Jehovah's Witnesses Quotes

This quotation is noteworthy because although there are some scientists who are sympathetic to the religious fundamentalist view of the origin of the universe, they are almost always second class scientists. In this case, the scientist is a first class scientist, a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. So his quotation has more weight than of most others and is used more often by many fundamentalists who support the Biblical Genesis version of creation rather than the Big Bang scientific explanations and evolution. There are however many great scientists who also are people of faith in a God. They may be religious, but like most religious Americans, interpret the Bible metaphorically and symbolically rather than literally as the fundamentalists do.

This quotation is important and memorable for several reasons. First, the Congressman is one of the relatively few highly educated Americans who believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible. Most Christians and Jews do not interpret the ancient scripture literally. Most Christian and Jewish religious organizations, including the Roman Catholic Church, have no problem at all with evolution and the big bang theory. As a matter of fact, the scientist who developed the mathematics to explain the big bang was a Catholic Priest. Even some religious people who do not believe that that evolution is not an accurate interpretation, rarely claim that the Earth is only 9,000 years old. It is actually over 13 Billion years old. An anti-scientific view of the world is certainly within an American’s right, but the fact that this congressman was assigned by The Republican Party leadership to be a Member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology given his belief structure is amazing, If the earth were only 9,000 years old, there is no way the global positioning satellites could tell us where we are, our nuclear arsenal would be unstable and dangerous, radiation medicine would not help anyone get well just for a few examples. A second noteworthy aspect is that the Congressman is not just stating that the millions of scientists and science teachers are wrong—in error. He accuses each and every one of them of acting as agents of Satan and that their motivation in studying and doing science is to undermine his and others faith in God and that none of them has any belief in or desire for a personal Savior. It is rare that this type of un-American behavior is found in a member of Congress who claims that any person who disagrees with his religions views or has different Biblical interpretations is an agent from Hell. The founding fathers created the First Amendment to cope with and even tolerate the few who had the extreme and unrealistic views of this Congressmen.

There are many scientists who disagree with Johnson’s very unusual logic. They point out that it is certainly possible that God initially did not have had humans in minds, and when they evolved, decided that they were worthy of salvation history and then interfered to the extent of a virgin birth. Others would point out that just because man cannot exactly foresee the exact future pattern of evolution, does not men that a Supreme Being could not have initiated the mechanism that he/she knew would result in salvation history. The Pope and the Catholic Church see no inconsistency between Darwinism and the salvation history. Then there are those non-Christians who do not believe that God ever did introduce salvation and there are many more of them than there are Christians. Then, it is possible that God just set things in motion and had more important things then micromanaging evolution on our one planet in a universe of billions of billions. Last there are those who do not believe that there is or has been a God. Of course there is the possibility that Johnson is right, and religiously he may be, but that is not subject to scientific analysis.

In the middle of the 19th century, there was an Anglican English Bishop by the name of Usher who was the first person to perform this “Biblical” analysis. Even then the absurdity of this claim was demonstrated over and over again with the science of the time. Most religious fundamentalists believe that the word “day” was really an unspecified period of time which might have been billions of years. Other religious theologians argue that the entire Genesis story was a metaphor and not meant to be taken literally. Today we know that our universe is over 18 billion years old, and the overwhelming proportions of the different animals and other life forms that have existed are long since extinct, while a few, like horseshoe crabs, are many millions of years old. New species are being created constantly. Even man, one of the more recent life forms, was well developed, had communities, and had spread over the world more than 6,000 years ago. We have archeological evidence of human life that goes back 10s of thousands of years. None-the-less, there are a number of American citizens who actually believe the 6,000 year claim, and they are entitled to their opinion regardless of how absurd it may seem to others. That is the great strength of a liberal democracy. Absurd seeming beliefs must be protected and respected. However, views that are so variant from known scientific reality may not be allowed to interfere with the teaching and public education to advocate a particular theological view and especially under the rubric of science.

1st Earl of Beaconsfield. In this famous speech, Disraeli demonstrated his great political skill, by charming the scientists as well as the clerics regarding the then new concept of Darwinian evolution.

Ms. Holloway had led the majority of the board that had voted to revise the education standards of Kansas to exclude evolution. She was defeated in the Republican primary election afterward. See Sue Gamble {602752}

of the Intelligent Design strategists

This is an important quotation for several reasons. First, it demonstrates the extreme diversity of religion in America. To Swaggart, Evolution is a “Satanic Theory”. However, to most American religious leaders, Evolution, per se, is not problematic. The Roman Catholic Church has no trouble with Evolution; Catholic Universities teach Evolution as a basic part of their science curricula. Jews have no theological problems with Evolution. None of the main-line Protestant Churches have any theological opposition to Evolution per se. Yet there are other Protestant denominations who find that Evolution is in contradiction to a literal interpretation of the Bible and hence do not accept it. Second, it shows the extreme level of vituperation and disrespect that is given differing points of view by some of the extreme fundamentalists who do not have the traditional American religious tolerance for differing belief structures. Here Swaggart accuses the hundreds of millions of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist and other clerics and laypeople who see Evolution as a well-established explanation of much of science, of being not only atheists but atheists in league with the Devil. A third factor is that this quotation is an example of a Minister telling people what is or is not science and scientifically demonstrated. If a scientist without any religious training of study were ever to render judgments on theology, most of us would laugh and see it as ridiculous. However when a cleric like Swaggert, untutored and ignorant of even basic science, makes scientific pronouncements, he (and many other fundamentalists) find that reasonable.

This was not only the case in 1852, but also true 150 years later. The only difference is that there is much more proof of Evolution, and there is a much smaller proportion of the population that questions Evolution as the fundamental mechanism by which all species have developed.

Darwin who had a Protestant Christian upbringing, never precluded the possibility that God had created the universe with the Laws of Evolution and that was the mechanism He selected to allow all the species and diversity of life to develop. But he did not say that explicitly. While he found immediate acceptance and accolades from the scientific communities throughout the world, and enthusiastic approval by most educated people with the exception of theologians and clerics. Their reaction was extreme—almost apoplectic. The book as a best seller and they sold out with each successive printing. In the 6th edition, Darwin not only was explicit about the role the Deity might have had, but Darwin stated that he personally believed that He was the impetus to the creative process. Ironically, almost all the social and political opponents of Evolution have never read Darwin’s work (or much else on the subject) and certainly do not realize that the man they accuse of leaving God out of the Creation, actually believed that God was the critical element and he and other evolutionary scientists were just discovering God’s laws. Dr. Huxley and some other supporters of Darwin were disappointed with this change in the 6th edition, as they were atheists and believed that there was no deity involved in the creation. Today, there are evolutionary scientists who are on both sides of the issue. They just disagree on this point, but they work together on everything else.

The religious theology of the Church of England had accepted the fact based on Newton’s work, that the heavenly bodies followed a set of scientific laws that were themselves created by God. However, the Church could not accept the same principle when it came to the different species of humans and lower order animals. Each species they believe was created with all its characteristics by God directly and species could not change, develop, regress, go extinct unless God specifically ordained that. It was this inconsistency that Darwin was afraid would produce religious attacks on him and his notions of natural selection while astronomy and physics was treated very different theologically. Darwin delayed publishing his findings for 25 years hoping to find a religious atmosphere that would treat biology much as physics and astronomy. It didn’t come and finally he published and took the heat, which actually was not very great. With the exception of some religious fundamentalists, most other elements of society welcomed and supported Darwin’s ideas which today we realize were among the most important ever put forth in the world of science.

Actually no school teaches that. What they did teach when covering Evolution was that some modern apes (chimpanzees and bonobos) and humans were both descended from a common ancestor. The Congressman was at that point an evangelical Christian fundamentalist, Later, DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.

While many people in America say they do not “believe in” evolution almost all of them do not know what evolution is much less understand what it is that they think is false. There are very few people who have studied evolution who reject it as being without merit in explaining life forms and their history. Almost all who are against it are religious fundamentalists who take the Judeo-Christian Bible literally. For their particular religion, evolution is a false doctrine, but there are many major religions in America for whom evolution is no problem. For example, Quakers, Unitarians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Reform Jews, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox just to list some. Creationism, of which the quote author is an advocate, is an excellent religious solution to the contradiction between Evolution and the literal word of the Bible, but it is such terrible science, that it is not even considered science or taught in science curricula.

This is a very good quotation showing the point of view of religious fundamentalists that if there is no fixed statement of ethics and morality as with the word of God as revealed in the Bible, what then makes anything right or wrong and the world exists in a moral behavioral vacuum. Other religionists hold that the morality is in the metaphors and philosophy of religion and not in the literal words of scripture. Still others argue that morality and religion itself is dynamic and is constantly changing. Then there are those who build their view of morality on philosophy but which is not based on a deity—Ethical Culturalists for example {592791}. Also, there are the pragmatic evolutionists who argue that cooperative behavior has evolved in man and cultural rules—morality—is also transmitted by culture and systems of law.