The worst thing that conservatives can do is slip headlong into buzz-word hell. The second worst thing is to emulate the opposition.

Hmm. So what’s left over then? That seems to pretty much covers everything except “biblical not-naturalism”. I’m surprised that Darwin didn’t get blamed for pre-Biblical naturalism (whatever that is) as well. A brief summary of the argument (inasmuch as there is an argument) seems to be “everyone except True Christians ™ commit unspeakably evil acts”. But the irony is that it is precisely this kind of Us vs. Them thinking that is responsible for far more evil in the world than the unspeakable sin that Darwin committed of believing that things might actually be as they appear to be.

As I pointed out earlier, I think that the demonization of Darwin is just downright silly, and so is mentioning Darwin in the same breath as Jeffrey Dahmer. By the same token, I don’t think it’s useful to demonize “humanists” or to lay the woes of the world at the feet of godless materialists. Heck, I disdain godless materialists just as much as the next guy – but, let’s keep this in proportion.

In fact I am very sympathetic to Linda Kimball’s conviction that this is a morally ordered universe, and that sciientists are not immune from stupidity and self-delusion.

But polemics and pat rhetoric are not helpful, in my opinion.

Biology or not, a nonliving object such as a snowflake can exhibit crystal symmetry and thus possess a “creative force” with higher energy than a mere lump of ice. That is utterly different than an omnipotent being molding each flake into his flaky image. The wild-eyed nonscientific atheists (aka communists) and Christians alike are equally bigoted, in that they start with a conclusion and then work backwards for a justification.

To answer your last point on morals, every Christian I have debated with dodges the truth with vast historical inaccuracy, even though history is entirely non-essential in answering the core questions of creation. If it is a question of science, truth can be discovered anywhere in the universe. Any moral Christian code which mandates the murder of atheists is not moral at all. But if it is called “moral”, invariably many modern Christians are corrupt and evil in that they are failing to execute their murderous morals in this regard. If one asks “does God exist?”, and then is told “God is useful” because of a totally false moral decay argument, that entirely detonates your claim of “rational science”.

A useful pharmaceutical drug is NOT useful if it doesn’t even exist. That fact is inescapable. To claim the facts can be ignored when there is social consequence is the same as admitting your God could be a placebo and it matters not at all to you. As a consequence of those values, it is evident feminists and Nazis are therefore morally wrong only on a moral relativistic basis. Theirs is a different illusion, for which facts are too discomforting.

Whether an ideology is “morally useful” has to be subordinate to whether it is factually right and wrong to begin with. Otherwise, you cannot convince anyone of anything besides what opinion you find pleasant and/or useful. I could be wrong about this, but please correct me if I am mistaken. If you prefer to call the creative force GOD, how does in anyway prove the existance of God to those who define it by biblical depiction? I prefer to call my refrigerator God, so is that a valid proof?

Anyone educated in “hard” science is aware of the “Third Law of Thermodynamics.” In a nut shell it says that all matter tends towards the lowest energy state, consistent with maximum disorder. It takes energy to order atoms into increasingly large molecules and bio-molecules are some of the largest most organized.

Leave these bio-molecules isolated for a few even a relatively short period of time and they degrade into smaller and smaller pieces, seeking the lowest energy state. They will never continuously increase in size regardless of the amount of energy supplied. Without an unknown creative force I call GOD, macromolecules would not exist. Our modern laws of science simply don’t explain the scientific fact of evolution, but rather force one to conclude that a creating force (GOD) must exist.

Just as our natural scientific laws are the results of repeated empirical observations, the moral laws can be empirically determined by analyzing history. Societies that have followed the righteous moral code of Christianity or other religious variations have flourished while those ignoring them end in ruin. Subordinating man’s ego to the will of the creating force is the foremost requirement for an enduring society.