Brilliant article. Thanks. Really enjoyed reading it. I was quite offended by those remarks of Pell's, but I guess his defensiveness is understandable considering his church's fast declining relevance.

Cheers Chrys. I must say that the line “about the need to respect those who don’t share our views” is a bit of a misrepresentation of my point. I never mentioned anything out ‘respect’, by point was to promote 'understanding'. Thanks for the mention all the same.

Simon, I think I understand your point but I have simply phrased it a little differently. Your point, I believe, was that we should not brand people 'stupid' because they believe stupid things. Rather, we should consider 'why' they hold such beliefs and have a bit of understanding - we all have our own biases. My rephrasing that we should 'respect' those who don't share our views says, I think, essentially the same thing - at least that was my intent. It does not suggest that the 'views' should be respected, but the people holding them, generally, should be. I'm sorry if you didn't read it that way.

"To call evolution science is deceit at best ..."
Posted by runner, Wednesday, 8 December 2010 11:15:50 AM

runner ... Evolution has little to do with origins - origins for the universe is cosmogenesis, and for biological life is abiogenesis.

Evolution was verified by finding the microscopic mechanisms by which it happens - Austrian Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel's Laws of Inheritance published in 1865 (that still apply today); chromosomes, etc that lead to the Modern Evolutionary synthesis in the 1940s with contributions by Theodosius Dobzhansky and Julian Huxley; and subsequent discoveries such as DNA, RNA, etc.

"Thankfully small kids are smart enough to see design written all over our planet. Evolution as one expert says is fairytales for adults."

Small kids lead down the garden path by misleading adults?

Just re-read Pell's diatribe -

"Cardinal Pell said education was not enough to create a civilised society, that faith was necessary too. He cited the example of 20th century Germany, which he said was the best educated society in the world when Hitler became leader."

http://www.smh.com.au/national/faithless-are-coarse-uncaring-and-without-purpose-says-cardinal-pell-20101128-18cg3.html

Hitler got in, in 1933, after a few episodes voting had not given a clear majority, and after a previous minority leader - army general named Kurt von Schleicher - tendered his resignation to Hindenburg, 57 days after he had been appointed. as he had been unable to secure a majority coalition in the Reichstag.

Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany, although the National Socialists never captured more than 37 percent of the national vote, and even though they still held a minority of cabinet posts and fewer than 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag. Hitler and the Nazis then set out to to consolidate their power.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0403a.asp

It had nothing to do with faith, or lack of it; or education, whether it be optimum, lack of, or anything in between.

Pell misrepresents, again.

Dear Runner
Intelligent Christians must be wishing that you would stop blaming god for our very unintelligent design. There are many places where you can read lists of the really dumb things about our design that you are blaming god for. Have a good look at http://www.youdebate.com/cgi-bin/scarecrow/topic.cgi?forum=3&topic=833. A couple of our design flaws mentioned there are:
• Retinal arteries/veins lying on and in front of the retina of the eyes. Many causes of blindness come from this defective design.
• Hip joints perfectly suited to support human weight if there were four of them or 4 supporting limbs. In a biped, the stress causes extremely common hip degeneration, and femoral neck fractures in women and older people. How often do you hear of that in a dog or horse?
No intelligent designer would have signed off on these and numerous other examples of poor human design. And many of these provide more evidence that humans really did evolve from quadrupeds in which the design features that are flaws in humans would have made sense.