Bishop Spong on Evolution (salvation, Buddhists, souls, hell)
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I have not Posted in a while so I thought I would come back and visit you good peoples....
I subscribe to a mailing list sent out weekly called Q&A with Bishop Spong
A recent question addressed the act of the Church of England sending out an open apology to Charles Darwin 150 years later, basically saying "You were right about Evolution and we were wrong about the creation myth"
I am copying it here, and credit needs to go to Bishop SPng for the content
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JJJord1726, via the Internet, writes:
This Week's Essay The Origins of the Bible, Part XXIII:
Job, the Icon of New Consciousness
Read it now, and join the conversation on the exclusive member message boards, when you START YOUR FREE MONTH (http://click.newsletters.johnshelbyspong.com/fwvvrrmdr_zrrvfrwtf.html - broken link)
The Church of England apologized to Charles Darwin last fall, nearly 150 years after he published his most famous work, for its initial rejection of his theories. The church conceded that it was over-defensive and over-emotional in dismissing Darwin's ideas, and it called "anti-evolutionary fervour" an "indictment" of the Church.
The bold move is certain to dismay sections of the church that believe in creationism and regard Darwin's views as directly opposed to traditional Christian teaching. The apology, which was written by the Rev. Dr. Malcolm Brown, the Church's director of mission and public affairs, says that Christians in their response to Darwin's theory of natural selection repeated the mistakes they made in doubting Galileo's astronomy in the 17th century. The statement read, "Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of "faith seeking understanding" and hope that makes some amends."
Opposition to evolutionary theories is still "a litmus test of faithfulness" for some Christian movements, the Church admits. It says that such attitudes owe much to a fear of perceived threats to Christianity.
Dear JJJord,
Thanks for your e-mail and the news that the Church of England has apologized to Charles Darwin for rejecting evolution. It is better late than never. My sense is that this action is more embarrassing than helpful. Darwin doesn't need the Church's apology. His thesis is now accepted academically across the world. Evolution is taught in fourth-grade science books. Medical science assumes its truth and the discovery of DNA took away the last vestige of the suggestion that it was still "an unproved theory." The fact that there are some benighted souls in the world who believe that quoting the book of Genesis can somehow counter the insights of Charles Darwin, or that it is their Christian duty to resist Darwin, is hardly determinative in the debate.
It is a tragedy that the Church officially resisted Darwin for the last 150 years, but that is quite typical of church leaders' behavior. Recall that it was in December of 1991 that the Vatican finally admitted that Galileo was correct. This was about 40 years after space travel had begun. If Galileo had not been correct, our spacecraft would have collided with the sky that separated heaven from earth.
I would suggest the leaders of the Church of England must now practice what that apology to Darwin suggests that we believe. For Darwin attacks the basic Christian myth of a perfect creation, the fall into sin, the divine rescue carried out by Jesus and the restoration through faith to our status as those created in the image of God. If we evolved from single cells into complex self-conscious creatures then there was no perfection from which to fall, no fall into sin, no need for a divine rescue and no capacity to be restored to something which we have never been. This means that the whole way of telling the Jesus story must be rethought, and this reformulation will threaten church leaders deeply. Clergy on Sunday mornings can no longer address "fallen sinners." The mantra that "Jesus died for my sins" will have to be retired. The traditional meaning of the Eucharist will have to be revised. We will have to recognize that we are now addressing not those who need to be rescued from a fall but those who have not yet achieved the status of being fully human. Jesus must then empower us to be fully human; he cannot rescue us from sin.
I'm glad to see the Church of England begin to enter the 20th century. I will be happier when they finally begin to enter the 21st century.
[RIGHT]– John Shelby Spong[/RIGHT]
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Now I bring this up because Long Before I left Christianity, Long before I even heard of Bishop Spong even, I had openly rejected the Concept of "Sin" as taught by the Christian Religion and I see that Bishop Spong here makes a decent enough analogy as to how Humanity has, as Science has shown and will continue to show, evolved beyond a need for "Sin and salvation" ....
As for moving into the 21st Century, it would be nice to see the resources and time of COE and others focusing on 21st century issues instead of rehashing first century mythology. The answers to today's problems do not lie in some ancient book, but in what humanity can create now through it's own means.
I think you have it backwards...Fundamentalists are a joke to most Christians, as well as the secular world.
Not really a joke, sanspeur . . . but misguided and overconfident in their ability to overcome our "spiritual blindness" and understand the whole "spiritual elephant" from their designated part. They assume (wrongly) that their simplistic reading and understanding is an absolute standard that anyone can clearly comprehend the meaning of . . . exactly as they do. They reject psychology because it reveals all the foibles and flaws that they wish to completely ignore in their ignorance so as to enjoy the bliss that comes of it.
Spong is so far removed from Biblical Christianity that I don't know exactly what this statement accomplishes. He's a joke to most Christians.
Soooo..... I'm sensing that you couldn't fathom the simple logic of his statements, right, kd?
But, let's summarize:
Catholic Church
Islam
The Anglican (High English) Church
Shinto
Buddhists
Atheists
Scientists
Many curious laypeople
What is this list? Just those who understand and accept the obvious logic and observable facts of Evolution.
I wonder what little percentage of the Earth's growing population this list includes now. I'll betcha it's gotta be a "meaningless", oh let's say.... 65+% by now, and rising by multi-millions with each annual graduating high school class.
So, you're right, kd. They're all really well off the mark. (PS: hang on to your seat!)
Soooo..... I'm sensing that you couldn't fathom the simple logic of his statements, right, kd?
But, let's summarize:
Catholic Church
Islam
The Anglican (High English) Church
Shinto
Buddhists
Atheists
Scientists
Many curious laypeople
What is this list? Just those who understand and accept the obvious logic and observable facts of Evolution.
I wonder what little percentage of the Earth's growing population this list includes now. I'll betcha it's gotta be a "meaningless", oh let's say.... 65+% by now, and rising by multi-millions with each annual graduating high school class.
So, you're right, kd. They're all really well off the mark. (PS: hang on to your seat!)
1. What "facts" of evolution have been "OBSERVED"? Species-to-species evolution has not been observed. There are gaping holes in the fossil record, and no transitional fossils exist.
2. Most of the people on earth believed at one point that the earth was flat...doesn't mean it was. Popular opinion does not dictate truth.
1. What "facts" of evolution have been "OBSERVED"? Species-to-species evolution has not been observed.
You mean like these empirical studies???
Speciation events observed in the laboratory:
Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory by J.R. Weinberg V. R. Starczak and P. Jora, Evolution vol 46, PP 1214-1220, 1992
Experimentally Created Incipient Species of Drosophila by Theodosius Dobzhansky & Olga Pavlovsky, Nature 230, pp 289 - 292 (02 April 1971)
Founder-flush speciation in Drosophila pseudoobscura: a large scale experiment by A. Galiana, A. Moya and F. J. Alaya, Evolution vol 47, pp 432-444, 1993 (Speciation event in Drosophila melanogaster)
Phagotrophy by a flagellate selects for colonial prey: A possible origin of multicellularity byM.E. Boraas, D.B. Seale and J.E. Boxhorn, Evolutionary Ecology Vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 153-164. Feb 1998
Sexual isolation caused by selection for positive and negative phototaxis and geotaxis in Drosophila pseudoobscura by E. del Solar, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, vol 56, pp 484-487, 1966
The phagotrophic origin of eukaryotes and phylogenetic classification of Protozoa by Tom Cavalier-Smith, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology vol 52, pp 297-354, 2002
Speciation events in nature and supporting phylogenetic evidence:
Adaptive Evolution And Explosive Speciation: The Cichlid Fish Model by Thomas D. Kocher, Nature Reviews: Genetics, 5: 288-298 (April 2004)
Cichlid Species Flocks of the Past and Present by A. Meyer, Heredity vol 95, 419-420, 20 July 2005
Drosophila paulistorum: A Cluster of Species in Statu Nascendi by Theodosius Dobzhansky & Boris Spassky, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA., 45(3): 419-428 (1959)
Hybridisation and Contemporary Evolution in an introduced Cichlid Fish from Lake Malawi National Park by J. Todd Streelman, S.L. Gymrek, M.R. Kidd, C. Kidd, R.L. Robinson, E. Hert, A.J. Ambali and T.D. Kocher, Molecular Ecology, vol 13, pp 2471-2479, 21 April 2004
Major Histocompatibility Complex Variation In Two Species Of Cichlid Fishes From Lake Malawi by Hideki Ono, Colm O'hUigin, Herbert Tichy and Jan Klein, Molecular and Evolutionary Biology, 10(5): 1060-1072 (1993)
Mitochondrial Phylogeny of the Endemic Mouthbrooding Lineages of Cichlid Fishes from Lake Tanganyika in Eastern Africa by Christian Sturmbauer and Axel Meyer, Journal of Molecular and Biological Evolution, Vol 10, No. 4, pp 751-768, 1993
Multilocus Phylogeny of Cichlid Fishes (Pisces: Perciformes) : Evolutionary Comparison of Microsatellite and Single-Copy Nuclear Loci by J. Todd Streelman, Rafael Zardoya, Axel Meyer and Stephen A Karl, Journal of Molecular and Biological Evolution, Vol 15, No 7, pp 798-808, 1998
Origin of the Superflock of Cichlid Fishes from Lake Victoria, East Africa by Erik Verheyen, Walter Salzburger, Jos Snoeks and Axel Meyer, Science, vol 300, pp 325-329, 11 April 2003
Phylogeny of African Cichlid Fishes as Revealed By Molecular Markers by Werner E. Mayer, Herbert Tichy and Jan Klein., Heredity, vol 80, pp 702-714, 1998
The Species Flocks of East African Cichlid Fishes: Recent Advances in Molecular Phylogenetics and Population Genetics by Walter Salzburger and Axel Mayer, Naturwissenschaft, vol 91, pp 277-290, 20 April 2004
TY for that. However as you have already seen, the title of Bishop holds no credence with the fundamental Christians aka evangelicals aka YEC folk of the grande ol' US of A. He is thus classified as a hairy tick and as was so eloquently stated, he is a deluded fraud and biblically unsound to pass comment.
However, the respondee started a thread awhile back wherein we have been debacling this subject ad nausium and has not posted any hypothesis to the contrary. It saddens us much as we deluded "few" would greatly benefit from his infinitesimal wisdom yet he chooses to refrain from "enlightening" us all.
Contrary to Mr Rifleman's statistics, our respondee obviously has better and more updated information that he is not sharing with us which has us "few" at a loss for words.
We are informed that evolution has not been observed yet we "few" deluded believers have posted multiple accounts of this aka "testimonies" for the more eloquent linguists. We are also informed of gaping holes which we are aware of yet our respondee fails to acknowledge that from the alternate dimensional reality of pseudoscience, there are far too many gaps aka unanswered questions. We are often informed that these "gaps" are ascribed to his Deity who makes tweaks here and there, overcomes all obstacles in hydrology, cosmology, climatology, geology, or in other words, the science as we "few" deluded are aware of today. However these deferances to said Deity do raise many questions and for example we have a few thousand species - Oh my bad kinds of animals that are rescued from a cataclysmic flood of well - biblical proportions.
We are informed that said Deity perfectly created all things but when we with our limited knowledge have indicated that a mega boat would be required to house approximately 70 million animals and seeds and young plants and trees for viable reproduction post flood not to mention food, neither the respondee(s) or said Deity can provide us any answers that satisfy our "deluded/finite" minds.
We are also informed that from these kinds it was not necessary for all the animals to be present and accounted for hence we are to accept say a pair of lions would eventually procreate a domestic house cat, they are after all from the same feline kind.
This global flood of epic biblical proportions lasting 18 months has raised a few other questions with the "few" deluded. We just cannot understand how the animals found sustenance be it from non existent flora as that was now all turned to (soon to be coal) covered in rich volcanic lime rich ash that was brought forth from the ocean depths when the springs opened up leading to aforesaid cataclysmic biblical proportions flood. Those that suddenly became carnivores again after becoming herbivores (just so they would not eat each other on the boat called the ark) were OK for a day or two as they could eat up all the pair kinds that were supposed to replenish the planet.
Seeing by our limited understanding despite the huge global fossil records we have, and the fact that some of these beasties if not all still exist today, we are left scratching our heads just how was this achieved.
Based on the dimensions of said ark, given by the said deity no less, even us poor deluded "few" realize there was no place for all the hay these poor beasties were to consume during a most frightening epic voyage of 18 months or so. We are also at a loss as to how the herbivores (the ones that were herbivores all along) manged to fast so long while the plants were planted by the 8 man crew of HMS Ark and has to germinate and sprout and bud and bear fruit.
The respondee and his friends have informed us that this boat also came to rest at an altitude of 15,000 feet no less on a mountain not far from where the epic voyage actually began. With our limited knowledge of ocean currents, we "few" are curious to know exactly how the boat managed to hover if you will in more or less the same place as the place of departure. We have seen pictures of stone achors that allegedly were attached to the ark but to be honest, these are so big that the crew of the HMS Ark must have been "really strong" to toss them overboard or tug at the rope when snagged on a rock for example. Just so you know, by today's standards, those rocks would require a 5 ton hoist - something we are in agreement with did not exist at the time of the alleged epic flood of biblical proportions.
We are shown pictures of an alleged docking station on a mountain in Turkey who's slopes seem rather steep for certain animals oh like those with hooves to navigate down from. Sadly we are not able to make a determination of this puzzle as the said mountain appears to be covered with snow and ice barring a few warm years when the ice melted somewhat; some aviator happened to spot what is known today as an anomaly.
With all these questions, we "few" have attempted to answer the questions of the origins of species but our learned friend informs us we are all hapless victims to a global conspiracy to hide the true origins of species, that being the account dictated by their Deity to a fellow named Moses who by the way lived many years after the global flood. Of course by this time all evidence was now well and truly dispersed throughout the globe and some animals and plants even miraculously managed to build some mode of ocean going transportation to reach the distant lands of Australia, the America's and a number of other island-type distant lands. It does appear however there was consensus as to which animals went where as some of these kinds are only found in one of these distant lands.
Whereas we the "few" believe in what is known as the theory of evolution, a lie from the pit of said Deity's hell, we are nonetheless assured that all these species evolved or transitioned to form these new hybrids of the kinds. I am sure you understand our confusion.
In our research we have discovered fossils of creatures unbeknown to man 4000 years ago, however our respondee and his friends assure us they were all alive and well prior to the beginning of the epic voyage and that these were in fact tame animals, and by their assertions were all herbivores too. They suggest that these ancient specimens were part of the epic voyage and later grew smaller (maybe they were lonely) and that is why we see the different fossils of those left behind cretins that perished in the flood. But I digress, these fossils we have discovered are all in different layers in sediment rock and even in the newly formed coal of the flood era.
In our scientific endeavors, we have developed some real nifty tools to calculate/measure the age of these fossils and of course the sediment wherein they are found. Sadly our figures do not align with the said Deity's dictum and we are thus informed our measurements are all unreliable even though cross checking with the various tools gives us a validated answer suggesting our tools work OK.
Now the various layers we found these fossils at all over the world, we are told cannot be true as the animals and plants that perished were all covered simultaneously by the volcanic ash from the depths of the ocean when the springs sprang forth. We are really confused now as the "few" of us have seen the multiple layer worldwide so we think their Deity is playing some cruel trick on us.
We have presented our evidence time and again with peer reviewed scientific papers (albeit just us deluded few) yet our hypothesis and physical evidence is rejected out of hand. As none of us were there when the fossils we discovered died, we are told to accept that this happened about 4000 years ago in spite of our fancy tools and findings. We are not quite ready to concede defeat as the evidence is just so damn compelling.
The "few" of us have delved into unrelated scientific disciplines all with funny names that end in -ogy and lo and behold, even though unrelated, they tend to support our point of view.
But I digress. As one of the "few", I welcome you to the debate and I am sure you will be equally fascinated at our findings and somewhat frustrated by the lack of answers from our respondee and his friends.
Please join us on the other thread where we are debacling (debating) this matter out "Daily Evolution Question"
Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory by J.R. Weinberg V. R. Starczak and P. Jora, Evolution vol 46, PP 1214-1220, 1992
Experimentally Created Incipient Species of Drosophila by Theodosius Dobzhansky & Olga Pavlovsky, Nature 230, pp 289 - 292 (02 April 1971)
Founder-flush speciation in Drosophila pseudoobscura: a large scale experiment by A. Galiana, A. Moya and F. J. Alaya, Evolution vol 47, pp 432-444, 1993 (Speciation event in Drosophila melanogaster)
Phagotrophy by a flagellate selects for colonial prey: A possible origin of multicellularity byM.E. Boraas, D.B. Seale and J.E. Boxhorn, Evolutionary Ecology Vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 153-164. Feb 1998
Sexual isolation caused by selection for positive and negative phototaxis and geotaxis in Drosophila pseudoobscura by E. del Solar, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, vol 56, pp 484-487, 1966
The phagotrophic origin of eukaryotes and phylogenetic classification of Protozoa by Tom Cavalier-Smith, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology vol 52, pp 297-354, 2002
Speciation events in nature and supporting phylogenetic evidence:
Adaptive Evolution And Explosive Speciation: The Cichlid Fish Model by Thomas D. Kocher, Nature Reviews: Genetics, 5: 288-298 (April 2004)
Cichlid Species Flocks of the Past and Present by A. Meyer, Heredity vol 95, 419-420, 20 July 2005
Drosophila paulistorum: A Cluster of Species in Statu Nascendi by Theodosius Dobzhansky & Boris Spassky, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA., 45(3): 419-428 (1959)
Hybridisation and Contemporary Evolution in an introduced Cichlid Fish from Lake Malawi National Park by J. Todd Streelman, S.L. Gymrek, M.R. Kidd, C. Kidd, R.L. Robinson, E. Hert, A.J. Ambali and T.D. Kocher, Molecular Ecology, vol 13, pp 2471-2479, 21 April 2004
Major Histocompatibility Complex Variation In Two Species Of Cichlid Fishes From Lake Malawi by Hideki Ono, Colm O'hUigin, Herbert Tichy and Jan Klein, Molecular and Evolutionary Biology, 10(5): 1060-1072 (1993)
Mitochondrial Phylogeny of the Endemic Mouthbrooding Lineages of Cichlid Fishes from Lake Tanganyika in Eastern Africa by Christian Sturmbauer and Axel Meyer, Journal of Molecular and Biological Evolution, Vol 10, No. 4, pp 751-768, 1993
Multilocus Phylogeny of Cichlid Fishes (Pisces: Perciformes) : Evolutionary Comparison of Microsatellite and Single-Copy Nuclear Loci by J. Todd Streelman, Rafael Zardoya, Axel Meyer and Stephen A Karl, Journal of Molecular and Biological Evolution, Vol 15, No 7, pp 798-808, 1998
Origin of the Superflock of Cichlid Fishes from Lake Victoria, East Africa by Erik Verheyen, Walter Salzburger, Jos Snoeks and Axel Meyer, Science, vol 300, pp 325-329, 11 April 2003
Phylogeny of African Cichlid Fishes as Revealed By Molecular Markers by Werner E. Mayer, Herbert Tichy and Jan Klein., Heredity, vol 80, pp 702-714, 1998
The Species Flocks of East African Cichlid Fishes: Recent Advances in Molecular Phylogenetics and Population Genetics by Walter Salzburger and Axel Mayer, Naturwissenschaft, vol 91, pp 277-290, 20 April 2004
Pick one of 'em, give me a link to a website and let's talk about it. In our own words.
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