Winning!
I grew up in a home where my mother and father, both fallen-away Christians, wanted to let my sister and I “decide our own beliefs.”
The idea, of course, is that we are blank slates and my parents would not indoctrinate me into a particular religion, thus letting me collect data and inputs over time and eventually grow up and choose my own beliefs or worldview. I can see how someone would think this makes sense.
But in fact my sister and I both became agnostics, mirroring the (un)belief system of our parents. This was no accident, because it’s impossible to rear your child in a vacuum. Whether you like it or not, you are teaching them things about the world, existence, and faith (through your actions, the things you say (and don’t say), etc.).
They bought us books on evolution that claimed humans evolved from single-celled organisms; we never once said a prayer in our home thanking “someone” for the many blessings we had; we only went to church for a short time, and that was at the Unitarian Universalist one where people believed all kinds of contradictory things. In short, the guidance we were given supported an atheistic materialism worldview and argued against a Christian one.
It is not surprising then that my sister and I both became agnostics (though in truth I was militantly atheistic, seeking to convince Christian friends that God did not exist). Did we choose this? Yes, but the unbelief of our parents was an instrumental influence in our decision, as it is with any child.
There is no escaping influencing your child. The only question is: what will you influence them to believe?
This great responsibility is all the more reason to yourself delve into philosophy so as to understand the right use of reason, allowing you to penetrate into the truths of existence and ultimately supporting the assent of faith in Jesus Christ and His Church. Along these lines, I would highly recommend Dr. Feser’s book The Last Superstition, which refutes the New Atheists via the right use of reason. Reason is on the side of Christianity.
You can only give what you yourself possess: form yourself in the truth that you may pass it on to your children. Do not be fooled when an atheist claims you are “indoctrinating” your children into your belief system. You are teaching them the objective truth of existence. They are seeking to do the same, only their beliefs are false and so they pass on errors to their children.
Whether Christians or atheists, we have the responsibility as parents to teach our children how to reason cogently. If we instruct them in this invaluable skill, we can be hopeful that they will be able to discover the truth.
Excellent!!!
I recommend homeschooling. Not only should parents indoctrinate their own children. They should insulate them from the erroneous and harmful information which is continually being passed down to them by atheistic teachers and peers in the public school systems.
Sincerely,
De Maria
Amen to that!
Sending my kids to a public school was the worst mistake of my life.
Mr. Rose, I’m curious. This question is meant entirely in the interest of my own education, not to make judgments.
Based on what little I’ve heard you say about it on this blog, am I to take it that you don’t believe in evolution? If not, would you please explain to me why not (maybe you could make a blog entry about that at some point in the future)? I’m rather curious, as the theory seems to be consistent and to make sense to me, as far as what I know about what it says. In addition to which I don’t have a better explanation.
I believe that the human soul is the product of divine creation, and since that’s an inextricable part of human nature, you could say that I don’t believe that human beings evolved from apes or anything else. However, while I don’t say that God wasn’t involved, I don’t see why the human body didn’t evolve from apelike ancestors, and that that was the raw material that God fashioned into a human, rather than literally dust. In addition, I don’t believe that belief in evolution is necessary for anyone–it’s not doctrine, and being a scientific theory it could very easily be altered or even refuted with new information.
But if you have information that I’m not privy to, I would be interested in hearing it. I’m less interested in defending evolution than I am in learning the truth.
Michael,
Like with global climate change disruption, I am still gathering inputs on the plausibility of the spectrum of claims that fall under the name of evolution.
For instance, it is my understanding that scientists have demonstrated that new species can arise through evolutionary processes. As a matter of fact one of my Catholic friends has discovered a new species of frog (she’s an evolutionary biologist). But I have not heard that scientists have demonstrated (that is proven) evolution across Families (as in Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species) or maybe even across Genera.
So I see no reason to believe that our bodies evolved from single-celled organisms, or that life arose from non-life spontaneously/randomly (abiogenesis). Yet people who say “evolution” usually include the former claim and sometimes include the latter one (though abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution since evolution doesn’t guide non-living things).
The idea of theistic evolution, that our bodies did evolve from a common ancestor with, say, apes, is something I have considered but am on the fence about. Still learning more.
God bless,
Devin
Thank you for the information, Mr. Rose!
I wonder, though: would it even be possible to demonstrate that new genera, or families, arise via evolution? I mean, has anyone (that you know of) given any idea of what would (in theory, at least) prove evolution across genera or families false? Because if there is nothing that would prove it false, not even in theory, then it isn’t even a scientific theory at all, even if it’s true.
I suppose this is what I wonder the most about, though: is it scientific or not, irrespective of whether it’s true? Because even if it is true, if there is no scientific test or observation that would conclusively prove macroevolution false (in the event that it turned out to actually be false), then no science class should be teaching it at all. (That’s how it is for string “theory”.)
Hmmm, can it be proven false? Probably not, as the counter-argument would go: “given more time, say another billion years, maybe we could see evolution occur at this greater scale.”
Same with abiogenesis: given enough time, *maybe* non-life molecules would coalesce together and form proteins and amino acids and then the first organism.
I suppose the question then becomes “How do you account for the differences in fossil fauna over time, and the similarities in embryology and genetics across diverse species and even higher taxa?” Case in point: the dinosaurs. If every non-avian species of dinosaur is extinct now, how did the biological population of the world not go down significantly and stay down? Did God create new species wholesale and then make them go extinct before He made us? (That’s not a rhetorical question, as that’s true of the dinosaurs whether they evolved into existence or not, and God creates our souls new as each person is conceived.)
Also, I’ve heard it said that fruit flies share about half of their genes with us, and combined with the fossil record as we have it, what reason would there be for such diverse species to have the same genes if we didn’t all come from the same ancestor(s)? (To say nothing, of course, of chimpanzees sharing some 99% of theirs with us.) It wouldn’t even necessarily be un-Biblical, as far as I can see, as all human beings came from the same ancestors too.
Granted, if you can’t explain these things without recourse to macro-evolution, that doesn’t automatically mean that macro-evolution is true, but I do wonder how that would be, because I’ve heard it said that a possible way to disprove the theory would be if we found, for example, human fossils in Precambrian rock. Then again, would that actually disprove evolution? Most species don’t fossilize anyway, so theoretically it wouldn’t disprove anything, only change our minds radically on what we think we know about the history of life on Earth. Technically you could still argue that it might be true, just that the mechanism is different from how we used to imagine it.
Likewise, another supposed finding that would falsify macro-evolution would be if mutations could be shown to be prevented from accumulating–but how could we show that, if it did not actually happen? The most I could see is that we would notice them by their absence, but does that mean they’re not possible at all, or just that we’re not seeing them?
That leaves Charles Darwin’s proposed finding that would falsify his theory: a complex organ that couldn’t possibly have been formed by evolution by natural selection–by “numerous, successive, slight modifications”. I suppose that is a way it could be falsified, but then how would you define what could or could not have been formed thus, and what criteria would you use to arrive at your definition? In other words, would that actually be a way to falsify it, or would you run into problems of definition and have it STILL be permanently safe, and hence unscientific?
Am I talking myself out of believing in macro-evolution…?
I’m just coming to wonder how it is that we can even have scientific theories that involve the PAST. We can observe current phenomena, and even extrapolate back into the past, but is there a significant enough difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution to where that doesn’t count as a case where extrapolation back into the past counts as consistent with the scientific theory of micro-evolution?
Michael, the answer to the “we share 99% of the same DNA” argument is that that’s equally consistent with natural selection, artificial selection, or direct design/engineering. Imagine if aliens came to earth after humans moved on, and they dug up the “fossil record” of automobiles from the 19th century to today. You’d see an initial “Cambrian explosion” where a whole bunch of different types pop into existence and are very quickly weeded out to a few standard forms. Then you could trace a “family tree” from those survivors to the present, with various models more or less close or distant over time. My 2011 Ford Fiesta probably shares 80% of its “DNA” with the Ford Model T. A pickup truck might be a different phylum, a motorcycle a different kingdom, but each would have a family tree of its own. If God created us by artificial selection (the way we have created different breeds of dogs) we and other animals would obviously have a true “family tree”. Even if he engineered and manufactured each species in a laboratory, most species would still be made of “the same kind of parts” and have similar DNA.
IMHO, the real debate is about natural selection, and “evolution” is a kind of nonspecific word that people use to make arguments hard to evaluate. (Sort of like how the advocates of man-made global warming use “climate change” as a weasel word.) I think the theory of “evolution” (which means: we changed over time) is hard to deny. The real question is, was it driven by purely accidental processes (“natural selection”) or was it helped and guided? If we believe that God intervenes in history and the physical world, why assume that he only started doing so when people were around? The fossil evidence is consistent with either a natural selection or artificial selection (design) scenario, and logically, Darwin was right that natural selection *could* theoretically result in evolution. The thing we lack is evidence that natural selection ever *did* occur here on earth.
What you say makes sense, Joe. Why should we assume that God didn’t intervene at all before there were human beings? But how would you distinguish between natural and supernatural selection by experiment or observation?
It would seem to me that you could only call it supernatural if 1) all natural explanations indicate that a new life form should not have been able to survive given the environment, and yet it has survived; or 2) the environment changed to accommodate the new life form despite our knowledge of natural law indicating that such change in the environment should not have happened.
Even then, it might be that there’s another scientific theory that we don’t know of that might explain the above, and anyway supernatural selection is not scientific by definition and shouldn’t be taught in a science course.
One thing I find interesting is that fossil history suggests a straight line of descent from mammal-like reptiles to the ancestors of mammals, and the one major detour it makes is the dinosaurs, who are unrelated entirely. Was this nature or supernature, and how would we even know for sure since it is in the past and so by definition cannot be either experimented or observed?
I also have a thought on how science might answer this question. We know two ways of creating species by “intelligent design”: one is by selective breeding, the way we created domestic dogs, horses, corn/maize, and a bunch of other species. The other is genetic engineering, in which we create species right in the laboratory.
One way scientists could refute intelligent design is to look at the fossil record of these human-created species, and compare it to the fossil record of wild species, and show that they’re different in some logical way that is consistent with the wild species NOT being artificially selected or genetically engineered. Something different in the DNA, or the skeletons, or something. If they found something like this, they could at least say those species weren’t designed in any way *we* know how to design species.
… Emphasis on “Not”. You may as well leave your guns about while you’re (Not) at it. With the exception of reversability / added reaction time, the end result is much the same, and potentially on a much larger scale.
Exactly. There is no neutral middle ground. As CS Lewis so brilliantly wrote, “You are not, in fact, going to read nothing…if you don’t read good books you will read bad ones. If you don’t go on thinking rationally, you will think irrationally.”
Thank you for this. My 15 year old son has been questioning along this vein and I’m too fuzzy (newborn haze) to craft an answer. Now I have one!
Pingback: MONDAY AFTERNOON EDITION | Big Pulpit
Excellent article! I find it funny when people say they want to raise their children to choose their own belief system while at the same time they make tons of other decisions for their children while raising them. Why is something so important as one’s belief system not a part of how one raises their child? It is quite a contradiction. Thank you for sharing your experience!
Yeah, on that same line of thought, let’s let our children decide what to eat each day, what programs to watch each day, or if they want to go to school each day. Sigh. I think people that come up with this nonsense are parents who really do not want to be parents nor want the responsibility that comes with parenting. I fear for these parents at the time of judgement, when God will ask them what they did to instruct their children in the ways of Truth.
abortive inaction. “Sniff. Sniff. I don’t know what I happened, I just zoned out for a while over twinkies and weed, then when I looked back….wussername wuz….NICE JACKET!”
Yup. They’re children…they don’t raise themselves. If we’re not going to do it, then why not send them into the woods to be raised by wild animals.
AWESOME piece, and something weighing on my heart. (I know couples raising their children without a set belief system, and the kids are so open to it now… I wonder how belief could be fostered??) I especially love the book recommendation – many thanks, Devin!
Welcome Julie!
Pingback: Asimov’s Foundation Sci-Fi and Religion | St. Joseph's Vanguard