Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[CNN]

The Church of England owes Charles Darwin an apology for its hostile 19th-century reaction to the naturalist’s theory of evolution, a cleric wrote on an Anglican Web site launched Monday.The Rev. Malcolm Brown, who heads the church’s public affairs department, issued the statement to mark Darwin’s bicentenary and the 150th anniversary of the seminal work “On the Origin of Species,” both of which fall next year.

Brown said the Church of England should say it is sorry for misunderstanding him at the time he released his findings and, “by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand (Darwin) still.” The Church of England said Brown’s statement reflected its position on Darwin but did not constitute an official apology.

The church’s stance sets it apart from fundamentalist Christians, who believe evolutionary theory is incompatible with the biblical story of the Earth’s creation. Darwin was born into the Church of England, educated at a church boarding school and trained to become an Anglican priest. However, his theory that species evolve over generations through a process of natural selection brought him into conflict with the church.

The Church of England did not take an official stance against Darwin’s theories, but many senior Anglicans reacted with hostility to his ideas, arguing against them at public debates.

At an Oxford University debate in 1860, the bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, famously asked scientist Thomas Huxley whether it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed to be descended from a monkey. Critics included the Rev. John Stevens Henslow and Adam Sedgwick, both scientists who had taught Darwin at Cambridge. Sedgwick wrote that he found some of Darwin’s ideas “utterly false and grievously mischievous.”

Brown said that from a modern perspective, it was hard to avoid the thought that the reaction against Darwin was based on what would now be called the “yuck factor … when he proposed a lineage from apes to humans.” Brown called for a “rapprochement” between Christianity and Darwinism.

Read more here.

[From me]

Apologize for what? Darwin’s theory is just that a theory. If I found out that God used Evolution it wouldn’t destroy my faith but I see no where in Scripture where it talks about Evolution.  Genesis clearly says that God created the heavens and the earth and God created man.  It doesn’t say he created an Ape that became man. The church owes no apology but Darwin will answer for his terrible theory.

What do you think?

[BP]

The Spanish Parliament’s move to grant rights previously reserved for human beings to chimpanzees and other apes is a victory for those seeking to minimize the uniqueness of humanity, a bioethics specialist says.

An environmental committee in Spain’s legislature approved a resolution June 25 calling for the government to abide by the Great Apes Project, a 15-year-old campaign to grant the right to life, freedom and no torture to chimps, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos. The measure has the support of a majority of members of Parliament and is expected to become law, according to Reuters News Service.

The declaration, developed in 1993 by a group of primatologists, ethicists, and psychologists known as the Great Ape Project, demands “the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes.” According to the declaration, apes may not be killed except under “strictly defined circumstances,” such as self-defense. They may not be imprisoned without due legal process, and they may not be subjected to the “deliberate infliction of severe pain,” even if doing so is said to benefit others.

The Great Apes Project (GAP) is the brainchild of philosophers Peter Singer, a controversial ethics professor at Princeton University, and Paola Cavalieri, who founded it in 1993, Reuters reported.

GAP’s goal is not just to improve conditions for apes but “to demote human beings from the uniquely valuable species and into merely another animal in the forest,” Wesley Smith wrote on his weblog. Smith is a bioethicist, author and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.

“Once people accept that premise, Judeo/Christian philosophy goes to the guillotine allowing the utilitarian agenda to proceed unhindered, leading in turn to the moral value of the weak and vulnerable among us becoming archaic, resulting in their loss of the right to life and being used instrumentally for those deemed more valuable.

“In the world being born out of the ashes of the sanctity/equality of human life ethic, value will be subjective and rights temporary — depending on one’s individual capacities rather than humanity,” Smith wrote. “And we will see apes … being viewed as more important than some humans.”

Read more here.

[From the Bible]

Genesis 1:26

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

[From me]

I guess they waited for Charlton Heston to die before they tried this.  I’m not for any kind of torture.  But Animals are not equal with humans.  Did Apes create vaccines to cure diseases?  Can they participate in diplomacy?  Do they talk?  What’s next?  Roaches?  Ants?  Fleas?  When will it end?

What do you think?