Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!ncar!tank!ogil From: ogil@tank.uchicago.edu (Brian W. Ogilvie) Newsgroups: sci.bio Subject: Re: Creationism as a science... Message-ID: <1477@tank.uchicago.edu> Date: 18 Jan 89 20:22:04 GMT References: <761@bimacs.BITNET> Reply-To: ogil@tank.uchicago.edu (Brian W. Ogilvie) Organization: History of Science, University of Chicago Lines: 25 In article <761@bimacs.BITNET> kanov@bimacs.UUCP (Mechael Kanovsky) writes: >What if we say that first g-d created the universe (creatism) and then >he let nature i.e. darwinism take over or in other words he also >craeted the rules that govern the universe and upon those rules we >could make predictions. > >Mechael Kanovsky This is not the "Creation Science" that is being discussed. Creation Science holds that animal and plant species were created individually by God and cannot change beyond a fixed limit of variability. Louis Agassiz, who died in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, was the last important biologist to hold this view. The position you have sketched is not incompatible with evolution, and in fact is held by many biologists. It is compatible with the belief in a personal God (held by Asa Gray among others) and with an impersonal Deism. Depending on which scholar you ask, Darwin was a Deist. I certainly believe he was for a while, though religious questions dwindled in importance to him as he grew older. -- Brian W. Ogilvie / ogil@tank.uchicago.edu "Cartesianism is the most popular 'popular science' ever invented." --Noel Swerdlow