>Joel noted that "B.B. Warfield, a seminal fundamentalists, called himself
>a "Darwinian of the purest water.""
>
>That's true, of course. But in reading the latest book on Warfield last
>year, I suggest that he was using the term "Darwinian" in a different
>sense than, for example, Dawkins, Gould, etc. use it. Even in a different
>sense than most ASA members might use it (I personally stay away from the
>term).
>
>Griffin's book, which I recently reviewed, has a rather excellent (IMHO)
>discussion of the term "Darwinism," dissecting it into 14 parts. I talk
>about this in my review at the web site below.
I think that one big problem in the debate over evolution within the church
is that "Darwinism" is rarely defined. Most commonly it seems to mean "all
the things about evolution that I don't like." When it is defined, it is
usually defined in a way that makes it equivalent to atheism or deism. The
result is circular reasoning. Evolution is _defined_ as godless and then
all of evolutionary science is condemned on that basis.
The term "Darwinism" is rarely used in scientific publications. It seems
to be used primarily when people are trying to make some metaphysical
claim.
If "Darwinism" simply meant what Darwin thought about the evolutionary
process, then I suspect there are no Darwinists living today.
Keith
Keith B. Miller
Department of Geology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
kbmill@ksu.edu
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
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