I wrote this as a comment below but it just might qualify as essay material so I have included it here as well.
Darwinian evolution (a process of linear development) would not have been conceptually possible in the pagan world because the notion of linear time and thus progress, require Christian philosophical presuppositions. This notion entered the world through Genesis, the narrative that portrays time and space as created, rather than eternal entities. This radical break from paganism, to which the entire world was subject until Christ entered the world, was difficult even for Christians to fully comprehend at first (Origen for example, despite his brilliance, could never shake the notion of circular time), and it would be many centuries later before the full power (freedom really) of these concepts would bear fruit. The scientific system in other words, could not have developed anywhere except in a Christian culture.
Darwin was a philosophical materialist. His theory (randomness in particular) is wholly dependent on philosophical materialism. I approach the Christian – atheist debate in terms of the history of ideas (I have to leave the science to others). Freud fell, Marx fell, and I believe that the Darwinian collapse is inevitable as well. Taking a long view it might be that Dawkins, Hitchens, and the other radical atheists represent little more than the last gasps of a dying philosophy.
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Everybody has something to say about the shooting in Tucson, Arizona, where a 22-year-old man killed six people and wounded at least twice as many more at a political event on Saturday. Among those he killed are a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl. Among the (critically) injured is the Congressional representative for the district where the shooting took place. Because so little is known about the shooter, and because he is not “cooperating” with police, much of the commentary is devoted to speculation about his motivation for doing the deed.
