Darwin was an agnostic, never pretended to be anything else.
Given that he spent a year preparing for the priesthood, and that he was a great admirer of Paley's work on design in nature as evidence of God, he either was pretending very effectively not to be agnostic or he was not always an agnostic and became so later in life.
On the Origins is 'one long argument' against special creation and that is the explicit purpose of the book as stated by the author.
Yes, it is. But it is not an argument against God, nor against creation. It is an argument that God did not miraculously specially and separately create each and every one of the 300 odd species of fruit fly in the Hawaiian islands.
Now I know that you--and today, most YECists--don't believe that God miraculously, specially and separately created each and every one of those fruit fly species either. Since the 1940s anti-evolutionists have promoted the concept of specially created "kinds" (which are not identical with species).
But Darwin was not arguing against the special creation of kinds. He was arguing against the special creation of each and every species. He was arguing in favour of something you and virtually all anti-Darwinists today fully accept: that the originally created population changed over time, evolving into a diversity of species.
Darwin is rejecting God as Creator
No, he is not, and never did. Near the end of Origin of Species he speculates a bit on how many original special creations there were (just a YECs today are speculating on how many original 'baramins' or created kinds there were). He suggests that each class of animal may have had a common ancestor. (Modern YEC prefers to set it at the rank of family).
He never suggests there were NO special creations, but (as per his acknowledgment of Lamarck's work) that
subsequent changes in these created beings are what occur non-miraculously.
Tell me, how does that differ in substance from the views of modern creationists like Todd Wood or Hugh Ross? Don't they also preach that God created kinds/baramins and that subsequent to that creation, the original created kind diversified into the various species each adapted to its own particular habitat and ecological niche?
After 150 years, biblical literalists have caught up to Darwin, but can't acknowledge it because they have so thoroughly and unfairly vilified him.
It's a categorical rejection of the supernatural, nothing more.
Darwin never categorically rejected the supernatural. (As you say, he was agnostic, not a committed atheist). And the one matter he referred to natural law rather than the interposition of miracle is a matter that today's YECs, including you personally, agree with him on. Talk about irony!
The demon is the naturalistic assumptions of Darwinians who simply attack Christians for believing in the supernatural creation of the 'heavens and the earth'. The transcendent principle is applied to everything which pretends an omnipotence that was described by Danial Dennent as 'Universal Acid' that eats though everything.
Just what do you mean by "naturalistic assumptions"? Christians who accept evolution believe in a God who created nature (possibly with some miracles involved) and sustains nature in ways we refer to as natural law or natural process. How is this a rejection of Creation?
Or is it only the atheism of a Daniel Dennett that you have problems with?
Well, TEs don't like his atheism either.
Demonizing YEC is neither Christian nor is it Biblical.
Calling YECs on their poor theology is an obligation.
As a matter of fact the age of the earth has never been tied to a single Biblical doctrine
Then YECs should never denounce a person who considers the scientifically determined ages to be correct as an unbeliever or a person who is dismissing scripture. Whether they are day-age creationists, gap theologians, TEs or whatever, they are well within the bounds of acceptable interpretation of scripture. You may prefer the YEC interpretation, but you cannot defend it as the only possible interpretation consistent with Christian faith.
and God creating the heavens and the earth is not a question.
Of course it isn't.
The Scriptures make it clear if you don't worship Christ as Creator you are not a Christian.
Right. It doesn't follow however that worshipping Christ as Creator involves denying that originally created kinds (or kind, as the case may be) can change and diversify without miraculous interposition according to the capacity for adaptation endowed upon them by the Creator.
Descartes thought it was important not only to know that he himself, as a thinking being, really existed, but that his physical nature, and the world around him is real too. And you say "so what?" You don't think that is an important question?
Doesn't really surprise me. The reality of the physical world is a threat to YECism. And that is why I characterize YECism as being on a slippery slope toward heresy.
Christian faith absolutely affirms the reality of the world God made. In this it takes a clear position against those faiths which depict the universe as an ephemeral dream which will disappear when God wakes up. Or get packed away into oblivion when God decides to stop playing with it. Or vanish into the abyss destined for all contingent existence, since contingent existence is merely a construct of human thought.
But since the real world is at odds with the preferred YECist interpretation of scripture (which they choose to characterize as "what God said") then the real world has to go. Just throw out the fundamental doctrine of creation to save creationism. So what, indeed!
I read his First Philosophy of Science and I appreciate the epistemological point he is making. How do I know, that I know, what I know? He is not saying he does not know for sure that God or the universe exists, he is saying that the only thing that he can be certain of is Ego Sum, Ego Cognito. Which, by the way, is all I said.
You make Descartes epistemological point correctly, but Descartes did not write pastiche Latin. I gave you the correct phrase in my last post. Feel free to check it out. For example on Wikipedia
He is perhaps best known for the philosophical statement "Cogito ergo sum" (French: Je pense, donc je suis; English: I think, therefore I am), found in part IV of Discourse on the Method (1637 written in French but with inclusion of "Cogito ergo sum") and §7 of part I of Principles of Philosophy (1644 written in Latin).
Instead of using the phrase correctly you write gibberish.
Ego=I, sum = I am. Ego is not normally used in Latin with a verb unless one wishes to stress the word "I". "Sum" is all that is needed to say "I am". "Cogito" is all that is needed to say "I think." Descartes, in fact, did not use the word "ego" at all. He used a similar word "ergo" which is the "therefore" that links "I think" to "I am".
As for "Cognito", that is a past participle in the dative or ablative case of the masculine singular meaning "known" i.e. a completely different verb than "think".
To say "I know" in Latin one would say "cogno" not "cognito". "Cognito" might be used in a phrase such as "this painting was done by a well-known artist" (Tabula [=picture/painting] tecnico [=by artist] bene cognito [=well-known] facta est [=was done]. The word order is typical for Latin.)
In any case, "cognito" would not be used with "ego" since, as noted "cognito" is in the dative or ablative case while "ego" is a nominative case and adjectives and participles in Latin must be in the same case as the noun or pronoun they modify. Decartes might say "Cogno" (I know) even "Ego cogno" (
I know) or "Ego cognitus sum" (I am known) but not "ego cognito"
I studied Latin for five years with top marks. I am not fluent but I know the basics. It is entirely up to you if you wish to continue to publicly display your ignorance of the language. But when you do, it just comes across as pretentious.
