Science in Christian Perspective

Letter to the Editor

Thanks for a Broader Perspective
Wayne E. Newquist
1220 W. 22nd Street
Kearney, Nebraska 68847

From: JASA 34 (June 1982): 123.

I appreciate much that you printed the letters from D. M. D'Aria and Tom Pitman in the December 1981 issue of the Journal ASA.

I have been reading the magazine for quite a while and believe they are the first such sentiments I have seen. Instead, what I have been seeing is exactly what Tom Pittman said in his first paragraph. This is probably the result of viewing things from my own perspective, but I don't see that that is any worse than for others to view things from their perspective.

I believe it is true that by far the most articles in the Jounal ASA are from the academic community. It should be rather sobering that this same issue has the article by Jerry Bergman which says that it was the academic community more than the religious community that would not at first accept the heliocentric view of the universe. "because the new theory was so radically different from the view of the universe which had been accepted for hundreds of years." I wonder if that may be the situation with creation/evolution. The Christian academic, scientific and theological communities have worked so hard and so long to try to reconcile evolution and Scripture that it is hard to give it up.

I am certainly no expert on this, but it is my understanding that Einstein's theory of relativity came about, at least partly, as a result of working to reconcile the new  idea that the speed of light was independent of the speed or direction of its source. So it seems to me that it is a worthy objective to fit our world view into the biblical statements just as they are written, excepting, of course, what may be plainly allegorical. And that decision as to what is allegorical and what is not, may be just where some of the difficulty lies. 

I have the privilege of reading your magazine before sending it on to my missionary son, David Nequist. PhD (atmospheric science), physics professor at Tunghai University, Box 365, Taichung 400, Taiwan. We serve as his Stateside mailing address.