Whoa, who talked about "taking over" the churches? I was seconding George's
argument about teaching evolution in a positive light in churches.In many
evangelical churches, evolution is derided as bad science at best , and a
product of Satan at worst. Young people growing up in such churches go out
into the world, realise that evolution is actually pretty good science, and
stop believing not only in what the church teaches about evolution, but
pretty much in everything else in the church teaches.
This almost happened to Glenn, and almost happened to me . It really did
happen to a lot of people. A proper understanding of evolution would cut
down on that happening.
Such rhetoric proves my point about the difficulties of teaching evolution
in church.
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
Behalf Of Woodward Norm Civ WRALC/TIEDM
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 3:06 PM
To: Shuan Rose; glenn.morton@btinternet.com; Walter Hicks;
gmurphy@raex.com
Cc: Asa
Subject: RE: How to teach about evolution in the church. Was" Utley v
Dawkins"
Methinks that the evolutionists are getting a little greedy.
First they have taken over the public schools; now they want to take over
the churches.
Doesn’t the Separation Clause swing both ways?
Norm
-----Original Message-----
From: Shuan Rose [mailto:shuanr@boo.net]
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 2:43 PM
To: glenn.morton@btinternet.com; Walter Hicks; gmurphy@raex.com
Cc: Asa
Subject: How to teach about evolution in the church. Was" Utley v Dawkins"
Glenn Morton wrote:
I am not sure that is why people become YECs. I knew the arguments for an
old earth before I became a YEC. I became a YEC because my religious
beliefs required it. The reasoning is that if God's word says this
happened, and if we trust God, then we should believe what is written.
Same
reasoning goes to many other parts of the Bible such as, God's word says
that Jesus arose, If I trust God, then I should believe that. The
parallelism of this type of argument is why YEC arguments have force in
Christianity. It is not merely a matter of knowledge. I know lots of YECs
who know the arguments for an ancient earth--indeed, Allen knows them
also--e.g. light from distant stars.
And I might add that this misunderstanding is why so often our arguments
fail to reach their target.
Glenn, you are on target. The main reason people become YECs is not
because they believe that creation science is superior, but because they
believe that if Genesis is not literally true, then the entire Bible is a
lie. Often they hear this from the their pastor, or some other chuch leader.
Which leads to George's point:
The best way to "deny others the tools" is for churches to incorporate
evolution into thei theology, teaching, proclamation, & worship. By this
of
course I do not mean that evolution should be the heart of the church's
message,
that it should be considered an ultimate truth, or anything like that. But
if
people heard evolution being discussed in positive ways in the church, and
if the
doctrine of creation were presented with evolution in view, then children
would
learn to see it as part of a Christian understanding of the world. Then
when
they got to high school and some atheist biology teacher said (as was the
experience of one of my parishoners) "Forget what you've learned in Sunday
School
- now we're going to learn how it really happened", their reaction would
be,
"What are you talking about? Evolution is how we learned it in Sunday
School."
In contrast, the way too many churches have dealt with this issue amounts
to painting a target on their chests and then handing atheists a gun.
I agree with George that the best way to counter what Walter Hicks
described as "flagrant atheism, liberalism $ humanism taught in many public
schools in my state" is to do a better job of teaching about evolution in
church. Church leadersare often the problem here , however. Quite a few are
YECs or YEC sympathizers.Even if they might be inclined to teach positively
about evolution, the issue is so controversial that leaders do not want to
go into it. I know some YECs who are so committed on the issue that they are
quite capable of instigating a church split over the issue.Not too many
church leaders want to be accused of introducing " liberal, godless,
apostate, evolutionistic" doctrine into the church.Those of us who are from
a conservative evangelical background know what I am talking about.
Shuan Rose
2632 N Charles Street,Baltimore MD 21218
[410]467-2655
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