><<Beginning of Howard's remarks>>
>At the risk of appearing like the new kid on the block with a motor mouth,
>I would like to offer a contribution in another direction. While I agree
>with much of what Mark Noll apparently has to say about the anti-
>intellectual tendencies in conservative American Christianity, I have
>reservations about his reported comments on creation science. Please note
>that I have not yet read Noll's "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" but
>only Bill Hamilton's review.
>
>As a relative newcomer to the debate between old- and young-earth
>evangelicals, I find name-calling instead of respectful dialogue the
>common practice. Noll does not make a positive contribution at this
>point. Bill Hamilton says that "Noll attributes the popularity of
>creation science to the intuitive belief of many evangelicals that it
>embodied the simple teachings of Scripture...." This is not acceptable
>language. The young-earth interpretation of Scripture is not merely
>intuitive. In making this claim Noll is echoing the unhelpful assertion of
>the American Scientific Affiliation and other old-earth advocates that the
>young-earth position is by definition unscientific, anti-intellectual, and
>fundamentalist. (See for example Roy A. Clouser, "Genesis on the Origin
>of the Human Race," Perspectives on Science & Christian Faith (published
>by the ASA), March 1991, pp. 2,4 7.) This is just as objectionable as the
>common young-earth proponents' accusation that the old-earth position is
>unscriptural.
>
>I would argue that the young-earth theory is quite plausible, and indeed
>is more plausible than the gap theory and localized Noah flood of the
>old-earth interpretation. I am not denying the Scriptural plausibility of
>the old-earth interpretation, but I think that it is the more difficult
>and complex biblical view.
>
>In 1994, simply for my own clarification, I wrote a think piece entitled
>"Thoughts on Creation & Evolution". I would welcome feedback on it and my
>comments above.
>
> THOUGHTS ON CREATION & EVOLUTION
>
>The controversy between old-earth evangelicals and young-earth
>evangelicals seems to boil down to this: Is the case for biological
>evolutionary theory (macroevolution) so compelling that it requires us to
>accept the complex and difficult interpretations of the Bible,
>particularly Genesis 1-11, necessary to accommodate it? Or is there a
>scientific alternative to biological evolutionary theory that is
>sufficiently plausible to justify the simpler and easier interpretations
>of the Bible associated with the young-earth theory? It is propagandistic
>for old-earth evangelicals to call young-earth evangelicals
>"fundamentalists". Young-earth evangelicals should likewise avoid
>labeling their opponents' views as necessarily heretical. The next four
>paragraphs offer background.
>
>Definitions: Theology--Humanity's systematic attempt to understand God, and
>therefore the Bible. Science--Humanity's systematic attempt to understand
>the universe.
>
>The job of both fields is to discover, not invent, what is really there.
>Our interpretation of the Bible is only as valid as it approaches what God
>intended it to say to us when He caused it to be written. Our
>interpretation of the universe is only as valid as it approaches what God
>did in creating it and continues to do in sustaining it by His word of
>power (Heb 1:3; Col 1:17). The only difference between the natural and
>the supernatural is that the latter is God's activities in our
>space/matter/time continuum that we cannot yet describe by mathematics or
>by what we call "natural law". Just because we can describe some
>phenomenon by mathematics or natural law, we are not required thereby to
>exclude the orderly, willful activity of God in that phenomenon. This was
>the intellectual framework of the fathers of modern science (Francis
>Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton). It was the naturalistic
>rationalists who by a huge leap of faith consigned God's activity
>exclusively to the "scientifically unexplainable". Thereby they fathered
>the so-called Age of Enlightenment.
>
>It is wrong to say that the Bible and science conflict--or agree, for that
>matter. Rather, we must say that theology and science agree or disagree.
>If there seems to be a conflict, our interpretation of the Bible could be
>wrong, our interpretation of the universe could be wrong, or both
>interpretations could be wrong. Truth, that is, accurate information,
>will tend to dovetail although sometimes conflict might stem from
>incompleteness of information rather than inaccuracy.
>
>It is arrogant of people to claim that their theology or science is
>exhaustively accurate. New insights and discoveries occur. However, it
>is equally foolish to believe that our limitations as humans leave us
>stuck in an existentialist fog without ability to cope in life. We do make
>reasonably accurate assessments about many probabilities. We do manage to
>make TV's, hunt mushrooms, ride on freeways and in planes, talk with one
>another, write books, form marriages and governments, raise children, and
>devise experiments and calculations. And a God who could make the
>universe, including us, could certainly devise a way to communicate with
>us with substantial accuracy. But He is not obliged to act in any
>particular way just to oblige our desire for truth. We discover; we do
>not insist. <<end of Howard's remarks>>
>
-Bill Hamilton
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Bill and Linda Hamilton
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