In a message dated 1/5/01 9:32:35 PM Mountain Standard Time,
robert.rogland@worldnet.att.net writes:
> Nevertheless, I don't think it is a good idea for the ASA to undertake the
> kind of effort he proposes. No doubt the great majority of members are
> OECs, but neither the stated goals of the association nor the Statement of
> Faith to which all members subscribe is that restrictive. One of the
> things that I appreciate about ASA is that Christians in science of all
> stripes-YECs, progressive creationists, theistic evolutionists, and ID
> advocates-can meet together under the lordship of Christ. If ASA sponsors
> an explicityly OEC education project, we would de facto commit ASA to a
> position that some of its members cannot accept and did not expect to
> support when they joined.
>
I would share Robert Rogland's concern, except that I think he mistakes the
intent of the project. As I read the original message, it is not an
"explicitly OEC education project". Instead, for example I see the phrase
"show people believably that the young-earth view is not the only possible
one."
If it was aimed at convincing people that the old-Earth view was definitely
correct and the young-Earth view was definitely wrong, then I agree it would
be inappropriate for the ASA. But if the intention is to show that the
young-Earth view is not the *only* acceptable Christian view, then it lines
up with what the ASA has always stood for, as for example in the publication
of "God Did It, But How?" The tone should be one of affirmation of God's
status as Creator, and of saying that the means and chronology of that
creation are secondary issues that should not divide the church and should
not be made stumbling blocks to potential believers.
My feeling is that, in order to get at the root of the problem, such an
effort should not mainly focus on science. As many have pointed out, no
amount of scientific evidence will convince the "true believer" who has been
brainwashed into thinking a particular narrow interpretation of Genesis is
essential to the faith. Somehow, people must be cured of two major errors,
each of which is mainly theological and not scientific:
1) The error of trying to make Genesis be a science textbook. This is a
tough one, as a fundamentalist view of Scripture has infected a lot of the
Evangelical church. John McIntyre's article in the latest PSCF about the
statement on Genesis of the Presbyterian Church in America is a good
illustration of what we are up against. As long as people insist on extreme
versions of "inerrancy" that don't allow God to communicate in figurative
language and hold up Scripture to a modern-human-invented standard of
scientific perfection that would have been wholly alien to Moses, the
prospects are bleak. Somehow, we must encourage people to think that maybe
God didn't care about teaching us scientific details in Genesis, without
setting off alarm bells and accusations that we are saying Genesis isn't
"true." Of course even for those strongly committed to literalism, there can
be education that "days" need not mean 24 hours and that several verses in
Genesis show "mediated" creation.
2) The "God of the Gaps" error. As Richard Bube put it:
"No more damaging confusion is caused than that which arises from assuming
that calling something 'natural' means that God is not involved, and that the
involvement of God can be assured only by the treatment of specific phenomena
as exclusively 'supernatural.'"
Here the point of God's sovereignty over nature must be made, perhaps with
the observation that the Bible credits God for things like rain and stars and
mountains even though we have "natural" explanations for them. Here also
pointing out that Genesis 1 actually pictures nature doing the creating of
several things in obediance to God's command (which by the way puts Scripture
in contradiction to the PCA statement) might be helpful.
If people could be disabused of the erroneous philosophy (as propagated by
people like Richard Dawkins outside the church and Phil Johnson within it)
that "natural" explanations exclude God, much of the reason for Christian
conflict with science (be it scientific explanations for the evolution of
life or for the evolution and history of the universe and the Earth) would
disappear. Not all of it, because there would still be the issue of whether
some scientific explanations were contrary to Scripture. Which is where #1
above comes in.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Allan H. Harvey, Boulder, Colorado | SteamDoc@aol.com
"Any opinions expressed here are mine, and should not be
attributed to my employer, my wife, or my cats"
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