hi Todd,
Was it you that said you had heard from someone that they were told by their
pastor to not look at Hubble photos? Is that 4th or 5th hand ;-)
Stephen J. Krogh, P.G.
President,
The PanTerra Group
======================
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
> Behalf Of Todd S. Greene
> Sent: Monday, April 02, 2001 10:09 PM
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: Engaging the power of Internet links
>
>
> Hi, John.
>
> I started my website almost exactly 2 years ago. One of the first pages
> was my Links Page,
>
> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/7755/links.html
>
> and the very first version of that page had a link to the ASA website on
> it. I have used dozens of links to sites like the ASA website for the
> very purpose of demonstrating to the many Christians who don't realize
> it that the portrayal by many Christians of discussion about creationism
> and evolution as "Christians (meaning young earth creationists) versus
> atheistic conspiracy" is simply not a correct portrayal of the true
> situation. The ASA website (the home page, and links to a specific
> article or two) has always figured prominently on my Links Page.
>
> Henry Morris was an ASA member way back around the time it first
> started. He left because he couldn't handle the serious criticism of his
> ideas. The ASA has not taken an official position; which means, in turn,
> that young earth creationism is not the official position of the
> organization; which means consideration of other positions, and
> criticism of YEC is allowed. This sets the ASA apart from other
> "conservative" Christian organizations. Try criticizing YEC in the ICR
> and open advocating something like antiquity in your local congregation,
> then stand back and watch the fireworks!
>
> Another correspondent mentioned the stats and gave a dire prognosis. My
> opinion is just the opposite. I believe that, the (last) decline of
> young earth creationism has already begun, and that after this decline
> YEC will be considered as geocentrism is now. A permanent result of this
> change will be that many of the hermeneutical considerations that are
> being worked on now, appropriate to the realization of the nature of the
> real world with respect to antiquity, and to biological processes, will
> become just another part of the typical "cultural milieu" of evangelical
> Christians - just as hermeneutical changes with regard to the
> geocentrism are now taken totally for granted. I see this, because of at
> least three different observations:
>
> (1) In denominations where anything other than YEC used to be anathema,
> official governing bodies are considering this specific issue, and are
> taking official positions of toleration of non-YEC views. Granted, there
> is still the "working out" of the internal strife that is going on,
> where, for example, particular congregations of the Christian Reformed
> Church has split over this issue (while this issue was actually part of
> a "plate" of other issues as well, such as women preachers). As you may
> be aware, Howard J. Van Till, a (now retired) professor at
> CRC-affiliated Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, met much
> public expression of criticism by YECs in the CRC over this issue, years
> ago. The situation today is substantially different, and this change is
> going on in other denominations as well.
>
> I myself was raised in the Church Of Christ. (Also, my father was a
> minister of the COC until his retirement from the ministry in 1990.)
> Even the very conservative COC now has substantial toleration of
> non-YEC views and criticism of YEC positions. Again, there still remains
> a significant contingent of COC preachers and other members expressing
> "exclusivism" on this issue (they preach that Christians who do not
> believe young earth creationism are not pleasing to God, and that anyone
> who publicly criticizes YEC is a "false teacher" who is to be publicly
> condemned as such), but their influence has greatly diminished since
> 20 and 30 years ago. I can report to you that among the general COC
> membership, there are a great many for whom the YEC issue is merely
> passe.
>
> (2) Others have pointed this out already, that due to whatever
> historical contingents of our cultural evolution that made YEC such a
> strong temptation to so many, its great popularity has been a mostly
> U.S. phenomenon. It was a reaction against some post-World War II
> social threads (not the least, I believe, which was some of the rampant
> political socialism and flirtation with communism among some
> "liberals"), and evolution and everything associated with it (geology,
> astronomy, anything at all) was seen as part of this mixture of evil.
> And this was despite the fact that many of the "fathers" of evangelical
> Christianity had long since "made peace" with antiquity and had also
> proceeded substantially, along with non-evangelicals, toward "making
> peace" with the idea of biological evolution. What was part of a
> reaction took on its own power in its way of thinking and looking at
> theology (God's Word is Truth; scientific theories about the world
> are merely the "fallible wisdom of man"). To look at things in a more
> complex way simply became a part of the problem rather than a more
> accurate way to look at things. (Why would God make His Word too
> difficult for people to understand in a straightforward manner?)
>
> (3) The rise of the internet has seen a great increase in the ease by
> which relevant information can be accessed. Granted, there is also a
> great amount of bad information that can be accessed, but, really, this
> is no change in what existed before, it's just that the internet has
> made all information easier to access. It was pointed out that YECs
> "outgun" non-YEC sites on the web, but I disagree. While of sites that
> specifically discuss creationism issues, sites with a YEC orientation
> predominate, we can certainly say that of sites that cover information
> relevant to creationism, YEC is quite dwarfed. For example, we wouldn't
> consider The Hubble Space Telescope site
>
> http://oposite.stsci.edu/
>
> to be a creationism-related website. However, the site clearly contains
> information relevant to creationism issues, and that information clearly
> contradicts YEC, with respect to the antiquity issue - and it is the
> antiquity issue alone that blows YEC-based theology and hermeneutics out
> of the water.
>
> There are other miscellaneous observations, such as, for example, the
> YEC claim, made for at least a few decades now that evolution (and by
> extension, antiquity) is "about to overthrown" by some kind of
> revolution in science. I don't know what time-scale YECs have
> specifically had in mind on that one, but George McCready Price was
> making that claim, and the claim has been used quite steadily since
> then. (For example, it was used, with no apparent embarrassment, by Paul
> Nelson and John Mark Reynolds in *Three Views on Creation and Evolution*
> just a couple of years ago.) I hate to be the one to break the "news,"
> but the "revolution" is going the other way, and it's occurring in the
> conservative Christian community!
>
> Truth cannot contradict truth. And that's something that the controversy
> over young earth creationism cannot change. SN1987A sits there, a direct
> observation of an event that occurred about 168,000 years in the past.
>
> http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/novaesupernovae.html
>
> "SN1987A and The Antiquity of the Universe"
> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/7755/essays.html
>
> This kind of direct observational material is kind of hard to dispute.
> Indeed, all YECs have ever offered in trying to explicate their position
> in the face of these kinds of observations is: (1) their own human
> speculation, very pure, completely unadulterated by any substantiating
> empirical information, or (2) almost the entire universe is a truly
> cosmic illusion (a la Gosse, the "apparent age" concept). Of course,
> since neither of these positions is stated anywhere in the Bible, young
> earth creationists have thereby demonstrated the inherent fallacy of
> their own philosophical position.
>
> Now, look at that, John. I got all that just from talking about my
> placing a link to ASA's site on my Links Page a couple of years ago!
> Keep up the good work!
>
> Regards,
> Todd S. Greene
> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/7755/
>
>
> ###### John Burgeson, 4/2/01 17:57 EDT ######
> [snip]
>
> The placing of a link on the web sites of ASA members pointing to the
> ASA web site. (I've done this; have you?)
>
> [snip]
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Apr 02 2001 - 23:37:07 EDT