Re: SBC seminary

As a fairly recent ex, my sense if that (in short form) the
long-developing reversion toward more conservative perspectives has
placed the denomination is a position sufficiently alienated from
conventional science that they find it now necessary to throw up some
institutional buttresses for increasingly firmly and popularly held
young earth and anti-evolution positions. A "Center" is a good way to do
that, and one can be created more easily in a seminary setting than a
university (apparently - given the history at Baylor).

The focus on ID is also pretty easy to sort out. A naive reading of the
Intelligent Design movement suggests that this is a more friendly, yet
viable scientific perspective for a number of reasons: it sounds good;
it has relatively easy-to-remember talking points because of its heavy
use of anecdotal plausibility arguments; it carries the persuasive
trappings of more lofty science by talking (somewhat unconventionally)
about information and complexity; it even accepts a palatably small
amount of evolution (microevolution) without compromising an aversion to
a more extensive (species-level macroevolution) creature descent model;
and above all, it embraces an intelligent designer. I expect that many
Christians think that this is the only perspective in which some weak
aspects of evolution and God can coexist.

The opportunity to acquire Dr. Dembski to head it up is pretty much a
fortuitous happenstance (or was he a catalyst or active agent?) given
his high visibility in the ID domain. Perhaps his attractiveness is even
enhanced by his rejection at the hands of a university community tainted
by certain perspectives of conventional science.

I fear those denominational trends lead steadily and ultimately to a
diminished public image of Christian thought, and of Baptists in
particular, in the larger world context. I guess it's a good thing that
the commitment of the Southern Baptist Seminary to this particular path
has sharpened the focus on the prevailing throught of its leadership.
It's sure not the SBC I once knew.

All IMHO, JimA

bdffoster@charter.net wrote:

>Hello list
>I havn't posted in a looooong time, I moved, changed my email address etc... I'll just pose this one question and get back to lurking. It's an appropriate question since this list is devoted to science and Christianity and since I am a Southern Baptist, or at least was until I moved. Now I'm looking for a church. Anyway the question is why does the Southern Baptist Seminary need a "Center for Science and Theology" and why do they need William Dembski to direct it? (See http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i20/20a00701.htm )
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>Brent
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Received on Wed Feb 2 21:20:26 2005