Re: have we forgotten who the enemy is?

From: Dick Fischer <dickfischer@earthlink.net>
Date: Wed Feb 16 2005 - 11:31:40 EST
Jack Syme wrote:

I am not sure why the discussion on this list is always so negative against both ID and YEC.  IMO in the big picture, this battle is a minor one.  The most important belief that we all have, and share with our creationist brothers, is the Gospel.  Most evangelical Christians dont really care that much about the creation/evolution issue, knowing Christ is much more important.

The Bible-science debate is a multi-faceted issue.  Knowing Christ is the overriding issue.  However, due to the misguided, protracted efforts of creationist organizations, the Bible is being tied to an errant interpretation.  Abusing science in the process, they then foist the entire package on the "willingly ignorant."  They are making evangelism more difficult.  We not only need to present the gospel to skeptics, we have to dispel all the misinformation they have been exposed to.  Not an easy task.  Who reads our ruminations?

In essence, those educated in science have been handed a Get Out of Jail Free card.  "Eat, drink and be merry," and all that.  We have to take it away from them before they need worry about the consequences of dying outside the faith.

It seems to me that we are losing sight of the real enemy, which is philosophical materialism, atheistic naturalism.

Enemies are all around us.  Satan is the real enemy.  And he uses lies wherever they advance his cause.

We should be reaching out to scientist non believers, and showing them that the Bible, and science are compatible.  This issue is more about apologetics than polemics.

Absolutely agreed!  So what does TE contribute to the problem of resolving Bible-science conflict?  Is Genesis allegory, poetry, tradition or mythology?  Or Semitic history, as a few of us have advocated - and that has not been advanced by any TEs I know.  If we don't give conservatives a better solution then they have, they will continue to ride a dead horse to the detriment of evangelicals.

Certainly there are things I disagree with YEC about.  And there are things about ID I disagree with too.   But I dont see how one cannot embrace some of the things that ID proponents are trying to do, and still hold to TE.

And how do we educate the rest of the public?

I honestly think that trying to come up with a mathematical model to identify design, IS scientific.  There are going to be spots in the scientifc account of creation/evolution that will never have a purely naturalistic explanation.  It has to be that way, because at some point, God intervened, and supernatural causes are going to be the only explanation.

He doesn't need to "intervene" in His own creation.  It is His creation from the get go.  How closely or intimately He supervises the process by which the creation unfolds is the issue.

Dick Fischer  - Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
www.genesisproclaimed.org
Received on Wed Feb 16 11:33:15 2005

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