Re: ASA positions on science/faith issues

>>> "Terry M. Gray" <grayt@lamar.colostate.edu> 03/31/05 5:44 PM >>>wrote:
<soapbox--more than usual>
However, there is slightly more than semantics in my agenda. Some in
this group have a curious penchant for inventing terms and concepts.
We seem to thing that we're some of the first people to ever think
about some of these things. Now I'm not suggesting that there is
never anything new, but there seldom really is. And we owe to
ourselves if this is going to more than bar room or dorm room
off-the-top discussion to root ourselves in previous millennia of
philosophical and theological discussion.
</soapbox>

Ted:
If I had a nickel for everytime I've said this--virtually always in the
context of talking about issues in religion and science--I'd have enough for
a pretty nice vacation. Terry, you just voiced my number one general
comment about the so-called "dialogue" of religion and science. This
applies with special force to the early years of the Templeton Foundation
conferences, when history was usually seen as talking about irrelevant dead
guys before doing the real serious stuff.

Frankly, the dead guys are nearly always relevant to the current ones, but
the current ones rarely think so. Peacocke's view, that only what has been
said and written in the past 150 years (more or less since Darwin) is
relevant, is just so much poppycock; it's driven by scientism, of course, by
the attitude scientists still often hold, that history (of science) is
something that retired scientists do for fun, and about as well as,
professional historians.

This historical ignorance about religion/science heavily colors the origins
discussion, and that's the main reason why I have made available on my
webpage a number of important texts about origins from the past. Anyone who
wants to know what Philip Johnson thinks, for example, might just as well go
read Charles Hodge; you can't slip a razor blade between them.

ted
Received on Thu Mar 31 20:31:54 2005