Re: Kansas munchkins (as Gould will call them)

>>> Keith Miller <kbmill@ksu.edu> 5/19/2005 10:21:18 PM >>>writes:

One thing that I found disappointing about Menuge is that he had edited
that volume on Christian vocation, something that I feel is extremely
important. However, he stated that evolution and Christianity are
incompatible. According to this view, it would seem that it would be
impossible for a Christian to have a vocational calling in any of the
historical sciences, particularly evolutionary biology or paleontology.
  He therefore is effectively denying my vocational calling.

Ted replies:
Yes, Keith, he is. He's also denying the validity of mine, since I share
your view on evolution and Christian faith, and I see the advancement of my
views on that as a core part of my vocation. I can live with that in my
case, he's entitled to his views and he obviously respects mine even if he
cannot swallow them.

This should raise questions about why I agreed to publish an essay (on
Boyle) in his volume. The answer is threefold: one, personal regard for
Angus, who does what we do insofar as he uses his considerable talents in
the service of his beliefs. Two, the opportunity to publish an essay on
this particular subject in a popular (or at least semi-popular)
venue--partly to draw attention to the specific topic (Boyle's example of
Christian vocation) and partly to draw YECs to my own work elsewhere (many
YECs believe that if a TE says it, it's got to be wrong, so perhaps my essay
in combination with my other work will at least create a little cognitive
dissonance). And three, the opportunity to publish with two really fine
historians, Peter Harrison and Peter Barker, whose work I admire.

This vocation thing is very important, and it's something I talk about from
time to time with my friends in ID, such as Angus (and others). They have a
very different view of science as Christian vocation, with a different view
of how one bears public witness for one's faith. Many of them have a hard
time accepting the legitimacy of someone like Ian Hutchinson or Francis
Collins--two examples I offer them of world class scientists who are also
publicly known for their Christian faith. They don't "get it," they tend to
see Hutchinson and Collins as "confused" since they have different ways of
speaking about their faith and relating it to their work (which they've both
done in secular venues). For IDs, one needs to see science as a means of
evangelizing (literally, to one degree or another), as well as a central
part of apologetics. For many TEs, science is an important activity that
does inform our understanding of God in some ways (and not in other ways),
but does not provide us with a warrant to convert unbelieving scientists or
to deny the validity of their science.

We would go a long way toward reapproachment with IDs (assuming one wants
to do that), if we and they were to start by understanding and respecting
(if not accepting) these two quite different understandings of science as a
Christian vocation.

Ted
Received on Fri May 20 08:59:21 2005