RE: RATE Vol. II

I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments expressed by George and
Keith. I believe this thread is striking at the heart of the creation
debate and needs to be brought out more clearly to the lay Christian.

I think there is a sense in which the YEC community has been allowed to
get away with having it both ways. As I stated before, YEC
organizations have increasingly been moving from a defensive stance in
which they see themselves as providing comfort to the lay Christian to
one that is stressing "creation evangelism" to evangelize though
creation. For them to expect the non-believe to be converted by hearing
the "good news" of a young earth would seem to require that the evidence
for the young earth must actually appear to support a young earth to a
person that doesn't already have the right presuppositions.

The RATE II material should and can be used as an effective tool to
demonstrate the folly of this form of outreach. It seems they want to
be presuppositionalist and evidentialist at the same time and they
should be taken to task for saying the "evidence independent of the
Sciptures supports a young earth" (as Brown states in "in the
Beginning") one day and the next day saying that the evidence looks like
an old earth but the Scriptures help us to see how to read this evidence
the right way.

Joel

--------------------------------------------------------
Dr. R. Joel Duff

Associate Professor of Biology

185 ASEC, Department of Biology

University of Akron

Akron OH 44325-3908

rjduff@uakron.edu

---------------------------------------------------------

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of George Murphy
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 11:06 AM
To: Keith Miller; American Scientific Affiliation
Subject: Re: RATE Vol. II

Keith is right. I've apparently dumped the original post & don't know
who the quote is from (Dembski?) but it seems to assume that "theistic
evolutionists" start from science & then try to figure out some way to
tack "God" onto the scientific description. Some may but the proper
procedure is to start from the belief that the God revealed in Christ is
the creator of the world & then to embed what science discovers about
the world into a theology that expresses that belief.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

        ----- Original Message -----

        From: Keith Miller <mailto:kbmill@ksu.edu>

        To: American Scientific Affiliation <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>

        Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2006 7:13 PM

        Subject: Re: RATE Vol. II

                <quote> Design theorists find the "theism" in theistic
evolution superfluous. Theistic evolution at best includes God as an
unnecessary rider in an otherwise purely naturalistic account of life.
As such, theistic evolution violates Occam's razor. Occam's razor is a
regulative principle for how scientists are supposed to do their
science. According to this principle, superfluous entities are to be
rigorously excised from science. Thus, since God is an unnecessary rider
in our understanding of the natural world, theistic evolution ought to
dispense with all talk of God outright and get rid of the useless
adjective "theistic."</quote>

        This is a sad statement, and one that emphasizes the conflation
that both YEC and ID make between scientific description and theological
truth. Both try to make science do the heavy lifting that only theology
can do.

        Theistic evolution (I prefer the term "continuous creation") is
NOT a scientific theory. It is a theological proposition about the
nature of God's creative and sustaining activity in the natural world.
An appeal to God IS unnecessary for the narrow scientific description of
the natural world. But it is also unnecessary to appeal to God's action
when doing auto mechanics. Christian theology has the much more vital
task of making sense of the world and ourselves in light of the
self-revelation of God in Christ. No amount of physics, biochemistry or
geology will get us there. Why do ID proponents (and YECs) so intensely
believe that theology must be held up on the shoulders of scientific
verification?

        Keith

        Keith B. Miller

        Research Assistant Professor

        Dept of Geology, Kansas State University

        Manhattan, KS 66506-3201

        785-532-2250

        http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/

         
Received on Mon May 22 12:53:38 2006