My comments inserted below.
ted
>>> "Freeman, Louise Margaret" <lfreeman@mbc.edu> 01/31/07 10:41 AM >>>
Thanks Ted. Based on my admitedly limited experience, here are the
scientific issues associated with a theistic evolutionary POV that seem
hardest to stomach for my literalist friends, even the ones who can kinda
sorta maybe visualize an old Earth and common descent of organisms (except
maybe humans). In no particular order
1. Death before the Fall (I'd say this was #1 among the 2005 summer course
particiapnts, Ted)
T: Exactly. Anyone who pays attention to my posts here knows this is my
view. For a great rejoinder from the early 19th century, check out Edward
Hitchcock on my webpage. http://home.messiah.edu/~tdavis/texts.htm
Several nerdy friends of mine (it takes one to know one) are planning a
book on just this issue. I hope it comes to be.
2. Women not literally being made from men (hence students coming to
college
wanting to believe they have different numbers of ribs)
Yeah, I've heard stories like this rib thing. Pretty funny, when you think
about it. Not much more to say on that one.
3. No literal world-covering, most-life-wiping-out flood (people around
here
enthusiastically embrace flood-geology related arguements like dinosaurs on
the ark, [& possibly still in Africa today!] and the flood carving the
Grand
Canyon.
A very serious objection, unless one is prepared to put all or most of
pre-Abrahamic Genesis in the same boat (to throw in a pun), as I probably
am. The Dinosaurs in Africa thing is another hoot, generally, though we do
know of course that some really old animals are out there, like coelocanth
and crocodiles and some other stuff.
4. Jesus with his perfect knowledge (and Paul, supernaturally protected
from
error) speaking as though they believe the NT is literal history.
A very serious objection, until/unless one realizes the degree to which
Jesus borrows from/alludes to a big parcel of Hebrew literature, which many
modern readers wrongly interpret all on the same level. e.g., he calls
himself "Son of Man," almost certainly a reference to First Enoch (I think
that's the correct extra-canonical book), where that phrase is used to mean
a special servant of God, instead of humankind generally as it typically did
in the OT. We don't take Jesus' use of this metaphor, indeed his use of it
to refer to himself, as an endorsement of the divine authority of First
Enoch. But this type of thing -- the relation between canonical and
non-canonical literature -- is also likely to bother many YECs. It's
extraordiniarly rare, IMO, for conservative churches to talk about this type
of thing in a serious way. It's as though the decisions made about
canonicity were given to the Pope on stone tablets.
5. No special creation of Adam from dust.
The deepest, rock-bottom objection, I think. A bright student once told a
colleague in one of our humanities departments, "I refuse to believe I'm
nothing but pond scum." ie, if evolution is true then I'm just a bunch of
worthless (or nearly worthless) chemicals. Harry Emerson Fosdick, whom I
don't always agree with (to put it delicately), hit the nail on the head
with this one. "Origins prove nothing in the realm of values."
Fosdick, Evolution and Mr. Bryan (1922), 14
But it can be very tough to convince people of this, even though the Bible
expressly says that we came from "dust," which isn't exactly an auspicious
beginning. I'm fine with my students all believing in special creation of
humans (as most of them do, if not all), since it's a lot easier for them to
see value in that, and value is more important than scientiifc truth in any
case. But I do try to get them to see Fosdick's point. Nature hardly
teaches us that "all men are created equal," to borrow Mr Jefferson's
enlightened white male language; indeed, if anything it says just the
opposite, both in terms of genetics (we don't all start on the same page)
and common descent, which has often encouraged evolutionary racism (as
Bertrand Russell once observed, evolution and democracy don't mix very
well). Jefferson needed a creator to get equality (even if a limited notion
of it), and I don't think we've improved on that subsequently.
ted
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Received on Wed Jan 31 11:08:15 2007
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