Re: [asa] Conservative Christianity and Evolution

I have a lot of time for Eugenie Scott who strives to be totally fair.

I agree with her not believing but accepting evolution and state the same
myself to make the point that my acceptance of a scientific theory is
provisional until it is overthrown but my belief in Christ is absolute.

Perhaps we can think of the baptismal promises in the church of England

Do you believe and trust in God the Father etc?

To ask
Do you believe and trust in evolution? is a no-no

Michael

PS I had to read the parable of the sower as the Gospel at a communion today
and the wicked thought crossed my mind that thank goodness Jesus taught in
parables and not paradigms.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Wallace" <wdwllace@sympatico.ca>
To: "PvM" <pvm.pandas@gmail.com>
Cc: "American Scientific Affiliation" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Conservative Christianity and Evolution

I watched the whole lecture and found it outstanding. The contrast to
Dawkins could not be greater eg

> Richard Dawkins, who holds the interesting title of “Charles Simonyi
> professor of the public understanding of science” at Oxford University
> Belief in God is not only a delusion, he argues, but a “pernicious” one.

Dawkins style of writing just feeds right into peoples fear of godless
scientists who bend science to promote evolution. IMHO Dawkins writings
are a big boost to YEC and the ICR.

The only thing I objected to was that Dr. Scott said that she
did not believe in evolution and then a few lines later said that she
accepted the theory of evolution. It struck me as cheap theater. In
such a case I would use believe in the sense of case 2 and 3 below as a
shorthand for I think that a certain theory/practice etc is somewhat to
highly likely. During my work career on visits to the USofA I also found
the same kind of
objections to use of the word believe usually seeming to imply that it
always had to be a religious belief, case 4 below. Case 1 was also
used but case 2 and 3 seem to be falling out of favour in the US.

 From an online dictionary the definition of believe

> 1. (transitive) To accept that someone is telling the truth.
>
> * Why did I ever *believe* you?
>
> 2. (transitive) To accept as true.
>
> * If you *believe* the numbers, you'll agree we need change.
>
> 3. (transitive) To consider likely.
>
> * I *believe* it might rain tomorrow.
>
> 4. (intransitive) To have religious faith; to believe in
>
> a greater truth
> .
>
> * After that night in the church, I *believed*.
>

Dave

PvM wrote:
> Various interesting lectures at
>
> http://web.cortland.edu/communication/fundamental/com342.html
>
> Including Eugenie Scott's "Conservative Christianity and Evolution"
> A lecture in the SUNY-Cortland series, "Fundamentally Speaking". Dr.
> Scott will define "conservative Christian", and discuss how
> conservative Christianity, usually considered hostile to evolution,
> nonetheless has adherents who accept evolution and see it as part of
> God's creative plan -- a theological view known as "theistic
> evolution" which is usually associated with Catholics and mainstream
> Christians.
>
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Received on Wed Feb 14 11:37:08 2007