Re: [asa] Who are the famous TE's?

Ted, if you were going to put together a panel for an American audience that
would include evangelicals, wouldn't you want to include some people from
American evangelical colleges? Who would those people be (besides
yourself!).

On Dec 15, 2007 10:16 PM, Ted Davis <tdavis@messiah.edu> wrote:

> Bernie,
>
> Your question is hard to answer succinctly, IMO, b/c you put a series of
> adjectives that widen the field, rather than narrow it. To wit, you have
> "most famous", "modern," "outspoken", and then the noun "celebrities" --
> who, by the way, advocate any form of Theistic Evolution.
>
> Most famous *to whom,* that is, for which particular audience? The larger
> international science/religion "dialogue"? American evangelicals (who
> might
> view most or all TEs with suspicion)? Secular scientists? Christian
> scientists? Pastors? I hope my point is being clarified, rather than
> clouded, by this set of questions. Anyway, I think one could also get
> different answers for "outspoken" and "celebrities."
>
> As for me, let me suggest this. Francis Collins, a top scientist, is
> perhaps the "most famous" TE for Americans presently. Certainly his being
> on the cover of "Time" makes him a "celebrity," and his book is very
> popular
> for good reasons. However, IMO, his importance lies in his visibility and
> courageous witness, not in any subtlety or depth of analysis in his book.
> Howard Van Till (and I second what James Mahaffy has said) is well known,
> but not nearly as well known as Collins, though he thinks a lot more about
> this than Collins does. John Polkinghorne sells the most books, to the
> best
> of my knowledge, though many of them aren't really about evolution at
> all--unless the reader is a YEC, in which case a lot of what he write is
> about "evolution," since he's a physicist and he often writes about the
> big
> bang. Ken Miller is very well known--we filled our chapel when he came to
> campus a few years ago, and a lot of people were from off campus--but
> internationally Polkinghorne is the best known of all of these folks.
> He's
> perhaps the best scientist in this group, also, though it's hard to
> compare
> a physicist to a biologist. Being an FRS, obviously, he has plenty of
> credibility. Polkinghorne probably has more credibility among secular
> scientists than any other Christian scientist I can think of, and not just
> b/c of his science. He is a genuinely humble person who can disarm people
> who come looking for a fight, b/c he doesn't think atheists are stupid and
> he has a deep understanding of both the process of science and the nature
> of
> religious belief. But most evangelicals I talk to dismiss him (very
> inaccurately and unfairly, usually without reading anything he's written)
> as
> a process theologian (when he's very clearly and quite strongly dissented
> from process theism on some key points) or a deist (which is absurd, given
> his unconditional support for the Incarnation and the Trinity). And,
> among
> scientists, Conway Morris probably knows as much about the actual history
> of
> life as anyone alive, but he doesn't really write much about Christianity.
> He's definitely a Christian, and he write a lot about evolution as a kind
> of
> "front loaded" or "guided" process, which is a classic sort of TE
> position,
> so you can put him on that list too.
>
> But, my "short list" of 3 for your panel would probably look like this.
> My
> goal here is to get a range of TE positions within (at least what I would
> consider) orthodox Christianity. I'd put Polkinghorne, George Murphy, and
> (to make sure there's a biologist) either Ken Miller or Conway Morris on
> the
> panel.
>
> Ted
>
>
>
>
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Received on Sun Dec 16 12:41:42 2007