RE: [asa] Crossing the Divide

Running to evolution(ists) for help...hmmm, quite an image that provides!
   
  A question on the text quoted: that's not Brian Alters (McGill, Evolution Education Research Centre), is it? I tried to meet him last summer after the SSHRC fiasco, no answer, disappeared. Definitely not an ASA/CSCA member.
   
  Though perhaps suggesting a different 'divide' that is to be crossed, one point to make is simply this: TE, if ASA is indeed to be a haven for it, unfortunately seems uninterested in bridging the divide between natural sciences and human-social sciences. THIS divide, however, is what is most notably touched on (though not thoroughly discussed) by the IDM and its peculiar brand of 'design' theory. That is because intelligence is 'always already' acknowledged in human beings. Human beings simply do 'design' things, 'nuf said.
   
  Turning the Creator into an anthropomorphic 'designing agent,' is nevertheless, a less than ideal solution. Theologically suspect, naturalistically-scientistically challenged.

  One other note: CSCA's Lamoureux converted to Evolutionary Creationism (not to TE) during mid-age. The tone of ASA seems directed to middle-aged or to retired persons. What is ASA doing for the 20-something generation? This is the demographic attracted to 'i+d,' which an antiquated TE, based on biology-physics-chemistry added to theology, minus anthropology, sociology, psychology (which should these days almost be written as PSYCHOLOGY), all but ignores. Where is a psychological account of transition from YEC to OEC/PC/TE/EC/not-literalist/hermeneutically-inclined person given? This seems to be, from the quotations, what the article is about (powerful emotions, risk, identity, loss of community, etc.).
   
  The notions of intentionality, purpose, meaning, reason (somewhat TE/ECish), and teleology embraced by i+d are quite attractive to young people today. Isn't this a 'divide' that ASA should draw its attention and network to?
   
  Which divide? Whose divide?
   
  Arago
   
  
"Dehler, Bernie" <bernie.dehler@intel.com> wrote:
        v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) } Randy said:
“I particularly wanted to flag the comment "no one to turn to". I think this is a key function for ASA and the reason we need all you folks and your friends signed up for ASA so we can build a network and help folks know who they can turn to.”
   
  Randy- you know your charter well. I needed something, and ASA has been a tremendous help for me. I’m still searching and learning, and ASA is helping tremendously. Without ASA, where would Christians, who are willing to consider evolution, turn to?
   
  …Bernie
   
      
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  From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Randy Isaac
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 12:07 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: [asa] Crossing the Divide

   
    Those of you subscribed to Science or other access may be able to read this article:
   Evolution: Crossing the Divide?
   I don't have permission to copy the whole article but here are a few snippets, including a quote from ASA's Denis Lamoureux.
  I particularly wanted to flag the comment "no one to turn to". I think this is a key function for ASA and the reason we need all you folks and your friends signed up for ASA so we can build a network and help folks know who they can turn to.
  Randy
   
   EVOLUTION:
Crossing the Divide
  Jennifer Couzin
    Like others who have rejected creationism and embraced evolution, paleontologist Stephen Godfrey is still recovering from the traumatic journey

           
  ....
  Powerful emotions bind together young-Earth creationists, members of a movement making inroads from Kenya to Kentucky, where a $27 million Creation Museum opened last year. Scientists and educators have responded mainly by boosting biology's place in the classroom and building rational arguments for evolution. But reason alone is rarely enough to sway believers. That's because letting go of creationism carries enormous emotional risks, including a loss of identity and community and an agonizing, if illusory, choice: science or faith.
  People like Godfrey tend not to advertise their painful transition from creationist to evolutionist, certainly not to scientific peers. When doubts about creationism begin to nag, they have no one to turn to: not Christians in their community, who espouse a literal reading of the Bible and equate rejecting creationism with rejecting God, and not scientists, who often dismiss creationists as ignorant or lunatic.
  .....
  Although creationism might seem bizarre to individuals who have never believed in it, for those who do, its power is almost beyond words. Alters remembers, as a young teenager, sitting in on a sermon by Robert Schuller, a televangelist whose California church is fairly liberal. Listening to Schuller endorse the views of scientists who consider rocks to be millions of years old, Alters began to cry, horrified that the preacher would lie. "It was almost as if he stood there and said Jesus Christ didn't exist," he recalls. For biblical literalists, belief is generally an all-or-nothing proposition.
  ...
  Parents often cannot cope with such an upheaval in a child. "The day I had to tell my mother I wasn't a young-Earth creationist was the scariest day of my life," says Denis Lamoureux, who teaches science and religion at St. Joseph's College in the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. His mother was so embarrassed by his work in biology that she told her friends her son was still in the profession he once belonged to: dentistry. Some compare these conversations to informing fundamentalist Christian parents that they are gay--but perhaps even more wrenching.

       
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Received on Fri Feb 22 18:06:16 2008