My thought is that age is totally irrelevant. I think that if you think
20 year olds think something different than mid-life'ers, then that is
just your experience, and the world is much bigger in that.
I think YEC, TE, Atheists, etc. crosses all age boundaries; totally
regardless of age. It is an ideological battle. The ideas can inhabit
any age of mind just as easily. Much more important is the immediate
culture near a person (atheist, YEC, etc.). Engaging these different
cultures-of-thought is crossing the divide.
Check out this popular YouTube video to illustrate my idea (46 seconds
long):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=P8Aq00yJSxo
...Bernie
________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Gregory Arago
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 3:05 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: 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:
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
________________________________
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
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5866/1034?sa_campaign=Em
ail/sntw/22-February-2008/10.1126/science.319.5866.1034> ?
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 19:46:18 2008
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