RE: [asa] Creationism Conference

George Cooper wrote:

Yesterday, I had lunch with my daughter, who's in college, and she has been
indoctrinated into the anti-evolution camp. When I began to calmly offer
the idea that God uses processes to accomplish His will and that evolution
is a very powerful and logical process, tears began to form in her eyes
because her Dad is, apparently, not the Christian soldier that she hoped he
would be.

I realized last night that I had a similar incident with my wife some months
ago. She asked me one night something like, "So are you an evolutionist
now?" The question floored me, and I fumbled out an answer. Another time a
little before or after that, I was saying something about Dover and
Intelligent Design, and she looked at me very much askance and asked
incredulously, "So you don't believe in intelligent design anymore?" (I
don't remember if she said "anymore".) Again, I fumbled out an answer, and
she did acknowledge that "intelligent design" isn't something that
necessarily is scientifically provable.

What these examples illustrated to me is that though I am becoming more
versed with the information and arguments on various aspects of these
questions, there is a tremendous uphill battle taking this into the popular
Christian culture, even with those who know us best. Since the above
incidents, I have shared more with her, when I was more in control of the
conversation and able to formulate the thoughts rather than react to
spontaneous questions. Though she doesn't understand or have patience to
investigate nearly all the arguments, she understands just a little better.
She read the lengthy critique of Expelled on the ASA site.

And by the way, she is possibly slightly more prepared to hear the
scientific arguments than most, being a B.S. in pre-med biology, although
going through school she was somewhat impervious to the evolutionary aspect
because of a strong predisposition against it. How much more difficult is
it for those with little or no background in or commitment to science, and
who are strongly influenced by anti-scientific rhetoric?

Jon Tandy

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Received on Tue Jun 24 10:03:23 2008