RE: [asa] Creationism Conference

It is an extremely delicate balancing act to hold to the truth of the Christian faith and evolution. Only a few can truly pull it out. The rest will go either one way or the other.

 
Moorad

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of Jon Tandy
Sent: Tue 6/24/2008 10:02 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: 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 12:38:57 2008