Re: [asa] More WLC on Evolution, ID, and Genesis

Almost immediately I react with gratitude for these comments.

I get fed up with all this Christian world view as if there is only one and if you are "biblical" then it is the only Christian world view. To make it all multiple is excellent and all of us Christians may aim to be totally biblical and totally Christian in our world view but our worldviews are coloured by our cultures (or as D Siemens would say colored by our cultures!) so that mine is distorted by my Englishness and whatever else is my culture and the same with all other people.
I cringe at some of the biblical world view stuff and it makes me want to say that I have no biblical world view!!

With Ted I don't agree that modern science has only Christian roots and I would want to emphasise the Arabic and Muslim roots as well.

We have the opposite problem when some want to dismiss 18th century science with its old earth and later evolutionary perspectives as ENLIGHTENMENT

Michael
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: David Opderbeck
  To: Ted Davis
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu ; Schwarzwald
  Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 5:16 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] More WLC on Evolution, ID, and Genesis

  I have a broader problem with the suggestion that at any point in time in human history there was an overarching "Christian culture" or adherence to a "Biblical worldview."

  Andy Crouch makes an excellent point in his book "Culture Making": we always live in multiple "cultures" not in a unitary "culture." I'd suggest that likewise we always operate under multiple "worldviews" not under a unitary "worldview."

  I also don't like the notion that medieval / rennaisance / 18th century Europe was a "Christian" culture because there were many things about the cultures of those times that, though ostensibly "Christian," seem to have had little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus.

  So maybe we could say this: the development of Western science was supported by the notion in the cultures of Europe, which were strongly influenced by Christianity, that there was a God who created an orderly, observeable universe.

  David W. Opderbeck
  Associate Professor of Law
  Seton Hall University Law School
  Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology

  On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:51 AM, Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu> wrote:

    Schwarzwald,

    I was picking up on this specific language: "modern science was birthed by
    a biblical worldview," which to my ears sounds like the claim that
    Christianity was the one main cause of modern science. Perhaps I have read
    too much into this, but if the language said "modern science arose in a
    Christian culture" I would fully agree.

    Often, I encounter the view that there was no genuine science at all, prior
    to (say) 1500 or (less commonly) 1200 AD, that it took Christianity to
    produce genuine science. That wasn't part of the claim I responded to, but
    (as I say) I do find it said more than a little. Stark pushes this, based
    partly on Stan Jaki and partly on his own misreading of other sources (he
    seems to think this is a consensus, when it's a tiny minority who think
    this). IMO, however, genuine science did exist in the Greek and Hellenistic
    worlds. It wasn't widespread in time or space, but it was real science,
    even if it didn't very closely resemble modern science. Indeed, the impulse
    for the human mind to go out and conquer nature, mentally if not
    technologically, is embedded within Greek philosophy; you don't need
    Christian theism to believe that nature makes sense, even though it very
    naturally flows from Christian theism that it should. Hubris can do what
    theism encourages.

    Ted

    To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
    "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Nov 25 12:26:33 2008