RE: [asa] Darwin's anti-slavery Sacred Cause

I agree with this. Recently a friend sent me a link to the Louie Giglio
video on YouTube (which I had already watched, and commented on here). I
happened to scroll down to some of the comments on it, and the tone of many
on there was just shamefully derogatory against Christians -- not just for
believing in any specified "bad science," but for our belief in a great,
providential God, which was the real message of Giglio's presentation.

Our petty internal conflict with other Christians over the age of the earth,
etc., is a sideshow in many ways to the anti-Christian rhetoric out there
among "secularists." Dick, I hope your recent messages on this thread don't
indicate that you think advocating the truth of "evolution via natural
selection" is more important than advancing the message of Christ. I know
you don't believe this, but saying that "we need more secularists" because
ASA can't give a strong enough statement on YEC to your liking seems to be
quite missing the point.

We don't need to help build walls with YECs and further the warfare model by
taking an exclusionary position. Let it be them instead that build the
walls in response to us presenting a more clear, aggressive, and positive
message of Christ in a way that is true to science, as opposed to their
message of "Christ instead of science." ASA has already taken a stance
against bad science, and it's abundantly clear to many that the organization
has for some time been dominated by those who do not accept YEC.

Jon Tandy

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Schwarzwald
Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2009 10:25 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Darwin's anti-slavery Sacred Cause

While I have no sympathy for the YEC view, I think quite a lot of damage has
been done by secularists who have happily insisted that one cannot both
accept evolution and at the same time believe in God, much less
Christianity, in the desire to use evolution and science in general as a
stick to beat religion with. Unfortunately, many have shown that if they
have to make such a false choice, they won't pick what secularists hoped
they would.

Until more TEs realize that Christians in general - not just YECs - are
attacked by secularists as being fundamentally 'anti-science', their impact
will be limited. Denouncing YECs is not enough, and will never be enough. A
fight has to be opened against people who insist that evolution is not
compatible with God - or better yet, against those who argue that teleology
does not and cannot exist in nature, much less evolution.

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Received on Sat Feb 14 14:48:21 2009