Re: [asa] Symposium on ID at Villanova

The symposium I just alerted people to is alarming to me in its design. If I could attend I would, and perhaps some other ASA members will be able to attend. I have a family commitment that weekend that prevents me from going.

What alarms me is the strong YEC bent that it appears to have, albeit with a Roman Catholic flavor. Mike Behe can never be called a YEC, and I know that I don't have to elaborate on that here. At least two of the other speakers, however, are almost certainly YEC in their views -- namely, John Sanford and Hugh Miller (it's ironic that the famous Hugh Miller from the 19th century entirely rejected the YEC view). Futhermore, the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation also appears to be a Catholic YEC organization. I don't know anything about them, but this is my inference from their web site. (Their claim that the patristics were nearly unanimous on the 24-hour day view is one that many Catholic scholars would dispute, especially if put forth without qualification. There have *always* been questions about the meaning of the "days," esp the first three "days" which precede the creation of the sun. And, quite a few fathers took the view that creation happened instantly, wi!
 th the "days" being metaphorical devices; Augustine had predecessors in that view.)

I don't know anything about the other Catholic organizations, but I can guess what they might do with the view that "science" doesn't support "evolution," esp human evolution, and that it doesn't even support mainstream dating methods in natural history.

Ted

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Fri Oct 9 10:06:46 2009