Evolution, according to evolutionists, means “All life on Earth shares a common ancestor, just as you and your cousins share a common grandmother. Through the process of descent with modification, this common ancestor gave rise to the diverse species that we see documented in the fossil record and around us today. Evolution means that we’re all distant cousins: humans and oak trees, hummingbirds and whales.” In other words, evolution (as the word is commonly understood) is an explanation for the entire diversity of life on earth.
Once properly defined, it should be obvious that evolution is antithetical to Scripture. Scripture teaches that God made the various kinds of organisms to reproduce according to their respective kinds. There is no evolution in terms of complete common ancestry across the kind boundary. Redefining the word to simply mean “change over time” is a pointless gesture of accommodating secular ideas and can confuse people.
We can agree on that much. Upon re-reading this thread, I do not think anyone has suggested Todd Wood promotes evolution ( it is not necessary to add adjectives to distinguish the mainstream general concept of evolution ).
Wood has been forthright in acknowledging the evidence for evolution, and has refused to engage in the science bashing endemic at AiG and other apologetic outlets. Enough so that in response, AiG has derisively castigated him as a Young Earth Evolutionist.
Then perhaps you need to add the study of English Literature and Comprehension to your Scholarly endeavours. There is a big deference between knowing what a word can mean and applying that to its place in a sentence or passage. if you isolate a phrase it no longer has that clarification needed to indicate which understanding is being asked for.
I trust that my next reply and its illustrations showed you what I was driving at.
I taught remedial reading and composition to college freshmen for a year, and an entrance requirement for grad school was a minimum full year’s worth of English literature (on top of Greek literature).
I just re-read your post and that last sentence still just sounds like a declaration of the way things should be or perhaps how they actually are. I can’t see how it’s a conclusion when it so closely follows “Not that I would encourage such blatant division”.
I would also add that Peter’s opinions about the age of the Earth (if he had any) are not material to anything. The divine illumination he got from the Spirit was clearly not to make him a scientist - but to enlighten him about the true meaning of what he was the first in the Church to witness (1 Corinthians 15:5).
Todd Wood also believes that scientists are justified in accepting the theory of evolution on scientific grounds. He is working hard to find what he considers a better scientific interpretation of the data, but he will admit that he hasn’t gotten there yet. He openly states that he rejects the theory of evolution because of his religious beliefs.
This is why I see Todd Wood as an honest broker in the larger conversation of how science fits into Christian theology. He has a foot in both worlds, and he is honest about both the reality of the scientific evidence and his reasons for believing as he does.
That’s not true. Darwin argued for two separate things: common ancestry and natural selection. The scientific community swiftly adopted common ancestry because of the evidence that supported it. One big piece of evidence is the nested hierarchy that joins all complex life. Natural selection could be false, but that wouldn’t change the evidence for common ancestry because common ancestry never depended on natural selection being true.
More to the point, Todd Wood knows this. In fact, having written papers on molecular phylogenetics he is well aware of the mountains of scientific evidence supporting common ancestry. As he states, being scientifically supported is not the same as being ultimate truth. This allows him to acknowledge the truth of where the scientific evidence sits.
YEC has this same problem. First, scripture wasn’t given to humans until 3,000 years after the beginning of creation, according to YEC. Even then, God only revealed himself to one group of people in the Middle East. It wasn’t until 4,000 years after the beginning of creation that Jesus of Nazareth appears. So why the wait? Isn’t that just as racist by your own criteria?
I don’t see how that matters for the article under question. Whether TE is waning or increasing in popularity has little to do with how they should be treated within congregations which was the ultimate purpose of the article.
It is worth pointing out that you accept thousands and thousands of naturalistic explanations for the very same reason.
That’s what I have observed as well. Christian scientists are able to distinguish between their scientific work and their religious beliefs. It has been this way since the beginning of modern science, and I don’t expect it to change.
One way I like to illustrate this point is through a simple challenge. Randomly select a peer reviewed paper, and based on the material in the paper try to guess what religious beliefs are held by the authors (if any). It’s a bit of a rhetorical question, but it is worth pointing out that many scientists and many biologists are Christians, but you wouldn’t know that by reading their scientific papers. You would know that if you got to know them personally, however. I suspect many Christian scientists here can attest to the fact that they aren’t treated any differently within the scientific community because of their religious beliefs, at least in 99% of cases. There’s always that one person in every group . . .
Controversy is certainly much louder on this site than it probably is in most congregations. On that I would heartily agree. In the vast majority of cases people respect others within their congregation and don’t find evolution worthy of creating divisions between each other. That’s a good thing.
That is true, though there is a dark side that lurks under the surface, in that it is such a divisive subject that it is somewhat forbidden or discouraged to discuss. Even though, according to polls, the 2nd leading cause of youth leaving the church (behind hypocrisy) is the way the church handles science, few churches have open discussions about science, be it creation care or evolution or age of the earth. To our local congregation’s credit, we have had a long discussion on sexuality and gender issues, which is often another subject that is often forbidden (and we try to avoid here due to the controversial nature and the scope of the organization).
Still your point remains true that most church members value relationships above ideology in their day to day relationships.
The thrust within the denomination I am part of is to try and defuse the conflict, not by discussing it but by claiming there is nothing to discuss. It is a sort of white lie but it serves. They provide places where people can discuss it if they wish/need to but they just promote the view that science is not in conflict with God but an expression of His work.
Having said that, I went on one of these residential weekends and found it did not address what I wanted/needed to address. It was more like a potted course in science interspersed with Biblical studies where the text could be understood without confronting science.
It would seem that there is no teaching that can successfully marry the two.
I also wonder how much of this is a US thing. I would strongly suspect that this isn’t as large of a problem in other Western countries. This is why it is interesting to hear from @RichardG because I believe he is from the UK which I have always thought of as being a bit more relaxed when it comes to science. It also makes me wonder how much the secularization of a country changes the way in which churches within that country approach science.
One sentence towards the beginning of the article immediately grabbed my attention.
“Can we know that evolutionary theory is true much like we know that gravity or the germ theory of disease are true?”
I think the authors suffer from an epistemic blind spot in this instance. The authors don’t question gravity or germ theory on theological grounds, but they ignore the fact that others do.
Gravity is rejected by Biblical Flat Earthers on theological grounds. If gravity were true then a flat Earth would not be possible, so they reject gravity on the basis of it not being consistent with their interpretation of scripture. This puts gravity is the same epistemic position as the authors put evolution. If we are following the authors’ arguments to their obvious conclusion, then gravity should be doubted for the same reason that they give for doubting evolution.
The same for germ theory. Here is an abstract from an interesting article on how doctors are trying to combat infectious diseases on the African continent.
Germ theory is rejected based on religious beliefs as well. This puts germ theory in the same position as evolution.
The overall argument in the article just doesn’t seem tenable. If scientific theories are thrown into doubt if someone from any religion is skeptical of the theory because of their religious beliefs then nearly all of science is in doubt, not just evolution. While the authors probably intended for their ideas to be tightly focused on evolution, they instead carpet bomb nearly all of science.
At the same time, it is important for people on opposing sides to understand where all of us are coming from. While the authors arguments are flawed (in my opinion), they have the redeeming quality of also being honest. Sometimes, honest conversations are more important than being right.
I think it is less vocalised, that is there are fewer fanatical groups. Evolution is almost taken for granted. You can’t watch a nature program or go to a zoo without it being rammed down your throat and I think it has become a srt of background noise in that respect. It is a sort of dissonance but not in a destructive way, more of a cry wolf.
In other words, the disagreement is not an issue of science but of theology. And that means it suffers from the great problem of all theological disagreements which is that we have no way of proving what is correct.
Since I cannot believe in Christianity without evolution and Wood considers his Christianity incompatible with evolution then the logical conclusion is that I would never believe in Wood’s version of Christianity – it is not something I can see any value in. I honestly prefer atheism to a Christianity like that.
I have no interest in a Christianity which proposes an alteration of reality at sometime in the past in order to make it fit a particular interpretation of the Bible – for me that would make the Bible a work of fantasy. I have no interest in a Christianity which has God designing extreme suffering for manifestly innocent human beings for some mysterious unknowable purpose (not to mention the idea that this means they are not really innocent in some mysterious way). I am not interested in a Christian God who clings to power and control that He must be the sole author of the future and responsible for everything that happens. These would make the god of such a Christianity far more like the devil than any God I could admire or worship.
Yes–my church, for example, is quite strongly YEC, yet they have not changed their interaction with me when I discussed my views on science. I’m impressed, and grateful. They have been taught some unusual things about people who take science, so to speak, over Scripture–as though we do it to avoid responsibility to God, etc. I think that there’s a lot I need to appreciate more about others and their acceptance.
Actually it’s rejected on ideological grounds. This point became very clear from reading posts in an old thread about actual benefits of evolutionary theory.
