I agree with your good points. When I refer to the “Warfare Thesis” I’m not intending a generic reference. I’m referring to a specific history of the relationship between science and religion (hence the capitol letters). I think what is too often missing is an understanding of the theological foundation and motivation of evolution. It is right there in the literature, yet often goes unstated. Once we understand that, then things become much clearer.
I’d also like to say that I’m not advocating any parochial position, like geocentrism, or a flat Earth, or a young Earth, or anything like that. That’s not where I’m coming from at all. And I’m certainly not opposed to God creating via secondary causation either. What I’m advocating is a better understanding of origins, which can be a complicated topic.
You don’t seem to be answering Christy’s question. Beyond that, I have no idea what you are talking about here. Why do you insert the singular, definite article “the” in front of “species”? Which species? It doesn’t seem to be an accident, as you used it four times.
More importantly, which particular evolutionists have said or written something using such a strange construction?
The claim that all of the species evolved is the consensus position in the literature. In fact, it is the only position. You will not find challenges to that in the literature. Evolutionists debate how the species evolved, not if the species evolved.
BioLogos is officially and publically against ideological ‘evolutionism’.
“BioLogos emphatically rejects Evolutionism, the atheistic worldview that so often accompanies the acceptance of biological evolution in public discussion.”
Do you still nevertheless consider BioLogos people ‘evolutionists’?
Cornelius, my contention is that a faith-science warfare description of people’s position is not accurate, and is derogatory, because it diverts attention away from the real disagreement (such as disagreement with evolution), and tries to make it as if people disagree with science in general. In changing the parameters of the “name-calling”, it makes it seem as if people of faith are against science, which is absolutely untrue. In the degree to which people of faith use and accept the terms of faith vs science, they have been duped into falling into the trap of accepting this parameter. And in that way people of faith seem to agree that people of faith are stupid, ignorant, and backward, because they are against science.
People of faith are not against science. Plain and simple. Being against one particular issue, does not mean they are against the field of science, the practice of science, or 99% of the conclusions derived from scientific activities.
The history has been misnamed and maligned falsely against people of faith.
So if you mean all of the species, why not write that to make your prose intelligible?
And you might want to look at the literature, because you’ll see papers and disagreements about which species are separate, which are the same, to what extent a population has split into separate species, etc. None of those map very well to your use of “the species” or “all of the species,” as evolutionary theory predicts fuzziness.
This is why I asked the second question that you didn’t answer: which particular “evolutionists” have said or written something using such a strange construction?
When I refer to the Warfare Thesis, it means exactly what historians have shown it means: a politically-motivated assault on the whole notion of Christian learning, making the demonstrably false claim that Christian theology has played one single role throughout history–namely, vigorously to hold back the supposed inevitable progress of science.
The Warfare Thesis does not mean what Cornelius Hunter spins it to mean, in order to construct his false charge that BioLogos promotes it. Most of the historians who’ve studied the Warfare Thesis are not religious believers, and many of them would not be sympathetic with the goals of BioLogos. Every one of them, however, would agree with what I just said about the Warfare Thesis. Dr. Hunter defines “evolution” in his own way; he defines the “Warfare Thesis” in his own way, and then he charges us at BioLogos with promoting something we don’t promote.
This is myth-making, pure and simple: it leads ordinary readers, who lack the expertise to evaluate his claims, to believe untrue things. I agreed to write for BioLogos for this very reason: to get some of the best scholarship, including the best historical scholarship, out of the academy and into the minds of interested lay people, whether or not they share my Christian faith. I don’t make myths; I deconstruct them.
As I said before, Dr Hunter is entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts. He’s not an historian. He doesn’t contribute to historical conferences, he doesn’t publish in peer-reviewed historical journals, and he doesn’t publish books with university presses. Read his opinions on historical matters with great skepticism, until such time as he is prepared to contribute to the historical literature on this topic and have it pass muster among those do. I’m certainly not holding him back from making the attempt.
This topic is now closed. New replies are no longer allowed. I think it’s only appropriate to let @TedDavis have the last word in his own comment thread.