The overwhelmingly large number of podcasts is demonstrated by the fact there current page is covered by those talking about the Charlie Kirk shooting. Perhaps you can link or point out something particular which you found helpful.
I mean, it’s a podcast that has been running for years. What I found helpful in the past (I have not listened to them as regularly lately, but I did when I was personally more adjacent to Evangelicalism and trying harder to dialogue with conservatives) was the perspective they brought to current events and the interviews with authors and people involved in various interesting ministries and vocations. They have a weekly podcast. If something notable happens, sometimes I check out what they are saying about it. They sometimes have very insightful clips that are useful if you are trying to engage people in discussions across ideological lines, like this recent one that my (more conservative Southern Baptist) friend brought up at dinner last night. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOuAYZ0kev1/
I do not wish to contradict or criticise any of the previous posts.
From my experience science only becomes a problem if we make it so. It is very easy to casually set science up as the enemy without really realising it has happened.
There are some who try to bend or squeeze science into conforming with their theology and that can be as disasterous as dismisssing science altogether;
The second problem is when dogmatism about what must be beleived impacts on those with scientific knowledge and acceptance.
The general adivce is “quietly, quietly, catchee monkey” or not to blunder in and stick your foot in it. It is easier to concentrate on the places where there is agreement than to claim
But science says…"
If confrontation occurs
“i am sorry but i see it this way because…” and let your own reasons and convictons speak for you. You should find that differences can be embraced and even appreciated by others who have never managed to confront or admit their own doubts and conflicts.
Richard
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Same here! And I’ll put in a plug for Holy Post Plus (a modest monthly fee) that gets you early releases (chapter by chapter) of Skye Jethani’s new book “The World Born In You”. Having kept up with these (the four chapters written and released so far), I can attest that this is an excellent work for any and everyone who is concerned with faith issues these days. I can’t recommend it highly enough, even though, alas, it is not published for general purchase yet!
And one other note … a large fraction of the books in my Kindle library are there because of some author interview or recommendation I got from the Holy Post. These people are influencers at their best! May their tribe and those like them increase - for the sake of our children, our nation, our world.
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As I was searching online for a Kansas City area church to share with some people who happen to live in the KC area, I stumbled across this sermon from Adam Hamilton at the Church of the Resurrection (United Methodist), which is a megachurch with a lot of campuses scattered over the KC area. You can find his sermons online. This is one he happened to preach in February of this year (2025) about evolution! While I am no megachurch enthusiast generally, if I did ever begin attending one, it would be preaching like this that would make me consider it.
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Hello @Theangeloffury,
Welcome to the Biologos Forum.
I think you’ve found a good place to talk about your concerns with people who share them or similar.
It sure is the common response. And it doesn’t help anyone who has doubts and concerns. It gives new doubts can create real fear. But it doesn’t deal with the problem the person has.
It’s a tough time to have faith. Our culture prizes the rational above all. Science fits this perfectly, because that’s is foundation and goal. Faith doesn’t fit this model. In my view, if one insists that it does, then faith has to be altered or dismantled. Or the faithful must force their view of the natural world as well as the study of it (science) into an incompatable mold.
I think faith and science are not compatable in the way many people want to force them to be. I have to treat them (mostly) separately. I should point out that I am not a scientist and don’t think like one. I understand that my way of handling this tension is simply not possible for some people. Including most people I have ever gone to church with.
This is entirely understandable. I recommend you take your time and develop relationships with people you have been able to build trust with.
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I feel that what makes it toughest, is not that your culture prizes the rational above all, which it only does in one besieged quarter in the US I aver, but in the overt, judgmental hostility to the spectrum of free thinking, the social gospel; in fact anything and everything that is the fruit of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, in pioneered US religion. And prior to the Scientific Revolution, paradoxically, the Reformation.
Sometimes I’ve wondered is that people in the faith don’t want their security, safety, and comfort to be challenged. I think what makes dealing with doubt so complicated is that feels like many Christians don’t want to take a fellow person’s doubt seriously, lest they follow the doubter down the path to “unbelief”. It seems that many Christians who doubt end up describing their expierence as “being in the wilderness” and I find that description very apt.
On the hand, I struggle a lot with trying to find the congruence of faith and science, because that also seems to be a place where people get “comforted” that their faith seems to have some backing. And in both streams I struggle myself because while finding assurance of our faith very appealing, I feel that so many people spend their whole lives working on these reasons to have their faith assured. And in doing that so many people miss the radical teaching of Jesus that really impact the world and a much more straightforward response to our faith. We spend so much time focusing on our personal faith that we forget to be the salt and light in the world. And I understand why so many people get turned off to Chrstianty at a time where the world really needs it.
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Cool. Some of the other links on that Facebook page were also helpful, summarizing their basic approach to things.
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A long time ago I was told that it was much easier to be pulled off a table than to heave someone onto it.
A strong faith can be very intimidating, especially to those struggling. We can seem as inflexible and uncaring and most of all not understanding, but you must remember that to reach the level of faith I have has taken almost a lifetime and has not been without its falters and doubts.
That is because faith is very personal and the moment you look inwards towards it you can not see the people behind or around you. Also the Christian faith can be very much about your personal journey and salvation as opposed to that of others.
We think we are being caring and helpful when others see it as being superior and supercilious. If someone is not iinterested in life after death then confronting them with any sort of possibility can be seen as intrusive and callous. Evengelism is not about standing on a street corner with a megaphone or PA system. Like faith, it has to be personal and tailored to the individual with compassion and acceptance of differences. It is a line that Christianity, like many faith finds hard to find and remain on.
If i have belittled your concerns about science I apopologise.
Richard
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This definitely resonates with me. I’m only 26 but I already feel like I’ve dealt with a whole lifetime of doubts and struggles. I could have never imagined my faith to look like what it does 10yrs ago. I just pray that I’ll find the people who are willing to help me along. And these forums hopefully will be one facet of that.
I absolutely understand this but recently I’ve definitely come to appreciate the communal aspects of the faith, especially as a rebuttal to the rampant individualism in our post-modern age. For me recently, certain communal expressions of the faith has partially kept me so enraptured with the Christian faith. I do understand what it means for it to be a personal faith. As much as it is a personal decision, I believe actually doing what Jesus teaches us is like the best form of evangelism (caring for creation, taking care of the vulnerable, loving our enemies with gracious dialogue). I think that kind of social action is sorely lacking in Western Christianity. If more people saw us acting like Jesus and his servants in the Kingdom of Heaven, I think more people would be curious of the faith.
Thank you for taking the time to respond!
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Hello, Apistos.
I don’t think we have met. Greetings. Welcome.
You demonstrate the shortcomings of my post, particularly my lack of clarity. The forum frequently fuctions as much as a writers’ workshop for me as discussion board.
Obviously I’ve given myself away as an American. Hard to hide, I suppose. I don’t know where @Theangeloffury is from. You seem not to be an American, having referred to “my” culture as “your.”
So some clarifications are in order, although they may make no difference at all:
By “our culture” I really meant something much wider than American culture: Western, Northern mostly.
Regarding the rational, prizing it does not imply employing or practicing it. Prizing of nearly anything (wealth, status, benevolance, …) can lead to practices that are no more than parody. Prizing it overly (without really practicing it) can lead one to insist that matters of faith must be/are rational and rationally grounded and rationally defensible. And/or that doctrinal matters (of faith) must be applied as if they are rational and universal, rather than part of a system of faith. And so on.
The anti-intellectualism that I believe you referred to in your post above is real in the US, and is treated by those who practice it as entirely rational, justifiable, obvious. There is much to be said about this unrelated to this thread, and I would be willing to discuss it elsewhere.
Perhaps if that discussion takes place, you would include more detail of your thoughts regarding your last phrase.
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My dear Kendel,
Indeed we have not. Thank you. But I believe you know my father, late of this parish?
What shortcomings?! I demonstrate my presumption in assuming that you are American, like the site and most of its denizens, Richard being an obvious exception. I perceive other European voices. You have certain more Transatlantic idioms : )
And yes, WEIRD is wider!
Excellent critique of the multi-polar extremes of the rational, including its misappropriation.
We have the same anti-intellectualism here in our politics and religion, where global warming deniers, anti-vaxxers, racists, flat earthers all feature. All thanks to the ruling class here as there, who hide in plain sight and deny education and control the media.
My inclusion of the Reformation as something the anti-intellectual oppose, is in its inception, which implied freedom of thought and led to the novel and the cult of individualism. To modernism. (Along with rapacious imperial capitalism, even worse than Iberian Catholic was). The freedom to think just became the freedom to build a different prison. Such is civilization: populism - politics - always wins.
= Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic
I will add this to the glossary thread.
Thank you for explaining the connection you made with the Reformation.
While I value the study of doctrine, theology and the like for understanding and developing of one’s faith, there are limits to what we can learn there. Those with intellectual interests outside that set soon end up right where @Theangeloffury finds himself.
With regard to completely free thinking - that is, when no consideration is off limits - …well, once the cat is out of the box, the Reformation no longer understands a place for it. Except condemnation.
Even cautious thinking outside the box is regularly treated with contempt. As it seems you are aware.
This is counterproductive, though. To the mission of Jesus, at least. Obsessions over conformity of thought regularly turn the Church into a gated community with impossible standards for membership and a misalignment of purpose. All too popular.
Unfortunately, those with faith find themselves homeless.
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My counsel on this is to forget science – it can have no impact on faith because faith consists of keeping our eyes on Jesus! Since He rose from the dead, no scientific position, whether ToE over to YEC, is relevant: the Resurrection is the foundation, not anyone’s philosophy about science.
Science comes in on the side as a way to understand how God runs things, not as something that can upset faith – contrary to some, science has nothing to say about the Resurrection either way (it can’t!). It can help us see how glorious His works are, but it is incapable of saying those works aren’t His.
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Thinking of recommending, I recommend Dr. Michael Heiser’s books and videos. Dr. Heiser brings a coherence to the scriptures – or rather shows the coherence that is there! – that makes it seem far less a collection of documents and more a record of an ongoing battle where God is fighting on our side. He shows how reading the Bible as what it is (ancient literature) makes it explode into life.
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FWIW, I came very close to getting ordained in the UMC!
Excellent.
This made me think of the other day when I swam out to a big rock in the middle of a swimming hole, to just chill in the sunshine. Not wanting to be challenged in faith strikes me as like wishing there was a bridge to that rock – no real effort involved to get there. But a great part of the joy of being out there was judging and swimming counter to the current, feeling the cold streaks of water as some came up from the bottom, even dodging a couple of floating sticks whose paths I crossed! It is the challenges that make faith worth having.
Reminds me of what a Lutheran theologian from Australia once commented: faith is a cord – it isn’t for admiring, it’s for building bridges.
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Thanks for responding! It can be very difficult, if not impossible to separate the two realms even with some basic levels of Scriptural understanding can show interplay between faith, science, and history. Though I completely agree that everything falls apart if the Resurrection falls apart. You believe or you don’t. You can assess all the possibilities of what the phenomenon was, but even the worst case scenario is that a bodily Resurrection is just as likely as any natural phenomenon.
This is one of the things that is consistently a life preserver in the shipwreck that has been my faith in recent years. I am amazed despite contradictions, error or what have you in the text, the theological coherence in Scripture and how quickly the apostles were able to understand the Old Testament and see Jesus there to me has always been a signpost towards the Truth within. I’ll probably make a separate discussion on my ongoing difficulties on whether theistic evolution can keep Scriptures theologically coherent because that’s what’s most important for me. If you can tell that story, with all the new scientific understandings and historical data, and it leads to Jesus, I think many more people wouldn’t see the many blockades to faith in the person of Christ. I had read half of The Unseen Realm and I was blown away by it. I want to get the new edition that has more of his work embedded into that original book.
I start from the other end: scripture is theologically coherent regardless, so whether or not TE can fit into that is to me a sort of entertainment – the science can’t overturn the scriptures, just inform our understanding.
I did some second-Temple Judaism studies in grad school, but what Heiser does makes that material look amateurish. Of course he has a few decades more scholarship under his belt . . . !
Thanks for the tip! A new extended version of the book seems to be published soon, in October 2025. I already ordered it.
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