Someone mentioned how starkly the ID and EC-BioLogos approach to apologetics differ. How can I read that second approach? Where do I find it?
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As far as I know there is not a specific manual or approach. But there are some things that may help.
- Concordism vs accommodationism.
Those who believe in intelligent design such as young earth creationist seem to approach it through concordism. That means that they read something like genesis 1-2 and then they try to find, and fabricate, science to support it. They read “Adam and Eve” and then demand that science shows us that evolution is false and we all came from the same two humans roughly 6k years ago. They read about the flood and then try to make science support it. They do stuff like say “ see there is marine life fossils on top of mountains which means a flood covered them”’type of stuff.
But evolutionary creationist/christian naturalist does not try to make theology what science is built off of. We let science interpre science. By that I mean we look generally at two things. Take the marine fossils on the top of mountains. Does the scientific method demand that or does a biblical interpretation try to force that? Secondly we look at the scientific consensus. So I’m not a geologist or a paleontologist. So I look at what the experts have to say. So take Everest. 29,000 feet up in the air the summit , Qomolangma Limestone , has marine fossils in it. So how did those fossils find themselves roughly 5 miles high. Was it because of a flood settling them there or was it for another reason. IDist claim it was the flood but the scientific consensus, which is the general explanation agreed upon by the bulk of experts in those fields, says otherwise. They say that mt. Everest was, and still is, being created by the cataclysmic collision of two main tectonic plates and the edges of those plates are being smooshed up. So India on the indo-Australian plate was pushed into Eurasia around 30-50mya. I’m not sure what the exact timeframe is. I’ve never been to interested in this and so googling brings up various headlines with dates. Which marine fossils are on top of mt. Everest found in the yellow band towards the peak because prior to this collision that area was actually under water, and so no flood did that.
In a nutshell IDist interprets science through theology and the agreed upon consensus of young earth creationist while ECist interprets science through the scientific method and the agreed upon consensus of the scientific community which are experts in their various fields.
I don’t feel like diving into a second reason. But in a nutshell it’s interpreting scripture through contextual analysis which includes things like when it was written, who it was written to, the genre, the literary devices and so on and what’s the consensus of biblical scholars. This is a bit more fuzzy since it’s mostly done in broad strokes. But if you get everyone who is an actual biblical scholar you’ll see things like Genesis 1 is not read as history. It’s kind of a big topic.
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There is no Biologos statement that I know of on apologetics, but there was a long thread here on the forum addressing a book about it, giving some insight as to how forum participants feel about the subject:
Just looking over it, the discussion is a little hard to get into, but the book itself is something I would recommend, and was well received.
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Another similar example I like to use especially for people in USA is to explain how did marine fossils end up on the Rocky Mountains. Well all you have to do is look at a map of the western interior seaway and compare that to a map of the Rocky Mountains and the uplift becomes very clear.
When you look at that western interior seaway map you’ll notice that by that time, in the Cretaceous, the western portion of Laurasia that became North America was separated into Laramidia ( western ) and Appalachia ( eastern ). This is why you see some different fossils on each mountain. The marine fossils of the Appalachian wont be as young as Rocky and the Rocky mountians terrestrial fossils won’t be as old as the Appalachians.
Though these ranges have developed more than once. Rockies was there but super small compared to now hundreds of millions of years ago. Appalachians are not growing and are some of the oldest mountains in the world and so they’ve been withered down a lot.
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So, by apologetics, I’m assuming you mean: ways to prove God and Christianity are true. I don’t believe that Biologos as an organization promotes anything as such.
The doctrinal statement on the website is pretty standard reformed-type Christianity. Which is not a consensus among the forum participants.
I appreciate that @JPM pointed to The End of Apologetics. It sharply criticizes a particular, popular type of apologetics that are seen and practiced today. And promotes a lived apologetic, that is often criticized as “liberal” or “progressive.”
Love truth. Preach the word. Live it.
That speaks to people.
It requires no special training, just a life of obedience.
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I agree that the purpose of apologetics is not to convince others to convert to Christianity. Only the Holy Spirit can do that, but I do think that part of apologetics is to inform and correct misconceptions about Christianity, such as the idea that you have to reject evolution or other modern scientific theories to believe that the Bible is authoritative.
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I know exactly what you mean. An approach that views the study of science as some sort of ammunition gathering exercise, constantly on the hunt for sound bites with which to argue a point, or in some cases to smear the scientific community as having something nefarious or other going on.
It’s a recipe for misunderstanding, confusion and quote mining, and is ultimately counterproductive.
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