The Institute for Creation Research is having a four-week event here at a Bible church with an openly political pastor.
I talked with Ken Ham about the chasm between his world and that of scientists. He said “secular scientists”.
There are two universities close to this church 50 minutes away from metro Dallas.
Enough responded to have discouraged me from debating YECs.
An interesting number of responses came back related to my bridge-building question.
Now there’s a chance for public discourse four times. Should I go for it? By telling stories of students caught between the authority of the church and the authority of science? Between pastors and professors?
Whilst i do largely agree with AIG and Creation Ministries, i think they are overly “redneck” in their presentations and theology and that is a shame. Great ideas are tarnished by redneck fundamentalists.
Even though i am YEC, i think you should definately follow through on your idea.
Dont expect to be reasoned with though anymore than they should expect you would change your mind.
But, my small university exposure in studying the reformation has left a lasting impact in that what came out of the reformation has been important on a global scale.
Bridging chasms is important i believe more so now than it has in the past. Christians are faced with LGBT, ordination of women, YEC/TEism etc so its a necessary path and i think your interest in doing that is admirable and worthwile. Probably just try to remember, Christ chose Judas Iscariot to be among the 12…and Judas betrayed him. Salvation isnt always something we understand logically because God makes what to us are strange choices sometimes (the point being salvation isnt scientific)
EDIT
I note that again there is this notion of students losing their faith because of an apparent conflict between creationism and science. Im sorry to tell you this but that is a fallacy. The bible is very specific on individuals losing their way.
The real problem here is that people lose their faith in Christ because they cannot accept the miracle of the gospel. You cannot fix that by convincing them to manually reinterpret scripture because your science doesnt agree with it. Doing so erodes the consistency of the bible and eventually its authenticity. God becomes a mythical fairytale. The historicity of the bible is its foundation.
Individuals on both sides here are extremely defensive of their positions. Its not unlike politics or sports teams.
I can see your point. It is not a black and white situation, and a lot of factors can enter into lack of belief, but past experiences certainly provide the soil that disbelief grows in. Hypocrisy is probably the biggest factor that pushes pushes people away in my experience, and of course that can take many forms, from abusive relationships to whatever. It would be a lot easier to just be a rigid Calvinist, and say God preordained, so that’s that.
Hi Phil, I have really appreciated your feedback over the past years. What do you think about my strategy of doing storytelling at the ICR meeting about students caught between the teachings of pastors and science professors who do not interact?
Story is highly valued in the Christian community, with its emphasis on testimony, so I think is a good strategy. It is a hard sell to the scientific community with its emphasis on objective data.
There is a public discourse, because the guests from IRC are confident they can address any question the public brings with something that sounds convincing to the crowd. Don’t expect to be giving enough time to really make a point.
Be prepared to “corrected” in front of your fellow parishioners by statements you know are wrong but the crowd finds convincing. How will you handle this “correction” and the fruitlessness of your well-intended efforts?
The pastor - yours - clearly feels this is important. He surely feels he is doing “the Lord’s work” this, believing that IRC work can help bolster faith. Perhaps you can talk to him about your concerns about using pseudoscience as a form of apologetics or discipleship. My own concern is two-fold: it distracts us from the really hard features of the gospel that Jesus commanded outright, and it encourages Christians to base their faith in or bolster their faith with something untrue and refutable. If we value truth, and we believe God does, then we should make sure truth is what we are pursuing.
Lastly, you didn’t mention when on Sunday these events will take place. If your pastor is giving up 4 weeks of preaching, or including this stuff in the worship service, just go. Walk out the door. Write a letter explaining your leaving, if you think it would matter.
I view it as being caught between the authority of YEC and observed facts. It’s not as if science is something you choose to believe. There’s an actual real universe around us, and it contains facts, facts that don’t match up to YEC. Scapegoating “secular scientists” doesn’t change these facts.
I don’t know if this would be appropriate to bring up or perhaps presented more diplomatically, but it is certainly something that jumps out to me. What happens when YEC Christians are faced with these facts, especially in cases where YEC supporters have led people believe that these facts don’t exist (e.g. transitional fossils). Judging by some of the YEC posts in these threads, I begin to wonder if YEC’s think the only hominid transitional fossils to ever exist are Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man.
You made me think about that a bit more. The irony is that they were always suspect by the scientific community, and ultimately discredited by the scientific community largely because they were inconsistent with hundreds of other transitional fossils that were well documented. So, thereason they were discredited was in large part due to the large number of legitimate fossils with transitional features, something I am sure the critics are not eager to point out.