Is it dangerous to teach evolutionary theory to children?

Is it really that hard to imagine that “the movement of theistic evolution” may have started on the enormous piles of evidence for the Theory of Evolution?

I bet that you would find lots of us opposed to “seeker-sensitive models” of church growth. You seem to be very certain that we are pursuing something other than the best explanation for the evidence we observe in God’s creation. If you have actually studied evolutionary processes, you surely must wonder why God will fill his creation with such evidence if it is in actuality false and misleading. Isn’t it more likely that the evidence is there because that is what happened?

I come from a Young Earth Creationist background. I’ve never seen anything which would suggest that anybody adopted theistic evolution because it is easier to “sell” to the masses. But perhaps my background is atypical. (That is quite possible, in fact.)

I watched the rise of the “creation science” movement and was once a part of it. Have you ever wondered if “creation science” was motivated by pleasing donors? (I have because I saw how the leaders and origins ministry entrepreneurs [a favorite term a colleague coined] would tailor their message for maximum popularity in fundamentalist circles. The more they attacked the positions of other Christians, the more cheers they got.)

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This is a really interesting point. in the same vein, did you realize that the masses who were following Jesus around looking for a miracle or a free meal or what they might only consider a magic trick were probably the same ones who were swayed by the masses and by religious hypocrites to call for his death? Jesus healed and did miracles on a temporary scale in order to prove that He is who He says He is, the healer of souls. There are some great authors who explain this in detail. The Bible addresses this in more detail too…many followed Jesus to see his miracles to which one of the apostles replied, “the Jews look for signs and the Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.” Signs and wisdom don’t save. Looking to the cross does.

The thing that convinces me that this is true is based on current history where people follow quack leaders who give them a show and pretend miracles and promise riches all the while they entice these same people to give their hard earned money for that same leader to have access to private jets, fancy cars and lavish lifestyles. One good Christian leader called such activity in these fraud leaders “witchcraft” I agree

the performance of miraculous feats and the pretending of performance of miraculous feats has no power to change a person. However in Jesus life, the performance of miraculous feats which were intended to point to the greater issue that He is indeed God, a God of both love and also a God of justice and wrath towards those who decline His free offer of grace that may be accepted by grace through faith!

And ps. There still are miraculous events occurring around the world. God still does miracles but in His ways and in His timing for His glory. Ravi Zacharious has a great story. in my family we have some great ones too. In a day in age of high medical technology and simple mindedness especially in America, God seems less eager to perform these miracles than He does in some Third world countries. Gotta run

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I have never stated that I believe definitively that the earth is really young. I don’t see any logic to the assumption that an old earth concludes that evolution from common decent be true either. My daughter is learning this error in her homeschool logic class 101. No amount of time gives any logic to the naturalistic worldview in secular science and for me, there is no logic for the church to adapt large chunks of this worldview either.

Worldview points and belief systems are powerful entities for interpretations in the historical scientific realm.

The God of the universe transcends human vantagepoints and perceptions and for this, I will admit that the earth may look old and could be but accept the possibility that what appears old may not be either. Time is a tricky item which I don’t think humans have been privy enough to truly understand.

Again, as far as common decent evolution, I just don’t see objective science truly supporting it and I see absolutely no logic whatsoever to godless chance evolution as I am sure you would agree.

We are all frivolous at times. I agree with some of your sentiments here. the piles of evidence are just as fitting to adaptation of created species or kinds as they are fitting of common decent evolution. I just believe that there are mountains of other types of evidence that point more logically to complexity suggesting a complex Creator designing and creating it than I do lots of time, chance and energy.
The trick about all of this is still going to be that when one’s basic worldview is already in place, there will be a tendency to interpret the evidence in a slanted way to fit the worldview. The other trick is that when one from a particular worldview is large enough and convincing enough, they can sway others towards it. The church should be demonstratively pushing against the belief in naturalism and not adopting large chunks.

When you say mountains of evidence, to me based on the interpretations of evidence I have read in several articles, I don’t see mountains of evidence, I see mountains of interpretations of evidence based upon a pre set worldview.

The Biblical worldview is that God transcends humanity more than the size of the expanding universe takes up contrasted to the shadow I make here sitting in my office. Right? This principle is stated as clear as day in Hebrews chapter 3. That should be the Christian God in people’s minds. When one gains a firm grasp on this One and Only God, they will hesitate to cave towards humanizing Him. They will not be quick to try to understand how He created something from nothing when the Bible doesn’t give all of the detail. They will also hesitate to sin against Him. And they will absolutely treasure the Gospel of Jesus Christ that is the only means for salvation from the wrath of such a God against the terror of our sin and disobedience towards Him.

There is enormous pressure for Christians to cave about macro evolution…especially Christians with a science bend. If a Christian wants to study medicine and they go into the science field they are going to not only be bombarded with indoctrination into the naturalistic religion, but they are going to find it uphill to get the grades and get a job if they hold fast to the idea of God as Creator. Am I wrong? For this, I don’t think Christians cave to this, but we support good Christian schools and start new Harvards and new Yales that have a basis upon creationistic and God revering principles that provide a better education and lead to the creation of better hospitals and better family practices and others!

I won’t throw stones at AIG for achieving donors for such an ark project. I will throw them at mega church pastors living large on the back of common folk where they are asking them to raise money for 20 million dollar jets and mansions and large living. point I make here is that we see this enormous ability for capital potential, I wish that someone would lead all towards focusing those resources towards new education facilities and towards bolstering the good Christian schools that remain firm upon biblical principles.

The secular schools in America may flounder more and more …kids today are more into handouts and partying than an education anymore. Christians need to raise their children above this and point them towards a Biblical worldview and towards educators who do so as well combined with excellent education services for being the best scientists, doctors, chemists etc who will choose to work hard in their endeavors as unto the Lord who made them!

In my experience yes. I have several doctors that are excellent and are also strong Christians.

You just described Ken Ham.

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I went all the way through my BSc and my PhD denying evolution at a secular university. I got excellent grades, and was never pressured in any way. I even had a evolution professor respond to my (now embarrassing to me) uneducated objections with grace. So, yes, I would say that your characterization is misguided, yes. There might be some “God’s Not Dead” type professors out there, but none that I have ever met.

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Mr. Brooks. I go to a church that largely sides with young earth creationism and they don’t thrust it down my throat. I could take such a generalization you make here and call IT defamatory, but I won’t because discourse in these subjects is very helpful.

This conversation is more than a complaint about “YEC” forcing down throats. I have read several articles on Biologos where there is even defensiveness against the likes of old earth creationism as well as the intelligent design movement too.

I see the sequel was shut out of the Oscars again. An outrage. :smiley:

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I met them at Miami University in Oxford OH in the late 90’s as a chem major. It is worse today. I have read a few articles about this which suggest that Christians in secular schools are being confronted and pushed towards accepting naturalism but probably need to do some personal research on the topic.

There are many many fine Christian scientists today who are educated and still object to evolutionary terms. Some of the most brilliant Christian apologists on the planet object the evolutionary terms as well. This is not a matter of educated vs not educated. It is the clash of worldviews that interpret the evidence. Very sorry but just because a chimp has similar dna patterns as a human does not make us their descendant.

Evolution does not predict - in any way - that chimpanzees are ancestral to us (!). We share a common ancestral population in the past. That’s like saying that modern Italian came from modern Spanish. Nope - modern languages share ancestral populations of speakers in the past.

FWIW, the folks that dispute the evidence for common ancestry do it for religious reasons, not for scientific ones - there really is no other way to put it.

Greg, if you’d like, I’d be happy to send you a copy of my recent book, free of charge. It lays out the genetic evidence for common ancestry. If you are willing to read it, I will send you one. :slight_smile:

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Read that again. I don’t throw AIG under the bus. From what I have gathered, Ken Hamm is not a lover of money. He makes a good salary but less than usual for running this size organization. (170k I think and this is public info) The ARK project on the back of donors who wanted it and was otherwise a financial risky move by AIG. I know several guys on staff with AIG and they are really great guys who all live modest lives and some who have to rely on hunting deer to feed their families! I kid you not. They pursue holiness before their God and have formed a backbone of the leadership in our church which has never been a thrust- young -earth- creationism- down your -throat type of thing but a reverence to God and the Bible focus.

@grog

Again, you don’t seem capable of understanding the purpose of BioLogos. People like me support BioLogos because it can show Christians unhappy with the anti-science attitudes of their churches that there is a way to accept the findings of Science and to be a devoted Christian.

Old Earth Creationism can be helpful at times (for example, why don’t you accept the arguments of the Old Earth Creationists, @grog?) - - but they reject an awful lot of Evolutionary science. And this is part of the pattern.

I.D. supporters, one would think, would be in the very same wagon with the BioLogos folks. It seems the reason they are not is that precious few of them believe in Speciation by means of God’s use of Evolution. There are some notable exceptions, but for some reason, few people follow their example. And so we mostly encounter I.D. supporters who oppose Speciation by Evolution - - whether God is doing or not. It’s most puzzling.

I believe you are one of those, yes?

Thanks for the offer Dennis. I see your bio- I traveled through British Columbia on the way to work at a Bible camp in Alaska after graduating from college years ago. Beautiful there! Stunning. We clocked a cow moose running next to our car…It was running-if my memory serves me correctly-over 35 mph.

If your book is anything like this article:
http://biologos.org/blogs/dennis-venema-letters-to-the-duchess/biological-information-and-intelligent-design-meyer-yarus-and-the-direct-templating-hypothesis

then it would be a waste of you time sending it to me because I would not understand it. I have never been impressed with high tech language books or articles on anything related to understanding how we got here. It is not because I am dumb. It is because in the almost 50 years of my life, the folks who become so focused on small details in almost anything in life and who want to spew out language that suggest that they know better than others on a topic because they are so keen on such and such details are usually the ones who appear to me to be missing the forest for the trees in that area. I have never met you to discern this, but would be interested to hear(if possible) in plain language genetic evidence for common decent. I would want to hear in plain language how this evidence provides definitive scientific proof that ALL OF LIFE came from a common decent and how this evidence does not fit into a model of already created kinds created by God with the ability to adapt. Do you have a resource that can do this? Can you give a resource recommendation that would help? Can you help me to understand if you have approached the topic of our arrival on this planet in a holistic way, borrowing from areas like statistics, logic, philosophy and most importantly, the Bible.

And by the way, what is wrong with rejecting common ancestry for religious reasons? I assume that you are a Christian?? The faith in God that I follow is one of belief in a God of miracles that can trumps the natural at any point. This theme runs through the entire Bible. Gideon with too many men to defeat the midianites. Poor orator Moses with baggage assigned to be the leader of the Israelites out from slavery. A gospel that confounds every bit of our pride and human tendency to swaggering and sniveling. A God of wisdom who confounds the wise man in his own eyes. And this leads us to a Creator who is a jealous God who won’t share grounds with the naturalistic religion’s aliens and astroids planting seeds for life. When it comes to determining how life got here, to take a single minded scientific approach is potentially the wrong approach because you have to assume (which is necessarily establishing a system of belief) that science is even capable of making such determinations. Right? If God interacts within the natural at any point, science becomes obsolete. Science that is in the present is fickle (and recently confirmed to me by a med residency student recently who had to stitch up my hand) let alone defining the past is an example of a single tree aspect of determination which may lead to missing the forest of TRUTH that God has established.

Hi Greg -

That article is one of my more technical ones. Maybe start here, and let me know how it goes. If you find that series useful, then let me know if you’d like the book.

Perhaps one point I’ll say in reply - it is ok that some folks within the body of believers know more about certain things, if they have studied them and have become experts in a certain area. When I need my house wiring done, I call a certified electrician. When I need work done on my teeth, I go to a dentist. So yes, folks like myself, and @glipsnort, and @Swamidass, and others, do know more about the science behind these topics, because we have invested the time to learn about them. We can serve the body of Christ with our skills and knowledge, just like an electrician, a plumber, a dentist, a doctor, and so on.

One of the first things that you’ll see in that series I linked above is that science does not offer proof of anything - it offers converging lines of evidence. Proof is for alcohol and mathematics. :slight_smile:

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These two quotes…

juxtaposed with this quote…

…are quite remarkable.

Greg, you openly stated that you don’t understand the details of much of the scientific research. Yet you also feel supremely qualified to serve as judge of how to interpret that very same evidence…the evidence you just told us you don’t understand.

Do you understand how you’re coming across to your audience, Greg?

If a trial judge announced to the plaintiffs and defendants that he really didn’t understand a whole lot of the evidence, but he was going to make a definitive ruling anyway, how would the parties at law feel?

If a builder said he didn’t really understand the architect’s plans, and he didn’t understand much about the materials he was going to use, and he didn’t know the subs very well…but he said he was going to put together a fine house anyway…would you trust him?

I remind you of what you wrote three months ago:

What I said then is equally true now:

Now you just slandered my kids and their friends, Greg. Before you go any farther down this path, please consider:

  1. All four of my kids worked very hard on their college educations. One pursued a masters degree in music, and is now a soldier-musician in the U.S. Army (101st Airborne). Another got an English degree from Vanderbilt and is working in publishing. Another got a degree from Princeton and is working as an intern with a campus ministry. The baby of the family is right now working on his thesis, a statistical investigation of the Fragile Families data set.

  2. There have been plenty of U.S. students over the past 300 years who have been dissolute and unindustrious. Today’s students have nothing on the eating club habitues described by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

  3. How about the college students in your church? Are they into parties and handouts?

Sigh…

I laud these fine brothers in Christ.

If God interacts within medicine at any point, medicine becomes obsolete. But I’ll bet you still go to doctors, even though you’ve experienced miracles.

Why not treat scientists the same way that you treat medical professionals?

You do know, Greg, that there are 2 kinds of naturalism:

  • Methodological naturalism, and
  • Philosophical naturalism

Help me understand what you are saying, then, Greg: Do you think that Christians should push against both types of naturalism, or just one of them? If just one, which one should Christians oppose and which one should Christians accept?

Thanks,

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Wow, is this really Dennis Venema speaking? Could it be that @Relates somehow logged onto Dennis’ account to say this? :wink:

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I was thinking the same thing! :grinning:

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Same experience in med school. It made undergraduate comparative anatomy a little difficult, as I was on the fence about evolution at the time, and evolution is really the basis of comparative anatomy, but no one anywhere ever asked or cared if I accepted evolution throughout school at a state university.

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Greg. I really believe that if more people were willing to take the position that ok, God created kinds, but He did it in a ‘tree of life’ pattern that looks a heck of a lot like common descent, a lot of biology teachers would stop going half so nuts over creationism.

Naturalism is not the point. The point is that the pattern of relationships among all living things has been studied exhaustively, confirmed and reconfirmed and comprehensively established again and again and again for the past hundred and fifty years. It’s not bias, it’s not made up, and everyone who bothers to actually look at living things with an open mind and an eye to detail can confirm it for themselves.

This link is one I highly recommend you read. It gives a very good example of something which holds true across the entire animal kingdom, plus plants and every other living thing we study.

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I am sure that is correct, and feel he and those who work with him are sincere Christians. However, it is always dangerous when his, his sons, his son in law and who knows what other family members are financially dependent on one ministry. I have the same feeling about all the other ministries out there that are family businesses, and there are many, unfortunately. It creates an unhealthy atmosphere.
Also, a lot of times, the real money is in book sales, and speaking engagements. I do not know how AIG handles that, which would be interesting.

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