The guy obviously needs to read his Bible more. (She says in jest and imitation)
Scripture clearly teaches that God controls random dice rolls in Proverbs 16:33.
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Comments like this expose ID and the Disco Institute for what they really are.
This is positively Orwellian in its distortion of truth.
Apparently they still haven’t realized that evolution isn’t a random process.
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I just saw the term “leftist tyrants” in the comments, used by the author of the article. That proves they’re not doing science or theology, they’re doing politics. It’s just standard culture war stuff.
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The culture war is real, but they fail to realize we are on the same side. There are times that I think we should just say that there is no fight over evolution, that issue is settled and like gravity and heliocentrism, it just is. Get over it and move on, we are tired of discussing it. Then about that time we take friendly fire and get shot in the back.
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What culture war?
My thought is that the culture war that is real is the conflict between the kingdom of God and the world, in line with Augustine’s thoughts in City of God. What it is not is what we often see in the striving for earthly power and political gain, though admittedly the edges are blurred at times.
They also lose credibility in society at large when they insist that science has to be false in order for their religious beliefs to be true. How are they going to influence the direction society moves in when they are seen as irrational and just plain wrong on the issue of science?
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Sometimes you make me laugh out loud @T_aquaticus.
You are an atheist you know. Its pretty entertaining to see you get worked up with the rest of us about strange tactics among enthusiastic Christians. It’s almost as if you are rooting for us!
In my experience, sensible atheists are happy to support sensible Christians. Given the state of society when it is dominated by non-sensible Christians, this makes perfect sense to me.
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I am rooting for those who think science is as exciting and worthwhile as I do, so it is a bit self-serving in that sense. I would hate to see anyone’s religious beliefs lead them away from an endeavor I find so rewarding, especially when they are being led in the wrong direction by misinformation.
If you want, replace science with baseball, and think of me as a big baseball fan. If I heard that some people refused to play baseball because of some religious misconceptions and outright twisted logic, I don’t see why it would be odd for an atheist to point out that baseball and christianity are completely compatible. On top of that, the game is enriched by having people from throughout society participating. You might say I am rooting for humanity at large, including christians.
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One more point in response to the original question is that the book appears to only address theistic evolution expressed by Christians who are not Catholic. Meanwhile, the DI has promoted two books by Michael Chaberek that are polemics against Catholic theistic evolution.
Good news, my copy arrived yesterday. Thanks @Paul_Nelson. Will be reading this carefully, and already had a chance to go through the key articles. Just a few thoughts at this point.
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From my point of view, this is a product of the ID movement (do you agree @agauger?), but is a uniquely valuable contribution because it actually explains their theological objections to TE. Though occasionally theological reasoning is explained, this book really gets into their real concerns. It is notable, for example, to understand why @JohnWalton’s work (which I like) is not acceptable to them. Grudem lists out 12 theological objections to TE, almost all of which center on Adam and Eve (!).
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I understand that many feel they have no accurately represented TE (i.e. BioLogos and EC). This might be true, but there is an interesting parallel. Wayne Grudem explains that the definition of “historical Adam” was just a strawman (my words, not his) in Adam and the Genome. There may be a good lesson here. If the goal is understand no-Adam TE, read Adam and the Genome. If the goal is to understand historical Adam, read Theistic Evolution. Both books are better are representing their own views than those of their opponents. Those who feel this is talking past one another (as I often do) should probably be equally disturbed by mischaracterizations in both books.
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I also appreciated Wayne Grudem’s emphasis that TE’s are Christians. He calls TE’s “brothers and sisters,” that are well intentioned and care about Scripture deeply. He feels compelled (as many of the authors do) to engage because of genuine theological concerns he has about a non-literal, non-concordist, and non-traditional approach to Genesis, but more importantly to New Testament theology. This book, at least the theological contributions, read as an attempt at an opening bid for conversation.
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I wish they had tried to answer a central question here, however. If BioLogos ( as they understand it ) is not the right type of TE , what would be the right way to be TE? That would have been really helpful. Perhaps in light of a Genealogical Adam, there might be a way for a new type of TE to grow that affirms the doctrinal committements they care about.
Of course, there is also a lot of the standard fair in ID scientific and philosophical critiques. I have not yet read this in detail, but it seems to be repeating many of the arguments we have heard before. There is some interesting explanations form Dough Axe, however, that I’m going to have to reread and think about more. He spends some time explaining why a non-confrontational relationship with science is a bad idea; which is almost exactly the opposite of Peaceful Science. I want to understand that more.
Any how, that is my initial take. I’ll be thinking about this a lot in the coming weeks/months. I’m not sure how accurate it is in representing TE, but it does explain much more cogently than most books I’ve read the New Testament case for why some Christians think a historical Adam is important. In TE circles the New Testament theology of Adam, generally speaking, is less engaged than hermeneutics of Genesis. For Old Earth Creationists (as most authors are in this book), the disagreement is not really about Genesis. It is, rather, more about the New Testament theology. This book explains exactly why this matters to many theologians in a way that seems less polemic (at least in the new testament theology chapters); more like a self disclosure. We all should listen carefully to their concerns.
What are all your thoughts and questions? Especially about #2?
The book has a full chapter from a BB Warfield scholar on BB Warfield’s views of evolution. I’d be curious your thoughts on this chapter, and how accurate he is.
Who is the “he” here?
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Wayne Grudem, who is the theological editor.
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