Let’s face it. There are only a few thousand people on the BioLogos discussion forum. Am I right?
It seems to be the case. The American Scientific Affiliation that birthed BioLogos is only a few thousand as far as members. Is it even 10,000 people out of 320 million Americans?
I haven’t met a single self-identified member of ASA anywhere in Texas, which is a state of 26 million.
So how to get the EC message out, that deism is not what EC is?
We need local leaders who can meet face to face. Especially ID people who make the deism charge very loudly as my Cru friend Mark does, and patient EC people.
Any thoughts about how to get face to face meetings negotiated so there is more light than heat?
Since my conversion i shared my view with my friends. But only with them. Im dont want to engage personally face ti face with others. I keep my beliefs to myself now . Although if someone asks me i will share with him the EC view. To be honest generally in the world are too little EC christians. I might be the only one in my city and my city has 100000 inhabitants. I would agree that we need a representative and people to engage in conversations with other christians and such. Even most atheists dont know that evolution and christianity are harmonized.
It is a challenge as to what to do as far as discussion in the church you attend. Interestingly, one of my good friends is a active OEC with strong ties to Reasons to Believe and Hugh Ross, and we get along great, facing the hordes of YECers shoulder to shoulder. We have a fair number of people who find ID attractive and philosophically agree, but I get the feeling none really are aware of the issues with the ID movement.
That is OK. There are more important issues in church, and if folks don’t want to discuss the topic of origins, that is fine.
Not much effort is made because it is not a very common accusation.
And when someone brings that accusation here … we point out that Christians who embrace evolution STILL believe in prayers, and God’s response to prayers.
Well as for getting knowledgeable people to confront those others it’s something that naturally occurs. There are random debates of it on YouTube and so on. For your specific church all I can think of is find someone local and have them meet up.
For me personally, I do most of it myself. When i need to defend my positions to a congregation I do just that.
When it comes to debating theistic evolution vs creationism it’s a discussion on scripture because they reject science and I study the Bible lot and feel confident enough that I can defend my positions against others.
People will believe what they want to believe no matter what you say.
But in the long run, the truth will out. And no matter how irrational groups continue pushing lies, scientist will continue to pursue the truth and people will continue to discover the truth of what they report.
Thus the fact is that the majority of Christianity accepts the truth of evolution. Furthermore, EC and Biologos will remain for those who accept both Christianity and evolution to explore the theological implications of these scientific results.
And the irrational groups includes both religions and atheists pushing the deception that science supports their conclusions about religious matters. Science does no such thing, no matter what the subjective judgements on the implications of scientific results by either group may be. The only objective conclusion in this case is that these are choices of faith.