What We Like About AiG

Faith & Science Conversation
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And so did the Sadducees and the Pharisees, and Jesus did complement them for the thoroughness of their tithing. However, it was important for Jesus to confront these religious leaders because they enforced a legalistic understanding of God’s Covenant that was contrary to the Spirit of God.

Now the way I see it as a servant of God, Ham & Co. have stepped into the role of the Pharisees by creating the “cultural war” against their “enemies,” which serves as a screen for maintaining their power and influence over God’s people. They use bad theology that the Bible is the Word of God as their primary tool to oppress others.

Jesus said a tree is known by its fruit. AiG does not have good fruit.

BioLogo needs to point this out and the bad theology that is its source.

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Along the same lines, AiG may entice people to learn more about cosmology, geology, and biology. That’s never a bad thing.

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And Smith’s articles are surely steering some over here, not a bad thing either.

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As long as our current forum participants are willing to abide by the guidelines about gracious dialogue :upside_down_face:

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All three positions, YEC, OEC and FC promote and educate for their positions on the premise that as young people understand their position, it will help prevent them from leaving the faith—and that the other two positions feed youth a bunch of lies, causing them to leave the faith.
Right here in this forum, EC commenting on YEC

And has already been noted, Ken as YEC would claim the same for EC.

I doubt there has ever been a serious study of this, so we can only swap stories. But I know people who are convinced of evolution, and find EC explanations on how scripture and evolution can both be true to be unsatisfactory. So they abandoned their faith. And I know people who either lived with a tension between evolution and their faith, or abandoned their faith because of evolution, or had resisted the gospel because of evolution. Then when either YEC or OEC was explained, the tension was lifted and faith was found or restored.

Of course, there is likely no objective data as to how many people left the faith because of evolutionism v creationism, or who were able to embrace faith because of BioLogos outreach vs those who were able to embrace faith because of AIG outreach. Again, the sword cuts both ways

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I don’t know specifically the bad fruit is that you are talking about. If you are speaking of divisiveness in the church, let me assure you that sword cuts both ways. Promoting EC in the church and seminaries has also been divisive.

And if bad fruit indicates wrong belief–well, Ken Ham, even if not completely right, at least is on to something when he identifies Darwin and his followers as supporting racism and eugenics–bad fruit with bad theology or worldview at its source.

In the spirit of full disclosure: although our church supports AIGs position on Genesis and we liked much about the curriculum, we chose not to adopt AIG Sunday School material because AIG seems to be a bit rancorous. We adopted the Gospel Project curriculum instead.

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Comparing Darwin and subsequent approaches to racism/eugenics with Ken Ham is not exactly apples to apples.

A better solution would be to teach science and then to teach various religious perspectives and “steel man” them. My YEC and the vast majority of them threatened young people who questioned these positions. You are also not dealing with evolution as being told the scientific processes and incredibly strong and diverse evidence. To call it simply lies in YEC is not equally weighted. Go read the the RATE project’s work and assess it.

I teach evolution in Christian university level courses. I present the relevant evidence and processes in accordance with the curriculum. I also give assignments for students to explore various perspectives within Christianity. I know my students come from a variety of YEC - EC backgrounds and I encourage them to explore their faith, hermeneutic, and the science involved in the discussion. I let them critically analyze the evidence from a scientific perspective and ensure that doubt, questions, and other perspectives are met with kindness and analysis. This treatment is not mirrored by the vast majority of the YEC camp. This is how to help young people move forward. I hate the spiritual terrorism connected with threatening salvation over this.

As for fruit, YEC creates distrust of science (except for approved Christian or non-threatening areas) leads to direct harm. YEC is entangled with numerous religious-political movements and supports them as a theoretical framework to oppose a variety of effective interventions and processes in society.

Yes promoting a position that is contested will lead to division, yet in most organizations that do promote EC do not make it a salvation issue or use to as justification to put forth bad faith politics.

You do realize that the racism and extended ideas were present already and they simply took over the process and were not correct by those Christian-dominant cultures. They did not suddenly stopped treating the other (disabled, “undesirables” and other groups) better on their own. It took immense and saddening events to bring this change about and it is not completed.

Evolution and other branches of sciences depend on evidence and scientific processes at their source.

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Good points, Craig. We need to be reminded that none of us are free from this sort of prideful behavior. It is ironic that you mention racism, as racist policies persisted in many of the favorite colleges of AIG until the recent past. It is good that AIG has managed to change their position to resemble that of current voices in evolution and genetics, who hold that race is a social, not a biologic concept in mankind.
Still, there does appear to be a real difference between how AIG approaches the issue. Perhaps they feel they have to be more aggressive in their defensive posture as they are backed in the corner by the larger culture. In any case, they seem to be on the attack more than any other origins organization, with the Discovery Institute maybe coming up second.

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31

Very much so, @cewoldt. Thanks.

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This reminds me of something that was posted on the Internet Monk website a while back:

Wilson begins by noting that, with regard to the topic of origins, “There is hardly a more controversial subject among evangelical Christians.” As one of our commenters noted the other day: “And hardly a less controversial subject anywhere else. Sometimes there are not two sides to every issue. There is a right answer and a wrong answer.” My main response to this article is, “Boy, do evangelicals need to grow up and enter the real world.”

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@Randy This is your #1 issue? You must be joking. Either that or your understanding of racism is fundamentally flawed.

I expected to find AIG articulating the causes and effects of racism, identifying and taking a position in defence of those who suffer from racism, highlighting cities and communities where institutional racism is/was a problem, advocating for social change… I could go on.

Instead, there is nothing but article after article saying that the Bible doesn’t recognise races, that we are all made in God’s image, and that, as Mr Mackey might say, “racism is bad”.

I suggest to you that AiG (and Ken Ham) are socially and politically silent with regard to racism. Ironically, their silence speaks louder than any of their words and, I hesitate to say this, one might argue whether AIG is an institutionally racist organisation.

Full disclosure: I’m a white Australian male with an Anglo heritage. I’m not an activist or politically or socially active. I acknowledge that the original inhabitants of Australia were dispossessed, their lands were stolen. For generations, aborigines as a race suffered institutional abuse from Government and non-aboriginal citizens alike. In 2022, racism towards aborigines still exists in Australia. Racism is not limited to aborigines, though they have borne the brunt, and it manifests in many ways. Much remains to be done.

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@Christy That’s a pretty remarkable suggestion by a moderator in a discussion forum.

What is it about this thread (or @Randy) in particular that makes it off limits? Is it be kind to AIG week?

I’m ok with an OP’s prohibition on ‘snarky asides’. But if one wants to focus on certain things that one considers ‘positive’, then one should be prepared to justify their opinions.

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I think there must be some misunderstanding. Nothing about Randy or this thread is off-limits. Randy is an abundantly kind and empathetic Enneagram 9 who wants us all to live in peace and harmony and mutual goodwill and understanding. I love that about him.

What I would like to honor is his intent in starting this thread, which was to look for the good in people, not use it as an opportunity to do the opposite.

Why? Typically when someone gives a compliment or expresses thanks, it’s not taken as an argument, and you don’t have to defend your premises.

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Besides the good reasons already given, there have been at least a couple recent threads frankly critical of AIG mostly in response to the openly hostile things they’ve been publishing about BioLogos. I believe Randy’s intent was that we not become entirely polarized on our end. After all many who come to embrace the theological interpretations promoted here come out of communities under the sway of AIG. It is or should be possible to separate the trained scientists who should know better from our relatives who are under their influence as @jammycakes has been at pains to do.

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You make a good point, echoing some of the thoughts of Martin Luther King regarding moderate ministers in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, but in the culture Ham is in the middle of, it could be argued that he really is working to change the attitudes of that population.
In any case, I think the idea is that there were other threads for criticism, and we need to look for the positive also. I am certainly guilty of negativism myself. It is Sunday here, and I need to go off to church. Have a blessed day!

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It’s often the case that a person’s strength can also be their greatest weakness (or vice versa). AIG gets dogpiled a lot around here (by me as much as anyone else) for putting scriptures forward as a singular all-or-nothing unit which will be accepted or rejected whole-cloth.

I’ll use Randy’s exhortation here as an opportunity to say that I think this stems from an admirable quality of AIG. They see the life of faith as a call to total commitment. Christ doesn’t want just part of us. And I think this highest of imperatives is what motivates much of the determination that characterizes the AIG crowd to persist in the face of much unkind cultural mockery.

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I am not aware of anything in terms of major embezzlement or moral scandal. Nowadays, that is not nothing, right?

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Disagreement is not the same as divisiveness. I can disagree with people even on basic issues without calling them enemies or enemies of God.

The issue seems to be what is science and what is not. If you accept YEC for faith reasons, that is faith and not science. If I reject YEC for faith and science reasons that is also faith and should not be rejected as unfaith.

Itis very true that some people have used Darwinism to support racism and eugenics. Itis also true that many people have used the Bible to support racism. This does not make the Bible or evolution right or wrong, and it certainly does not make the Bible good science.

I do not believe that the curse of Canaan is valid Biblical truth. And for good measure Jesus reversed the curse when He blessed the Canaanite woman. Evolution has been falsely understood and needs to be fixed, rather than rejected by Christians.

Christians need to work together on issues of faith and science, instead of rejecting differing views out of hand.

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42

Thanks. There are many reasons to be positive, as enumerated above, by many of you.

  1. It keeps dialogue open
  2. Scripture recommends that we put the person above the issue at hand–with Christ treating those who disagreed with him, with love (eg, coals of fire, walking the extra mile, etc)
  3. In many situations, it’s recommended that a rebuke be sandwiched between 2 positive observations. This makes it more likely that the other will listen.
  4. It avoids tribalism–we don’t want to do what we condemn in AiG, as being unfriendly and hypercritical, to the point of breaking fellowship over small things, relative to our commonalities with not only AiG, or fellow Christians, but the whole world.
  1. Finally, it’s easy for people to make generalizations about each other’s groups, including even odd presumptions, such as were in those of Calvin Smith’s concerns about heresy. Personally affirming commonalities of good intent, rather than arguing over abstracts, seems a preferable approach.

This is not to ignore the wrong things that AiG does. There are a lot of other areas that we have documented that, and are continuing to do so (as in the Heresy thread).

Thanks.

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43

Well, a couple of things I can be charitable about with AiG or at least YEC in general.

First, one of the people working in the creation museum (Patrick Marsh) used to be a member of my church here in Tokyo. I think he built or designed some of the stage trappings for some of the Christmas concerts we used to do called “The Singing Christmas Tree”. He was very talented. A long time ago, he designed the trappings for the movie Jaws. However, when I remember him, he had fallen into very hard times. His wife was in our theology courses and mentioned the personal crisis he was going through. I guess he really believes this stuff, … there are members in my church who do as well. … Nevertheless, it deeply saddens me to know that he was not recognized for his talent and basically left for garbage for a very long time. Only the Creation Museum was willing to take a risk (hardly!) on such a talented individual. You’ve got to admit that Noah’s ark is an incredible engineering project. As little as I know about it, I’m almost certain that Patrick was involved with designing and building that.

There is something wrong when people like that are ignored and maybe that is a plague on society that society often humiliates very talented people sometimes as much as it does its criminals.

Second, in line with all of the above, I do know people at my church who are YEC. Some of them really are good people, they have helped me in my spiritual walk, and they have been tolerant of me and my foibles. They have never irresponsibly questioned my faith, as some have (both YEC and others). In fact, they have generously recognized it from time to time.

Obviously, any of us who are Christian have to admit that we are creationists at some level. The thing is, I simply cannot agree with the YEC way of thinking; the 6000-year-old earth, and all the other absurdities they want us to accept with a seamless transition between light 6006 years old and 6007. There is no coherent picture that can be made from their ideas that can match with science, nor can it find oil and minerals or predict the structure of biomolecules (something I see every day). It all becomes just rescuing attempts to balance an inverted pyramid.

Moreover, God orders our steps, even though we have a will and often refuse to listen to God and do the opposite. God is also the alpha and the omega. Yet the evolution of the universe and life are merely physical processes that could be “ordered” from the beginning of time. How much easier would it be for God to order the steps of the universe, to order the steps of evolution. On the face of it, it is random, but God made the cards, the dice, and God sees through all time. No matter how insanely complicated that would be, compared to our will as individuals, it is basically nothing. YEC folks accept that we have to revise our own way of thinking about other people when we meet Jesus, why can they not also accept that it is sometimes necessary to revise our way of thinking about God.

So I cannot agree with YEC beyond the fundamental point that God is the creator of all that is, was, and ever will be, the apostle’s creed, and various other standard doctrines of the Christian faith. Still, at least on that, we are in agreement. … and I have found something charitable to say. …

by Grace we proceed

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