Such an approach makes evolution an appendix to Christianity.
Are you suggesting that we should reject evolution and all the observational
data that goes along with it (pseudogenes) and thus should accept our faith
with no regard to the observational data?
Or are you suggesting that if evolution is true, then Christianity is wrong
and we shouldn't try to "salvage our faith"?
At one point in my life it was this latter position that I was fully
prepared to accept. I had become convinced that in order to reject
evolution I had to reject all the vast observational data that went with it.
As a physicist I am more knowledgable of
>cosmology, a deductive science just like evolution, where we cannot be
>certain that a Big Bang actually occurred. We make measurements in the
>present and work backwards in time, but all such approaches are very
>speculative and never conclusive. Perhaps we ought to face the whole problem
>of origins, creation of life from matter/energy, in order to have a clearer
>preservative of the difficulty or, perhaps, impossibility of creating any
>theory which would explain the existence of conscious beings.
If we do that, as Christians, then we relinquish the intellectual playing
field to those who have absolutely no sympathy for Christianity. This is
the "surrender" strategy. Surrender rarely advances one's cause.
>Scientists will one day claim that our actions are governed by our genes. On
>that day we would have the perfect excuse: "my genes made me do it." Of
>course, that is nonsense since I do believe in the reality of a free will
>and so our actions, even though predisposed by our genes, nevertheless
>result from actual moral choices.
How can they when there is not enough information content in the genes to
specify the brain? That dog won't hunt.
>Long ago Descartes said that "matter cannot think" and so it is. Perhaps
>C.S. Lewis said it best when he said that "reasoning is supernatural." It is
>so obvious that a purely scientific approach to the whole of reality is apt
>to lead to all sorts of nonsense. For instance, if evolution is true, why
>not help it. Wasn't that the logic of Hitler? If evolution is true, is it
>possible that some races are less developed than others?
So why did good southern Baptists in the south own slaves last century? They
didn't believe in the humanity of blacks either and they didn't believe in
evolution. Why would my mother's southern Baptist church in 1963 refuse to
let blacks worship with them? No one in that church believed in evolution!
What was their problem? This whole "racism comes from evolution" argument is
highly flawed and pays no attention to the Christian examples of racism. How
about the (former? I don't know if they changed) policies of Bob Jones
University? They actively taught that evolution was wrong but wouldn't allow
any blacks into their school.
Racism comes from sin--the sin of pride and the sin of hate--nothing more.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm