>A YEC who can is welcome in the ASA--there is nothing in the
>Statement of Faith to exclude them and the recently published
>commission on creation statement has YEC as one of four viable views
>in the ASA.
I do not believe that membership in the ASA should be restricted by
anything other than the historical Christian creeds. The ASA should not
require assent to any particular scientific position as a condition of
membership. For example, even the Geological Society of America (GSA) does
not require acceptance of an ancient Earth for membership. There are in
fact several YEC members of the GSA.
However, while I agree that the ASA should not take any official position
on any scientific question, it should stand for scientific integrity. It
should encourage the pursuit of quality scholarship in science and
theology. That scholarship should be protected in the journal by peer
review and in the newsletter as well. For this reason, certain positions
should find it difficult to find their way into the pages of _Perspectives_
simply because they lack such scholarship. Similarly, you will not find
articles arguing for a young Earth in the pages of the GSA Bulletin,
although you might find an article written by a YEC.
Secondly, the creation statement (for which I was one of the authors) was
intended as a brief statement of the range of views present within the
Christian community, and thus within the ASA. This is basically a
description of reality. However, there is no implication that all of these
views should be considered "viable." I, for one, view the YEC view as
utterly nonviable both scientifically and theologically.
In summary, the guiding principle should be quality scholarship and
rigorous peer review, not agreement or disagreement with any particular
position.
Keith
Keith B. Miller
Department of Geology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
kbmill@ksu.edu
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
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