From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Aug 22 2003 - 10:16:32 EDT
I agree. I was going to write a reply to one of the
comments you had made about the poll of students and
point out that I think the reason why evolution is so
misunderstood in certain denominations is that those
christians who see no problems with evolution
scientifically or theologically (the second of which I
think is the main point that should be emphasized) are
simply being out hussled and out gunned by very active
interest groups like ICR that seem to have a very good
PR campaign going and go to great lengths to peddle
their wares wherever possible.
Ultimately, with one group going around and saying
things like that if evolution and is true then things
like Jesus' action on the cross means nothing (which I
recall hearing Duane Gish say something to that
effect), it clearly sets up a dichotomy that someone
who takes Jesus seriously cannot accept. Of course,
it is a false, theologically and practically flawed
dichotomy. But if one group is out there saying it
with a simple message every chance they get, people
will tend to believe it, especially when Dawkins, et
al. back that position up.
The problem, in part, is you have two groups of people
finding lots of personal satisfaction (be that money,
whatever) in stridently pursuing creationism and
science shows atheism is true alternatives. It is
like interest group politics. There is no strongly
motivated middle group that competes well with either
of these two camps, perhaps because the rewards
(however defined), are not there for the middle of the
raod group... then, of course, there are all sorts of
other institutional barriers to getting such a message
out (e.g., the nature of media coverage, etc.)
--- "Howard J. Van Till" <hvantill@chartermi.net>
wrote:
> >From: "Dr. Blake Nelson" <bnelson301@yahoo.com>
>
> Skip 2 paragraphs...
>
> > My point? Those with the biggest axes to grind
> > generally shout the loudest... it is academia's
> > version of interest group politics. Additionally,
> > those who get the press are the vocal atheists and
> > antireligionists. They perhaps are also more
> likely
> > to be science popularizers for the same reason
>
> Perhaps one could make a parallel assessment re
> popularizers of biblical
> literalism and YEC interpretations of Genesis 1-3.
> The combination of these
> two assessments would help us understand why the
> popular version of the
> science/theology dialog is the strident shouting
> match known as the
> creation/evolution debate -- represented by such
> familiar shouters as
> Richard Dawkins and Kent Hovind.
>
> Howard Van Till
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