From: Josh Bembenek (jbembe@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Sep 19 2003 - 11:22:03 EDT
List-
I wish to update you on the process of working through Ken Ham visiting our
church on October 5th. A colleague from Southwestern Medical Center (best
described as a theistic evolutionist) and I met with the pastor and three
others involved in leadership here at Watermark and we had a very productive
conversation which cleared alot of air. Although I was unable to convince
them that Ken Ham would be uneffective toward the goal of creating an open
dialogue about origins, we agreed that this should be one of our primary
goals. The simple difference is that they do not agree that Ken Ham will
work against that goal. This is quite tricky business as conversations
between Michael and Alexian on this list strongly elucidate: who is
reasonable in making a particular deduction and who is unreasonable, and
also, who gets to decide? For those who begin with a "straightforward"
reading of genesis, the argument of appearance of age is reasonable. For
those who begin elsewhere, (and not necessarily with "evolutionized
thinking" as Ken Ham would argue, but perhaps a different view of the bible
or give more weight to the evidence of science) this does not appear to be
very reasonable. I believe that we all enjoyed the conversation and
benefited from hearing the others' perspective. One troubling aspect for me
was that they felt that the particular rhetorical strategy of Ken Ham (which
uses the word evolution in the place of methodological naturalistic atheism)
was not out of place due to the mass perception of what evolution means. My
belief is that regardless of what perceptions people have, we need to clear
the air and clarify the real issues: we disagree with philosophical
presuppositions that some scientists use scientific authority to pronounce
as the only logical possibility, as opposed to disagreeing with population
genetics or the process of random mutation and natural selection operating
in the natural world. This point was even conceded by Michael Ruse in his
recent science article dealing with issues of evolution and faith, which I
forgot to mention. If scientists can realize that they need to start making
the distinction between science and philosophy, so can we. The fault we
have with scientists is with extrapolation, not with data, and my concern is
that Ken Ham does not adequately delineate that distinction, especially when
he attacks the reliability of scientific methods/ scientists credibility to
obtain factual data. We have not yet resolved this issue, but the
leadership charged us with presenting our case as airtight as possible for
them to make thier final decision about Ken Ham speaking. Any comments
regarding this issue would be exceptionally useful.
The most disconcerting aspect of this whole process was the fact that Ken
Ham began inquiring with the leadership as to "who this Josh Bembenek" guy
is after getting wind of what I had been posting on this listserve. Through
my words here, I gave the false impression to Ken that I was a part of the
leadership at Watermark and was working with them to prepare a seminar
before and after Ken Ham's visit for the purpose of debunking what he said
and making him look bad. I wish to publicly declare on this list that none
of those intentions are mine, and that my goals are to provide a open
dialogue useful for all Christians of any sort of view on origins. This
includes those views held by Ken Ham and those who think like him (which I
think is a majority at my local body- meaning that a goal to be insensitive
to those views would be quite unproductive.) I also gave the leadership of
the church the strong impression that I was viewing the sitation as
something like "the smart science guy alienated and fighting against the
dumb, dogmatic church folk." This is embarissingly not my intention, and I
regret fully that they had that impression based upon what they saw from
this listserve. Anyone here who had a similar impression, I would like to
clarify that this is not the situation, despite the impression I gave. The
leadership of our church is more than open to working through the matter,
and hadn't even been given a chance to dialogue with me before I began
posting on the issue here. I admit to feeling confrontational towards the
leadership, but I had yet to know their position and was not aiming to
convey anything about their intentions or motivations. My goal in coming to
the listserve was to data mine those who are familiar with Ken Ham's
approaches and arguments for the purpose of being prepared to explain to the
leadership why Ken Ham, IMO and that of others, is not effective in creating
an open dialogue about the issue of origins. Hopefully that shoud clear the
matter and we can move forward. This example should serve as a strong
caveat for those here on the listserve, as it has for me; people are
watching. We aren't exactly behind closed doors here, and things I may say
that many will understand in a certain way can easily be interpreted
differently by others, and we might all benefit by being aware of that.
Josh Bembenek
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