ASA proposals (was Re: On evangelical seminaries, etc., and religion/science)

Thank you, Ted, and those of you who commented on this thread. I think
you're all on a very critical point and an important need for ASA to
consider. There are lots of opportunities here for us to address. I will
enumerate a few possibilities and you might think of others as well. If
some of you would like to volunteer to help, I would be interested in
forming a small team of say five people or so on one or two of these
initiatives that we think worthwhile and develop a proposal to go first to
the executive council for approval and then to various sources for funding.
Some of these go beyond the specific suggestions in the thread.

1) Revamped lecture series. In the past 20 years, ASA has administered the
ASA/Templeton lecture series which was very well received. Over a hundred
lectures were funded during the last several years until the program funding
was not renewed YE 2004. In reestablishing a lecture series, we could tie
it more closely to an ongoing dialogue at the location of the talk, to ASA
speakers, to ASA chapter formation, and to ASA perspectives (meaning giving
perspective to the critical issues rather than a speaker's advocacy of a
particular philosophy)

2) Workshops designed for seminaries. Specifically addressing the concerns
and opportunities cited in this thread, ASA could develop an intensive
workshop of one day or a few days in length that would aim to prepare
seminarians to deal with issues of science and faith. The ASA "neutrality"
would prevail and the focus would be on understanding the core issues and
ways to deal with them in congregations rather than an adovocacy of any
position. This might be a series of lectures interspersed with discussion
sessions and aids for dealing with difficult situations. Ideally, a group
of ASA members would be trained to be able to give the presentations and any
3 of them could lead a workshop of this type. This could be made available
to any seminary as a supplement to their curriculum.

3) Working conferences. In the spirit of the renowned "gordon conferences",
ASA could sponsor intensive, invitation-only conferences of key thinkers in
diverse camps, each designed to address specific aspects of the critical
issues. The goal would be to strive for better understanding of each
other's views and to publish the resulting position statements.

4) Educational retreats. It would be great for ASA to provide a setting of
several days, either a long weekend or a week, whereby interested people can
come and learn about issues of science and faith at a deeper level than the
occasional lecture. While somewhat similar to proposal 2, this would be
geared for non-seminarians--teachers perhaps?-- and aimed at education for
those sufficiently interested to spend time learning--and to pay something
for it! Could be tuned for the audience which would be screened to ensure a
somewhat consistent starting level.

5) Think tank. Longer term and more ambitiously, ASA could envision working
with some host institution to set up an ongoing focus of dialogue such as
Ted mentions. In some sense this is already being done in various places
but perhaps not for the purpose of bringing together diverse schools of
thought.

Perhaps I've lost touch with reality but are any of these worth pursuing?
I'd appreciate your feedback.

Randy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <tdavis@messiah.edu>
To: <dopderbeck@gmail.com>; "Keith Miller" <kbmill@ksu.edu>
Cc: "American Scientific Affiliation" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 2:07 PM
Subject: On evangelical seminaries, etc., and religion/science

>
> What *I* think we need is a place where *both* schools of thought can come
> into regular contact, both formal and informal contact, a place where
> students are exposed very seriously to ideas from both camps, *by
> advocates
> of those ideas*. To the best of my knowledge, there presently is no such
> place. This list *could* perhaps be that place, if it were more
> hospitable
> to IDs, or a place like Biola *could* perhaps be such a place, if it would
> hire a few people like "us." Presently only something like the occasional
> ASA meeting (some meetings have this, others don't) is such a place, but
> not
> always and always only for a brief instant in time not on a continued,
> ongoing basis. I wish I were wrong about this, but I do not think that I
> am.
>
> Ted
>
Received on Thu Apr 6 22:01:17 2006