Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

This has been an excellent discussion, but I think we've been only pinching
at the periphery of the Big Issues here and there. I'm starting to think
that one of the Big Issues for us in communicating with people who hold
strong YEC views is how we think of conversion and worldviews. "Evolution"
is symbolic of the godless worldview from which we are expected to be
dramatically converted. A primary attraction of the YEC view is the
pristine alternative worldview it provides – by converting into a YEC view,
one moves into a completely alternative community that includes a simple,
clear explanation of why there is suffering in the world and of how each
person's life is meaningful and not merely driven by chance.

It's easy to criticize this as naïve, simplistic, and immature – a little
bit of study shows that, while the Bible and the Christian faith do indeed
offer an alternative metanarrative that provides answers to the problems of
pain and purpose, they are not always easy, immediately satisfying answers.
Yet, without the backbone of a well-defined "Fall," I think we have to admit
that the Christian metanarrative doesn't seem as compelling and immediate as
we might like. Can you imagine a street-corner evangelist thundering about
Adam the Neolithic farmer who basically lived like tens of thousands of
other hard scrabble new stone age people, or Adam the mytho-poetic symbol?

The evangelical "battle for the Bible" tradition and questions of
hermeneutics clearly are keys to our problem, but I think so also is the
evangelical pietist-revivalist tradition. We do believe in the reality of
sin and the necessity of conversion, but our way of explaining the faith
necessarily has to be more complex and nuanced than a YEC view allows.
 Somehow,
I think we need to provide more compelling conversion narratives – like C.S.
Lewis did, or Alister McGrath, or Francis Collins – that also demonstrate
intellectual and even scientific depth.

And of course there is this: what "they" need from us and we need from
"them" maybe most of all is love, patience, and grace. I even wonder if
some of these problems are something God uses to make us learn how to love
and accept each other unconditionally. I know I find that hard.

On 7/4/07, James Mahaffy <Mahaffy@dordt.edu> wrote:
>
>
> --
>
> James Mahaffy (mahaffy@dordt.edu) Phone: 712 722-6279
> 498 4th Ave NE
> Biology Department FAX : 712 722-1198
> Dordt College, Sioux Center IA 51250-1697
>
> >>> On 7/3/2007 at 12:43 PM, in message
> <20070703174520.64828711495@gray.dordt.edu>, "Randy Isaac"
> <randyisaac@comcast.net> wrote:
> [snip]
> >
> > By the way, in my talk I ended up claiming that, as far as I could tell,
> > there has been no case where a scientific theory which has been
> validated by
> >
> > data from many independent sources and which is accepted as consensus by
> the
> >
> > mainstream community, has been later invalidated. I'd love to hear of
> any
> > examples that any of you might think of.
>
>
> I haven't been following this thread closely but I think Kuhn just rolled
> over in his grave.
>
> He would claim that there was lot of evidence for pre Einstein physics
> and in fact some of those models still work.
>
> In chemistry biologist still use the Bohr mode because it explains some
> concepts easier than drawing clouds of electrons etc.
>
> The early models of the cell assuming the protein was denatured fit with a
> lot of the evidence.
>
> Some of the early inheritance models (pre-Cell theory fit a lot of the
> evidence).
>
> That does not mean that some of these were not poor or wrong models but
> they did fit with a lot of the evidence of the day.
>
>
>
>
>
> [snip again]
> > "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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>

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Received on Wed Jul 4 18:25:53 2007