[asa] Note from our Elders

Note from our Elders (Norman Oklahoma Baptist Trinity Church). The
full text has recently been removed from their website

<quote>In about three weeks, Trinity will be undertaking a very
intense and strategic effort to present the gospel to the University
of Oklahoma. God has given us incredible mission fields here in
Norman with our proximity to a campus that welcomes thousands of
students, many of whom have either never heard the gospel or have
rejected the truth of the scriptures.

In our effort to penetrate the university campus with the gospel, we
are bringing Dr. William Dembski to OU on September 16-17. Dr.
Dembski is one of the foremost experts and leaders in the Intelligent
Design movement which is challenging the evolutionary and naturalistic
worldview that is so hostile to God. He will preach at Trinity Sunday
morning and then make several presentations at OU during the rest of
his time in Norman. His presentations will be open to the public
generally but will specifically target students and professors within
several science departments at OU. In case you are wondering, these
departments and their teachings are not friends of Christianity.

We are working diligently to prepare for Dr. Dembski's time in Norman.
 Our college students spent the summer reading and studying, on a
weekly basis, in order to be able to share and discuss the issues that
will arise from the presentations on campus. We are working with
other churches and organizations that share our vision for evangelism
and truth to help with financial aspects of this project.

Make no mistake about it, our goal for this project is not to win a
debate or to simply present an alternative worldview. Our prayer for
this entire effort is for God to open doors so the power of His gospel
would be made known to groups of people who need to hear the truth.
The issues of intelligent design and evolution are far greater than
simply differing perspectives about science. The overall issue is one
explaining the world in which we live. Another issue, Naturalism,
eliminates God from the equation and thus affects every other part of
life. That makes this issue one of vital gospel importance!

We earnestly need your help. It is never cheap to make this kind of
gospel investment. We have many expenses such as speaker honorarium
and expenses, facility rentals at OU, meals, lodging, promotion,
advertising, etc. The goal that Trinity has set is $5,000.

If we are able to raise approximately $10,000, we would be capable of
doing this event well and promoting it so the most people would know
about it. Would you pray about giving to this project? This event has
the potential to affect literally thousands with the gospel. What an
incredible opportunity!

We also need people to commit to pray faithfully for this event. Pray
for Dr. Dembski, for our college students, for believing professors
who will be involved, and for the gospel to be proclaimed with
boldness and power!

Being thankful and watchful for what God will do,
</quote>

Thus was set in motion an event which exposed the scientific vacuity
of ID. In this case however, its victims were not just science but
also religion. Let me explain:

Dembski's presentation was followed by a Q&A session in which student
after student exposed the scientific vacuity of ID. The coup de grace
was deliver by Phillip Klebba, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry
at the University of Oklahoma. It was Klebba's relentless questions
during the Q&A of Dembski's talkat the Oklahoma University in Norman
Oklahoma which forced Dembski to admit to the level of ignorance that
is required for ID.

See: http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007/09/irreducible-complexity-reflects-human.html

Klebba wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper
http://hub.ou.edu/articles/article.php?article_id=1009840354&search_id=307049470

<quote>As a researcher who understands the biochemistry that was the
main subject of the lecture, I was surprised to find the discussion
much less substantive than I anticipated.

It was a bit more like the naive questions of a teenager than the keen
insights of an erudite philosopher.</quote>

Dembski, when asked what would convince him that evolution could
explain the flagellum, admitted that he would need a step by step,
mutation by mutation, second by second replay of the evolution of the
flagellum before he would admit that evolution explains its origin.

Remember the Baptist Trinity Church who had invited Dembski in the
hope of penetrating the university with the Gospel?

<quote>We also need people to commit to pray faithfully for this
event. Pray for Dr. Dembski, for our college students, for believing
professors who will be involved, and for the gospel to be proclaimed
with boldness and power!</quote>

They may have received what they prayed for, but not necessarily what
they expected.

Here we notice a congregation of well meaning Baptists who are led to
believe that Intelligent Design is a scientific argument which can be
succesfully used to convince students at a local university to accept
the gospel

<quote>We freely admit that Intelligent Design does have religions
implications…as do evolution, naturalism, materialism and in our
opinion all beliefs concerning the origin of life. Religious
implications do not and cannot invalidate the truth or merit of an
argument or scientific theory.</quote>

By linking religious faith to Intelligent Design, these elders ignored
the warnings by St Augustine and now have to deal with the fall out of
this event. Countless sites on the internet are blogging about this,
exposing how the students relentlessly questioned Dembski and got him
to admit that not only apes and humans do not share a common ancestry
but also that ID will never accept evolutionary pathways as
explanations for the flagellum. This is the new era of the Church of
the Flagellum it seems.

http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007/09/dembski-affair-part-2-students-have.html

<quote>But Im afraid that Jesus let those poor, poor Trinity
Creationists down. God wanted nothing to do with Dembski during the
rest of the Q&A... and the students ate him alive. Student after
student, grad student, some not looking a day over 18, micro students,
and towards the end, and art student, took a bite. I will either get
audio up, or write up a transcript while we're working on the audio,
to honor each of those students that stood up and made Dembski answer
their questions . Not moving from the mic, repeating themselves, until
they got an answer, or a final sign that Demski would not answer their
question. Logan (Im going to embarass the hell out of you, sorry!),
was adorably nervous, but you know what he got Dembski to say? After
several minutes of tapdancing, and Logan not budging, rephrasing his
question several times, Dembski finally stated that he did not accept
that humans evolved from another species.</quote>

Perhaps people on this group may object to may warnings in the past
about the scientific vacuity of ID, but surely these events show that
ID may have even worse impact on issues of religious faith.

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Received on Sun Sep 23 14:01:03 2007