> There are other major problems with TE. To quote Wheaton's P.P.T. Pun:
>
> "If man is a product of the chance events of natural selection, [TEs] have the
> problem of convincing the secular world of the biblical basis of humans as
> created in the image of God and of the first sin....
TEs have the problem of convincing the secular world that Jesus was the
Son of God and that the Bible is God's revelation.
Do PCs have it that much better? Even if you could scientifically prove
that macroevolution is false, and that no known natural mechanisms could
account for humanity's existence, you would STILL need to convince the
secular world that Jesus was the Son of God and that the Bible is God's
revelation. History shows us what a task that is!
-----------------------------
> In their efforts to
> reconcile the naturalistic and theistic approaches to the origin of life they
> have inadvertently put themselves into the inconsistent position of denying
> the miracles of creation
No, only the alleged miracles of biological assembly. That is no more
inconsistent than saying that the sun could have assembled through
gravitational collapse ...
> while maintaining the supernatrual nature of the
> Christian message....This runs into the difficulty....of compartmentalizing
> reality into separate spiritual and physical realms...." [from "Evolution" in
> Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Baker)]
I don't deny that _some_ TEs compartmentalize the spiritual and physical
realms. Some PCs and YECs do very similar things! But this is by no
means a necessary part of TE/EC, as has been repeatedly demonstrated.
--------------
> TE sprang up as a way to accomodate modern science,
"Accomodate" has become a dirty word because it assumes something
altogether unwholesome, and frequently untrue, about another
person's motivations.
Let's try another one:
"TE sprang up as an honest effort by Christian scholars to integrate
EVERYTHING they believed God was telling them about his creation, both
from the study of scripture and the study of creation."
-------------
> The final, major problem is the TE's overconfidence in the data as interpreted
> through naturalistic science.
Not true. We have overconfidence in the data as interpreted through
THEISTIC science! :-)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Your denial of my victimhood |
is lowering my self-esteem!" | Loren Haarsma
--Calvin (_Calvin_and_Hobbes_) | lhaarsma@opal.tufts.edu