>Many of us Christians also take offense at seeing Johnson's strident
>anti-evolution rhetoric identified with the Christian faith. It's downright
>embarrassing. It makes Christianity look as if it could be defeated by the
>success of the *scientific* concept of the evolutionary development of
>creaturely forms.
Steve replies:
>The fact is that *a lot more* ordinary Christians are *very happy* with
>Johnson's so-called "anti-evolution rhetoric". This is evident by the
>*enormous* number of books Johnson has sold in 9 years (a quarter of
>a million), which probably far outweighs all TE/EC books sold combined
>in the same period and maybe even all TE/EC books *ever* sold!
Steve may have a point here and I think it would be good if people
like Howard pondered why this is. One can always adopt the
snobbish attitude (and I am not saying that this is what Howard
would do) and attribute the popularity of people like Johnson
and Behe to fundamentalism, but their appeal seems to be broader
(judging from the many editorials and letters to the
editor over the last few years). I suspect that Johnson is more
popular because many Christians think that people like Howard
offer no substantive defense against the atheism of people like Dawkins
and Gould and instead it's more about not be "embarrassed." Thus, if
Howard and others want to get their message out, I think they would do
a far better job of this by taking on people like Dawkins directly and
ignoring the ID movement.
Let me give a simple example. The June 11, 1999 issue of Science
has a couple of letters where scientists express their disgust with
the Templeton Foundation's various activities (hardly a hotbed of
ID). In one letter, it is argued the only relationship between science
and religion is that science needs to study religion because "it
has the capacity to objectively analyze religion and to dispel
illusions necessary for its operation."(-Eric Stone). This letter argues
that religious faith is to be explained in terms of Darwinian principles.
Now,
I've seen these types of letters in various scientific journals and
how would someone like Howard reply? How does he remove
God's intervention in natural history yet maintain God can/has
intervened in human history? Would not his "fully-gifted" theology
lead to the notion that everything about Christian faith and history
can be explained by the same gifts that gave rise to humans?
Is the existence of Christianity just another example of Darwinism-in-
action? I would be interested in having Howard read Eric Stone's
letter to _Science_ and seeing how he would reply. Would he
withdraw further into the subjective or draw the line in the sand?
Mike