RE: Christian Faith Requires Accepting Evolution
July 23, 2013 at 9:52 am
(This post was last modified: July 23, 2013 at 9:53 am by Anomalocaris.)
(July 21, 2013 at 8:36 am)whateverist Wrote: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-d...76345.html
Zen shared this with me on fb and I thought it would be of interest here. This is an example of mature Christian thought I'm always extolling but only rarely encountering anywhere. So Frodo, I think, is already on board. Chad I guess might be too. How about you Drich, Cat, GC, Ronadee, Consilius? Do you see any problem with this line of reasoning?
Quote:As someone raised evangelical, I realize anti-evolutionists believe they are defending the Christian tradition. But as a seminary graduate now training to be a medical scientist, I can say that, in reality, they've abandoned it.
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In theory, if not always in practice, past Christian theologians valued science out of the belief that God created the world scientists study. Augustine castigated those who made the Bible teach bad science, John Calvin argued that Genesis reflects a commoner's view of the physical world, and the Belgic confession likened scripture and nature to two books written by the same author.
These beliefs encouraged past Christians to accept the best science of their day, and these beliefs persisted even into the evangelical tradition. As Princeton Seminary's Charles Hodge, widely considered the father of modern evangelical theology, put it in 1859: "Nature is as truly a revelation of God as the Bible; and we only interpret the Word of God by the Word of God when we interpret the Bible by science."
In this analysis, Christians must accept sound science, not because they don't believe God created the world, but precisely because they do.
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.. no amount of talk about "worldviews" and "presuppositions" can change a simple fact: creationism has failed to provide an alternative explanation for the vast majority of evidence explained by evolution.
If Christianity can be made both internally consistent as well adaptable to any knowledges and discoveries outside the understanding of those yokels who originally propounded it, then it wouldn't have included in the first place any special claim to having special received truth, nor nailed itself to the ridiculous plank of shady god man who fucked his own mother to give himself birth, nor insulted all mankind by insinuating mankind needed "saving" by such as that.
