Before I go see Expelled tomorrow, and maybe have my mind tweaked a bit, I am going to throw my $.02 out into the Internet.
I respect the scientists behind Intelligent Design theory, and I do think that it's a legitimate scientific theory (certainly more provable than evolution).
I also think that, for Christians, it's become a compromise. I would much rather see an agnostic scientist saying, "I have no idea what I believe about this 'intelligence,' but I know there HAS to be one" than see a Christian scientist say, "No, I'm not saying that God created the earth or that the Genesis account is true or anything like that -- I'm just saying that there has to be some intelligence."
I understand where truth may be unpleasant, surprising, abrasive and hard to believe. I understand where truth may seem foolish.
But if the whole earth declares His glory, where do we get off pointing out the intricacy of that glory and not attributing it to Him?
I think that if I were an atheist wondering about origins theory, and I listened to a speaker whom I knew to be a Christian, but who make every effort to distance himself from publicly espousing the Genesis account, I would be thinking, well, this guy must not really believe that Genesis stuff anyway; heh, I'd be embarrassed too if that were my story.
Can a scientific victory be a spiritual loss?
Not sure if any of the above makes enough sense to repeat out loud.
Thoughts?
1 comment:
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The way I've seen this issue played out in The University World is as a game with two strategies:
First, we might be secularist. Scientia, empirical data, becomes divorced from our faith and our spiritual imperitives. Not to say that science becomes diabolical, only that it becomes a spiritually neutral medium, like musicology. Theories of music (as far as I know) have been "secular" for hundreds of years, and science is catching up. We can make antibiotics and insulin, or we can harvest biological weapons; but the practices of science itself—the maths, if you will—are neutral.
The next approach we might take would be a more "reformed" approach (and I use that distinction because I've learned about this way of thinking from a bunch of Calvinists...)
Rather than saying "scientific data is neutral," we might say "nothing is neutral, and all science must fit into the service of God's kingdom." Neutrality doesn't exist in this "reformed" way of thinking; we're either serving God or not. Music isn't neutral: it's music, and testifies to God's glorious creation. "Secular" theories are all, in effect, diabolical if they fail to give account for God's creation, the fall, and the grace of salvation.
ID needs to be there, to stick up for "the facts" within the first system, because the secular system decides who gets federal funding and so forth. Real Christianity, though, has to make a much louder noise in a much different arena. This isn't just a debate about the veracity of the fossil record, this is about life and love and freedom and truth. (As your post about divorce and empiricism/evolutionary PSYC a while back pointed out.)
So keep up the good fight!
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