evolution in church

[juvenissun]

I've been told around here many times that once you are saved doing good comes from the light of Jesus within you, not some desire for heavenly credit. That you work harder because the desire to do good wells up in you, not for personal gain.

If so, what is the difference between two saved persons that one works harder than the other? In a governing system, "reward" is a necessary thing to have.

Again, don't forget a Christian could work very hard on projects that do not merit any credit (or even have negative credit), such as promoting evolution.

 

[juvenissun]

Wow.. you have some weird ideas about heaven.

My idea (in fact, it is not mine. I learned it in the Scripture) is more reasonable than yours.

 

[CabVet]

You shouldn't. But you could. That could be one of the motivation.
It is not ugly at all. It is beautiful.

No, it's not only ugly but wrong. If you truly love someone, you do things for him/her without the motivation of "reward".

 

[juvenissun]

No, it's not only ugly but wrong. If you truly love someone, you do things for him/her without the motivation of "reward".

That is true. But it is a very rare case. And when it happened, it usually did not last long.

Besides, you mixed two things together. For people who do not believe (like you) or don't have enough faith, the motivation of getting reward won't exist either.

 

[Skaloop]

For people who do not believe (like you) or don't have enough faith, the motivation of getting reward won't exist either.

And yet we do it anyway.

 

[USincognito]

Can you guys get back to addressing the content of the videos and take your tangental argument elsewhere?

 

[USincognito]

The Q&A for the Evolution class gave me an insight into how to approach discussing "kinds" with Creationists. If they're not amennable to a discussion of phylogenetics per se, I could probably change tack and explain that "kinds" is consistent with the theological lesson of Genesis (God creates an {relatively} orderly Universe, Earth and life on it), thus we would never expect to see an apple tree sprout peanuts or an iguana lay a clutch of rabbits.

 

[AV1611VET]

The Q&A for the Evolution class gave me an insight into how to approach discussing "kinds" with Creationists.

A "kind" is an animal's common ancestor.

Common Designer → common ancestor → genus → species

By way of example:

God → unicorn → Equus → Equus ferus caballus

 

[USincognito]

This message is hidden because AV1611VET is on your ignore list.

Please don't waste my or anyone elses time by responding to my posts with your nonsense.

 

[AV1611VET]

Please don't waste my or anyone elses time by responding to my posts with your nonsense.

I'll pass ... but thanks, anyway.

 

[USincognito]

Steve, the comments from JREF have been mostly disappointing to say the least, but here's two that you might find worth reading or commenting upon.

I've only watched the first of the two videos so far.

The presentation of evolution was reasonable enough, given that it's for a non-science-literate audience. The one suggestion I would make is to avoid the emphasis on mutation; mutation can be mentioned as one cause of variation, but many phenotype changes can come about with reassortment of existing traits, such as to produce e.g. non-albino white fur color in rabbits.

I was a bit disappointed, though, that the theological part was on a similarly "101" level. Only three alternatives for dealing with the difference between evolution and Genesis were discussed, and these only briefly:

1. Disregard evolution because it contradicts Genesis.

2. Divinely guided evolution, including special creation (e.g. of new phyla) in the gaps.

3. "Genesis is a theological, not a historical, account."

While some in the audience might not have heard of some of those three notions before, they're not really very interesting in themselves. What I was hoping for, that would make it more interesting, is a frank discussion of the implications and ramifications of each of them. Not one of them allows for "business as usual" with the narratives of Christianity. Even the first option implies a deceptive Creation, an implication that can be ignored only by irrational blind faith and denied only by conspiracy theory beliefs. There are common but not very well founded beliefs about the nature of God that are contradicted by a billion year ago Creation. Why not point some of them out? And what does it mean to say that Genesis is theological, not historical? What, then, is the theology that the Eden story is presenting? There are interesting possibilities, but they must be delved into, not swept under a pat phrase.

The human origins topic will allow a second chance to address some of these issues, so I'll have to watch that segment before commenting further.

U.S.
I just watched "Evolution". I'll try to catch the other tomorrow.
I happily accept your verdict that he is a fine person and I applaud the attempt to get across to a non scientist audience some of the basics of evolution.
He is dealing with a specialist audience and naturally gives the issue a suitable spin, but I failed to catch a single instance of where he could say "Here is god 's hand at work". The best he can do is to suggest that mutation and natural selection may be god's modus operandi and that god may have reused some existing DNA back in the early days to create other phylla. Well yes, but that's just saying "Here's how it is. I believe god was involved, so this must be how."
That's begging the question totally. Substitute "FSM" for "god" and it makes exactly as much sense. Why raise a needless complication? Evolution works without divine assistance. Steve has to be able to see that. That doesn't disprove god, or the FSM, or fairies. It doesn't need to. It's not about them.

If I was a kid listening to the talk, unaware of any of it, I'd be amazed to know that Australia and Antarctica were connected once. I'd be amazed that Antarctica was warm and fertile. I'd be astonished to know men came out of Africa and knew Neanderthals on the way. (In both senses!)
I'd be fascinated by a lot of the talk and I'd want to know how we know all this. I'd ask why we have so few chimp fossils and why we have more hominin ones. I'd ask a bunch of questions.

The questions I would not ask are all the ones involving gods and the supernatural. Because, by comparison, they are dull and uninteresting.

Scientists know all this stuff, have evidence for it, evidence from lots of different sources that all point to the same conclusion...and uh..what was the god part again?

(Which is, more or less, my experience of Sunday School and bible class- no clear answers, a lot of vague suggestions, a great deal of evasion and not a shred of evidence, compared with which, even primary 1 was like a free university, with teachers gleefully stuffing facts in both eyes and ears as fast as I could soak them up.)

The truth is I think Steve is achieving something useful if he educates people about evolution and the rest, but I truly don't see him convincing any non Christian that god has a relevant role in science. Any god- Yaweh, Hanuman or whichever.

Points for trying, sure. But I suspect he's more likely to turn a few people on to science than to religion.
Which is no bad thing.

I noted to Myriad that there'd been a whole class on Nonconcordism earlier in the series and to Sam that the Evolution class wasn't aimed at non-Christians, but in establishing that evolution wasn't a lie invented to attack Christianity.

 

[USincognito]

This one wasn't too bad either. It's missing some conctext, but the large paragraph contains the content worth pointing out.

Most of Dr. Shaffner's religious comments were not irrational. However, they seemed trivial. This is most evident when he tries to explain away the problem of evil.

There is one instance where he is holding contradictory positions. At 38:50 he quotes Dobzhansky: ''Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began 10 billion years ago and is still under way.'' In the context of the video, Dr. Shaffner agrees. But then, at 47:00 someone from the audience is saying that science is shaky with the concept that all variety of life evolved from a unicellular organism. That there had to be Special Creation for ''plants and birds in the air'' which later evolved into the different species we see today. Dr.Shaffner accepts this as a valid position, even if it contradicts the quote that evolution has proceeded from 10 billion years ago to the present. Even if this invalidates the theory of evolution.

In any case, I enjoyed the video. On balance, I have a positive opinion about Dr. Shaffner.

 

[verysincere]

I too greatly enjoyed the two evolution-related videos of some weeks ago. I started to watch some of the other videos in the series (done by other presenters) but I found myself not as interested in the topics----but perhaps I should give them another chance when I have the time.

But I was wondering if there were other videos by Dr. S. yet to come or that I somehow missed on related topics. In any case, I hope Dr. S. will post something here to alert us to knew videos.

(And as for the critiques that were posted from JREF, they struck me as sort of blind to the fact that the audience was Sunday School participants with limited background. And how many hours of material do they think can be covered in one or two classes??? Plus, it is my experience that some Science-and-the-Bible topics are virtually impossible to present fairly without doing them somewhat completely. That is, a "little knowledge" can be a dangerous thing when there is not sufficient time to EXPLAIN the points. For example, I suppose I would be described as a Genesis-concordist in many ways----but I'm not making "long stretches" to fit science into the text. Instead, I spent YEARS of exegetical study and learning linguistics and ONLY BECAUSE OF THAT can I make various claims about what the text is saying----but I know that to the average person who doesn't have that background they sound just plain farfetched. But imagine trying to explain satellite transmission of TV programs of live events back in 1812. Wouldn't it sound like far-fetched "magic talk"? Yet anyone with electronics and physics background today understands how it makes complete sense. Indeed, if an American living in 1812 could be transported in time to today, imagine how much instruction would be required to convince that person that a live TV broadcast from the other side of the planet was NOT some kind of "magic". I would even have to spent a lot of time explaining electrons and basic wave propagation---without "ether"!)

Thanks!

 

[sfs]

Steve, the comments from JREF have been mostly disappointing to say the least, but here's two that you might find worth reading or commenting upon.

I noted to Myriad that there'd been a whole class on Nonconcordism earlier in the series and to Sam that the Evolution class wasn't aimed at non-Christians, but in establishing that evolution wasn't a lie invented to attack Christianity.

Thanks for copying them. I don't want to get too bogged down in the comments right now, mostly because I'm kind of weary of the whole thing. A couple of general responses:

1) Yes, the theological implications of accepting the findings of science (both in evolutionary biology and in other areas) are substantial. This class was not the place for going into them in depth, however. Exactly as you say, we were just trying to ease people into the seeing scientific views as acceptable. Several members of the staff (both pastoral and support) want to get together to have regular meetings to start exploring some of the deeper issues touched on lightly in this class.

2) Whether someone finds the science interesting and the faith stuff dull depends on the person. Certainly in a church adult education class, the faith stuff is important, and probably of interest to the people who bothered to show up.

3) I disagree about mutations. Yes, much evolution occurs without new mutations (although it's not the reassortment of traits that changes a population, but changes in frequency of alleles), but if you're trying to convince an audience that people are related to cantaloupes, almost all of the relevant change does in fact rely on mutations. A more nuanced presentation would include lots of other stuff. E.g. I mentioned nothing about genetic drift (which would have caused Larry Moran to have palpitations, in the unlikely event he had wandered in by mistake), but there's only so much one can cover at a time.

4) I'm not going to go back and review the video, but I doubt I said that separate creation of different branches of life was a valid scientific view. I would consider that a theologically acceptable approach that is at least attempting to deal with scientific realities, even if it falls far short of doing so successfully.

 

[sfs]

I too greatly enjoyed the two evolution-related videos of some weeks ago. I started to watch some of the other videos in the series (done by other presenters) but I found myself not as interested in the topics----but perhaps I should give them another chance when I have the time.

But I was wondering if there were other videos by Dr. S. yet to come or that I somehow missed on related topics. In any case, I hope Dr. S. will post something here to alert us to knew videos.

Thanks. I did do some more talking, and showed a couple of slides of data, during the last class, which was Q&A. The first question, in particular, was where I talked at some length.

(And as for the critiques that were posted from JREF, they struck me as sort of blind to the fact that the audience was Sunday School participants with limited background. And how many hours of material do they think can be covered in one or two classes??? Plus, it is my experience that some Science-and-the-Bible topics are virtually impossible to present fairly without doing them somewhat completely.

Yeah. There's a reason I covered very little genetics even though I'm a geneticist. There's just a lot more background you have to cover in order to make points, and they're less compelling that things that are more familiar to the audience.