Survey results recently reported by Christianity Today clarify once again the sober truth that evangelicals are not making much progress in accepting well-established mainstream scientific ideas about origins. Particularly disturbing is the finding that only 27 percent of evangelical pastors "strongly disagree" with the statement that the earth is 6,000 years old. A higher number "strongly agree" that the earth is just 6,000 years old, a conclusion refuted by mountains of evidence. Seven in 10 evangelical pastors "strongly disagree" that "God used evolution to create people."
Also out this fall is a survey by the Barna Group, a Christian polling organization, explaining why most evangelical Christians "disconnect either permanently or for an extended period of time from church life after age 15." It turns out that science is a major factor. Barna identified six reasons for the disconnection:
1. Churches seem overprotective.
2. Teens and 20-somethings' experience of Christianity is shallow.
3. Churches come across as antagonistic to science.
4. Young Christians' church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.
5).They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.
6. The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.
Barna elaborates on item three -- Churches come across as antagonistic to science -- as follows:
One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity and science. The most common of the perceptions in this arena is "Christians are too confident they know all the answers" (35%). Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that "churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in" (29%). Another one-quarter embrace the perception that "Christianity is anti-science" (25%). And nearly the same proportion (23%) said they have "been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate." Furthermore, the research shows that many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries.
I have been teaching science to evangelical college students for more than 25 years, and all this rings true. The students in my classes have had hundreds of hours of religious education growing up before they came to college. Most of them attended Sunday School regularly, listened to sermons at least once a week, spent time at summer Bible camps and weekends away with their youth groups. They read religious books, watched religious videos and subscribed to religious magazines (or, as is more likely, were given gift subscriptions by relatives).
Many evangelicals grow up in a sort of "parallel culture," running alongside and often at odds with the larger, secular culture. The educational component of this parallel culture, which Randall Stephens and I describe in detail in "The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age," contains strategies and techniques for undermining and even challenging secular culture, particularly science. Young earth creationist Ken Ham is the best and most influential example of this. In videos and writings that are widely consumed by evangelicals, he encourages students to ask their science teachers "Were you there?" when they talk about the past. The biology teacher says "Life first appeared on earth about 4 billion years ago," and the student is to ask "Were you there?" The physics teacher says "The universe originated in a Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago" and the students is to ask "Were you there?"
In a recent piece titled "Nine Year Old Challenges Nasa," Ham blogged proudly about "Emma B" who, when told that a NASA moon rock was 3.75 billion years old, asked "Were you there?"
The suggestion that scientists cannot speak about the past unless "they were there" is a strange claim. The implication is that we cannot do something as simple as count tree rings and confidently declare "This great pine was standing here 2,000 years ago." As a philosophy of science, such a restriction would completely rule out the scientific study of the past. This, of course, is precisely what the creationists want.
Many bright evangelical young people are, fortunately, not impressed with the suggestion that only "eyewitnesses" can speak about the past. Just this past spring I taught an honors seminar on science and religion at an evangelical college. The class included a couple of bright students who had grown up in fundamentalist churches that showed Ken Ham videos in their Sunday School class. Both of them recalled the encouragement to ask their teachers "Were you there?" And both of them, a few years older and wiser than "Emma B," thought this suggestion was ridiculous and wondered what kind of ideas required the embrace of such nonsense on their behalf. These students -- in fact, most of the students I have had over the years -- will graduate from college accepting contemporary science and its various explanations for what has happened in the past. But unless the leadership in their churches does a better job with its teaching ministry, such students will have a hard time returning to their home churches.
The dismissive and even hostile approach to science taken by evangelical leaders like Ken Ham accounts for the Barna finding above. In the name of protecting Christianity from a secularism perceived as corrosive to the faith, the creationists are unwittingly driving the best and brightest evangelicals out of the church -- or at least into the arms of the compromising Episcopalians, whom they despise. What remains after their exodus is an even more intellectually impoverished parallel culture, with even fewer resources to think about complex issues.
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Paul Wallace: Why I Teach Evolution in Church
Creationism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Young Earth creationism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Creation Museum - Creation, Evolution, Science, Dinosaurs, Family ...
Ken Ham Disinvited from Homeschooling Events over 'Ungodly ...
Christian: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Nonchristian: Really? Were you there?
We don't know what happened in the past. We make educated guesses based on the evidence and knowledge that we have at the time. And, ideally, when new evidence and knowledge is available to challenge the old viewpoint, we reconsider that viewpoint. Ideally.
Or, maybe I should accept the simple facts of science that acknowledge life could not have come about on the earth by itself. It had to be deposited on the earth by aliens? Evidence?? Or maybe a meteor passed through earth's atmosphere but didn't destory living things on it. Where is the massive empirical evidence for that simple fact of science?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/ribonucleotides/
On top of that, it is axiomatic that in the view of macro-biological evolution, the first life form had to be the result of random processes. Since, as massive empirical evidence shows, random things do not produce complex systems, all that has come from evolution is random--nothing guided it--and therefore, a) any thoughts that humans have are nothing but random brain activity and therefore mean nothing; and b) you are nothing but your genes and therefore, whether you agree with me or not is determined by your genes, not by your free choice.
http://truecreation.info
http://biologos.org
The only truly strange concept I ran across was when exposed to kids from my own country when I came back and met Christians of other denominations. I learned so much about fundamental science from my dad, and the reveling in the wonder of the Creator's universe as well. The whole family are early adapters of technology.
American fundamentalist Christians just seem like self blinded people with a tiny sad little universe. Going 50 miles from home seemed like a foreign place to one lady I met. We went from a DC suburb to some "mountains" in Virgina and could not get over how "foreign" the people were. I just looked at her and snorted. Not as foreign as some of the places in the Andes I've been to.
Why would people willingly make themselves deaf dumb and blind.
I think most of these folks prefer simplicity to complexity, certainty over uncertainty.
They prefer living within a restricted worldview that doesn't challenge them.
Call it existential agoraphobia.
When I would get the "Were you there?" question from students in my physics classes I would ask the questioner if they knew if and when their parents were married? If they answered yes I would ask them Were you there? Only once in 31 years did I receive an answer of yes.
Thank you for being a physics teacher!
"One of the reasons young adults DO NOT! feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they DO NOT! feel between Christianity and science. The most common of the perceptions in this arena is "Christians are NOT! too confident they know all the answers" (65%). SEVEN out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that "churches are NOT! out of step with the scientific world we live in" (71%). Another three-quarter embrace the perception that "Christianity is NOT! anti-science" (75%). And nearly the same proportion (77%) said they have "NOT! been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate." Furthermore, the research shows that many(?=25%) science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries.
So what has changed in America since the Scopes trial? Nothing! Young people still overwhelmingly accept religion and religious beliefs as representations of reality (about 75%) and they will continue to act and VOTE accordingly. What else would one expect in a country where religious fantasy is held in such high regard?!
The church attender either (a) blindly accepts the principles preached at him/her, (b) researches them for him/herself and comes to a reasonable conclusion while maintaining his/her faith, or (c) dismisses the faith based on poor/ignorant teaching on these topics.
There is a step of faith required for a person to believe in the truth of the scriptures, but this truth must be studied directly from the bible rather than a shallow acceptance of what someone else says.
Statement: Science says the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Response: Were you there?
Statement: The Bible says Jesus was crucified. Response: Were you there?
See how easy it is to turn that argument on its head and against true believers?
Statement: people of faith say "Prove that God does not exist" Response "We don't have to prove anything"
See how interesting it is to turn the argument on its head?
Response: How can you be sure that your experience was not a hallucination? What distinguishes it from the same experiences of different religions?
"Statement: people of faith say "Prove that God does not exist" Response "We don't have to prove anything""
Because you can't prove a negative like that. You cannot prove the gods of other religions don't exist, etc, but something tells me someone has told you this before.
Neanderthal's would be populating Earth today if the gods had not agreed to make "Man in Our Image, after Our likeness" Genesis1:26 thus bringing evolution forward by 50 million years!
But no one quite as much as George. He could pack more wisdom into a 5 minute routine then a 500 page treatise by any philosopher, and also have me falling off the couch laughing at the same time.
It's an overused phrase, but we lost a genius when George left us.
"When you talk to god, you are praying; when god talks to you, you are psychotic."
1. Either god can create a stone that he cannot lift, or he cannot create a stone that he cannot lift.
2. If god can create a stone that he cannot lift, then he is not omnipotent.
3. If god cannot create a stone that he cannot lift, then he is not omnipotent
4. Therefore by definition, god is not omnipotent.
THE PARADOX OF OMNISCIENCE
1 If God does not know all events past and future then he is not omniscient.
2 If God does know all events both past and future (especially future) then he cannot make any decision or choose a course of action, because he already knows his future actions for all eternity. He is paralysed by his own omniscience.
3 If God can make a decision or choose a course of action that he did not know in advance, then he is not omniscient.
this is acctually an easy one, which I figured out: God uses an additional, space dimension. Creates a stone at the same spatial and time coordinates, and with an extension in this new spatial direction. Now he walks to the stone in the same spatial and time coordinates we live in and tries to lift it. And in the same space and time he lifts it and fails to lift it separated by the additional new spatial dimension He created to make you happy. So he made a stone which he could and he could not lift at the same space and time. Dont argue about hidden spatial dimensions just read up on string theory and you'll be happy I only used one :-)
Another answer: 1) God creates rock that God couldn't lift. 2) God increases God's strength to lift rock. 3) Repeat steps 1 and 2 until infinity.
Ref: "THE PARADOX OF OMNISCIENCE" Since God knows all, God created the ideal timeline the first time around so there is no desire to change the timeline showing omniscience and omnipotence.