David Heddle, over at the He Lives blog, has written yet another cogent criticism of William Dembski and the Intelligent Design (ID) political movement. He points out, as others have, the ID has both political, religious, and scientific aspects. It is all too easy to confuse these. I have no problem with ID as a religious stance, and I don't think Heddle does, either. But Dembski and others have gone way beyond that, attempting to have ID taught as part of the science curriculum in the public schools, and enlisting Young-Earth Creationists (YEC) as foot soldiers in this cause.
There are real tragedies in all this including:
A) Thousands, maybe millions of conscientious Christians are being taught:
1) that YEC and ID are the same thing, when they are not
2) that ID is good science, and therefore deserves a place in the public school curricula
3) that no Bible-believing and Bible-understanding Christian disagrees with points 1 and 2
B) Honest, genuinely seeking non-Christians may evaluate Christianity based on the stances I listed above, and believe, based on scientific or political ID nonsense (and/or YEC nonsense), that Christianity, the Bible, and Christ's redemptive work are also nonsense, and be eternally lost.
Thanks for reading.
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The remarks above are slightly modified from a comment I made on the post on the He Lives blog. Less than two days later, there are 26 comments on this post, some of which are challenges to my comment, by apparent atheists.
Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because it is public domain. I am grateful.
License
I have written an e-book, Does the Bible Really Say That?, which is free to anyone. To download that book, in several formats, go here.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
2 comments:
I'm enjoying your blog. I especially appreciate your insight as to the problems caused by confusion and the probability that seeking non-christians give up sorting it out and categorize it all as non-sense.
There are many things that the modern evangelical church lazily teache that worry me. It is all done in a style that suggests they believe they are still encouraging people who already believe as they do. But those days have passed (if they ever existed). It is irresponsible and negligent to say, "the bible clearly teaches," when the bible doesn't clearly teach on the subject. Ironically, there are societal and cultural things that the church supports with the bible when the bible CLEARLY teaches otherwise.
Anyway, sorry to ramble. I really am enjoying your blog.
Thanks. And, unfortunately, things that Christ taught, such as helping the poor, that much of the Church ignores. (I don't do much about it myself)
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