I went to a Biola event with Hugh Ross' Reasons to Believe showing a Docudrama "Dual Revelation" with a Q&A session afterward. I thought Dual Revelation sucked and the Q&A was lame, but I got to talk to Dr. Bloom for a bit afterward. The film and Reasons to Believe like the "old-earth creationism" or as I think of it "progressive creationism," meaning the creation account speaks of long periods of time instead of days. They say they have a good balance between science and the Bible - 6-day creationism regards the Bible too high against science and evolution regards science too high against the Bible. This is a good talking point and would convince the masses but is intellectually empty political crap. I was the only one laughing when he said that though.
I came out of the event believing more strongly in theistic evolution. Of course they think the creation account is historical narrative which I don't, so evolution isn't really an option for them. But the underlying antipathy toward theistic evolution is how that belief could be abused. The main arguments are that it could lead to a deistic God or one can have too low a view of the Bible. Apparently the famous theistic evolutionists are deists. In talking to Dr. Bloom I got somewhat frustrated because he said that theistic evolution as I veiw it is fine but most theistic evolutionists (at least the popular ones) don't have the moderate view I do. Of course the entire theme of the night had a very low view of evolution as all Christian events do. This actually miffed me a bit. It seems our goal is no longer truth but only truth that is not easily abused. We have become fascist in allowing only certain views to be considered, and with this mindset of course old earth creationsim is the most likely. The thing I love most about Christianity is our love for truth and use of common sense, but in this arena that's forgotten in favor of intellectual fascism. I consider myself a theistic evolutionist partly out of spite.
5 comments:
How does being a theistic evolutionist affect your day to day life? How would it differ if you were a creationist? What's its relevance on morality? I'm not really sure what it means to be a "moderate theistic evolutionist." (as you can probably tell from my questions.) =)
It doesn't affect day to day life or morality or any of that, I don't think. Of course one has to reconcile the animal death thing, meaning animal death doesn't bother God since it's integral to evolution.
I say moderate in comparison to deists. It is just a mechanism for creation inside traditional evangelical Christianity; it doesn't affect any basic tenet of Protestantism.
how do you put together theistic evolution and believe in gen 1 (even if you think it's poetic, etc) because the creation timeline in genesis is so different that the evolutionary timeline of creation? just wondering...that is my first question, but i have many :) that is until thomas is born and then i will take a rest from it. :)...two more for now..."it doesn't affect any basic tenet of Protestantism"...um, isn't a basic creation? if God did not create as he said then how can we tell what is poetic, etc and what should be taken literally? also, how do you coordinate "yom" if you believe it did not mean day with evening and morning? sorry if the wording is bad, but i think you get my questions. i'm sure you've heard them a million times.
Hey Nath,
I'm curious about theistic evolution... could you give a brief overview of it... I mean, beyond "God used evolution as the process for creating everyhing."
You're right that evolution gets a pretty low view in most Christian events where it's talked about. However, it's not talked about it most Christian events. It seems that overall the affirmation that God did create is the key to most Christians. Some really want to focus on exactly how, which I'm not sure I understand personally.
So it's been forever since I posted, which I apologize for, and I don't have the time/effort to post lots now, so I'm going to post in small chunks.
I think creation is a basic tenet, but I would qualify it broadly as God created the world and is beyond/above it, not that God created the universe in 6 days 10,000 years ago.
As for the question on what should be taken literally and what as poetry, I think you have to use your head. If the passage's purposes don't require a historical narrative perspective, whether it was eye-witnessed, and what the original audience thought are important criteria. I think those three tests point to allegory instead of historical narrative.
As for "yom," there are places in the OT where yom means era, but mostly it means day. I also think it means day here too, especially with the "evening and morning the x-th day." The story makes more sense if Moses is referring to days instead of eras, I think.
I'm not dogmatic about the specifics of theistic evolution, or even sure. As in, I'm not sure of God miraculously instigated life on earth or whether it was done by physical laws. And I am not opposed to God sticking his hand into the evolutionary process and tweeking things. It's cooler if he didn't, but I'm ok with either way. I don't think we know enough on the science side to say definitively what is possible. I don't want to fall into the god of the gaps or naturalism of the gaps fallacy.
A more interesting question is whether Adam was a specific creation or not. What distinguished him? How different was he than his non-human ancestors? My inclination is to say God did something special with Adam. He had a human soul, had human volition and thinking ability, all of which were fundamentally different than his predecessors. Of course deciding what that looked like is hard. I'm curious what y'all think of the dcotrine of Adam in theistic evolution.
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