By the way, be careful not to confuse the time-scale issue (billions vs. thousands of years) with the mechanism issue (creative acts of intelligent design vs. random chance and unchanging natural laws). There are a fair number of Evangelicals who are "old earth creationists," taking the days of Genesis to refer to longer periods of time, viewed from the surface of the earth (day 1 = light and darkness become distinct, day 2 = surface mists clear, sky and sea become distinct, etc.). I personally don't think this view conflicts with the honesty of Genesis; supposing it to be correct, and supposing quite hypothetically that (for whatever reason) God had appeared to an ancient Hebrew and explained that the days were actually longer periods of time, I don't think the Hebrew would have felt lied to by the text of Genesis.
This was of course one of the issues that I had to consider in re-evaluating my beliefs a decade ago. Not being a scientist, I couldn't independently evaluate everyone's arguments, but I could still look for reasonableness of presentation. It seemed to me that the young-earth creationists had to resort to desperate stretches when trying to interpret natural history in a short time-scale, but that there were some valid points in favor of intelligent design that mainstream scientists weren't quite taking seriously, perhaps due to a form of scientific method that disallows entirely any consideration of supernatural explanations.
That wasn't what convinced me to remain a Christian, of course-- it just kept the question open while I considered other related issues.
***
Also, I note that your view of religion differs sharply from mine in matters of morals and ethics; you seem to be saying that you wouldn't accept a religion that contradicted your moral sense, while I believe in first finding out about God and then letting Him (assuming correctness of pronoun) dictate what my moral senses ought to be. (Indeed, I would almost prefer to define "religion" as "that which dictates one's moral values"; if your view of humanity dictates your values, independently of the presence/absence and nature of God, then I'd wish to say that your view of humanity is your real "religion"!)
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Date: 2003-07-01 10:59 pm (UTC)This was of course one of the issues that I had to consider in re-evaluating my beliefs a decade ago. Not being a scientist, I couldn't independently evaluate everyone's arguments, but I could still look for reasonableness of presentation. It seemed to me that the young-earth creationists had to resort to desperate stretches when trying to interpret natural history in a short time-scale, but that there were some valid points in favor of intelligent design that mainstream scientists weren't quite taking seriously, perhaps due to a form of scientific method that disallows entirely any consideration of supernatural explanations.
That wasn't what convinced me to remain a Christian, of course-- it just kept the question open while I considered other related issues.
***
Also, I note that your view of religion differs sharply from mine in matters of morals and ethics; you seem to be saying that you wouldn't accept a religion that contradicted your moral sense, while I believe in first finding out about God and then letting Him (assuming correctness of pronoun) dictate what my moral senses ought to be. (Indeed, I would almost prefer to define "religion" as "that which dictates one's moral values"; if your view of humanity dictates your values, independently of the presence/absence and nature of God, then I'd wish to say that your view of humanity is your real "religion"!)