inter faith

[percival]

It's all nice and easy to be an inter faith enthusiast when you talk to moderate Christians, Buddhists, Taoists,
etc. - but whenever I encounter a specific sub group of Evangelical Christians, namely the one illustrated by the
Creation Science Fair,
I can't suppress a strong urge to retch. (I found the URL in sff_corgi's journal.)

I've nothing against fundamentalist or evangelical Christianity - but if science is twisted in line to support a world view that is often diametrically opposed to my ethics, that crosses the line.

For example, I can accept the argument that women should stay at home to look after their children because the children will benefit. But I will never accept an "argument" that takes women's lower pay to be a justification for excluding women from the work place.

As for the demonstration of the difference between Uncle Steve and a monkey, and the experiment to create life from inanimate substances - oh please. That just goes against the grain of scientific method - and demonstrates no grasp even of the popular scientific literature. (Notice how I suppressed a SNARXY comment about Uncle Steve.)

That said, I could probably live with my children adopting these views - or living with somebody that has these views. I'd just hope they'd snap out of it again ;)

Comments

[cynthia-black.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't get to the 'Creation Science Fair' via your link, but I could hazard a good guess as to what it's like.

I think a lot of fundamentalist Christians get a bee in their bonnet about creation vs. evolution simply because the latter is taught as fact when it is actually only the theory of evolution. When it comes down to it, you need as much faith to believe that all life started as an accident and that we evolved very suddenly from apes, then virtually stopped evolving thereafter, as you do to believe that God created the world with systems and laws and rules to help it run.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

Well yes, you are right - evolution is a theory, but it happens to fit very many observations of the natural world, which you could classify as facts.

Also, current evolution theory does not hold that we evolved "suddenly" from apes - if you look at the family trees, development of human faculties was slow and gradual, over hundreds of thousands of years. Tool use, speech, art ... all this emerged over the millenia, consistent with the speeds that evolution theory postulates for other species.

As for us not evolving anymore: humans may seem to have stopped evolving mainly because we value human life much more, and many lives that would have been destroyed before can now be lived, thanks to, for example, Christ and the values He promoted.
Survival of the fittest is not acceptable in human societies anymore.

However, biologists find smaller animals, insects for example, evolving all the time - mainly becoming resistant to the very chemicals designed to kill them.

Actually, a theory that I find very fascinating is that of the Anthropic Principle, postulated by F.A. Tipler, if I remember correctly. This Principle states that we were designed to evolve towards God, and is consistent with much of contemporary physics.

Thank you for your response, it's much appreciated!

percival

[jennlee2.livejournal.com]

I think the evolution "from" apes thing is a bit of a misnomer. The evidence points to both species evolving from earlier species which evolved from earlier species which at some point a long time ago were the same, so it's more like apes are cousins instead of grandparents.

I do think humans are still evolving, we just can't see it as well because we only have a small time-frame in which we look. And as you noted, we value human life more, and this likely has an effect in terms of natural selection.

Thanks for the most interesting topic this morning!

[drakanjel.livejournal.com]

That humans may indeed be evolving, yet with a smaller point of reference, is an interesting idea. Could this explain the difference in the lifespan of generally healthy humans being significantly longer now than it was, say, two hundred (or more) years ago? Even those who do not use conventional medicine tend to live longer than they would have in other times.... (and those who do not use ANY "modern" technology - i.e. the Amish)

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

To add to what perceval said, a 'theory' in science isn't quite the same thing as it is normally. Something isn't a theory just because people randomly thought it up to explain something - the title 'theory' is only granted when it's been rigorously tested under fair conditions. After all, it's the Theory of Gravity, and nobody goes around saying that's just as much on faith as any religion.

Sorry, I always have to respond when anyone says something like that. :)

[jennlee2.livejournal.com]

OMG - thanks for the link. That is abolutely incredible. I thought the Uncle Steve/monkey one seemed a bit humerous as well as sad - tried to feed him bananas but he refused. Snerk. The one that freaked me out was the second place for "Women Were Designed For Homemaking" because they are well suited to carrying laundry baskets due to a low center of gravity. Those kids seem pretty snarky: "Rocks Can't Evolve, Where Did They Come From Mr. Darwin?" Or I suppose it's their parents. I feel sorry for the kids because it's not their fault they are raised like this. I just hope that as they grow up they are exposed to other ideas and make up their own minds about stuff (and hopefully snap out of it).

[spin1978.livejournal.com]

I've seen the site before. I'm under the impression it is a very well done parody site, with its tongue planted so firmly in its cheek it gives very little away compared to the highly entertaining but very overdone Landover Baptist website.

But yes, "creation science" is an oxymoron par excellence.

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

You think? Really? I looked it over pretty thoroughly, and if it IS a parody, I've never seen a face that straight. That's an awful lot of site to build as a joke without a wink involved, and considering I went to high school with bare-walls Protestant evangelicals, this didn't sound all that different from their line.

[shellebelle93.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear heavens.

Here's a comment from your friendly neighborhood fundie ;-)
I believe in Creation. I do not hold with evolution. But there are many, many flavors of Christian thought on this subject, and I am not about to tell someone that they are 100% wrong. This particular subject is not, I repeat, *not* vital to my faith in Christ. (In other words, it is not "fundamental" in the strictest sense of the word.) The "science" in this event is laughable, and shows a tremendous disrespect for people(any people). It shows a callous disregard and disrespect for others who do not hold with their beliefs, which does not do any favors for Christians of any flavor.

Now, I can say that the 'fundies' believe that there was a time in society when Christians who believed strictly in Creation were laughed and ridiculed openly for believing as such. I myself have never encountered this attitude. However, aren't these people being as narrow-minded and antagonistic as they accuse Evolutionists of being? I deplore the horribly sarcastic and disrespectful attitude in the Creationist camps these days.

My main point is this: We weren't there. When we get to heaven, all of us, without exception, are going to have some things explained to us that we just got plain WRONG. Disrespect will get us no Brownie points with God.

*sigh* I don't think I can call myself a 'fundie' anymore. I think I'll call myself a 'tolerant, thinking Christian' instead.

Sheesh.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

:)

hugs the friendly neighborhood fundie.

Well, Creationists *are* getting ridiculed, but I guess that most evolutionists who openly seek dialogue with creationists try to be calm and respectful, and this is what inter faith is all about .

[shellebelle93.livejournal.com]

The problem is that these days, I tend to see a whole lot more, shall we say, rudeness, coming from the Creationist camps than from the Evolutionist camps. Or maybe that's just me being blindsided by the 'fundies' again. *snerk*

Sigh. I wish I could say that I thought the site you linked to was a parody site. Unfortunately, no.

I'm just going to say that every day I am grateful for the internet. I get to dialogue with so many interesting people every day. *hugs Perceval*

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

However, aren't these people being as narrow-minded and antagonistic as they accuse Evolutionists of being? I deplore the horribly sarcastic and disrespectful attitude in the Creationist camps these days.

That's my problem with a lot of people (not you, obviously) who call themselves Christian -- and practice Old Testament intolerance and vengefulness, inequality and inflexibility. It's also a symptom of institutionalising a faith, don't you think?

[shellebelle93.livejournal.com]

It's also a symptom of institutionalising a faith, don't you think?

I think you've hit the nail on the head, to an extent. I tend to think of these things as happening a lot more in America. There is an attitude of Christians in America, where they want everything spelled out for them in neat little tidy terms, and no one wants to think. Therefore, they have programs for every single little thing. It is much easier to be dogmatic and tote the party line than to actually think about what your faith means to you and to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling."
(Philippians 2:12) How does this relate to this article? Well, look at the "science projects"--if I had turned in something like this in sixth grade, I would have gotten a failing grade. I am willing to bet that not two hours was spent in actual 'research'. And that type on non-thinking is all too often encouraged. It carries over to Bible reading, to sermon preparation, to everything. It is a pity that all too often, brains are not used in the manner God intended. *sigh*

[dr-c.livejournal.com]

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"!)