Christians do not reject science. We do not believe in a flat earth standing on 4 columns, we do not believe the earth is the centre of the universe. We do not doubt that illness is caused by bacteria and viruses, and we are happy to use computers, which use principles of quantum physics.
So, I bet evolusionists must be scratching their heads, asking "Why us?". Why does evolution cause so much contraversy? Why do we still debate creationism 150 years after Darwin?
The reason is that the debate is not really scientific in nature, but it is rather a clash between world views.
Modern Science assume two principles that is in direct conflict with the Christian worldview. These principle are not scientific in nature, but without it, science is not possible. They are naturalism and uniformism.
Acording to this world view, there is nothing beyond the natural world (nature must explain itself), and the principles of nature can be applied to all historic and future events.
In the Christian world view, God created a perfect world, but because of man's disobedience, nature was reduced to a fallen state. It is important to note, the scripture does not restrict this "fallen nature" to mankind alone, but all of nature. The implications of this fallen nature are war, disease, suffering, pain, famon, death and finally, eternal punnishment or hell. Fortunately, God is not only just, but also loving and mercyfull. His holyness demands that the evils of man (that includes christians!) must be punnished, but his love for us wanted to give us a way out. That way out was Jesus Christ, who came to sacrifice Himself to pay for our sins. His sacrifice lead to the salvations of Jews in the Old Testement, and Christians in the New Testemant. One day, he will return and judge the world.
We are all guilty, but those who believed in Him, will be pardoned, to be taken to the new world, where once again, there will be no war, disease, suffering, pain, famon or death. This salvation must not be seen as a right, it is a privilage which no one deserves.
In the christian mind, scientific naturalism and uniformism is only accurate, as long as it is applied to the world in its fallen state. Scientific observations are made in the fallen nature, and it applies only to the fallen nature. We can not make any scientific deductions about the perfect world that existed prior, and will exist after this world, because we have no observations made in that nature.
Evolution is the logical conclusion to make, if you believe in absolute naturalism and uniformism, but this can never be acceptable for the christian. The bible clearly states that God who created nature, can, and did, change the nature of nature. If you're an atheist, I'll accept that you'll write me off as a nut right now, but if you're a christian, you should think twice before doing so. Do you believe you're going to heaven? Have you ever stop to think what heaven will be like? Do you think the scientific principles as we know them today can create an environment as blissful as described in the Bible? Do you expect evolution to continue in heaven as well? If God can create a perfect world after this world, why did He not do so the first time round? If God really did use evolution (which requires death and suffering), why would he promise a New Earth? Why punnish us for evil, because evil is build into evolution. (eg Death, pain, disease) And if we are not going to be held accountable, why did Christ bother? Put simply, evolution, and uniformism which underlies it, is bad theology, and makes no sence in the Christian world view. In a way, this assesment also cast a dark shadow over modern creationism: it too is trying to explain the perfect nature with the science of the fallen nature. Though I would not like to discourage them, I do think there could well be a problem this their approach.
But now you might say that evolution has falsified the entire christian faith. Not so. Remember, evolusionists look at the data through a uniformist and naturalist (Which preassume that God had no/a very limited hand in creation) perspective. These are philosofical assumptions, not scientific ones. For instance, they assume that radio mentric decay was always constant (Always there?), but that assumption is made on observations made in a fallen nature. We have no way of knowing how radio metric decay would work in a non-fallen nature, or if it would even exists there. The origin of the universe, life and macro evolusion is not really a science in the classical sence of the word, as it deals with history. Unlike the laws of physics, history is not repeatable and testable. This is proven by the fact that, dispite our best scietific research tools, innocent people sometimes still end up en jail.
This is the strongest arguement against the death penalty. If science can be so very wrong about something that happened only a few months ago, how can we be so sure about the origins of live? When it comes to history, even science can get it wrong. Science got a lot of historic facts wrong, and there is no way of telling how many of our current scientific ideas are wrong until they're proven to be so.
From this I can make two deductions. First, this debate is pointless. Secondly, it is not going away any time soon. The debate on evolution vs creationism is not scientific in nature, but metaphysical. It is not a disagreement on something you can proof by repetision, as it deals with history. As such, you will never be able to completely disprove the oposing idea.
To allow for a meaningful debate, one need to share a common ground. But in this debate, even the very nature of reality is called into question. With no metaphysical common ground, a meaningful debate on creation\macro evolution is impossible. In the end, it all comes down
to: Does God exist? If so, can He interfere with nature? If so, did he interfere with nature, if not, why do we call him God?
Whether by God's design, or by evolutionary processes, no one can deny that mankind is spiritual in nature, who desires a higher purpose. Worldwide atheist rationalism is loosing ground to monoistic believe systems, because atheism can not provide this higher purpose.
Where Creator/Creation spirituality seperates the creator from the creation, thereby allowing a rational study of nature, monoism sees the spirit and the physical world as interconected.
This believe leads to magic and mystisism. You can take your pick which of the two are more damaging to science. Scientists must acknowledge that the origin of mankind can never be a cold, clinical, purely scientific issue. They, more than in any other field of study, have to be more sensitive to people when they publish their results, and acknowledge the underlying philosofical assumptions of the science they use, rather than to tell people their cherrished believes are ancient myths. It is a simple matter of good P.R.
{Cleaned up the formating some. The original version was a mass of extra line breaks and uncertain paragraph divisions. I put the paragraph breaks where they seemed to have been intended, but such was largely a wild guess on my part. I did absolutely no edits of the content itself. Will submit the edits, and see how the results look. Further edits by the originator will probably be called for. - Adminnemooseus}
This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 03-20-2006 06:25 AM
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