Echoes in Eternity

Christianity Today has a useful little piece on the Intelligent Design versus Evolution debate.

Asking what advocates of intelligent design must do to gain credibility in the academy is a bit like asking a man when he stopped beating his wife. Such a question makes a prejudicial assumption.

When queried about his history of spousal abuse, an innocent man should say, "I don't concede the premise of your question." Similarly, I would suggest that behind the Village Green question lurk some false assumptions. Indeed, the question seems to presuppose three things: the scientific community is uniformly opposed to the theory of intelligent design; the theory needs majority support in the academy to be credible; and there is good reason—such as lack of supporting evidence—for hostility toward the theory within academia.

[HT: JT]

Doug Wilson rightly calls Bruce Waltke, a renowned Old Testament scholar, to account for his poor reasoning that Christians should support evolution as the explanation of how everything came to be (see at the bottom of this post for the video of what Waltke said).

There are (at least) five confusions here.

First, he wants to say that if we believe that the Lord is the Giver and Creator of all life, and we do so in a way that is not approved by our secularist betters, then that means we have embraced death. To simply accept "what God says" is actually cultic. There is something counterintuitive in there somewhere.

Second, Waltke confounds "what the data requires" with "what secularists stubbornly say that the data requires." All truth is indeed God's truth, but it does not follow from this that all lies are God's truth. Suppose the data don't constitute overwhelming evidence for evolution? Suppose Christians surrender on Darwin unnecessarily? What are we embracing then?

Third, as mentioned above, he says that refusal to believe in evolution is to embrace spiritual death. But the evolutionary account of our world points to a record of death. What is the fossil record but a massive column of dead bodies? If God created by evolutionary means, then nature red in tooth and claw is "very good," and God doesn't have the problem with death that we thought He did. So maybe it might be a good thing to embrace spiritual death. Or did I miss something?

Fourth, there is a difference between "staying in the discussion" with unbelievers and sitting down and believing what you are told by unbelievers to believe. Paul was in a real dialogue with the philosophers on Mars Hill, and it did not consist of him getting into a high chair and having them cut his meat for him.

Fifth, this displays, as few other things could, the utter irrelevance of the lust for relevance.

[Evolution] appeals to the same innocent and permanent needs in us which welcome Jack the Giant Killer. It gives us almost everything the imagination craves – irony, heroism, vastness, unity in multiplicity, and a tragic close. It appeals to every part of me except my reason. That is why those of us who feel that [evolution] is already dead for us must not make the mistake of trying to 'debunk' it in the wrong way. We must not fancy that we are securing the modern world from something grim and dry, something that starves the soul. The contrary is the truth. It is our painful duty to wake the world from an enchantment. … [W]e must treat [evolution] with respect. It was all (on a certain level) nonsense: but a man would be a dull dog if he could not feel the thrill and the charm of it.

- C.S. Lewis

This is such a great picture...

For those who have occasionally clicked on the LGF headlines on the right side of this blog, you may have noticed that they are no longer there. For months, LGF blogger Charles Johnson has been hating on people who believe in intelligent design, choosing to equate them on several occasions to radical Islamists. At first, I chose to ignore his diatribes and keep the headlines on this blog since he still occasionally posts some quite useful news. But after a recent increased spate of vitriol aimed at both "creationists" and social conservatives (for some reason, Johnson thinks that the two are one and the same), I decided that while LGF may still from time to time post some insightful commentary or eye-opening facts regarding radical Islam, I don't think the new bent to his site represents this blog enough to link to it any further.

It was interesting and informative to note that he immediately deleted my comment (and my account) on his site stating the aforementioned. Funny how the tolerant can so quickly become intolerant. It's too bad that social conservatives and fiscal conservatives can be at such odds, but perhaps it's all for the better. I hope that the Republican Party does not follow the likes of Johnson into the abyss of social liberalism, or this country will be completely lost. Then again, I suppose it is only a matter of time before America becomes the next Europe; where both parties are basically socialist and liberal. If only people like Mr. Johnson would recognize what created the cultural downfall in Europe in the first place and set it up for the postmodern, multicultural chaos that exists there today.

It is impossible to understate the importance of the next 5-10 years for the Republican Party. Christians should be prepared for the possibility that opposition to abortion and embryonic stem-cell research will no longer be Republican platforms. Life hangs in the balance...

UPDATE: Apparently, as this blogger shows quite well, Charles Johnson is losing respectability in most circles as he careens into vitriolic insanity. It's sad to see such a formerly strong voice of truth slip into irrelevancy.

Here is an interesting link that I saw on a friend's blog. It flips the evolution/creation debate on its head and shows Creationism in a scientific light while depicting evolutionary theory with very religious overtones. Very cool idea!