Letter to my pastor concerning "The Truth Project"
Posted: March 13th, 2008, 8:06 amP.S. a google on "The Truth Project" will find this rather quickly.
I was rather disturbed by our meeting on Wednesday. The video made me so furious that I am begining to doubt whether I can continue to participate in this. My respect for the program is demolished and being subjected to such one-sided rhetoric is not a pleasant way to spend the evening (as much as I might like the company).
I certainly don't expect you to accept my point of view. I remain committed to the belief that the Bible is the word of God and that no matter what we may believe about evolution or creation, it is to the Bible that we must steadfastly point as the guide that God prepared to bring us to Him. However I think you should understand my point of view because it represents one way that a scientist can be a Christian and I don't think that is door that should be locked, especially if you are committed to this idea of making your church a place where one can be comfortable no matter what you believe.
First of all, "Intellegent Design" is NOT a scientific theory because it doesn't EXPLAIN anything, but simply says that there is something there that cannot be explained. It may be great for the theological task of arguing that God must exist, but it doesn't get the scientist anywhere. Furthermore, putting it up as a scientific theory basically implies that one cannot pursue scientific investigations of the origins of life without being in opposition to a belief in God as the creator. I think that is fundamentally wrong and that it is destructively divisive of Chrisitanity, because I am confident that there will continue to be scientists who believe and come to believe in God despite their rejection of the validity of Intellegent Design as a scientific theory.
The scientist pursues his work with the faith that we can discover how (most) thing happen because (most) things do not occur by some mysterious unexplainable action of God. (I interject most because the scientist is restricted to those things which they can examine in a repeatable manner. No they cannot judge the validity of miracles and cannot examine the historical events by which a species actually came into being. But they can examine processes by which new species do come into being.) Yes, this does mean that their explanations will provide atheists with the ammunition they need to justify their argument that they do not need God to explain anything. But I don't think that the explanation of natural pheneomena is the proper role of God, and making God depend on such a role will just put Christianity in a rather precarious position. Belief in God simply has to come from the recognition of a whole other aspect to life outside the physical and material - otherwise I simply don't see the point of it.
I firmly believe that for these reasons the scientific community as a whole will never accept Intellegent Design as a legitimate scientific theory, no matter what scientists may be found to support it. An this is NOT because they are a bunch of God hating atheists, but because it runs counter to the whole history and methodology of modern science. I have no doubt that scientists will come up with explanations to fill in those gaps we see in theories at this point. But I also have no doubt that more gaps will appear, because I am quite certain that the things they are attempting to explain are far more complex and difficult than they imagine. This is not a problem for them because this is the part of the purpose of their work, to discover the questions that they have not yet imagined.
Furthermore I have fundamental religious objections to the idea of intellegent design. Just as many Christians feel horror at the way evolution identifies human beings with the animals, I feel an even greater horror at the way Design identifies human beings with machines and robots. This is why I feel both views are fundamentally flawed by their treatment of living things as inanimate. Both the evolutionist and the creationist sees them as coming into being by processes that operate on them rather than as something which they are a part of. Both views necessarily give ultimate responsiblity for everything to these external forces. Only by being a part of this process of creation through growth and learning, can living things and human beings in particular be responsible for what they do.
In this way I think we can not only steer between these false views of man as animal or robot (because we are not fully a product of either biology or God alone), but also resolve some other difficulties. One is the origin of evil and the other is this alienation we have from the rest of life on the planet. In this view it becomes rather easy to see how we and not God can truly be responsible for the existence of evil in our world. This view also reveals how we are a part of the life on the planet. The intricate interdependencies of living species on our planet really make us one unified whole and that by destroying parts of it and poisoning it, we are destroying and poisoning ourselves. Is this an entirely un-Biblical point of view? Have you ever asked yourself why God destroyed not only human beings but all the animals with them as well in the flood? Could it be that God really saw them all as one and the same thing?
As a result, if there is no fundamental difference between living things and machines then I really see no point in religion at all. So yes I believe that God designed the universe for the purpose of life and that God created all living things - but that He created them through an intimate realtionship and not as a designer. I feel that our relationship with God is like that of parent and child and not like that of carpenter and puppet. Inanimate objects like tools are created only to serve a purpose and no more, but a child is created to be served - to be loved - nurtured and cared for. In other words, the creation of the child is its own purpose, because this work of creation is really is a neverending process, especially between finite human beings and an infinite God.
I was rather disturbed by our meeting on Wednesday. The video made me so furious that I am begining to doubt whether I can continue to participate in this. My respect for the program is demolished and being subjected to such one-sided rhetoric is not a pleasant way to spend the evening (as much as I might like the company).
I certainly don't expect you to accept my point of view. I remain committed to the belief that the Bible is the word of God and that no matter what we may believe about evolution or creation, it is to the Bible that we must steadfastly point as the guide that God prepared to bring us to Him. However I think you should understand my point of view because it represents one way that a scientist can be a Christian and I don't think that is door that should be locked, especially if you are committed to this idea of making your church a place where one can be comfortable no matter what you believe.
First of all, "Intellegent Design" is NOT a scientific theory because it doesn't EXPLAIN anything, but simply says that there is something there that cannot be explained. It may be great for the theological task of arguing that God must exist, but it doesn't get the scientist anywhere. Furthermore, putting it up as a scientific theory basically implies that one cannot pursue scientific investigations of the origins of life without being in opposition to a belief in God as the creator. I think that is fundamentally wrong and that it is destructively divisive of Chrisitanity, because I am confident that there will continue to be scientists who believe and come to believe in God despite their rejection of the validity of Intellegent Design as a scientific theory.
The scientist pursues his work with the faith that we can discover how (most) thing happen because (most) things do not occur by some mysterious unexplainable action of God. (I interject most because the scientist is restricted to those things which they can examine in a repeatable manner. No they cannot judge the validity of miracles and cannot examine the historical events by which a species actually came into being. But they can examine processes by which new species do come into being.) Yes, this does mean that their explanations will provide atheists with the ammunition they need to justify their argument that they do not need God to explain anything. But I don't think that the explanation of natural pheneomena is the proper role of God, and making God depend on such a role will just put Christianity in a rather precarious position. Belief in God simply has to come from the recognition of a whole other aspect to life outside the physical and material - otherwise I simply don't see the point of it.
I firmly believe that for these reasons the scientific community as a whole will never accept Intellegent Design as a legitimate scientific theory, no matter what scientists may be found to support it. An this is NOT because they are a bunch of God hating atheists, but because it runs counter to the whole history and methodology of modern science. I have no doubt that scientists will come up with explanations to fill in those gaps we see in theories at this point. But I also have no doubt that more gaps will appear, because I am quite certain that the things they are attempting to explain are far more complex and difficult than they imagine. This is not a problem for them because this is the part of the purpose of their work, to discover the questions that they have not yet imagined.
Furthermore I have fundamental religious objections to the idea of intellegent design. Just as many Christians feel horror at the way evolution identifies human beings with the animals, I feel an even greater horror at the way Design identifies human beings with machines and robots. This is why I feel both views are fundamentally flawed by their treatment of living things as inanimate. Both the evolutionist and the creationist sees them as coming into being by processes that operate on them rather than as something which they are a part of. Both views necessarily give ultimate responsiblity for everything to these external forces. Only by being a part of this process of creation through growth and learning, can living things and human beings in particular be responsible for what they do.
In this way I think we can not only steer between these false views of man as animal or robot (because we are not fully a product of either biology or God alone), but also resolve some other difficulties. One is the origin of evil and the other is this alienation we have from the rest of life on the planet. In this view it becomes rather easy to see how we and not God can truly be responsible for the existence of evil in our world. This view also reveals how we are a part of the life on the planet. The intricate interdependencies of living species on our planet really make us one unified whole and that by destroying parts of it and poisoning it, we are destroying and poisoning ourselves. Is this an entirely un-Biblical point of view? Have you ever asked yourself why God destroyed not only human beings but all the animals with them as well in the flood? Could it be that God really saw them all as one and the same thing?
As a result, if there is no fundamental difference between living things and machines then I really see no point in religion at all. So yes I believe that God designed the universe for the purpose of life and that God created all living things - but that He created them through an intimate realtionship and not as a designer. I feel that our relationship with God is like that of parent and child and not like that of carpenter and puppet. Inanimate objects like tools are created only to serve a purpose and no more, but a child is created to be served - to be loved - nurtured and cared for. In other words, the creation of the child is its own purpose, because this work of creation is really is a neverending process, especially between finite human beings and an infinite God.