2 posts tagged “evolution”
christianity has two enduring, but acute problems, both exacerbated by modernity.
the first is the question of origins -- how the universe began. sending our children into the society without the equipment to think-through the modern view of origins is like placing them outside naked in the winter. once they see the staggering proof for the age of the earth and the veracity in the claims of the movement of change, and once they see how this does not jive with what they were taught in the church, it throws everything else under the bus as well?
second, is the problem of evil, most seriously expressed in the shoah. nothing, and i mean nothing has called into question the sovereignty of God, the providence of God, the goodness of God and the power of God like the ashes of auschwitz. this catastrophe continues to be a serious blow to all current theological work, that at best trivializes it, and at worst, makes it obscene. (go here: http://www.ethicsdaily.com/article_detail.cfm?AID=10652).
as irving greenberg said, speaking about the shoah: "let us offer, then, as a working principle the following: no statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children."
here, here.
Two books might help us:
I weary of the seeming constant yammer of the creation/evolution debate. I weary of the evangelical requirement to check my brain at the door of the church. I weary of the fear and distain many of the churched have for those in the sciences. I weary of science’s fear of the church, built on the puny shoulders of Hitchens and Dawkins, who build arguments against straw men and state and restate the threadbare mantra that religion does bad things, when everyone know the greatest bloodletting of the 20th century were done by confirmed secularists and atheists! I weary of the lack of conversation between science and religion. I long for an openness and understanding, a dialogue based upon mutual respect and adherence to the notion, on the side of religion that all truth is God’s truth -- so science must be given freedom to explore and explore, and on the side of science that they (and their technological cousins) do not have all the answers -- so that religion can come to the table not with the how of things (say of origins) but perhaps the why...