Reba said:
The conflict is not between science and religion. God Himself gave us the brains for scientific thought, and He established the natural laws that science makes use of. Many of the great scientists and explorers of the past were fundamental Christians in faith and practice. Many great scientists and explorers of today are also fundamental Christians. No conflict.
The conflict comes from those who want to discredit the basic truths of the Bible.
That's certainly not my goal. The central ideas (which were God's whole point in giving us the Bible) are timeless.
However, you'd be amazed how many times I've been treated like an apostate or demon for thinking as I do--to be condemned by the people who are
supposed to be your brothers and sisters in Christ is incredibly cruel. You'd think these people WANTED me to burn in Hell just so they could feel better about themselves. Excuse the bitterness...but that happened once in a Sunday school class where I was ganged up on so much that I came away with an impression that if Christian behavior was that bad, then I wanted to keep my distance from it.
While that's changed, people need to realize just how much of an impact their behavior has on others. These people thought that somehow they'd save my soul by belittling me. And that's the sad part.
Evolution theory also puts man in the category of "just another animal". Of course, we don't hold animals responsible for their behaviors. We can't expect man to be monogamous because he is "just an animal." If a person is elderly or severely handicapped, they should be "put down" like an animal. Some people consider "pets" and "people" to be "equal".
In my view, that's
decontextualized science. Before the Enlightenment, there was far less of a division line between the physical, philosophical, and theological sciences, and I take a similar approach--I see all three as needing each other in order to make any sense.
I look at physical sciences if I want to understand the processes of
how we were created, and the laws of the physical environment. I look to philosophy if I want to understand the logic by which things happen, and those laws. And I look to theology to understand the spirit and God. To me they're outgrowths of the same central discipline and have to be treated as belonging together. To divorce physical sciences from the rest, and worship them, is a mistake--but so too is divorcing theology from the rest and acting as if the physical environment doesn't exist and doesn't have a logic. They were all created by the same Creator, and in remembering that, nothing the other two sciences (philosophy and physical science) can show is a problem.
Reba said:
It's true that the early readers of God's Word didn't all have the same scientific knowledge with which we are blessed but God certainly had all the facts when He gave us His Word. There are no "mistakes" in God's account of creation.
If God gave His account of creation today, do you think it would be any more accepted by sceptics if He put it into a deeply detailed scientific format, full of formulas, charts, measurements, DNA diagrams, chemical breakdowns, step-by-step processes, spectrographs, and 3-D videos on a DVD?
Where did I deny that God had any less knowledge of the facts? I only suggest that He chose an "age-appropriate" way to explain things (if you consider the "age" of society), no different than when you tell your children about a difficult concept in very simplistic terms. As they get older, they learn more and more of the facts, and that's what I see us as doing...now that we're "older", we're learning more and more about the mechanisms God actually used to do what He did.
There would always be skeptics. But (on a lighter note) that DVD might not be a bad idea...
