I really enjoy reading contemporary science writers like Hawking and Gould because I can see science today is moving towards a more congruent alignment with our theology. I'm very much looking forward to a discussion with my father on these points.
Here is what irritates me about Sunday School debates about evolution:
1. How many of these people have even read "The Origin of Species." (I myself confess I have never made it all the way through.) Gimmeabreak, how many church members have even read any James Talmadge or John Widsoe?
2. The nerve of humans, fancying themselves to be superior to animals. Just look in today's newspaper and tell me we're not savages. To those who are horrified at the thought that we are descended from monkeys, I reply, "Oh, the poor monkeys!" (Yes, I know that is not what science teaches, but a perusal of Christian bumper stickers tells me some people have learned otherwise.)
3. Most people's thought process is so, well, reductionist. Bumper sticker again: "God said it, I believe it, and that's it." Plus, they are so convinced that they are right and everyone else is wrong that they assume I agree.
Right now, I am reading Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence, and am fascinated with tracing the threads of various schools of thought through the centuries. I was already convinced that we have a ways to go philosophically, and if I hadn't been, this survey of five centuries would do the trick.
Tue Jan 14 2003 17:14:
All of our "truth" is culturally filtered. I think our finite human minds cannot comprehend the universe in any other way. (And some minds are more finite than others!) In this generation, the Church has made great strides towards shedding the Dead White Man paradigm, but so much remains, and we are so steeped in it, we can't even recognize much of it from where we sit. It's going to be very interesting to find out what "the truth" really is.