Friday, May 07, 2010

More on Evolution

The South Australian government has forbidden the teaching of intelligent design and creationism in public schools (though allowing it in religious education). On the same topic, I thought I would point to an interesting article by David Vinson at BioLogos about Allaying Parental Fears About Evolution Education in Public School which prompts some thoughtful remarks in the comments section too.

5 comments:

Bruce J. Russell, Sr. said...

Naturalistic views of the past are the foundation for naturalistic views of the future. The creation has ample evidence of the eternal power and divinity of its Creator: the concept of light years, for example. If God wanted to make the earth look 7000 years old he could have, and it would have a more plastic look and feel. Dig into the evidence for earth's age. But don't expect origins to be any less confounding than destiny. Our children need to understand just how amazing the original creation and the resurrection of all things really are. This is an amazement far beyond what science can offer.

Matt Viney said...

I read some of the comments under the article. This is why so many evangelicals in Australia don't want to openly talk about the subject: it just opens up a can of worms that's hard to close.

Judy Redman said...

I don't see any reason why creation should be taught in a science classroom - it isn't science. Further, if you teach biblical creationism or intelligent design as part of the science curriculum, you also need to be prepared to teach the explanations of how the universe came into being from other religious traditions. However, I think the science curriculum should require that the gaps in the theory of evolution are pointed out. If it were taught that this is how scientists think the world came into being, but that the theory doesn't explain several siginficant aspects of this, then there would be far less problem for people who have faith positions on how the world came into being.

John Thomson said...

'If God wanted to make the earth look 7000 years old he could have, and it would have a more plastic look and feel.'

Why so? The wine at Cana didn't seem synthetic. If God creates something already 'aged' presumably he can do so authentically.

Bruce J. Russell, Sr. said...

John: I think what I'm trying to say is that if you suppose that supernatural creation did not occur, then you must assume that the universe is billions of years old, you replace God with unfathomable lengths of time. Scientists tell me that many features of the earth appear to be millions of years old. I say, what did you expect? But aren't you using human instruments to measure God? -- Bruce

P.S.: If I don't make sense then ignore me.