An Evolution for Sunday

Sean McDowell recently wrote a column about the Clergy Letter Project's Evolution Sunday, a day in which churches and their members can have a "serious discussion and reflection on the relationship between religion and science". I believe this was an attempt to honestly raise the bar of discussion about evolution and its compatibility with Christianity to a largely unscientific and layman audience.

I believe that many church leaders are weary of the Kent Hovinds and Ken Hams setting up shop with bizarre pseudoscience. Luckily, they don't do much for promoting creationism and finally church leaders are beginning to see that.

Sean McDowell is obviously afraid of opening up a dialogue such as this. He writes "Would they be open to hear the view of someone in favor of intelligent design or creation science? Probably not. It's the same old liberal tolerance trick that pretneds ot be open-minded but is really close-minded, exclusivist, and intolerant".

It's easy to take this road; the Liberals and their intolerant tolerance! Very simply and honestly: it comes down to accurate science and sound theory. Why do creationists never get published in leading scientific journals? Because they practice unsound scientific theory.

To me, it makes no difference if you're a creationist or a centrist or even a light healer. If you can produce a scientifically valid and sound paper supporting your hypothesis, that draws on previous research and is reproducible, then fantastic! Submit and see what happens.

The Evolutionists (I feel uncomfortable using this term, because it denotes that there are a gang of us out there with sticks), maybe I'll say Scientists, have already done this.

But then Sean gets to the point of his column:

"We must educate ourselves, and in particular, our youth, to think clearly about creation, design and the philosophy of science. That's why I'm writing a book with William Dembski...."

This is where I lost interest. Any time someone mentions William Dembski in a favorable light in a science column, I have to tune out, otherwise I start to lose faith in the human race.

We're getting to the main point of this article: He's writing a book he wants to sell! And, he wants to help us: "To simplify some of the complex scientific facts that challenge Darwinian evolution and support design".

A side note here: Why does McDowell refer to evolution as Darwinian Evolution? There's only one kind of evolution, which was proposed by Charles Darwin, has had numerous changes to it and now exists as the Theory of Evolution.

Another side note here: Good science always changes - as new research becomes available to build on old science, science changes. That's good.

However, good science does not write books that simplifies complex scientific facts that have already been falsified, discredited or are simply untrue. That's misleading. Or propaganda. Or indoctrination.

McDowell ends with this - "Creation is not only true, but we can know it to be true through special and general revelation (Rom 1)".

Now we really get down to it. Evolution is not "true" because it's not in the bible. Is this the standard by which McDowell judges the "truth" of things?