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Here's how you can tell if it's a dream from God or if it's just a dream: If you awake right after that, it's a dream from God, because the Bible says whenever God spoke to His saints through dreams they awakened. They did not stay asleep, they woke up.
-- Benny Hinn, This is Your Day, Trinity Broadcasting Network, March 19, 1997
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News: Teaching evolution at Christian college
Posted on Saturday, February 12 @ 16:01:48 PST by Virgil |
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Professional danger comes in many flavors. While Richard Colling doesn't jump into forest fires or test experimental jets for a living, he does do the academic's equivalent: He teaches biology and evolution at a fundamentalist Christian college.
At Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, he says, ''As soon as you mention evolution in anything louder than a whisper, you have people who aren't very happy.''
And within the larger conservative-Christian community, he adds, ''I've been called some interesting names.''
But those experiences haven't stopped Colling -- who received a Ph.D. in microbiology, chairs the biology department at Olivet Nazarene and is himself a devout, conservative Christian -- from coming out swinging. In his new book, Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Connect with Creator (Browning Press, $18.95), he writes: ''It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods'' when they say evolutionary theory is ''in crisis'' and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. ''Such statements are blatantly untrue,'' he argues. ''Evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny.''
Finds opening in church's stance
His is hardly the standard scientific defense of naturalist Charles Darwin, though. His central claim is that both the origin of life from a primordial goo of nonliving chemicals, and the evolution of species according to the processes of random mutation and natural selection, are ''fully compatible with the available scientific evidence and also contemporary religious beliefs.'' In addition, he says, referring to Christian conservatives, "Denying science makes us look stupid.''
Colling is one of a small number of conservative Christian scholars who are trying to convince biblical literalists that Darwin's theory of evolution is no more the work of the devil than is physicist Isaac Newton's theory of gravity.
Evolution is under assault across the nation, with schools ordering science teachers to raise questions about its validity and, in some cases, teach ''intelligent design,'' which asserts that only a supernatural tinkerer could have produced such coups as the human eye. According to a Gallup poll released last month, only one third of Americans regard Darwin's theory of evolution as well supported by empirical evidence; 45 percent believe God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago.
Usually, the defense of evolution comes from scientists. But Colling has another motivation.
''People should not feel they have to deny reality in order to experience their faith,'' he says.
He offers a rendering of evolution compatible with faith, including his own. The Church of the Nazarene, which runs his university, ''believes in the biblical account of creation,'' explains its manual. ''We oppose a godless interpretation of the evolutionary hypothesis.''
In that small opening, Colling finds a place for God in evolution by positing a ''random designer'' who harnesses the laws of nature he created. ''What the designer designed is the random-design process,'' or Darwinian evolution, Colling says. ''God devised these natural laws, and uses evolution to accomplish his goals.''
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-olivet31.html
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Re: Teaching evolution at Christian college (Score: 1)
 by wilycowboy on Saturday, February 12 @ 19:50:33 PST
(User Info | Send a Message) | | Colling is "out to lunch." His concept of the ''random designer'' is nothing more than the nut cake idea of "Theistic evolution" in new garb. No true evolutionist would accept it and no Christian should accept it as the whole concept makes a complete mockery of the message of the Bible |
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Re: Teaching evolution at Christian college (Score: 1)
by Islamaphobe on Saturday, February 12 @ 20:15:13 PST
(User Info | Send a Message) | | I second the thoughts of the first poster. As a strong believer in applying Ockham's razor to the analysis of cause and effect, I find myself wondering how anyone can claim to believe in a benevolent God and then assume that this same God has designed a universe that operates randomly. How does a random-design process accomplish His goals? If Darwinism is valid, where is the evidence that new species are currently being formed through natural selection? Where are the intermediate forms to demonstrate the creation of new species in the past? How does this guy deal with the criticisms of Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, William Dembski, and many others? What has HE published? Why am I wasting time posting a response to an article as stupid as this one? |
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- by Virgil on Saturday, February 12 @ 20:42:25 PST
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Re: Teaching evolution at Christian college (Score: 1)
 by Mick on Sunday, February 13 @ 00:38:14 PST
(User Info | Send a Message) | We need to be careful about the definitions of the words we use. The scientific observation of evolution, that is change with time, is a fact of science. It is the Theory of Evolution that is in crisis. My children have understood the fact of evolution when they learned about the breeding of collies a few years ago when we acquired a pedigree collie. For a more full explanation of this topic see the following web site. http://doesgodexist.org/SepOct04/MicroMacroingEvolution.html
When the author says, ''It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods'' when they say evolutionary theory is ''in crisis'' and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. ''Such statements are blatantly untrue,'' he argues. ''Evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny.'' It matters how he is using the term evolution.
Although I have not read his book, the some of direct quotes in the article are suspect and do conflict with the teaching of the Bible as well as current scientific understanding of the origin of life on earth. To say that the origin of life from a primordial goo of nonliving chemicals, and the evolution of species according to the processes of random mutation and natural selection, are ''fully compatible with the available scientific evidence and also contemporary religious beliefs.'', is to ignore the scientific and historical evidence. To quote from, http://doesgodexist.org/NovDec03/VisitingTheOriginOfLifeAgain.html
The history of mechanical explanations of the origin of life began with Charles Darwin who proposed in 1871 that life may have emerged from "some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc. present" (Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, New York, D. Appleton, 1887, page 202). In 1924, Alexander Oparin proposed that complex molecules had formed from simple ones by a series of chemical processes. In 1928, J.B.S. Haldane suggested that ultraviolet radiation caused sugars and amino acids to concentrate in oceans in the ancient earth. In the early 1950s, Harold Urey proposed that the earth's ancient atmosphere made life happen, and he directed his student Stanley Miller to do an experiment using gases that Urey thought might work--ammonia, methane, and hydrogen. Miller did the experiment using electrical discharge as the catalyst and was able to detect amino acids in a trap connected to the apparatus. Amino acids are the building blocks of life, so the media picked up on this and headlines like "Scientist Creates Life" appeared around the world. Miller was hailed as having made a great breakthrough, and certainly the fact that simple materials could be used to produce more complex molecules was proven. Transferring this to the ancient earth was difficult, because the apparatus destroyed amino acids 10,000 times faster than it produced them, and thinking of how something on the earth could serve as the trap that Miller used in his apparatus to protect the amino acids from the electrical discharge was very hard to do.
Since 1956 when Miller did all this, research has continued and Miller's experiment has been shown to be almost totally irrelevant to the origin of life. The big problem is that Urey chose the gases that would be used, and assumed that these gases were present in the atmosphere of the newly created earth. The gases that he chose were very active. We heat our homes and cook our food with methane, and hydrogen is an explosive gas--a point made loud and clear when the Hindenburg exploded. Hydrogen is also so light weight, that the earth's gravity cannot hold it, so hydrogen gas in our atmosphere escapes into outer space and could never have been a factor in the make up of the early earth. Ammonia is also a very active material chemically. Just placing ammonia into water causes rapid dissolving and the production of ammonium hydroxide, and ammonia reacts vigorously with any anion. By choosing gases that were ver
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Re: Teaching evolution at Christian college (Score: 1)
by artmel on Sunday, February 13 @ 10:36:13 PST
(User Info | Send a Message) | The Bible says like begets like. Men say like begets different (evolution). Whom should we believe? What a dilemma!
Arthur |
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