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edwest2
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Fundamentalists? What’s that?
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Ed
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jonathan_hili
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Fundamentalists are a group of Christians in the US (I think primarily the southern states) who got their name from a book of edited essays called The Fundamentals, published in the early 20th century. The book basically contained a lot of traditional Christian doctrine and held these fundamental teachings as true, e.g. the literal resurrection of Christ, the Fall, etc., when they were being challenged by other Christian circles. I think, if I remember rightly, the essays came out of Princeton Theological Seminary.
These days, Fundamentalists get a bad rap for being extremely conservative, young earth creationists, seemingly narrow-minded and literalistic in theological matters, and so on.
I don’t know any Fundamentalists so really can’t say. I don’t think they like Catholics much, though!
Karl Keating wrote the classic text combating Fundamentalism: Catholicism And Fundamentalism.
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rossum
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You are being lied to by creationist websites. Evolution is good science.
False. You are being lied to again by those creationist websites. When I use Google Scholar (scholar.google.com/) to search for “evolution”, I get 3,930,000 hits. When I search for “intelligent design” I get 34,900 hits.
I would go on for longer, but there is currently a moratorium on the discussion of evolution.
Why do you believe websites that lie to you?
rossum
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clem456
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I kknow a fundamentalist rather well. He is Baptist and subscribes to the young earth, and literalist biblical interpretation. He mistrusts science anytime it comes up against literalist bible interpretation.
And that’s the heart of his view of science right there…mistrust. He has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. He does not like Catholicism, although we get along fine. Catholicism is too reasonable for him. It appreciates the gifts of reason and science more than he can allow. (He does like his bible interpretation though, despite that fact that it didn’t land here from outerspace complete.)
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jonathan_hili
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It’s sad when Christians see our reason and rational understanding of the world (for example, through the scientific method) as hostile to the faith. Why on earth would God give us our minds!
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Charlemagne_II
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jonathan
**It’s sad when Christians see our reason and rational understanding of the world (for example, through the scientific method) as hostile to the faith. Why on earth would God give us our minds! **
Yet I see many ways that science has been misused as a weapon against religion. Some scientists have been doing this since Darwin’s day. Look at Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking, for just two examples living in our own time. The distrust of science is not warranted so much as the distrust of scientists who draw false and sometimes even stupid conclusions from their science.
**It’s sad when Christians see our reason and rational understanding of the world (for example, through the scientific method) as hostile to the faith. Why on earth would God give us our minds! **
Yet I see many ways that science has been misused as a weapon against religion. Some scientists have been doing this since Darwin’s day. Look at Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking, for just two examples living in our own time. The distrust of science is not warranted so much as the distrust of scientists who draw false and sometimes even stupid conclusions from their science.
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RPRPsych
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I think the co-opting of science by the atheist / secular humanist movement is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Remember, the world’s worst atheistic regime (that of Stalin) actually denounced mainstream biological science, including evolutionary theory, and subscribed to pseudo-science such as Lysenkoism, to their own confusion.
Many scientists are theists (or even Christians) and see little conflict between their faith and their beliefs, though they recognize that there are areas where much is still unknown.
Unfortunately, the issue has been politicized by secular liberals on one hand, and Jack Chick Protestants on the other. This leads to the first group accepting every speculation as “fact”, and the second rejecting science outright and making God look like a cover-up artist. Neither view is tenable, and both are repugnant to faith as well as reason.
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edwest2
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And widely publicize their ideas via books, the internet and TV. Science good. Criticizing a being you think is mythical, bad.
Peace,
Ed
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edwest2
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What’s wrong with being extremely conservative? And what’s wrong with believing in a young earth? even the Church hasn’t decided that one. Literalistic? Like what? All the miracles Jesus actually did or just the book of Genesis?
Peace,
Ed
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Ion
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I do not think is a good think the Church to be involved with ID; in the case of a mistake, this will be remembered ohohoho, like the one in the Galileo trial. Atheists have no problems with their mistakes; people forget them alltogether after their natural death.
Also there is this bothering thing: when the Vatican astronomer said something from his particulars views, everybody jumped “Vatican says…” The same when a catholic says something, more or less. Somehow we must asknowledge the slack we are given, and the fact that we express personal opinions
Also there is this bothering thing: when the Vatican astronomer said something from his particulars views, everybody jumped “Vatican says…” The same when a catholic says something, more or less. Somehow we must asknowledge the slack we are given, and the fact that we express personal opinions
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RPRPsych
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edwest2
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Many scientists are theists? Do you have a source for that?I think the co-opting of science by the atheist / secular humanist movement is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Remember, the world’s worst atheistic regime (that of Stalin) actually denounced mainstream biological science, including evolutionary theory, and subscribed to pseudo-science such as Lysenkoism, to their own confusion.
Many scientists are theists (or even Christians) and see little conflict between their faith and their beliefs, though they recognize that there are areas where much is still unknown.
Unfortunately, the issue has been politicized by secular liberals on one hand, and Jack Chick Protestants on the other. This leads to the first group accepting every speculation as “fact”, and the second rejecting science outright and making God look like a cover-up artist. Neither view is tenable, and both are repugnant to faith as well as reason.
stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html
What was ‘covered up’?
Peace,
Ed
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clem456
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I don’t want to derail the thread with this one topic, but this is a good example of science giving irrefutable proof that the biblical timeline in Genesis is metaphorical (not the same thing as being false!).
There is a mountain (no pun intended) of geologic evidence that the earth is in fact several billion years old. It’s grounded in solid chemistry, physics and geography.
And that does not detract from Genesis or our faith in general one bit. The truth in Genesis is not based on historical fact. God is not bound by historical facts.
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RPRPsych
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- “Greater” or “leading” scientists is a biased sample. Who is “great”?
- A US sample from 1914 is hardly conclusive. What about samples from other countries? Across a range of natural sciences?
- Gould is an agnostic himself; he’s hardly an unbiased source.
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Al_Moritz
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About 40 % of all scientists believe in a personal, active God:
adventistreview.org/2002-1526/story2-2.html
I have read the Nature article myself, the representation is correct. See also:
mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/sciandf/contrib/clari.txt
researchmagazine.uga.edu/97su/faith.html
Discrepancy between Gallup poll and Leuba:
ncse.com/rncse/18/2/do-scientists-really-reject-god
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Ion
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We just have to stress one of the 2 points of view of any opinion: the “scientific view” of our opinion, together with the proven fact that scientific opinions were so many times wrong and are always changeable, vs the religious view which is always true and unchangable. The trouble comes by mixing them in the area of what we think is true.
My scientific view of the world history is about 65 hundred years…
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edwest2
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But Catholics can believe in a young earth.
"The Time Question
“Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeared. The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago.”
If Jesus was not a historical fact, our faith is in vain.
Peace,
Ed
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clem456
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I understand your point 100%. God is unchangeable and always at the center of everything. Science is fallible to one degree or another.
Some facts are easily observable, or provable. The sun comes up on the east horizon for instance.
Similarly, the geologic time-table is very well documented and the science is really beyond question, give or take a few million years.
None of this detracts from God’s plan (absurd, nothing detracts from God), our understanding of the world around us simply develops over time. Does it change God for us to understand that the 7 days of Genesis is really 4.5 billion years?
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Ion
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You see, that “really” is the trouble, scientific truth is relative and changeable. All you have to add to be fair is a sentence like “as the scientists now consider” or something like that.
Muslims always say some kind of “peace be with him” when they mention Mohamed. I think it may be useful to do in the same manner when we mention a scientific opinion, because it’s not an absolute truth.
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clem456
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I understand the point you are trying to make about scientific truth, but consider this question:
Would you run cross the interstate at rush hour?
No? Why not? Do you trust the research your eyes and senses have taught you? How about the science done in collision labs? I don’t know about you, but I trust that science to help inform me about the world God made. This is not about having perfect information (no such thing), or all the info, but information that should be used by our reason. We have to make wise judgements given the information we have.
Part of trusting God is to also trust the common sense of the observable world. The world, the reason we use, science, are all gifts from God. We trust other people all the time, constantly.
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