It’s time for evangelicals to come out for evolution

ABP News ^ | 06/17/2014 | Chuck Queen

[SeekAndFind]

Whenever I engage in conversation with people I meet for the first time I try to avoid being asked the question, “What do you do for a living?” But if I am asked I say, “I am a minister.” Generally, the one who asks then inquires, “What denomination?” or “What kind of church?”

Here is where I always have to clarify, depending on the most recent news headline involving Christian leaders: “I am a Baptist minister, but I am not a science-denying Baptist minister who thinks that dinosaurs lived alongside humans a few thousand years ago.”

What a strange irony that a 30-foot-long fossil of an Allosaurus will be on display at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., where museum founder, Ken Ham, recently debated science educator Bill Nye. Ken Ham and his colleagues think it defends the book of Genesis and supplies evidence of Noah’s flood. Good grief.

Unfortunately, this is real life, not a Charlie Brown cartoon. According to a recent survey by the Associated Press, 77 percent of people who claim to be born again or evangelical say they have little or no confidence that the universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang. And 76 percent of evangelicals doubt that life on Earth, including human beings, evolved through a process of natural selection.

Educated evangelicals know better. According to Newsweek 99 percent of America’s earth and life scientists hold to some form of evolution. Darrel Falk, a biology professor at evangelical Point Loma Nazarene University, told Cathy Grossman of the Religion News Service, that many biblical (evangelical) scholars do not see a conflict between religion and science. He noted: “The story of the cosmos and the Big Bang of creation is not inconsistent with the message of Genesis 1.”

I suspect that many (if not most) educated evangelical biblical scholars who subscribe to some form of biblical inerrancy (and sign faith statements testifying to that fact) believe what professor Falk believes.

They know there are different kinds (genres) of biblical literature which call for different approaches other than a literal interpretation of the text. They know that the creation stories are parabolic in nature and are not chronicles of history or reports conveying scientific data. They know that these stories are spiritual, metaphorical and theological stories and, while not factual, they certainly teach truth about God and God’s relationship to the world.

They know Ken Ham’s claim that “no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record” is utter foolishness.

Harvard theologian Harvey Cox tells about the time the student leader of Harvard’s atheist group on campus took one of his theology classes. This otherwise bright student wrote a very weak paper in which he sought to discredit the God of the Christian and Jewish faiths by attacking and dismantling a literal interpretation of the Genesis flood story. He thought that by proving the story could not have happened the way the story says it happened, he would thus disprove the reality of God.

Dr. Cox said to the student, “Don’t you know a story when you read one?”

Educated evangelicals know that the creation stories were never intended to be history lessons or science reports, because the Bible is not a history or science book.

Educated evangelicals also know:

• That evangelical Christians need not fear or deny the enormous amount of scientific data supporting evolution.

• That the story of evolution and the biblical story are not mutually exclusive.

• That a healthy faith welcomes and is informed by science.

So why do so many evangelicals deny evolution and believe in a literal interpretation of the creation stories in Genesis?

Apparently what educated evangelical professors know and believe is not getting down to the people in the pew.

Why aren’t educated evangelical pastors teaching their churches these things? Are they afraid of being shunned or looked down upon by their peers? Are they afraid to rock the evangelical boat? Are they afraid of facing conflict in their churches or losing their jobs? Are the professors actually teaching what they believe and know to their students?

Whatever the reasons, it’s time for evangelicals who know the truth to come out and proclaim the truth. If the truth sets us free, as Jesus said, then many of our evangelical sisters and brothers need to hear a liberating word from their pastors.

OPINION: Views expressed in ABPnews/Herald columns and commentaries are solely those of the authors.

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Chuck Queen is pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Frankfort, Ky., and author of Being a Progressive Christian (is not) for Dummies (nor for know-it-alls): An Evolution of Faith.

[editor-surveyor]

Get a clue!

Nothing of God is hidden.
.

[Alamo-Girl]

So, the creator who didn't create sent his son for a problem that didn't exist to a world that was humming along as happenstance came about.

LOLOL! Well said, dear brother in Christ!

[Alamo-Girl]

VERY, very well said, dear brother in Christ! Thank you!

[TXnMA]

Hosepipe, you wrote:

"Historically; I cannot get any traction on this subject.. i.e. born again.."

"Understandable too.. it being so personal..
Seem to most it’s merely a bible meme.. they havn’t thought deeply about.. Or deem it as a magical or miraclous event in their lives they cannot (actually) explain.."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I believe I owe you an apology for the way I ended my #115 -- so, I DO apologize!

Silly me! In a thread on evolution, I understood that your "Is being born again.... EVOLUTION!?.... survival of the fittest?.. Intelligent design?..."
-- meant you wanted to discuss "EVOLUTION".

And -- I must admit that your smart#$$3d

"please try to pay attention.." remark --

-- after a long drive, a L-O-N-G wait (in a no-internet waiting room) trying to find out why I have lost much of the feeling in my left hand -- triggered an unworthy response in me. So, again, I apologize. I am not "done with you" (but I would prefer to end the discussion of "evolution" as [un]related to "the New Birth"). -- OK?--

---

If you are seriously interested in understanding "New Birth" (which, as you have observed, is a deeply personal subject) I will be more than happy to help you by sharing my own experience and explaining it as clearly as I can.

BTW, I appreciate MHGinTN's "raccoon" and "phase shift" analogy attempts toward that end, and I'm willing to enter into personal, friendly, open conversation (with no "sniping" from either side) with you. I will do my best to help you understand -- and -- unapologetically -- try to guide you to attain -- your own personal experience of the New Birth.

If that is what you truly want, just say so -- and let's begin...

TXnMA

[Alamo-Girl]

This phase shift via individual choice should not startle modern humans since Physics has shown that even the observer effects the outcome merely by observing.

Great point, dear brother in Christ! Thank you for sharing your insights!

[TXnMA]

Since I mentioned you in # 144, here;s your courtesy ping to it...

[TXnMA]

FReepMails for you...

[Alamo-Girl]

Dear hosepipe, you've spoken several times about the donkey/rider metaphor - that the body is the donkey and the person is the rider. You've also mentioned the stark difference between the person looking into the mirror and the physical body looking back at him.

With those concepts in mind I'd like to revisit MHGinTN's mention of being born again as a kind of "phase shift."

Indeed, one of my favorite geometric physicists, P.S. Wesson, posits that physical death itself may be a phase change:

We review the idea, due to Einstein, Eddington, Hoyle and Ballard, that time is a subjective label, whose primary purpose is to order events, perhaps in a higher-dimensional universe. In this approach, all moments in time exist simultaneously, but they are ordered to create the illusion of an unfolding experience by some physical mechanism. This, in the language of relativity, may be connected to a hypersurface in a world that extends beyond spacetime. Death in such a scenario may be merely a phase change.

Time as an Illusion

Being 'born again' is very much like that, like dying while yet alive or being alive but in a different phase to this world. Things are just things, our perspective changes, and we are different to observers still "in" phase with the physical world. We're here but not here.

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. - Colossians 3:3

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20

Just as Jesus promised:

Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. - John 3:7-8

We are truly His because of that rebirth:

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. - Romans 8:9

God's Name is I AM.

[TXnMA]

For a first-personal, eye (and hand) witness testimony re the Paluxy River "man tracks", I heartily recommend that you read my #100 on this thread.

I will swear to those observations in any court of law.

I felt the fresh chisel marks in the (muddy-water-filled, 3' above an nearly dry river -- in a drought) newly-carved "man track" on the WRONG side of that flipped slab. And it was my F-I-L's pocketknife I borrowed to demonstrate to him that the largest "Giant Man Track" was actually carved in MUD. I stuck it in to the full depth of its longest blade -- before I carved my "X" across the abomination.

By the way, guess whose name was on that "Bauanthropus" plaque?

I know who the "deliberate deceiver" really is. And I know who has made his shameful, scamful living off of that phony museum.

And -- I am a Christian, who believes devoutly in our Creator and His Creation.

Any questions?

[hosepipe]

With those concepts in mind I'd like to revisit MHGinTN’s mention of being born again as a kind of “phase shift.”

---

I dig “phase shifts”... but it's a bit too high flautin for me..

Easier for me to envision a Space Suit for the the spirit..
so the spirit can function in three dimensions..
but Donkey/Rider also works..

Wish I could display my vision(s) that I had(on that).. BUT
many don't even believe in “visions”.. like me; I didn't either until I had one....lol. (actually several)..

Be hard for someone to convince me there is no such thing as “the spirit”... I was “there”..

Basically these convos are just entertainment to me...
But If had the freedom to do it.. it might blow a few minds the way things really are.. (that I SAW)..

I asked the Holy Spirit after them(visions) what was THAT all about..
Should I go go tell somebody about what I saw.. and Why? ME?..
The HS said you have been praying for this info for at least 40 years.. and you ask why?.. we both laughed(at least I did)..

“His” response was quite humorous.. “Go tell them or not.. because “they” will not believe you anyway”..

I like that “guy” the Holy Spirit.. so practical and even funny..
Because what I saw was quite different than anything I imagined in my wildest “perceptions”..

So different I cannot reveal them even to you.. my precious friend..

[TXnMA]

No "BS" -- just fact. Remember, I was taken there by my F-I-L, who had helped Baugh by lifting and turning over foot-thick limestone slabs for him. After our visit to the site, even he rejected Baugh's claims, as well.

"Compression analysis"?? Faking paper is no (moral or physical) challenge at all for someone who will fake "Giant Man Tracks" -- as I observed directly.

Oh -- and you might want to visit Creation.com, which has this to say about Baugh and his claims:

"Many of Carl Baugh’s creation ‘evidences’. Sorry to say, we think that he’s well meaning but that he unfortunately uses a lot of material that is not sound scientifically. So we advise against relying on any ‘evidence’ he provides, unless supported by creationist organisations with reputations for Biblical and scientific rigour. Unfortunately, there are talented creationist speakers with reasonably orthodox understandings of Genesis who continue to promote some of the Wyatt and Baugh ‘evidences’ despite being approached on the matter."

"Well meaning?" Hardly. "Tool of Satan" is more apropos...

But, go ahead and delude yourself. No doubt, it makes you feel "holier" than us mere Christians who testify to the truth... Enjoy the feeling -- for now... You'll get the chance to plead your case before the One who Knows the truth. Good luck with that.

[hosepipe]

No worries.. (( hug ))

[editor-surveyor]

Your false accusations will be your alone to account for when you stand at the Great White Throne.

I’m sure that this doesn’t bother you any more than it bothers your Father-in-law, and that is what is going to make that show so satisfying.

Creation.com is much like sopes.

[TXnMA]

Thank you. I will be praying for you...

[Alamo-Girl]

I recall your talking about some of this years ago. The part about your laughing also tickled me.

May God always bless you, dear hosepipe!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for sharing your insights and that link, dear brother in Christ!

[hosepipe]

I may have been a little too honest in that post...
Who would believe it... or even care...