Replies

Creating Controversy
September 1, 2009
Ever a thorny issue, the teaching of evolutionary biology at a small Christian university in California has sparked debate on the campus and ...” [snip]
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/01/evolution

One interesting comment:

This is not a small controversy—
Posted by Theistic Evolutionist on September 1, 2009 at 12:15pm EDT

This controversy is very important, for two reasons.
One: The Seventh-Day Adventists run a chain of hospitals nationwide. These hospitals are staffed with Adventist-trained doctors, nurses, technicians, and other medical personnel. These hospitals often provide the only medical care available in rural areas. Their doctors also practice in the surrounding community. If all these persons reject evolutionary biology, what effect might that have on the quality of their medical care? Is it possible to practice modern medicine while rejecting evolutionary biology? I really don’t see how.

Two: It is perfectly possible to be a Christian while accepting the theory of evolution as the best scientific account of the origin of life on earth and its subsequent development into complex life forms, including Homo sapiens sapiens. In fact, the majority of Christians worldwide see no incompatibiility between religion and science with respect to evolutionary biology. This is not a new thing. St. Augustine argued for a form of evolutionary theory more than 1500 years ago. So this is not a dispute between religion and secularism.

It is a dispute between one form of Christianity — a particular, modern form that is no more than 150 years old — and everyone else, including almost all other Christians and almost all other non-Christian religious faiths.