I'm watching the BBC documentary A War on Science (see below) and it makes me wonder: what do most Adventist scientists think of the church's active involvement in pushing creation science/intelligent design?
From my limited interactions with Adventist scientists they appear to be cautious, thoughtful people. Far from being monolithic in their ideas, their level of enthusiasm for creationism runs a gamut. Some think that the universe was created a few hundreds of thousands of years ago. Others tentatively support young-earth creation. None of them have made dogmatic claims for creation in my presence in the way that many theologians have.
The Adventist church has taken a difficult position for itself. Presenting itself as the ultimate holder of truth, being open to change in light of new scientific discoveries that directly contradict Ellen White or the accepted interpretation of the Bible is nearly untenable.
Many other denominations are embracing the theory of evolution. Adventist schools still teach "we believe in microevolution but not macroevolution."
Some interesting quotes from the film:
"Evolution is no barrier to faith."
-Pope John Paul II
"Intelligent design is going to destroy not just science, but religion."
-Father George Coyne - Jesuit priest and astrophysicist, Director of Vatican Observatory
What will the eventual play out of it be? Will Adventism yield to scientific evidence or will it continue to pride itself as the ultimate purveyor of truth? Considering my personal opinion that people are attracted to the exclusivity of the Advent message by the feeling of self-righteousness it affords them I don't see the church's official position changing. However, those of us who are not first generation and who have had the luxury of time to step back and consider just how "ultimate" the church's truths are may be able to bring some debate and even incremental change to the table.
2 comments:
Great post! Since I majored in chemistry at an Adventist University, I know several Adventist Scientists. Many of those believe in evolution (not just the micro version either). Others, accept all the scientific evidence but admit that it supports Darwinian conclusions. However, they also say that they have hope that new evidence will be found to support the bible. They hope that Darwinian theory will be falsified. I happen to know an Adventist (creationist) paleontologist who hates the SDA science textbooks because they blatantly support theories that have been falsified.
Hey, nice post. It seems that although people have been yakking on this topic forever, there is still a lot to be said. And the post here is another good addition.
Have you been tracking the hefty discussion going on over at the Spectrum blog on the subject?
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