(no subject)
This was taken from a letter to Scientific American February 2007. Reprinted without permission.
As an evangelical Christian with a biology background, I appreciate and agree with most of Michael Shermer's column, "Darwin on the Right" (Scientific American, Skeptic, January 2007) , on why Christians should stop opposing evolution. He missed, however, what is in my experience the main reason so mnay Christians hold on so strongly to creationism. That is the belief that if we throw out the literal creation account, then we are opening the door to throwing out the very basis of Christianity, the physical and historical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. As long as the two are linked, conservative Christians can never accept evolution.
Only by decoupling the two issues can Christians accept evolution. Fortunately, this separation has already happened once in Christian history, when the Protestants of the Reformation dropped the belief in the literal transformation of the Eucharist in the Mass. Once they realized that they could rationally take the Eucharist passages figuratively and still take the Resurrection literally, they followed the physical evidence and never looked back. Conservative Christians will not accept evolution until they make the same intellectual leap. How long that will take, only God knows.
-Blake Adams, San Antonio, Texas
Precedence in religion, eh? Thoughts?
As an evangelical Christian with a biology background, I appreciate and agree with most of Michael Shermer's column, "Darwin on the Right" (Scientific American, Skeptic, January 2007) , on why Christians should stop opposing evolution. He missed, however, what is in my experience the main reason so mnay Christians hold on so strongly to creationism. That is the belief that if we throw out the literal creation account, then we are opening the door to throwing out the very basis of Christianity, the physical and historical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. As long as the two are linked, conservative Christians can never accept evolution.
Only by decoupling the two issues can Christians accept evolution. Fortunately, this separation has already happened once in Christian history, when the Protestants of the Reformation dropped the belief in the literal transformation of the Eucharist in the Mass. Once they realized that they could rationally take the Eucharist passages figuratively and still take the Resurrection literally, they followed the physical evidence and never looked back. Conservative Christians will not accept evolution until they make the same intellectual leap. How long that will take, only God knows.
-Blake Adams, San Antonio, Texas
Precedence in religion, eh? Thoughts?