What do you mean by “special creationism”?

I use the “special” description chiefly to distinguish it from “evolutionary”, as in “evolutionary creationism”, which is a bit of a euphemism for “theistic evolution”. Special creationism is the idea that natural processes alone cannot account for biodiversity and required special intervention from God, whereas “evolutionary creationism” affirms that God created via natural processes without need for intervention.

Fair enough Steve. I originally posted on here because the way you were coming across, not the actual points you were making. It got carried away, but I thought it was worth going there.

I noticed people were making some potentially beardronneous claims about specific out-of-context bible verses – of how they could be interpreted literally – when it doesn’t seem to me that a creationist or the original authors/audience would interpret it as such.

But then it does seem you are describing an American problem. As one wise man once said to me “American Christianity is as wide and as deep as the Mississippi river”.. and before I get blasted for America-bashing, it was an American who first spoke those words to me.

BTW What do you mean by “special creationism”?

Originally Posted By Alex Fear
The problem that Steve is describing in his post is exegetical not scientific. People do need to be taught how to read and interpret scripture, how to discern between different types of text. Making a argument for this from science, let alone evolution is just a completely foolish approach.. and if you are wanting to convince anyone to read the bible differently see my comments above, talking about people in such a way is not going to convince them to interpret scripture correctly.

I have said time and again that we cannot simply debunk creationism scientifically and expect Christians to fare well: concomitantly, we must provide Christians a better hermeneutic and a corrected view of the nature of the Bible. Without this, creationists being convinced of evolution are likelier to leave the faith than live with the cognitive dissonance between literalism and the evidence. And I explicitly made reference to problems of hermeneutics, together with two separate links where I have done just what you suggest, under point 3 of this very post!! This is the kind of thing that makes me think you wandered into this post looking for a fight before reading the OP.

Notice, too, that my main post did not argue in favor of evolutionary theory as much as the value of looking into the debate. One major reason I omitted (mostly because there has already been so much written on it in the blogosphere) is that those not well grounded in the faith who grow up thinking that they can only embrace either Christianity or evolution and not both, when encountering the mounting evidence for common descent and evolutionary theory, have nowhere to run but atheism.

As I told you, I embraced evolution because of a corrected bibliology, following my recognition of the need to interpret things contextually rather than literalistically; but something that helped me understand that something was amiss with my inherited literalistic hermeneutic was the fact that even Christians disagreed about whether the physical world corresponded with the YEC interpretation of Genesis.

You said on the other post:

I really feel it is down to individual Christians to study and make their own minds up.

I find it a little ironic that you’re advocating Christians studying and making their minds up, and yet apparently chastising my posts for being a source for their study. I agree that studying is a good thing; in fact, it was the people who decided not to study that I was addressing (as seen in the first few lines of the OP).

Like I said on the previous post, it’s not something that is going to change a persons behavior and it’s not essential to living out faith.

Alex, I think we are arriving at the heart of the problem.

This “live and let live” attitude does not fly over here: it’s warfare. In America, evolutionists are evilutionists; to a person, all of our “leaders” say so. American evangelical culture typically follows a core group of authorized teachers unquestioningly, including the men I mentioned specifically in my first post. If it were just a matter of most evangelicals not understanding some aspect of science, it would be altogether minor and not deserve the attention I gave it. But it is much more than that. The very fact that we have scientists hiding within their own churches for fear of being marginalized as theological liberals is painful enough. But how is evangelism not “essential to living out faith”? I’m telling you, in America anyway (and from many reports, abroad especially), the Christian faith is equated not only with anti-evolutionism, but an anti-science stance that makes our faith a laughingstock and that, rightly, is a fountain of irritation because of the false accusations of professional incompetence and/or atheistic bias on the part of scientists.

Because of special creationism, thousands of people are leaving the faith; because of special creationism, thousands of people are ridiculing our faith. If special creationism is true, well, I suppose we’ll just have to take our lumps. But why should I be content to let all this happen if special creationism is not true? Why should I not encourage people to look into the debate?

I’m interested in where this theory that the earth is a sphere has come from.. did it really come from the bible?

“And He will lift up a standard for the nations And assemble the banished ones of Israel, And will gather the dispersed of Judah From the four corners of the earth.” – Isaiah 11:12

Surely someone who read the bible literally would understand the earth to be 4 sides of a square or rectangle, not a sphere?

This throws a spanner in the works somewhat and reveals what appears to be straw man in this instance.