Waynesburg University (Pennsylvania) biology prof Wayne Rossiter, author of In the Shadow of Oz, offers some thoughts on Templeton’s bad investment, BioLogos (theistic evolution):
Of particular importance is the title of the blog: Why Christians Don’t Need to Be Threatened by Evolution.
“For too long Christians in North America have thought the Bible was in conflict with biological evolution. Yet many orthodox Christian theologians of the nineteenth century (including Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield) saw no conflict in principle.”
First, that depends on what you mean by evolution. All brands of Christianity incorporate some theory of diversification and speciation that we might call biological evolution. But, if by “evolution” we mean the Darwinian mechanism as scientists understand it, with it being the only real force in the process, then yes, there seems to be conflict. Second, we all could really care less if a few scholars of the nineteenth century saw no conflict. The fact is, many did. This would include those close to Darwin himself (Lyell, Wallace… even Asa Gray had some concerns). This is just a blatant appeal to authority.
Yes. Typical church closer.
Now on to the meat and potatoes of Middleton’s blog.
“The infamous ‘war’ of science and religion (of which the creation-evolution battle is the most prominent example) is a relatively recent invention, manufactured from the atheist side by John William Draper (History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, 1874) and by Andrew Dickson White (A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 1896) and on the Christian side by conservatives who misread the Genesis creation accounts as scientific.”
Note from O’Leary for News: I don’t get it. If the theistic Darwinists want to be naturalist atheists, why don’t they just admit it?
Darwin was the first important fully naturalist atheist and he spawned many movements, including eugenics.
But part of this is probably about sanitizing history. You know Darwin a liberator like Lincoln. Some of it also may be about all that dying church money waiting to be sopped up.
See also: Darwinian racism: The story you never learned in school
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