Stephen T-B

Very often when Creationists engage “non-Creationists” they come off better because the debate is always on their home territory to the extent that the power of god can overcome any and every obstacle which a rationalists might throw up - as we have seen in the posts here by dear Ed.
The false choice the Creationists offer is “what do we prefer to believe?” The real choice is “what looks the more sensible?”
I suggest you analyse the Genesis story, especially what happened on Day One, and relate what is written there to what the authors of the Creation story might positively have known about the Earth and the universe. This web site <a href="http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm" target="_blank">http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm</a> shows the extent to which the Bible’s writers believed the Earth was flat, and looks at their interpretation of “the heavens.”
It is quite clear from Genesis 1 that they had absolutely no understanding of the sun, the moon or the stars. God doesn’t put the sun and the moon in the heavens until the fourth day - after he’d created grass, herbs and fruit trees.
Does that make any kind of sense, not only in view of what we know about photo-synthesis but about the solar system?
In Genesis 2 we read that god didn’t cause it to rain until after he had made the plants and herbs: Vs 4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
Vs 5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
Genesis tells us that plants grew without water or sunlight. We know that that is nonsense. Why should the authors of Genesis have known it was? (Clearly, they didn’t - and god’s revelation didn’t tell them.)
Whatever Genesis is, it is not a revelation of a sequence of physical events.
You might suggest that if the account of Creation provided a complete explanation for the world we find ourselves in, no questions would have remained to be answered and history would not now contain that great train of inquirers which began with Copernicus. You might ask if Darwin deliberately formulated his theory in order to undermine the Bible, or if he was simply pursing explanations for observable facts which were not then available from the Bible.

You might ask if a telescope is a more or less reliable tool for understanding why the sun rises than is Genesis

Baidarka

I've posted this before but I think that Augustine's words are good place to start.

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]"

Saint Augustine (A.D. 354-430) in his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim) provided excellent advice for all Christians who are faced with the task of interpreting Scripture in the light of scientific knowledge. This translation is by J. H. Taylor in Ancient Christian Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41.

I think that it is an insult to the intelligence and the literary genius of the Genesis writers to assume that they (or he/she) were delusional and could not tell myth from reality. The Genesis myth is a "just so" story whose humor and symbolism is lost in a literal interpretation. In other words if you read Genesis as history than it loses its metaphorical power, it loses its meaning.

scigirl

Baidarka,

That book sounds very interesting. Too bad I have no free time to read!
<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> for scigirl!

I agree entirely.

Actually I think the whole story is a perfect metaphor for evolution! We ate from the tree of knowledge and therefore felt shame. In other words, as we evolved a bigger brain than the chimps (more knowledge), we were able to look around and see what naughty things we were doing to each other. Hence, our concience had evolved.

The "tree" is really a metaphor for a phylogenetic tree.

Heh I bet YECS just love that interpretation.

scigirl

doubtingt

My suggestion is to point out how the scientific
method is really nothing more than formal version of the way we gather evidence and make decisions in everyday life. You could come up with numerous examples of how Don and everyone in the audience
rely on empirical evidence whenever they care about knowing the truth or making the best decision.
Virtually everyone in that audience uses evidence and a crude form of scientific methods when buying a car, deciding which route is the fastest to church, which school will give our kid the best education, and just about every other issue where our interest in the truth outweighs our biased interest in protecting or promoting an ideologically preferred conclusion.
We all agree that court decisions should be based upon a careful weighing of the evidence and whether it supports guilt or innocence. We would feel that it is unjust if a judge based his decision on feelings, gut, or faith because we know that these methods of belief are highly unreliable for questions of fact.
The scientific method is specifically designed to deal with and control for the normal human errors and biases in observation and judgment that any honest person admits we are all prone to engage in. Rejecting the "scientific method" is not something anyone actually does in practice, because their very lives and well being depend upon the accurate information that evidence based
conclusions provide. Rejecting science is simply something people do in the abstract and as a rhetorical argument so they can dismiss the evidence it presents against their pet theories, while everyday they use science whenever they need reliable information.

[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: doubtingt ]</p>

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Scigirl--with that intreptation, you could convince a fair few people to become theists. After all, the bible does show...

Brian63

Bubba,

Congratulations on obtaining such a great opportunity!

I think the best that you can (or should) hope for is that after hearing 2 different sides of the issue, audience members will be inspired to study the subject even more on their own. It will spark a curiosity in them to find out more about the evolution/creation controversy.

To do that, the best approach is to show how evolution is not something to be frightened of or opposed to as something that is threatening to the faith, but it can instead help it grow by allowing people to come closer to God. Evolution reveals how God created the world and the life around us, and how it has developed since that point.

You can point out all the *beautiful* aspects of evolution, and how it is reflective of how interconnected all life forms are with each other and the rest of nature. We all share a common bond that God had created when we were made in His likeness.

If you can do this, then hopefully they will not see evolution as an enemy, or a belief that they are right to find threatening. Manderguy summed it up very nicely-it should be "The Bible and science" and not "The Bible vs. science."

I don't know how much your opponent will focus on the biology of evolution (as opposed to its theological implications), but I would suggest only venturing into the science and biology of it as far as he goes, and no further. Your main aim would be to show how evolution is not at all threatening to faith, but actually enhances it. This will speak volumes to the fundamentalist Christians in your audience much more than any biology lecture would.

Good luck!

Brian

pug846

This should be your simplest task. When many conservatives think of science, they think of the “evil evolution conspiracy” and science being anti-religion. Show people that we all use the scientific method in our day-to-day lives and further, have all benefited from the fruits of science. If you know someone in your congregation was cured from some disease, talk about that. Science, and the scientific method, has brought us planes, trains and automobiles along with cures to diseases. If Don is true to his word and he rejects the scientific method as a way of knowing, does he reject all the fruits of science? Ask him how he got to church that day. Ask him how he ate breakfast that morning, etc. He doesn’t reject the scientific method as a way of knowing. He only dismisses it when it suits his political agenda. (I obviously wouldn’t say that in the debate. ) Show the audience a simply demonstration on how the scientific method does produce knowledge and further, how it can be used to bolster faith. When we date manuscripts of the bible and establish it’s authenticity, we are using modern science.

I think the biggest problem is that you aren’t an expert and it’s incredibly easy to attack an opinion without holding one of your own. It takes mere seconds to “dismiss” modern science or evolution, while it is going to take you longer to make your case. For instance, if I was debating you, I might give a 30 second spiel on why the 2nd law of thermodynamics clearly makes evolution impossible. Now, if you don’t understand science very well, this seems like a very simple, intuitively correct argument. It is going to take you a lot longer than 30 seconds to show why this is not only an invalid argument, but a really bad one! So, you, as a non-expert, are going to ramble on for 5 minutes doing the best you can do to show everyone what the 2LoT doesn’t mean evolution is possible…meanwhile, 2 and a half minutes ago, most of the audience stopped listening. You can’t compete with his 30 second sound bite.

First off, you really should read Finding Darwin’s God by Kenneth Miller who not only makes a good case that theism and evolution can go hand in hand, but anything else simply doesn’t make sense from a theistic point of view. You can get lots of good points from the book. If you can find a theistic scientist who agrees with you, he might make a good speaker. A lot of Christians would be surprised to find out that some biologist who accept all of evolution are conservative Christians. If there is a major University by your church, e-mail professors in the biology department.

I don’t mean to sound condescending when I say this, but you aren’t going to find many people who actually care enough to search out the truth who believe the bible is literally true, word for word. So, whatever you say for the most part is going to be dismissed. I honestly don’t know how any educated person reads the bible and thinks it’s word for word true, so I can’t be a lot of help here. You might want to talk about why it isn’t necessary to believe in a literal bible to accept that Jesus was the Son of God, etc. IMO, the strongest case has to be talking about Noah’s flood because the very concept is just ridiculous.

szcax

hey - good luck with your discussion. Let us know how it turns out!

Bubba

Damn, girl. You are the athiest and I am thethiest and we have the same interpretation.

Amazing what understanding mythology as mythology does, isn't it?

Bubba