Bubba

I have been asked to debate a friend of mine at my church on the infallibility of the bible and on evolution. My church has been very tolerant of my liberal beliefs and has even allowed me to continue teaching sunday school. However, we also have a very conservative memeber who is an extreme literalist. My pastor decided that a nice open debate would help people think and open peoples minds, so Don and I are going to debate several topics over the next several months in front of an adult sunday school class.
The beliefs of members range from very conservative to raher liberal, so this should promote some good discussion. We're starting with the idea of literal interpretation and then moving on to the evolution issue.

Here are my specific questions.

1. Don in some ways rejects the idea of the scientific method as a way of knowing. What do you think would be a good way to present science in a positive, nonthreatening light? Where should I start in a defense of the scientific method? I have some ideas but I want your input.

2. Scigirl, in your debate with our Pal Douglas you suggested that a debate might be more helpful in a church than a sermon. You got your wish!

3. Eugenie Scott has said that it is bad to openly debate evolution with creationists. Does anyone here see anything wrong with a debate over coffee and donuts in a friendly environment? So far our discussions have been friendly and people have been fairly receptive.

4. What is the best way for me to present evolution in a positive light? Should I bring a guest speaker that is a scientist? I'm obviously not qualified myself to get into an in depth debate. However, my opponenet isn't either. I'm thinking about reprinting the Gish debate from the II library and discussing that,but still really kind of unsure of the best way to handle this.

5. How should I present a break with biblical literalism? I'm thinking that the age of the earth would be the easiest for people to understand and relate to, but again I want your input.

I'm really convinced that a hardcore conservative literal understanding of the bible is just plain wrong.

Any help would be appreciated

Bubba

RufusAtticus

The first step really is to address Biblical litteralism. Here is my take on the issue.

<enter theist mode>
The bible is not a history or science tome. The bible is composed from ancient Hebrew oral tales. The signifance of the scripture is not that Noah or Job really existed, but how God interacted with them. The importance of scripture is not in its factual accuracy, but in moral and spirutal lessons it teaches. This has been recognized for over a thousand years. (St. Augustin made some of the earliest insights into this.) Biblical litteralism and the current YEC nonsense is not a tradional view, but rather modern theology, based mostly on fear of progress.

So called biblical "litteralists" are not litteral at all. They pick and chose what sections of the bible are important to them, just like everyone else. They have no special gift or insight, just their cultural upbringing and personal taste. "Litteralists" quickly say that the universe and the solar system are not as described by the ancient hewbews, but Genesis must be true.

Christianity got over Galileo. It too will get over Darwin.
</end theist mode>

Bubba

I agree. I would tend to belive what you wrote in your "thiest mode" and feel that the more liberal view is also the more accurate.

Chris

Starboy

Hey Bubba, I think Eugenie was right. Evolution vs. the bible is not a political campaign. The result should not be arrived at by popular sentiment. I think it would be better to be informative rather then controversial. If people knew more about science the debate would not be necessary.

Starboy

[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>

Coragyps

Hey, bubba, I'm jealous, ...I think.

A few random thoughts on your questions:
I think that a good spin on the scientific method is that, no, it's not the only way to think all the time, but gosh, look how well it works! It enables all this technology that brings us modern medicine, computers, Billy Bass,.....
And yes, there are other "ways of knowing," but for the physical world, science is pretty tough to beat.

I think Ms Scott's only objection to debating creationists is to debating the pros, not a fellow citizen like you are planning to do. I can well imagine that Gish or Hovind have heard nearly all the lines, and can obfuscate, denigrate, and get out of state faster than a cat covering up cat leavings. She also is wary of "stacked" audiences, which I don't think you will have.

Age of the Earth, immobility of the Earth ("she shall not be moved"), Joshua stopping the Sun, demons causing insanity - any or all could work. Emphasize that the folks that wrote it all down, no matter how "inspired", lived a few thousand years ago and had a limited understanding of cosmology, medicine, biology, etc. As to Genesis I, maybe you could ask how a bunch of Bronze-Age farmers and sheepherders would react to, "In the beginning was a protostar with a big honkin' accretion disk...." Most SUV-drivers find that a little too scientific even today.

I'll stew on this some more, while some of the bright folks around here give you good advice.

DNAunion

DNAunion: You said different topics from week to week. A literalist vs non-literalist debate has to, at some point, have a discussion about the age of the Earth. Or is that a topic too touchy that they won't allow it to be debated?

Here is someting I recently posted. Surely you shouldn't use this word for word (it wasn't meant to be read in a church and improvements should be made first), but it might give you some ideas on what to discuss.

This stuff is a lot easier, I think, for people to understand than are half lives of radioactive isotopes. And you can probably find a map that shows the mid-Atlantic ridge and the way that the continents would naturally fit together. This simple visual would be compelling, and I don't know of such a simple visual for radiometric dating.


DNAunion: I am sure this could be filled out with some actual numbers (what is the actual current rate that NA and Europe are drifting apart; how many years does each magnetic flux reversal occur and how many alternating bands are there; etc.)

Think about one of points: Why would God lay down additional alternating bands of oceanic crust? There's really no logical reason: it serves no functional purpose. And the only thing it would do is yield false results for dating things based on the rate of sea-floor spreading. If God did do that, isn't he a deceiver? I would say so. So if this logic is given in church, and they accept that God would not be deceitful, then they would be forced to conceded, I think, that God did NOT lay down additional bands: that they formed naturally, just as the new ones we can see forming are, and that therefore, sea-floor spreading has been going on for more than 6,000 years.

[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]</p>

Bubba

Thanks guys. I think I mostly posted this because I wanted a little moral support walking into the lions den. However, your basic ideas are sound and I intend to use quite a bit of what you've posted. I think the answer about Scott being mostly concerned about people debating guys like Ham and Hovind was helpful to me as well.

Chris

Answerer

Bubba, for the sake of science, please don't lose.

Lizard

Hi, and congratulations for being in the position to impart some knowledge about science to your fellow church members.

I would say the most important thing you could do is to define what it is that science is, and what it can and cannot investigate.

Science is a way of exploring the *physical* world and universe and developing explanations for how it got that way. The "why" questions are best left to philosophy and theology, because science has no means to address them.

Please let them know that "science" does not say there is no God, or that there is one, just as auto mechanics and polka dancing don't.

In fact, science has much more in common with auto mechanics than it does with religion. The scientific method (aka methodological naturalism, *not*, repeat *not* phillsophical naturalism) involves observation of physical phenomena, suggestions of how it might have gotten that way (hypotheses), testing of those hypotheses, and confirmation, modification or falsification of those hypotheses by experimentation. Note that all of this has to do with the *physical* reality.

Science deals only with *proximate* cause, not *ultimate* cause. So anybody who tells you it is a "religion" or "atheism" is dead wrong. It's only a means of describing, investigating, and learning more about the physical reality of the universe.

"Who" dunnit? Science hasn't a clue.

Quetzal

I don't know how the debate will proceed, but at some point they're going to bring up the cosmology and the origin of the solar system, etc. Keith Harwood posted a marvelous, easily understood "creation story" in this forum awhile back. Although I have the text, I don't have the link - but it's one of the best, easily understood explanations I've ever read. No jargon, easily understood and explained concepts, etc. Maybe Keith still has the link (or I can email you the text).