Comments on: Pastor Tim’s Response

By: Paul Richard Strange, Sr.

Paul Richard Strange, Sr. — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:04:03 +0000

Thanks for the “friendly” aspect of this blog!

I believe in God through Jesus Christ, and have friends who are atheists. We disagree, but it is also friendly.

One thing which has made Richard Dawkins stand out, in my humble opinion, is that he dialogues with students, and engages in debates, without throwing a sense of humor out the window.

Good website.

Paul Richard Strange, Sr.
Waxahachie Texas

By: ken

ken — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 05:26:09 +0000

Pastor,

There’s one thing that always raises a red flag for me. And that’s when people such as yourself raise the point that evolution is a “theory” not a “fact”.

Although in everyday vernacular, a fact is a proven theory, it is not in science. In science, you start with the facts: things like fossil records, carbon dating, and the complexity of life on Earth. Those are facts.

A hypothesis is speculation about the facts. A theory is a full explanation of the facts. The point is, theory is never promoted to become a fact. It forever remains a theory. Facts are not proven theories.

Although it’s a common misunderstanding, it’s an important distinction.

By: Bob Johnson

Bob Johnson — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 12:15:50 +0000

One major trap the liberal media falls into these days is the need for “equal time.” Rather than being a fount of opinion (sure, driven by the rich and not representative of majority view) as was the general case historically, the appearance of lack of bias (often as a kneejerk reaction to accusations from the Right) often becomes more important than commitment to truth. This has been painfully apparent in the media’s treatment of the global warming “controversy.” Even if 2% of the scientists who chime in on the global warming debate express themselves counter to the majority, accepted view that global warming is caused by human activities and poses a grave threat to the planet’s entire living community, and even if those 2% are almost invariably funded by Exxon-Mobil and not specialists in the field (like Michael Crichton, say), often, it gets an disproportionately large amount of media coverage. Then again, it’s anyone’s fault who hasn’t learned to distrust immediately a noisy and irrational minority’s view. [Note that I am not singling you out. While I am not an atheist, I find that they are often neither noisy nor irrational (whether or not I agree with their reasoning)]

Often, Creationism/ID are derived (whether honestly portrayed as such or not) from a literalist interpretation of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. I emphasize this because it is more visible among Christians than other Abrahamic religions. My advice to those proponents of ID who are Christian (that is, if there are any who aren’t), my advice is that you sit down and chart out a detailed timeline of the story portrayed in the book of Genesis, especially both accounts of the Creation, set side by side (in my opinion) screaming for non-literal interpretation. If you can get that story straight, first of all, I am very impressed…that takes a great deal of effort. Secondly, though, I can’t help but think that you must be omitting or tweaking details in order to reconcile the “fact” of the Creation. If you have tweaked or omitted even one detail, you are recognizing one of two things: 1) The fallibility of the Bible or 2) The allegorical nature certain aspects of the creation narrative (I tend toward this one myself).

Accepting either of those two aforementioned views should lead you in a direction that allows you to accept reason as presented by centuries of the scientific pursuit of the truth. If, in fact, God created the universe, and therefore the physical laws bound to it, examination of the universe around us can only lead to a better understanding of God and the miraculous universe he created, whether it took 6 days or 15 billion years.

By: txatheist

txatheist — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 00:29:54 +0000

I’d like an answer to this. On page 26 of the document it states that Noah had small dinasours on the ark and others, like large ones, died out after the flood. Care to point to one peer reviewed journal or group(not ID folk) that will show T-Rex died out after the flood? When and how did this happen?

By: Marty

Marty — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 18:36:51 +0000

Dear Tim and Karyn – Thank you for this positive step. I look forward to when you will have time to further review the comments from those on this board. I think that how you objectively work this through with Hemant and the others on this board will either add dramatically to the great experience that you and Hemant shared (and your credibility) or dramatically take away from it. That does not mean that I am looking for or expect agreement.

I think this is causing all of us to stretch and look deeper – while at the same time it makes absolutely no difference to me in my life as to which is correct. I find this a major waste of time, I welcome and support true science and do not want it poluted by religion. At the same time, I personally choose to believe that there is a God (by whatever name) who manifests in ways that science can not grasp – but that is my choice and I have no need/desire to prove that to anyone else.

To me it is a shame that some elements of religion choose to make science an enemy. Where there are cases of those who are solely driven by science and are out to prove that science exclusion that there may be somethings that science can not and will not ever be able to explain – I do not support these types of scientists either.

By: Karyn Purvis

Karyn Purvis — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 13:45:36 +0000

Just wanted to weigh in and let you all know that Pastor Tim has been out of town and just hasn’t had a minute to address some of the questions posted here about his paper “Creationism for My Child’s Teacher” beyond his earlier post. We did do some tweaking, however, to address concerns about the use of the NG cover. We still like the cover…it asks the question that we want to ask ~ “Was Darwin Wrong?” But we added a caption making it clear that NG’s answer to the question was “No.” We also removed reference to the NG cover in Tim’s “Dear Teacher” letter on page 3. We felt there were legimate objections to our previous use of the cover and we wanted to rectify that. See Creationism For My Child’s Teacher.

By: Siamang

Siamang — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 23:58:01 +0000

Brad,

Yes, it’s him. Here’s the Christian group that hired him:

http://off-the-map.org/atheist/

The whole story’s there.

By: Helen aka Ir

Helen aka Ir — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 21:22:37 +0000

Hi Brad,

Yes Hemant is the ‘ebay atheist guy’. There’s some information about the auction on Hemant’s FAQ page (his link to it lives is on the top right hand side of this blog).

The winning bidder, Off The Map, also has some information about the auction on their site – you can go to their eBay atheist home page and read the links in the “Getting Started” box.

Hemant didn’t go to 50 churches; Jim Henderson of Off The Map said he’d be happy if Hemant would go to about 10 different church services instead and write about them for Off The Map’s website. Hemant agreed to that.

If you check Hemant’s media appearances (another link on the top right hand side of this blog), the story is told in many of them also.

How did you hear about the eBay atheist?

Anyway, happy reading/listening

By: Brad Thom

Brad Thom — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 20:58:16 +0000

Is this the ebay atheist guy? I saw the auction ended at $500, did you spend 50 days going to church? Hrmm.. where are the archives that tell this story?

-Brad

By: Reign of Reason

Reign of Reason — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 17:08:18 +0000

You hit it on the head: “So why do we have to throw out the supernatural just because it makes people uncomfortable?” … because supernaturalism has no place in science or in the public schools.

Supernaturalism, by definition, is neither testable nor verifiable… Hence, you can posit any explanation for an observation and be shielded from scrutiny.

We need to focus on understanding the universe we live in… not writing it off to some mythical being… We tried that once: it was called the Dark Ages.