Re: Evolutionary creationism

On 3/11/2025 6:19 PM, David wrote:

On 11/03/2025 13:51, RonO wrote:

On 3/11/2025 4:00 AM, David wrote:

On 10/03/2025 22:20, RonO wrote:

https://biologos.org/common-questions/what-is-evolutionary-creation
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https://biologos.org/common-questions/how-is-biologos-different- from- evolutionism-intelligent-design-and-creationism
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QUOTE:
Evolutionary Creation (EC) is a Christian position on origins. It takes the Bible seriously as the inspired and authoritative word of God, and it takes science seriously as a way of understanding the world God has made. EC includes two basic ideas. First, that God created all things, including human beings in his own image. Second, that evolution is the best scientific explanation we currently have for the diversity and similarities of all life on Earth.
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QUOTE:
The Identity of BioLogos
Core Values
Christ-centered Faith — We embrace the historical Christian faith, upholding the authority and inspiration of the Bible.
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Rigorous Science — We affirm the established findings of modern science, celebrating the wonders of God’s creation.
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Gracious Dialogue — We strive for humble and thoughtful dialogue with those who hold other views, speaking the truth in love.
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It looks like Biologos consists of Christians with some knowledge of science that want to fit what nature actually is into a Biblical context.  They seem to be a diverse group with some of them being evangelical Christians.  Essentially they want to do what the Reason to Believe old earth anti-evolution creationists have not been able to do.
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It seems like they understand the limits of science, and they are not trying to rewrite a cosmic mythology to replace the one that the Hebrew inherited from their neighbors.  These neighbors may have been civilized for thousands of years before the Israelites, but their flat earth cosmology is pretty far off the mark.  Any attempt to rewrite the Biblical creation mythology would be subject to future rewriting as a better understanding of nature continues to unfold. They just seem interested in conforming what we currently understand about nature with a few chosen Biblical claims about our existence in this universe.
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They are not trying to get their religious beliefs taught in the public schools.  Unlike the Reason to Believe old earth creationists that have undertaken the impossible task of trying to take the Bible as literally as possible.  The Biologos creationists seem to have given up on doing that.  Instead they seem to be picking out parts of the creation mythology that they might be able to conform to what we know about nature.  They are theistic evolutionists and some of them are supernatural tweekers like Behe that have not given up on their god's supernatural involvement in the evolution of life on earth.
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The Biologos creationists differ from the ID perps by how they approach science.  The ID perps focus on gap denial, while the Biologos creationists focus on claiming that their god can be responsible for what we already understand about nature.  They are still not abiding by Saint Augustine's admonishment about not using the Bible to make claims about what we can determine for ourselves about nature, so my guess is that their efforts can still fail to represent nature accurately depending on how consistent with the Bible that they want to be.
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Ron Okimoto

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What is YOUR thinking on this, Ron?
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I've admitted to being baptized into the Methodist church as an adult. At that time you had to go into a meeting with the pastor and be interviewed before being baptized.  I told the pastor that I did not take the Biblical view of nature literally, and he told me that, that was acceptable.  It is one of the things that Nyikos lied about to harass me for over a decade and a half.  Anyone can look it up, and the Methodists take no stand on those aspects of the Bible.  There is a YEC faction in the Methodist church, but they coexist with theistic evolutionists and old earth creationists.  How the Bible got it wrong about nature is not an issue in the Methodist church.  You can look into it and the Methodist church has been against teaching creationism and ID in the public schools since the start of the scientific creationist efforts.  As such I have never been inclined to use any of my science endeavors to support my religious beliefs.  Nature is just what it is, and science is just the study of nature.  I have always understood that my religious beliefs are not rational, and has never depended the same rational evaluation of nature that science depends on.  My take is that most religious scientists have the same view of the difference between science and religion.  They are not trying to justify their religious beliefs through their science.  They are just trying to contribute their part to a better understanding of nature.  I see no reason to lie about what the situation currently is, and have always been against the anti- science efforts of creationists.

 I appreciate your response Ron. Thank you.
 Are YOU a scientist?
 

I retired last year, and have stopped reviewing journal articles.  I informed the journals that I was retiring, and did not give them my home email address.  I was in academia until 2005 before going into private industry.  Because my job involved a rapidly developing field in animal breeding I was expected to remain current, and participate in relevant research that we funded or got funding for.  We were allowed to publish some of the research, and participate in the manuscript review process.
Google scholar has most of my publications.  I try to delete the ones that are not mine, but never bother adding something that they haven't put in.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=QP5FNzgAAAAJ
Ron Okimoto