Posted on 10/16/2005 5:56:09 PM PDT by hiho hiho
Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.
We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.
"We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth."
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Jesus said to him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by Me.
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This site includes hundreds of signatures from clergy. It is interesting to see who has publicly endorsed this statement. (Actually, they are the usual suspects.)
http://www.uwosh.edu/colleges/cols/rel_sci_ae.htm
Once people can utter "Philosophy" and "Theology" alongside "Science" and "Religion," I might start paying more attention to this debate.
YEC INTREP - Mainline, liberal ALERT
I read the Bible literally and scientifically.
"Once people can utter "Philosophy" and "Theology" alongside "Science" and "Religion," I might start paying more attention to this debate."
Don't quite get what you mean, especially in view of the fact that you are Catholic.
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