But what does this show? That Chuck Queen reads public opinion polls, and is addled enough to believe that somehow they are revelatory of God's Truth? What other explanation of his motive could there be?
Is he arguing that Christian ministers and priests have to "get hip" and conform their teaching to the current myth du jour, in order for their pews to be filled?
Jeepers, that advice looks to me like it's completely "bass-ackwards."
The Christian Church has not survived and thrived for over two thousand years by cutting itself to the size of the currently prevailing public frenzies, which ever pass away....
Anyhoot, the evolution question is entirely at the root of the current confusion.
As a Christian, I believe in evolution. But that is not to say I believe in Darwin's evolution theory.
On the Genesis account, I see God's Creation as laid down "in the Beginning," according to His Word, the Logos, Son of God, as involving a process that unfolds in space and time. That is, a process that evolves — from a First, to a Last Cause.
The First Cause is God's intention with respect to His Creation, as instantiated according to the Word of the Beginning. [An interesting question: What is the qualitative difference between "Let there be Light!" and the big bang from the singularity that the physical sciences seem to have noticed recently?]
The Final Cause is God's purpose or goal for having created anything in the first place.
What evolves in-between the First Cause (divine Creation) and Final Cause (Judgment Day) is human existence and experience, largely of the natural world. "In-between," an on-going implicit cause governs the world of men and nature, precisely in a temporal, that is to say, an "evolutionary" process.
Evidently, Charles Darwin would have no truck with such ideas. His biological evolution theory has no concept of purposes or goals: There are no first or final causes. Evidently, there is only an "eternal universe" without beginning or end; it just rolls on forever; and everything that happens in it, in the biological realm especially, is merely serendipitous happenstance. Whatever "works" seems to be the criterion of "truth." (Assuming Darwinists care about such a thing.) But Darwin's theory does not address, let alone answer, the question: works for what "truth???" (Or even whose "truth?")
According to Darwin's theory, everything in the biological world is an accident that, by happenstance, might work out "in a positive direction" for a while. Long enough to breed (with luck) a next generation; who then will face the same sheer pointlessness of existence that their progenitors did.
"Natural Selection" by means of "Random Mutation" does not compass the identification of purpose in Nature. Yet every actual biological function is a cause seeking the completion of an effect necessary for the existence and maintenance of the total biological organism. This is purposive, goal-oriented behavior that screams of a final cause at work, mediated by at least some minimal form of intelligence.
In short, to me Darwin's theory is rude, crude and socially unacceptable. But worse, it is totally mindless — both in its methods, and in its presuppositions.
I would think it is the business of pastors especially to point out this sort of nonsense to their congregants, to remind them constantly that man's theories cannot be the measure of God or of what He wrought; if you want to understand what God wrought, best to start with Genesis.
Instead, so many of our modern pastors are rolling over and playing dead in the face of "elite opinion."
Such shepherds are unworthy of their flocks....
Well I'll put a sock in it for now.
Thanks for the great post, SeekandFind!
Purposeful phenomena such as biological repair and maintenance to the benefit of the autonomous organism cannot arise by mere happenstance.
Thank you so much for your informative essay-post!
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Dear Sister in Christ,
As I have said before, I greatly prefer the term, "development", rather than "evolution", when discussing how the state of "our" (physical and biological) universe progressed from the moment of creation up to the present.
And, I do that with several considerations:
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So -- I respectfully submit that, for our purposes (unless discussing Darwinism, per se) we restrict discussions of the progress of God's universe (both physical and biological) to the use of the term, "development", as opposed to "evolution"...