ACADEMIC OR DOGMATIST?

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I just wanted to share another thought about last night's debate.

Ken Ham seemed offended that his religious views were not regarded as science.  In much the same way, an astrologist might be indignant because astronomers do not give them very much credence.

Ken Ham does what a lot of fundamentalists do.  He wants to elevate dogmatic scholarship to the level of academic scholarship.  We find this occurring in Biblical studies a lot.

Fundamentalist "scholars" who teach in Bible colleges like Liberty University in Virginia, Bryan College and Tennessee Temple in Tennessee, or Bob Jones in South Carolina base their "scholarship" on their unassailable belief that the Bible is inerrant.  

They disregard any academic study of the Bible that seeks to use modern methods that discover how various sources were interwoven into different texts.  For instance, there is a huge consensus that Paul did not write some of his letters.  A writer, using Paul's name wrote them.

Dogmatic scholarship cannot accept such conclusions.  They deny the evidence based on their belief that the Bible has no errors.  First and Second Timothy have Paul's name identifying him as the author; therefore, Paul wrote them.

There are so many reasons why that false.  I will not get into those reasons here.  My point concerns the difference between a dogmatic approach and an academic approach.

Ken Ham admitted in the debate that no evidence would ever change his mind.

An academic scholar does not think that way.  An academic scholar is open to better methodologies and evidence.  

A dogmatic scholar's mind is made up.  If I am a dogmatist and the Bible says the earth is a six thousand year old tick embedded in the hide of a massive hound, I'm going to believe the Bible.

Any evidence that proves that earth is not a flea, the flea is not six thousand years old, and the universe is not a hound will move me not.  I will deny it emphatically.  

Thank God, the Bible does not say that; for then the debate would look sillier than it already did.  

The Bible does say that life began in a garden with a talking snake.  Why doesn't that sound as strange to our ears as my flea theory?

Anyway, Bill Nye's answer to the question of what would change his mind about evolution expressed the thinking of an academic.  He recounted evidence that would change his mind.

Indeed, I was surprised Ken Ham asked the question.  How could he not know that Nye would give the answer he did? Ham must truly believe that science and religion are different faith systems.

Neither creationism nor astrology can ever be on a scientific footing equal to evolution, so Ken Ham's insistence that secularists have hijacked the word "science" is false.  

Now, I could embark on an academic study of the least likely pseudo-sciences to make it past the next century, and write an article about it, maybe even a book, but no belief that already knows what conclusions its research will find is academic.  

It's dogmatic and belongs in church.

Blessings...