I’m sure Joshua Swamidass will hate that heading, but he’s asked me to draw our readers’ attention to his new initiative (funded and everything!) to seek common ground between all positions from Naturalist Evolutionism to Young Earth Creationism. And if that isn’t a supernatural attack on the culture-war walls of the US origins discussion, I’m not sure what is!
The “manifesto” for the initiative may be found on his blog here. It’s great to see a relative newcomer to the table with the vision and initiative to makes such things happen. Please pray for it, because one thing that’s certain is that he’ll be accused of being a Creationist by some, an Apostate by others, and by many others as “consorting with the enemy”, whoever they may happen to be!
A grant for common ground?! why not a bigger grant for truth and proving it??
Why the need for common ground/ The common ground is don’t punch each other. Then fight it out. Is there to be a common ground between different religions?
I think its really about finding that a God can exist in a universe that was created by evolutionary chance.
All that needs to be done is a demand to prove your hypothesis by scientific methodology. THIS would dethrone evolution/anti creator concepts.
YEC starts from a revealed witness concept and later attacks opponents and later backs up its conclusions with what data one can find.
I understand that three leading YECs are on board already, Robert. Seems there are at least a few folks who want to dialogue before they attack.
So not confirmed speakers yet (this was just launched last week) but we already have some strong interest from some YECs, but also some very strongly negative responses. It is remarkably to me when people are threatened by conversation. What should we make of that?
“What should we make of that?”
Well, my grandfather never took kindly to Germans after the First World War. But then he’d spent from 1915-1918 on the western front, and still had nightmares into his nineties.
But the culture wars don’t really offer the same level of excuse, do they?
And Jon, thanks for the article. It is very clever.