Re: terminology from Re: paleonet YEC&DinoBlood

Well here are a couple of links.  One is a video of your "Evangelical" state
senator right there in Alabama.  http://media.putfile.com/Hank-Erwin.  This
is a Tom Brokaw interview with the president of the National Association of
Evangelicals that represents 45,000 churches.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9815374.  Here is the NAE website
http://www.nae.net/ for those interested.  The Tom Brokaw interview is
interesting because NBC was able to intercept an e-mail that the pastors of
the churches in the piece had sent out.  It basically admonished the
congregations to keep the rhetoric and wild activity at a minimum while the
film crews were there.  We have to keep in mind that what is on the website
and what they are saying in church on Sunday are often different things.  If
you turn on your local Christian TV station and watch guys like Rod Parsley,
Jack Van Impe, John Hagee, ect. then you'll hear plenty of God's wrath
rhetoric.  It is true that there really is no unified front but the big guns
in the business who do most of the talking are the ones who support these
positions and have the greatest influence over the community.  The gentleman
in Dana's e-mail is a great example of a guy who is a dissenter but he's not
the one talking most of the time therefore he's not the one influencing the
arguement.  I think that it would be fantastic if he did so that those who
are labeled Evangelicals could see that there are options beyond Kennedy and
Hagee that still are Evangelical.

-Mike

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dr. David Campbell" <amblema@bama.ua.edu>
To: <paleonet@nhm.ac.uk>
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 9:25 AM
Subject: Re: terminology from Re: paleonet YEC&DinoBlood


> > Just to clarify when I said "these Evangelicals" I was referring
> > specifically to those individuals that identify themselves as such.
> > I believe that there is a multidenominational national organization
> > that explicitly outlines the beliefs of the common group.  These
> > things range from antievolution to "New Orleans was sinful and had
> > it coming."  Those view are consistently conveyed by individuals who
> > label themselves as Evangelicals.  There may be dissenters but I
> > have not heard anyone in the media labeled "Evangelical" who did not
> > convey the messages of the common group consistently.  That includes
> > the "intellectuals" like Dr. James Kennedy.
>
> Although there exist some groups that try to provide a
> unified "evangelical" voice, the numerous disparate Protestant
> denominations involved make it impossible to have any enforced
> viewpoint.  I tried searching the National Association of Evangelicals
> website for anything related to creation or to Katrina.  All I found
> was information on Katrina relief efforts.  Dr. Kennedy is definitely
> promoting a bunch of antievolutionary baloney, but also is promoting
> Katrina relief efforts.  In fact, some more fundamentalist individuals
> condemn evangelicals as heretically liberal, being soft on evolution.
>
> The media is not very reliable as a source on science nor religion.
> The NABT has a good summary of the situation in their review of "Of
> Pandas and People" at http://www.nabt.org/sub/evolution/panda1.asp
> It (the NABT, not the bad textbook) classifies evangelicals into
> several subgroups of response to evolution (for and against,
> activist/passive, etc.).
>
> The basic issue is that, _as paleontologists_, we care about good
> science and not about philosophical or religious beliefs, although
> they may provide a useful context for doing good science (e.g., by
> providing motivation to be truthful and hardworking).  Personally, we
> might not like it if someone rips peoples' hearts out as a religious
> ceremony, but paleontologically it's only rather odd taphonomy.  Young
> earth and antievolutionary claims are contrary to the paleontological
> evidence.  The merits or lack thereof of evangelicalism, atheism, or
> any other metaphysical view as a whole are not scientific issues and
> should be distinguished from criticism of bad science or affirmation
> of good science that may be associated with any particular view.
>
>
> -- 
> Dr. David Campbell
> 425 Scientific Collections Building
> Department of Biological Sciences
> Biodiversity and Systematics
> University of Alabama, Box 870345
> Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0345  USA
>
>