Selected Comments on Chapter 2 of Mr. Lee Strobel’s “The Case For a Creator”
‘The Images of Evolution’
Page 18: “Later, as our nation began unraveling in the 1960s, when social conventions were being turned upside down, when relativism and situational ethics were started to create a quicksand of morality …” Mr. Strobel sees the Bible as the bedrock of reality, so what about the situational ethics that is the Bible? Click.
Also compare the ethic of atheists and believers. Click.
More comparisons of the ethics of atheists with believers. Click.
and still more comparisons. Click.
Actually most people use a Provisional morality which is more realistic than absolute morality or empty relativistic morality.
Actually crime has decreased substantially in the last few decades in the West.
Page 21: “I’ve lost count of the number of spiritual skeptics have told me that their seeds of doubt were planted in high school and college when they studied Darwinism.”
I don’t know of any non-believer who lost their faith because of evolution. That sure wasn’t my case. My faith eroded with the study of the Bible — the more I studied it the more I disbelieved it to be due to an external, ‘creator of the Universe’ God. Later on, science, including Biology, confirmed my conclusions about the Bible. This, then generalized into the realization that there is no supernatural realm.
Page 22: A comment about Scientist, Evolutionist and Christian. Click
Also What is Basic Evolution in a few words? Is evolution a certainty? Click.
Page 23: “contemporary Darwinism does not envision a God-guided process of evolutionary change”
This applies to all of science, not only Darwinism. Click.
The following statements on Page 23 are correct: “If we admit God into the process, Darwin argued, then God would ensure that only ‘the right variations occurred … natural selection would be superfluous.” and “Nancy Pearcey — “you can have God or Natural Selection, but not both”.
It is assumed here that by God is meant an external, supernatural, Creator of all things God.
The statement “contemporary Darwinism does not envision a God-guided process in evolutionary change.” This statement doesn’t only apply to Darwinism, but to all of Science, including Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy, Neuroscience.
Page 24: ‘Can there be a Christian evolutionist?’ question is the same as ‘Can there be a Christian Scientist?’
The answer is yes, provided he believes his God is an internal, personal one, not an external, creator God; that this God is a god of his brain. This God will die when the brain dies. The number of Gods is the same as the number of people that believe in a God, and they vary about as much. Click.
Page 25: “… freedom from moral strictures. For me, living without God meant living one hundred percent for myself”
Religion, including Christianity, does not have a monopoly on morals. Provisional kind of morality comes quite natural for most people — living the Golden Rule is a common, natural thing. Except for psychopaths, being compassionate, loving is a trait that most adult people have naturally.
I personally do not live immorally. Although I did get some e-mails saying that I must be living a very immoral life since I don’t have any religious moral strictures. I must be raping and murdering at my heart’s content. Nothing would be more abhorrent to me. The statement quoted from Page 25 is completely false, it is something religionists would like to be true.
Page 27: “Are science and faith doomed to always be at war? Was I right that a science-minded individual must necessarily eschew religious beliefs?” The answer is yes with the restrictions given above for page 24. Check this again and this again.
Page 29: my comment: All scientific knowledge is provisional even the theory that the Earth is round is provisional — just in case some new evidence arises to refute it or change this theory. The evidence for the Round Earth is so overwhelming that it is confidently considered a fact. Another example of a theory that has enough evidence to support so that it is confidently considered a fact is the theory of evolution. As many ancient books, the Bible supports the Flat Earth theory .
O. Hooge
Naturalism and Religious Experience 