Posted by Joshua Woo
This evening we screened and watched the debate over Richard Dawkins' 2006's book The God Delusion, organised by Fixed Point Foundation. The length of the debate is about 1 hour and 40 minutes long.
It was only natural that the screening session was a little dry given that particular topic, the nature of the debate, and the fact that we were trying to understand every words uttered in-between the debaters' rhetorics the whole time. Nothing short of the like in sitting through a counseling session talking to a stubborn congregant. Nonetheless, each debater's occasional compulsion to correct the opposite party was sometimes hilarious and engaging. These helped to keep us fixated and enjoyed the exchange between the two prolific speakers.
The better part came after the screening: the discussion time. We started off by evaluating each debater's strengths and weaknesses. All that were present in the evening agreed that the strength of Lennox was in his ability to engage and counter Dawkins' arguments. His content was solid and he spoke lucidly. However, his weakness lies in the few seeming occasions when he critiqued Dawkins' personality rather than the proposals.
Dawkins on the other end had the better composure that appeared to focus more on the issues rather than attempting to ridicule his opponent. We like the way he carried himself throughout the debate. Yet his arguments were weak as compared to Lennox's. At times, he misunderstood Lennox. For an instance, Dawkins' mumbled that Lennox charged him for having faith in the cosmos. But that was not what Lennox talked about. Lennox was actually saying that having faith in the idea that there is nothing in the cosmos except matters is seemingly a commitment of faith.
Among other things, we discussed the idea of evolution, which was one of the central contentions in the debate. Dawkins mentioned that it was the theory of evolution that led him away from believing in God in his teenage years. Hence we spent significant portion of time conversing over 'evolution'; what does it really means and its implication on our faith.
Tommy, who taught Biology at a senior secondary school in Indonesia, elaborated to us his understanding of evolution and how he taught it to his students. He also shared with us the idea of 'theistic evolution' which Mui Kiang was interested to find out more.
Benjamin Lee rightly remarked that we have no empirical fact that shows Darwin was an atheist. At best, he was an agnostic. (And it was not because of his discovery that led him to agnosticism. Rather, it was the death of his beloved daughter that affected his faith.) So Benjamin thought that evolution does not necessarily contradict the Christian faith.
It was at this point when Wei Yi raised a question regarding 'evolution' and its compatibility with certain interpretations of certain passages in the Bible that seem to show that there is no gap in the development of the human species. If humans came about through a long process of natural selection and mutation, then how should we understand apostle Paul's argument in Romans 5.12-21 that presupposes the historicity of Adam? We have no answer, of course. However, I have to say that Biologos has a series of articles on this question even though it is just some scholars' attempt, among others, to approach the problem.
We are reminded by Yip Khiong that whether 'evolution' is true or not is up to the experts to figure out. Our faith does not hinge on it. Instead, our faith is anchored in the historicity of Christ's resurrection which can be investigated historically. A new friend, Hai, shared with us that his looked at 'evolution' in term of the philosophical baggages of the term. It is on these grounds that Christians may evaluate and engage the concept.
Maricel expressed her confidence in the theology of God rather than in the various explanations provided by natural sciences to explain the origin or the creation of life. Therefore she does not have any problem with evolution. Whether we are the product of macro-evolution or not does not affect the fact that God is the sovereign creator who is free to bring about the existence of the human race with whichever means he so chosen.
The discussion was filled with laughter and shared mutual-learning experiences. It was interesting to see committed Christians with different perspective reasoning through a contentious issue together. I noticed that many of the issues were concern over different understandings of certain words. Words like 'faith', 'science', 'evolution', 'chance', and etc.
As conclusion, we thought that there are still many more works to be done in this area. There will certainly be upcoming guided-discussion sessions to explore these issues further. Such exercises will not only satisfy our curiosity but also deepen our awareness of what God can do through them in each of our ministry.
It was only natural that the screening session was a little dry given that particular topic, the nature of the debate, and the fact that we were trying to understand every words uttered in-between the debaters' rhetorics the whole time. Nothing short of the like in sitting through a counseling session talking to a stubborn congregant. Nonetheless, each debater's occasional compulsion to correct the opposite party was sometimes hilarious and engaging. These helped to keep us fixated and enjoyed the exchange between the two prolific speakers.
The better part came after the screening: the discussion time. We started off by evaluating each debater's strengths and weaknesses. All that were present in the evening agreed that the strength of Lennox was in his ability to engage and counter Dawkins' arguments. His content was solid and he spoke lucidly. However, his weakness lies in the few seeming occasions when he critiqued Dawkins' personality rather than the proposals.
Dawkins on the other end had the better composure that appeared to focus more on the issues rather than attempting to ridicule his opponent. We like the way he carried himself throughout the debate. Yet his arguments were weak as compared to Lennox's. At times, he misunderstood Lennox. For an instance, Dawkins' mumbled that Lennox charged him for having faith in the cosmos. But that was not what Lennox talked about. Lennox was actually saying that having faith in the idea that there is nothing in the cosmos except matters is seemingly a commitment of faith.
Among other things, we discussed the idea of evolution, which was one of the central contentions in the debate. Dawkins mentioned that it was the theory of evolution that led him away from believing in God in his teenage years. Hence we spent significant portion of time conversing over 'evolution'; what does it really means and its implication on our faith.
Tommy, who taught Biology at a senior secondary school in Indonesia, elaborated to us his understanding of evolution and how he taught it to his students. He also shared with us the idea of 'theistic evolution' which Mui Kiang was interested to find out more.
Benjamin Lee rightly remarked that we have no empirical fact that shows Darwin was an atheist. At best, he was an agnostic. (And it was not because of his discovery that led him to agnosticism. Rather, it was the death of his beloved daughter that affected his faith.) So Benjamin thought that evolution does not necessarily contradict the Christian faith.
It was at this point when Wei Yi raised a question regarding 'evolution' and its compatibility with certain interpretations of certain passages in the Bible that seem to show that there is no gap in the development of the human species. If humans came about through a long process of natural selection and mutation, then how should we understand apostle Paul's argument in Romans 5.12-21 that presupposes the historicity of Adam? We have no answer, of course. However, I have to say that Biologos has a series of articles on this question even though it is just some scholars' attempt, among others, to approach the problem.
We are reminded by Yip Khiong that whether 'evolution' is true or not is up to the experts to figure out. Our faith does not hinge on it. Instead, our faith is anchored in the historicity of Christ's resurrection which can be investigated historically. A new friend, Hai, shared with us that his looked at 'evolution' in term of the philosophical baggages of the term. It is on these grounds that Christians may evaluate and engage the concept.
Maricel expressed her confidence in the theology of God rather than in the various explanations provided by natural sciences to explain the origin or the creation of life. Therefore she does not have any problem with evolution. Whether we are the product of macro-evolution or not does not affect the fact that God is the sovereign creator who is free to bring about the existence of the human race with whichever means he so chosen.
The discussion was filled with laughter and shared mutual-learning experiences. It was interesting to see committed Christians with different perspective reasoning through a contentious issue together. I noticed that many of the issues were concern over different understandings of certain words. Words like 'faith', 'science', 'evolution', 'chance', and etc.
As conclusion, we thought that there are still many more works to be done in this area. There will certainly be upcoming guided-discussion sessions to explore these issues further. Such exercises will not only satisfy our curiosity but also deepen our awareness of what God can do through them in each of our ministry.
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