Henry Neufeld reminds us in a trackback to an early ‘Untold Sequel’ that featured Nancey Murphy, how Dr Richard Colling was treated at Olivet Nazarene University for writing a book titled ‘Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Connect with the Creator”.
Dr Colling’s story was featured in Inside Higher Ed
The article reminds us how
[But] the groups arguing for freedom of expression of evolution deniers have not been heard agitating for the rights of Richard Colling. He’s a professor at Olivet Nazarene University, in Illinois, who has been barred from teaching general biology or having his book taught at the university that is his alma mater and the place where he has taught for 27 years. A biologist who is very much a person of faith, these punishments followed anger by some religious supporters of the college over the publication of his book in which he argues that it is possible to believe in God and still accept evolution.
“I thought I was doing the church a service,” Colling said in an interview. He believes that religious colleges that frame science and faith as incompatible will lose some of their best minds, and that his work has been devoted to helping faithful students maintain their religious devotion while learning science as science should be taught.
This perhaps explains why Colling’s situation has not attracted much attention since he believes that teaching science as being incompatible with faith is an irresponsible way to teach either.
While Colling has not been fired, he has been prevented from teaching classes:
“You can’t check your intellect at the door of the church,” he said. Colling has tenure and he hasn’t been fired or had his pay cut — which university officials have told the American Association of University Professors means that Olivet Nazarene can’t be accused of violating his academic freedom.
Until Colling wrote his book, his career at Olivet Nazarene was succcesful.
Colling’s career at Olivet Nazarene was successful until the publication in 2004 of Random Designer, his attempt to offer a philosophy in which religious people can study evolution with scientific seriousness, and scientists can embrace faith. The central idea, in short, is that one can believe that God created the universe, and in so doing created the systems that would evolve into everything that exists today. Colling acknowledges that it is not possible to believe literally in the Bible’s creation of the world in six days but argues that this need not diminish the moral force of the Bible or belief in God.
As a scientist, Colling accepts the fact and theory of evolution as the best explanation and explains in his book how one can reconcile science and faith without harming either.
As a biologist, Colling said that he thinks there is simply no argument that rebuts evolution, and that the evidence is overwhelming. But in writing his book, he said that he didn’t think of himself as remotely heretical. In fact, he said that one of the things he admires about the Church of the Nazarene is that — provided one believes in God — the faith embraces science.
Being ‘banned’ from teaching comes at a significant emotional cost to Colling.
Colling said that the bans on what he can teach have hurt him deeply because he feels that he was trying to help his church and its students. He stressed that he has never told students what they must believe, but that he teaches “what the science says,” which is that evolution is real. “I have an obligation. If we say we value the principles of academic freedom and we say that all verifiable science is fine, this is verifiable science that should be taught.”
Rather than denying the fact of evolution and how the theory of evolution is the best explanation of facts, causing much harm to science and faith, Colling’s approach has to reconcile faith with what science is teaching us.
Some students in the past have been troubled by evolution, Colling said, because they fear that if they study science, they must leave their faith behind. “My challenge has been to be a real human being to them and to assure them that the biology does not need to threaten their faith.”
Looks to me like we need to get a PR crew together to make our own version of EXPELLED: NO SCIENCE ALLOWED. Perhaps it would be better to hire professional filmmakers and documentary makers and not leave the task to scientists alone. We could even hire such notables as Kirk Cameron for on-screen talent. I’m sure that for enough money he would be willing to change sides.
Smilar things happened to Terry Gray and H. Van Nil (Calvin College). I’m still trying to figure out how these came out.
Gray “recanted” but it was a strange recantation that is difficult to understand. AFAICT, he agreed to simultaneously believe that Adam was created from dust and that evolution is the current fact and theory in biology.
Van Nil apparently managed to hang onto his job at Calvin. As far as I know, evolution is still taught there.
I hope someone is compiling a systematic list of the *real* persecution stories of pro-evo people by ID/creationists, as opposed to the trumped-up stories told by the makers of Excreted.
Been said before. It is foolish to make believing false and dumb things a litmus test for a religion. People quite often will take it seriously. The fundies have produced more atheists than Dawkins et al. by a lot. Dawkins may have made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. The fundies have made it a compelling reason.
The Catholic church tried that once with Galileo and G. Bruno and geocentrism. They changed their mind in a hurry. Pope Pius said it best, “One Galileo in 2,000 years is enough.”
The creos will lose in the end. Reality is what it is, no matter how many scientists and science supporters get persecuted. The only question is whether this will be before or after they bring down our American civilization. All civilizations end, the British and Soviet empires ended within living memory. It would be nice if it hangs together for a few more decades.
I’ve been keeping a running tally and posting it often. This needs to be hosted on a website, maybe as a guest post so the NCSE and anyone can link to it. It is devastating to the whole case the Expelleds are making.
I’ve discovered that this list really bothers creos. Truth to them is like a cross to a vampire.
People have seen this before and might be getting tired of it. I’m going to send it to the NSCE website and see if they will host it. Alternatively, have it hosted as a guest on a blog or website so people can link to it. And if anyone wants to take it, it is free, took a whole hour of search engine time and is all documentable. The creos are way ahead on body counts, literally and figuratively and this is a critical point. One guy is dead already.
There is also the sad, but true, case of a Turkish college professor who was murdered by an Islamofascist zealot in Turkey for believing in evolution.
I guess you meant Darwin, but I may have to steal this quote. ^^
Do you have any more info? I googled “Turkey college professor evolution” among other words and all I got was your post.
I believe the phrase “intellectually fulfilled atheist” is usually associated with Richard Dawkins, not Charles Darwin.
for Raven:
QoD has a recent posting on Van Till here:
http://sfmatheson.blogspot.com/
(scroll down to the second post)
this fills in some info.
I met Colling at the last NABT meeting in Atlanta, and I have a copy of his book - all I need is time to read it…
raven said:
I suspect you mean Howard Van Till, a now retired physics Prof. at Calvin. He experienced probelms at the school because of a book he published, but was not fired. At the time he was a theistic evolutionist who rejected ID.
Has has since left his religion.
Still reading about Howard Van Till. Apparently he and Calvin and the Reformeds had quite a battle over his book on the cosmos.
AFAIK, he managed to keep his job and much of what he proposed is at least tolerated. Good for the Reformeds. Apparently the church schismed over some of the issues. Routine. The Presbyterians are often called the “split-Ps”, having schismed so many times no one can keep track of them.
I only know about the Scottish evolutionist who was killed by a British creationist. Both were biomedical students.
I note on the ‘expelled the movie’ site that there are one or two posts about those who accepted evolution being ‘harassed.’ Perhaps we should start posting our own examples on the Expelled site?
http://www.expelledthemovie.com/
They may then start dropping such posts, but that would be another example of their duplicity. Will some of you try this?
Raven,
I noticed that you dropped mentioning the death threats against Judge Jones and his family. They were under the protection of the US Marshall Service for a while.
Judge Jones mentioned his dismay about this on that Nova documentary as well as speaking about it in a few of his talks around the country.
At one time I thought there was only one credible threat, but I believe he mentioned that there were several.
Good point. I’ll add him back. This list has been evolving and not all mutations are beneficial.
“Or you can take the blue pill and go back to your dream world …sans.. MATRIX”
I’ll take reality “sans” Matrix, thanks.
OK you’re both wrong :)
Dawkins made the quote first in The Blind Watchmaker and has repeated it many times since:
So Dawkinns said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist
Would it be too much to ask the Administrators to delete Bornagain77’s latest post, given as how it’s a copy and paste duplicate of his previous post from 3 to 4 months ago, and has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of this thread?
My pleasure. Born Again, gone again
I actually knew that. I thought it needed updating. A lot more people have read Dawkin’s books than Darwin’s Origin of the species.
Besides, it was sort of a joke :>).
That’s not quite it. He agreed that the natural evidence and the Biblical evidence pointed to two different things and that he did not know how to personally reconcile them totally. Within the Reformed tradition there is a concept – first explained by John Calvin – known as accomodationism whereby God accommodated our lack of understanding by communicating at our “level”. Terry was following in that tradition. This concept is explained by Westminster Theological Seminary professor Peter Enns in his book Inspiration and Incarnation. WTS was originally formed by J. Greshen Machen who also founded the OPC. Enns was just suspended from WTS this week.
“That for the good of the Seminary (Faculty Manual II.4.C.4) Professor Peter Enns be suspended at the close of this school year, that is May 23, 2008 (Constitution Article III, Section 15), and that the Institutional Personnel Committee (IPC) recommend the appropriate process for the Board to consider whether Professor Enns should be terminated from his employment at the Seminary. Further that the IPC present their recommendations to the Board at its meeting in May 2008.”
There is an online student and alumni petition concerning this at www.saveourseminary.com.
So, how do I know this? Because I was on the elder board of the church who received Terry into membership after he was suspended from office in the OPC. We are both on the board of the same local chapter of the American Scientific Affiliation. Terry presented the scientific evidence for evolution at a Sunday School at my current (Evangelical Free) church and is a member in good standing at a local CRC church. Just because there are evolutionists who are militant atheists doesn’t imply we all are. Likewise, just because some evangelicals are opposed to true academic freedom does not imply that we all are.
Raven said:
Gray “recanted” but it was a strange recantation that is difficult to understand. AFAICT, he agreed to simultaneously believe that [Adam was created from dust] and that evolution is the current fact and theory in biology.
Well, aren’t we all made from the dust of the earth, which was stardust at one time? If not, then what else are we made from? Sounds like Gray was paraphrasing Galileo by saying “Yes, I believe in god but the earth still moves.”
He knows he’s up the creek in regards to teaching at his prison, but he’s not giving up his ideas.
Pardon me, but I’ve been reading this one for a while, and I’m not clear on what a “successful” death threat is. Is it a successful threat? A successful death? I’m guessing it means it succeeded in coercing the result the threatener wanted, but it’s not exactly clear from the wording.
“Gwen Pearson death threat” doesn’t turn up anything on Google except your posts.
Also, “harassment” is misspelled.
I know and point this out often. Some of the people who run this website, PT, are Xians.
The often repeated equation:
science=evolution=atheism=mass murder is a common fundie lie. Egnor just made it again a few days ago.
Don’t know much about the OPC except it is a schismatic sect and relatively small at 28,000 versus the PC(USA) at 2.3 million.
[OT: IMO, they seem stuck in the middle ages. The trend in the USA these days is to deemphasize dogma. If you can’t live and understand the spirit of the religion, what is the point of conflict over one verse or another. Motes and beams, remember?]
Gwen Pearson is an untold story of harassment by fundies. She was beaten up, threatened with death, and harassed at UT Permian until she did the sensible thing, quit and moved far away. WTH, what sort of low lifes go around beating up women? Yeah, I know, they are smaller and weaker and make easy targets. So what, this is sickening.
Your Google is broken. Better fix it.
Posting this before it gets lost on the net. I should mention that death threats and other fundie harassment are a lot more common than my list. Most people don’t publicize these because they aren’t into martyrdom. They want to go to work, go home, feed the pets, and hope their kids have a better life.
I had students holding prayer meetings outside my door one semester while I was teaching. Apparently, several of our courses are on the “do not take list” at the local University baptist church. Nothing like the shocker above, but Raven is right – we need a public assembly of such stories from around the country.
My point was a little more specific. I live in the evangelical sub-culture and the point that mainline Protestants are friendly to evolution isn’t very persuasive. For some reason Ken Miller’s Catholicism is not very persuasive while Michael Behe’s is. Ironically, Michael Behe tried to convert Terry to Catholicism. My finer point is not only are other kinds of Christians friendly to evolution but so are many evangelicals.
Keith Miller who is a member of the Evangelical Free denomination and the ASA was one of the evangelical scientists who opposed the so-called Kansas science standards. He is also the editor of the book Perspective on Evolving Creation. ASA member Terry Gray also wrote one of the chapters. ASA fellow Francis Collins is the most famous evangelical evolutionist.
As I said in my previous post, Westminster Theological Seminary was founded by the OPC as their Princeton. What they are most famous for is putting the OT in its ANE perspective and the NT into its second Temple Judaism perspective. Professor Meridith Kline originated what is known as the Framework Hypothesis for Genesis 1. Another former WTS professor is getting some publicity recently and he is Tim Keller. Tim Keller is the pastor of the PCA church Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City. The PCA is another conservative Presbyterian denomination that D. James Kennedy was a pastor in. Dr. Keller is the 800 pound gorilla in the denomination being so incredibly successful with roughly 50 churches planted in the NYC area. He has received praise from such diverse sources as Billy Graham and the New York Times. This is so because Dr. Keller is as irenic as Dr. Kennedy was polemic. About a month ago, Dr. Keller wrote the Reason for God where he answered a number of questions that skeptics ask him during the several hours he spends doing so after his sermons.
One of those questions he addresses in the book is doesn’t science contradict Christianity? He noted that it was perfectly consistent to see the evidence for evolution and be a Christian. He cited as examples B.B. Warfield, the father of 20th Century inerrancy theory, and R.A. Torrey, one of the original fundamentalists who both believed that evolution and Biblical Christianity can be consistent.
On the ASA list Terry Gray gave a quiz of “who wrote this”. The first quote is from WTS professor Peter Enns while the second is from B.B. Warfield and A.A. Hodge. This underscores Dr. Keller’s point that not only are many contemporaneous evangelicals friendly to evolutionary theory but so also were historical evangelicals. It is the YEC and the wooden literalists who are the aberration.
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/2[…]03/0043.html
It is not merely in the matter of verbal expression or literary composition that the personal idiosyncrasies of each author are freely manifested…, but the very substance of what they write is evidently for the most part the product of their own mental and spiritual activities… [Each author of Scripture] gave evidence of his own special limitations of knowledge and mental power, and of his personal defects as well as of his powers.
[The Scriptures] are written in human languages, whose words, inflections, constructions and idioms bear everywhere indelible traces of error. The record itself furnishes evidence that the writers were in large measure dependent for their knowledge upon sources and methods in themselves fallible, and that their personal knowledge and judgments were in many matters hesitating and defective, or even wrong.
I’ve recently become aware that some Evangelicals don’t have a problem with contemporary science. Evolution is taught at Calvin and an occasional poster here appears to be a biologist teaching at an evangelical college in Canada.
The anti-science fundies have been trying to hijack the Xian religion for a while now. My blunt point is that ultimately they will probably do it some serious damage. When Xian becomes synonymous with liar, bigot, ignorant, and violent, who would want to be one. Already we are seeing a backlash.
The usual plea is, “where are the so called moderate Xians”. They are out there and starting to make their presence known. The Clergy Letter project supporting science has ca. 12,000 ministers signed up.
Not all Christians are fundamentalist evolution deniers, but I still get creeped out by people who believe in patent nonsense. Sam Harris correctly points out that it’s the so-called moderate religionists who make it possible for the ‘radicals’. He also points out that the truest implementation of Christianity was the period of the Inquisition. I like his take on it. He wryly notes that it was during this time when the Bible was being used most literally. So the Crusades and Inquisition were not an aberation of Christian values but the truest expression of them.
You can’t ‘believe in the Bible’ as the written word and law of GOD and not be a radical. It’s only because we’ve had a couple thousand years of beating back the tyranny of religion that we are even able to have these discussions.
As a constitutionalist, I have a hard time justifying outlawing religion because people have a right to believe lunatic things UP TO THE POINT THEY TRY TO BRING IT TO THE PUBLIC SPHERE. We don’t let crazy parents deny their kids necessary life saving medicine on the basis of religious belief (for the most part anyway). You can’t yell Fire! in a crowded theater with your free speech rights. Time to clamp down on the relignotards if they’re not happy staying on their side of the church-state divide.
Enjoy.
evolution is evil nonsense, of the devil, anti-God, anti-intellectual, anti-Christ
You joker.
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