...when convictions were convictions and martyrs were martyrs. Apparently William Dembski, has had to recant some of his moderate views on creation. In his latest book, End Of Christianity, he had the temerity to admit that he believes that scientists ARE right-the Universe really IS around 14 billion years old and that "the Flood" was NOT world wide. I guess that didn't set well with his overlords (I mean bosses) at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. According to Michael Zimmerman writing in the Huffington Post, Dembski was called on the carpet for his writings. Since the inquisition is long gone, presumably his bosses used less drastic means than hot pokers or racks to get him to recant. Maybe they water boarded him- I don't know.
At any rate Dembski has at least partly recanted claiming that his statement about the flood NOT being universal was based on incomplete reflection:
"Before I write on this topic ( the Flood) again, I have much exegetical,
historical, and theological work to do. In any case, not only Genesis 6–9 but also
Jesus in Matthew 24 and Peter in Second Peter seem clearly to teach that the
Flood was universal. As a biblical inerrantist, I believe that what the Bible teaches
is true and bow to the text, including its teaching about the Flood and its
universality."
quoted in:
http://www.baptisttheology.org/documents/AReplytoTomNettlesReviewofDembskisTheEndofChristianity.pdf
Intelligent design advocates have long claimed that their beliefs about intelligent design are NOT Biblically motivated but I wonder how we are to take an advocate of intelligent design placing the Bible above empirical data.
To be fair, Dembski does not entirely recant but argues:
"My book The End of Christianity is a work of speculative theology. It
assumes that the earth and universe are old and, given that assumption, attempts
to answer how the Fall of humanity could be responsible for natural evil, such as
animal suffering. Since, on the assumption of an old earth, animal suffering
precedes the arrival of humans, the challenge is to explain how the effect (natural
evil) can temporally precede the cause (human sin and the Fall). My solution is to
argue that just as the effects of salvation at the Cross of Christ reach both forward
in time (saving contemporary Christians) and backward (saving the Old
Testament saints), so the effects of the Fall reach forward in time as well as
backward. What makes my argument work is the ability of God to arrange events
at one time to anticipate events at a later time."
OK so Dembski argues that the Fall was an actual event whose affects rippled both into the present and also into the past. So I guess all those veggie eating dinosaurs in the Creation Science museum mysteriously got transformed into evil T. rexes.
Speculative theology indeed!
