Oops! Awaken invites the wrong speaker on evolution and religion

So, as we enter into Awaken's week of "love, justice and unity" one would expect the typical set of ideas brought forth by the campus Christian community; universal acceptance of Jesus Christ as personal savior will end the world's pain and suffering, lack of morality in the youth is causing societal problems, etc. One would hardly expect a well known evolutionary microbiologist from Brown University to be on the event list. In case you aren't familiar with Dr. Ken Miller, he was featured on the Colbert Report, NPR, and was the lead witness in many of the famous Intelligent Design school board cases. Anyway, he is outspoken when it comes to defending science in the classroom. Snippets of his talks can be found on YouTube.

When I heard Dr. Miller was coming to speak, I wondered if I was thinking of the wrong Dr. Miller. Could I possibly be thinking of the man who, despite being personally religious, does not believe in the absolute infallible word of the Bible, nor does he believe that religion has any place in everyday science? How could this man be brought in by Christians, primarily Evangelicals, and presumably active ones at that?

Could this be something like the lame "God is Dead" ploy put on before, or could this be a genuine "reaching out" by the Christians, who, realizing finally that churches are typically last on issues of science and human rights, are desperately searching for some way to retain control over a growingly displeased group of subjects?

Many moderate Christians on campus will tell you it is a valid event put on to show people that the campus Christians aren't that bad. Perhaps, but in that attempt it was something more than that. It was an expose' of the ignorance and unwillingness of the Evangelical Christian to logically reason. For those not familiar with the event, Dr. Miller's talk on the failures of I.D. was followed by a discussion panel where Dr. Miller and another evolutionary biologist were paired with a resident physicist and an alum M.D. Ph.D. candidate. The physicist claimed that he had trouble with the whole evolution thing, and that he just couldn't reconcile his differences between his Evangelicalism and evolution. Having become a Christian in his adulthood, he seemed like the fiercest type of Evangelical, a real Jesus Camp trooper. He knew exactly how long he had been a Christian. He was trumped only by an Evangelical literalist, who started his argument with a reading from Genesis and had his bible in his hands the entire length of the panel discussion.

The fair number of people who got up and left when the literalist started reading Genesis should have stayed for Dr. Miller's response. It was beautiful. He referred to a passage where the bible claims in a song "God is a rock." He proceeded to ask the literalist if God was igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic. This question may be silly but brings up a completely relevant point; if this line is a metaphor (which it obviously is) and interpretation has to be applied to it for it to make any since, how could it not apply similarly to the seven day Genesis story. The response was golden; some areas obviously need interpretation to make sense, some don't. You can obviously see what flaws are in this argument. It was followed up by the statement that the spirit will lead you to the truth. Is anyone else reminded of a big wagon of pick and choose bullshit yet?

The literalist did make a very relevant point for everyone to see though. If you blindly believe the bible literally, there is no way to reconcile its claims with evolution's. Dr. Miller tried to find some common ground, but basically let the argument go for the sake of time. The other evolutionary biologist addressed the issue very tenderly, basically saying that we really can't expect wackos to be reasonable.

So this brings us to my earlier statement: The panel discussion was an expose' of the ignorance and unwillingness of the Evangelical Christian to logically reason.
It was as simple as this: a scientist spoke, inviting religious people to abandon their thoughts that science and religion aren't compatible. He opened his arms for love, justice, and unity in science, and the evangelicals turned him away. Typical.

Oh, and on the matter of "stacking" as being an intellectual cop out, I have only a little to say. Religion answers questions with what people want to hear. It's a way of answering things that science hasn't figured out a comprehensive answer for yet. Personally, I am fine with the idea that I simply don't know, but most people find comfort in answers, despite the irrelevancy to an actual accurate world view.