Comments on: Listen! You’ll Hear It! (Reductionism Fails)

By: Brandie

Brandie — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:38:55 +0000

Thanks for being on point and on traget!

By: Steve Drake

Steve Drake — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:28:00 +0000

Tom,
On the advice of good counsel, I am being encouraged to ‘let it go’ and not respond to your comments above. There’s a lot I could say but won’t.

By: Tom Gilson

Tom Gilson — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:37:14 +0000

I realize the last sentence of my prior comment sets up a false dichotomy. A commenter could think the questions through and yet disagree with me about what they mean; and they could either stay on the blog or leave after that. Steve, if you really think my questions through and disagree with me about what they mean, I think you have my email address. I’d just as soon we let this discussion return to its original topic now.

By: Tom Gilson

Tom Gilson — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:31:03 +0000

Steve,

I stand by what I said. I am unmoved your charge of “clearly discriminatory,” because discrimination on relevant grounds is a good thing, not a bad thing. (And I know for certain that you agree with me on that.) My attempt to “marginalize” you was in fact an attempt to halt your move toward hijacking this thread onto unrelated topics. As a blog author, I really don’t appreciate that being done to topics I write about. You have done this in 3 out of your last 4 participations on my Thinking Christian blog, and twice in a row now for blog posts of mine that you’ve commented on here.

If you thought my comment was an attack, please re-read it. Yes, it was definitely a criticism of your changing the subject on this thread for no discernible reason, other than your acknowledged YEC bias. (I agree you did not directly mention YEC. But because it is a constant undercurrent to virtually everything you post on the blogs I take part in, and because of the names you brought up, I continue to believe you were doing what I previously thought you were doing.)

But it wasn’t merely criticism. I think it’s really quite sad that you could not participate in the discussion that was underway, and that you felt the need to wrench it onto another topic altogether. Why could you not take a moment to think about music in relation to materialism, which was the topic of the thread? Why could you not take a moment to consider whether Polkinghorne’s statement quoted here had some value? And if for some reason those things were really hard for you to do (or hard to do online, at least), why did you have to change the subject to interrupt others in that conversation? Ask yourself these questions, Steve, please. Why?

If another commenter were as consistent in trying to wrest discussion off track as you are, I would ask them similar questions, in hopes that they would some serious thought to what I was asking. If they left the blog rather than thinking the questions through, I would be sad for them.

By: Steve Drake

Steve Drake — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:07:05 +0000

@Tom#5,
Anything and everything I say these days seems to raise your ire, doesn’t it? Your biases against me and my position, are showing Tom. Clearly discriminatory. I said nothing about an old-earth, or YEC, yet you read into my comments my biases (and I certainly do have them), trying to marginalize me in contradistinction to any other commenter on this blog. Imagine if you were to attack the person and the biases of any other commenter here on as a consistent basis that you do me? Pretty soon you wouldn’t have anyone left to comment.

By: Tom Gilson

Tom Gilson — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:01:22 +0000

Thank you for that excellent quote, CF.

For the record, I have a few points of disagreement with Polkinghorne, as I do with many or most Christian thinkers, including those I respect the most. Those disagreements are utterly irrelevant to the current conversation.

By: Tom Gilson

Tom Gilson — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 01:57:41 +0000

But regardless of that: Steve, your question was contentious baiting that had nothing to do with the topic of the post, and nothing to do with what CF wrote, either.

Based on this and prior conversations, I cannot help but wonder: why is it that every topic for you has to turn to Darwin, evolution, and the age of the earth? Why could you not take a moment to think about music, for example, without making this instead an opportunity virtually to label Polkinghorne an old-earth heretic? Why could you not think for a moment about whether what he said in CF’s quote was true, or whether there was some goodness or value in it? Do writers have to pass YEC muster with you to have anything worthwhile to say?

By: Tom Gilson

Tom Gilson — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 01:52:49 +0000

It’s the former. (Actually you’ve set up an erroneous dichotomy.)

By: Anthony Mator

Anthony Mator — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:47:45 +0000

Steve:

It’s the latter, of course.

By: Steve Drake

Steve Drake — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 20:24:22 +0000

One of the darlings of the BioLogos Forum (http://biologos.org/blog/an-afternoon-with-john-polkinghorne), Polkinghorne is correct in saying that science and religion are friends, not enemies, yet one wonders what is actually meant by that statement? Does he mean to say that in the vein of Kepler, Steno, Huygens, Newton, Maxwell, & Joule, that science is the practice of thinking God’s thoughts after Him as recorded in Scripture, or Hutton, Playfair, Hall, Lyell, & Darwin who sought to distance themselves autonomously from notions that Scripture and the revelation of God has anything to do with it?

By: CF

CF — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:07:47 +0000

On a similar theme, here’s John Polkinghorne: “[S]cience [like theology] has its self-chosen parochialities. Its great success is purchased through the modesty of its ambition, restricting the phenomena it is prepared to discuss to those of an impersonal, and largely repeatable, character … [confining] itself to the primary quantitative questions…. [B]ut that narrow view would be a poor metaphysical strategy, condemning one to a narrow reductions concept of reality. Those discarded secondary qualities of human perception may in fact prove to be primary clues to the construction of an ampler view of the way the world is. Music is more than vibrations in the air.”