Hi NosyNed, we are all quite familiar, I believe, with the difficulties both opposing perspectives encounter when discussing this topic. Proponents of both evolution and creation state that they can't convince the other side of anything.
There is continous bickering and in the end the discussion is terminated without any real positive conclusion. The idea that I get is that both sides are always talking at cross-purposes with no real communication getting through.
The first point I would propose in the discussion is the acknowledgement that even though both areas are really independent of one another and therefore should not try to step into the others arena.
Scientific enquiry is essential to the continuous opening to new knowledge and if inadvertantly it apparently sheds new knowledge on the question of our origins, it should be accepted as such.
What we need to remember is that science is not an absolute but is in continuous flux. What was believed yesterday is not what is necessarily believed today. It is therefore fitting that scientific hypothesis remain just that and not become dogmas in themselves.
Where discoveries are made that directly contradict the bible and they have been proven to their utmost then the biblical texts should back down and refrain from trying to prove the unprovable and impossible. This pertains mainly to historical facts found by archeology.
Believers at this time should reexamine their foundations for believing the way they do, and in most cases will find that the reason they believe such and such is because it was handed down from the puplpit and not because it is clearly stated in the bible. Many things that are dogmas are not even mentioned in biblical texts and these interpretations should be reevaluated.
A clear example of such a situation is the age of the earth.
As for the possibility of life on other planets the bible doesn't say one word about that. But it does say how that life should be treated if it is found (or rather when).
Christianity has one major problem that it doesn't even realize it has. The wheight of belief of 2 millenia skew their world view. They believe that just because it has always been so that it should remain so. Traditions are the poison in christian belief, not the belief itself.
"That the sphericity of the earth was clearly established in the ancient world is beyond dispute. Apparently unknown to the Babylonians or Egyptians, it was a discovery of Greek astronomy and was generally accepted among natural philosophers by the time of Aristotle. It was the received view of educated Romans as well, including Pliny the Elder. Among Christian thinkers, however, its fortunes are not quite so clear. It was not without significance that the ancient Hebrews, whose views were reflected in Scripture, conceived the earth as a flat disk covered over by the dome of the heavens ... [Isidore's] grasp on the spherical nature of the earth was tenuous at best ..."
McCready, William D. Isidore, the Antipodeans, and the shape of the earth. Isis, v. 87, Mar. 1996: 108—127. illus.
Bibliographic footnotes.
The problem is that christians need to continuely reexaine their knowldge of the world and not maintain a traditional belief where it is no longer warrented. 4000 yers ago the Hebrew outlook could have been accepted since there was no knowlege to the contrary but at the time of christianity this outlook had already been abandoned by many scholars. The rejection of new knowledge by the christian church was a major setback for the world.
We are the sum of all that is, and has been. We will be the sum of our choices.
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