In 2005 a group of researchers assembled sixty-three Coloradans to discuss three controversial issues: same sex marriage, affirmative action, and global warming. About half the participants were conservatives from Colorado Springs and the other half liberals living in Boulder. After the participants completed, in private, questionnaires about their personal views on the three topics they were split into ten groups---five conservative and five liberal. Each group spent time discussing the issues with the goal of reaching a consensus on each one. After the discussion, the participants again filled out questionnaires.
The results showed the deliberations among like-minded people produced what researchers call “ideological amplification.” People's views became more extreme and more entrenched.
In 1996, Pope John Paul II wrote: "Science and religion are not in conflict, for their teachings occupy distinctly different domains…..The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise---"
Accepting that the earth is 10,000 years-old requires reconciling that conclusion with the reports that scientists have found trees, whose rings they believe show are six-thousand-years-old and dead trees they believe are older; that lake beds have been found at the bottom of lakes suggesting layers as old as thirty-five-thousand years; and ice rings in glaciers that show ice 123,000 years old in Greenland and as old as 740,000 years in Antarctica?
There are those who profess to be Christian and accept evolution. You might consider having one come in as you had Brad Harrub and let him explain his reasons.
“In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.” ---Augustine of Hippo
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