Virtual Methodist

We're taking a break from our reflections on the New Creation, just as the Biblical narrative has God resting on the seventh day and Christ's body is pictured as resting in a tomb on the Saturday of Holy Week. Which gives me a chance to do my usual round-up of stuff that caught my eye this week. And I suppose it is appropriate that I start with this piece in the Huffington Post about an attempt by a small group in the United Methodist Church in America affiliated to Answers in Genesis to rewrite that denomination's position on "Creationism" and science. Currently the United Methodist Church affirms scientific method, seeing nothing in conflict between science and Biblical Faith, and it expressly opposes the teaching of creationism within the public school system. The fact that they had to make such a ruling in the first place speaks of the depth of polarisation in the US on this issue, and should be a salient lesson to us on this side of the Atlantic about ...

I awoke this morning to the news on Radio Ulster that our esteemed Minister at the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Nelson McCausland has written to the National Museums of Northern Ireland to ask for them (and presumably he means their recently renovated flagship, The Ulster Museum which he is pictured here re-opening) to give more prominence to Ulster-Scots, the Orange Order and alternative theories on the origin of the universe. I already had a sore head, and this did not improve it any. The claim is that this is in pursuit of the Northern Ireland Executive's Shared Future agenda, and given that I have worked with Mr. McCausland in the past on good relations issues I have no doubt of his sincere desire for such an end. However, given that he previously also has been an outspoken advocate of Ulster-Scots and a prominent member of the Orange Order, and that at least one member of his political party has been vocal in his demands for Creationism to be given a prominent plac...

Yesterday was Charles Darwin's 200th birthday! So I half expected to be buried under assorted Darwinania and various mailings from the fundamentalist wing of evolutionary biology... But no, instead they stood back and left the floor open for "the other side." And true to form, the first piece of news to come across my RSS reader yesterday referring to Darwin was from the same brains-trust that gave us a NI Enviroment minister who doesn't believe in Man Made Climate Change... with a news story from the Guardian referring to DUP MLA Mervyn Storey who is threatening to mount a legal challenge to the Ulster Museum under equality legislation if they go ahead with a Darwin Exhibition... I despair... But... what if their bluff was called and, under equality legislation, they were given exhibition space proportional to the properly peer-reviewed scientific research in support of either evolution or Young Earth Creationism, or even Old Earth Intelligent Design? I'm sure t...

As well as being the 500th Anniversary of the birth of John Calvin this year it is also the 200th Anniversary of Charles Darwin , and the 150th Anniversary of his publication of his " On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection " (a snappy title if ever there was one!). A Methodist studying Calvin's Institutes may be a strange phenomenon, but some would believe that an evangelical studying Behavioural and Evolutionary Genetics, which was the the subject of my honours dissertation in my primary degree, is even more bizarre. I am increasingly dismayed by the tendency within evangelicalism (particularly in America and Northern Ireland) to hold to literal belief in the Genesis creation stories (even though the accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 are "literally" contradictory) and "scientific" creationism, as a touchstone of "soundness". Add to that the tendency of evolutionists such as Dawkins (whose "selfish gene" theory was cor...