Recently my brothers and I had a most interesting and thoughtful exchange of e-mail posts on my previous post: Intelligent Design vs. Evolution. I came out supporting a modified intelligent design position, and they favored evolutionary positions that do not preclude or exclude their Christian beliefs. One of the things I came away with is the desire to make sure that everyone does their best to be understood fully, and to fully understand the position of others. Too often rhetoric and innuendo is employed to manipulate conversations or discussions in your favor, casting one's "opponent" in a disparaging light, not because one is seeking truth, but because one is trying to "win". I have been fortunate to come from a family that doesn't see the blessing or advantage for anyone to "win" at the expense of the other.
This past summer while attending a Science Inquiry conference sponsored by the Oregon Science Teachers Association, I was intrigued by the differentiation between the concepts of discussion and dialogue. Discussion has similar roots with the words percussion and concussion. They all have to do with hitting something. In concussion you get hit in the head, percussion you hit an instrument to generate sound. In discussion, you hit others with your ideas. The attitude in a discussion is to argue about ideas. One seeks to win the argument, put forward the best offense, catch your opponent in the weakness of their ideas, and drive your point home. The problem is, if you're concerned with having the best offense, you really end up being offensive.
A dialogue, however, is only possible when true relationships are upheld as the best means to finding truth. Truth in one's ideas is only possible if it arises out of the relationship of mutual respect, and trust in each other's integrity. In reality, then, one can't have a dialogue with just anyone. Dialogue commences when both people, or all those involved, desire to build the relationship between them MORE than convincing the other person of their rightness or correctness. The search for intellectual truth or the trueness of one's ideas arises out of the justice and fairness of one's relationship with others, the trueness or truth of one's being for others, for even the person one's "argument" is against.
Now in the dialogue that we had about Evolution and Intelligent Design, I found that we actually were very close in agreement at least 90% of the time. I still would like a more open acceptance of the Intelligent Design thoughts and positions to be discussed in upper division classes, if not at the high school level, then surely at the college level when Evolution is taught. I also felt that there can be and should be a distinction made between Evolution (capital E) and evolution (small e). Evolution (capital E), in my mind, refers to the whole-sale acceptance of Naturalism (or Scientific Naturalism, as my brother proposed) that maintains the randomness, and complete unguided or non-theistic nature of Nature: It is the Whole Show, and God neither exists nor creates. Evolution (small e), on the other hand, is the description and accompanying theory of gradual change over time that allows for direction and purpose and creation by God, although for scientific purposes (not religious purposes) God is not "figured into the equation" as a quantifiable or identifiable entity or director. Science, being limited by empiricism, does not try to prove or disprove God. It can do neither, and desires to do neither. It's purpose is to articulate natural laws, not define, reveal or encapsulate the Legislator of those natural laws. It is for those reasons that many Christians who believe in the Creation of the Earth, still uphold the theory of evolution (small e) without being hard-core atheistic Evolutionists or Naturalists (likewise a capital N). These distinctions are my own, and if they are helpful in the ongoing debate/dialogue, so be it. That is my intention.
