Resolution 2009-05:

Teaching Intelligent Design

Assembly voted not to consider

Download the PDF

1 WHEREAS Scientism and good
2 science are two different things;
3 Nancy Pearcey and Chuck Colson
4 have written a book called, How
5 Now Shall We Live. Scientism has
6 its roots in Darwinism. Tufts
7 University professor Daniel
8 Dennett writes that Darwinism,
9 rightly understood, is a "universal
10 acid" that dissolves away all
11 traditional moral, metaphysical,
12 and religious beliefs. For if
13 humans have evolved by a
14 material, purposeless process, then
15 there is no basis for believing in a
16 God who created us and revealed
17 moral truths, or imposing those
18 moral views in any area of life.

19 Dennett is using a common tactic-
20 using science as a weapon to shoot
21 down religious faith. The standard
22 assumption is that science is
23 objective knowledge, while
24 religion is an expression of
25 subjective need. Religion,
26 therefore, must subordinate its
27 claims about the world to whatever
28 science decrees.

29 Scientism assumes that science is
30 the controlling reality about life, so
31 anything that can be validated
32 scientifically ought to be done.
33 Other things are subjective
34 fantasy-like love, beauty, good,
35 evil, conscience, ethics.

36 So science, which originally
37 simply meant the study of the
38 natural world, has in this view
39 been conflated with scientific
40 naturalism, a philosophy that the
41 natural world is all that exists.

42 Humans are reduced to "objects"
43 that can be inspected,
44 experimented on, and ultimately
45 controlled. In 1922, G.K.
46 Chesterton warned that scientism
47 had become a "creed" taking over
48 our institutions, a "system of
49 thought which began with
50 Evolution and has ended in
51 Eugenics."

52 C.S. Lewis warned that the rise of
53 scientific naturalism would lead to
54 "the abolition of man," for it
55 denies the reality of those things
56 central to our humanity: a sense of
57 right and wrong, of purpose, of
58 beauty, of God.

59 THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that
60 the Southeastern Minnesota Synod,
61 ELCA continue to emphasize
62 Intelligent Design in our Christian
63 Education, and work with the
64 educational establishment in our
65 local areas, to teach Intelligent
66 Design as an alternative theory to
67 Natural Selection or Darwinism.

68 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that
69 the ELCA advocate to the
70 Department of Education to allow
71 the teaching of the theory (belief)
72 of Intelligent Design alongside of
73 the theory (belief) of Natural
74 Selection.

Submitted by the congregational council of St. Ansgar's Lutheran Church, Cannon Falls, Minn. Author, Jack Schlichting, Vice President.

The Committee on Reference and Counsel finds this to be an editorial resolution with unsupported claims and presents it to the assembly without edit or endorsing its content. The Committee on Reference and Counsel does not recommend its passage.

Continue to Resolution 2009-06

Return to 2009 Resolution List