Very subtle and unannounced. Though it is also an honor, and exciting too. We are not even an organization, and we are taking our place alongside other much more established than us.
So this leads me to one of the first questions I had about Peaceful Science. I’ve spent the last two days reading as much as I can on the forums but while there is a lot of diversity in people, I’m not seeing nearly as much diversity of topics as those other organizations. Obviously I’m not expecting a lot considering Peaceful Science hasn’t been around long and it doesn’t have the resources that those other organizations have.
So my question is, is Peaceful Science “planned” to encompass much more than Adam and human evolutionary history? There may not be an answer right now, and that’s fine. I’m a physical chemistry myself and do very little with biological systems, so at this point I’m mostly here to learn and not to contribute per se.
Most defintely. I’m finalizing plans for an office hours session with Theologian Randal Rauser on ways to have more productive conversations, intellectual fairness, etc. I hope to officially announce it by the end of the day.
@Jordan you are right there does seem to be a narrow focus sometimes. But then Genealogical Adam and the Two-population model for humanity is sort of what our host is known for. I checked the topics I posted and the way I scored it only 7 of 17 were on Adam, so it is not like all of us are one-trick ponies or anything, but it is something that maybe all of us regular contributors should be mindful of.
The reason Adam comes up so much is because it is the most important nexus of conflict between evolution and creation. Here, we see questions about God’s action, inerrancy, genetics, common descent, and everything else converge. Most importantly, it brings us to the grand question: what does it mean to be human? This question is asked by everyone, it is one of the grandquestions of origins.
At Peaceful Science, rather than answers, we want to engage the questions, the grand questions of origins.
In this, we are the fifth voice. The leading camps are YEC, OEC, ID, and TE/EC, often represented by AIG, RTB, Discovery, and BioLogos. We might become the fifth voice. The neutral voice of science, that values honesty, community, and questions over polemics, advocacy and answers.
We are not merely focused on Adam. We are much bigger than just this. We are seeking peace in the creation wars, and recovering a confessional voice in science. The Genealogical Adam is just one of many efforts towards that goal.