So might astrology or oneiromancy. But should we value their contributions equally?
Not sure what “equally” is supposed to refer to but I do think that the “image of God” involves a strong articulation of human value. Other -ologies didn’t make that impression on me, but I don’t claim to have done any kind of search. I’ll just say this: I think Christianity is false and have explained (too much) why. I also think that there are large swaths of Christianity that affirm central humanist values, and that’s why I think that there is lots of potential for fruitful – or at least cordial – discussion with Christians of good will.
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No argument with that. But is theology at all useful in that endeavor, any more than astrology or oneiromancy would be?
Definitely not. Hepatomancy and cromnyomancy should be valued above all other such methods.
Not because they produce better results, but because of the culinary by-products.
If we are talking about Christian theology, of the kind that believes humans to be created in the image of the Christian god, then yes, I think so.
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Could you explain why?
To the millions of Christians, to even those who accept Evolution, it does not matter if their position on God’s role in the Universe is not a scientific hypothesis.
Do you “get” that? This recurring theme, ad naseum, is a by-product of giving free rein to non-religious correspondents for nearly 7 years.
Please, enough. GAE was written to explain some religion to Atheists, and to explain some science to Theists.
But religion is like leaven: put a little leaven into a gallon of dough… suddenly you have a LOT of leaven!!!
I.D. folks fail in their efforts because they think they can argue that religion can become science. It cannot.
Throw the I.D. water out … but save the Baby, i.e., God used evolution to populate the earth with life!
They are only an issue if, say Astrology, gets in the way of accepting evolutionary science.
Theology is the study of the nature of religious metaphysics. Involving theology is unavoidable if you want to convince YECs of ANY thing.
My simple claim is that Christian theology can bring interesting and important insights to a discussion of “what it means to be human.” The most obvious one is that most Christian theology asserts that humans are special (in terms of moral value and dignity, at least) by virtue of being created in the image of God. Humanism (by definition, I think) asserts that humans are special in terms of moral value and dignity. Now, if (as noted by @Jordan) there are ongoing efforts to revise concepts of the image of God in light of common ancestry with non-human animals, then there is a specific “theological” program in common between those branches of Christianity and humanism.
In short, I think it is obvious why theological reflection (aka work) on the image of God is valuable to a diverse group of humans who are wrestling with what it means to be human.
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Feel free to substitute any of the mancys.
I’m dubious. For example, I don’t find your example to be in any way interesting or important. Could you explain that? Talking about this:
Just don’t see it. Why should a non-Christian find this useful just because we might agree on the specialness?
And yet it isn’t obvious to me, even after reading your post.
Further, “image of God” and “human” may not be the same thing. There is much argument around here about whether those outside the Garden are in the image of God, and even some about whether they’re human, and in what sense they are or are not (q.v. “textual humans”).
That’s okay with me.
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From a purely naturalistic perspective, how do you justify this ‘specialness’ of humanity? Is it just because natural selection leads us to favor our own species (as, presumably, with other species), so we believe that we’re special? Or do you think there’s something objectively special about humans?
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It was an invitation to make your point more clearly. You aren’t interested?
The only animal capable of believing that it’s special?
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Great question. For me, I take the moral value and dignity of humans to be axiomatic – at its heart, my humanism asserts human value and doesn’t seek to “justify” it. All I have done is remove “because we’re made in God’s image” from the equation (I am an apostate) because for me that is meaningless.
I do think the capacity for reason (or we can call it ‘consciousness’) is objectively special about humans but I also acknowledge that consciousness seems to exist on a spectrum, and I doubt that it is utterly dependent on human tissue. So, yes, I think humans are objectively special but I hesitate to base human moral value on just that.
Also, I reserve the right to change my mind about any and all of the above. 
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I did my best, John. It’s possible that you are weighting words like ‘useful’ in ways I don’t intend. If you don’t think that Christian belief in the image of God has any usefulness of any kind in a place like Peaceful Science, that’s fine with me. My naive (even deluded?) hope is that talking about human value and what it means… can help preserve humanity in the face of destructive forces propelled by religion itself. Yeah, like I said: naive.
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Thanks for explaining. For what it’s worth, even as a Christian, I also have difficulty justifying the ‘specialness’ of humanity. I don’t know what “image of God” means, or how it marks humanity apart from other species, or at what stage in our evolution we could have acquired this status (since all aspects of our evolution seem gradualistic). So my question wasn’t meant to be a jab at naturalism, it was a legitimate question because I seem to be in no less difficult a position than you.
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Personally, I don’t. Yes, humans are special to us humans, but that’s not really an objective criterion.
I do have a somewhat different conception of humanism. It seems to me that humanism broadens our perspective by treating the entire species as special. The natural tendency for many people is to treat only a tribal subgroup as special. So humanism is a broadening, not a narrowing.
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