Pastor Tim Harlow and Hemant Mehta in Friendly Dialog
Hemant Mehta, the ‘eBay atheist’, was Pastor Tim Harlow’s guest this weekend at Parkview Christian Church. In each service, instead of Pastor Tim delivering a message as usual, Pastor Tim and Hemant engaged in friendly dialog, taking turns to ask each other questions.
Even though they disagreed strongly over topics such as whether Intelligent Design should be taught alongside evolution in schools, Pastor Tim and Hemant remained friendly and respectful throughout the dialogs.
The audio recordings of the three dialogs are now available and are well worth listening to. You can find links to them on our eBay atheist blog.
June 13th, 2006 · 3 Comments
Categories: Doable Evangelism
Peter Walker said
am June 13 2006 @ 10:37 pm
I’m curious about other Christians thoughts on the subject of Intelligent Design in schools: Should it be taught alongside evolution? Is it really in Christianity’s best interests to have its ideologies taught through government-funded educational programs?
That question even presupposes that Intelligent Design is (or should be) one of the Church’s overarching teachings. I don’t really care too much HOW God created the heavens and the earth, but I have a hunch he’s big enough to create an evolutionary structure if he wanted to… in fact, God might even be big enough to make a really big bang… but that’s beside the point.
My point is (and maybe I’m MISSING the point of this article, which is about respectful dialogue between pastor and atheist, which is awesome!) do we Christians need to be so intensely concerned about what the public school system is teaching?
Just thinking out loud…
Pam Hogeweide said
am June 14 2006 @ 12:41 am
I’m a parent of two school aged kids. I’ve talked with my son and daughter about the theory of evolution and the faith based belief of creation. I’ve also indicated to them that it’s good to learn about all kinds of things and that nobody really knows 100 percent for sure how life first began on planet earth, or for that matter, the universe.
For me, as a Christ follower and as a mom, I want to help my kids develop critical thinking skills and learn to assess information for themselves and figure it out. I cannot, in good conscience, just tell them evolution is wrong or, conversely, that creation in a literal six days is the answer to the question of the origin of life.
As for intelligent design, should it be taught in school? My preference would be that all the prevailing theories and thoughts about origin of life would be taught in such a way so as to give students the capacity to think about it and determine what perspective warrants more investigation. I suppose until the end of time we will have differing opinions about this Big Question.
Helen M. said
am June 14 2006 @ 5:09 am
I reposted Peter Walker’s excellent questions in a new blog entry. Please continue the discussion of them there - thanks!