The Winter 2011 Southern Seminary Magazine continues to receive attention. In recent days, Baptist Press has noted the ongoing dialogue between proponents of theistic evolution, such as The BioLogos Foundation, and R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. At Baptist Press, a Jan. 26 article, “Mohler at center of debate over evolution & the Bible,” mentions that Mohler considers evolutionary theory “one of the greatest challenges to Christian faith and faithfulness in our times.”
The article highlights one of Mohler’s two feature articles in the Winter 2011 magazine, “The New Atheism and the Dogma of Darwinism.” For those who are not familiar with the movement, the New Atheism includes such outspoken atheistic figures as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.
In the article, Mohler seeks to demonstrate the necessity of Darwinian evolutionary theory for the atheist worldview to account for the origins of life and the existence of the cosmos. As the world-famous evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins puts it, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
Concerning the essentiality of Darwinian evolution to the atheist worldview, Mohler writes the following in his Southern Seminary Magazine article:
The dogma of Darwinism is among the first principles of the worldview offered by the New Atheists. Darwin replaces the Bible as the great explainer of the existence of life in all of its forms. The New Atheists are not merely dependent upon science for their worldview; their worldview amounts to scientism – the belief that modern naturalistic science is the great unifying answer to the most basic questions of human life.
Readers can access both of Mohler’s articles, “The New Atheism and the Dogma of Darwinism” as well as “The New Shape of the Debate,” in the PDF for the latest magazine provided by the SBTS Resource page.
Baptist Press offers more coverage of the discussion about the disputed compatibility between Christianity and evolutionary theory with the article, “Theistic evolutionists, too, face ‘suspicion, condescension,’ Mohler observes.”