September 11, 2008

Theology, please conversate with Science!

When theology, biblical studies, and science are not in conversation (which they must always be to be a responsible theologian), then sites and folks like this do things like this:
Please take the time and read the material provided on this website. We are here to help. If you or a loved one is suffering from Homosexuality don't hesitate to send them our way. Please Email us with any questions or thoughts.
(from godhatesfags.com, their new site lovegodsway.com)
Check out this article on brain development and homosexuality. I'll declare up front I don't know where I stand on the issue of homosexuality, but I can tell you two things. We Christians MUST address the issue in humility and must change the way we have addressed the issue in the past (or should I say present). Secondly, we in our humility we must listen to other voices on this issue. For me, it is important whether or not homosexuals are born gay or not. If they are or at least some are then this is a classic case of our theology needing to listen to science.

What happens when we ignore science? Well, ask Galileo who was thrown into prison by the church for supporting Copernicus' claim that the planets revolve around the sun, not the earth and the pope.

In their study of 25 straight men, 25 straight women, 20 gay men, and 20 gay women, the neurologists at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, found that
Savic was able to demonstrate highly statistically significant differences between straight and gay brains. Gay and lesbian brains more closely resembled the brains of straight volunteers of the opposite sex than the brains of heterosexual members of the same sex.
and
Although Savic admits that her study cannot distinguish between genetic or prenatal intrauterine environmental changes, such as relative differences in sex hormone levels, her studies do suggest that our sexual preferences are, at least in large part, determined by the time of birth.
Interesting indeed. Read the rest.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

just to be contrarian... i did a little research on galileo back in intro to christian history. galileo, while he was right and suppressed by the church, was also something of an arrogant bastard.

history is always more interesting and gray than we think.

Joe Bumbulis said...

arrogant or not, his cosmology was suppressed by the church for a hundred years or more, if I'm not mistaking so copernicus suffered for be a galilean cosmologist.

History is more interesting and gray, but so are many of the "issues" in church.