Throughout various points in this blog I’ve mentioned my self-study journey to learn more about the interplay between science and theology, especially in relationship to evolution. In a recent post I mentioned that the journey reached a time to pause, but I wasn’t willing to post about the topic yet. Interestingly, a reader (Rad) commented that he wants to know more, which to me means I should inform readers more about where I’ve been and what I’m now doing – so here goes.
In order to know more about any topic, one has to be willing to learn – and even better when the motivation is driven from within. I’ve always believed that the more you learn, the more you discover how much you don’t know. In other words, when digging deeper into a topic, you discover a bottomless pit.
Another thing you learn is the overwhelming knowledge that leaders in the field have on the topic – again, verifying how little you actually know. I know I’ve learned and learned a lot, but I still stand in awe at the knowledge of others and the totality of the body of knowledge. Plus I know I was reading the right people because of the way these authors referred to one another.
I maintained a bibliography tracking my journey so I can comfortably say that I used the following:
- 7 full books
- 13 essays and selected chapters from books
- 16 professional articles
- 5 lecture, portion of lectures, and speech transcripts
- 2 polls and associated resources of past polls
- 2 court transcripts of testimonies
- 12 position statements and catechisms
- Email with 2 correspondents
In order to demonstrate my learning I recently wrote a paper. The paper is currently being reviewed by people I selected who are laypeople, pastors, or have a science background. I will take their comments and improve the paper. Then I will attempt to seek a review from some of the authors I read. If I’m lucky enough to be successful, I again will work to improve the paper and eventually publish it somewhere … maybe here.
Thanks Rad.
A Frank Angle 