Group Ethos

Strong convictions, held with an open mind

The key value of Edinburgh Creation Group is openness. We want to create an atmosphere where the issue of origins can be debated in an open minded way. That is not to say that those organising the group don't have strong convictions. Rather it is our confidence that there is strong objective evidence for a creator that allows us to be open to question.

The primary aim of the group is to engage with those who disagree with this conviction in a non-aggressive way. We would rather discuss the issue over a cup of coffee and a slice of cake than in a political style debate (with more hot air than substance). In the Enlightenment the main place where discussions took place was in the pubs and coffee shops on the Royal Mile and in the Grass Market. We are very keen to recreate this atmosphere, but we believe two hundred years later the conclusions reached will be very different.

We assume the people we are talking to do not have a prior commitment to a religious text (unless they have told us otherwise). So we will not tend to argue that something is true because the bible says it. Such an argument clearly has no weight unless the person being spoken to believes the bible. Two of the founding members of the group came to faith by trying to disprove the bible in the light of science and archaeology. They treated the bible as if it was false and it was the evidence from the natural world that lead them to change their minds not the other way round.

However we do not exclude discussion about scripture from the debate where relevant. We think people should look at nature, consider what the bible has to say, and decide for themselves if there is agreement between the two. In the original Enlightenment a group of elite thinkers called 'The Select Society' allowed themselves to discuss whatever they wished, with one exception: revealed religion. Because divine cause was ruled out at the beginning, all the theories and philosophies that the Enlightenment generated (e.g. evolution, gradualism) never end up pointing back to a God. This is not the conclusion of the Enlightenment but it's starting assumption. We want to changes the rules so people are free to discuss anything. We believe when you don't rule God out before you even start the evidence leads in a very different direction.

Over the past few decades there has been a shift in education away from giving students a working knowledge of different fields and towards simply examining the ability to repeat information. We think it is a vital in education that students learn how to ask the right questions.