>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of JW Burgeson
>Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 2:38 PM
>I just visited the site
>
>http://www.trueorigin.org
>
>which is a YEC site devoted to "exposing" TALKORIGINS.
>
>The unhappy thing I find there is that their visitation counter is
>somewhere
>in excess of 800,000! When I look at the counters of -- say -- Glenn Morton
>or the ASA -- it is apparent (I think I said this before, last year) that
>WE ARE LOSING.
No, Burgy, we have already LOST. The people look to their preachers, their
Campus Crusade leaders, their navigator leaders etc rather than to what they
can see with their own eyes.
Faith is a funny thing. It gives one the certainty 'of what is not seen'.
When applied to areas of science/religion conflict, it means that data can
be ignored. What is seen isn't important any longer and all that we say
falls on deaf ears and blind eyes.
To me, one of the interesting things is that faith in other religions does
the very same thing. Look at the faith of the Islamic world which seems to
firmly believe that the videos of Osama taking responsibility for 911 aren't
real, were doctored, or they believe that he isn't really saying what he is
clearly saying. It makes people believe the authors of books who tell
incredible stories of how golden plates with Egyptian Reformed hieroglyphics
were found in North America. It makes people believe that vials filled with
pig's blood are really filled with 'the blood of a saint'. It makes people
think that dark spots on the ground is the newly liquified blood of a saint
instead of bat urine (Simon Winchester,The Map that Changed the World,
(London: Viking, 2001), p.284)
It makes people believe guys like Jim Jones, of whom observational data
should have informed his followers that he was going to kill them. Somehow
faith must be tempered by observational data.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Apr 30 2002 - 10:29:38 EDT