Tough love

GRMorton@aol.com
Sat, 6 Jan 1996 14:23:20 -0500

In a message dated 96-01-06 00:46:38 EST,Stephen writes:

>DL>Fine point here. I tried unsuccessfully to get this point across
>>to Stephen Jones. If you don't have the tools to be a scholar, it is
>>pretty tough to judge scholarship.
>
>Yes, it's tough being "unlearned and ignorant" (Acts 4:13)! :-)
>
>One wonders why, if it is so "tough to judge scholarship", that
>scholars even bother to write books for us plebs?
>
>But even plebs can understand some things that real "scholars"
>even write, such as:
>
>"In all debates, let truth be thy aim, and endeavor to gain
>rather than expose thy opponent."
>
>Indeed, they can even read (albeit in an interlinear! <g>) what
>another scholar once wrote wrote:
>
>"If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all
>knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not
>love, I am nothing." (1Cor 13:2).
>
>The same scholar also wrote:
>
>"Love is patient, love is kind...it does not boast, it is not proud."
>(1Cor 13:4),
>
>and:
>
>"Love...is not rude..." (1Cor 13:5).
>
>But then maybe this latter scholar did not have all the benefits of
>modern "professional scholarship"? :-)

Stephen, I think this is a unfair to Denis. Pointing out that someone does
not have the back ground is not an unfair or untrue assertion in many cases.
I get tired of Christian apologists saying things that are absolutely
ridiculous about geology when they have never, ever looked at a well log, a
seismic line, a core or made a geologic map or (as is the case of most
apologists) ever been on a geologic field trip with someone who knows what
they are doing.

To point these things out is not unloving, but loving. As I often say, there
are only two kinds of people who will tell you your breathe stinks or you
have something hanging from your nostril: Those who love you dearly and wish
you well, and those who hate your guts and wish to ridicule you.

In the case you are responding to, Denis was not in the latter category.

glenn