>Well, Glenn, I'm sure you probably know as well as anyone what a stubborn
>fellow I can be :). Whenever I see a statement like this I usually get these
>warning bells going off in my head.
>
Ah yes, but I bet I beat you in obnoxious persistence. :-) The point of my
statement was that there is a lot of human-like bones. It is reasonable for
someone to eventuially want to know. If we don't have an answer, we leave
them hanging.
[snip]
>Now lets look at fossil men. In this case I think the consequences of
>being wrong are much less severe. We are not, after all, going to sell
>them into slavery or something. What are the consequences of being
>wrong here? First let me see if I understood your argument. There
>seem to be three factors involved in elevating this to an important decision.
>
>1) An individual has taken sides so to speak in the debate over human
> origins. They count themselves as a YEC, PC, MC, EC, TE etc. and
> this view has certain consequences wrt the origin of humanity.
>2) This person has certain doctrinal positions they hold dearly. Perhaps
> some are completely non-negotiable.
>3) There are certain hard facts from the fossil record, the rocks or whatever
> that need to be dealt with.
>
>What are the consequences of being wrong or of not deciding in a case
>like this? The answer to this seems to depend on who the individual
>is. If the person is a Christian apologist or someone in the public eye
>or if the person is a teacher in the church who regularly talks about
>origins issues (I really hate to think this occupies much time in Sunday
>school!), then I think the consequences of being wrong are pretty
>serious.
>
>What about your average everyday layman? I don't see any bad consequences
>at all from being wrong or even from refusing to decide.
I have no serious trouble with this other than the danger of teaching your
children something (because they will ask and demand some type of answer
from their parent and if the parent says "i don't know" they will seek an
answer from who knows who? Once they find out that Christians don't know
very much about the areas they say they do, then there is a danger of them
leaving the faith. E. O. Wilson was raised Southern Baptist but left when he
ran into evolution. William Provine (personal communication0 told me that
he was raised as the son of a Presbyterian minister who did not believe in
evolution. the lack of a rational christian framework within which to place
the data of science caused him to rethink his views of christianity. Today
he says that about 90? percent of the christians coming into his classes
leave as atheists. is this what we want to encourage?
> In fact, a lot of
>folks don't even understand what's going on in items 1-3 above. For these
>people the best thing is simply not to decide. I think a lot of troubles come
>from people being spoon fed some incomplete information and then having
>their arms twisted into taking some activist position. If only people would
>have the courage to say they don't know what all the issues are and they
>aren't going to decide then I think we would have a lot fewer problems.
>For most Christians going about their everyday lives these issues are,
>I believe, relatively unimportant.
>
I agree that for most they are not important. They were relatively
uniportant to me until I found myself in the oil industry seeing that
everything Christians had taught me about geology was pure poppycock.
Eventually it nearly caused me to leave the faith. Telling the laity the
truth is very important even if they don't think it is.
>I am reminded of following from Pascal:
>
>==========================================================
>543. Preface.- The metaphysical proofs of God are so remote from
>the reasoning of men, and so complicated, that they make little
>impression; and if they should be of service to some, it would be only
>during the moment that they see such demonstration; but an hour
>afterwards they fear they have been mistaken. -- Pascal
>===========================================================
>
>Substitute "scientific and theological discussions on the origin of man"
>for "metaphysical proofs of God" and imagine some poor fellow (who has
>to work for a living) one hour after attending a lecture by Duane Gish.
>How did that go again .....?
>
I don't agree here. I had a good friend who fell under the spell of the
local creationist leader. He now views me as the devil incarnate. The fact
that the local leader claims to be a geologist, but doesn't know what a
listric fault is, or a normal fault doesn't bother my friend because he
doesn't know either. The fact that the local leader got his "geology
degree", a Ph.D. from a degree mill in Australia set up by Clifford Wilson,
so that Creationsits can get their Ph D's doesn't bother my friend either.
He tells me that I am being to harsh because creationists can'[t get Ph D's
from secular schools. the fact that this guy wrote a term paper and got a
Ph D doesn't seem important to my friend.
>Whenever I'm discussing these types of things with folks who are not
>familiar with all the issues I generally take the approach of trying to
convince
>them that its not particularly important rather than trying to persuade
>them to my own view. I assure them that they won't need to know any
>of this stuff when they minister to the children at the mission down town.
>
>[...]
>
>GM:===
>>
>>I want to relate a story told me by a good friend who got a PHD in biology
>>wanting to be involved in the creation\evolution debate. When he got out,
>>he realized that the really tough issues are in geology. he then made the
>>move in that direction and now is a very knowledgeable geoscientist. The
>>entire issue of evolution lies inside of the rocks of the earth. All the
>>evolution we see today is minor compared to what the record of life tells us
>>from below our feet.
>>
>
>I like this. A good illustration of the fact of evolution.
My life story illustrates punctuated equilibrium. I used to be a YEC and
remained in stasis for several years. then all of a sudden, I became an
evolutionist. :-)
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm