Re: After Fundamentalism

Jim Bell (JamesScottBell@compuserve.com)
Thu, 28 May 1998 15:47:27 -0400

Glenn writes:

<<I am delighted by your list. You couldn't have made me happier.>>

Oh, I probably could have. Finding a habilis site with a "Home, Sweet Home"
sign would have sent you to paradise.

I'm less than happy about your subsequent arguments, however. Briefly:

<<That is rational thinking. Homo erectus used EXACTLY that line of
reasoning at Schoningen, Germany 400,000 years ago. OK, he was rational.>>

As I said in my first post, your criteria are so fuzzy as to mean almost
anything. Note that you have switched from rational UNDERSTANDING (of God's
command...you conveniently ignored the cite to Gen. 1:28) to mere ability
re: tool making and hunting. You've substituted your own concept here, and
that's just not good argumentation.

>2. moral obedience (2:16-17)

This one we can't find fossil evidence for but then I can't prove that the
Egyptians from 4500 BC were morally obedient either. They left no evidence
of moral obedience.>>

There you go again. The argument is over evidence of capacity for moral
obedience, not whether they actually lived up to it (the Bible gives us a
clue about that!) But to have the capacity means you understand morality.

You're right that you are without evidence of such capacity in the fossil
record, and are likely to remain so. So where do we have irrefutable
evidence of moral capacity? The laws of Ur-Nammu, from around 2100 B.C.
That's as far back as we can go.

>3. religious communion (3:3)

Once again, you don't deal with the citation, nor the OBJECT of
communion--a known God.

I'm sorry, Glenn, but you haven't come close to dealing with the Henry
criteria. Perhaps your happiness is mere delirium?

Best,
Jim