From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Fri May 23 2003 - 08:14:01 EDT
>From: "Michael Roberts" <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>
> At the risk of being personal I wonder whether the pressure he has received
> from fundamentalists has not helped. I do think that typical fundamentalist
> viciousness does push people away from an evangelical position, as the
> behaviour does not match faith claims.
Michael, a quick response before I dash off to other activities again:
Your personal comments were relevant. In my first post on this series, I
said, "But it is not science, by itself, that moves me away from traditional
supernaturalism toward naturalistic theism. It is the way that naturalistic
theism rings true to the whole of my life experience that attracts me to
it."
Actually, the first draft of that post had an additional sentence to the
effect, "Furthermore, the mischievous behavior of a few strident
representatives of traditional supernaturalism also functioned to encourage
me to explore other theological territories."
Not wanting to characterize an entire group by the bad behavior of some of
its members, I chose to delete that comment and focus on the theological
issues rather than the behavioral ones, but your type of story is very
familiar to me by personal experience.
Howard
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