From: Darryl Maddox (dpmaddox@arn.net)
Date: Wed Oct 01 2003 - 10:06:29 EDT
Hello Dick et al
This is a reply to Dick's comments in his post to me (and possibly ASA but I don't remember) of a couple of days ago. His post was in response to my reply to his question of "Do we have the same courage?." Unfortunately I deleated his post before realizing this morning I had one last thing to add to the conversation. PLEASE EVERYONE, this is not directed at Dick or anyone one else, it just happened to have been triggered by his question and some earlier comments by various people in the conversation which preceeded it.
Yesterday I had a enlightening conversation with a Creationist Scientist. His field ando there information are not relevant to what follows so will be omitted. Suffice it to say he knows very little geology but does have a Ph.D. from Stanford (late 1970's I think) in a field considered by most to be quite relevant to the question of evolution. I think one of the reasons we have good conversations is that he knows no geology (nor does he particularly care) and I know essentially nothing about his field (and I don't care to learn much about it, I am having enough trouble catching up and keeping up with geology). But we do trust each other's integrity as scientists. If he says something is a fact I haven't a doubt in the world that it is true. His conclusions from what he says I disagree with, but I do not doubt the truthfullness, nor the completness of his statements of fact. And, I think he holds the same opinion of me. I will not shade the truth of any statement about geology to try to influence him. It would discredit me both as a Christian and as a scientist, and I think it would destroy our ability to have good conversations.
I'll admit, the conversations are a bit one sided, I ask him questions and he answers them. (But that is the way I generally converse with a person whose field is different from mine and from whom I am trying to learn something about what they think or why they think it. My conversations of Friday and Saturday with a philosopher followed much the same format.) In these conversations I generally offer a few comments and I did so yesterday. I hope the comments are relevant and can generally tell from the response if they are or not. Yesterday as I gave the briefest of introductions to the problems I saw as a geologist with an old earth but no evolution scenerio I realized my argument was of the same form as one he had presented earlier for why he did not believe in evolution. The details are irrelevant here, but what is very important is that I my argument had the same form and logic as his and I had always considered his to be an invalid form of argument yet there I sat looking him square in the eye making an argument which I realized I myself considered invalid. I don't think he caught it but I will send him an email today and point it out. I learned something important from that discussion. I have said before and I will repeat it here, I have and I hope to continue to learn from others. I am not sure what conclusion I will eventually reach about the validity of the aruments we were using but until I resolve the issue I think I may not use that form of argument again. In the event I do use it in my classroom as an argument for evolution I will be sure to point out that an argument of the same form can be used, and I think with equal justification and validity, against evolution. If I am going to accept my argument as valid (which I still think I do) I must, inorder to be consistent, accept the validity of the counter argument.
So to wrap up my contributions to this line of discussion let me add only the following:
Somewhere I read or heard
"There are none so blind as those who will not see; (to which I add)
and none so stupid as those who will not take the time to be aware of information or theories with which they dissagree -because they already know the answer;
and none so guilty as those who know better, and do it anyway.
So I pray dear God
show me my blindspots;
show me where I have refused to learn;
and show me my guilts.
In return
I will try to be more aware of my unwarrented assumptions and the data I have ignored;
I will try to learn those things I consider(ed) irrelevant because I already knew the answer and everthing of significance to the argument;
and most of all, I will try not to think I know more than You and intentionally do things I know are wrong or at least are not the best thing I could do in those bits and pieces of time where the choice of what to do is mine.
Amen.
Good day to all, May God bless your endevours and I look forward to reading more of your interesting posts.
Darryl
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