Re: Henry Morris

On 3/6/06, Michael Roberts <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>
> What would evangelicals say when Bishop Spong pops his clogs? O r Richard
> Dawkins or Bill Provine?
> Michael
>

Umm ... Alleluia! I shouldn't be surprised!

Seriously though, I feel the tone of this debate is very poor on both
sides. Last week in a sermon at my church, YEC Andy McIntosh made a most
inappropriate personal attack on Richard Dawkins, saying "When Dawkins gets
to meet his Maker, he'll realise there was plenty of evidence for God".

But equally, there's a lot of name calling of live YEC's that goes on from
the other side of the fence (dare I mention once again "Braying jackass"?).
In particular, what I think is really unhelpful is when people accuse YEC's
of lying to people.

I think we should remember that the human capacity for self-deception is
enormous, and it applies to all of us that we frequently "see what we want
to see". It is arguable that the human capacity to spot patterns, even when
the patterns aren't really there, has led to the intellectual position we're
in now, with things like language, literature, music, scientific discovery
etc etc. In spotting such patterns, we are bound to spot a few false ones
and genuinely believe that we're on to something. An experiment set up by
the Australian Skeptics association tested the ability of "dowsers" to
detect water. They were required to detect which of 10 underground pipes,
and known locations had water in it (only 1 out of 10 did). They asked them
all before the experiment what success rate they expected to get. They all
said confidently that they would get 80-85% correct. They in fact scored
12%. Now I don't think these people were liars - they genuinely believed
they had this ability and were perfectly honest in their assessment, despite
the fact that it was totally wrong and self-deluded.

Similarly we should not accuse YEC's of being liars - it is not IMO helpful,
and merely serves to antagonise people and make them further entrenched in
their views.

Let's see some of the gracious words offered about Henry Morris now he is
dead, offered to those YEC's who are still alive, rather judging them as
liars. I also feel that if you wouldn't use such language to their faces
you shouldn't use it behind their backs.

Iain
Received on Mon Mar 6 07:51:07 2006