Re: [asa] AIG -- Scientists! Give it up!

Vernon Jenkins wrote:

>
> There are plenty of "bad fruits" coming out of peoples abuses of
> Chistianity as well.
>
> Iain, I have invited you to provide an example of evolution's "good
> fruits". Surely, you must agree that this doctrine is the very
> antithesis of the Lord's Gospel of Love. And that is why it has been
> so eagerly grasped by those who wish to destroy the Church - and all
> it stands for. [A little while ago, you objected to my quoting the
> name 'Hitler' in this context. For your information, Richard Weikart's
> "From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in
> Germany", overwhelms your objection with hard facts.]
>
> The Lord has laid down the guidelines for righteous living; it
> therefore follows that he cannot be held responsible for the behaviour
> of those 'tares' who, under the aegis 'Christian', perpetrate the foul
> deeds you speak of.
>
> Are you really not able to see that, as a TE, you are attempting to
> serve two masters. The Lord himself reckons this to be impossible,
> predicting that "He will hold to the one (e.g. evolution), and despise
> the other (e.g. the Bible)".
>
This issue of fruits fascinates me. For one thing, Vernon, a good
scientist would find the concept totally irrelevant in their quest for
"factual" truth. Evolutionary descriptions of how life's history plays
out will either be accurate or not, quite independently of what
anybody chooses to do with the information. Atomic theory is no less
true just because we've now built nuclear weapons with it. And "guilt
by association" has no scientific (or ethical?) bearing either. Hitler
cleaned up Germany of pornography and opposed "big tobacco" (he gave us
that phrase). Does that mean those causes are bereft of merit because
of his association?

But in the larger questions of life that go quite beyond science --
fruits do have significance. Our Lord states as much, in fact telling
us that fruit is our best indicator of where another person stands
(Matt. 7:16-20 & beyond). But as a "proof" of some tenet or doctrine
or even as an apologetic tool for Christianity itself, things get
trickier. One correspondent once referred to this as the
"no-true-scottsman" fallacy. And I had to look that up to discover it
is a reference to circular reasoning. (I.e. Christianity is the
true religion because Christians have done good things. But wait!
What about the Crusades? Ans: Well, they couldn't have been "truly"
Christian because look what they did! ---and so history will of course
show Christianity as the home of the saints) Well I acknowledge the
fallacy well enough, I remain unconvinced that fruits then are "out of
bounds" for evaluation. For one thing, the same hostile person
actually insisted to me that Hitler was a Christian! His reasoning was
that Hitler had declared himself to be so in his book Mein Kampf -- so
that must make him one. According to that bizarre logic I could
apparently make myself a Rhodes scholar simply by declaring that I am
one, which of course, is nonsense. Anyone that can think of Hitler's
life as Christian is pretty determined to view history through a narrow
anti-Christian lens. ("Just the hard facts" he'd insist, which to me
is a catch-phrase that usually means "WARNING -- I've got
unacknowledged underlying ideologies)

So it seems to me that fruits are important -- but maybe more as an
in-house indicator?

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Received on Wed Jul 26 21:41:38 2006