Re: [asa] E.O. Wilson "Baptist No More"

I suppose the point here is that the Church was at fault for not giving
Wilson other options. Perhaps there is a fair point there given the
particulars of Wilson's upbringing. But what if Wilson's response had been
to continually ask God to help him better understand the truth. Would
Wilson then have found organizations like the ASA that existed at the time?
Would he have found friends and mentors to help him work through the
questions everyone faces when they grow out of a childish fundamentalism
into a more mature faith? Would he have felt freer to question some aspects
of "evolution" as a metanarrative while at the same time broadening his
understanding of theology and scripture? In short, do we really have to buy
hook, line and sinker the story: "Church: bad; Wilson: innocent?"

On Nov 26, 2007 11:01 PM, John Walley <john_walley@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Here is a relevant and chilling quote from E.O. Wilson from
> "Consilience".
>
>
>
> http://www.cnn.com/books/beginnings/9805/consilience/index.html
>
>
>
> On a far more modest scale, I found it a wonderful feeling not just to
> taste the unification metaphysics but also to be released from the
> confinement of fundamentalist religion. I had been raised a Southern
> Baptist, laid backward under the water on the sturdy arm of a pastor, been
> born again. I knew the healing power of redemption. Faith, hope, and charity
> were in my bones, and with millions of others I knew that my savior Jesus
> Christ would grant me eternal life. More pious than the average teenager, I
> read the Bible cover to cover, twice. But now at college, steroid-driven
> into moods of adolescent rebellion, I chose to doubt. I found it hard to
> accept that our deepest beliefs were set in stone by agricultural societies
> of the eastern Mediterranean more than two thousand years ago. I suffered
> cognitive dissonance between the cheerfully reported genocidal wars of these
> people and Christian civilization in 1940s Alabama. It seemed to me that the
> Book of Revelation might be black magic hallucinated by an ancient
> primitive. And I thought, surely a loving personal God, if He is paying
> attention, will not abandon those who reject the literal interpretation of
> the biblical cosmology. It is only fair to award points for intellectual
> courage. Better damned with Plato and Bacon, Shelley said, than go to heaven
> with Paley and Malthus. But most of all, Baptist theology made no provision
> for *evolution.* The biblical authors had missed the most important
> revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the
> thoughts of God? Might the pastors of my childhood, good and loving men
> though they were, be mistaken? It was all too much, and freedom was ever so
> sweet. I drifted away from the church, not definitively agnostic or
> atheistic, just Baptist no more.
>

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Received on Tue Nov 27 13:26:27 2007