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

Given the choice, usually made clear in many Baptist churches, between
YEC and damnation, and the clear evidence that YEC is false, indeed
nonsensical, it is easy to draw the conclusion that the salvation message
is also balderdash.
Dave (ASA)

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:25:27 -0500 "David Opderbeck"
<dopderbeck@gmail.com> writes:
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 14:08:29 2007