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

 If you rephrase that the "damnation" message is balderdash, I'm already signed up.?

-Mike (Friend of ASA)

-----Original Message-----
From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>
To: dopderbeck@gmail.com
Cc: john_walley@yahoo.com; asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 1:04 pm
Subject: 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.
  

  
?

________________________________________________________________________
More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://o.aolcdn.com/cdn.webmail.aol.com/mailtour/aol/en-us/text.htm?ncid=aolcmp00050000000003

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Nov 27 16:06:30 2007