From: brinkman@edseq4.llnl.gov
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Does theory of evolution affect belief in God?
Date: 14 Apr 92 23:46:31 GMT


   In article <salem.702857217@pangea.Stanford.EDU> salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU 
(Bruce Salem) writes...

>brinkman@edseq4.llnl.gov writes:

>	Matt is taking a statement of mine and transforming it to look
>like some religionist cant. 

   Specifically a Creationist cant, but go on...

>He is trying to show that by taking an
>argument that I have made about the tendency to Creationism is
>integral to Near Eastern religion is the same kind of argument made
>by religious bigots against science.

   No.  I was showing that you are being overbroad in your claims.  To
give an example of such overbroadness, in the above sentence you have used the
phrase "Near Eastern religion" and earlier you said Christianity, Judaism,
and Islam.  Can you point out to me the Jewish or Islamic Creationists you
are worried about, because I've never met them.  Of course, without both
large communities of Jewish and Islamic Creationists, acting in that nasty 
Creationist way, your entire argument falls, doesn't it?

>>   And through the magic of simple textual substitution come up with the
>>kind of argument Creationists are noted for (Mr. Tun being merely the latest
>>of that sorry lot)...

   Note, I was very specific to state textual substitution.  In other words,
I exchanged words/phrases with comparable words/phrases.  If you feel I have
gone beyond these restrictions, could you please point out where?

>	The pursuit of science is not to asail religion. 

   I would claim that the point (pursuit, if your prefer) of religion is
not to assail science.  Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

   Once again we can perform simple textual substitution and go from Bruce
Salem...

>I said that there were basic tendencies in Near Eastern
>religion that led directly to the belief in Creationism, and I have said
>many times, not necessarily to it, that is not all Christians are Creationists
>and certiantly not all are bigoted. 

   to Mr. Creation Scientist...

I said there were basic tendencies in Science that lead directly to the belief
in Evolutionism (in the nasty sense of the word), and I have said many times, 
not necessarily to it, that is that not all Scientists are Evolutionists and 
certainly not all are intolerant.

   Am I once again overgeneralizing your arguments, Bruce?  I agree that the
claim is indeed overbroad, but that would appear to be a problem with your
argument not my transformation.

>Matt seems to be blind to what these tendencies are, even after I have 
>described them many times.

   Not blind to them as much as confused by them.  They seem to rate slightly
above piffle in terms of discussing Creationism.  As example, let's look at 
your recent formulation of these claims...

>	1) The Bible is taken as a literal historical and legal
> 	   authority. Its value as a sacred text is in its
>	   use as a law book, not as a set of symbolic guides to
>	   spiritual turths, the correct way to live. This is in
>	   sharp contrast to the use of sacred texts by most other
>	   great religious traditions. They are not taken so literally
>	   or regarded to be in conflict with science.

   Could you please explain why viewing the _Bible_ as a "legal" authority is
conducive to Creationism?  You spend the vast majority of the paragraph railing
against this use of the _Bible_, but it doesn't have anything to do with
Creationism.  This is a question of sociology and appears to be an argument 
against Christianity, not Creationism.

   Now, you have also brought up that the _Bible_ is also to be taken as a
literal historical authority.  This is at least related to Creationism 
(provided one can show this tendency extends to questions of origins), but is
it true?  You have glossed over the overwhelming amount of theological 
thought dealing with the questions of literal versus symbolic interpretation of
the texts.  Huge segments of the Talmud deal with precisely this question, and
major contributors to Christian thought also frequently side with allegorical 
readings (for example see the writings by Thomas Aquinas on the origins of 
life).

   In short, you have vastly oversimplified Near Eastern Religious thought on
this matter by failing to note the counterposing view.  Now, you could claim,
"Well, Aquinas was the exception that proved the rule," but you need to provide
evidence for this claim.  Once again, we have Campbell's plausibility arguments,
but no real evidence for this position.  Furthermore, since the vast majority
of Christians do not treat the _Bible_ as a literal historical truth (e.g., the
Roman Catholic views on origins), it is hard to see how this can be a basic
tendency of Christianity.

   As a final note:  Taking the _Bible_ as a historical authority can only
be bad if it isn't historical.  Yet when someone brings up arguments on the
historicity of Christ you protest that talk.origins isn't the forum for such
discussions.  In other words, you want to criticize Christianity for an alleged
flaw, but you are feel bringing counterposing arguments to this claim are
un-talk.originsian.  I don't understand why you want it both ways.  (I would
claim that neither is talk.origins fare, but that is just my personal view.)

>	2) The path to spiritual reward is taken by Christians to be
>	   to a point not in this world and distant from themselves,
>	   especially their corporal selves. The physical world
>	   contains few vestiages of the divine, and the divine is
>	   not to be found inside us. After the Reformation and in
>	   some modern sects there is a much more personalized
>	   relationship taken to God, but we are still estranged in
>	   this life from Him. This is not necessarily the case for
>	   other world religions who regard the divine as part of
>	   everyday existance, if mostly hidden from experience.

>	   The meaning of this for Creationism is that the physical
>	   relaity is regarded as fallen and unimportant. It can
>	   have nothing to say about a teleology that has divine
>	   origins and motives.

   Bruce, this is such a gross mischaracterization of Christian thought as to
be laughable.  What you are claiming as a tendency of Christianity (i.e., the
belief in the ultimate corrupt nature of the physical world) is in actuality 
one of the central hallmarks of Gnosticism, a Christian heresy.  A few simple
examples should suffice to show that this is at best a superficial reading of
Christian thought.

1) The biblical mandate for man to subdue the Earth.  Christians are not 
   supposed to separate themselves from the world, they are supposed to get
   down and dirty and wrestle with it.

2) The numerous places in the epistles where Paul points out with pride that 
   he is a tent maker.  The otherworldly spiritual goals of Christianity are
   never meant to to alleviate or excuse Christians from living, participating, 
   and working in this world.

3) Traditional Christian thought holds that Christ was God incarnate.  He was
   made of the same stuff as all natural things and was born via distinctly
   biological processes (with the exception of conception).  This in and of 
   itself demonstrates that the material world is not some irretrievably 
   corrupt entity that Christians are to spurn as unimportant, because to do
   so is to spurn their saviour.

   Finally, if this is correct, would you care to comment on why science, 
which is the ultimate human endeavor with regard to interacting with the 
physical world, would have reached such spectacular heights in a culture 
permeated by the Near Eastern Religious Worldview (and hence, with such an
overwhelming inherent barrier against it in your view)?  That strikes me as a 
real difficulty for this silly claim.

>	3) The Near Eastern Religions are theocratic and monocratic.
>	   Until very recently Christinaity was used to keep Monarchs
>	   in power as it envisinged a hiearchy of relations from God,
>	   the king down through the temporal ruler and his clergy
>	   to their subjects. This is still the case in the "Islamic
>	   Republics". This scheme is justified in the same teleology
>	   believed in by Creationists. This is an authoritarian
>	   tradition, which has been overlain by Humanist ideals from
>	   other sources often taken by modern Christians to be in
>	   conflict with Christianity. The Rights of Man and the
>	   values that lead to democratic institutions were not
>	   invented by Christian religion. This is not to say that
>	   founders were not devout, this has nothing to do with
>	   it. In the argument for ideas, it says that our religious
>	   tradition is strongly authoritarian and that people resort
>	   to argument by authority often because of the real power
>	   given to kings, popes, bishops to enforce the Law.

   Once again, we are back to comment made on your earlier claim that the
_Bible_ is to be viewed as a legal authority.  You are discussing questions
of social engineering here, and such questions have no relation to Creationism.
This is, once again, not a comment on Creationism as much as it is an overbroad
attack on Christianity.

   Now, looking back at your contentions, we have:

1) One claim (i.e., Christians view the _Bible_ as a historical source) that 
   is of marginal utility to discussions of Creationism.  Marginal in terms
   of the fact that there is little or no evidence that this claim is in
   general true for Near Eastern Religions as regards to discussions of 
   origins.

2) One claim (i.e., Christians view the material world as unimportant) that is
   based on a gross mischaracterization of Christian religious thought.  In 
   fact, it is more closely related to a Christian heresy.

3) Two claims (i.e., Christians view the _Bible_ as a legal authority and
   Near Eastern religions are authoritarian) that have nothing to do with 
   Creationism beyond being attacks on Christianity.

In other words, your opinions on tendencies inherent in Christianity are
either completely irrelevant or useless to discussions of Creationism.

   I guess my question is, what is your hidden agenda, Bruce?  You seem to be
doing an admirable imitation of Creationist rhetorical forms, with unsupported 
claims, attacks on strawmen, immaterial fear-mongering, and, of course, the
ubiquitous proselytizing (i.e., we need a new spiritual direction like Far
Eastern Religions provide).

>Bruce Salem

Matt Brinkman		brinkman@edseq1.llnl.gov