From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.skeptic,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests
Date: 31 Jul 92 00:04:24 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <1182@tecsun1.etl.army.mil>, riggs@descartes.tec.army.mil (Bill Riggs) writes:
> In article <11455@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
> >Which prepackaged religions predicate "the Universe being roughly
> >6000 years old"?  I seem to have missed that one.
> >
> >Even many fundamentalist Christians don't subscribe to that notion, and 
> >certainly, most Christians of all stripes don't.  In any case, it
> >isn't part of the religion.
> 
> 	The original assertion was questionable, but, if we are to
> organize reality in such a way that it does not shatter our view
> of the world (NOTE TO THE NIETSCHE FANS IN THIS GROUP: I did not resort
> to the inevitable German rendition of this phrase, for political
> reasons), then we must allow others the same priviledge.
> 
> 	Since the Bible gives specific figures on ages and dates, and once
> upon a time there was a monk who was industrious, and could add and

Bishop Usher, not a monk, but what's a little ignorance?

> subtract, the figure of the Creation happening about 4000 B.C. was
> derived. We can avoid this conclusion by certain theological formulations
> and rational deductions about the accuracy of the source data, but
> regretably, this defeats the fundamentalist assertion that every
> word in the King James Version is unfailing true.

One of the more interesting items I've read on this subject was
written in the last century, by a literalist, demonstrating that
Bishop Usher's chronology was wrong EVEN FROM A LITERALIST PERSPECTIVE!
The word "begat" in the KJV is a translation of a word in Hebrew that
merely indicates descent, and not necessarily one generation.
Further, there are significant differences in genealogies in
different parts of the Bible, with symbolic significance to the
which generations, and which "X begat Y" are present.  Thus,
Usher's attempt at determining the age of the Earth is doomed to
failure.

Similar problems with the word translated as "day" in KJV and
NIV are left as an exercise for the reader.  I don't hold any
brief for fundamentalism, but there is a profound ignorance of
what the Bible actually contains, versus such later interpolations
as the Bishop Usher chronology, the Darby-Scofield eschatology, etc.

> 	If the way in which you define "fundamentalist" is someone who
> sticks with the basic message of the Bible, rather than someone who 
> quibbles over every line and verse, then your statement makes some sense.
> Otherwise, the advantage goes to the opposition.
> 
> 	Bill R.

In fact, fundamentalists divide into two groups: one asserts the
Bible was perfect as originally written down, and recognizes that
data transmission may have been less than perfect, as well as
difficulties in translation; and another group, much smaller, that
asserts that even the data transmission and translation process
is perfect.  Both forms of fundamentalism are essentially different
from more liberal theological thinking, but only the latter form
of fundamentalism fits with your notion of the word.
-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
"Well, maybe the Holocaust was right *for that culture*." -- a moral relativist
with whom I work.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.humor,alt.folklore.urban,alt.religion.kibology