From: kerr@redgum.ucnv.edu.au (r.kerr)
Newsgroups: aus.religion
Subject: Re: Creation & Evolution - the great side issue.
Date: 27 Aug 92 03:49:16 GMT
Organization: UCNV, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

In article <1992Aug25.232806.16414@bain3.bain.oz.au> callum@bain3.bain.oz.au (Callum Gibson) writes:
>Greg Restall (gar@cltr.uq.oz.au) wrote:
>> Why believe fallible scientists?  Because they are using
>> their divinely created faculty of reason, and as far as
>> I check these things, a lot of their reasoning seems pretty
>> sensible.  Of course, when they resort to over-the-top 
>> claims like "now that we have this theory, we have no need
>> to say that God did it" I can see that their reasoning is
>> crazy, and I won't go along with that.  But that's not 
>> science.  That's scientism: the belief that once we have
>> a scientific explanation for something, it's the only 
>> explanation that counts.  This view is simply crazy, and
>> it is our real opponent, IMHO.
>
>I agree.  If CSF are engaged in scientism then they are just as much our
>opponent as anyone.

**BULLS EYE**

Let's hypothesise that natural selection accumulated over time actually
_is_ how speciation occurs.

If God _had_ wanted that to be the point of Gen 1-3 how would He have
described it to the prehistoric inhabitants of Palestine?

It wouldn't have looked anything like it does, would it?

So either we're barking up the wrong tree with Darwinian evolution or
it's not the point of the story.

What is the point of the story?  If you'd asked Moses I suspect he would
have said something like:
	"Well... We disobeyed God and now we find it hard to
	 know what He's like..."

Remember that the important bit of an oral tradition always comes at
the end.  For instance, the parable of the Prodigal Son is not actually
_about_ the prodigal.  It's about his older brother (read it in context,
it was told to the Pharisees).  Now we can, if we like, draw some
conclusions about God's treatment of us as prodigals but the first part
of the story is not the point that Christ was trying to make.  It is, in
some ways, irrelevant.  The detail of the first part (prostitutes and
pig's swill) is doubly irrelevant.  If I were to force a major
theological point from the detail in those verses I would be justly howled
down.

Similarly, Gen 1-3 is about our estrangement from God.  The fossil
record would have been the furthest thing from Moses' mind when he wrote
down the story his father had told him.

The Creation Science Foundation has pushed faith in science even further
than the evolutionary biologists.  They have declared that the point of
the passage _must_ be scientific and that their interpretation of it _must_
be scientifically correct.  In their effort to defend the scripture
they actually deny its meaning.

Unlike the evolutionary biologists they can't change their minds, even
if they are shown to be wrong.  Rather than starting from a relatively
unbiased position and reasoning from the facts they start from a given
view of the world and try to massage that facts into fitting it.  This
explains the astoundingly bad science they do.

BTW:  Darwin originally intented to become ordained and was deeply hurt
by his church's reaction to his discoveries.  He refused to defend himself
against the attacks of the church, even though they were often bitter and
personal.  His friends spoke in his defense.

Regards, Richard.  (kerr@redgum.ucnv.oz.au) <-- Note new address
Newsgroups: aus.religion