From: salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem)
Subject: Re: Question for Creationists
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 01:01:53 GMT

	Let's see the question was "What is the Purpose of Mankind?"
and Lionel's reply was to "Worship God". Now, my first response was
"Bullshit!" and then I ignored the story, noting the self-referential,
or is that self-serving, nature of the "argument" that followed.

	I do take some issue with Robert's repsonse, not because he is
wrong, but because Lionel's rhetoric is relavant to this group in that
it shows that the basic charter of this group, a debate between
Creationists and Evolutionists, is basically rediculous. There can be
no meaningful dialogue between people like Lionel and the rest of us
who do not buy the statement that because God created us that we must
worship Him, even that he created us, or that we have a preordained
purpose. Both notions are open for debate and have been debated ad
nausium in this group, and here Lonel has put us back to square one
as if nothing has hapened and his is the first post to this group.

In article <1992Sep7.180044.9246@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu> zuber_rg@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Robert G Zuber) writes:
>In article <1992Sep2.130157.3954@city.cs> lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun) writes:
>>My next door neighbour and myself had a long discussion about this.

	Your neighbor is just like you, no doubt.

>>We concluded that God is simply amazing and wonderful and very very
>>clever and brilliant - in facts words (and thoughts) fail to 
>>sum Him up - not surprising really as He is our Creator and we are
>>His created beings.

	Oh, how simply wonderful, the two of you were just musing one
idle English afternoon and drempt up the answers to everything without
any outside help, no precident of two millenia of mental pablum, or
stuffy ministers and headmasters pounding Christian authority into you.

>> My neighbour and I thought about all that God had 
>>done for us and given us, including existence itself, and we decided
>>that to spend eternity in God's presence (heaven) was an appropriate
>>length of time - we would be able to actually see God face to face
>>and praise, honour, glorify and simply worship Him.

	While you are at it, thank your God for starvation in Somalia,
ethnic strief in Bosnia and the Rep. of Gorgia, the army killings in
South Africa, the Homeless in United Kingdom and America, etc. etc.,
why don't you get off your ass and do something useful?

>	Thank you Lionel. This post of yours really brings us closer to a
>resolution of the creation/evolution controversy. Not.
>
>	Could you kindly take such stuff elsewhere to more appropriate
>newsgroups? Is this too much to ask?
>
>Rob Zuber

	There is no resolution to the controversy as long as it is
played out on the one hand as a scientific issue then then when it
suits anti-scientists as the kind of stuff above. You can't win unless
you nail the Creationist ass to a cross made from the double standard
of changing the rules in mid sentence. Even the venerable old poster
named Robert Bales who insists that he is thinking scientifically can't
resist injecting his religious beliefs when it suits him. We cannot
except as much from Lionel who is upfront with his faith first, and
which is so circular that we can't argue about it. He does not convince
any new converts with it, but can only speak to his neighbor, who must
already be a convert.

Bruce Salem


Newsgroups: talk.origins