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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (13666)	2/13/2011 4:16:06 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 69300

>No more so than the bible. The idea of inerrancy destroys ALL biblical claims unless one dismisses ALL science. Sorry. THAT IS A FACT. It is ONE OR THE OTHER!!< But this hard binary choice has been mooted. Gaskell freely admits to evolution and old earth. As a result he does not subscribe to biblical inerrancy. Most Christians do not subscribe to biblical inerrancy. By presenting it as all or nothing, you are creating a dichotomy that does not align with the real world of people who are at once generally rational and overall Christians, or Jews or (...). By insisting that observers of religions accept all the doctrinal minutiae of their sometimes contradictory doctrines (e.g. the talking donkey thing, not as voiced by Eddie Murphy) you make it easy for you to ridicule all religion and its adherents. This is perhaps satisfying, but you're clearly smart enough to realize that you're begging the question by your approach. Inerrancy is neither a necessary nor widespread doctrinal plank. Certainly a minority profess it, and I will join you in saying that those worshipers have plainly chosen to abandon reason in the quest for pure faith. But if you say that Christians either adhere to the doctrine of whole-Bible inerrancy, with all its warts - or they are not "true Scotsmen", then I see that as using an arbitrary and irrational argument to show that they are being, uh, arbitrary and irrational. The world is not that simple. As a result, I don't see Gaskell's being a Christian (one who, when faced with the choice between the Burgess Shale and Balaam's ass, went with the aged rock) as enough to characterize him as "a nut". I admit that I don't know what the selection committee did, and I respect that you have sat on comparable committees and had to sometimes emulate Solomon. (Heh. Solo[mo]n.) (Great gosh. was the thing with the baby and the sword a partial-b<splutter!> Noooo...) I too admit that the world is not so simple. But what I saw was Dawkins and co. using Christianity of the more benign manifestation - not like the rather less polite form championed by strict-interpreters or cold-call proselytizers - as a generic disqualification in a professional situation. That has me thinking "foul". addendum: I was not bringing Hitler into it in the usual combative sense. I was pointing out that unchecked loyalty is dangerous by using a salient historical example. In fact, I wasn't discussing Hitler at all. I believe Himmler was the architect of the SS' astonishingly variant morality.