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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Creation-science vs. Christianity
Message-ID: <155@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-Aug-85 15:22:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.155
Posted: Fri Aug 16 15:22:36 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 04:34:50 EDT
References: <111@gargoyle.UUCP> <1395@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 42

In article <1395@uwmacc.UUCP> dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Risky Rat) writes:
	
> "The" Christian doctrine of creation?  Evolutionists tell us too often
> that the fundamentalists endorse only one very narrow view of Genesis
> and that most denonimations (or schools of thought, or [insert your
> own concept used for dividing Christians into categories for
> classificatory purposes]) have long ago made their peace with Darwin
> (as the phrase usually goes).  So what is "the" doctrine?

By the Christian doctrine of creation, I mean "I believe in one God,
the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible
and invisible."  Of course, as Paul implies, there are different
interpretations and understandings of this teaching.  One modern
interpretation (Tillich's) holds that the doctrine is the basic
description of the relation of God to the world, and to man in
particular.  The interpretation of Biblical literalism holds that it
describes an event that took place on a certain date, or rather
during a certain week.  You pays your money and you takes your
choice.  

The sad thing about Biblical literalism, to me, is its perversion of
the Christian tradition that in our time has produced such splendid
men and women as Bonhoeffer, Dr. King, John XXIII, John Paul II,
Mother Theresa, and some of the South African churchmen.  Instead,
literalism has produced, hmmm, let's see, Jerry Falwell and Oral
Roberts (the man who saw a 900-foot Jesus); Francis Schaeffer, a
pseudophilosopher; pathetic humbugs like Gish, Morris, and A. Ray
Miller; and an infantile belief-system in which all the hard
questions have prepackaged answers, just look 'em up in the Book --
and whose hermeneutic principles for interpreting the Book are
contradictory and inconsistent, as Charles Blair recently pointed
out.  

Small wonder that much of the strongest opposition to creationism
comes, not from atheistic communist scientists, but from the pillars
of the Christian churches.

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
"So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian
Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at
this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one."
--Hume