At 03:19 PM 2/10/00 -0600, Russell Maatman wrote:
>Glenn and other ASAers:
>
>My family's experiences in the South were similar to yours. But I come to a
>different conclusion. A candidate for Governor of our state said in
>campaign speeches to racist crowds that all you had to do was "look at
>'them'" and you'd be sure they were not human. He was applying just the
>test I claim should not be applied: don't decide on humanity using
>appearances. His "them" were people who bore God's image because they were
>Adam's descendants--and they therefore were human. On the "intellectual"
>level, the university newspaper cited Anthropologist Carlton Coon to prove
>that blacks are 200,000 years behind whites in their evolution. (Because of
>our activities in the civil rights movement, we were shunned, received
>anonymous phone calls, and were figuratively but not literally chased out
>of the state.)
I can sympathise. But my background was not as noble as yours. Often after
big cultural changes like the civil rights movement, it becomes hard to
find people who were against it. But I will be honest about my background,
good and bad. My family was against it. No one bothered to try to shun us
out of the south. I am distantly related to the Lee family of
Virginia(Robert was a cousin of some sort). My great grandfather lost 5 of
7 sons on the side of the South. I was reared to be proud of my southern
heritage, and I am. But my parents were as racist as anyone in the south
(and at age 14, I was also). My brother was 18 years old and manager of
Ardmore, Oklahoma's swimming pool the summer the Civil Rights Bill was
passed. He got two calls that day. One was from the NAACP telling him that
if he didn't let blacks swim tomorrow that there would be trouble. The
other from the local KKK telling him that if he did let them swim, they
would get him. Gary was very troubled that night at dinner. To my racist
dad's credit (and my surprise) he told my brother to obey the new law.
One reason this approach bothers me so much is that I have enough black
friends to know what they will see in such a theory. I also know enough
racists to know how they will use it. Those people scare me.
>I am not able to go into details concerning your last paragraph. But I have
>a feeling that here too you are deciding humanity on physical grounds.
ACtually I define humanity behaviorally. I don't care what they look like.
A human could have been a 3 headed lizard as long as those 3 heads behave
in a human fashion. Because of my preference for defining humanity by
behavior, I can include fossil men who look quite different from us. There
is no difference in this approach than in the approach that eventually lead
most of us southerners to finally give up our racist ways.
>> There is. If I can't use a person's behavior to determine if he is
>bearing
>> the image of God, then exactly what do I use? How can I tell that YOU
>bear
>> the image of God? Does an atheist bear the image of God? How do I know.
>> Maybe the fact that he is an atheist is evidence that he doesn't possess
>> the image of God?
>
>The difference between a Christian and an atheist is Christ restores the
>broken image of the Christian but not the broken image of the atheist (Rom.
>8:29).
I haven't seen you define 'imageo Dei'. Without a clear definition of what
it is, rather than who you think has it, subjectivity will reign in its
application. Racists will use it as they want with others using it in other
ways.
>
>> Or does race come into play here? After all, since we
>> humans received our our image as a result of being descended from Adam,
>we
>> also received genetic inheritance from Adam. Thus, the image must be
>> related to our genetic inheritance.
>
>Oops. I'm not convinced your "Thus" is logical.
Obviously the image descends to us from Adam. No other beings have it. Even
you admitted that only Adam's descendants have the image. If the image
isn't somehow impressed in our heritage then descent can't be involved in
the image. In such a case, my cat might bear the image of God. That being
said, what is impressed on us via descent must somehow involve behavior
which is also genetically transmitted. I have seen some of my parent's
worst behaviors in me and in my children.
>
>> Because of this, if there are people
>> who look like us and act like us but are not human, then we can treat
>them
>> as we wish. Are blacks without the image? What about the Chinese or
>> American indians To me this opens a terrible terrible door. I know you do
>> not hold these views, but they are the implications of what you advocate
>here.
>
>Very likely if you do not understand me, it is my fault. Without doubt, you
>and I would agree 100% were we to decide on which contemporary beings are
>human. Why? Surely not on looks. Because we'd be convinced they are
>descended from Adam.
I have no doubt that we would include every human on earth today as a child
of Adam. But what if it is proven (as some anthropologists contend) that
Australians are descended from Asian erectus--maybe being a mixture of
out-of-Africa sapiens with erectus inheritance also? Are we then to say
they don't carry the image of God? Are we to say they only have half of it?
I would approach it backwards. I would be convinced of their humanity
because of their behavior first. From that I would then conclude that they
are descended from Adam.
Gorillas don't behave like people in spite of their general similarity to
people. It isn't their knucklewalking that makes them nonhuman--it is
there lack of human behavior. I have known people who had no legs and a
terribly deformed body. They did some sort of knucklewalking. But they were
human because in the important ways they acted like people. They could
talk, they could worship, they could pray, etc. Behavior is what defines
who has the image of God, not physical appearance.
>> Do any of these non-human beings exist today? after all you say that they
>> interbred with the real humans, which is the reference to the nephilim.
>> The nephilim are mentioned after the flood and thus must live today. Who
>> are they?
>
>Concerning contemporary beings: I wonder if we do not see faint glimmerings
>of the unusual abilities which once existed among non-humans in some an
>imals of the present day.
I don't understand this.
>> Sorry, Russ, I will fight this with everything I can muster. The only way
>> to avoid the implications of this is to posit Adam way back in history. I
>> know Christians are loathe to do that, but it is the only way to avoid
>the
>> problems I see with the view you advocate and still match the data of
>> anthropology. If Adam lived before our genetic split into races, then we
>> are all descendants of Adam. Otherwise, we aren't.
>> glenn
>
>Glenn, I don't necessarily disagree with your claim of a flood of six
>million years ago. I followed that thread a few years ago with great
>interest. So it may be that every being you claim to have been human was
>actually human. What I disagree with is the method of decdiing that point.
Fair enough. But I would ask you to define the image of God. That would be
a great starting point for further discussion. I can't really see that you
have defined anything except descent from Adam as the mark of the Image.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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