In a message dated 5/6/02 2:14:30 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
MikeSatterlee@cs.com writes:
> I too would like to see more discussions of other matters here. Since this
> group is mainly composed of Christians who are a bit "smarter than the
> average bear," or at least a bit more well read, I think we could have some
> very enlightening discussions on several other interesting topics. There
> are
> several I'd be glad to discuss. I have not raised any of them because I
> thought they would be "off topic" for this group.
>
> So, Shuan, If you occasionally have a non-Genesis 1-11 or non-science
> related
> topic you would like to see discussed, toss it out here. I'll have no
> objection and I doubt anyone else here will either.
>
I would object. Not to the non-Genesis 1-11 part; I'd love to see some of
the other science/faith issues that others like Terry have mentioned. Our
week with Francis Collins was a welcome respite in that regard. Bioethics,
environmental stewardship, "being a Christian in science" ... there's plenty
of other important things to discuss within the ASA's science/faith mission.
But the ASA, and by extension this listserv, is for science/faith discussion.
The amount of traffic these days is already too high to follow for those of
us with full-time jobs. The last thing we need is for additional discussions
on things with zero science content, like debating the merits of the
Christian Science religion or the King James Bible or the interpretation of
Daniel's 70 weeks. Of course there are some things that have no science
content in themselves that still become important in our science/faith
discussions, like approaches to Scripture (and maybe even Sacraments, if one
relates them to science/faith issues as George did). But if we veer toward
becoming a general Christian discussion group rather than sticking to the
ASA's mission, this group will lose its value for me and I suspect many
others. The signal-to-noise ratio has only barely returned to the edge of
tolerability with Terry's moderation -- I'd strongly urge that cans of worms
outside the mission of the ASA be left unopened here.
I would even hope that, if somebody sent a message trying to start a general
discussion on, for example, the merits of dispensationalism or whether you
can lose your salvation, the moderator would reject it for the sake of
keeping us in the ballpark of the purpose of the list.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Allan H. Harvey, Boulder, Colorado | SteamDoc@aol.com
"Any opinions expressed here are mine, and should not be
attributed to my employer, my wife, or my cats"
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