Re: AIG Weakly News, 2/20/04

----- Original Message -----
From: "John W Burgeson" <jwburgeson@juno.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Saturday, June 05, 2004 10:41 AM
Subject: AIG Weakly News, 2/20/04
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AIG Weakly News, Feb 20, 2004
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Third: Art, with presumably an inadequate education, "... heard the false
belief that the earth and dinosaurs were millions of years old. But Art
realized that the Bible couldn't be reconciled with that time frame. So
he had to choose one or the other-both couldn't possibly be true." He did
not, of course, "have" to chose between them. This is called the fallacy
of the binary choice. "Either God -- or evolution." There are more than
two possibilities here, of course. Something YECs hardly ever mention,
for keeping the choice binary makes their debating points easier.
................................................

        I think "makes their debating points easier" isn't a strong enough
way to put it. The little word "or" - as in "creation or evolution" - is
the key to
Christian anti-evolutionary rhetoric. As long as anti-evolutionists can
persuaded people that the binary choice must be made, they'll be able to
keep on rallying the troops. Of course the fact that one _could_ accept
evolution & still believe in creation & be a Christian doesn't make
avolution a slam dunk theologically, for there are still theologocal issues
that have to be wrestled with. But if the anti-evolutionists had to start
debating real theology instead of just being allowed to assume that
Christianity & evolution were incompatible, their days as a major social
force would be numbered.

        BTW, is the AIG report actually called "AIG We_a_kly News"? If not,
maybe it should be.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Sat Jun 5 13:10:31 2004