On Fri, 19 Apr 1996 07:47:20 -0500 you wrote to Tom:
[...]
CW>If you really CARE whether or not evangelical Christendom accepts
>the correctness of anything other than YEC, the burden of proof and
>the responsibility for making it comprehensible to the masses is on
>YOU (the Christian scientific "establishment". YOU must convince the
>rest of us!
Good point! If these "experts" cannot get their point across to
intelligent laymen (save your stamp Denis! <g>), but only to their
own ilk, then they will have failed. The Johnsons of this world will
win the hearts and minds of the laymen.
CW>What would be your opinion of a missionary who after presenting the
>gospel, simply directed illiterate natives to the bible, with the
>stern admonition: "Don't dare question what I say until you learn to
>read. Then let the bible answer your silly questions."
The "natives" could wonder whether the "missionary" really knew the
answers to their "silly questions"! :-)
>Or a theologian who will not defend his theories at the popular level,
>referring questioners to the Church Fathers. That's why the Catholics
>holding mass in Latin for all those years was such a joke.
CW>If you're going to claim the intellectual high ground, and keep it,
>you're going to have to do a better job of defending it than
>referring challengers to your own sacred literature. If you can't
>convince the Chuck Warmans and Steve Jones and Jim Bells of the
>world, or more importantly, the Joe Sixpacks of the world, AT THEIR
>LEVEL, then no matter how right you may be, you'll never attract much
>of a following. Unless you resort to ACLU-type coercion, that is.
Indeed. If scientists continue to ride rough-shod over ordinary
people for too long, they mayl provoke an inevitable reaction that
they may not like. Johnson asks:
"Can we really address fundamental, divisive questions in the academic
world, or must educators assume a politically correct standpoint and
go on from there? The second alternative involves submerging the
genuine intellectual questions in labels and thus tacitly conceding
that academic intellectuals operate strictly within their own
ideological boundaries and have nothing much to say to outsiders. In
that case the only recourse of ordinary citizens who are not willing
to be ruled by self-appointed Platonic guardians is to fight power
with power. Is that what the intellectuals really want?" (Johnson
P.E., "Reason in the Balance", InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove
Ill., 1995, p187)
God bless.
Steve
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