@ken: My engaging friend! First, apologies – I went …

Comment on A “Christian Agnostic”? by Wesley Kime.

@ken: My engaging friend! First, apologies – I went one metaphor too far. Second, submission to your protocol. OK, let us get personal, and you’d like me to start? Will you be joining in?

You remember! But I wasn’t automatically converted at age 10, just baptized. The two aren’t necessarily, or very often, concurrent. Anyway, it happened in a Big Tent, rather different from the Commodious Tent now being advocated, the message was not the contemporary syndicated powerpointed otherwise powerless and pointless celebration, and there really was a sawdust floor. It was in North Hollywood, of all places. I don’t remember being raptured. The part I remember, the last thing I remember as I went under, was seeing the tent canvas sort of flapping and the pole-to-pole diagram of Daniel 2. Then, splash. At 83 I believe, going by faith plus evidence, I’m at last converted. It takes a lifetime. Longer. (Don’t despair, friend.)

As to Genesis 1, admittedly and unabashedly I was converted, submitted to (if you must), compelled by evidence, multidisciplinary and multifaceted and multivectored and criss-crossing, cross-linked, cascading. When? It started at age 13 or 14, I think; in the 7th grade. Back then we didn’t have gender-sensitivity class, we had physiology. The textbook was not appropriate to the grade. That was before committees, and now the State, decide on texts. But for some reason (I’ve always wondered) the textbook given us 7th graders was a college text, as I found later, perusing the shelves at Occidental College (I was there before Obama). Marvelously detailed. I was besides myself with excitement. (Got an A+) Never been as excited by school since, but almost, in medical school. It was the late 1930s and I submitted to it like the 60s submitted to the Beatles. But I never thought to connect physiology with Genesis 1 until the 1960s, when the likes of Erv Taylor (we go way back) began to question it, question, question, bang bang bang. That awoke me. (I believe I, and officially this site, have duly thanked Dr. Taylor for his heroic crusade that misfired and roused us instead.)

I can’t say I ever sat down and suffered through a crisis – that would be too tidy a story. But somehow for every carbon-dated fossil that shouted at me, the Krebs Circle shouted louder.

As to which holds the upper hand in Genesis 1, and everything else, faith or science (I like “evidence” in all contexts), I’ve never thought to ask the question. Never occurred to me, would you believe? (to slip in a question for you.) Just like the centipede never thought about how he manages all those legs at once, all those perfect little legs fluttering in programmed sequence like peristalsis, until somebody asked him. So, rather flustered at the idea of having to say one or the other, I say both, sometimes the front batch of legs bearing more weight than the middle batch, and then the back batch kicks in.

Adventists, at least in my day, were famously expected to witness at any street corner, knock on doors, regale seatmates in planes. Personally (you get confessions as a bonus) I never cared to. Not my style. And I don’t care to on this blog, either. I prefer parable to proselytics, rhetorical devices to rhetoric. By your leave I’ll leave in-depth and in-detail exposition of Genesis 1 to Dr. Pitman. He’s young and feisty, up to it and up on it. I’m too old for writing pugilistic polemics. I’ve written my share, footnotes and all. But somehow acclaiming my own empiric evolution, though not in the disputationally academic format you wanted, is exciting. Thanks for finally, after a couple of years, goading me into it. Next question? But considering the outburst your question marks unplugged (beware when you shoot off those things), you don’t want more, do you?

Gratefully, W

PS: For the record, anent the twist in the current thread, Jesus greeted Judas as “friend” even as Judas was betraying Him. And – anent our own thread – having Himself prophesied repeatedly exactly that this would happen, Jesus, as was his wont, greeted Judus with a rhetorical and consummately purposeful question: “Wherefore art thou come?” Matthew 26:50. An answer was not forthcoming, only clubs and a crown of thorns, and salvation.

Wesley Kime Also Commented

A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Ken: – Yours of November 29, 10:39 pm, this thread: “I think Hawking’s view would be that Adventism is a faith construct trying to justify itself with pseudo science. … [sans any] accord with the observable laws of empirical science. … Many Adventists recognize the obvious … Others see that old ideas of Adventism must be… adapted… to the realities of sound science or it will become anachronistic mythology (like the Greek gods). Others … cherry-picked attacks on evolution, etc. to direct attention away from the subjectivity of creation science” (Where’s “disgruntled,” as in Hiram Edson?)

Forlorn, maybe a tad disgruntled, I’ve been sitting mulling your impersonation of Hawkings analyzing us Adventists. Then, on a roll, you took the microphone to present your 9-9-9 plan for rectifying our kind of cognitive kinkiness.

I can see, I disconsolately sob, that you, our special dear old agnostic friend, are so much more at home and at ease in Hawkings’s mind and bowels, with his kind of premises and vocabulary, his strokes and tropes, than ours (our less progressively premised minds, etc. etc., anyway). Oh, don’t think I don’t see your smitten look when that man is around — I can just feel the electricity, — and your toying way when we are alone! And, sob, we’ve been living together in the same blog for the last two whole years, sob, and we’ve all had such fun together. But, no, don’t leave, you can’t leave! I’ll make your favorite dish (rehash of Gilgamesh garnished with cherry-picked raspberries). Put on your favorite composer (Hendimyth)? Read you your favorite qualm Psalm? Write you a poem? (“Ode to Query”, “Let Me Count The Question Marks”) Oh, please, more question marks, more, more! ));-}>


A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Ken:

PREEMINENCE

There was a kindly old agnostic of Gilamesh
Who when asked which takes preeminence,
QUESTION
Or ANSWER,
Answered QUESTION, no question, dear friend Wes.


A “Christian Agnostic”?
@ken: ET call home.


Recent Comments by Wesley Kime

Dr. Walter Veith and the anti-vaccine arguments of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche
Informative and stimulating, but proceeding into more confusion. A veteran of Moderna vaccinations, I trust, hope, they are effective, at least until otherwise. The whole business, being part of End Times, is in the hands of God, not humans expert and as degreed as they may be.


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Brilliant, beautiful, and so right! Speaking of your presentation at LLU recently. Great to see you and your family (especially my namesake, Wes. God bless! WK


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@Bob Helm: Dr. Sanford is very familiar to most of us. He was invited to speak at LLU several years ago and I and a great many were privileged to hear him.


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Hats off yet again to Sean for pursuing this topic as a scientist should, no nonsense, and in it’s proper setting — as a revival of one of the ancient ideas recently upgraded as a desperate alternative to the increasingly compelling intelligent design data. I had occasion to review panspermia a few years ago and as is my wont I found it more amusing than scientific. If you would like what was intended to be a satirical response to panspermia and other related curiosities you could check out: http://www.iessaythere.com/black-hole-humor.html
Meantime, Sean’s article is of far more cogent worth.


The Sabbath and the Covenants (Old vs. New)
As he has done on this site many times, Sean in his line-by-line-item response to C. White (not EG or EB) has, to my mind, clearly enunciated the issue and resolution.

When all the hermeneutics, quoting, and arguing and inordinately judgmental riposte are over, it comes down, as I understand it, to two things: 1) Whether the 7th day Sabbath (whether enunciated in the famous 10 commandments or otherwise) is still valid, and 2) Does the grace obtained by the vicarious sacrifice by the shedding of Christ’s blood or other divine process too deep for us to understand in this life, cover every sin automatically and without ado, altogether passively on our part, or is it only on condition that we first totally and deeply accept it? Other details always hassled forever are distractions.

I accept that I must accept it, wholly, actively, even with agony, with my whole being.