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”?
Whether waggish or grumpy, ET’s visits here are always memorable, especially today’s.
Normally frolicsome, he’s usually merely entertained by the idea Genesis 1 can be science and by the Heroic Crusade in defense of such, as he himself proclaimed it, waggish proclamations being his wont.
But today in a resolutely magisterial tone he’s over here proclaiming Genesis 1 Adventism, as personified by Dr. Pitman, sect-ist.
But I’m so old I remember when Walter Martin (remember him?), more theologically than anthropologically oriented, regally adjudged and adjudicated Adventism NOT a sect. WHAT a relief that was! Amen.
But seriously, of immediate concern is ET’s fretting over being so thumbed down over here. Amen.
A “Christian Agnostic”?
@ken: ET call home.
A “Christian Agnostic”?
@ken: Establish a Chair of Intelligent Design? A crackerjack idea! Award-winning! Best thing since 9-9-9. There’s a crying need for it. Must happen – at Harvard. UC Berkeley?
But at LSU? Friend, that’s like establishing the Debt-Tax-Abatement-Enhancement SuperCommittee at… — but wait! That’s too zingy, artful, insensitive, unfriendly, arguably sarcastic, in a word Kimesque. Apologies. Again. May I try again?
Recent Comments by Wesley Kime
Beyond the Creation Story – Why the Controversy Matters
@Ken: Ken, re. yours of May 31, 15 12:42 pm: … those standing up for FB28 have every right to do so…until they [presumably the FBs, not the communicants, although either could be changed in a twinkling of any eye] are democratically changed.”
FB28? What’s that? You probably know better than I. Genesis 1 I can quote; FB28 I can’t. And won’t bother to check. I couldn’t even tell you where to find those FBs. I read what you say more assiduously than the FBs. (What’s FB? FaceBook?)
In the first place I think you’ve got Adventism wrong, or at least Adventism as I know it. Well, maybe you haven’t, the postmodernist kind anyway. I’m pre-catechistic, ergo prehistoric, alas. I’m that old.
FB28 or whatever it is, if it WERE changed, democratically or otherwise, dramatically or creepingly, by evolution or edict, even if expunged and expurgated in the interest of big-tent accord, which seemed on the verge of happening pre-T. Wilson, and may yet, I wouldn’t even know it until I saw it here. You’d know before I would.
With or without and despite FB28 or whatever, or EduTruth, I’d still honor Genesis 1. I’d honor it, A, by faith, because the Bible, i.e. God, says so. A validated faith validated by B, The evidence, good scientific falsifiable evidence. And C, the consummate cosmic multi-vectored syllogism. Everything fits.
Seriously, though, discussion has to start somewhere and be referenced by something, for convenience if not citizenship. But I’d prefer to start, if granted “every right,” with Genesis 1, at the beginning.
Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
@Ken: “something Dr. Kime said struck a very strange chord in me: that a Chair in ID at Harvard would be a quantum leap (forward – my edit) while such a Chair would be a step backward at LSU. I’ m very sorry Wes, but for me to honestly investigate reality, such double standard is not acceptable. …[therefore] I think I’m coming to the end of my Adventist journey.”
I can, of course, dear friend, understand why, and respect that, you would see the two directions of leaping, forward and backward, by Harvard and LSU, as a double standard.
But might it also be seen as simple Einsteinian Relativity? It all depends on from whence you’re starting or observing. Two venues, Harvard vs. LSU, two vectors, not two standards. At any rate, a parting of our ways. The Chair did it. A very unlucky ill-omened Chair, from the start.
Parting — that indeed is sad, especially this parting. I grieve too. In sadness we are agreed. That’s not double speak; only you could I say that to.
For these several years you, and your courteous ways, even your questions, have been most fascinating, even endearing, inspiring to both poetic and, I now regret, rasping response. I’ve so much enjoyed your postings, always looked for them first, and appreciated your uncommon patience and politeness, and our camaraderie in the bomb shelter and on the grandstand. Too bad the Chair, our double bed, didn’t work out.
As benediction, maybe we can all get together again, somewhere. Meanwhile, the Mizpah, which I think I should be the one to deliver, seeing it was, you say, my one-liner that was the last straw, for which I’ll get heck all around, and rightly so: “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” Genesis 31:49.
What the heck, have some popcorn for the road. And don’t forget your cyber plaque. You will be remembered, appreciated, thought about, prayed for. Do come back soon.
Until then, your jousting friend, W
Strumming the Attached Strings
@Phillip Brantley: Excellent! I shall quote you: “learn something from Sean Pitman.” Indeed, indeed — there’s so much to learn from that man.
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen: “I don’t know if anyone has really been able to follow your thinking…”
A tad, a smidgeon, just slightly overstated maybe? Just a tad, just a smidgeon, at the cost of not a few dislikes? Well, I for one do follow it. And with great admiration. Great.
What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
@Ervin Taylor: Out of purely poetic symmetry of rhetoric, Ervin, your trademark whimsical “…I guess someone who rejects…” is asking for — I was waiting for it! — a Pitman’s “I guess someone who accepts…” Lovely diptych, ping and pong.
