@ken: A DIATRIBIC PENTAMETER FOR KEN If in all argument, as …

Comment on The Heroic Crusade Redux by Wesley Kime.

@ken:

A DIATRIBIC PENTAMETER FOR KEN

If in all argument, as ample evidence shows, rancor rules
For Km ‘n Kn the rhyme’s the thing, not those raucous duals.
Luckily for us two chivalrous old-fashioned rhyming fools
The Hawking belching merits only cheery iambic ridicule.
To begin:
It only takes, to beatify a Hawk burp with deep sacerdotal reverence,
Ken,
Chuckles, chutzpah, and a quantum deeper faith than evidence.
Amen.

Wesley Kime Also Commented

The Heroic Crusade Redux
@David Read: This time I’m on Tidy-Up patrol. I feel obliged to set straight Dr. Taylor’s positions, since I’ve known and heard him for so long, and cited his declaration that appeared on this site a year ago, to wit, Dr. Pitman has undertaken a Truly Noble Crusade in promoting Genesis 1 despite all odds and all scientific evidence. Dr. Taylor said so in good irony, I thought. Actually he went easy on the sarcasm. And I tried for the same tone – irony, not sarcasm – in my recent essay on how Dr. Pitman’s crusade as characterized by Dr. Taylor differs from others currently being discussed. By the way, there is, I think, a useful operational difference between those words.

Dr. Taylor sees no scientific evidence for Genesis 1, granting whimsically a measly 2% as not inconsistent. Thus he has enthusiastically embraced and advocated evolution, presumably theistic, not a literal Genesis 1. Some on this site are insisting, with Dr. Taylor, that there is no scientific evidence for Genesis 1, but, differing from Dr. Taylor, it must be believed anyway, by faith alone. Dr. Taylor, remaining admirably consistent, has never taken that course. I’m saying this not in defense of Dr. Taylor’s notions but in defense of accuracy in dealing with all parties.

OK, everyone: back to your posts!


The Heroic Crusade Redux
@Ken:

Welcome, welcome back good friend Ken,
Good to see you again, here in the lions den,
Where skin is thin and chagrins never end.
So how’ve you been?

Welcome again to this sometimes venomous venue.
What’s your pleasure from our sometimes bilious menu?
A little faith with this personally proffered doggerel?
A dash of hot dogged defender dogma rigmarole?

I’d really rather debate, certainly greet, in meter and rhyme
With Ogden Nash my paradigm, not Milton or Dante sublime,
Any time, all the time, from the Maginot Line to dinner time.
Yours, with this loving evidence, Dual Crusader Kime.


The Heroic Crusade Redux
@Steve Billiter: Steve, Exceptionally well expressed, your critique of evolution. Please write more, here and elsewhere, and often.

By the way, that particular text, Job 11:8 is a favorite of mine too, not just for content but also for manner of expression, especially in the KJV (“It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell; what canst thou know?”) – pointed, poetically balanced, almost insolent. But Job isn’t an essay.

And speaking of stylistic critique, with yours of mine I concur, mostly. I also concur that the happiest essays are the most even toned, e.g. E.B. White’s. Updyke’s are a smidge more vivid, but still well tempered. I’m envious of that kind of essay-writing. But being inescapably visually and poetically oriented, I am also charmed by those of Evelyn Waugh and, well, Erv Taylor. Alas, the rhetoric sometimes swamps the message. I worry about that in mine, honestly; sometimes in anguish.

But an even more dreadful worry is that my position may not come through clearly from my elaborate sentences and riffs of rhetoric – the only kind I can write, alas — when read cursorily.

Now then: my essay was to define the recent crusade that has swamped this blog site, materializing from all sides, against the employment of scientific evidence for creation. It was not — repeat not, goodness not! — to define or decry all science, certainly not the scientific community that presents evidence for creation. Of which Dr. Pitman, scientist and enviably even-toned essayist, is an exemplary disputationalist. That my point should be perceived so exactly totally absolutely opposite from what I thought I had presented – another irony.

Thanks for giving me the chance to extend a hopefully not too florid if-I-offended-you-I’m-sorry, and to unload a little essay on writing – us writers always jump at any chance, – plus upright my upended point. God bless you in your writing.


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.