Comment on Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’ by Wesley Kime.
@Ken: What do you think Wes? For the love of truth, and mankind should we publicly debate?
You, you of all people, trying to lure me, me of all people, into this new fibril within a fiber within a thread – to debate debate? For the “love of truth and mankind”? Throw in apple pie, the flag, ratings, and motherhood, the usual suspects. To do it up right, like the celebrities, we’ll need to hassle ground rules, admissible evidence and how many points disembodied faith gets; a virtually unbiased moderator (Jim Leher or Bill O’Reilly, toss a coin); makeup persons, stage props, the lighting, who gets to stand on the stool; weapons and seconds.
Anyway, it’s already been decided in court, the Scopes trial, starring Jack Lemmon as Henry Drummond as W.J. Bryan and George C. Scott as Matthew Harrison Brady as Darrow, and the Dover rerun, surely coming soon to a theater near you. Casting now open for the LSU trial. Why wait? Anyway anyhow, we already know, cringing, how’ll it’ll be rerun by the folks over at Spectrum and Adven’y, and right here.
But I’m so old that the very idea of Adventists even debating Genesis 1 is just downright nonplusing plus! Genesis 1 decided it once and for all, certainly for Adventists. What’s for Adventists to debate? Everything? How’d that happen? I guess that’s what will really be debated, at bottom, pretty near up front and throughout, like a fugue.
I always thought debating Evo v Creationism is not for Adventist against Adventist but for Adventist against secularist (as Sean does on his site). But if everybody else gets to, why can’t we? Everybody else has hauled away their pulpits and trucked in props and producers and awards. And everybody else stages creation debates, get your season tickets early — reality TV; creation debates are as common on uTube as cute dogs; name a little college that hasn’t had one. Se we have to too – it’s outreach, letting the world know we’re relevant, you know.
But how’s Erv going to prove to me that his fossils and strata prove anything? Or Sean prove to Ken they don’t? Transcendent faith and transcendent catcalls will kick in the instant Jim Leher (he won the toss) mounts the podium. Me, I may or may not even go see it, if it’s held around here. But no way will I click the uTubes. I lost faith, transcendent or the regular kind, in debates when Kennedy and Nixon debated. I thought Nixon won. Clinton was impeached, in prime time – did it matter?
But seriously, if you must, Sean, God bless you. May the evidence be with you. And Luke 12:11, 12.
Wesley Kime Also Commented
Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’
@Ken:
Dear Ken, Wonderful! See you at the debate, then. Let’s get there a little early, for a chat. I do feel I know you pretty well now, so am all the more eager to meet you en vivo, away from blog’s built-in and contagious rancor and cantankerousity. I’ll be the asymmetrically dimpled old guy with the Brillo pad white beard, subliminal grin and a non-subliminal kyphosis. (Interesting suggestion, that Ted Wilson moderate. Hmmm. But I think he’d do better for the opening prayer and benediction. They may be more crucial than the polemics anyway. But, say! hmmmm, would you be willing?)
If this doesn’t work out for us, some other time – even if only allegorically.
Expectantly, W
Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’
“…the final authority scripture,” which our scholars turn into just allegory, especially Genesis 1, putting us not just into a circular orbit, which can serve in a pinch, but into a spiral tailspin spiraling hellward, just where Satan wants us vectored. Which God knew would be the vector Satan would spin us into, and is why He, through Paul again, admonishes us to test… — but we really do know what Paul said. Our problem isn’t a lack of Pauline quotes, or doc #1 or #6 or the whole catechistic caboodle, EGW, anybody’s book on hermeneutics, or Huss or Jerome, even Alexander Carpenter. Our problem is, we are simply out of control in this faith-evidence vortex, which thus itself becomes an allegory of The Allegory, as we blog ourselves into a black hole.
Dr. Pitman (and, by faith, God) never asked us to put evidence in place of faith, or scripture (certainly not Genesis 1) — to say he has is to utterly misconstrue and misquote him. He has said, how many times — even Google couldn’t count them — and as clearly as HTML can put it, to put evidence along with, with faith, with, and faith along with evidence. With.
Why can not the two work, function, walk, live, and work and function and walk together? Why is it one or the other? No, it’s not like serving two masters, science or faith, but like marriage with husband needing wife and wife need husband. I know I couldn’t function without mine. As evidence I submit our grandchildren. Would you like to see our snapshots?
Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’
…this crusade is getting more heroic by the minute!
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.
