[ ARC forum 2 ]

Re: Bill Clinton

Written by Ivan at 10 Apr 2003 23:13:19:

As an answer to: Re: Bill Clinton written by Harmen at 10 Apr 2003 22:31:41:

>>>The whacky part of Jim's statement was that he took it for granted that people who voted for Clinton were idiots.
>Before I objected to Jim’s advices for not always being shaded enough. I didn’t dig in his past, but if it’s true, I must confess that his feelings about Clinton and his frankly admitting to be a Christian are facts that are in his credit. Clinton indeed was a Lewinsky fucking president and a great liar. Those were his qualities!
>There are Christians with a rather rigid vision on evolution. I don’t agree with them, but it’s not very relevant on foreskin issues. Why don’t you attack Jim on his advices?

Why don't literalist Christians accept the Creation stories (there are several of course, and not entirely consistent) of the Bible as parables. As a Christian, I believe in the Trinity, that is, that God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are manifestations of the same Divine Being. I know that Jesus spoke in parables, that is, stories which are not literally true, nor to be taken as such, but which illustrate some deeper point of morality and/or wisdom. Many of the parables are among the most insightful and inspirational portions of the Bible. So since Jesus speaks in parables, and Jesus and the Father are one and the same Being, why would one claim that God cannot speak in parables. To do so, you have to deny Jesus' divinity, since you are saying the use of parables is beneath God, but not beneath Jesus. Since the Creation stories are inconsistent with absolutely every observation made of the physical world, including the on-going biology of his creatures, then to believe they are literal you have to believe that God created and crafted the physical world as a bald-faced lie, a deliberate trick to give the appearance of great age and the evolutionary succession of creatures. I find it far easier to accept that the Creation stories are just as much parables as the stories of the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the rest than to feel reverence for a deceiving God.

I also find the development of the universe as can be pieced together from the various fields of modern science to be magnificent, beautiful and awe-inspiring. I feel far more reverent of a God that can say "Let there be Light!" causing the Big Bang to ensue from the primordial Atom, and can then lean back figuratively and say "Okay, my work is done for the next ten billion years, until intelligent creatures have arisen, as they will." And BTW, while there are gaps which science is working to fill in, the gaps in Creationism are far greater. Also, quite a substantial majority of scientists have been and are religious, believing they were/are discovering God's ways when they study natural laws. In fact it is the Creationists who oppose Creation.


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