MJ Walker wrote:

> I don't think anybody on this list "worships" Darwinism, David; it's
> just that it is the explanation of our historical biological existence
> that fits the facts we have hitherto been able to discover, on the basis
> of exploration, excavation, measurement, chemical etc  analysis ,
> whatever (ditto Einstein's hypotheses). It's not even inconsistent with
> the hypothesis of a Deity (or indeed Deities).... Almost none of the
> Bible is factual;
> so what, it is a great source of knowledge without being true in the
> literal, realist manner.
>
> David Riddell wrote:
>
>> It is curious indeed,how each one of us
>> worship our own particular deity.
>> some worship Dylan
>> some worship Einstein
>> and some of us even worship
>> Darwinism.
>
I must've been cutting class the day Revealed Truth was expounded.  No,
seriously...my Believer credentials are at times far too much in place
for my own comfort or anyone else's, considering that I stuck my foot in
some dog waste here about a month ago: though that was not so much about
beliefs as abrasion.  We are sometimes blessed by those we offend.  But
how to say this?  Unlike some of the people with whom I'm marooned on
the Desert Island, the foul jerks who are currently trying to take over
the American government, I don't really give a flying eff if the
Biblical statements are true or not and I'm really not, at end of day,
interested in seeing beliefs turned into law.

I have something called Suspension of Disbelief to keep me warm when the
girlfriend's in a bad mood and the cats are off fighting in the kitchen.

The most presumably devastating attack on the literalist view of the
Bible was one about which I heard a few years back: that the ancient
Hebrew/Israelites were essentially self-invented imposters who had been
kicked out of Egypt for practicing monotheism, schlepped their way into
the desert, and along the way invented a history for themselves to
account for how they showed up in present day Israel/Palestine.
According to this version, there really are historical characters in the
Hebrew Scripture, but they show up first in the Book of Kings, and the
first is King Saul.  The rest is plainly a fabrication--Adam, Eve, Cain,
Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc., etc.  Never happened.  Made up
to give yourself a past and relationship to that mono-God.  Justify the
ways of God to Man indeed.

The point for me is I don't care if it's true or not.  There are things
I choose to believe because I believe in nothing literal.  I would not
trade the Akeidah--the almost-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham--for all the
objective truth on earth.  "I don't want reality, I want magic": and
that is what that story is.  A truth beyond a truth about parents,
children, faith, and the absolute absence of Coincidence.  When I was
being prepared for baptism 8 years ago a priest with whom I'd been
talking asked me about the question that stopped most Jews in their
tracks: the Virgin Birth.  How can anyone believe this?  Yet it did not
trouble or deter me, I said, not because I took it literally but because
it was one of those cool stories that even if it was not literally true,
ought to be.  An imagination is a terrible thing not to waste.  Add to
that not the Crucifixion but its objective three days later.  If I
happen to be in a community of people who believe the same stuff, that's
lovely.  If not, then apart from statements like this--morally akin to
Charles Foster Kane's "Declaration of Principles"--I'm not doing much
talking.

All you need to be interesting is a good line to get my attention: it's
when you begin believing it applies to anyone but you that we start
running into problems.  That applies to me as well.  Changing a heart is
one thing; changing a law is dangerous.

Darwin and Einstein work well enough so they've named an award after
Darwin for people who managed to descend the food chain and get
themselves killed in the process.  Probably Darwin had a lot going for
him.  But he doesn't work quite well enough for me not to believe that
many cats and dogs are temperamentally and spiritually superior to
presumptive human beings who have "dominion" over them.  And I suspect
Einstein would be horrified if he became an object of veneration.

Right now I am trying to write about Lynndie England.  The task is
terribly hard because I have to invent a moral center for her where
there may not be one that I'm aware of.  It's like trying to write about
a brighter but less glitzy version Paris Hilton, one who's facing years
in the stockade and a destroyed life for acts done at the bidding of
others.  Oh yeah...Free Will....

Ken

--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538