Re: Henry Morris has died


SRNissen wrote:
explainer wrote:
dkomo wrote:

2. He has led a large group of people into sustained crackpottery.
I have not read anything suggesting he coerced anyone into living a
lie. Those unable or unwilling to think for themselves deserve their
fate, unless coerced, especially today where there is a free flow of
information and misinformation.

I will respond to this as best I can.

On this subject, we disagree. While this may indeed be the "information
age," that means nothing if you have not been taught how to search...
....searching is one thing, thinking is the key. My challenge is the
same as yours, 168 hours in a week. At the time I was reading Dr.
Morris's footnotes I was employed full time with little time outside my
profession for such study. Also, that was at least ten years ago and
the Internet search capability was paltry. (Not an excuse, just the
facts)

...On
the one hand, you have the ToE, and the masses of evidence, most of it
written in scholarly journals, indeciphrable to the lay man. On the
other hand, you have a trusted teacher, who informs you that there are
flaws, the ToE is "just a theory."
Fortunately, we now have places like TO where we can explore the
possibilities. I posted a topic recently asking about the origin of
species in lay language and received a tremendous response, more than I
could fathom, but a great deal I could comprehend and directions toward
other readings which will be very helpful.

It is a challenge for the expert to relate complex information in lay
terms. If you asked me to explain how the Internet TCP/IP protocols
work in simple terms, I could do so, not because I am a genius, but
because I spent fifteen years doing it in the classroom, full time, to
non-technical students.


I am, myself, fortunate. I live in a socialist country, and the state
has paid my schooling. I was expected to know passable conversational
english in sixth grade, and in seventh grade we started on a third
language. I like to believe I speak english fluently today, and my
german is certainly better than passable. So I could, already at an
early age, begin to read, and I did. The state and school libraries
were easy to reach in my daily life, and I swallowed the nonfiction
sections, because I was a curious child. I started with dinosaurs and
weapons (which boys don't?) but soon spread it out. My "trusted
teachers" were never biblical literalists. They all encouraged me in my
curiosity, and occasionally suggested books that they thought I might
enjoy. I have never been lied to in that cruel fashion, "Science
contradicts God, and God is true, so science must be false."
I have never been so instructed, but my original image of God was more
anthropomorphic and transcendent as it is today.

But what of other people? Growing up poor, in rural areas. I hate to
rag on the US like this, but I hear bad things about your public
schools. Some of them on this very newsgroup, when I read of state
senators who try to pass anti-science laws about the school
curriculums. How could those people ever learn the truth?

Their sunday school teachers may very well be biblical litteralists,
and they may even be so unfortunate that they encounter such in their
science classses. They learn a distorted version of the ToE, a version
they are constantly told is "unproven."

So they have to chose. And their options aren't so very black and
white, "God, or Science?" Rather, they have to chose between "God, or
this theory that they /say/ is scientific but really, we know how it
is, don't we?"

So true and it's their leaders that must guide them. Much of the
developing world is Roman Catholic. The Pope's position on science and
religion is clear and the RC church has progressed in the past. My
hope is they continue to do so in the future.

All the best, Gordon

.

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