- Jan 30, 2014
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Anyone who's interested should read through this interview given by ID creationist Bill Dembski: Disillusion with Fundamentalism. In it, he covers some extremely interesting topics, including:
1) How he reconciles an old earth with the arrival of evil. Basically, he believes that the universe, earth, and life are all billions of years old, but when Adam and Eve sinned for the first time, it had "retroactive effects" through history. IOW, their sin not only changed the course of history that was to come, but also changed the history that had already occurred.
2) His dislike for fundamentalism, which he describes as "[holding] one particular view so dogmatically that all others may not even be discussed, or their logical consequences considered", "a harsh, wooden-headed attitude that not only involves knowing one is right, but refuses to listen to, learn from, or understand other Christians, to say nothing of outsiders to the faith", "a brain-dead, soul-stifling attitude" and having an "impulse to simple, neat, pat answers".
3) His attempt to "move young-earth creationists from their position that the earth and universe are only a few thousand years old", and how rather than persuade, it generated a huge amount of backlash from fundamentalists (including Ken Ham) who called him a "heretic" and even tried to get him fired from his teaching position at Southwestern Seminary.
4) How intolerant fundamentalists are of any academic dissent. Specifically, he cites the reaction to his writing that Noah's flood was written for a theological purpose and based on a local flood in the Middle east:
It's amazing how for all the rhetoric about academic freedom coming from creationists, it's the creationists who are so intolerant of differing views.
1) How he reconciles an old earth with the arrival of evil. Basically, he believes that the universe, earth, and life are all billions of years old, but when Adam and Eve sinned for the first time, it had "retroactive effects" through history. IOW, their sin not only changed the course of history that was to come, but also changed the history that had already occurred.
2) His dislike for fundamentalism, which he describes as "[holding] one particular view so dogmatically that all others may not even be discussed, or their logical consequences considered", "a harsh, wooden-headed attitude that not only involves knowing one is right, but refuses to listen to, learn from, or understand other Christians, to say nothing of outsiders to the faith", "a brain-dead, soul-stifling attitude" and having an "impulse to simple, neat, pat answers".
3) His attempt to "move young-earth creationists from their position that the earth and universe are only a few thousand years old", and how rather than persuade, it generated a huge amount of backlash from fundamentalists (including Ken Ham) who called him a "heretic" and even tried to get him fired from his teaching position at Southwestern Seminary.
4) How intolerant fundamentalists are of any academic dissent. Specifically, he cites the reaction to his writing that Noah's flood was written for a theological purpose and based on a local flood in the Middle east:
At the meeting with president, provost, dean, and senior professor, the president made it clear to me from the start that my job was on the line. “Job on the line” in this context does not mean finishing out the academic year and giving me a chance to find another academic job. My questioning the universality of Noah’s flood meant I was a heretic, or at least not suitable for teaching at Southern Baptist seminaries, and thus I’d need to be clearing my desk immediately—unless my theological soundness could be quickly reestablished.
With a severely autistic son, debts, and a family still upset about my experience at Baylor, I wasn’t about to bare my soul and tell this second star chamber (my first being Baylor’s External Review Committee) what I really thought. I therefore finessed it. You can read the statement I wrote for yourself, especially paragraph three, where I said just enough to keep my job, and just enough to give me room to recant, as I’m doing here.
If I had been feeling less vulnerable, if I had independent financial means, I would have said goodbye to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary right then and there. This is one of the things I find most destructive about fundamentalism, the constant threat that at any moment one can run afoul of the orthodoxy du jour, and be thrown under the bus because that’s the proper place for heretics.
It's amazing how for all the rhetoric about academic freedom coming from creationists, it's the creationists who are so intolerant of differing views.