George, Platt and y'all:
> DMB says:
> Creationism is for ignorant hicks, not mystics or
> philosophers.
GIJ said:
Is that so? I'm a Seventh-day Adventist, and not "by birth" either.
Rather I had what seemed to me a "mystical" experience (see William James'
"Varieties of Religious Experience") that confirmed for me that I should
observe the Old Testament Sabbath, which in turn is considered a memorial
to the week of Creation.
DMB says:
I'd like to hear more about your "mystical" experience. I'm skeptical. I had
a contrary "vision" once. I watched the earth, all of life upon it and
myself evolve all simultaneously in the space of just a few seconds. Anyway,
the offending phrase, ignorant hicks, is a reference to comments made by
Pirsig on page 273, just a few pages into chapter 22...
"It was this issue of intellect versus society that made the Scopes trial of
1925 such a journalistic sensation. In that trial a Tennessee schoolteacher,
John Scopes, was charged with illegally teaching Darwinian evolution. ...
his lawyer, Clarence Darrow was just taking easy shots at a toothless tiger.
Only religious fanatics and ignorant Tennessee hillbillies opposed the
teaching of Evolution. When that trial is seen as a conflict of social and
intellectual values its meaning emerges. Scopes and Darrow were defending
academic freedom but, more importantly, they were prosecuting the old static
religious patterns of the past. They gave intellectuals a warm feeling of
arriving somewhere they had been waiting to arrive for a long time. Church
bigots, pillars of society who for centuries had viciously attacked and
defamed intellectual who disagreed with them, were now getting some of it
back."
DMB continues:
Pirsig isn't exactly pulling his punches here. He calls the creationists
religious fantatics, ingnorant hillbillies and church bigots. This kind of
language is pretty hard to miss or overlook. The word "hick" is pretty mild
by comparison. (Pirsig's begins to discuss fascism, another form of
right-wing reaction, in the very next paragraph.)
GIJ said:
Two things I'd like to ask this group, the first hypothetical: Have you
pondered the "Quality", or lack thereof, of a lot of the arguments upon
which the Theory of evolution is based, or do you just "faithfully" accept
them?
DMB says:
Seriously? Surely you understand the difference between myth and science,
between blind faith and empirical evidence, between social and intellectual
values. That's what its all about. When it comes to accepting or rejecting
scientific theories, faith is irrelevant.
GIJ said:
And my second question to which I am looking forward to answers from hicks
and non-hick's alike: Wherein does the Quality exist in Christianity?
DMB says:
Good question. Like it or not, Jesus Christ is the central hero of Western
civilization and I consider myself to be something like a Christian mystic,
but I don't subscribe to any particular sectarian dogma and I view any kind
of fundamentalism as a kind of disease. I think the MOST valuable aspect of
religion is the area where they agree. At the center of every major religion
there is a esoteric mystical core and they all say essentially the same
thing. This is called the perennial philosophy and it is only verified by
intellectual values. This is where the most profound truths of religion can
be found.
George "Ignoramus" Jempty said:
PS....before you go judging me as a hypocrite because of my sarcasm, you
might consider the many writings of the Apostle Paul ;)
DMB asks:
Was Paul often sarcastic?
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