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Sorry, I am working backwards through pings and just read this one about ""... I'm trying to understand this common creationist horror at the thought of our distant ancestors having been something other than ourselves...""

You need to remember that the idea that we were not tied to our ancestors' lineage is an entirely Christian idea, as this was a Christian nation. The whole notion of being self made, of pulling oneself up by his bootstraps, the rugged individualist, the log cabin to White House ideal, is because of Christianity's essential influence on the nation to abhor carrying the sin's of the father into each generation, of the Christian outrage at the injustice of 'nobility" and the monarchy (believing that other people are closer to God because of bloodlines than the common man) and of loving thy neighbor as thyself because we both have been created equal in the eyes of God.

This is the radical idea of Christianity, because to love thy neighbor as thyself means you are created equally before God. This idea broke us off of European class structure, nobility and aristocracy and monarchy. The American Dream of being a self made individual is a Christian idea -- i.e. all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..." The Founding Fathers were Christians.

Again, I have to muse on the cosmic joke of Lincoln and Darwin's shared birthdate. Lincoln himself, along with the rest of the nation, marveled that God allowed the only two Presidents who signed the Declaration, Jefferson and Adams, to both die on the exact same day, on the exact day of the Jubilee or fiftieth year of the Declaration of Independence -- July Fourth 1826. This statistical and supernatural miracle impressed Lincoln years later, (ironic that he would die on Good Friday, too!), and convinced Lincoln that God was behind the founding of this nation.

Now to ruminate upon the fallout of Darwin on this nation -- how people just have an easy out when it comes to believing or not believing that we are Created in God's image (as the Founders did, btw!) it makes Darwin's shared birthdate with Lincoln's very very ironic, considering Lincoln furthered the cause of the Founding Fathers by holding the Union together, purified of the stain of slavery, because he believed the Creator created us all equal...

Thanks for those two responses. I don't know how to respond to them, because they spell out a worldview which is so fundamentally different than mine that it's hard go grab hold of anything that I would recognize as rational. It's more like our mindsets are... orthogonal to each other. On different planes altogether. :-)

Just a couple observations, then. First, this allegiance to a totalizing interpretation of Scripture is very dangerous. In fact this approach is what is tying down Muslims in the 7th century and preventing their modernization.

As for the history of the "self-made man" concept, you may well be right that it stems from Christianity, I don't know. I just know that in a free country, we see people acheiving their own dreams all the time. Nobody need be held back by the fact that their grandfather was a serial killer or neer-do-well, let alone that their great-times-500,000 grandfather was a chimp. The truth of that is not dependent on the truth of Christianity. It's a simple fact that happens to flow from the fact of our human nature as the rational animal, and from the kind of government & society that best lets such an animal thrive.

Last word to you...