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To: PatrickHenry
Junior's work is pretty comprehensive, but his definition of Creationism is rather limited wouldn't you say?

I've been told that I'm a "creationist" because I simply believe God was and is involved in biological development in some way.

These stupid threads will never end until everyone can agree on just what in the hell a "Creationist" is.
4 posted on 01/07/2002 3:31:38 PM PST by Exnihilo
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To: Exnihilo
I've been told that I'm a "creationist" because I simply believe God was and is involved in biological development in some way.

Well, yes, then you are a "creationist," but in this sense so is (virtually) any theist.

In my view the bible teaches (in the main, though its testimony on the matter does vary considerably) that God is deeply involved in the governance of all aspects of the "natural" world, so that a true biblical theist should see no fundamental conflict between a full-bodied theism and a "naturalistic" understanding of the world's history and operation.

For example the bible claims, of babies developing in the womb, that God "knits [them] together of bone and sinew," and that He "forms [their] inward parts" (which, interestingly, does not seem to inspire any opposition to teaching embryological development as a purely natural process). The book of Amos says that God "creates" the wind, using the same term that fundamentalists insist only refers to ex nihilo creation in Genesis (but no one denies that wind has a physical cause).

But in spite of all this, antievolutionists arbitrarily draw a line at the creation of species, especially humans, and assert or assume that naturalistic theories of evolution "leave God out". (Funny that God can create individual humans in the womb by natural means, but couldn't, according to the fundies, manage to create the species itself in like manner.)

Considering that the sophistication and subtlty of (antievolutionary) creationists is actually less, in these respects, than the primitive sheepherders who wrote The Bible, maybe we could refer to them as "cretinists," and allow other theists to reclaim the "creationist" title? Somehow, though, I think the "cretinists" would object. :-)

106 posted on 01/07/2002 5:48:05 PM PST by Stultis
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