[Phys-L] Re: [SPAM-4.611] Re: THE WEDGE STRATEGY of The ID Movement

[clement at HAL-PC.ORG (John Clement)]

This is also the position of most of the mainline Christian churches
Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopal...  The exceptions are of course the
fundamentalist churches such as the Missouri Synod Lutheran and the
conservative Baptist churches.

As I recall, the Orthodox churches may not include the apocalyptic writings
in their scriptures.  In actuality these writings were reinterpreted in a
non literal sense many centuries ago by the Roman church.  These are
actually the big problem because many fundamentalists see the current era as
being in the end time.  As a result they may actually wish for the final
war.  It has been said that Bush has this point of view and may see himself
as an instrument in the final apocalypse.  It has also been claimed that
when Rome burned under Nero that the Christians, inspired by the apocalypse
may have hindered the efforts to extinguish it.  However, Rome was a tinder
box at that time, and Nero used the Christians as a scapegoat.

In either case I doubt that the Roman church has much influence on the
fundamentalists.  They often see the RC church as not being Christian, just
as did many Protestants in the 1800s.  Indeed this Protestant prejudice was
enshrined in the Book of Mormon by Joe Smith where he describes the Roman
church as the whore of Babylon.  There are also some American Catholics who
may reject this teaching as being liberal European bias.  What they will do
when their own priests express the same views is not known.  So far the
Pope's writings which clearly reject capital punishment have had little
effect in the US.  I remember that the Pope's own astronomer explained that
evolution and cosmology were accepted.  This was an end paper in the NY
Times magazine over 30 years ago as I recall.

Europeans laugh at American ignorance.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> The Roman Catholic Church published a document rejecting creationism as
> anything more than a legend.  Will this influence Christian
> fundamentalists
> in America?  Let's hope so.
>
> Here is an excerpt from the UK Times:
>
>
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1811332,00.html
> The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching
> document
> instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually
> true.
>  The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their
> five
> million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of
> scripture,
> that they should not expect "total accuracy" from the Bible.  "We should
> not
> expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete
> historical
> precision," they say in The Gift of Scripture.
>
>
> The document is timely, coming as it does amid the rise of the religious
> Right, in particular in the US.  Some Christians want a literal
> interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught
> alongside Darwin's theory of evolution in schools, believing "intelligent
> design" to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began.
>
>
>
> In the document, the bishops acknowledge... that proper acknowledgement
> should be given both to the word of God and its human dimensions.  They
> say
> the Church must offer the gospel in ways "appropriate to changing times,
> intelligible and attractive to our contemporaries". The Bible is true in
> passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: "We should
> not
> expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters."  They go
> on
> to condemn fundamentalism for its "intransigent intolerance" and to warn
> of
> "significant dangers" involved in a fundamentalist approach.
>
>
>
> As examples of passages not to be taken literally, the bishops cite the
> early chapters of Genesis, comparing them with early creation legends from
> other cultures, especially from the ancient East. The bishops say it is
> clear that the primary purpose of these chapters was to provide religious
> teaching and that they could not be described as historical writing.
> Similarly, they refute the apocalyptic prophecies of Revelation, the last
> book of the Christian Bible, in which the writer describes the work of the
> risen Jesus, the death of the Beast and the wedding feast of Christ the
> Lamb.  The bishops say: "...We should not expect to discover in this book
> details about the end of the world, about how many will be saved and about
> when the end will come."