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Author Topic:   Opening the doors to creationism in British Schools?
dwise1
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Message 88 of 129 (624390)
07-17-2011 5:11 PM
Reply to: Message 87 by frako
07-17-2011 4:25 PM


Or to put what Frako's telling IamJoseph into NT verbage ("spiritual milk" for those not yet ready for "spiritual meat", just as one does not feed a newborn baby meat): a pre-scientific people cannot understand "scientific meat", so a more simplified form, "scientific milk" if you would, would be more useful for imparting at least some understanding. Kind of like adults using fanciful stories to explain to young children where babies come from (eg, storks, cabbage patches) in which the important teaching is not the technical details, but rather the message of the parents' love for each other and for their children -- which is how I would understand Genesis, that the scientific details were not important, but rather WhoDunIt.
An example would be the scene in "The Sand Pebbles" where Engineman Steve McQueen is teaching coolie Mako the steam/water cycle of the San Pablo's boiler system. As Mako was trying to understand the new revelation that water and steam are the same thing, McQueen's explanation of water being "stim sleeping" did the trick.
Similarly, in Air Force tech school, one course started with the instructor telling us that he was about to lie to us and he pointed out what that lie was. That lie was a definition that we were starting out with, so that mid-way through that course when we had learned enough, we could understand the truth.
Another effect that appears is that even if you tell a pre-scientific people the actual scientific truth (feed them scientific meat), they will still understand it in their pre-scientific terms. For example, there's a degenerative brain disease, kuru, in New Guinea which is transmitted through cannibalism. According to an account I read in the 1980's, the natives believed that it was caused by evil spirits while the doctors were trying to tell them what was really causing it and how to avoid it. As a final argument, scientists had natives view the infectious agent, a prion, under the microscope. Instead of accepting what the scientists were trying to tell them, this convinced the natives even more that evil spirits were to blame, because now they've seen those evil spirits with their own eyes.
If you can find a copy of a tape of Orson Scott Card's Secular Humanist Revival Meeting, he offers a reading of Genesis "if Moses could have understood the wonderous vision that was shown him." The refrain (changed in its final form):
quote:
The strong nuclear force holds tight.
The weak nuclear force hangs on.
The electro-magnetic force shines so bright as if to say "It is good."
And gravity ... it just sits and sucks.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 87 by frako, posted 07-17-2011 4:25 PM frako has not replied

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