[Vision2020] Re: Evolution and cruelty

[Ralph Nielsen]

> From: Joshua Nieuwsma <joshuahendrik@yahoo.com>
> Date: Tue Sep 23, 2003  6:52:28 PM US/Pacific
> To: vision <vision2020@moscow.com>
> Subject: [Vision2020] Re: Evolution and cruelty
>
> JOSHUA
> I will respect your opposition to the 4th Commandment
> once you have attained perfection. But until then I
> respectfully contend that it is not for you, the clay,
> to say to the Potter "why have you made me like this?"

RALPH
Joshua, would you please tell us what you mean by "4th Commandment"? If 
you can show us an official numbered list of the so-called Ten 
Commandments anywhere in the Bible, including both the OT and the NT, I 
will pay you a $1,000 reward.

Your reference to prescientific polemics about potters and their 
creations doesn't intimidate me. The rest of us know that we are 
products of evolution, of the laws of genetics, of the interaction of 
strands of DNA.

> JOSHUA
> As to eternity, it is the skeptic whose world is too
> small, not the Christian's. The skeptic has a perfect
> universe the size of a marble outside of which no
> truth can exist. The Christian has a world, let alone
> the universe, in which the skeptic himself can exist.
> Which is better?

RALPH
Sorry, Joshua, I think it's people like you whose universe is too 
small. A flat piece of earth with the sun, moon, and stars rotating 
around it every 24 hours, all made out of nothing 6,000 years ago by an 
ancient Hebrew tribal deity, is pretty puny compared with the vastness 
in both space and time of the universe as we have discovered it to be 
in the last few centuries after skeptical secular science tossed out 
belief in magic and superstition. But many people are afraid of 
reality. Fortunately for them, the earth  still has room for wishful 
thinking by small-minded fundamentalists.

> JOSHUA
> As to selfishness, it is not selfish to desire to be
> saved. Or should one expect that you will, in the
> effort to avoid being selfish, keep quiet if you are
> ever caught in a house fire? Yelling for help is
> rather the instinct of self-preservation. Same goes
> for the sinner caught in the way of the wrath of the
> righteous God. And obeying orders to get blessed is
> the way of the world. Blessings for obedience, curses
> for disobedience. Try disobeying the laws of Moscow
> and see how far you get.

RALPH
I'm sure your sermon impresses the choir. If I saw a house on fire I 
would phone 911 for help immediately. Is that an act of selfishness? A 
couple of years ago I found an expensive wheel complete with tire on my 
front lawn. It had obviously fallen off a vehicle. If I were selfish I 
could have sold it for over $300. Instead, I called the police to come 
and pick it up. Last Sunday morning an expensive mountain bike was 
lying on my lawn. After I got back from church it was still there. So I 
called the police to come and pick it up. And I placed a notice about 
it in Vision 2020. Do I expect some heavenly reward for these acts of 
unselfishness? Of course not. There is no life after death, so we have 
to live as harmoniously as possible with our fellow beings in our life 
before death.