from CED message on the myth of the destruction of the library of alexandria by christians

----NOTE THIS IS NOT MY WRITING---------------------

Date: Sat Jun 29, 2002 10:27 am
Subject: The myth of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria by Christians

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Group,

I would like to address a common myth that does the rounds again and again
on the circuit of atheist, free thinker, internet infidel and anti-Christian
sites. It also appears on many anti-ID/creationist sites and boards.This
concerns the story that mobs of Christians destroyed the Great Library of
Alexandria burning all the books in the process and brutally murdering the
pagan mathematician, Hypatia. This tall story is periodically dragged out,
dusted off and paraded around to confirm how beastly and barbaric the early
Christians were and to confirm the smug prejudices of those who wish to tar
and feather Christians and creationists today.

I apologise in advance for the number of quotes but I believe these, and the
links given, are necessary to establish the truth of the matter.

Here is the legendary story:

"Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, is also the patron saint of arsonists.
As Christianity slowly strangled the life out of classical culture in the
forth century it became more and more difficult to be a pagan. There stood
in Alexandria the great temple of Serapis called the Serapeum and attached
to it was the Great Library of Alexandria where all the wisdom of the
ancients was preserved. Now Theophilus knew that as long as this knowledge
existed people would be less inclined to believe the bible so he set about
destroying the pagan temples. But the Serapeum was a huge structure, high on
a mound and beyond the abilities of the raging Christian fanatics to
assault. Faced with this edifice, the Patriarch sent word to Rome. There the
Emperor Theodosius the Great, who had ordered that paganism be annihilated,
gave his permission for the destruction of the Serapeum. Realising they had
no chance, the priests and priestesses fled their temple and the mob moved
in. The vast structure was razed to it foundations and the scrolls from the
library were burnt in huge pyres in the streets of Alexandria."
http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm



What follows are a selection of typical quotes from the hundreds of websites
sites that perpetuate this propaganda myth. I am sorry for the mind-numbing
repetition of fiction, falsehoods and half truths (as will be demonstrated)
but this is par for the course for the cavalier disregard for historical
facts on many of these sites:

"In 391 Christians burned down one of the world's greatest libraries in
Alexandria, believed to have housed over 700,000 scrolls. All of the books
of the Gnostic Basilides, Porphyry's 36 volumes, papyrus rolls of 27 schools
of the Mysteries, and 270,000 ancient documents gathered by Ptolemy
Philadelphyus were turned to ash."
The secular humanist site:
http://my.ohio.voyager.net/~dionisio/controversies/essay-science.html

"Perhaps the greatest single intellectual loss of the classical world was
the destruction of the library of Alexandria. At one time, it was reputed to
house about 700,000 books on subjects ranging from literature and history to
science and philosophy. In the year 391, the bishop of Alexandria,
Theophilus (d.412), in his quest to destroy paganism, lead a group of crazed
monks and laymen, destroyed all the books in the great library."
a skeptic's guide to Christianity
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/bookburn.html

"It was nascent Christianity that destroyed the academic knowledge of
pagans, who were the first educative force in Europe. After burning the
Library of Alexandria, destroying the majority of writings and books by
pagan scholars, (hiding a few away in church vaults), they exterminated
anyone who was pagan; exemplified in the brutal murder of Hypatia. They
plunged the world into a thousand years of darkness, the only knowledge
remaining retained and hidden by the church. Only by the steadfastness of
courageous scientists such as Galileo was the church forced to withdraw its
influence over the lives of the people. Each step forward was fiercely
opposed by the church. The church fathers recognized clearly that learning
and wisdom, truth in the classic meaning, were, as they still are, the
eternal adversaries of faith and dogma."
From the site IN REASON WE TRUST: REASON RULES AMERICA
http://www.aztriad.com/jesus.html

"In 415 AD, a young female librarian, Hypatia of Alexandria, Egypt
mathematically proved not only that the Earth was round, but that it
revolved around the Sun (contrary to Christian belief). She was innocent
and ignorant of propaganda that unjustly placed her as the protagonist of
deadly conflicts between Christians and Jews and was slaughtered by a
Christian mob. As a pagan, Hypatia was completely unrelated to the holy war
between the followers of the same God. The Library of Alexandria was
subsequently burned to the ground to destroy all documents supporting the
heresy of an Earth that was not at the center of the universe. A Christian
tradition that is (sadly) still in practice today. This one act began the
Dark ages. A millennium in which any text that did not praise God was
forbidden and experimentation with any science might be punishable by
death."
from The Evolution of Genesis :An introduction to the origins of the
Creation myth site
http://evolutionofgenesis.homestead.com/evil.html

"Probably one of the most unforgivable acts of the early Christians was the
killing of Hypatia in March of 415 a. d., which was soon followed by the
departure from Alexandria of most of the scholars who were associated with
the great library. Not long after that, the library itself was destroyed,
including the burning of all of the remaining books which the departing
scholars had not taken with them. What we know today of the great library
comes from the few books removed by the departing scholars, along with
letters from the scholars which were preserved in other places. This sparse
record gives us so many tantalizing clues as to the contents of the great
library... But unless someone discovers how to construct a time machine, all
of this is lost to us forever, thanks be to the local Christian patriarch,
St. Cyril, and his followers, who set out to burn the pagan books which they
believed Christians had no use for."
From the "Agnostic Church" homepage http://www.agnostic.org/BIBLEH.htm

"They're not just coming, they've been around since tribal legends, the fall
of The Great Library of Alexandria, witch hunts in Europe and in Salem, and
they're here today still; people like Ham have a long and bloody history
behind them already of which they claim to be proud. Biblical literalists
like Ham and company are what inspire the Taliban to be so certain their
martyrs will be serviced in heaven by 72 virgins for eternity."
"The Archon, a place where we apply logic and reason before superstition and
pseudoscience. No brain, no gain!"
http://www.the-archon.com/Essays/museum.htm

"And then there are other matters, like the mad monks led by Saint Cyril,
the patron saint of arsonists, who burned the Great Library at Alexandria,
destroying 600,000 volumes of knowledge of the ancient world--the greatest
property crime of all time."
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2000/murphy1.html

"The destruction of the great ancient Egyptian Library of Alexandria under
the reign of Ptolemy with its estimated millions of books and manuscripts
was a horrendous crime against all civilization. The burning and looting was
organised by monk-led mobs of Christians in the year AD 389. The foremost
librarian and scientist, Hypatia was dragged out of the library, stripped
and torn apart by the Christian mobs armed with jagged seashells."
from The Canadian Atheist, Issue 1 Winter 1994/95
http://home.istar.ca/~tcas/canat1.html

"When the great library at Alexandria was ransacked by Christian fanatics in
387... an inestimable wealth of gnostic literature must have been destroyed.
Until the nineteenth century the main source of knowledge of Gnosticism was,
ironically, in the writings of the Church Fathers, who in their refutations
summarised gnostic texts and often quoted at length from them."
Stuart Holroyd, The Elements of Gnosticism, p.22, 1994
http://members.tripod.com/~gnostica/

"The evolution/creation conflict is not a battle between to two equal
theories, it is a battle between truth and deceit. Creationists like to say
that evolution is 'just a theory', well creationism is just a primitive
superstition. In 415 AD the Alexandria Library was burned to the ground and
the scientist who ran it was beaten to death by catholic monks, because they
considered scientific work heretical. The damage done to science and
enlightenment by this primitive act is incalculable."
from the RAGE AGAINST THEISM webpage
http://home.mweb.co.za/it/iti04330/atheist1.htm


Again, I invite readers to do their own Google search of the Web and
confirm just how common this story is, and the sort of sites on which it
appears and the miasma of contradictions contained therein.

The problem with this story is it a total fabrication, a piece of fiction
masquerading as historical fact designed and perpetuated solely as
propaganda against Christians. It is not my intention to reinvent the wheel
by detailing a point by point rebuttal; this has already been done in
several thorough and scholarly examinations of this story available on the
Net. I wish merely to point out where this topic can be investigated more
fully for those who wish to uncover the truth. I shall merely present a
summary of the historical facts from a number of sources:

1.The Mysterious Fate of the Great Library of Alexandria
http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm an article based on the existing primary
sources:

"An awful lot of ink has been splashed around about the destruction of the
Great Library. You can blame Christians, Moslems or Julius Caesar depending
on taste. But the only way to find the truth is a careful examination of the
original sources. This essay goes over them with a fine-toothed comb and
finds that while Christians and Moslems were almost certainly innocent, the
Romans just might have a lot to answer for."

"Burning down libraries
The idea of deliberating setting fire to a repository of knowledge appals us
in a way that few other crimes can do. As demonstrated by the astronomical
sums paid at auction, we value art far more than human life. Tens of
thousands of Afghans could die in war without anyone in the West caring very
much but, as the BBC reported, when the Taleban demolish a couple of ancient
statues, there is world wide horror and condemnation.

This attitude has meant that the false accusation that Edward Gibbon laid at
the door of the Patriarch Theophilus in chapter 28 of his Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire regarding the Great Library of Alexandria has been
tremendously damaging to Christianity and is repeated by every author with a
bone to pick. But although we can establish that this library was not
destroyed by a Christian mob, were there not other ancient libraries that
did suffer exactly that fate? The saying that there is no smoke without fire
would seem to be exceedingly appropriate in this case. I do not for a second
claim to have analysed every ancient source but I have read a good deal and
have only located one example of deliberate destruction of an entire library
recorded by the chroniclers.

The chronicler in question is John of Antioch about whom we know almost
nothing. He was a Greek speaking Christian historian who may have lived
between the sixth and tenth centuries. All his works are lost and only
fragments of his chronicle remain preserved in other places. Among them is
the following passage from the great Byzantine encyclopaedia called the Suda
in the article on the Emperor Jovian:

Emperor Hadrian had built a beautiful temple for the worship of his father
Trajan which, on the orders of Emperor Julian, the eunuch Theophilus had
made into a library. Jovian, at the urging of his wife, burned the temple
with all the books in it with his concubines laughing and setting the fire.

Scholars believe that it is John of Antioch is being quoted. The Suda itself
is full of snippets of information but it is treated with justifiable
caution by the scholars who have studied it. Certainly, it is very often
wrong but usually not deliberately. Instead it just quotes earlier authors
uncritically and repeats their mistakes...

The pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus was actually with Jovian in Antioch
and does not breath a word about any libraries... Although Jovian was a
Christian he is recorded by the rhetor Themistius to have insisted on
tolerance towards pagans. The great pagan orator Libanius who lived in
Antioch at the time and from whom we have speeches, lectures and no less
than 1,500 letters, makes no mention of the library's destruction. We have
no other record of there being a temple of Trajan built by Hadrian in
Antioch.

John was writing several hundred years after the library burning is supposed
to have taken place but no one else mentions it.... All the counter
arguments depend on silence which demonstrates just how hard it is to prove
a negative... If we knew that burning down libraries was the sort of thing
that Jovian or other Christians actually did, we might have a case for
believing it happened here but as it is a single example it cannot be
allowed to simply reinforce our prejudices. Still, this remains the only
possible record of a library being deliberately destroyed that I have been
able to find in the sources and those who with an anti-Christian axe to
grind should use this case rather than Alexandria. Furthermore, it does
illustrate that Christian writers were happy to report such things and
repeat them from other sources. Contrary to the allegations of many
sceptics, the Christian scribes made no effort to censor this alleged
misdeed of Jovian even though he was a Christian emperor."
http://www.bede.org.uk/literature.htm#biblio


2. ...Did the Christians burn/destroy all the classical literature?
by Glenn Miller http://www.christian-thinktank.com This extensive and
voluminously referenced work is summarised here:

a)"The pre-Constantine church did NOT do 'burnings' or destruction of
classical works and/or libraries.

b)The early church leaders widely and favorably used classical works in
their writings, maintained them in their personal libraries, and made
attempts to preserve them.

c)The pre-Constantine church was the victim of a thorough-going Christian
book burning campaign by the Roman Emperors.

d)A few post-Constantine Christian Emperors 'traded' censorship initiatives
with a few Non-Christian Roman Emperors, but the overall effect on classical
texts were minimal.

e)The post-Constantine church was NOT responsible for the burning of the
famous main library at Alexandria.

f)The destruction of the classical works and libraries of the ancient world
was the result of accidental fires, neglect, the barbarian invasions,
de-urbanization, and the destruction of the educational system/public
records systems by those invasions.

g)The Western institutional church--although considerably uneven in its
estimates of the value of various classical authors--nevertheless had a
number of individuals and institutions that almost single-handedly preserved
the classical works that we enjoy today.

h)The Eastern institutional church preserved the major mass of Greek mss.
that was used to 'fuel' the Renaissance in Western Europe.

i)The vast majority of the censorship/book burnings of the later church were
insubstantial--either symbolic directed at non-classical works."

Miller's work is profusely annotated and repays close inspection.

Miller addresses the popular statements of Ellerbe:
"... Christians burned down one of the world's greatest libraries in
Alexandria, said to have housed 700,000 rolls. All the books of the Gnostic
Basilides, Porphyry's 36 volumes, papyrus rolls of 27 schools of the
Mysteries, and 270,000 ancient documents gathered by Ptolemy Philadelphus
were burned. Ancient academies of learning were closed. Education for anyone
outside of the Church came to an end..."
Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History, p. 46, 1995
http://members.tripod.com/~gnostica/

"The problem with this is that it is ABYSMALLY inaccurate. If one compares
the statements of Ellerbe with the works of ACTUAL academic scholars in the
field one can see how wrong this statement is. The actual history of the
famous Museum library of Alex (which is said to have housed 500,000 rolls)
goes like this:


1)Ptolemy Soter (Ptolemy I, 367-282bc) built a shine to the Muses (a
Museion) and brought outstanding scholars to live there Books and Readers in
the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p177
The History and Power of Writing by Henri-Jean Martin (trans. Lydia
Cochrane), Univ. of Chicago: 1994 p55.

2) it was a communal society of men of science and letters , and was located
in the royal precinct
Books and Readers in the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p178

3) later, a smaller library (for overflow) was built OUTSIDE the palace
area--called the "daughter" library. It contained less than 8% of the total
holdings of the combined' libraries, and was connected to a pagan shrine
(the Serapeum).
Books and Readers in the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995
p179-180

4)The major library (Museion) was without peer in the 3rd century , and
probably had most extant classical works.
Books and Readers in the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p180
The History and Power of Writing by Henri-Jean Martin (trans. Lydia
Cochrane), Univ. of Chicago: 1994 p55
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris,
Scarecrow:1995. p45

5) Then--trouble begins: "Then, around 145 bce, the persecution of
Alexandrian scholars and their disciples by [Ptolemy VII Physcon] Euergetes
II resulted in an emigration of academic talent from the Museion and a loss
of distinction in its librarians." Books and Readers in the Early Church,
Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p180


6) "Ptolemy VIII [Lathyros, Soter II] (Cacergetes) came to the throne.
Having been forced to leave Alexandria by his enemies, he returned in the
course of a civil war (89-88bc) and burned much of the city. The students
and fellows of the Museum were at least temporarily scattered...Though never
reaching their former greatness, the Museum and its library were
reconstituted and survived for several hundred years longer." Note: most of
the damage to the library occurred before the birth of Christ!
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris, Scarecrow:1995
p46

7) Then, in 47 BC when Julius Caesar was conquering Egypt, the Library was
partially destroyed
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris, Scarecrow:1995
p46
Books and Readers in the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p180

8) In the first century AD, some of the volumes in the library were moved to
Rome to replenish libraries there
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris, Scarecrow:1995
p46

9)Finally, the main Museum and library was destroyed in 273 AD, when the
Roman Emperor Aurelian burned much of Alexandria--including most of the
Palace area.
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris, Scarecrow:1995
p46-47
Books and Readers in the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p180
The History and Power of Writing by Henri-Jean Martin (trans. Lydia
Cochrane), Univ. of Chicago: 1994 p56.

10) It is possible that the Museum (already a shadow of the glory of the
first one) was rebuilt "on a smaller scale."
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris, Scarecrow:1995
p47

11) But "A few years later, the city was completely sacked by Diocletian.
The Museum, which had enjoyed long periods of renewed splendor during
Imperial times and which had recently been restored once more to its old
glory thanks to the notable efforts of the mathematician Diophantus, must
have suffered terrible damage."
The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, by Luciano Canfora,
Univ. of Calif: 1987. p87

12. The small, daughter library--the Serapeum--was thought to have survived
and WAS destroyed by the Patriarch Theophilis in 391, under the directives
of Emperor Theodosius in 391. Note--this is NOT the famous library at
all...it was a very small temple library. "




3. The Beauty of Reasoning: A Re-examination of Hypatia of Alexandra. Bryan
J. Whitfield, The Mathematics Educator, Vol.6 No. 1
http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/DEPT/TME/Issues/v6n1/v6n1.pdf.

" From the sixth-century writings of Damascius to more recent writers like
Charles Kingsley, Edward Gibbon, and Carl Sagan, the tragedy of Hypatia's
death has been used as an occasion for a miscreant euhemerization that
falsifies historical fact, at best in the service of a larger narrative, at
worst in the service of propaganda. These tendentious historians present
Hypatia as a noble pagan martyr, a sacrificial virgin murdered at the
instigation of Cyril, the evil Christian bishop of Alexandria, for her
refusal to abandon the religion of the Greeks. She becomes the embodiment of
Hellenism destroyed by the onslaught of mindless Christianity, the epitome
of the end of the wisdom of the ancients.This rendering of Hypatia's death
may be high drama, but it is poor history that does a disservice to
Hypatia's real contributions and ignores the continuation of the Alexandrian
philosophical tradition after her death. Examination of her significance
must begin, therefore, with a refutation of this idealized portrait and then
continue with a development of her life and work using more reliable
historical sources as well as legitimate inferences that may be drawn from
the intellectual and cultural context in which she lived."

"Attempts to use the death of Hypatia for polemical ends began with the work
of the Athenian scholar Damascius, the last head of the Academy before it
was closed by Justinian. He wrote in exile, as one of the last of the
pagans,and was anxious to exploit the scandal of Hypatia's
death.Consequently, he placed responsibility for her death in the hands of
Cyril's men so that readers would picture her as the martyr of Hellenism,
comparable to the heroized Emperor Julian, who had sought to restore
paganism as the of the empire and was reportedly killed by a traitorous
Christian."



4. The Primary Sources for the Life and Work of Hypatia of Alexandria by
Michael A. B. Deakin
History of Mathematics Paper 63 August 1995 Mathematics Department, Monash
University, Australia
http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Hypatia/primary-sources.html

"...it should be said that works of fiction (whether the fiction is
intentional or not!) are not historical sources at all. Regrettably much of
what is readily available on Hypatia derives from fictional, rather than
historical, sources.
The life of Hypatia of Alexandria depends on a small amount of primary
material, and anything going outside that is either fiction or speculation
and in a good account should be flagged as such.

5. Ellen N. Brundige, The Library of Alexandria: The Legend of the Library
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/Students/Ellen/Museum.html

"The library of Alexandria is a legend. Not a myth, but a legend. The
destruction of the library of the ancient world has been retold many times
and attributed to just as many different factions and rulers, not for the
purpose of chronicling that ediface of education, but as political slander.
Much ink has been spilled, ancient and modern, over the 40,000 volumes
housed in grain depots near the harbor, which were supposedly incinerated
when Julius Caesar torched the fleet of Cleopatra's brother and rival
monarch. So says Livy, apparently, in one of his lost books, which Seneca
quotes. The figure of Hypatia, a fifth-century scholar and mathematician of
Alexandria, being dragged from her chariot from an angry Pagan-hating mob of
monks who flayed her alive then burned her upon the remnants of the old
Library, has found her way into legend as well, thanks to a few contemporary
sources which survived.Yet while we know of many rumors of the destruction
of "The Library" (in fact, there were at least three different libraries
coexisting in the city), and know of whole schools of Alexandrian scholars
and scholarship, there is scant data about the whereabouts, layout,
holdings, organization, administration, and physical structure of the
place."


The actual fate of the Library of Alexandria is unknown but it is likely to
be less exciting and propaganda-friendly than is popularly supposed:

"The story that Theophilus destroyed a library is clearly a fiction that we
can very precisely lay at the door of Edward Gibbon. It is in his monumental
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that we first find the allegation made.
Gibbon seems mainly concerned to clear the Arabs of the responsibility of
destroying the library and allows his marked anti-Christian prejudice to
cloud his better judgement. His excellent footnotes show he had exactly the
same sources as we do but drew the wrong conclusions.

The burning of the library at Alexandria has been referred to as a tragic
loss of information and knowledge. Livy wrote that the library was destroyed
when Julius Caesar torched the fleet of Cleopatra's brother and rival
monarch. Another myth is that Hypatia, a fifth-century scholar and
mathematician of Alexandria, was dragged from her chariot by an angry
Pagan-hating mob of Christian monks. The Christians had her burned alive in
the library to in a fit of religious fervor."

The Library at Alexandria - And Other Information Management Tragedies,
Paula Gamonal
http://www.ravenwerks.com/practices/the.htm



"Unfortunately, no traces of the original library at Alexandria remain. The
story of what happened to it is shrouded in legend and controversy. A
well-known and controversial theory is that the library was burned to the
ground by Julius Caesar in 48 B.C. when, according to some accounts, he set
fire to an enemy fleet and inadvertently burned the library too. There is
also a disputed legend that says Mark Antony presented Cleopatra with
200,000 scrolls from another library as a gift to help replace the lost
works.Some chroniclers say that in the fourth century A.D., after
Christianity had become the state religion, Theophilus I, the bishop of
Alexandria, spurred his followers to destroy the pagan temple that housed
the daughter library. Others, however, argue that the books might have been
removed or sold.

The upwelling of anti-pagan fervor culminates in the role of Hypatia, a
fifth-century mathematician and philosopher whose father had taught
mathematics at the school associated with the library. The glamorous and
intellectual Hypatia earned the enmity of Bishop Cyril, leader of the
Christian church. Some say Cyril had a mob attack and kill her in 415 A.D.
Other sources claim she was flayed and thrown on a pile of burning pagan
books. Still other accounts have Hypatia peeled to death with oyster shells
or stabbed with pieces of pottery. A final legend surrounding the library of
Alexandria comes with the arrival of the Arabs in the middle of the seventh
century A.D. Supposedly the invading Arabs destroyed the books because they
believed everything true or useful to be contained in the Koran, but this
legend is likely an anti-Arab fabrication from the time of the Crusades.

The truth behind the loss of the library of Alexandria may be less dramatic
than the stories that swirl around it. It is possible that the scrolls
simply disintegrated, or that they fell out of fashion with the advent of
vellum to replace papyrus. It is possible that other centers of learning
such as Constantinople replaced the primacy of the library at Alexandria.
According to Canfora, it was hard to preserve books in large urban libraries
that were prone to being attacked, and the safest locations for books were
more remote places such as monasteries and private collections.
Mystery, melodrama, reversal, and renewal by Jane C. McFann, Reading Today
February/March 2002
http://www.reading.org/publications/rty/archives/ancient_library.html


"The surprising thing is not that some books got burned in the conflict
between moribund
paganism and nascent Christianity, but that the burned books
were so few. When early Christianity had to fight for its life
and when it found obnoxious matter in so much of the pagan
literature, it really exercised great tolerance in destroying few
books except those that contained heresies or frontal attacks
upon itself."
"Books for the Burning" Clarence A. Forbes University of Nebraska, American
Philological Society 67 (1936), pp.114-25.
http://www.tertullian.org/articles/forbes_books_for_the_burning.htm
(This article cites the known cases of books intentionally burned with no
mention of the Library of Alexandria).

This post has focussed on the myth of the Christian burning of the Library
of Alexandria. It has not dealt substantially with the equally erroneous
myth that the early church generally destroyed the literary heritage of the
Classical world, which I may examine in another post.

So what is the source of this myth? There are some fragmentary and
contradictory early sources but several writers have pointed to Edward
Gibbon as the main originator of the legend in its current manifestation.

'Gibbon, who otherwise presents such an evocative picture of the destruction
of the Temple of Serapis, is mistaken when he says (XXVIII) that "The
valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed" by Theophilus,
whom he characterizes as "the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue; a bold,
bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold, and with blood."
That the temple did have a library is related by Ammianus, as well as by
Epiphanius, who, writing in AD 392, speaks of a second library "in the
Serapeum, called its daughter." But there is no support for the presumption
that it was destroyed at the same time as the temple or even that it still
existed by then.'
http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~snlrc/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/paganism/serapeum.ht
ml

But probably the most influential piece on which the legend depends is a
speech given to the Independent Religious Society in Chicago and published
by "The Rationalist" in May 1915 by Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian entitled
"The Martyrdom of Hypatia (or The Death of the Classical World)". It is a
piece of over-heated and vitriolic anti-Christian polemic that has set the
standard for the myth that gets promulgated all over the web by the
advocates of "reason" and "free thought".

The full text of this article can be read here and on a number of pagan and
rationalist (!) sites.
"A bit overwrought" is the assessment of one of this article's admirers:

The Martyrdom of Hypatia (or The Death of the Classical World)
by Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian
http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Hypatia/Mangasarian.html



I post this piece, and others like it, because it is "de rigueur" among many
of the opponents of Christianity and ID to claim that Christians are liars,
uneducated, stupid, ignorant, back woods yokels, misquoters of sources,
misrepresenters of facts, lacking in intelligence and reasoning ability,
flat-earthers, book-burners, controlled by the ideas of others - and a huge
list of other insulting and offensive slanders.

"Religion takes gullible people and makes them stupid, small-minded,
bigoted, and ignorant... and no less gullible."
http://www.kilnet.org/fragrant.html And he should know a stupid,
small-minded, ignorant gullible bigot when he sees one...

As demonstrated by the morally upright and intellectually superior statement
above when I turn to many of the comments and websites of their opponents I
see the very same and more - abusive language and profanity, libellous
insults, poor spelling and grammar and adolescent anti-Christian ravings all
thrown together in a mish-mash of repeated "sound bites", sophomoric slogans
and embarrassingly ignorant mythologising. Now if the assessment is true
about some Christians - who can't help it according to the enlightened
mindset of the free thinkers - then why is it so prevalent among the
supposedly educated intellectual giants of rationalism who spew forth their
venom all over the Net? If some Christians or creationists publish myths
on the Net because they are "liars, uneducated, stupid, etc." what excuse is
there for the enormous - and I mean enormous - amount of fabrication,
half-truth, old wives tales and myth that appear on many anti-ID, atheist
and "free thought" sites?

So what really happened to the great Library?

"Whatever the truth, the Great Library, wrapped in myths and legend, has
come to epitomize the ideal of free thought and independent scholarship.
'One ghostly image haunts all of us charged with preserving the creative
heritage of humanity: the specter of the great, lost Library of Alexandria,'
said James H. Billington, the US. Librarian of Congress, in a 1993 speech."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/08/0806_wirelibrary.html

Forget the facts, what matters is the myth, the legend, the ideal...the lie


Mark Gosling

from
CED
this is Stephen Jones talking, moderator of the group.
permission to copy has been given, provided backlink as done above is maintained...
-----------------PLEASE NOTE THIS IS AN EXTENDED QUOTE IT IS NOT MY WRITING------------------



The "essence of idolatry" is "severing of the world from God", which is
what "those who cannot discern God's action in the world", to whom "the
world is a self-contained, self-sufficient, self-explanatory, self-ordering
system" in which "they view themselves as autonomous and the world as
independent of God":

"Throughout Scripture the fundamental divide separating humans is
between those who can discern God's action in the world and those
who are blind to it. Those who can discern God's action in the
world that Scripture calls "spiritual"; those who cannot, Scripture
calls "natural" or "soulish."' For those who cannot discern God's
action in the world, the world is a self-contained, self-sufficient,
self-explanatory, self-ordering system. Consequently they view
themselves as autonomous and the world as independent of God.
This severing of the world from God is the essence of idolatry and
is in the end always what keeps us from knowing God. Severing the
world from God, or alternatively viewing the world as nature, is the
essence of humanity's fall." (Dembski W.A., "Intelligent Design:
The Bridge Between Science and Theology," InterVarsity Press:
Downers Grove IL, 1999, p.99).

"Naturalism leads irresistibly to idolatry" because "idolatry is ...
investing the world with a significance it does not deserve":

"Naturalism leads irresistibly to idolatry. As we read Scripture
today, we often wonder at all the excitement about idols and graven
images. Idolatry is uniformly condemned in the Old Testament, and
yet we are less horrified than amused at the idol makers who
fashion an idol from a piece of rock or wood and bow down before
it. It all seems rather ludicrous to us enlightened Westerners. If we
speak about idols at all these days, we speak of money, reputation
and power. But these are not properly speaking idols. They can
become idols, but in themselves they are not idols. Although in
ancient times graven images were the most obvious sign of idolatry,
idolatry is not so much a matter of investing any particular object
with extraordinary significance. Rather it is a matter of investing the
world with a significance it does not deserve. We need to ask our
selves why anyone would want to worship a material object in the
first place. The ancients certainly knew as well as we that a carved
figure by itself holds no special significance. What is significant
about a graven image is not the image itself but what it signifies.
Some images in the East, for instance, are hollow on the inside and
have a hole so that the reality signified by the image may enter the
image and thus become the proper object of worship for the
worshiper. Similarly in making a golden calf for the Israelites and
claiming that here were Israel's gods that had led them out of
Egypt, Aaron was not attributing to this chunk of metal any special
power." (Dembski, 1999, p.101).

"Idolatry is always a denial of the Creator, for it sets the creation above the
Creator":

"The problem is that all our images can signify only other things in
creation and not the One who gave creation its being in the first
place. A graven image signifies something else in the world, some
power, some influence, some favor that the worshiper wants to tap
into. The tacit assumption here is that what needs to be tapped into
is part of the world, not the God who created the world in the first
place. Idolatry is always a denial of the Creator, for it sets the
creation above the Creator and thereby transforms creation into
nature." (Dembski, 1999, p.102).

"idolatry ... is *foolishness*:

"The Bible uses many words and images to characterize idolatry,
but the most apt is *foolishness*. What can be more foolish than to
elevate what is second best to what is best? It's like preferring the
publisher of Shakespeare to Shakespeare himself. It's like preferring
golden eggs to the goose that lays the golden eggs. Because the
creation is so marvelous, it is easy to understand why we become
enamored of it. But as Maximus the Confessor reminds us in his
Four Centuries on Love, "If the creation is so marvelous, how
much more marvelous, is the one who created it?" The creation is
good and even very good. But it is not best. God is best. In fact,
God so far surpasses what is second best that giving anything
eminence comparable to God is simply outrageous." (Dembski,
1999, p.103. Emphasis in original).

"Naturalism['s] ... key tenet is the self-sufficiency of nature; it "affirms
not
so much that God does not exist as that God need not exist"; "the dyed-in-
the-wool naturalist" is therefore, from the Bible's perspective, an idolater,
who has "praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and
stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know", in preference to "the God in
whose hand" his "breath is, and ... all" his/her "ways":

"Naturalism is in the air we breathe. It pervades our cultural
atmosphere. We see it whenever the mysteries of the faith are
ridiculed. We see it whenever a PBS nature program credits nature
for some object of wonder instead of God. ... We see it, alas,
whenever we forget God and worship the creature more than the
Creator. ... Within Western culture, naturalism has become the
default position for all serious inquiry. From biblical studies to law
to education to science to the arts, inquiry is allowed to proceed
only under the supposition that nature is self-contained. To be sure,
this is not to require that we explicitly deny God's existence. God
could, after all, have created the world to be self-contained.
Nonetheless for the sake of inquiry we are required to pretend that
God does not exist and proceed accordingly. Naturalism affirms not
so much that God does not exist as that God need not exist. It's not
that God is dead so much as that God is absent. And because God
is absent, intellectual honesty demands that we get about our work
without invoking him. This is the received wisdom.... Naturalism is
an ideology. Its key tenet is the self-sufficiency of nature. Within
Western culture its most virulent form is known as scientific
naturalism. Scientific naturalism locates the self-sufficiency of nature
in the natural laws of science. Accordingly scientific naturalism
would have us to understand the universe entirely in terms of such
laws. Thus in particular, since human beings are a part of the
universe, who we are and what we do must ultimately be
understood in naturalistic terms; This is not to deny our humanity.
But it is to reinterpret our humanity as the consequence of brute
material processes that were not consciously aiming at us. Nor is
this to deny God. But it is to affirm that if God exists, he was
marvelously adept at covering his tracks and giving no evidence
that he ever interacted with the world. To be sure, there is no
logical contradiction for the scientific naturalist to affirm God's
existence, but this can be done only by making God a superfluous
rider on top of a self-contained account of the world. ... Theists
know that naturalism is false. Nature is not self-sufficient. God
created nature as well as any laws by which nature operates. Not
only has God created the world, but God upholds the world
moment by moment. Daniel's words to Belshazzar hold equally for
the dyed-in-the-wool naturalist: 'Thou hast praised the gods of
silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor
hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and
whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified" (Daniel 5:23 KJV)."
(Dembski, 1999, pp.103-104. Emphasis in original)

Note the "we". Dembski (and I) recognise that "Naturalism is in the air we"
(including Christians in Western societies) breathe" and so it is largely
unrecognised even by most Christians. I know that I personally have had
to work hard at first recognising, and then eradicating, naturalistic ways
of thinking that I had simply absorbed through the "cultural atmosphere"
I grew up in.

"Naturalism is idolatry by another name" because "it assigns ultimate value
to" nature:

"This is why idolatry-worshiping the creation rather than the
Creator-is so completely backwards, for it assigns ultimate value to
something that is inherently incapable of achieving ultimate value.
Creation, especially a fallen creation can at best reflect God's glory.
Idolatry, on the other hand contends that creation fully
comprehends God's glory. Idolatry turns the creation into the
ultimate reality. We've seen this before. It is called naturalism. No
doubt, contemporary scientific naturalism is a lot more
sophisticated than pagan fertility cults, but the difference is
superficial. Naturalism is idolatry by another name." (Dembski,
1999, p.226)

jesus journal

_meaning of creation_ by conrad hyers

my review posted to amazon---

5 of 5 stars
towards a exegetical solution in the creation evolution mess
February 9, 2003
it is one of those drop everything and read now type of books. very
much appropriate to a discussion of gen 1 and 2, and the extended
discussion of creation evolution, with attention to the relationship
of religion and science.

his thesis is that the first two chapters of genesis are polemic
against the neighboring cultures of the hebrews. simply put genesis
has nothing to do with modern science at all. we impose our catagories
of thought, but more importantly we impose what we want to hear onto
these chapters.

just a few quotes will help:
it is quite doubtful that these texts have waited in obscurity through
the millennia for their hidden meanings to be revealed by modern
science. it is at least a good possibility that the "real meaning" was
understood by the authors themselves. pg 3

and in response to henry morris who wrote "the creation account is
clear, definite, sequential and matter-of-fact, giving every
appearance of straightforward historical narrative"

---hyers writes on pg 23 "this may indeed be the way things appear to
certain modern interpreters at considerable remove from the context in
which the texts were written, living in an age so dominated by
scientific and historical modes of thought. It may also be the way
things appear to those for whom modern science and historiography
offer the criteria by which religious statements are to be understood
and judged to be true or false. Yet it is by no means obvious that
this represents the literary form or religious concern of the Genesis
writers"

the problem of the debate over origins from genesis is like pogo said
in the widely quoted cartoon "we have met the enemy and he is US".
the reason we have so much smoke over genesis is that we forgot the
first rule of hermenutics. approach the text as the first readers did,
with their assumptions, their world and life view. with the issues
they were interested in understanding in the forefront. NOT OURS. the
extension of scripture to all times and ages is done after this
culture and historic criticism. not before.

therefore genesis is a religious not a scientific document addressed
to the questions of that time. polytheism, and sacralization of the
physical world. this is in alignment with _battle for god_ by karen
armstrong and her analysis of logos and mythos. our problem is that we
so depreciate mythos as being NOT TRUE that we very much miss the
point of the first two chapters of Genesis....

------------------------end of my quote---------------------------

and two pieces from boar's Head tavern at
http://www.internetmonk.com/blogger.htm



The Meaning of Creation by Conrad Hyers (John Knox Press) This is a
Grand Slam. A book I underlined till the pages were ripped. Here is a
review. I could not agree more BUY THIS BOOK!

"Probably the finest book ever written on this topic. Hyers points out
the hermeneutical dilemmas associated with the reading of the Genesis
creation accounts. The Creation/Evolution controversy should never
have arrived at a scientific level, and Hyers wants his audience to
understand why. This well written work separates itself from the
hodgepodge of works that have come out the past several years
attempting to integrate theology and science. Hyers' work does not add
another trumpet to that redundant performance. Rather, he looks at the
literary genre and how it is being violated by the literalists. He
also examines how our modern literalistic culture places a harmful
interpretive shade over our eyes as we read ancient texts written
during a time rich with allegory. And he explains the neglect of
authorial intent in the Genesis creation accounts--texts which appear
to be more of a response to one or both of the ancient cosmologies
neighboring the Hebrews. Hyers is sensitive to those who cling to
traditional interpretations of the creation accounts in Genesis, and
is careful not to insult the intelligence of anyone. Hyers is a
conservative theologian, but his definition of conservative is to
conserve the original meaning of the text, as opposed to conserving a
traditional interpretation of the text."

and two links to conrad hyers' essays:
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/literalism.htm
http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?1031

---------------------end of quote----------------------------------

i actually found the book while researching how to reply to AiG's
arguments about Genesis. It was perhaps the 3 or 4th commentary on
Genesis that i read specially for this issue.

its short, well written, only slightly liberal/JPD-based. if you
really want to get a hold of what the not-YEC not-AiG are saying this
is the best(imho) book to start with.


richard williams

richard williams.................... thinkcreation2002@y...
http://fastucson.net/~rmwillia ......creation evolution homepage
http://rmwilliamsjr.blogspot.com ....blog
http://myhq.com/public/t/h/thinkcreation ...sorted CED bookmark list
http://myhq.com/public/r/w/rwilliam ........unsorted CURRENT bookmark list

working on a new yahoo discussion group. blessingsyou. got here from a message on apologetics about the constantine's synthesis.

-----------------------------
--- In blessingyou@yahoogroups.com, "martnluther " wrote:
snip snip
> Secular movements are flawed and we judge them by the gospel.
> However, secular movements are also used by God to accomplish his
> purposes and we judge and praise them by the gospel.
>
>
snip snip, trying to isolate one line of thought....



this looks to be a good synopsis of your position.
that is the judgement of God upon secular movements, including political ones, 1-done to further God's purposes 2-done in order to further the godly line(Abraham in OT. Christians in NT) 3-our criteria for judging these movements is to be the gospel.


i dont have a problem with principles like this at all. they appear to be straightforward and Biblical. My problem is with "how close" does the Church or Christians get to movements. "How close" does theology begin to intertwine with particular cultural or political movements?

my first big issue in Christianity was theonomy, now called reconstructionist or dominion theology. It is divisive in the churches we attend. in fact, it has like creation been a object of a study committee in the PCA, although not nearly as divisive as YEC's. So most of my thinking on the issue is really a long running discussion with Rushdoony, North, Bahnsen etc..

Plus as you can see from my post at apologetics.com i have had a long history of struggle with racism and my unconquered unvanquished Southern roots. It is their, the christian identity, the very right wing southerners that i think of as the ultimate intertwining of culture and the faith. completely unable to extricate themselves from the union(no pun intended).

so i have deep and long standing issues on the topic of nationalistic movements as it is currently being worded. your postings show a much milder form of the syncretism that i label as constantine's heresy, the alignment of Christianity with power rather than with powerlessness and poverty as it was for 300 years, and is by its(Christianity's) very nature. and if it boils down to the few principles i drew out of your postings, then i have no real argument with your position.

on the problem of seeing ourselves as others do.

my experience in china, where everyone stares, has me often coming back to the thought of seeing ourselves as others do.

our self images are apparently fixed sometime near the end of puberty, 16-19. we carry that outdated image inside our heads for the rest of our life. seldom modifying it, seldom really challenging it.

but i am aware of a part of me that strives for recognition from others. i can see in my emotions as i read a response to my messages on discussion groups, where i am please to be supported, downcast to be challenged, especially when they are right, and i wrong.

but most of all, i think about china. all heads turn. you literally leave a wake of people talking about you where ever you go. it is enough to cause some people to not go out, to be so shy, that they miss the experience of china by staying inside.

that summer i walked so much in china, was the only time i managed to loose weight, with mom's death just 2 weeks after i got back, i lost the ground i had gained so sacrifically there. it is time to regain the initiciative against my overweight, and remember the lessons of china. try to use the social pressure i felt then to work with my desires.

philosophy games link
take the test!!

posting at apologetics.com in response to a question about how should a christian approach nationalism


i look on constantine as one of the truely wrong synthesis or syncetisms that the church has undergone in its 2000 years of involvement in this world

my studies of the issue revolve around the radical reformation and its denial of the doctrine of 'corpus christianum' or the idea that the body of Christ existed in the physical communities of europe. of particular help was _The Reformers and Their Stepchildren_, by Leonard Verduin.

as such i think that the ideas of the historical peace churches are more biblical and christian than those of the reformed like presbyterian on this issue. following augustine and the doctrine of the two swords the reformed churches did not challenge this false idea of the unity of the church and state. either in the reformation nor in the subsequent nearly 500 years.

it was in the historical analysis of christianity in america that the separation of church and state arose, mostly as a compromise not to allow any particular sect alignment with political power. this was more pragmatic than the spiritual analysis of the anabaptist churches, but a step in the right direction.

i think the final step is to understand that political power is a necessary evil. to be very careful not to confuse spiritual and political domains, example is national flags in churches. for our citizenship is in heaven, not in this world where we are strangers in a strange land, finding it impossible to sing the songs of a political nature when they ask for an allegience we owe only to Christ and His kingdom yet to come.

one of the places we can watch these things work out will be in the burgeoning churches in africa, south america and asia where they will have to come to grips with the legacy of colonialism and its unique confusion of political power from the barrel of a gun and the spiritual power of a christianity that worked hand in glove with the colonial powers
. i think liberation theology is just the beginning of such re-theologizing.

thanks for listening.
richard williams

mr rogers died today.
i'm seeing more references to it as i read through blogs and emails.
lots of people greatly respected him.

alma's mom watched his show every day she was here.
it was one of the few things she really wanted to do.

i even teased her the days she missed it, that mr rogers emailed me that she wasnt watching. it really hurt the ratings for the over 80 watching group. i'm not sure she understood that i was joking.....

one thing i have often heard from old folks is that all their friends have died, and that all they do is go to funerals (remember the movie where to 2 old ladies go out to funerals on weds? took place in scotland i think)

hope mom clark hears he died, nicely. it will hurt her.

--- In CreationEvolutionDesign@yahoogroups.com, "richard williams
" wrote:
> i know Stephen is working on the rules of this discussion group.
>
> i went looking for examples of book group or discussion group rules:
>
> found this
> http://www.internetmonk.com/rules.htm
>
>
> i really do take myself too seriously at times.
> therefore i will read this group daily as an antidote.
>
> richard williams

sorry i forgot Stephen's rule that message ought to contain more than
the URL. and contain some discussion of the item....

therefore since it is short---

quote

Posting Guidelines for the Boar's Head Tavern



1. It's a good place. Make it better and we'll like you.
2. Persons requesting to be added to the blog will be asked to
submit a personal/theological/vocational bio to me. You also can
expect to wait a few days to get on.
3. If you are a legalist or a sensitive type, you are probably not
going to be very happy here, because there is a lot of humor, ranting
and skewering of various targets, so if you are looking for the
typical Christian discussion area, I would move on. Seriously.
4. All points of view are hanging around here somewhere, so if
sounds like it's all a bunch of men or Calvinists or Republicans or
worship traditionalists or ______________ or Oprah fans (!!) don't be
fooled and post something you'll regret. There is actually quite a bit
of diversity on here. Baptists. Pentecostals. Catholics. The
uncategorized.
5. People really do read this. I mean LOTS of people, so before you
post it, think about it.
6. People's feelings can get hurt (though we might hate to admit
it.) And it usually happens because you are upset that someone holds a
different opinion than you, or you forget that discussing opinions
doesn't involve making personal judgments about people you only know
on the other side of a monitor.
7. We basically accept the Christian profession of anyone who says
they are a Christian, and I will delete anyone who decides to question
that in the course of a post, based upon a disagreement over
legitimate issues.
8. Please do a reasonably brief bio on yourself when you start
posting regularly, and if there is something we need to know in under
to not run you over, please tell us. I mean, if you are a midget, and
you don't mind the risk that midget jokes will one day appear on the
blog, then keep it a secret. But if your short status is an emotional
issue with you and could cause hard feelings, please let us know.
Either at the beginning, or when appropriate.
9. If you join, I will list your email addy on the page while you
are an active poster unless you tell me not to do so.
10. It ranges from the serious to the trivial, sometimes the really
serious and sometimes the extremely trivial. If you assume it will
always be one thing or another, you will be wrong.
11. I'm no prude, but keep the language and humor pg-13 please. It's
mostly boys and we tend to act like it.
12. Try to start posts with the name of the person to whom you are
responding. (And it's MATTHEW, not Matt.) If you have a nickname you
prefer, tell us and we'll use it.
13. If you make a statement of reality or fact, it is perfectly
fair- and not rude- to ask you to produce some credible evidence that
backs you up. That is particularly appropriate when claims about
individuals are made. Ex: Luther and Calvin believed in the perpetual
virginity of Mary. Ken said it, I asked for references. He came up
with them. I was wrong. Imagine that.
14. If you are a liberal or a big fan of TBN or overly enamored of
your own opinions it may occasionally get ugly, and if you read the
stuff on Internetmonk.com you won't be surprised at what may be said.
(If you haven't read the main site, you might do so before falling
into the fray. We welcome all points of view, but it can get pretty
lively.)
15. Don't take all the alcohol discussion too seriously.
16. We cannot discuss the War Between the States. We've proven it,
so remember, I warned you.
17. Please be careful with blogger when posting pictures, sounds or
wild html tricks. I will delete all pictures within 24 hours unless I
don't
18. If you don't post for two weeks, I will probably take you off
the list. I think Blogger gets buggy with too many posters. Just write
me and I'll put you back. (Ask Rob...really!)
19. There are some points of view so offensive even I don't want to
listen to them. So if you become so obnoxious no one wants to post
anymore, I'll show you the door, but I'll warn you first. Maybe.
20. Members of BHT are encouraged to use the e-mail directory to
admonish one another. IOW, if you have a gripe about someone else,
tell them, not just me. Lurkers- that goes for you to.
21. Don't sell anything on here unless you ask me and I say OK.
22. If you really liked the Left Behind Books, I am happy for you.
Really. But that's just one example of things lots of people are into
that I'm really not into, so be forewarned. Others: Jabez. TBN.
Revivals. Invitationalism. CCM. P&W.
23. Really long posts are tolerated. But there are limits to the
human attention span, and many readers will not read long posts. After
a while they conclude you have nothing interesting to say.
24. Don't repeat yourself unless your mind is going and you can't
help it.
25. One word: Spelling. OK- I know I'm not perfect, but try, OK?
26. On the infamous DEAD HORSE (Heated discussion of Calvinism vs.
Arminianism). There seems to be some evidence that extensive
discussion of the topic may be discouraging other discussion and
participation on the blog. As the PRIMARY OFFENDER, I (MSpencer) take
full responsibility for this problem. But, hey, it's my nickel.
Anyway, some further rule regarding this MAY be forthcoming. At
present, let me mildly admonish all of us to remember that we've
covered a lot of ground here. NEW POSTERS: Let me please admonish you
NOT to try and cover this topic as if it hasn't been covered. We have
pretty much ridden the horse till it dropped. We've heard it all.
Several times and no one has changed their mind.
27. The CALVINISTS are right.
28. I am waiting for the tithes and offerings to start arriving.

end quote.


like the author(s) i am a self-conscious calvinist.
rules 26 and 27 are HILARIOUS, he even has a dead horse link to those
conversations.....


so what does this have to do with the discussion of Creation Evolution
Design. fundamental rule #1?

when discussing serious topics with great intellectual concentration
we forget to laugh. at ourselves and at our most precious and sacred,
heart felt principles.

i've spend almost every waking hour on the topic for several months
now. my to be read reading pile is now housed in 5 32 gallon plastic
tubs. i am further behind then when i started. but you know what....

these rules reminded me to laugh...


richard williams
http://fastucson.net/~rmwillia

a series of messages i wrote on science apologetics


> > reason: is it from God? does God reason in much the same way that
we
> > do? more specifically; is our logic something derived from creation
> or
> > something we impose onto a "unreasoning/unreasonable" creation?
> >
>
> I would like to see you develop these ideas a little more. I do not
> necessarily see a link between humans creating reason and creation
> being unreasonable. In other words, if God has revealed an orderly
> creation to us, then we may be able to impose our rules on to the
> observed creation in order to describe what we observe. As the
> observed creation obviously isn't entirely orderly, this can be done
> with a disordered universe as well.
>
snip snip...

i quess i start with:
i am impressed at the ability of science to capture some very amazing
things about the universe.
there seems to be no reason why, at very significant levels, the
universe is 'understandable' 'pervious to' 'amiable to' our 'reason'
'rationality' 'technic of science'.

i think that is where i start the train of thought. why does science
not just work, but capture some essential essence of the universe?
it is a little like the wonder i have when math, invented simply as an
intellectual exercise, finds application years after the original
theory was laid down.

now from a Christian perspective, that a reasonable God created the
universe, so that it reflects some of His attributes like reason,
consistency, it is explainable maybe even expected that science would
achieve such simple yet widely applicable theories.

but modern science is secular, it doesnt have a Christian perspective
on the universe like this, maybe the argument could be made that
science derived from a Christian world and life view, and as a result
has this idea of the reasonableness of the universe, but i dont think
this is a fruitful way of looking at it. rather i see modern physics
propose a universe of structure but not necessarily one corresponding
to human reason or rationality. i think leading edge researchers are
surprised and awed that their theories seem to capture something real
out there in a particularly beautiful way.

i think we make working assumptions about being able to manipulate the
things out there. assumptions like 'there are no demons in the world
that will punish us for looking too closely at them' (desacralization)
but i dont believe a high order assumption that the universe is
rational or reason 'all the way down' is a necessary assumption in
modern science.

but in the observer observed relationship, we need to look at our own
reason or rationality as well. and that is problematic, both from a
scientific evolutionary view and from a traditional Christian
viewpoint.

but to keep the discussion managable perhaps we ought to bite off just
the piece "is the universe reasonable ? " first.


Subject: Re: is faith rational?


snip snip, trying to isolate one line of thought.
>
> > if on the other hand, we do reason analogously to God, this reason
> > does try to reach God but can not due to the effects of sin, then
> God
> > can heal the effects and reason can "comprehend" God in some way.
> > faith in this scheme becomes the right reason beyond human reason.
> not
> > something contrary to reason, but something that fixs broken sinful
> > reason.
> > i believe to put the gap between faith and reason is dangerous, it
> > readily leads to things that i do not wish to say. on the otherhand
> > putting the two-faith and reason on the one side of a great divide
> and
> > putting unregenerate reason without faith on the other side fits
the
> > pieces better.
> >
>
> This is interesting because I think equating faith and reason is like
> equating black and white. Faith and reason are opposites. Why not
> just call them both reason? Or why not just call them both faith?
> Are they this synonymous? No! I think we have different words for
> them because they are very different things. I see them as different
> as black and white. Why try to marry these two concepts when they
> describe completely different methods of viewing truth? Ultimately,
> faith is believing things for which you have no evidence; no
> underlying principle supports faith based statements. Reason,
> although impossible to do without faith in axioms, allows one to
> build arguments on the axiomatic principles.
>
> So why do faith and reason belong on the same side of the great
> divide?
>
> tk


i think we are defining reason in similar ways. a particular type of
thought, bounded by certain ways of operating. i often use it in the
same way i use rationality, the whole complex of inductive, deductive,
facts, definitions etc.

i think what is important in reason is the 'steps', analogously to a
simple geometric proof. how is it that we accept the reasonableness of
a stepwise proof? in some deep way we share a set of axioms and the
ways we can handle them, the proof convinces us of its truthfulness,
or its reasonableness by reference to this logical system. what i am
interested in is this 'convincing' activity.

when i started the learning curve on creation-evolution last sept, one
of the first big articles i read was a paper on pseudogenes. what is
important is that it convinced me that humans and chimps shared a
common ancestor. what happens in some way is that we accept a body of
logic, theories, reasonableness; from this we draw 'reasonable'
conclusions, a process of being convinced.

i imagine faith is similar, what is different is the system that
surrounds us as we are involved in the process of being convinced. its
axioms, facts, etc are analogous to reason's but they are different.
In a historical faith like Christianity, part of faith's system is the
rational system. faith looks like something on top of, in addition to
rationality, rather that being opposed to it.

that is why your statement "faith is believing things for which you
have no evidence" is something i would question. for i look at faith
not as something i believe despite the evidence but rather something i
believe in addition to the evidence. faith is like a additional level
of certainity that you add to just not quite enough.

maybe a law analogy would help clarify my thoughts here.

we have introduced different burdens of proof.
fundamentally because we recognize that evidence and convincing are
probability based.

civil trials have something like preponderance. like 51% is good
enough.
criminal have something called, 'beyond reasonable doubt", maybe we
set a level of 95%+

faith essential takes a 'beyond reasonable doubt and makes it certain.
or maybe takes preponderance and makes it 'beyond reasonable doubt'
depending on the topic. when we are unable to reasonable move up the
limits yet we think in order to operate we need the next level of
certainity, then faith jumps in an pushes the topic up a level.



Subject: is faith rational?

i've been trying to work out an example of how faith builds on reason
not opposed to it.

i think the resurrection of Jesus is the key element of Christian
theology. i believe to have faith in the resurrection is not contrary
to reason thus:

we have reasonable testimony from eyewitnesses.
just because i have never seen anyone rise from the dead, as an
inductive proof, it is possible to believe that someone did. the
reasons would be supernatural, the why and how, of the resurrection.
but unlike science, theology is certainly not limited to naturalist
reasons.
as a matter of a bigger circle of previous knowledge the Scriptures
provide all kinds of supporting evidence, prophecy, consistent
interpretation etc.


now take another possible resurrection scene.
rather than a crucifixion, say Jesus was excecuted by chopping off
His head like the Chinese did in the same time frame. and that the
Gospels futhermore have Jesus returning from the dead with His head
in his hands. this is contrary to beliefs that it is required to have
your central nervous system intact to live. likewise you could
imagine the head talking, this contradicts the need for air to
originate in the lungs and be pushed past the vocal cords to make the
words. this in a real way is contrary to reason. to believe this i
would have to have faith despite reason. while in the actual
resurrection i believe because of the evidence. i see a significance
difference between the two.

richard williams

what's at stake? and is creationism especially YEC the best or right way to defend it?
------------------------------------------------------------
from the following long quote from Miller:
" Morris had been unable to answer the geological data on the earth's age I had presented the night before, and it had badly damaged his credibil­ity with the audience. Nonetheless, he looked me straight in the eyes. "Ken, you're intelligent, you're well-meaning, and you're energetic. But you are also young, and you don't realize what's at stake. In a question of such importance, scientific data aren't the ultimate authority. Even you know that science is wrong sometimes."


This is the slippery slope to unbelief argument that has so occupied my mind for the last few months.

The God revealed to us through the Scriptures is real, and He really created the universe. Now if at this point in time it looks as if the entire edifice of science is going to prove that religion is just a module in our evolutionarily designed brains, and that belief in God will soon, like belief in dwarves, and pixies be looked at as a mental problem. That does not change the nature of the universe. What we believe doesn't effect the world, it effects our activities in the world, but it doesnt change the world at all. If this is Gods' world, then no matter what current scientific thinking is, or how it explains away God, that edifice that science builds doesnt in any way change the facts about the world, only how people think about those facts.

that is why a fundamental scientific mindset tempered by the knowledge that God has revealed in Scripture things that are not shown to us in nature, the love and justice that revolves around Jesus,
is not ultimately afraid of science, despite its growing scientism. Morris expressed a fear that on a very low level, the age of the earth and of the universe, that science necessarily is wrong because to believe in an old earth is to challenge the fundamental Biblical believes he holds so valuable.

But scientism is wrong first on its metaphysical level, it is building idols to replace the Biblical God with. It is a system in competition with traditional theism. Furthermore it has made some good sound Biblically derived ideas fundamental and central to its vision of man and the world we inhabit. Foremost is the idea that the universe is desacralized, the creation is not God, and the subsequent understanding that it is good for Man to investigate and understand this world we find ourselves within.

As Christians we understand that creation is not God, that it was created good but because of our sinfulness it is fallen and is not longer good in very significant ways. But more importantly we realized that we are not good, that our minds are not clear but clouded. That our reason is not a good or fair judge of the evidence but it is in fact in rebellion towards God, justifying that rebellion by and with the elements it pulls from the world and presents as evidence that there is no God. Science even as a methodology, even as a technic of observation and explanation does not have clean hands in the debate about God, but rather will share with unregenerate man the desire to slay God and make Him irrelevant to the entire conversation of modern science. So in significant ways i end up agreeing with A. Kuyper that there are two sciences, regenerate and unregenerate which from the examination of the smallest fact, to the expounding of the grandest theory of everything are at odds because they worship different Gods.

Science is wrong from the top down, it is not as easy a proposition that to believe in a young earth. To hold to faith despite the facts. What i am calling an unreasonable faith versus a faithful reason. It is to look like modern science from the outside, to believe in an old universe, that God uses evolution to create, to look to many Christians as if you have abandoned the faith. When in fact, you are agreeing with the secularist, materialist, naturalist, evolutionist etc from the facts up, but not the metaphysics, not the religion. And now the real work needs to begin, how to go back over those facts and demonstrate that having a different metaphysics changes even what appears as a brute fact into an interpreted fact that supports the Biblical God.

This will be a much more difficult science than creation science ever aspired to be, For it means not to distance yourself from a mortal enemy in scientism, but to live intimately with it. Intertwined with the work of science, looking to be indistinguishable, open to every attack from the brethren as being compromisers, collaborationists. In order that you understand not just the science as well as do the secularist but that you have another whole field to master, theology. To then start the process of rebuilding science with Biblical presuppositions, with a Godly metaphysics.

It is rather more easy to just put your foot down, here i stand on a 6000 year old earth, i can do no other, God so help me. Then to take a longer view that this is God's world, and rightly guided science will support theism, will support much of the Scriptures. The problem is that man is in rebellion towards the God of this universe and he will always try to substitute worship of the creation for righteous worship of The Creator. We may play the same tune on the bandwagon of science as do the secularist, but we play for a different reason, and for a different audience.

this is a long extract from keith miller's book _finding darwin's god_ p 172-173
----------------------------------------------------------------
Are such opponents of evolution sincere? Several years ago, I was invited to Tampa, Florida, to debate the issue of evolution with Henry Morris, founder of the Institute for Creation Research and one of the most influential of the young-earth creationists. The debate had been occa­sioned by the passage of a curriculum mandating the inclusion of so-called creation science in high school biology. In front of a large audience, I ham­mered Morris repeatedly with the many errors of "flood geology" and did my best to show the enormous weight of scientific evidence behind evolu­tion. One never knows how such a debate goes, but the local science teach­ers in attendance were jubilant that I scored a scientific victory.17

As luck would have it, the organizers of this event had booked rooms for both Dr. Morris and myself in a local motel. When I walked into the coffee shop the next morning, I noticed Morris at a table by himself fin­ishing breakfast. Flushed with confidence from the debate, I asked if I might join him. The elderly Morris was a bit shaken, but he agreed. I ordered a nice breakfast, and then got right to the point. "Do you actually believe all this stuff?"

I suppose I might have expected a wink and a nod. We had both been paid for our debate appearances, and perhaps I expected him to acknowledge that he made a pretty good living from the creation business. He did nothing of the sort. Henry Morris made it clear to me that he believed everything he had said the night before. "But Dr. Morris, so much of what you argued is wrong, starting with the age of the earth!" Morris had been unable to answer the geological data on the earth's age I had presented the night before, and it had badly damaged his credibil­ity with the audience. Nonetheless, he looked me straight in the eyes. "Ken, you're intelligent, you're well-meaning, and you're energetic. But you are also young, and you don't realize what's at stake. In a question of such importance, scientific data aren't the ultimate authority. Even you know that science is wrong sometimes."

Indeed I did. Morris continued so that I could get a feeling for what that ultimate authority was. "Scripture tells us what the right conclusion is. And if science, momentarily, doesn't agree with it, then we have to keep work­ing until we get the right answer. But I have no doubts as to what that answer will be." Morris then excused himself, and I was left to ponder what he had said. I had sat down thinking the man a charlatan, but I left appreciating the depth, the power; and the sincerity of his convictions. Nonetheless, however one might admire Morris's strength of character; convictions that allow science to be bent beyond recognition are not merely unjustified - they are dangerous in the intellectual and even in the moral sense, because they corrupt and compromise the integrity of human reason.

My impromptu breakfast with Henry Morris taught me an impor­tant lesson-the appeal of creationism is emotional, not scientific. I might be able to lay out graphs and charts and diagrams, to cite labora­tory experiments and field observations, to describe the details of one evolutionary sequence after another; but to the true believers of cre­ationism, these would all be sound and fury, signifying nothing. The truth would always be somewhere else.

Three Wooden Crosses: Randy Travis.

Unknown.
(© Unknown.)
From "Rise And Shine", © 2002, Warner.

A farmer and a teacher, a hooker and a preacher,
Ridin' on a midnight bus bound for Mexico.
One's headed for vacation, one for higher education,
An' two of them were searchin' for lost souls.
That driver never ever saw the stop sign.
An' eighteen wheelers can't stop on a dime.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, Heaven only knows.
I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.

That farmer left a harvest, a home and eighty acres,
The faith an' love for growin' things in his young son's heart.
An' that teacher left her wisdom in the minds of lots of children:
Did her best to give 'em all a better start.
An' that preacher whispered: "Can't you see the Promised Land?"
As he laid his blood-stained bible in that hooker's hand.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, Heaven only knows.
I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.

That's the story that our preacher told last Sunday.
As he held that blood-stained bible up,
For all of us to see.
He said: "Bless the farmer, and the teacher, an' the preacher;
"Who gave this Bible to my mamma,
"Who read it to me."

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, now I guess we know.
It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway.

QUOTE

If a person believes in evolution (macro) and believes also in a God, they must believe that this God created pain and suffering- based on the macro evolutionary processes. If pain and suffering has been created by God to bring about change and advancement than how can we say that this God is good. The bible teaches that in the Beginning God created everything good and he called it very good. It teaches that man brought death into existence and through that, pain and suffering. From the christian perspective we can say that GOD IS GOOD as God did not make the world as it is, with pain and suffering. But a theistic macro evolutionist cannot.


I have seen the argument that confuses theodicy with an old earth position before in AiG. The problem of evil is so complex it is really sad to see a deliberate attempt to use it to discredit an origins theory while trying to use it to booster your own. Look carefully at Gen 2:17, God curses the ground for Adam's sake. Even in your truncated, literalistic view GOD is the author of evil, period. Dont try to align your young earth view with some GOD is good and created no evil position in the theodicy problem while at the same time accusing old earth creationists of introducing evil into a good world. Try to do some careful thinking on the issue. Theodicy is a BIG problem, with a omnipotent, omniscent GOD there is no solution to the question without trust that GOD can solve it. But you do such a great disservice to the Christian community to imply that a YEC position solves it, and an OEC introduces it. This is simply not true. Both positions believe in a such a God as will yield an intracible theodicy question. I apologize for the tone of the message here, but it is this type of ad hominen argument that has the majority of Christians so confused on the question of origins and Genesis. Not even to mention the very bad effect on apologetics that a reasonably educated secularist can see the issues clearly than most of the members of our own community.
Separate the question of evil from the question of origins, you do yourself and your cause a great disservice by confusing them. In either system, YEC or OEC, the question of the introduction of evil into a world created by God needs to be faced. This is such a massive question that careful thinking will see that either system has the problem and to introduce it repeatly into the question of origins as if your side has solved it simply by saying that God created the world good is begging the question, in the worst possible way.




first, you are right, the curse is Gen 3:17, i am very sorry to have made the error. i am without excuse.

Again you repeat the YEC line that evil is introduced into the world with Adam's sin. That is good for my argument. Maybe if i calm down a little and explain myself better and more completely.

Here is the YEC argument as i understand it:
God pronounces the world good, several times during creation week.
If, as OEC contend, these days are long ages, then death must be present, logically so, during those long ages. death is evil, therefore evil introduced before the fall of Adam. Therefore theodicy, the problem of evil, falls onto the OEC position, thus disproving the OEC position UNLESS you desire God to be the author of evil. or to assert the presence of evil before the fall.

To me this is a massive confusion of the problem of evil, theodicy, and the problem of origins.
Certainly we will make great reference to origins to work on the problem of evil, but this is an attempt to shortcircuit the discussion(imho) by casting the OEC position as particularly hard to work with evil.

For evidence you may wish to read the AiG pages on the problem of death before the fall.
AiG on death before the fall

It is not that theodicy is such a problem that it ought not to be addressed. it is that the YEC criticism of death before the fall so confuses the two issues: theodicy, and origins, that it seems to use theodicy as a criticism of the OEC position. Essentially forcing the OEC position to uniquely answer theodicy before it can finish the elaboration of its origin question.


Theodicy stems first from the character of God, as omnipotent and omniscient. period. it has nothing to do with long ages, or short recent creation week. Yet the YEC issue a strong criticism of long ages by making death during those long ages such an issue. that is what i mean by confusion. separate the two issues.

First, OEC have death entering into the world before Adam's disobedience and God's curse on him, Eve and creation. In both systems YEC and OEC it is God's curse of creation that involves the creation of evil.

i need to be a little more careful with words however:
as the westminster confession states so compactly:

QUOTE
I. God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.



the problem of sin, of evil. of theodicy. is how does God allow, without being the moral agent responsible for, ie author? that is another topic, for another place. my desire is to show how YEC confuse the two topics: origins and theodicy. in such a way as to excuse the OEC of introducing death, hence evil into a world labelled good by God, thus in essence accusing the OEC of all the problems of theodicy, while absolving the YEC position since it has such a short period of time from animal creation to Adam's fall that death might not have occurred until the curse.

At this point, it appears that i am hypersensitive to the issue, for this i apologize. For AiG in particular, seems so intent on burdening the OEC position with the stigma of introducing death into an old world, thus by inference denying the goodness of creation. This argument seems so sound to common sense that many Christians are apparently buying into the YEC scheme on this point alone.(i have several webpages where people attribute to the problem of death their firm conviction the YEC are properly interpreting Genesis).

It appears to be pushing the whole burden of theodicy onto the OEC position. when in fact any consistent Christian has a serious problem with theodicy no matter what their position on origins is.

--------

maybe to switch viewpoints will help me clarify what i think is going on:

QUOTE

I don't think the YEC need to argue about the goodness of God or the introduction of evil by God because the bible clearly states that evil was brought about by man. I think it is the theistic macro evolutuionists that must face that because their belief stands in opposition to the biblical view that man brought evil and death into the world rather than God.


You can see clearly that your quote requires the TE position to deal with theodicy as a part of their origins system. While YEC does not. It is as if you make solving theodicy a prerequiste for a consistent TE position on origins. When in fact, theodicy is unsolvable part of any Christian's world. The logic being that since TE as an explanation of origins requires a solution to theodicy before it can finish the origins explanation, that it can not be true, or complete....etc.

since both TE and OEC have death before the fall, since most people would interpret death as evil. therefore TE and OEC introduce evil before the fall. That pushes the problem of evil into the ages before the fall, this is what i mean by "putting the burden of theodicy onto the OEC position". in time, as a matter of priority, or as a matter of needing to explain, the OEC position encounters this question of death, in the form of the question of evil. The reason you dont think you need to argue the theodicy issue is that you have pushed it temporally onto the OEC position. Essentially requiring them to answer the unanswerable as part of their origins explanation. That is the point i am so desparately trying to make, in my own incoherent way. We have a common problem as Christians- theodicy, the YEC push the burden of the question onto the OEC since they see the problem earlier in their logic. The inplication being that the OEC position introduces evil/death into a good world.

The OEC position is that the death of not-human previous to the fall, is not evil, in the same sense that Adam's spiritual death after the Fall is a punishment for the evil of disobedience.

I guess all i what is to explain is how theodicy is confused with the death of creatures before the Fall.
This is what i mean by the confusion of big issues. the YEC position unreasonably confuses a already very confusing situation by its unwarranted introduction of theodicy into the conversation.

Again i apologize for the misquote of Scripture, the curse is Gen 3:17.
and for the strident tone, i really ought to be more respectful in tone, i usually am.

thanks for listening and sticky with the discussion despite me.
i hope this helps at least understand my position.

I feel so inadequate to the task of trying to clarify what i am referring to as the confusion of theodicy and origins. but like all insights it so dominates one's thinking that you see it everywhere.


QUOTE

I don't think I have just said that God created the world good and left it at that. I stated very clearly that the biblical view that God created the world to be VERY GOOD. The bible is very clear that death came after the fall as the result of God's judgement on man. if you believe that God created man so that he could suffer from things such as famine, rape, war, hunger, poverty.....so that he could progress and things today have always been from the beginning than from God's action- what would you call Him. If I am wrong than how would you address this issue that theist macroevolutionists must ultimately face? Secondly, what other reasons would I need to have to bring up the issue of the goodness of God when I am addressing the THEISTIC macroevolutionist view. How would I go about doing such a thing when the very nature of the discussion has to do with God and macro evolution. I fail to see why this is an ad hominen.


The Bible is clear that evil entered into the world with Adam's disobedience.
It's, (evils) potential existed before in the person of the snake, and in the potential for Adam's disobedience due to his(adam's) genuine freedom to choose. The actualization of evil came with the act of disobedience.

It is also clear that the death of God's curse, in Gen 3:17, is the spiritual death of Adam first, and his(adam's) subsequent physical death as punishment for sin. It is a jump from this to the death of animals before the fall. i believe an unwarranted jump done for the express purpose of moving theodicy onto anyone who believes anything but a literal creation week, and a young earth position. As proof i offer your words--"famine rape war hunger poverty. These are theodicy questions. By making the logical jumps from evil in disobedience, to spiritual death for Adam in the curse to physical death, to physical death for animals. You push the burden of theodicy onto the TE origins position. How to justify the death and suffering of animals before Adam's fall, as a theodicy question. Thus effectively requiring TE to solve the unsolvable(theodicy) as a exercise in the origins problem to explain the presence of death in the pre Fall world. Essentially, God couldn't create evil in the world, death of animals is evil, therefore God couldnt create in long ages, since death occurs in them. Furthermore since death entered into the world with Adam's sin, no animal death could have occurred previous to Adam's fall.

A two pronged attack on long creation ages, predictated on the curse being physical death, not just of Adam/Eve but of all creatures. Since i interpret the curse to be first, spiritual, second a later physical death as a result of the spiritual death, the curse has nothing to do with creatures dying at all. Secondly evil is a catagory only applicable to the human sphere of ethics. 3.5 billion years of evolution have no ethical content at all, God can pronounce the universe GOOD at any point up to the curse where He Himself creates the punishments for sin, where the world begins to reflect the evil that man introduced into the world.

Now that feels a lot better as an adequate defense of my thoughts.
thanks for the opportunity.


richard williams