Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cbscc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!cbosgd!cbsck!cbscc!pmd From: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: Evolving Religions Message-ID: <5437@cbscc.UUCP> Date: Thu, 13-Jun-85 09:58:37 EDT Article-I.D.: cbscc.5437 Posted: Thu Jun 13 09:58:37 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 15-Jun-85 05:46:28 EDT References: <238@ihnet.UUCP> <446@cmu-cs-k.ARPA> <99@umcp-cs.UUCP>, <240@ihnet.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories , Columbus Lines: 29 >... Atheistic belief systems (e.g. humanism) >do not require a deity, or any divine intervention. >It is not a threat to acknowledge their natural evolutionary origins. >However, Christianity (for example) must, by its very doctrines, >be more than a natural, evolving belief system. >Yet, I claim it is not. >Therefore, humanism may have objective validity, >while Christianity, as it stands today, cannot. >Is there any theistic religion that cannot be explained by >natural evolutionary processes? If so, where do I sign up? How does the requirement that a belief system have no deity (Humanism isn't necessarily atheistic. I assume that you mean that Humanism may have objective validity *if* it is atheistic) insure that it may have objective validity? (The lack of a requirement can just as well be stated as a requirement here.) I doubt that there is anything that can't be *explained* by natural evolutionary processes. Whether or not they *are* the result of such is a different question, however--one that can only be answered with varying degrees of certainty by the one doing the explaining (no matter which side of the fence you're on). For my part, I'm not sure that "natural evoutionary procesess" really have the ability to produce everything that is explained by them. But it's no threat for me to acknowledge that. -- Paul Dubuc cbscc!pmd