By the way, it's snowing big time here. I just shoveled our walks and will have to do it again in a couple of hours. I know that D4 will be happy. She asked for snow for Christmas--notice I said Christmas, not the holidays.
Just an explanation of what I posted yesterday about the Newsweek article--because of the formatting of my blog, it turned out that Lisa Miller's text was white and mine was red. Also, the paragraph just after the title and citation of the article is about me, not Lisa Miller.
Additionally, after reading the main editorial for Newsweek, Dec. 15, 2008, I have to admit that there is a fundamental difference between people who believe in a God-inspired Bible and those who just think it's a nice book with some good advice. Editor Jon Meacham parrots the arguments that those who truly believe in the Old and New Testaments are just wrong, wrong, wrong, and to stick with those beliefs is "the worst kind of fundamentalism" and because scholars have studied the origins of the Bible and find that they are just stories, so to "argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than "intellectually bankrupt--it is unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition." However, he doesn't say why it is intellectually bankrupt or unworthy--maybe because believers don't believe what he wants us to believe, so he resorts to name-calling and poisoning the well. Meacham also points out tradition and "relevant cultural and religious history and context" as being authoritative above what God says but says nothing good about the authority of biblical text. In other words, scholarship by man outweighs the word of God according to Meacham.
Another logical fallacy posed by Meacham is that sexual preference is somehow like skin color. His argument is that both are inherent. His argument is an apples to oranges logical fallacy because for an analogy to work, there must be more than a superficial equation between the two things being compared. Skin color is something that all of humanity is born with. Sexual preference seems to be something that is born into many people, but that develops later for others, and is chosen by still others. Skin color is always present for others to see. Sexual preference is not. Sexual preference is performed, while skin color is not. Finally, for Bible believers, skin color is not a sin, while homosexual behavior is.
Actually, I believe that the worst kind of fundamentalism is the fundamentalism of liberalism, intellectualism, and humanism that tries to oppress believers. For millennia believers have had to fight such persecution.
Have you ever noticed that there is no good answer to belief. No one can claim that I don't believe something if I do or they're liars. Their only resort is to try to shout me down, as if being louder than I am makes them right. I think that's what makes them so angry--they have no answer to belief.
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