Doug, Till, David, and Walt Jr.

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There is a question that has been asked in the past of Till, but I think
is at the bottom of this discussion and it is this: If the Till of the
1950's or another well educated, thoughtful Christian like Doug had
stumbled on this list at the beginning of their period of starting to
see the flaws in the Bible how would they have reacted to it? I think to
some extent like David and Walt Jr. You would have caught the badly
phrased and idiotic questions and dodge the difficult questions which 
you would have then on your own tried desperately to disprove to
yourselves. 

For example, there was a serious question about demons, but asking David
to define them was a very sloppy way to get to it. Asking him if he
would go to a doctor or Christ, if he were ill was equally weak because
the obvious answers is most Christians do both and it's hard to see harm
in this practice. All of which gave him a chance to dodge the hard
questions of what was going on in these verses, did he believe that this
was a description without error of an actual event, and wasn't Jesus,
who is supposed to be without sin, supposed to pay the owner of the pigs
under Jewish law?

When people are in trouble with alcohol there is a period that is
generally quite long. (I did an informal survey once and found it
averaged around seven years.) This period is called either, denial or a
state of denial, and I believe that it is definded as occurring whenever
a person is forced to change a most basic core value. My guess that both
Till and Doug took seven years or more to get from being true believing
ministers with secret doubts to convinced public atheists. I respect
anyone willing to face this road. Neither David or Walt, have turned
tail and run into some starry eye cult and totally hide from these
questions. It may take them years, as it did Till and Doug, but I
believe that in the end both inerrancy and Christianity are undefendable
and both these guys will come to admit this. They are no more asses than
Till and Doug were when the stood in a pulpit and told people to believe
what they no longer could. I really don't think that if a bunch of
atheists had called Till and Doug nasty names while they were speaking
from those pulpits it would not have helped them face the lies in what
they teach.  Obviously most of the list disagrees with this opinion. So
be it.
Helen
hhiwater@bright.net

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