Or never mind about my email address – I found yours, if you don’t mind keeping an eye out for an email from me. Either way is fine, if you were interested in continuing this topic of conversation via email.

“But ‘Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.”’ In all sincerity, I do not see what has changed since Jesus’ time to vindicate the efforts of the cultural warriors of the ID movement.”

Did you not also read what Jesus said about “Go[ing] into all the world and preach[ing] the Gospel to every creature”? Do you not recognize the fact that the quote of Jesus you provided only deals with PHYSICAL confrontations, not “cultural” or “ideological” or “truth/error” confrontations?

By the way, I would be interested in hearing what aspects of the Bible and Gospel caused you to reject them. If you like, you can email me your response at douglasjbender@hotmail.com (please include your name in the subject heading, so that I don’t accidentally toss it in the trash bin).

I don’t think the homology of their names is purely coincidental.

Common ancestry is a viable hypothesis, though I wouldn’t call it a theory just yet.

Thomas D. professes outright his belief in creation, and so do I. Chances are good that creation means something different for him than for me, and that he believes for different reasons than I. But I have always respected people who are passionate and open in their beliefs. “If thou art lukewarm, I shall spew thee out of my mouth.” “No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light.”

Back to my ancestry. Almost everyone in my family is Southern Baptist. I have been in debates over evolution with my father (at one time a deacon of his church), my brother (who goes on extended missions to serve the poor), and my nephew (youth minister in a large church). A passerby might think we were on the verge of a fistfight, but the situation is of course never really that dire.

Many at UD feel like kin to me. My first two degrees came from a Southern Baptist institution. When I began my undergraduate work, I planned on going to seminary. I did not change my plans because science undermined my faith. Indeed, as I have posted here before, an introduction to the philosophy of science made it clear to me that science could pose no threat to faith. It was my study of the Bible that caused me to discard one aspect after another of the dogma I had been raised with. Unfortunately, there had been little but dogma in my Christian education.

Perhaps readers will understand why I am strongly opposed to protecting the “weak in faith” from ideas that might challenge their beliefs. The fruit of the fairytale dogma I assimilated as a child was a spiritual house of cards. When the structure collapsed, I was extremely angry with the adults who misled me. It took me seven years to find for myself a mature belief that my church should have inculcated in me. To this day, I fault the adults who taught me as a child for not playing it straight with me.

I would suggest to everyone that the most important thing to teach your children is that they are in this world, but not of it. Clearly there are many Americans who believe that their little corner of the world is or should be Christian. But “Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.” In all sincerity, I do not see what has changed since Jesus’ time to vindicate the efforts of the cultural warriors of the ID movement.

Absolutely brilliant. It’s always a joy to find another mind that works like and is so compatible with mine.

I do appreciate clarifying this issue, I wonder about claiming one of the Tom Englishes as “ours”. However, that said, I have appreciated many of Tom M. Englishes posts, though he is not ID, he does take the topic seriously, offering valid challenges to the ID arguments. We need more like him, and fewer who try to diminish ID simply as religious fanaticism.