RufusAtticus

<a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl1767629724d&dq=&hl=en&selm=080520001 335204401%25kkirksey%40boone.net&rnum=1" target="_blank">Letter to My Pastor</a>

Edited to add:
It made the T.O. <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/may00.html" target="_blank">POTM for May 2000</a>. It's popped up again because the author recently reposted it in responce to a YEC.

[ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>

Edward

Your letter to the pastor contains a briliantly apposite quote from St. Augustine
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn."
And what did good old San Agostino do to forestall exposure of blatant contradictions between holy writ and matters of common experience and observation and the discoveries of science (actually quite advanced in some respects even in his day)? He introduced the allegory defence, which still going strong. It was used when I was first introduced to the bible in my prep school (UK grade 1). What was never stated was how do you know this bit is allegory and that bit is literal truth. As science and higher criticism advance more and more of the writ has to be reinterpreted as allegory until you realise the whole thing is allegory or to put it less charitably a fairy tale.