Arden Chatfield
Posts: 6657 Joined: Jan. 2006
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Heddle is actually one of the more truthful ID types at PT. The thing that's remarkable about him tho, is his ability to rigidly compartmentalize different things in his mind without allowing them to slop over. He truly is a Biblical literalist, and he's trying very hard to reconcile this literalism and science without compromising the bible. We've had a couple arguments with him on PT where he's said, with a straight face, that everything in the Bible can be reconciled with modern scientific understanding with no problem. Then when people jumped on him and said "Oh yeah? What about Methuselah living to be 900 years old? What about the Flood and Noah's ark? You don't believe those things are scientifically possible, do you?", and his response is "yes, I believe those things literally happened, but those things don't contradict science because they're miracles". Then we would respond "Oh, well, all you're doing is taking anything that's scientifically impossible and sequestering it off as a 'miracle'. That's unfair, how can you do that and still say everything in the bible is scientific?" Then he would respond "I'm not taking anything off the table, all I'm doing is saying that Noah's Arc and Methuselah making 900 are just miracles, that's all. That doesn't make them unscientific". Then WE would respond "WAIT A MINUTE! You can't take all the impossible stuff, drape it with a big blanket that says MIRACLE, then claim everything is still scientific! That's cheating!" Then he'd respond with something like "But that's not what I'm doing. I'm just saying those things are miracles. The bible is still totally scientifically accurate". And so on, and so on, and so on, and so on.
It's quite remarkable to watch, as anyone who's witnessed this can attest, this trick of simultaneously maintaining several different COMPLETELY CONTRADICTORY ideas in your brain at one time, and working hard to never consciously notice that they're contradictory.
There's a battle going on in Heddle's brain between empericism and biblical literalism, and it looks like the literalism is winning.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
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