Christianity played bigger role than geology in success

To The Daily Sun,

In response to E. Scott Cracraft's letter of May 16: I use the "scripture to justify European supremacy"? For Mr. Cracraft, you can find a racist under every rock. Scott thanks for the tip on "Guns Germs and Steel. I put it on my reading list.

Scott, you're a history professor, are you not? Am I wrong to say that you have confirmed my observation that history professors emphatically teach history as random events? Just my observation. As you state, Jared Diamond goes back to "Neolithic humans." It's interesting that he should start there as it is a time, at least they say, in which there are no written records. A time in which scientists can take a great amount of liberty to interpret their findings according to their own predisposition. I'm sorry I haven't read his book yet, but I did start watching the documentary. I had to laugh. He prefaces this as "the biggest question of human history" and concludes that the Europeans were simply lucky.

A few more thoughts before I move on. I'm 68-years-old. I've lived in several different geographical regions in my life. That geography and climate have an effect on local cultures is not a hard sell for me. What I do object to is when people use something like that to try to explain more than it does explain. I see it all the time. It doesn't matter how weak the argument if what is put forth is in harmony with the spirit of the age people will lap it up.

One of the problems of this discussion is that we are speaking from two different paradigms of history. I'm examining what has been written and accounts from these and also hold the Christian scriptures in high esteem as history. In fact, one of the reasons that I have been writing this series of letters is to demonstrate that it is reasonable to do so.

Mr. Cracraft, on the other hand, esteems very little the scriptures, as can be seen by his response. By first implying that I'm a racist, that's meant to shut the conversation down — he's a racist and not even worthy to be listened to — and then notice, he doesn't say I really don't know about this blessing business, but who knows it could be. He says, "Europeans did not come to dominate the world by divine design but rather by chance. They were lucky." Jared Diamond said so. Mr. Cracraft seems to esteem very highly the opinions of men. Mr. Cracraft's paradigm rejects the authority of the Bible, but highly esteems the opinion of men who study rocks, and artifacts, and skeletal remains and spin theories in which they try to deduce what happened, and write fictions about them that we call non-fiction and SCIENCE.

I'm going to try to say this with as much humility as I can, for E. Scott Cracraft is a professor of history and I am merely a student. Mr. Cracraft in this, as a history teacher, is being grossly negligent of the actual recorded history of this period of European development. One of the salient aspects of the development of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire was Christianity, more so than geography. It seems it affected almost every part of their lives from what I've studied. To blow off as salacious the possibility that an Old Testament blessing is being worked out in their ascendency demonstrates a clear bias either from an atheistic point of view or at least of the view that God is powerless to work in the affairs of men, or chooses not to. Any way you cut it it's religious or anti-religious bias.

Scott, a blessing on the European people's progenitor that passes down to them is not genetic superiority. It's a blessing. There is a spiritual aspect to our lives and the world. Those who will not accept this will have a hard time understanding anything in this life. Here's another example of a blessing: The Jews, of the wealthiest people in the world, you will find that the Jews are disproportionately represented in that demographic. This is a result of a blessing that comes from God through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Blessings, they're real. Perhaps this might help some students overcome their prejudice against old white men, and cause them to look at their own sin and repent and turn to Jesus for forgiveness and salvation from the judgment to come.

John Demakowski

Franklin