The problem is, the "digital divide" is a big fucking myth.
Anybody with a garage sale PC or Mac from ten years ago can get on the net at a decent speed for less than the cost of cable TV.
For that matter, any laptop with a PCMCIA slot and a $10 802.11 card will let you access the Internet from any of dozens of free wireless hotspots in every major city.
The total monthly cost of being connected is far less than the total montly cost of owning a car, and plenty of low-income folk manage to own cars, even if they don't need them to get to work.
So let's all just drop the "poor Timmy has no chance in life because his family can't afford the Internet," wailing and gnashing of teeth, shall we?
The reality is more likely that poor Timmy is a "Top Seller" of HK anime bootlegs on eBay.
Not only telcos, but the mom&pop ISP operations are getting screwed by this, too.
If every town in America becomes a direct customer of Qwest or Verison, there's really not much room for a small ISP (with their better service & support, more reasonable billing practices, etc.) to operate.
If you want your favorite geek-run ISP to go away forever, then getting your city to spend public funds on MSN or RoadRunner access for everybody is just about the most certain way to go about killing them.
This is not a war. This is not a civil liberties issue.
This is politicians buying votes with taxpayer money, plain and simple and boring as that.
If I want "free" wireless broadband, I can get it from my local coffee shop. I see no reason whatsoever why the old lady next door to me who doesn't even own a computer should be forced to pay for me to have free wireless in my house.
While it's neat that the BBC explored low-bandwidth flash animation, the truth is that the pieced-together version with the original footage plus narration is actually less dull.
Too bad, it would have been a fantastic episode if it was completed back in the Tom Baker years.
The similarity is that Agent Cooper believed in holistically looking at the universe to solve mysteries. There was one scene in an early episode where he threw rocks at bottles as a means of divination. Very similar to the sort of approach which Gently claimed to practice.
Also, and the whole reason Dirk Gently got written in the first place was so DNA could recycle some of the ideas he had for "Shada", a Doctor Who episode he wrote which was never completed due to a labor dispute.
It was made several years before Adams wrote the books. It was fantastic.
Only Dirk Gently was called Special Agent Cooper, and the show was called Twin Peaks.
(Oops! Did I just accuse the great DNA, my childhood idol, of ripping off somebody else's idea!? Oh well, bring on the "-1, Flambait" mods. I can take it!)
Yeah, like you didn't haul ass under the elevated trains in Chicago with the spedometer pinned out right after the first time you saw "The French Connection!"... or am I the only one?
While I agree that many (not all... perhaps not even most) of the "non-denominational" Churches have a somewhat Pentacostal feel to them, I disagree that this is a backlash against modernism, nor a millenial thing.
Most of the people I've meet from such strongly Charismatic groups are not typically millenialists. They live as if they are in the "End Times" because the apostles did the same thing. In their world-view, it's actually considered virtuous to operate under the assumption that the "end is nigh," even if it later turns out that it wasn't.
Nor are they really anti-modernists. While they may embrace the mystical side of their faith more than most of us are used to in Western Civilization, and devote a greater part of their free time to prayer and worship than your typical once-a-week nominal church attendee, I would not consider their world-view any less "modern" than a Shinto follower in Japan or a faithful Roman Catholic.
Also, I'm not convinced this is all that sudden of a phenomenon. The "Jesus freak" movement of the 60's was much the same, and shares a lot of traits with the prohibitionists of the 20s the revivalists of the 1890s, and the abolishionists of the 1850s.
I think, like Communist/Socialist ideology, it's a meme which doesn't really go away, so much as skips a generation or two now and then.
When I said "believe in evolution," it would have been more accurate for me to have said "do not take it as an article of faith to disbelieve evolution," as none of those religions actually dogmatically teach that evolution is true.
The place people get hung up on is that word "literal."
Also, there's a lot of room for disagreement on what is literal and what is metaphor.
Seeing as Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 cover a lot of the same ground, seemeingly contradicting each other on some factual details and even using a different word for "God," a lot of Christians have resolved this dissonance by accepting that the entire creation story is pretty much poetry and metaphor.
To insist otherwise is to believe that what we call the "sky" is the result of God separating the oceans, and that night and day are not defined by being on the shady side of the Earth at any given moment, but are because of the physical separation which was created between darkness and light.
Context is something which is frequently open to debate.
One of my favorite examples of a translation dispute:
"Thou Shalt Not Kill."
Just about everybody understands that this is one of the Commandments... except some scholars have pointed out that ancient Hebrew had different words for "kill" (slaughter a living thing), and "murder" (maliciously kill another person), and the scriptures use the word which more closely translates to "murder."
This nuance completely re-frames the debate for Christians in terms of everything from capital punishment to war to abortion to vegitarianism.
And that's just a dispute over translation! When you get into the fuzzy world of deciphering context (both language context and cultural context), you raise even more areas where the "correct" reading is wide open to debate.
For example, which Hebrew laws in Leviticus should a Christian adhere to, and which can be ignored?
Almost no Christians wear tassles on their clothes, avoid eating bacon, or send their wives out in to the wilderness during "unclean" days, yet many Christians will condemn various perverse sexual behaviors based on the very same set of Hebrew laws, against the objections of more liberal churches.
Some Christians interpret these disputed laws as mainly applying to the Nation of Israel at that specific time in history, and shrug much it off as laws which don't really apply to us... or worst case, laws which we will be forgiven for wrongly assuming to no longer apply.
Other Christians adopt Hebrew laws which most Christians (including "literal" Bible believers) feel free to ignore. For example, the Seventh Day Adventists strictly keep the Hebrew Sabbath, while nearly all other Christians set aside Sunday, the day after the Sabbath, as their day for religious rites and congregating.
As soon as you throw contextual interpretation into the mix, you are no longer accepting the Bible in a "literal" sense, and rather are making your own judgements on when the spirit and letter of the law are aligned and when they are not.
The headline summary called it a "book," and I was nitpicking... mostly because I was in the mood to say "Beggin' thah Colonel's pardon" to somebody.:)
I knew that the WELS and Missouri Synod Lutherans were a bit more legalistic than the ELCA, but I had no idea that they considered creationism as central to their dogma. In fact, I was long under the impression that this was not the case.
Oh, and for the record, I would not really call Lutheranism a "conservative sect." The Lutheran denomination is a product of Northern Europe, where, as I understand it, the Lutheran Church does not resemble American Fundamentalism at all. If anything, the "liberal" and "almost Roman Catholic" ELCA probably reflects global Lutheranism much more closely, from what I've seen.
Perhaps somebody from Norway or Germany could chime in and enlighten us.
I've never been to Norway, but I believe that a Paris is there because enough sources which I consider reliable (not perfect, but reliable) have told me that Norway exists.
In case you are wondering about that jumbled sentence: I started writing my analagy with a reference to Paris, but then edited to "Norway", as it sounded like I might have been talking about Paris Hilton instead of Paris, France.
It would have been amusing, but perhaps distracting, to use Miss Hilton as an analog for God.
Unfortunately, I failed to over-write "Paris" once in that line. This is what happens when you edit text manually instead of using regular expressions the way God intended.;)
Yep. If you are neither a Roman Catholic nor a Fundamentalist, your lack of an "absolute" authority means that you are left to rely on your own judgement to decide what you believe, and given the deeply flawed nature of human judgement, that's a precarious position to be in.
I see it this way:
I've never been to Norway, but I believe that a Paris is there because enough sources which I consider reliable (not perfect, but reliable) have told me that Norway exists.
Also, I have seen some indirect evidence that Paris exists. Not enough evidence to "prove" the existence of Norway, but enough to compel me to accept that it must exist, especially given the teachings of authorities which I consider reliable mentioned in the previous paragraph.
I believe God exists for the same reason.
Could I be wrong? Sure. However, just as a biochemist must proceed with biochemistry beginning with the idea that what he knows about evolution is correct until shown otherwise, so I must proceed with my spiritual life beginning with the idea that what I've concluded about God is correct until shown otherwise.
Revision of axioms about God are difficult and slow in coming for most people, but I've made them twice in my young life so far and find myself no worse for wear.
Heh. I live in Minnesota. To me, Kansas is "Deep South."
I've been to Topeka. The accents there sound Southern to me.
Also, anti-gay marriage is not exclusively a Fundamentalist position. I know many non-Christians, marginal Christians, and even thiests who vehemently oppose it. (Personally, I'm fine with it. Do what you like, just leave me out of it.) Catholics who observe their church's teachings will typically vote against allowing it as well.
I think the parent post was taking jabs at my suggestion that God's creation was mostly described as God passively permitting the world to exist. (i.e., "let there be $FOO", "let there be $BAR", etc.)
The passages he quotes do contradict my conceit, but look at how much he had to cherry-pick to find such passages. Here are a few relevant moments he skipped*.
Gen 1:3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
Gen 1:11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so.
Gen 1:20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky."
Gen 1:22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth."
Gen 1:24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so.
* The passages I include are taken from the New International Version, which is widely regarded as the most reliable translation available, assembled from the oldest available texts and translated directly to modern English from their original languages under the scrutiny of a massive world-wide council of Churches. I'm not sure which translation the parent post was using, but it was not the NIV.
but wasn't "Bartleby the Scrivner" just a short story?
(Oh, and a shout-out to those of you who caught the "Go Go Gophers" reference... Now there's a show which will never again see the light of day! My childhood memories of Saturday mornings brim over with laughter at shockingly politically correct depictions of Native Americans.)
I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. "Most"? 90% of the Christians I personally know tell me that the Bible is the literal word of God, and evolution is one of Satan's attempts to derail good Christians and keep them from the kingdom of Heaven.
Where do you live, anyway?
Let's break it down, shall we?
Catholics: Do not believe that the entire Bible is the literal word of God. Believe in Evolution.
Lutherans (all major Synods in America): Do not believe that the entire Bible is the literal word of God. Believe in Evolution.
Episocpals: Do not believe that the entire Bible is the literal word of God. Believe in Evolution.
Methodists: Do believe that the entire Bible is the literal word of God, but most do not believe that Evolution contraticts it.
Baptists: Mostly believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. Most (not all) Baptist denominations consider Evolution to be contrary to their beliefs.
I think I hit most of the major ones.
The thing about Fundamentalism is, it's fairly unique to the United States, and even then, it's fairly unique to the Deep South, and even then, it's fairly unique to only a handful of denominations.
Another thing about Fundamentalism is, it's a relatively new trend, and is actually a sort of neo-Catholicism. I'll explain what I mean (if you will pardon a long-winded tangent)...
Catholics believe that the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) is the ultimate spiritual authority on all things related to God in the world. Each pope is selected by a council of bishops, and Catholic dogma teaches that God's Holy Spirit works through these men to lead them to select the right leader for the Church. This (and the fact that anybody even considered is somebody who has dedicated a lifetime to studying Christian theology) is where the Pope's authority derives from.
Fundamentalists believe that the ultimate spritual authority on all things related to God in the world is the Bible. The Bible is not a single book, but a collection of many books. Which books were included in the Bible was determined by the Council of Nicea... a group of Church fathers, not at all unlike the groups that choose Popes these days, who came together to determine which Gospels, which letters, and which prophesy text(s) should be included, and which should be omitted. Fundamentalism rests on the idea that these men were guided by God's Holy Spirit to make the right choices. That (and the fact that they were about seventeen hundred years closer to the events in question) is where the Bible derives it's authority from.
Sound at all familiar?
Personally, I don't entirely embrace either idea, but if one is to take Christianity seriously at all, one should be loathe to completely dismiss the ideology of either sect... yet oddly enough Catholics and Fundamentalists often scoff at one another openly, and sometimes each question whether the other is actually part of the Christian Church.
This tiresome division is one of the reasons why "non-denominational" Evangelical churches are popping up like wildflowers all over America. People have better things to do with their lives than fret over whether the folk in the church across the street are "real" Christians or not.
If you understood everything there was to know about printing, binding and reproducing books, that knowledge and understanding still wouldn't tell you anything about how to write a good one.
Well, you could at least write a definitive book on the subject of publishing.
Slashdot Mirror
Ben: That's no article. That's an advertizement.
Han: Don't be silly, no honest company would run an advertizement as a front page sto... I've got a bad feeling about this...
The problem is, the "digital divide" is a big fucking myth.
Anybody with a garage sale PC or Mac from ten years ago can get on the net at a decent speed for less than the cost of cable TV.
For that matter, any laptop with a PCMCIA slot and a $10 802.11 card will let you access the Internet from any of dozens of free wireless hotspots in every major city.
The total monthly cost of being connected is far less than the total montly cost of owning a car, and plenty of low-income folk manage to own cars, even if they don't need them to get to work.
So let's all just drop the "poor Timmy has no chance in life because his family can't afford the Internet," wailing and gnashing of teeth, shall we?
The reality is more likely that poor Timmy is a "Top Seller" of HK anime bootlegs on eBay.
Not only telcos, but the mom&pop ISP operations are getting screwed by this, too.
If every town in America becomes a direct customer of Qwest or Verison, there's really not much room for a small ISP (with their better service & support, more reasonable billing practices, etc.) to operate.
If you want your favorite geek-run ISP to go away forever, then getting your city to spend public funds on MSN or RoadRunner access for everybody is just about the most certain way to go about killing them.
This is not a war. This is not a civil liberties issue.
This is politicians buying votes with taxpayer money, plain and simple and boring as that.
If I want "free" wireless broadband, I can get it from my local coffee shop. I see no reason whatsoever why the old lady next door to me who doesn't even own a computer should be forced to pay for me to have free wireless in my house.
While it's neat that the BBC explored low-bandwidth flash animation, the truth is that the pieced-together version with the original footage plus narration is actually less dull.
Too bad, it would have been a fantastic episode if it was completed back in the Tom Baker years.
Huh. Props to DNA then.
The similarity is that Agent Cooper believed in holistically looking at the universe to solve mysteries. There was one scene in an early episode where he threw rocks at bottles as a means of divination. Very similar to the sort of approach which Gently claimed to practice.
Also, and the whole reason Dirk Gently got written in the first place was so DNA could recycle some of the ideas he had for "Shada", a Doctor Who episode he wrote which was never completed due to a labor dispute.
Come on, where's the Dirk Gently movie/TV series?
It was made several years before Adams wrote the books. It was fantastic.
Only Dirk Gently was called Special Agent Cooper, and the show was called Twin Peaks.
(Oops! Did I just accuse the great DNA, my childhood idol, of ripping off somebody else's idea!? Oh well, bring on the "-1, Flambait" mods. I can take it!)
The movie seems to be doing well in the theaters, so a second and further movies are a possibility.
Terrific!
Now if the next movies can manage to actually be funny, we will really have something.
Dammit, how come no dead jazz legends brought me fruit and cheese when I arrived!?
Yeah, like you didn't haul ass under the elevated trains in Chicago with the spedometer pinned out right after the first time you saw "The French Connection!" ... or am I the only one?
A sweatshirt also holds a lot of coffee, but it isn't nearly as nice to drink it that way.
While I agree that many (not all... perhaps not even most) of the "non-denominational" Churches have a somewhat Pentacostal feel to them, I disagree that this is a backlash against modernism, nor a millenial thing.
Most of the people I've meet from such strongly Charismatic groups are not typically millenialists. They live as if they are in the "End Times" because the apostles did the same thing. In their world-view, it's actually considered virtuous to operate under the assumption that the "end is nigh," even if it later turns out that it wasn't.
Nor are they really anti-modernists. While they may embrace the mystical side of their faith more than most of us are used to in Western Civilization, and devote a greater part of their free time to prayer and worship than your typical once-a-week nominal church attendee, I would not consider their world-view any less "modern" than a Shinto follower in Japan or a faithful Roman Catholic.
Also, I'm not convinced this is all that sudden of a phenomenon. The "Jesus freak" movement of the 60's was much the same, and shares a lot of traits with the prohibitionists of the 20s the revivalists of the 1890s, and the abolishionists of the 1850s.
I think, like Communist/Socialist ideology, it's a meme which doesn't really go away, so much as skips a generation or two now and then.
Thank you for that clarification.
When I said "believe in evolution," it would have been more accurate for me to have said "do not take it as an article of faith to disbelieve evolution," as none of those religions actually dogmatically teach that evolution is true.
The place people get hung up on is that word "literal."
Also, there's a lot of room for disagreement on what is literal and what is metaphor.
Seeing as Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 cover a lot of the same ground, seemeingly contradicting each other on some factual details and even using a different word for "God," a lot of Christians have resolved this dissonance by accepting that the entire creation story is pretty much poetry and metaphor.
To insist otherwise is to believe that what we call the "sky" is the result of God separating the oceans, and that night and day are not defined by being on the shady side of the Earth at any given moment, but are because of the physical separation which was created between darkness and light.
Context is something which is frequently open to debate.
One of my favorite examples of a translation dispute:
"Thou Shalt Not Kill."
Just about everybody understands that this is one of the Commandments... except some scholars have pointed out that ancient Hebrew had different words for "kill" (slaughter a living thing), and "murder" (maliciously kill another person), and the scriptures use the word which more closely translates to "murder."
This nuance completely re-frames the debate for Christians in terms of everything from capital punishment to war to abortion to vegitarianism.
And that's just a dispute over translation! When you get into the fuzzy world of deciphering context (both language context and cultural context), you raise even more areas where the "correct" reading is wide open to debate.
For example, which Hebrew laws in Leviticus should a Christian adhere to, and which can be ignored?
Almost no Christians wear tassles on their clothes, avoid eating bacon, or send their wives out in to the wilderness during "unclean" days, yet many Christians will condemn various perverse sexual behaviors based on the very same set of Hebrew laws, against the objections of more liberal churches.
Some Christians interpret these disputed laws as mainly applying to the Nation of Israel at that specific time in history, and shrug much it off as laws which don't really apply to us... or worst case, laws which we will be forgiven for wrongly assuming to no longer apply.
Other Christians adopt Hebrew laws which most Christians (including "literal" Bible believers) feel free to ignore. For example, the Seventh Day Adventists strictly keep the Hebrew Sabbath, while nearly all other Christians set aside Sunday, the day after the Sabbath, as their day for religious rites and congregating.
As soon as you throw contextual interpretation into the mix, you are no longer accepting the Bible in a "literal" sense, and rather are making your own judgements on when the spirit and letter of the law are aligned and when they are not.
Exactly the sort of confirmation I was hoping to hear from somebody in your neck of the woods.
:)
Ain't the web grand?
I'm not saying it shouldn't be a game.
:)
The headline summary called it a "book," and I was nitpicking... mostly because I was in the mood to say "Beggin' thah Colonel's pardon" to somebody.
Well, I'll be jiggered.
I knew that the WELS and Missouri Synod Lutherans were a bit more legalistic than the ELCA, but I had no idea that they considered creationism as central to their dogma. In fact, I was long under the impression that this was not the case.
Oh, and for the record, I would not really call Lutheranism a "conservative sect." The Lutheran denomination is a product of Northern Europe, where, as I understand it, the Lutheran Church does not resemble American Fundamentalism at all. If anything, the "liberal" and "almost Roman Catholic" ELCA probably reflects global Lutheranism much more closely, from what I've seen.
Perhaps somebody from Norway or Germany could chime in and enlighten us.
I've never been to Norway, but I believe that a Paris is there because enough sources which I consider reliable (not perfect, but reliable) have told me that Norway exists.
;)
In case you are wondering about that jumbled sentence: I started writing my analagy with a reference to Paris, but then edited to "Norway", as it sounded like I might have been talking about Paris Hilton instead of Paris, France.
It would have been amusing, but perhaps distracting, to use Miss Hilton as an analog for God.
Unfortunately, I failed to over-write "Paris" once in that line. This is what happens when you edit text manually instead of using regular expressions the way God intended.
Yep. If you are neither a Roman Catholic nor a Fundamentalist, your lack of an "absolute" authority means that you are left to rely on your own judgement to decide what you believe, and given the deeply flawed nature of human judgement, that's a precarious position to be in.
I see it this way:
I've never been to Norway, but I believe that a Paris is there because enough sources which I consider reliable (not perfect, but reliable) have told me that Norway exists.
Also, I have seen some indirect evidence that Paris exists. Not enough evidence to "prove" the existence of Norway, but enough to compel me to accept that it must exist, especially given the teachings of authorities which I consider reliable mentioned in the previous paragraph.
I believe God exists for the same reason.
Could I be wrong? Sure. However, just as a biochemist must proceed with biochemistry beginning with the idea that what he knows about evolution is correct until shown otherwise, so I must proceed with my spiritual life beginning with the idea that what I've concluded about God is correct until shown otherwise.
Revision of axioms about God are difficult and slow in coming for most people, but I've made them twice in my young life so far and find myself no worse for wear.
Heh. I live in Minnesota. To me, Kansas is "Deep South."
I've been to Topeka. The accents there sound Southern to me.
Also, anti-gay marriage is not exclusively a Fundamentalist position. I know many non-Christians, marginal Christians, and even thiests who vehemently oppose it. (Personally, I'm fine with it. Do what you like, just leave me out of it.) Catholics who observe their church's teachings will typically vote against allowing it as well.
I think the parent post was taking jabs at my suggestion that God's creation was mostly described as God passively permitting the world to exist. (i.e., "let there be $FOO", "let there be $BAR", etc.)
The passages he quotes do contradict my conceit, but look at how much he had to cherry-pick to find such passages. Here are a few relevant moments he skipped*.
Gen 1:3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
Gen 1:11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so.
Gen 1:20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky."
Gen 1:22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth."
Gen 1:24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so.
* The passages I include are taken from the New International Version, which is widely regarded as the most reliable translation available, assembled from the oldest available texts and translated directly to modern English from their original languages under the scrutiny of a massive world-wide council of Churches. I'm not sure which translation the parent post was using, but it was not the NIV.
but wasn't "Bartleby the Scrivner" just a short story?
(Oh, and a shout-out to those of you who caught the "Go Go Gophers" reference... Now there's a show which will never again see the light of day! My childhood memories of Saturday mornings brim over with laughter at shockingly politically correct depictions of Native Americans.)
I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. "Most"? 90% of the Christians I personally know tell me that the Bible is the literal word of God, and evolution is one of Satan's attempts to derail good Christians and keep them from the kingdom of Heaven.
Where do you live, anyway?
Let's break it down, shall we?
Catholics: Do not believe that the entire Bible is the literal word of God. Believe in Evolution.
Lutherans (all major Synods in America): Do not believe that the entire Bible is the literal word of God. Believe in Evolution.
Episocpals: Do not believe that the entire Bible is the literal word of God. Believe in Evolution.
Methodists: Do believe that the entire Bible is the literal word of God, but most do not believe that Evolution contraticts it.
Baptists: Mostly believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. Most (not all) Baptist denominations consider Evolution to be contrary to their beliefs.
I think I hit most of the major ones.
The thing about Fundamentalism is, it's fairly unique to the United States, and even then, it's fairly unique to the Deep South, and even then, it's fairly unique to only a handful of denominations.
Another thing about Fundamentalism is, it's a relatively new trend, and is actually a sort of neo-Catholicism. I'll explain what I mean (if you will pardon a long-winded tangent)...
Catholics believe that the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) is the ultimate spiritual authority on all things related to God in the world. Each pope is selected by a council of bishops, and Catholic dogma teaches that God's Holy Spirit works through these men to lead them to select the right leader for the Church. This (and the fact that anybody even considered is somebody who has dedicated a lifetime to studying Christian theology) is where the Pope's authority derives from.
Fundamentalists believe that the ultimate spritual authority on all things related to God in the world is the Bible. The Bible is not a single book, but a collection of many books. Which books were included in the Bible was determined by the Council of Nicea... a group of Church fathers, not at all unlike the groups that choose Popes these days, who came together to determine which Gospels, which letters, and which prophesy text(s) should be included, and which should be omitted. Fundamentalism rests on the idea that these men were guided by God's Holy Spirit to make the right choices. That (and the fact that they were about seventeen hundred years closer to the events in question) is where the Bible derives it's authority from.
Sound at all familiar?
Personally, I don't entirely embrace either idea, but if one is to take Christianity seriously at all, one should be loathe to completely dismiss the ideology of either sect... yet oddly enough Catholics and Fundamentalists often scoff at one another openly, and sometimes each question whether the other is actually part of the Christian Church.
This tiresome division is one of the reasons why "non-denominational" Evangelical churches are popping up like wildflowers all over America. People have better things to do with their lives than fret over whether the folk in the church across the street are "real" Christians or not.
If you understood everything there was to know about printing, binding and reproducing books, that knowledge and understanding still wouldn't tell you anything about how to write a good one.
Well, you could at least write a definitive book on the subject of publishing.