The Wrath of the Intelligent Designer

[Paul Mackin]

On Sep 18, 2005, at 6:50 PM, jporter wrote:

>
> On Sep 18, 2005, at 2:58 PM, Paul Mackin wrote:
>
>
>> Sorry to have interrupted you in mid-sentence but I got hung up on  
>> a word. What is scurvhamism?
>>
>>
>
>         Robert Scurvham had founded, during the
>     reign of Charles I, a sect of most pure Puritans.
>     Their central hangup had to do with predestina-
>     tion. There were two kinds. Nothing for a Scurv-
>     hamite ever happened by accident, Creation was
>     a vast, intricate machine. But one part of it, the
>     Scurvhamite part, ran off the will of God, its prime
>     mover. The rest ran off some opposite Principle,
>     something blind, soulless; a brute automatism
>     that led to eternal death. The idea was to woo the
>     converts into the Godly and purposeful sodality
>     of the Scurvhamite. But somehow those few saved
>     Scurvhamites found themselves looking out into
>     the gaudy clockwork of the doomed with a certain
>     sick and fascinated horror, and this was to prove
>     fatal. One by one the glamorous prospect of
>     annihilation coaxed them over, until there was no
>     one left in the sect, not even Robert Scurvham,
>     who, like the ship's master had been last to go.
>     (Lot 49, p.155)
>
> jody

Thank you!

P.