Fallen and Flawed

Wow. What an awakening and timely article. As you know my conversation in one of your previous poststhat this does much justice to the second coming. Thanks for writing this.

And thanks be to God for giving His people the ability to stand for such truths.

For her birthday, my mother gave my daughter a teddy bear that says the classic “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep” prayer. Except it’s been changed from “I pray the Lord my soul to keep / If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take” to some fluffy nonsense about Him watching over the kid while they sleep and waking them with the morning light. I brought it up with Mom and she said “How can you stand that morbid old version? Kids shouldn’t have to hear about death and dying!”

This is a perfect example of the pathological fear of punishment and death that has become so epidemic among us. The classic “Hellfire and Brimstone” preacher has been rendered a caricature to be laughed at. The notion of God being filled with righteous wrath at our gross disobedience has been supplanted by a neutered Father who simply wags His almighty finger at our sins.

Denita,

What’s interesting is that my girls have the same one… lol. I can’t stand it. It says, “and angels watch me through the nigh” and then something about the morning light.

I’ll admit I wouldn’t start with the doctrine of hell if I was discussing Christianity with someone unless they brought it up. Too often I think it conjures up images of Elaine making devil faces mocking Puddy on Seinfeld. In other words like you said it’s easy to make hell seem ridiculous. But Jesus talked about it so frequently and vividly we can’t just brush it under the rug.

My question to you is do you think people in hell will be guilty and regretful? The rich man in Luke 16 doesn’t seem to be either to me. He’s in agony but seems to still be the same self-centered, blame shifting man he was during his life. I.e. if only you send someone to my brothers then they will be able to believe and since you didn’t do that for me it’s not my fault I’m here.

It seems to me in our reformed faith that once the entirety of God’s grace is removed from them they will not be capable of faith. So they’ll be miserable but unable to change and believe and thus stuck (justly) for eternity. But, not not capable of realizing it’s due to unbelief just like I wasn’t capable of realizing that same thing before my stone heart was turned to flesh. That leaves them not feeling guilty or regretful but just really, really frustrated. Does that make sense at all?

Jonathan, that’s the exact same one! I grit my teeth every time Tabitha activates it. It’s so trite and cutesy it turns my stomach. It’s like the Precious Moments stuff and all the other fluffy crud that passes for children’s education in God nowadays. We spoon-feed our kids sugar, leaving them unprepared for the bitterness that was meant to grow us in Christ. Then we weep when they desert their Father at the first sign of difficulty.

Denita and Jonathan: I do not have the teddy bear. Darn.

Rob: To answer your question let me say this: we know they’ll be conscious and finally given the undeniable proof that God does in fact exist…proof they’ve always asked for…so I think it’s fair to say they’ll be perfectly capable of regretting their decision. Nothing says they’ll lose the ability to reflect or introspect.

Now why they regret it is a different story and would explain the rich man’s behavior…he’s not regretting it cause he’s offended God…he’s regretting it because he got busted and it hurts. I think that’s how I’d explain it. Good question.

Also, I agree: I’d never start with this doctrine.

Denita,

Don’t get caught strangling it in front of your daughter! lol

I’m just looking forward to the batteries running down…

Demian, I’m sorry we hijacked the comments. It just seems like the teddy bear and its diluted message is a prime example of the overall avoidance of punishment and difficulty that’s become so pervasive in our culture. That avoidance is why the warning of eternal punishment in Hell has become so unpopular.

When I was in the JWs, they eliminated the terrors of Hell entirely and pushed a message where the unrepentant are simply erased from existence. But who would be truly afraid of that…? What fear is there in disobeying a God who simply makes you go “poof” and disappear? The coldness of that outer darkness brings the faithful closer into the warm circle of His glory.

Eric and I have talked at length about Hell and what it means for those who end up there. We think it’s a combination of what you were talking about, Demian, as well as the wrenching knowledge that they have been rejected by the perfect Sovereign of the Universe, who should have received their adoration and obedience. They bow their knees in full acknowledgement of their disobedience, and spend the rest of eternity gnashing their teeth in agony as they cry “You truly WERE deserving of all glory and power and honor–and we spit on you instead…!”

Denita: I don’t mind tangents at all. In fact, your teddy bear story brought up a salient point: Not only have we erased hell from the picture…we’ve done the same thing with death. I smell a blog post coming on…gotta go!

Hm. I guess it never occurred to me to separate death from the afterlife. Each is as connected to each other as a door is to the room it opens in on!

Fire, no doubt, is symbolic.

Are you sure about that? Luke 16, as Rob has pointed out, has a rich man in agony. It seems pretty clear to me that fire is the cause.

Or do you think that Jesus is employing fire symbolically here too?

I don’t consider myself any kind of eschatologist so I’m asking here more than offering any kind of theory. We may have to parse some words here but I don’t see any regret in the rich man. I see him angry at Abraham (God) because he didn’t send someone from the dead to tell him explicitly, as if that would have convinced him, so it’s God’s fault he is where he is. I think being in hell and removed from all of God’s grace that he took for granted, he can reflect an be introspectful but he still has an unredeemed mind so like a demon he knows about God but he wars against him instead of regretting his lack of submission on earth. He’s correcting Abraham and ordering him around like he (the rich man) is in charge.

I see this in myself and others when say, they get a speeding ticket and it’s not that they were traveling faster than allowed but that the bad cop had it out for them. Like I said I don’t have any scripture to back this up more of a gut feeling which can be dangerous. Great topic for discussion.

James, I can’t point you to a scripture that says the fires are metaphorical but I do think words, terms, and ideas about heaven and hell fall short of the extremes to which they will be perfect or horrible.

It’s usually easier to avoid the doctrine of hell because it has been abused, misunderstood, and attacked. It is easier to avoid being linked to the “hellfire and brimstone” preachers.

Easier to avoid it, at least until some guy named Demian stirs it all up

Great post Demian. Thanks.

My comment is about part of a single line, and not really germane to the subject of the post at all. But why let that stop me…?

“…that it would be easier to persuade a skeptic to embrace a God without wrath and righteousness…”

I wonder if, in fact, it would be easier to persuade a skeptic with a God that exhibits wrath and righteousness. My self, I tend to be more influenced by strong imagery and clear messages rather than messages diluted so as to be indistinguishable from the rest of the noise.

To me it seems like it would be more difficult to get someone to sign up for God if He were so weak and watered down to the point of not even having Hell to pay to the non-believers.

But then the Calvinist voice in me says, “what’s the point? God will save those He elects.” But that’s a whole different thing altogether.

Happy New Year.

I may start using my Twitter account just so I can follow your updates: That is how much I love your blog.

“We do know that hell will last forever…”

How do ‘we’ know?

Because an old book says so? It’s statements like this, subtly added at the end, that fool the feeble minded in to believing this religious tripe. Your grasp on logic and reason is fundamentally flawed which is one of the reasons you aren’t able to see through this 2000 year old nonsense. Don’t worry, you won’t be going to hell, when you’re dead you’ll be just as pain free as you were in all the years before you were born.

OK Enjay, how can YOU prove YOUR statements?

Enjay,

So what is it that fools the strong minded in to believing this ‘nonesense’ ?

And how do you know we’ll be pain free when we’re dead? Did you just pluck it from thin air? Did logic tell you that?

My point being that the charge you level against believers as being weak minded and illogical is groundless. I’ve met believers and non-believers alike that fall on all points of the intellectual spectrum. Making sweeping generalizations isn’t useful.

Happy New Year

Rob: I think we’re saying the same thing. You’re just doing a better job of it than me.

James: What Rob said. Seriously, parables are meant to portray a truth that in itself is difficult to describe, so the principle is to usually look for what is being said. If we were to take all parables literal, then really, in the end [bear with me here] Jesus would be in a barn separating real weeds from real wheat, on a dock dividing the bad fish from good ones and in a pen separating real goats from sheep. In some cases explained the parables.

Enjay: What Denita and Matthew said. Also, I’ll add: Would it help if it’s a new book, say published last year? Would that convince you that hell is real?

Jeney: Wow. You’re making blush. Thank you very much.

I was caught by someone’s statement about hell not being taught as something that last eternally, and I was left wondering what was being said about the implications of removing the fear of hell from our thought. The statement was, “But who would be truly afraid of that…? What fear is there in disobeying a God who simply makes you go “poof” and disappear?” I’m wondering if this means that it is OK to use hell to motivate people to become Christian. Or to profess Christianity.
Whatever it meant, I think the appropriate message is to love God because he deserves our love and obedience. He did first love us. He died for us and suffered the torment of hell for us. His children thus belong to Him because of his costly purchase. He is a savior from sin, not a savior from hell, and that truth should stand clear and loud. Never should we preach God as a way to avoid hell, such a message would be humanistic since the essence of that thought is the end happiness of man. Christianity’s only right end result is the happiness of God. Anything else is appealing to our selfishness and is sin.
I’m not implying that anybody meant anything wrong nor am I trying to correct anyone. When I read those words I just wanted to say that avoiding hell should never be someone’s motivation.
I just don’t believe hell should ever be a reason to serve God. It would still be right to live as his child even if it meant we had to suffer eternal hell. He deserves all glory and he is uncontestable.

Jonathan kindly directed me to this subject. Interesting, but…

All the different explanation about hell listed in the post are based on the Bible. It’s just that different denominations interpret the Bible differently. It is so, because the Bible does not speak in a single voice. Ancient Jews simply had no concept of “eternal life”, and this is reflected in the oldest books of the Bible. If you were good, YHWH would simply make you live longer, and that was it. Then the concept of resurrection appeared, and later the concept of immortal soul, which is practically unbiblical, yet was adopted by the Jews from Persian religion during the Babylonian period.

Whenever the Bible mentions hell, it is the same as about heaven – we cannot know what it really means. Our point of view often depends on what we ALREADY believe in, regardless what you find in the Bible. I used to be an Adventist for a while, and back then you could never convince me that hell means anything but eternal death everywhere in the Bible. I may be of a different opinion now, of course.

Denita/Matthew,

Before I existed, I felt no pain, in fact I felt nothing. In the future, when I no longer exist, it’s reasonable to assume the experience of non-existence will be the same. It just a case of probability. My belief above is several orders of magnitude more likely than your hell scenario as every person that has ever existed has had the same pre-birth/non-existence experience.

The emphasis is on you and your friends to prove otherwise. You are the ones that have come up with the farfetched story. Also, why should I believe your story instead of one of the other religions?

Demian,

My point is not the age of the book, it’s the lack of any scientific evidence to support it. If it was printed yesterday it would still be just a story.

Why don’t religious people require the same kind of hard evidence for their religion as they would demand if they were accused of a crime they didn’t commit?

I don’t wish to offend, just to give food for thought.

Enjay, we don’t expect you to believe us. We’re just fallen, flawed creations with a myopic concept of eternity. To expect you to believe us is arrogance. All we can do is tell you what we have seen and heard, what truths we have found in a book you have already discounted as fable. The fact that you have already written us off means that whatever we say you will most likely discount as the gibberings of mad animals. So what can I say? I can’t say anything of my own experience. It’s flawed.

I can only tell what my blind eyes have seen:

A book sneered at by millions, and with seeming good reason. Unlike other books, the supposed heroes of the story have their shortcomings on tragic display: Noah is a drunkard, Abraham a coward who pimps his wife, Moses loses his patience, King David commits adultery and murder, Samson breaks his Nazirite vows almost constantly, Peter denies his affiliation with the supposed Savior of Humanity not once but three times. What folly is it to build a giant boat in the middle of a desert that has never seen rain? What nonsense is it to lead an impoverished people out of Egypt, only to leave them stranded in the wilderness of the Middle East for almost half a century? Why did this so-called almighty King allow himself to be beaten and nailed to a piece of timber?

And yet, why are so many people willing to be tortured, marginalized, and even die horribly, all for the sake of that book and the message it brings?

Enjay, if I may postulate something. Have you ever noticed that we, as a species, are hardwired to believe in something? As much as we “religious freaks” believe in a Deity, may I ask you to look at what you have been attempting to evangelize to us? Look with unbiased eyes and you will see the same feverish desire, the only difference being you spread the gospel of man. I have seen as fervent a preaching of the message of atheism as I have seen of its God-centered counterpart. I could easily replace your atheist words with those of, say, a Muslim’s beliefs, or a Jew’s beliefs, or one of a Christian. The passion to spread a gospel of some sort would still remain. So why are we driven to believe in something? Why are we so hungry for meaning? People spend billions of dollars on numerous products and seminars and rituals that are supposed to bring them to some sort of enlightenment. Why?

If it is as you say, and there is no God, then why is the whole world driven to seek Him? In some form or another, we show that we have a huge void in ourselves that we try to fill; some with temporal goods like sex and money and power, others with more ephemeral and spiritual things. If we were truly the products of random chance, would that still hold? Or would we simply be content with the daily routine of survival like every pack of wolves, or mob of kangaroos, or herd of gazelle has done for as long as we can remember? I have yet to see a lion hold aspirations beyond its own daily routine and grasp them, aside from perhaps scavenging for easy scraps at the edges of a human settlement. Does it learn the language of men and broker a deal with them for meat for his pride? No. Has a deer bargained for leniency from the cougar? Not yet. Has a colony of termites in Africa been found with stained glass windows and sculpted gargoyles in the cathedral of its mound? The news hasn’t reached me yet. And then, you have the paradox of the so-called “naked ape.” We have spent the entire span of our history changing our natures and aspiring to bigger–though maybe not always better–things. Why is this? If we’re animals, why are we the only ones that have leaped ahead in our supposed evolutionary sophistication? Or is there an elephant-built Space Shuttle that I haven’t heard about?

That’s just one of many visual observations that leaves me more assured of a Divine hand in our making. I could go on, but I have a family that needs me.

You ask for “proof” of the existence of God. But I must ask you, what about your “proof” against God? Evolution; a theory that has to be revised with every newly-unearthed bone? The Big Bang; a theory that states that “first there was nothing, then the Universe happened?” Carbon-dating; which has been shown to be inaccurate by hundreds to thousands of years or more? Or even the universe itself, which has shown that it is far too young for the amount of theoretical evolutionary steps to take place for even one living organism on Earth to be formed–much less the billions of living things that cover this ball of rock…?

The Bible states “For the word of the Cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…We teach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles…The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Cor 1:18-25) And ours IS a crazy message: we worship a King who was fully man and fully God, who made the Universe with His own hands but died in shame and agony on a Roman torture device, and who we believe had such infinite power over death that He rose again on that third day and now rules over us as a loving sovereign. We believe our ultimate purpose is to serve others, we desire to be walked upon, we show love to those who kill us. We seek humility and not power. There is nothing that we can honestly say, as believers, that will convince you if your heart is hardened against it, and to think otherwise is contrary to what a true Christian is about. We’re just messengers, it’s our job to speak of our Christ and Him crucified, and what that means for us, and how it has changed us. No Christian worth his salt is expected to change another person’s way of thinking, that capacity is not in our power. Only God Himself can change your heart.

Enjay thanks for adding to the discussion and trust me you will have to do a lot more to offend people around here (not that you should try).

It just a case of probability. My belief above is several orders of magnitude more likely

I am going to get these numbers wrong because it’s been a while since I read this. The scale is roughly the same and when you’re using numbers this big the exact numbers don’t really matter. But, due to the fine tuning or our universe of 100s of physical constants that need to be just so for life, the existence of matter, and the complexity in our universe the odds of it and us just happening are about 1 in 10^250. I can’t type scientifically on here but I mean one in 1 with 250 zeros behind it. The odds of just our solar system randomly happening are 1 in 10^150. The odds of you being a Boltzmann Brain that randomly happened is 1 in 10^90. So with these numbers it is much more probable (10^140 times more likely) that you are just a self aware entity that randomly popped into existence that is projecting the false universe and false history you think you know in your mind. And it would be completely irrational (against 1:10^140 odds) to believe otherwise.

Why don’t religious people require the same kind of hard evidence for their religion as they would demand if they were accused of a crime they didn’t commit?

This is a little different spin than I usually hear but I think evidence as presented in a court of law is exactly the kind of evidence believers are talking about for Christianity. That would include historical data, eye witness testimony, character witnesses, circumstantial evidence, motive, opportunity, alibis etc… Usually skeptics ask for scientific proof which I’ll talk about below.

My point is not the age of the book, it’s the lack of any scientific evidence to support it.

But what you’ve done here is take science, which is a very useful and predictable tool, and morphed it in to scientism, the idea that science is the ultimate authority over every other interpretation of life. It’s similar to strong rationalism and it defeats itself because what scientific proof do you have that we need scientific proof to believe the bible? What experiment did you run to come to that conclusion? Under their own weight scientism and strong rationalism collapse.

Jag, I’m confused by you. Are you saying that we can’t know which interpretation on a specific issue is right but only one is or are you saying that we can’t know which interpretation is right so they all are (pluralism)?

Denita, preach it!

Denita,

You seem to be putting evolution and the Big Bang against God – this is incorrect. Big Bang doesn’t really differ much from the creation moment as described in Genesis. Evolution is a fact that can be observed by anyone, and obviously every major discovery allows us to understand it better, and also allows us to adjust the details, which is great. Most Christians have absolutely no problem with evolution.

As for carbon (correctly – radiocarbon) dating, it is a very accurate dating method extremely consistent with other methods available. Saying that it “has been shown to be inaccurate by hundreds to thousands of years or more” you are either showing extreme ignorance (meaning that you were probably deceived by the so-called young earth creationists) or that you are simply lying to us (I will not dare assume that!). Radiocarbon dating can only be used to date samples up to about 60,000 years old, and no not older (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating). Unfortunately creationists do not have any evidence to speak in their favour (and their flawed interpretation of the Bible), so they simply usually lie in order to discredit scientific knowledge in the minds of the gullible. Real, deep Christianity doesn’t need to be afraid of facts and discount them. I recommend to you a great book by Michael Dowd (who amongst others worked as a Pentecostal pastor) “Thank God for Evolution”.

Oh, and by the way, the universe itself has NEVER been “shown that it is far too young for the amount of theoretical evolutionary steps to take place for even one living organism on Earth to be formed”. That’s just another creationist lie with no evidence.

Rob,

What I meant to say was that the Bible (being an anthology) speaks with many voices. Chrstians tried to build dogma out of it and assumed that this is not so, but the result is thousands of different denominations. The core of Jesus’s teaching is love for God and the others. As Rabbi Hillel (who preached a similar view at the same time as Jesus) said – everything else in the Bible is just a commentary. As much as I find the commentary interesting, I refuse to base my spiritual system on it. I’ll stick to the core – the teaching on love.

Denita,

You seem to be repeating lies often spread by the so-called young age creationists. What’s so different between the Big Bang and the Genesis creation? Aren’t you aware that most Christians do not have a problem with evolution? Radiocarbon dating is only used for samples up to about 60,000 years old, so to say that it is “inaccurate by hundreds to thousands of years or more” is simply evidence of your ignorance. I don’t blame you, you are probably repeating the lies you may have heard at your church (“Lying for Jesus” seems to be the unofficial catchcry in most fundamentalist congregations).
I recommend you read Michael Dowd’s “Thank God for Evolution. You will most likely understand a lot more.

Rob,

The core of Jesus’s teaching is love for God and others. Rabbi Hillel taught just about the same at the same time, and added that the rest of the Bible is just a commentary. I find the commentary useful, but refuse to make dogma out of it. Many Christians pretend not to see that the Bible does not speak in a single voice – and the result is that we have thousands of denominations.

Jag,

Why would you say that to Denita? Why do you accuse her of spreading lies?

Your accusations toward Denita, while professing faith in “Jesus’s teachings” of the “love of God and other” is evidence that you’re not a Christian, though you claim to be. Your comment lacks love and grace both. Repentance is your best option.

I know this will probably offend you. That’s not my goal, but Denita is my sister in Christ, and if you call yourself a Christian and treat other Christians like that, all the while disregarding the Jesus of the Bible—the bodily resurrected person of Jesus—and the truth of his teachings, then you ought not to call yourself a Christian.

I’m not going to debate with you either.

Demian is free to delete this comment if he likes.

By the way, Titus 1:10-16, 1 Corinthians 5:12-13. But again, this is “just” Scripture, isn’t it.

Jag- I believe most Christians don’t have a problem with micro-evolution. Macro-evolution the big issue. Maybe I just don’t know of any Christians who believe in macro-evolution, which is the changing of one animal or plant kind into another.

Jag, could you define what you mean by “the bible doesn’t speak in a single voice”. I would agree with you in the sense that it has multiple authors, styles, and audiences over centuries of time but I think it does all fall under the umbrella of the story of Jesus through creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

I’m also not real sure what you believe about religious pluralism. I hear you saying there are multiple points of view for each doctrinal issue and that we can’t know which is true. Does that mean they are all true or that only one is true but there’s no way to know which one.

Happy New Year!

Jonathan,

It was not my intention to offend anyone, least of all Denita, and I hope she will get it the right way. She has published obvious untruths here, and I must protest in the name of Christian honesty. I have, however, explained that I suspected she just repeated lies fed to her by some Christian fundamentalists who will stoop as low as it takes in order to defend their immature view of Christianity. I sincerely hope she is just ignorant rather than willing to disinform people. I don’t believe that the ends ever justify the means, I don’t believe in a religion that is based on spreading lies. If Christianity required that (and I strongly believe it does not), I’d rather be a Buddhist. Denita is my sister in Jesus as much as yours, which is why I have to correct her errors. Common decency requires that. Whether she accepts it and stops “lying for Jesus” is entirely up to her. This has nothing to do with what someone believes or what they call themselves, it has to do with simple checking your facts and getting them right before publishing them.

Jason – most Christians don’t even differentiate between miscro- and macroevolution. Francis Collins, for instance, is both an evangelical Christian and leading evolutionary scientist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins_(geneticist)
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/06/francis-collins-evolution-versus-faith.html

I can provide countless other examples of such eminent scientists, if you like. Evolution happens one minor change at a time. Over millions of years, one species evolves into something very different. Evolution is a fact. How we interpret it is another matter. We can do it like Richard Dawkins, like Francis Collins and in many other ways. There really is no need to deny facts.

Rob,

I feel that the centre of the Bible is the teaching of love, and “the rest is just a commentary”. When I said that the Bible speaks in many voices I meant that it has many internal inconsistencies. There are 2 stories of creation and two about the flood in Genesis alone, all inconsistent with each other. There are 3 different sets of 10 Commandments. The gospels depict the same Jesus very differently. I see no reason to force the stories to agree with each other. They are there not for literal interpretation anyway. That’s why all the efforts of young earth creationists to “prove” universal flood or young age of the earth scientifically in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary are just laughable. Remember the Good Samaritan parable. The priest and the Levite were condemned, despite their “correct” and “orthodox” beliefs and dogmatics. The Samaritan was the hero. Samaritans were considered heretics and hated by the Jews at the time. Yet to Jesus clearly what you believed in did not matter much; what mattered was how you lived – and loved.

Jag,

Do you affirm the bodily resurrection of Jesus?

Jag, obviously I disagree with how you interpret those to be inconsistencies but I think you’ve still danced around my question. So, more clearly, with your interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan would a kind Buddhist be justified before God?

Jonathan, I probably do not. But then, neither did the author of Mark’s gospel or Paul believe in a bodily resurrection of Jesus. Do you call then non-Christians? And what does it have to do with “lying for Jesus”? Are you suggesting that if you believe in a bodiliy resurrection you are allowed to spread misinformation?

Rob,

The kind of God I believe in does not necessarily require “justification”. Is this a biblical term at all? However, let’s stick to your interpretation of God and read Matthew chapter 7:

19 Any tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown on the fire.
20 I repeat, you will be able to tell them by their fruits.
21 ‘It is not anyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” who will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven.
22 When the day comes many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, work many miracles in your name?”
23 Then I shall tell them to their faces: I have never known you; away from me, all evil doers!

As you see, ANY tree that does not produce fruit is condemned – whether Buddhist, Christian or atheist. Those Chistians who prophesy, drive out demons (this one is a bit outdated in the 21st century though) or work miracles are condemned too, as long as they forget the basics – to love and not to judge (Matt 7:1). Therefore Samaritans, Buddhists, atheists and Christians alike are justified by how they live and love, and most certainly not what they believe in. Your beliefs may be absolutely incorrect and unorthodox (like the good Samartian’s). As long as your intentions are good, it ultimately doesn’t matter. I didn’t invent that – it’s in the gospel.

So the way you read Matthew 7 did Jesus need to die for our sins for us to be right with God?

Your definition of the gospel reminds me of this little quip:

Q: How many legs does a normal dog have if you call its tail a leg?

A: Four. Just because you call its tail a leg doesn’t mean it really is a leg.

Hi jag,

You said “Therefore Samaritans, Buddhists, atheists and Christians alike are justified by how they live and love, and most certainly not what they believe in.”

What does it mean to you when you read Romans 3:28 “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.”

Justification is certainly biblical. Romans 5:1, another example, “For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath [whereof] to glory; but not before God. ”

Hebrews 11:6 “But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

This means something different to me than it does to you, I think. How do you interpret God, his message to us, I don’t see how does one even wants to go to heaven if it means eternity a God they disregard. But who do you see as God? To you, is the bible his inerrant word?

You may have already stated your beliefs regarding these thing, forgive me for not having read everything. I will catch up.

Jag,

Are you familiar with Romans 15? I will give you a clip:

12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. (vv.12-19)

Obviously, the bodily resurrection is imperative for faith in Christ. And yes, it’s necessary for salvation. For without it, we’re all still lost, and that’s right, doomed for hell.

And no, my question does not have to do with “lying for Jesus.” I just wanted to see if you would publicly deny the deity and resurrected Lord Jesus Christ while professing Christianity. At least we all know where you stand with regard to this matter. I just wanted to make sure everyone knew.

Thanks.

Jonathan Woodward, et al.,

What difference does Jag’s belief in Jesus make as far as the subject of evolution is concerned? Misinformation is still misinformation, right, regardless of the source?

If you affirm the resurrection of Jesus, yet lie while you worship a god of truth, then you are not only a Christian, you’re also a hypocrite. Jag may or may not be a Christian unless he affirms the resurrection – but those who tell deliberate falsehoods in the name of the supposed author of truth are most definitely hypocrites.

Note: I am not accusing any of you of lying! This is only a warning to you: if you do not inform yourselves, then you will spread falsehoods unknowingly, and if you do not educate yourself, you will have spread falsehoods deliberately.

I did a search of “truth” on BibleGateway.com. It’s mentioned 258 times…so I’m guessing it’s at least a little bit important. But here are a few examples:

Psalm 31:5 and Isaiah 65:16 hail a God of truth.

Proverbs 12:22 proclaims a God who detests lying lips, but delights in those who are truthful.

John 8:44 states that lies are the native language of Satan.

Do you really believe in truth, or do you believe what other people have told you to be the truth? If you really, honestly believe that the God you worship is the Author of all Truth, then why are some of you so afraid of the truth? Why would you hesitate to learn if you worship a God who is the Author of all knowledge?

I’ve heard other Christians tell me that the God of the Bible is the Author of all truth. If some Christians are willing to tell lies to support this belief, then why should I believe any Christian when I hear that s/he worships a God of Truth?

Consider this: if God invented all truth, then why would supposed followers of said God try to tell me lies? If the truth of God isn’t good enough for you, then perhaps it’s not good enough for me. Think carefully about what impression you’d like to be sending here.

I know I’ve said a lot, but it really comes down to this essential question for me: do all of you really believe what you say you believe, or not?

Jason,

I was not referring to Paul’s teaching, but Jesus’s teaching. Paul, however, in your quote is referring to the law. Not being of Jewish faith the law doesn’t apply to me anyway. Please also compare the Epistle of James chapter 2:

14What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.

20You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,”[e] and he was called God’s friend. 24You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

Clearly, Paul and James had very different theological ideas. You can even say they were mutually exclusive. No wonder Luther wanted to delete James from the NT canon (http://www.oodegr.com/english/protestantism/louther_grafi1.htm, also http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/James/Background/canon.htm)!
It is then also obvious that considering any source, biblical or not, as “inerrant” is very dangerous. Oh yes, and certainly unbiblical too! Inerrancy is proposed by those who worship the Bible instead of God. To me the Bible is a roadsign showing the direction towards the divine. Not perfect, and not the only one available, yet quite precious despite its imperfections.

Jonathan,

I have already stated before (elsewhere though) that Paul naturally believed in some kind of a resurrection. But does he ever call it “bodily” resurrection? No. In fact, the resurrection he preached was quite the opposite of a “bodily” one”. Read 1 Cor 15:

35 Someone may ask: How are dead people raised, and what sort of body do they have when they come?
36 How foolish! What you sow must die before it is given new life;
37 and what you sow is not the body that is to be, but only a bare grain, of wheat I dare say, or some other kind;
38 it is God who gives it the sort of body that he has chosen for it, and for each kind of seed its own kind of body.
39 Not all flesh is the same flesh: there is human flesh; animals have another kind of flesh, birds another and fish yet another.
40 Then there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; the heavenly have a splendour of their own, and the earthly a different splendour.
41 The sun has its own splendour, the moon another splendour, and the stars yet another splendour; and the stars differ among themselves in splendour.
42 It is the same too with the resurrection of the dead: what is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable;
43 what is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; what is sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful;
44 what is sown is a natural body, and what is raised is a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is a spiritual body too.

Sadly, Paul failed to explain what his “spiritual body” meant, but he made it clear that it was not physical! In 15:4 Paul states that Jesus was raised to life – the word “physsically” (or bodily) does not appear in my translation.

Interestingly, in the same chapter we find a lot if ideas that the “orthodox” Christianity chose to forget about:

- Cephas (Peter) is separate from the Twelve (15:5)
- James is separate from the Twelve too, and the Apostles are yet a different group (15:7)
- in 15:51-52 Paul promises his readers in Corinth that not all of them are going to die. Clearly, a failed and totally unfulfilled prophesy, proving that Paul’s teaching is not inerrant.

I never denied deity or resurrection of Jesus, as those ideas can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways – and I take them symbolically. I do know, however, Christians who do reject both deity of Jesus and resurrection. I do not have a problem with that and still consider them great Christians. As I stated before based on the teaching of Jesus found in the gospels, what counts is how we live and love, not what we believe in.

Teleprompter – I can only say amen to your wise words.

One more thing – I still hope that Denita will have the courage to speak to us again, apologise and explain herself. I hope she is doing her research and learning to separate lies from truth, and that she will never repeat lies again.

Jag:

If Denita is, as you suggest, merely misinformed by some rogue fundamentalists, then it would mean she is simply incorrect in her statement(s).

Romans 15 seems to refute your statement that Paul did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ. If I were to follow your logic, I would accuse you of lying. However, I find you merely to be incorrect.

During a debate, it is difficult to stay on track when we pile allegations and diversions on top of the main points.

I am interested in reading the rest of this conversation, but it seems all other relevant discussion has stopped as we wait for Denita to confess to a crime even you have suggested she didn’t commit.

Jag:

I have no reason to apologize for what God has shown me in His word. I didn’t respond to you because, simply put, I have nothing to defend. But I suggest that you check where your heart is spiritually; having become so provoked by a comment not even aimed at you, and which has done no harm to your character.

Thanks, Denita, I was merely pointing out that your post container a number a statements that are simply untrue. I didn’t realise that God had shown you in her word that “[c]arbon-dating … has been shown to be inaccurate by hundreds to thousands of years or more”. Would you care to share with us how God revealed this to you? It would appear that this God has no idea how radiocarbon dating works, so perhaps I should discuss the issue with your God directly.

Explain how scientists get dates of millions of years from carbon-14 dating. I would start by visiting a creationist website (http://www.grisda.org/2009/09/radiocarbon-dating/) where there are interesting FAQ’s; here’s one of them:

“Explain how scientists get dates of millions of years from carbon-14 dating.
They don’t. Carbon-14 dating cannot measure ages beyond about 70,000 years. Dates of millions of years are based on other inorganic methods, such as potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating.”

Your God must have then been deceived too.

Jeney,

It is entirely possible that Paul’s theology in Romans is not consistent with 1 Corinthians. But if it is so, it is hardly my fault. Although the way I read it, Romans 15 is about a resurrection, but not necessarily a bodily one, which was a relatively late development, and Paul does not appear to uphold it (he probably never heard of it).

Note that the oldest canonical gospel, Mark, ends (in its oldest manuscripts) on 16:8. There is a single mention of Jesus being raised, and nothing about it being bodily. It sounds more like a risen spirit. It would then appear that it took at least a generation after the death of Jesus before the “bodily resurrection” idea became established, and even then most probably only in some Christian communities.

Having said that, unlike Denita, I do take responsibility for what I say and do not blame God for my errors.

Jag, God has never revealed Himself in the Bible any form other than male. This does not mean that He isn’t capable of creating, but to diminish Him as a “her” after every Hebrew and Greek text uses the masculine pronoun is the height of arrogance.

As for the rest of your comment, I think God can explain HIMself just fine, and has. The Hebrew word for “day” in Genesis is a literal DAY. Not an “epoch”, not an “era” not a nebulous span of time. But please feel free to continue trying to disprove God’s perfection using humanity’s flawed machinery and reasoning. I’m sure He finds it as amusing as I do.

What ultimately matters isn’t whether God made the Earth and its inhabitants in seven days, or seven hours, or seven million years. The ultimate fact is, God made it. He rules over it. He became flesh and died to save it from its folly. He rose from death and returned to Heaven, and has left numerous signs in His word as well as stamped all over His creation that show His design and His redemption. And whether you believe that or not, or believe me or not, won’t change a single bit of it.

As for taking responsibility, it seems your definition of “taking responsibility” is “yielding to your ideologue,” and that is something I will not do. I have never blamed God for my errors, because I have read the Bible and seen its contents to be true and accurate. If any blame is to be thrown around, it is to prideful Man and his imperfect reasoning and God-less modelling of creation, using flawed machines and flawed data, and producing flawed results, and ultimately reflecting his flawed desire to elevate himself to the level of God.

I don’t expect to change your mind, Jag, it’s obvious that you prefer to trample the pearls that have been offered to you numerous times. Just rest assured that, one day, we will have our answers. I pray you are willing to accept them.

Tele: Good to see you, but I’m still trying to figure out how we got on the topic of evolution to begin with…

You’re not the only one, Demian! Sorry about the hijack. That seems to be an issue with me, whether I intend it or not…forgive me?

Always, Denita. *bats eyes*

Denita,

Are you seriously suggesting that female is inferior to male?

In my personal opinion it is arrogant to assume that God is a male. True, the Bible uses mostly masculine pronouns, but it was written in a patriarchal socioeconomic context, so it was to be expected. But to make a dogma out of it? I heartily recommend to you some reading is feminist theology. Whether we use male, female or neuter pronouns, we should be aware of their limitations – none of them can accurately describe God, which is beyond words.

As for Genesis, there are 2 separate creation accounts, in chapters 1 and 2. They are incompatible and mutually exclusive, as they come from separate traditions and were written by different authors at different times. This, for starters, indicates, that they are not to be taken literally. In addition, God “speaks” to us through nature as well, and the book of nature reveas how life on our planet evolved over millions of years. To ignore this is to ignore true revelation and facts that cannot be reasonably denied.

The Bible also says that the earth is flat and rests on pillars, yet somehow no-one makes those texts into dogma.

However, I totally agree with you that the true objective of the biblical texts is to say that God “created” it.

I do not endeavour to change your beliefs, whatever they are. They may be bizzarre to others (or not), but as long as they are yours, this is all that counts. What I object to, however, is only one thing: misrepresentation of facts. The worst example of that was when you said that radiocarbon dating “has been shown to be inaccurate by hundreds of thousands of years or more”. I took offence, because this is absolutely untrue. You can check this on the Internet or by talking to anyone who has any idea how radiometric dating works. I don’t know where you got this information from, and I am glad that you no longer maintain it was revealed to you directly by God. Whoever told you this, was telling you a lie, and you should be arguing with that person – not me.

I believe that Christianity makes absolutely no sense unless it is based on fundamentals of truth and honesty. The reason why I remained a non-Christian for a large part of my life was that I didn’t know any Christians who would have enough courage to face the truth and stop lying. Luckily this has now changed.

Jag,

It is really difficult (really, it is) for me to understand how you count any of the Bible to be fact.

Jonathan,

What definition of fact do you have in mind? I do not look to the Bible when I get ill; I see a doctor. I do not read the Bible when I want to understand how nuclear power stations work or why planes fly. In other words, I do not treat it as a science textbook, because I would be disrespecting it. The Bible is about something entirely different; it deals with the spiritual realm. There is very little in it that I would take literally; instead I take my Bible seriously.

Jag,

That sounds like a shifty move. There’s no way of you knowing—in the way you believe—that any of the Bible is true, or fact, and therefore you are hoping in something vain. You say you believe in God, but what God? You can’t use the Bible because of so much you discredit as false. I just wished you would be straight about this, because it sure is distracting. You affirm that what Denita believes is okay, saying that even though her beliefs may be bizarre, but as long as they are hers, “this is all that counts.” Which, if we use this logic, it doesn’t matter what anyone believes, just as long as they believe it. And if they believe it, then it’s true because they believe it. But we know things aren’t true just because we believe them. But by your logic, everyone’s belief is just as valid as the other person’s.

And you’re accusing her of ignorance and spreading lies? I just don’t see where you have any grounds for doing so.

Jonathan,

What I was trying to say is that if you believe something you should have good reasons to believe it, and be able to justify your beliefs. To put it simply, you should have a good reason to be a Catholic, Shia Muslim, atheist or an animist. I am certainly not here to “convert” people to my way, because it would be disrespectful. It is much better for various spiritual traditions to enrich each other. We only grasp a tiny speck of truth. Your speck and mine may be similar, but may also be quite different. They are still specks of truth, but we will deceive ourselves if we hold that “my speck is the whole truth” or that “my speck is better/truer than yours”

When I study God, I do not limit myself to my own tradition’s scriptures. Others have scriptures too. But we also have the book of nature, and we need to use our reason too. Whenever the book of nature seems to be in conflict with the scriptures, I always ask myself if it is not the way we interpret the scripture that is wrong.

As St Augustine put it:

“Interpretation of biblical passages must be informed by the current state of demonstrable knowledge.”

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this 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. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learned from experience and the light of reason?”

I do believe in a God that is beyond human language and understanding. God that cannot be defined. God in which (as St Paul is reported in Acts 17:28 to say) “we live and move and exist”. Certainly not a God that is an old white male with a long beard (in case you are still confused, that’s Santa!)

But this has nothing to do with Denita’s issue. How can you be silent when someone calls white black and black white? What you or I believe is entirely personal. Denita’s claims were not. They were akin to saying “the earth is flat”. Of course she has every right to believe that, but she shouldn’t expect everyone to hold such a claim as a universal truth. She simply didn’t care to get her facts right. That is my ONLY issue. I was not accusing her, merely stated that what she wrote was NOT true. Wasn’t that sufficient grounds?

John 13:34-35 (NIV):
34″A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Matthew 22:36-40 (NIV):
36″Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

I am certainly not here to “convert” people to my way, because it would be disrespectful. It is much better for various spiritual traditions to enrich each other. We only grasp a tiny speck of truth. Your speck and mine may be similar, but may also be quite different. They are still specks of truth, but we will deceive ourselves if we hold that “my speck is the whole truth” or that “my speck is better/truer than yours” …..

What you or I believe is entirely personal.

Jag, you seem to have traded away truth for open-mindedness as the ultimate arbiter of correct and incorrect. You dismiss Genesis 1 & 2 because you claim they are irreconcilable yet you say it’s perfectly reasonable to hold Buddhism and Mormonism as equally valid despite the obvious irreconcilable differences between them. You can’t have it both ways and still be rational. How do you reconcile that? Your pluralism fails when you hold “A” and “Not A” as both equally true. So does your “we each see a part of the elephant but none see the whole” analogy because you are assuming that you can see the whole elephant. You’ve given no reason to believe yours is the enlightened position and not just another position. You’ve actually given a few reasons (logical inconsistencies) to believe that you’re not presenting the enlightened position.

I agree that as limited human beings we can’t see God in his entirety but we have lots of reason to believe in God as he reveals himself in the Bible. I tangibly see that at work daily in my own sanctification and the sanctification of believers around me. I’m wondering how your Jesus as not God, not bodily resurrected, and not the ultimate standard is working out for your own sanctification.

Jag, we continue to see you accuse us of believing in false data, and accusing us that what we believe is wrong, yet you say it’s okay if someone believes another religion as long as they have reasons for it. This is totally inconstant.

Also, you are adding more dogma than anyone here, by saying that all our beliefs about Scripture is wrong. And you accuse us of dogma? And you say that our interpretation of the Bible is inaccurate? And you say that evolution—with regard to the origin of man—is fact, and attempt to push that “fact” upon us?

My friend, I think you are the most dogmatic of us all.

Rob,

You are correct – my position is “just another position”. It is very arbitrary and very personal. And I find that by sharing our own different experiences of God we can enrich each other’s spirituality.

I would love you to point out my “logical inconsistencies” so I can work on them.

What kind of God “reveals himself on the Bible”? The God of love that Jesus taught about? Or perhaps the one who ordered his “chosen people” to rape and murder neighbouring tribes? Or the one who took it in his own hands to drown the world he had created just because he changed his mind? Or the one who sent down bears to rip off a bunch of kids just because they insulted his prophet? The Bible speaks in many voices, and presents very different (and sometimes very personal) perspectives on God. And when we read the Bible, we all pick and choose (though only some of us are willing to admit it).

Jonathan,

When we discuss religion and philosophy then we necessarily speculate, and at best can refer to our own experiences. There is no objective standard to measure our spiritual experiences against. That is OK. You can’t “prove” what’s true or false, you can only discuss what you find convincing.

However, when you make a claim of an objective nature, such as about a scientific fact or an observable phenomenon, it is entirely different. If I say that Barack Obama was an ancient Assyrian priest then I will be ridiculing myself, as well as the spiritual tradition I stand for. This is precisely what Denita did – hence my protest.

I never said that anyone’s all beliefs were wrong. At best I can disagree, however, I often find that deep down we share more than we admit.

As for evolution, it is a scientific fact (whether you like it or not). But don’t take my word for it, look up any reliable encyclopaedia. Of course, you are free to disagree with facts. You can believe there was no evolution, the earth is flat and gravity is a myth. That’s called freedom.

Jag,

I think you may want to check and make sure that your grasp of English definitions are correct when posting something like “As for evolution, it is a scientific fact (whether you like it or not)”

the-o-ry  
Pronunciation [thee-uh-ree, theer-ee]

–noun, plural -ries.

1. a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena: Einstein’s theory of relativity.
2. a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.
3. Mathematics. a body of principles, theorems, or the like, belonging to one subject: number theory.
4. the branch of a science or art that deals with its principles or methods, as distinguished from its practice: music theory.
5. a particular conception or view of something to be done or of the method of doing it; a system of rules or principles.
6. contemplation or speculation.
7. guess or conjecture.

fact
Pronunciation [fakt]

–noun
1. something that actually exists; reality; truth: Your fears have no basis in fact.
2. something known to exist or to have happened: Space travel is now a fact.
3. a truth known by actual experience or observation; something known to be true: Scientists gather facts about plant growth.
4. something said to be true or supposed to have happened: The facts given by the witness are highly questionable.
5. Law. Often, facts. an actual or alleged event or circumstance, as distinguished from its legal effect or consequence.

It is still referred to as the Theory of Evolution, not the Law of Evolution. There has yet to be published proof of a species-to-species macro-evolution incident. All we have evidence of is micro-evolution adaptations within a species, so I fail to see where your definition of evolution is a proven, scientific fact.

Eric,

Excellent advice – thank you. Of course I am all for checking facts before posting them here. It would be disrespectful to spread unverified rumours, and I do realise that your time (and all other reders’ is precious.

In fact, I had checked my definitions before posting. Which is I called evolution a “scientific fact”, and not simply “fact” so as to clearly distinguish between what the word means in science and in popular language:

“Fact is often used by scientists to refer to experimental data or objective verifiable observations. “Fact” is also used in a wider sense to mean any hypothesis for which there is overwhelming evidence.”

“Evolution is a fact in the sense of it being overwhelmingly validated by the evidence. Frequently evolution is said to be a fact in the same way as the Earth revolving around the Sun is a fact.”

“Scientific theories describe the coherent framework into which observable data fit. The “theory of evolution” is the framework that best explains observed changes of species over time and best predicts the new observations that continue to be made in evolutionary biology and related sciences.

The scientific definition of the word “theory” is different from the colloquial sense of the word. Colloquially, “theory” can mean a conjecture, an opinion, or a speculation that does not have to be based on facts or make testable predictions. In science, the meaning of theory is more rigorous: a theory must be based on observed facts and make testable predictions.

In science, a current theory is a theory that has no equally acceptable or more acceptable alternative theory, and has survived attempts at falsification. That is, there have been no observations made which contradict it to this point and, indeed, every observation ever made either supports the current theory or at least does not falsify it by contradicting it completely. A revision of the current theory, or the generation of a new theory is necessary if new observations contradict the current theory, as the current findings are in need of a new explanation (see scientific revolution or paradigm shift). However, the falsification of a theory does not falsify the facts on which the theory is based.”

“The application of the terms “fact” and “theory” to evolution is similar to their use in describing gravity.[1]

The most obvious fact of gravity is that objects in our everyday experience tend to fall downwards when not otherwise prevented from doing so. People throughout history have wondered what causes this effect. Many explanations have been proposed over the centuries. Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein have all developed useful models of gravity, each of which constitutes a theory of gravity. (Newton, for example, realized that the fact of gravity can be extended to the tendency of any two masses to attract one another.) The word “gravity”, therefore, can be used to refer to the observed facts (i.e., that masses attract one another) and the theory used to explain the facts (the reason why masses attract one another). In this way, gravity is both a theory and a fact.

In the study of biological species, the facts include the existence of many different species in existence today, some very similar to each other and some very dissimilar, the remains of extinct species in the fossil record, and so forth. In species that rapidly reproduce, for example fruit flies, the process of change from generation to generation — that is, evolutionary change — has been observed in the laboratory.[19] The observation of fruit fly populations changing over time is also an example of a fact. So evolution is a fact just as the observations of gravity are a fact.”

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact)

I have used Wikipedia here purely because it is so easily accessible. You will find basically the same information in any other reference resource.

I will let you read the full article, as it is full of interesting data. Evolution is thus both a theory and fact. When we refer to the “theory evolution” we do not mean a conjecture or hypothesis, but an explanation of the observable facts of evolution (your definition 1. applies).

There are people like you, who do fail to see proof of evolution, however it is usually because they refuse to accept facts and prefer to deny them. I do recommend you do some more research in this field. I can provide useful links, if you are interested. Evolution has been proven over and over again, and has never been falsified. And the distinction between micro- and macroevolution is purely artificial.

Jag,

As I stated, there is yet to be a proven species-to-species evolution event. Until that is proven, I will be scientific in my skepticism.

I prefer to have proof instead of theories and conjectures before assigning something as law.

Please feel free to post concrete proof (not extrapolated theories) of a species-to-species macro-evolution event.

The “refusal to accept facts and prefer denial of them” argument could also be applied to you in both your beliefs regarding macro/micro evolution (especially in calling the distinction “artificial”) and your views posted above regarding the Bible.

You appear to be the closed minded one here. You have been stating that we (myself and several commenters) are wrong, while you hold the correct view. You have placed your views of evolution as Scientific Law instead of still being tested theory.

The articles you posted regarding evolution are nothing new to me. Those and others I have read and studied still fail to show a species-to-species event. The articles contain many “scientists ‘think’ this is what happened” statements but they cannot move evolution into a law of nature status.

I am not so arrogant and closed-minded that I would not completely rethink evolution if a species-to-species event is proven. Would you be able to be that willing to rethink your position if no species-to-species event is ever found?

Jag, before we get too far along and despite the antagonistic flavor in the posts due to the nature of disagreeing I appreciate what you add here. If for no other reason than sharpening my arguments and making me provide a foundation for what I believe. So thanks.

You are correct – my position is “just another position”. It is very arbitrary and very personal. And I find that by sharing our own different experiences of God we can enrich each other’s spirituality. I would love you to point out my “logical inconsistencies” so I can work on them.

Let me point you to the current edition of Philosophia Christi and the paper by Keith Yandell, “Religious Pluralism: Reductionist, Exclusivist, and Intolerant?”. He gives a surprisingly snarky (for a peer reviewed journal) refutation of pluralism. In short, everybody can’t be right when they make mutually exclusive claims. Take the divinity of Christ for instance. The belief of the Muslim and Christian differ on this issue. Both of them can’t be right. AND most importantly, what you believe about the divinity of Christ has ramifications to say the least.

What kind of God “reveals himself on the Bible”? The God of love that Jesus taught about? Or perhaps the one who ordered his “chosen people” to rape and murder neighbouring tribes? Or the one who took it in his own hands to drown the world he had created just because he changed his mind? Or the one who sent down bears to rip off a bunch of kids just because they insulted his prophet? The Bible speaks in many voices, and presents very different (and sometimes very personal) perspectives on God. And when we read the Bible, we all pick and choose (though only some of us are willing to admit it).

I’ve said this before but the places where I am uncomfortable with God I have found that I’m either overestimating my righteousness or underestimating God’s. I humbly submit that if you don’t think God had the right to flood the world, send in the bears, and rout the Canaanites then you are doing the very same thing as me, underestimating his righteousness and overestimating our own. The Bible says we all deserve death due to our sin. Anything that we get other than death is a merciful gift, but certainly not deserved. So we can’t say God’s not fair and just. So yes, all of those things you mentioned are perfectly compatible with the one picture of God as he reveals himself in the Bible (with the exception of rape because it’s not there, you’ll see God allowing men to take wives from a conquered people but don’t place your 21st c. ideas about women and marriage onto this specific command at a specific time for a specific people and make a broad generalization that God condones rape. I also don’t think you’ll find support for the idea that God flooded the world because he was fickle). Just ask Job about the righteousness of God.

I think this is good news for you (and all of us) and makes Christ’s atoning sacrifice essential to well everything and so much more glorious than just a watered down, pluralistic, foundationless faith!

Well Jag, I think Eric and Rob did a fine enough job that I don’t need to add anything.

Plus, you still avoided the dogma, which is what you have been operating from with regard to the theory of the origin of man, and interpretation of the Bible.

Eric,

You have asserted that you believe and that you value open-minded. I have decided to take you at your word.

If you are truly as open-minded as you claim to be, then you will honestly evaluate the plentiful scientific evidence for multitudes of what you have called a “species-to-species macro-evolution event”.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Please read the above link carefully. I believe that you will find an excellent summary of the evidence which you have demanded. If you really are as open-minded as you claim, then you will evaluate all of the evidence openly and honestly. Please examine it in the spirit in which you have urged Jag to examine his own ideas – I ask you to live according to the highest ideals that you, yourself, profess.

I appreciate your time and your patience.

However, if you are not about to examine evidence which disagrees with your views as carefully as you wish Jag to examine evidence that would disagree with his views, then you are being hypocritical and all of my words have been wasted on you. I hope that is not the case.

Eric,

A very good (though necessarily brief) discussion of evidence for evolution can be found at the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_evolution

Some time agto I was discussing the issue with a very nice and well-educated traditional Christian. When I asked him what proof he would require to accept evolution, he replied that we would have to be able to replicate the Big Bang and abiogenesis. I couldn’t believe it – Big Bang and abiogenesis have NOTHING to do with evolution of life on earth! If you clearly define what you mean by “species-to-species evolution event”, including definitions of all the terms, then I can try to show you the evidence you are after. For the time being, how about studying the evolution of the horse? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse

Then, naturally, I also wholeheartedly recommend the link so kindly offered by Teleprompter.

Would you care to point out what facts you think I am denying? Empty accusations are pointless.

Evolution is a scientific theory (=explanation of observable facts), which has been tested and validated (“proven”), which has predictive powers and which has never been falsified. What else would you require? How accepting this can make me narrow-minded? It’s not me who’s afraid of the facts…

Rob,

The way i see it, different spiritual paths are like different branches to the same tree, or different roads to the same destination. Some are better than others, but I do not believe in “one size fits all” solutions. One religion may work for you, another for someone else. None are perfect, they all contain good and bad elements. and purely because we cannot prove objectively which religion is “true”, we should respect them all and grant all people their freedom of religion. Last time there was an established “true” religion we had crusades, inquisition, and burning of heretics at the stake. Is that what Yandell proposes?

An omnipotent God can do anything. Send bears, floods and even Hitler. Thing is, the God I believe (after Jesus) in is no so much omnipotent as Love. This is the opposite of some features attributed to God in the Bible. If you believe that God is capable of attrocities, then you believe that God is not Love. If you justify some attrocities as God-sent, you can justify any others. Using you logic, perhaps Auschwitz and the Holocaust were God’s will too – who is to say?

I don’t think my innocent daughter deserves death. I do not even think that you or I deserve it.

Imagine Israelites murdering every man and child. Imagine them sliding their fingers into women’s vaginas to check for virginity. Imagine that your whole family is murdered, and you are only spared because you are a virgin. In effect, you are nothing but a sex slave. Are you saying this is not rape? Yet it is in the Bible, and apparently God wanted it… It is also in the Bible the God “regretted” created mankind. The good news is, those stories never really happened.

The way i see it, different spiritual paths are like different branches to the same tree, or different roads to the same destination. Some are better than others, but I do not believe in “one size fits all” solutions. One religion may work for you, another for someone else. None are perfect, they all contain good and bad elements. and purely because we cannot prove objectively which religion is “true”, we should respect them all and grant all people their freedom of religion. Last time there was an established “true” religion we had crusades, inquisition, and burning of heretics at the stake. Is that what Yandell proposes?

Jag, your different branches of a tree, different parts of an elephant, different paths to the same destination fails at a very basic level and is arrogant in that it assumes you have the best view of the tree/elephant/path.. I have explained that at least twice now but I’m sorry I haven’t done it better. Where they are mutually exclusive they can’t all be true. You are going to have to pick a team and not just root for the referrees. Let’s take the deity of Christ again. I think Jesus is God, a muslim does not. We can’t both be right. You can’t hold proposition “A” and “Not A” to both be true. You are thinking illogically. Please answer how you reconcile A and Not A both being true in your mind. And like I said what you believe about the divinity of Christ has consequences. Jag what if one day you hear “away from me I never knew you” What if your daughter hears the same because you gave her this wrong view of Jesus. Yandell’s paper points out this inconsistency in a formal philosophical manner. It has nothing to do with state sponsored or mandated religion. It is a logical proposition and a fairly basic one at that.

An omnipotent God can do anything. Send bears, floods and even Hitler. Thing is, the God I believe (after Jesus) in is no so much omnipotent as Love. This is the opposite of some features attributed to God in the Bible. If you believe that God is capable of attrocities, then you believe that God is not Love. If you justify some attrocities as God-sent, you can justify any others. Using you logic, perhaps Auschwitz and the Holocaust were God’s will too – who is to say?

NO! The Jesus of the bible believed in the God of the OT. On what do you base any other idea of Jesus if not the NT? You have made up a little j jesus by picking and choosing what feels good to you, but is that reality? Just because it doesn’t make sense or feel good to you doensn’t mean that it’s wrong. The Bible would even tell you that your heart is wickedly deceptive and you specifically shouldn’t trust what you feel. What you call attrocities God calls justice. Do you know why the Canaanites were punished by God? Do you know why God made the Israelites wait 400 years before giving the land of the Canaanites over to them? I believe the opposite, if God is not just then he is not loving.

I don’t think my innocent daughter deserves death. I do not even think that you or I deserve it.

Like I said you are overestimating our righteousness and underestimating God’s. God is so much more awesome than you think He is and by comparison we are “menstruatae”. Frankly I don’t think you can use the word Christian and think your sins don’t deserve a penalty. That is such a foundational, non-negotiable tenet of the faith. I wish we were neighbors because your view of God is going to take more than a comment section on a blog to dissect.

Imagine Israelites murdering every man and child……The good news is, those stories never really happened.

In fearful humility I offer that you have a twisted, incomplete, illogical, broken, destructive view of God. Which is exactly what we would predict if it was put together by an unregenerate sinful mind. Repent and throw yourself on the mercy of God. Ask Him to reveal himself to you. What you believe is not true, and there is truth.

Someone once said this, about interpreting scripture:

“It doesn’t matter what it means to you, the question is what would it mean if you weren’t alive? What would it mean if you didn’t exist? What does it mean PERIOD is the issue, not what does it mean to you.”

I had to go find it, it was John McArthur.

And now I’m qouting one of my favorite authors, Arthur Pink-

” The Lord’s command in Mark 4:24 is “take heed what ye hear”. Corrupt nature is thoroughly in love with error and will more readily and eagerly receive false rather than true doctrine. Should any dispute this statement, we would refer them to Jeremiah 5:31: “the prophets prophesy falsely and the priests bear rule by their means; and My people love to have it so”. Said Christ unto the Jews, “because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not” (John 8:45): what a commentary on fallen human nature – had He preached lies they would have promptly received Him.

Alas, what is man: he will run greedily after something new and sensational, but is soon bored by the old story of the Gospel.

How feeble is the Christian, how weak his faith, how fickle and unstable the moment he is left to himself. Peter, the most courageous and forward of the apostles in his profession, denied his Master when challenged by a maid. Even when given a heart to love the Truth, we still have “itching ears” for novelties and errors, as the Israelites welcomed the manna at first, but soon grew weary of it and lusted after the fleshpots of Egypt.

Real and urgent then is our need to heed this command,
“Beware of false prophets.” ”

Thought I’d be a quote dropper today. Not that I talk much anyway.

Great discussion. I’ve really enjoyed following it the last several days.

Rob,

Are you saying that different spiritual traditions do not have an awful lot in common? If they do, and I believe they do, we can focus on enriching each other rather than antagonising. Of course, in some respects there are big differences, and I am not saying that we should downplay them or pretend they do not exist. Let’s just start together and see if we can respectfully differ when necessary. Perhaps you are unable to do that? I, for one, prefer to look for friends, not enemies. And where traditions differ, it’s not only impossible for all of them to be right, but it’s also possible for all of them to be wrong. So don’t let’s assume anything before we start the journey. Therefore, even if the Muslim you mention may well be wrong, it does not entail that you are right.

I take full responsibility for my spiritual choices. If God were to reject someone for trivial reasons, then I’d rather NOT be with such an evil God. And, you missed something: please read the “away from me, I never knew you” in context – it does not refer to people who have “wrong” beliefs, but those who lead “wrong” lives. Likewise, I do not believe in God that punishes people for what they didn’t do but what their parents did.

You seem to be trying to scare me into what you consider to be the correct “belief”. I find it not only unconvincing, but also unbiblical. Where there is love, there is no room for fear.

Yes, Jesus did believe in the OT God. After all Jesus was a Jew, was brought up in the Jewish tradition and practised the Jewish religion. Having said that, which OT God did he really believe in? There are different perspectives in the OT. Even just in the Pentateuch, the God of the Yahwist source is very different from the God of the Elohist and the God of the Priestly source… In one OT book God establishes animal sacrifices and just loves the stench of burning flesh, in another It says It does not want them. So I guess Jesus did pick and choose (like we all do when we read the Bible), because his view of God as presented in the Gospel is very consistent, unlike the differing views of the OT.

If you really believe that God that orders rape and sexual slavery is good, then I really prefer not to experience such goodness. That God of rape is certainly not the same deity that Jesus taught.

I don’t think it is my view of God that is destructive. How is your religion supposed to appeal to anyone’s heart if all it has to offer is fear that God will kill your family and cause your virgin relatives to be raped in this life, and that in the next you will be BBQ’d for eternity? We have a major disagreement about what is non-negotiable and foundational in Christianity.

If my view of God is “twisted, incomplete, illogical, broken”, then how come you are unable to offer a consistent, convincing and logical alternative?

Jason,

If you ask what scriptures mean, then what methodology do you propose we adopt to investigate this? I am convinced that regardless what it is, we will rarely be able to decide beyond any doubt. As with any literature, sacred or not, ultimately what it means to YOU is all that really matters. But we should also ask what it meant to whose who wrote it, and the the original audiences it was written to. We all interpret text when we read them, and the Bibles we read are already interpreted for us by the translator. Unless then you can be a 5 century BCE Jew or a 1 century CE Christian, you can never claim what it “really” means, as all is subjective. I will give you an example. Paul mentions in his letters, just once, “baptism for the dead”. Hundreds of interpretations have been offered about what he was talking about. None of them absolutely convincing. And since we are not Paul or his audience (who must have understood what he was writing about), we will probably never know – unless we discover some extrabiblical source from the same period that happens to explain it tu us.

Of course, in some respects there are big differences, and I am not saying that we should downplay them or pretend they do not exist. Let’s just start together and see if we can respectfully differ when necessary. Perhaps you are unable to do that? I, for one, prefer to look for friends, not enemies.

Sure, but which one of us is being a friend? The one who says go ahead and play in the busy street if it feels good or the one who says look out busy streets are dangerous! I can respectfully disagree if you’d rather play on the swings than the monkey bars but truth and love require me to say something if you want to play on the ledge of a sky scraper.

If God were to reject someone for trivial reasons, then I’d rather NOT be with such an evil God….then I really prefer not to experience such goodness….

Can you see even a little of what you are doing here? You are trying to make the holy, righteous, perfect God who created you conform to what you think is good. Ask Job how it feels when He calls you on that. Again, you’re overestimating yourself. Read Mt 7:22-23, paraphrased “Lord we did all the right things. Away, I don’t know you.” Why was Jesus so hard on the Pharisees if moral behavior is what mattered?

You seem to be trying to scare me into what you consider to be the correct “belief”. I find it not only unconvincing, but also unbiblical.

I got a chuckle out of this. Why does it matter to you if what I think is unbiblical (it’s not by the way) when you dismiss so much of the bible. I dismiss the Latter Day Saints’ text but I won’t refer you to it to prove my point. If I was trying to scare you I’d tell you there is not a solution freely available to anyone who would believe.

I don’t think it is my view of God that is destructive. How is your religion supposed to appeal to anyone’s heart if all it has to offer is fear that God will kill your family and cause your virgin relatives to be raped in this life, and that in the next you will be BBQ’d for eternity? We have a major disagreement about what is non-negotiable and foundational in Christianity.

If this is all you think that orthodox Christianity has to offer than I humbly offer you have no idea what Christianity is. So what is non-negotiable in your version? So far it’s not the deity of Christ, his resurection, our fallen nature, his necessary atonement for our redemption, the unchanging nature of God…. anything else I’m missing? I’m wondering what kind of lyrics you sing in church. “Moderately okay grace, how fine (but not necessary) the sound, that didn’t really save as much as love a person that was pretty much okay to begin with like me, I wasn’t lost but found something that feels good to me, I was never really blind but now i see what i want to see.”

If my view of God is “twisted, incomplete, illogical, broken”, then how come you are unable to offer a consistent, convincing and logical alternative?

I’m not so vain to think that I, in my own power, can. But I think the authors of the Bible through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit do, and that’s what I’m trying to faithfully offer. Of course if your heart was unredeemed then we would expect the Biblical view of God to seem foolish and smell of death to you, right?. Do you not see the irony here? When I became a Christian after thinking I had been one for 20 years people were surprised to hear me say I hadn’t been a real believer because I lived a pretty moral life on the outside. BUT NOBODY WAS MORE SURPRISED THAN I WAS! I’m giving you the same advice I would give anyone, and that I needed and still need myself, throw yourself on the mercy of God and ask his Spirit to reveal himself to you as he really is.

“I’m wondering what kind of lyrics you sing in church. “Moderately okay grace, how fine (but not necessary) the sound, that didn’t really save as much as love a person that was pretty much okay to begin with like me, I wasn’t lost but found something that feels good to me, I was never really blind but now i see what i want to see.””

Rob…I am so very very glad I had finished my coffee before reading this, or I’d be buying a new keyboard!

@Rob: “I dismiss the Latter Day Saints’ text but I won’t refer you to it to prove my point. If I was trying to scare you I’d tell you there is not a solution freely available to anyone who would believe.” My friend, you’ve pointed out a very important logic. Well done, sir. Well done.

Now you’re getting it, Rob! That’s perfectly what I meant by respectfully disagreeing on occassions.

However, you are still (mis-)quoting biblical texts out of context and select those that suit you. Why ignore those that offer a different perspective? I just don’t cling to the concept of God created in our own image, of which even I (imperfect as I am) can say that it doesn’t make sense? You still did not offer any reason to believe in a God of attrocities, except for fear. Well, unlike you, I am not afraid. And I am prepared for the consequences. I do, however, believe that God is Love, and everything else needs to be interpreted in the ligt of this. I know many people who came across teaching and decided that if this is what Jesus is about, then it’s better not to be Christian.

Apart from the above (God = Love), yes, the unchanging nature of God is non-negotiable. Which is why the flood story (with God that regrets) must not be taken literally, just like the many miracle stories, simply because miracles are not something that we could observe today. And the idea of “orthodox” Christianity I presented did not come out of nowhere – I used to be in an “evangelical” church, and I also found it on this blog. Hell seems to be a favourite subject of evangelicals – scares the hell out of people, and makes them put a lot of cash in the collection box.

Seems like, church-wise, we have gone in different directions – me out of fundamentalism, you into it. I suppose we will have to agree to disagree. I do not see any reason to believe many of the things you believe. Most biblical scholars are on my side too.

Rob and Denita – Do you ever sing songs about Santa Claus for Xmas? How about Rudolph? OK, so you probably don’t, and you consider them to be pagan idols, right? But I will tell you something – I can sing about Santa bringing presents down the chimney without literally believing it. It’s part of my tradition.

However, you are still (mis-)quoting biblical texts out of context and select those that suit you. Why ignore those that offer a different perspective

ATTENTION Pot, this is the kettle…… I’m saying you need to take the Bible as a whole, you are discounting parts based on preconceived notions and making it subject to your feelings and reason. I’m going to get to use my new word for today, Eisegesis!

You still did not offer any reason to believe in a God of attrocities, except for fear.

I’m not going to agree that it’s a God of atrocities (because he’s not) but for the sake of argument I will say I believe in the God of the OT because Jesus did. And when you or your liberal scholars raise from the dead I’ll listen more carefully to what you say about the matter.

Most biblical scholars are on my side too.

Really?

Wow, Jag. Most biblical scholars?

Do you mean most Jesus Seminar “scholars”?

Exactly, Bob. Take the Bible as a whole. Where there are obvious disagreements, different perspectives and minority voices, please do not ignore them. The common fundamentalist method is to take 1 text that they agree with and then marginalise those that present a different view.

I understand that you now claim that the Nazi’s were God’s angels and Auschwitz God’s will – right? Because there is no big difference between what happened there and the biblical description of the conquest of Canaan. Luckily, there is no historical or archeological evidence that such a conquest ever happened, so I am glad it’s only a myth and no such God ever really existed.

Jonathan, forget The Jesus Seminar. I meant biblical scholars at large – regardless of denomination (and a vast majority of them are Christians).

Exactly …. The common fundamentalist method is to take 1 text that they agree with and then marginalise those that present a different view.

Do you feel like you are doing this with all of Jesus’ teaching on Hell just because you don’t believe you’re that bad and deserve it and therefore it wouldn’t be fair?

I understand that you now claim that the Nazi’s were God’s angels and Auschwitz God’s will – right? Because there is no big difference between what happened there and the biblical description of the conquest of Canaan.

Jag it’s obvious your well read and have been around the Bible, which makes this comment so much more disappointing. I’m not sure where to take the discussion if you really can’t see the difference between these two events. It seems so obvious to me. Just for the sake of discussion play devil’s advocate to your position and tell me why these two events have absolutely nothing in common with each other. Or tell me what you think I’d say and then what’s wrong with it. If you honestly can’t I’d suggest any basic treatment of the “problem of evil” for starters. I hate that these comments probably sound snarky but I don’t know how you reason with someone who says that black is white.

No, Rob, not at all, I am not doing that with Jesus. I am studying Jesus and have different sources to deal with. Unlike you, when I see different gospels presenting different perspectives on Jesus I do not have to pretend that they agree where they certainly don’t. When faced with an interpretation problem I use the best methodology I can come up with. I am not perfect or infallible in this, but I know my intentions.

I don’t take your comments as snarky. You may not notice that, but I take them very seriously, and I enjoy our conversation precisely because we often disagree. If I only ever talked to people who agree with me then it would not be so challenging. You make me examine my own beliefs and verify them, so I have to thank you for that. I am also learning how to present my own views and how to talk with those I disagree with. It’s priceless.

The only difference I see about the two events
is that the Holocaust is not in the Bible. I am certain that if it was, you would unquestioningly accept it as God’s will and wisdom that’s beyond yours. I certainly call white white and black black when I see it. Even though hardly anything is black and white, as we live in the world of a million shades of grey.

Jag, are you then referring to liberal scholars?

My favorite treatment on Hell and why it shows us the love of Jesus:

http://bit.ly/uwkaF

I think to dismiss it is to dismiss too much of what Jesus said and for poor reasons. I.e. out of the supposed contradiction that a loving God would not send anyone to hell.

and then

http://bit.ly/5RH7fE (.mp3, I tried to find the text but couldn’t)

WLC answers the question “Did God commit Atrocities in the OT?” He is speaking in general to the atheist argument so he says it at most undermines biblical inerrancy not the morality of God but then goes on to say he (WLC) doesn’t think it does that either.

I can’t say I’m completely comfortable with the idea. But, like I said when that happens I’m either overestimating my own righteousness or underestimating God’s. I also think you need to think outside the idea that this life on earth is all there is.

Jag-

Do you believe in Satan? This is not a loaded question, but I’m interested to know if you think there is an enemy of God and what you believe regarding the good vs. evil struggle.

Jonathan,

As it happens, liberal scholarship prevails in the academia; conservative “Bible Studies” are only taught in some denominational institutions and are not so much aimed at scholarly study of the Bible as at apologetics for s particular denomination. As an exercise, try to write down the names of notable contemporary biblical scholars, and then see how many of them will be liberals. Having said that, it is not really about who is in majority, but who has more convincing arguments. I did study the Bible as a fundamentalist for years, yet it only started to make sense when I changed the perspective to liberal.

Jason,

I believe that our nature is capable of both good and evil. “Satan” is a convenient “night language” for the dark side of our nature. Note that in the Hebrew Bible Satan (“accuser”) is an angel of God – if you read the book of Job, Satan visits the court of God, walks with God, and even makes bets/gambles with God. Perceiving God and Satan as enemies therefore has no biblical basis, at least not in the Hebrew scriptures. On the other hand, Christianity re-interpreted Satan and made it God’s enemy, but I do not see any reason to take this literally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satan

This is just one example how the Bible speaks in many voices, and how if we look for unity we are looking in vain and risk marginalising a perspective we do not agree with.

As it happens, liberal scholarship prevails in the academia; conservative “Bible Studies” are only taught in some denominational institutions and are not so much aimed at scholarly study of the Bible as at apologetics for s particular denomination.

This reminds me of people who ask for textual proof for Christianity outside of the Bible. The early church had all of the available documents and they took the earliest and most reliable ones and canonized them. You can tell they didn’t just cherry pick the stuff they wanted because they would have made themselves look better. So when you ask for extra-biblical texts, as if they would provide weightier proof without bias, you’re really asking for later, more questionable, and second rate sources.

The same thing would happen if you discounted every biblical scholar who was not in secular academia. You could make a case that everyone who believed the bible would also be an orthodox Christian and would rather spend their time studying and teaching in a Christian seminary or institution. Whereas people who didn’t believe in the bible would rather study and teach in a place where, for instance, their lives would not be judged against the bible. So by asking for non-Christian and secular scholars you might be selecting for people who are second best at interpreting the Bible. Especially if that whole third member of the trinity is real, you know?

If you think academia is a place of pure secular reasoning you need to get a graduate degree and teach in one. I can tell you they are full of attitude, bias, and pettiness which can often get in the way of truth.

Lastly in the area of philosophy, and specifically philosophy of religion, you are now seeing this tilt back from the secular running academia to Christian professors being given chances to write in major journals and be in editorships.

Rob, well said, sir.

Rob,

Weren’t you paying attention? Did I really mention any secular/non-Christian scholars?

There is no real acaddemic freedom in most denominational institutions. As a Pentecostal, you must accept the belief in glossolalia. If you are an Adventist, you must defend the Sabbath. Stop doing that, and you get fired (and probably “de-frocked” too). I can provide examples, if you like. Remember what happened to Hans Kung!

On the other hand, the best theology departments are at non-denominational universities. Take John Dominic Crossan, probably the best historical Jesus scholar today. He had to quit priesthood to keep his integrity – though he chose to remain a Roman Catholic. and those universities do educate priests, ministers and pastors. Generally of much better quality than those who only complete “Bible schools”.

Additionally, seminary teachers really preach to the converted. They do not encounter real challenges, and what they teach does not get critically evaluated.

Attitude, bias, and pettiness are present everywhere. Are you saying it is absent in your church? At least in the acaddemia it stands in the way of knowledge, so it is discouraged.
Are you suggesting that the third member of the trinity only speaks to those who agree with you, not all those who have good intentions? Interesting proposition, but it remains to be defended.

Luckily, Christian professors have ALWAYS published in major journals. It’s about whether you have something new to say, not what religion you are.

It’s very amusing to see all this debating going on by Christians. You’re using reasoning and logic to form arguments. Your reasoning is based around the very poor foundations of an ‘infallible’ book of course. In fact, if you were any good at logic and reasoning you’d be unable to continue believing your religion. You’d accept the undeniable truth that the lack of evidence makes the probability of your God existing so infinitesimally small that no reasonable person could continue to believe it.

Denita,
As for saying that my atheist ‘preaching’ is no different to religious preaching and my words could easily be replaced by Christian/Muslim/Jewish equivalents, this is clearly utter nonsense. The difference is that my words are based on logic, based on reason and based on evidence. This is what separates atheism from religion. You clearly believe in logic and reason as you are attempting you use both to form your arguments, however, you clearly don’t truly believe in them otherwise you’d be atheist too.

Isn’t it sad that all the major conflicts currently going on in the world are caused by religion. It fills me with sorrow to think that this ‘great’ species of ours is still so intellectually immature.

Enjay, you said, “lack of evidence makes the probability of your God existing so infinitesimally small.”

That’s an absurd, sweeping statement. What do you mean by “lack of evidence?”

Also, “all the major conflicts currently going on in the world are caused by religion.” Really? Another sweeping statement.

Besides, what do you mean by “caused by religion?” And does it not bother you that in the 20th century wholesale slaughter of the non-religious kind accounted for 40 to 60 million deaths?

I’ll agree with you that our “great” species is intellectually immature. But that includes you, too, bud.

Are you suggesting that the third member of the trinity only speaks to those who agree with you, not all those who have good intentions? Interesting proposition, but it remains to be defended.

No, the Spirit often corrects me (thank God!). I’m saying as a person of the triune God he cannot speak falsely so if both of us think he’s speaking through scripture in mutually exclusive ways, then one of us is wrong. So by extension the Muslim with good intentions is still wrong and not enlightened by the Holy Spirit. I also think you need the HS to interpret scripture correctly so non-Christians who do not have the indwelling of the HS might not be the best Biblical interpreters.

Take John Dominic Crossan, probably the best historical Jesus scholar today.

Jag, I cannot tell you how much this helps me understand your perspective! All the other things we’ve been dancing around and disagreeing about have their basis in 2 questions: Who is Jesus and are the gospels reliable historical sources of his life? If you follow Crossan’s theology then the answer to the first question doesn’t really matter because Jesus is nothing terribly special and the answer to the second is no the gospels aren’t reliable because they speak of miracles and offend our 20th century perspectives. But that any claim to miracle is false and that Jesus shouldn’t offend us and should be about what we think is important aren’t proof s but presuppositions. Ask yourself if Jesus offends you in any way. Is there anything Jesus does or says that you don’t like. If not, or if you believe Jesus saying these things was added later, myth, etc… then you have made him in the image you wish him to have and that is not reality. I’m not sure why you are proposing that Crossan and his beliefs are mainstream though? It’s not bad to be a fringe group. Jesus went against popular opinion but that doesn’t mean he was wrong. Revel in you minority-ness! But even liberal theologians think he’s way off base. I said a bunch of things without much evidence to back them up so let me give you a link to WLC doing it better than I could.

http://bit.ly/7wN9cf

I don’t know what kind of fundamentalist church you grew up in. I have no doubt that it was horrible. There are plenty of them out there that fit that bill. But don’t trade the real, powerful, holy Jesus that can redeem your brokenness in for a feel good, neutered, 21st century pleasing one. Maybe you will have another coming out from pluralism to authentic Christianity?

PS Enjay, where you been! You old Boltzmann brain you!

Enjay,

This is blatantly false:

“Isn’t it sad that all the major conflicts currently going on in the world are caused by religion.”

Earlier, I said that refusing to make the effort to inform one’s self for the sake of defending one’s beliefs is extremely dishonest and does much to increase my skepticism. Well, the same qualification applies to you as an atheist just as well as it applies to everyone else.

All the major conflicts currently ongoing in the world are caused by religion? How do you know? Religion may be a factor in many or most of the conflicts, but how can you honestly say that religion is *the* cause of every single one of those conflicts? You can’t say that honestly.

Enjay,

Thanks for your comments. I do agree with some of your reasoning, however you shouldn’t put all Christians in the same bag. Not all of us consider the Bible to be infallible or inerrant. And not all of us ignore reason, experience and facts.

Rob,

According to you a “Muslim with good intentions is still wrong and not enlightened by the Holy Spirit”. So God only love you and the likes of you, but hates Muslims, right? No matter how good-intentioned they are and how much they love God, God still hates them… What a strange kind of God you believe in. No wonder Enjay cannot make sense of your beliefs. I can’t either. Do we have to become like you before we can be enlightened? Have you taken a patent for the holy spirit?

You also have a lot of Crossan reading to do!
Start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dominic_Crossan
Whether you agree or not, you have to admit that he is an outstanding Christian theologian and historical Jesus scholar. If you claim that according to Crossan Jesus was not “special” then either you are ignorant or Crossan or distort facts (I hope for the former).

The gospels are the main sources to study the life of Jesus. Of course they are not 100% reliable! They were written generations later, not by eyewitnesses, include later interpolations and often reflect theology of the day rather than the times of Jesus. Moreover, they often disagree with each other. You really have to close your eyes not to notice that.

Which liberal theologians exactly think that Crossan is off-base? He is certainly not a fringe theologian at all.

Thanks for your link, but it only takes me to a page saying that I am not logged in. Dead end.

I really don’t feel broken, and I certainly don’t want to be neutered… and I do not see why what you present should at all be considered to be “authentic” Christianity. I see it more as a backlash against modernity, and therefore a totally modern invention (I know, how ironic!). As said before, your argument seems to be “believe like me, and then you will be enlightened by the holy spirit”. Well, I can’t because I find your reasoning totally inconsistent and unconvincing. Sorry… Looks like pluralism must trump after all.

What a strange kind of God you believe in. No wonder Enjay cannot make sense of your beliefs. I can’t either.

Then you don’t understand orthodox Christianity, which explains why you’re so against it. I didn’t make up the stuff about Jesus winnowing the wheat from the chaff, I’m just not throwing it away because it doesn’t fit my PC box I want God to live in.

You also have a lot of Crossan reading to do!

He is prolific! But his Jesus is not special because he was not the son of God, did no miracles, did not raise from the grave, did not prophecy or fulfill any prophecies (because that’ supernatural and there’s no such thing), did not live a sinless life as the propitiation for our sins, nothing to make him worthy of worship. Which he willingly accepts from people if you don’t throw those parts of the gospels away. To Crossan he’s just an itinerant Jewish rabbi . Crossan proves you can be smart and let your bias get in the way of the truth and completely blow it.

Which liberal theologians exactly think that Crossan is off-base? He is certainly not a fringe theologian at all.

Thanks for your link, but it only takes me to a page saying that I am not logged in.

Sorry for the bad link. Just for you I’ll stretch the copyright “suggestions” on Craig’s site. Here’s a link to a hosted .rtf file of the text from the page. Toward the bottom he lists the liberal theologians that think Crossan is more liberal. They actually put it more bluntly.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/jn0mo2uwuyy/Seminar.rtf

I look forward to your refutation of his argument.

As said before, your argument seems to be “believe like me, and then you will be enlightened by the holy spirit”.

This a reformed website so actually you’ve got the order reversed which is extremely important. We are so depraved in our fallen nature that we can’t believe with out the Holy Spirit.

As for pluralism trumping after all, tell me how the deity of Christ can be true and not at the same time, or read the text from WLC and respond to some of the arguments he puts forth. Tell me why WLC is wrong when he dates the gospel of Thomas in the 2nd century since it has gnostic language in it. I hear a lot of “you’re crazy and your idea God is evil” but not a lot of substantive thoughts or proof.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Rob,

I would really appreciate it if you used less name-calling (or none) and more substantial arguments… thanks! Instead of saying that I don’t understand orthodox Christianity (without defining orthodoxy) you could exxplain what you mean, then I could consider it and reply.

If Jesus to Crossan is no-one special, then how do you explain the fact that he remains a Christian and writes about Jesus, not about any old “itinerant rabbi”? Where do you suggest he is biased?

The new link you provided opens a text I am familiar with. There is hardly any criticism of Crossan from a liberal perspective in it (perhaps you can elaborate?). Worse, the text is very unreliable in claiming that Crossan ignores Paul. Any Bible scholar knows that the Pauline corpus is the oldest writings we have about Jesus – dating back to before the gospels were written. In fact, Crossan co-wrote at least 2 books about Paul: “The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon” and “In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom”. Talk about bias and prejudice! Crossan simply remembers that Paul, despite being early, was not an eyewitness and never met the historical Jesus (something fundamentalists ignore). For your information I will also mention that Crossan co-wrote “The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright in Dialogue” with an evangelical theologian N T Wright. Please note the title says “in Dialogue”, not “in Argument” or something like it, because even though the two have differing visions of Jesus, nevertheless they both know how to differ respectfully (which is a credit to N T Wright, as this is a rarity amongst evangelicals). Are you suggesting Wright would co-wrote a book with a “fringe extremist theologian”?

So now you claim we need the Holy Spirit to believe… if so, then can you explain why she is so selective and will not enlighten absolutely everyone? And why we are fallen/depraved? Anything we have done?

No-one can prove that Jesus is God. And no-one can disprove it. Apparently Jesus is not interested in intervening, because he is rather quiet. Therefore the question of his deity seems not to be of utmost importance (and the onus is on the supporters of the claim to prove it). Surely if God wanted us to believe something, she would provide some more undeniable evidence.

Not sure what WLC is, but if you provide their arguments, I promise to evaluate them and respond. As to the Gospel of Thomas, it is dated between 60 CE (roughly the same as Mark) and 140 CE (roughly the same as John, though a little later). Any reliable reference will provide arguments for and against either camp (compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas). If it was late, however, why would it give any special importance to James, who was then long dead? Either way, it is early enough to be included amongst the earliest sources to study historical Jesus. And as for gnostic language, there is a lot more of it in Paul’s writing, and in fact some scholars consider Paul to be an early precursor of gnosticism.

Demian,

What do I mean by lack of evidence? I’m not sure I can make that statement any more clear and concise but I will try – Please show us all REAL evidence that so much as hints at your God existing and being creator of the Universe. (Please don’t just refer to other things which themselves need evidence)

Major conflicts – To name just a few – Gaza/Israel, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, the current war on terror is regarded by many to really be a war on religion (although probably more specifically Islam). Go here for an extensive list – http://justsaynotoreligion.com/religious-wars/
Perhaps you’d care to point out a long list of major conflicts that aren’t religiously motivated?

I’ll say again – Why don’t religious people require the same kind of hard evidence for their religion as they would demand if they were accused of a crime they didn’t commit? There is no justification for this but feel free to try, I suspect you will not succeed (or, more likely, just ignore this part of my post).

Enjay, that’s not really an answer to my question…but I guess I didn’t really ask you a question.

Anyway, I understand where you’re coming from and share your dislike for popular circular proofs for the existence of God [a la "the Bible says it"] but cosmological…teleological…fine-tuning…you don’t find those to be at least plausible examples of real evidence?

Second, I don’t agree with you that those are religious wars. I mean Gaza-Israel is over land. Yeah, they use their religious traditions to defend their rights to that land…but so what? If they were using science to defend their rights would it be fair to call it a scientifically-motivated war? No because we both agree that hostile, extreme fundamentalism is wrong.

And then Afghanistan and Iraq? I truly don’t see how you can defend the notion that these are religious wars.

Enjay, listen, I understand where you are coming from and share your disgust that blood has been shed in the name of “Christ” or “Allah.” But repulsion or shock is not a critique on truth. Ever. You still need to demonstrate why it’s wrong.

I could trot out Hitler’s non-religious massacre influenced by Darwinian ideas and condemn the theory of evolution…but have I said anything successfully AGAINST evolution.

No.

I don’t like conflict of any stripe, so I back you in your noble pursuit to damn it…but never at the insistence that one strip themselves of their views in order to accomplish that goal. When we do that we become extreme fundamentalists ourselves.

Thanks Enjay.

Jag, I am sorry. I know it’s hard to read people’s tone with only text so where you heard me being a jack ass (and I’m not saying I wasn’t) I apologize. Where I come across as a tool bag in this comment at least know I am trying hard not to be.

By orthodox Christianity I mean the basics. Maybe better put as foundational Christianity. The things a Catholic, a Baptist, a Presbyterian, and an Anglican could agree on. If our beliefs are going to mean anything we are going to have to put some boundaries on them or the word Christian will not denote anything at all. If you want more detail then I’d offer the Nicene Creed or to a lesser extent the Westminster Shorter Catechism. When you said “So God only love you and the likes of you, but hates Muslims, right? No matter how good-intentioned they are and how much they love God, God still hates them… What a strange kind of God you believe in.” I responded that you didn’t understand orthodox Christianity because these two documents of basic Christian tenets don’t speak of a person’s intentions making them right with God but instead they speak of Christ’s necessary atonement for our sin.

If Jesus to Crossan is no-one special, then how do you explain the fact that he remains a Christian and writes about Jesus, not about any old “itinerant rabbi”? Where do you suggest he is biased?

By saying he remains a Christian I am referring to my quip above about how many legs a dog has if you call his tail a leg. I can call myself an African-American but I’m going to have to really twist the common and accepted definition of that term to make it true. I would say the same about Crossan. He has so redefined Jesus from who the church thought him to be for 1970 years that his definition of Christian is not typical or readily accepted and bears the burden of needing to provide extraordinary proof. I suggest he is biased in that (like that article suggested) he presupposes naturalism, uses circular logic to date Thomas in the first century and the other gospels later, and that Jesus must fit into 20th c. politically correctness (i.e. if Jesus makes exclusive claims about himself that must have been added later because that’s not PC). So I don’t mean it offensively when I say Crossan is not a Christian, I’m just saying he has such a different definition that you could almost call anyone a Christian by it.

There is hardly any criticism of Crossan from a liberal perspective in it (perhaps you can elaborate?)

Here’s the quotes I’m referring to: “Howard Clark Kee of Boston University hails this procedure as “a triumph of circular reasoning!”9 British New Testament scholar Thomas Wright says it’s like Winnie the Pooh following his own tracks in the snow around a clump of trees and each time he sees more tracks he takes this as evidence that his quarry is even more numerous and more real than he thought before!10 No wonder that the fellows of the Jesus Seminar haven’t been able to convince very many of their colleagues by means of arguments like this…… But in fact Crossan’s theory about the primacy of the Gospel of Peter’s account is virtually universally rejected by New Testament scholars. The prominent Canadian scholar Ben Meyer has called Crossan’s arguments “eccentric and implausible.”11 Even Harvard University’s Helmut Koester rejects Crossan’s reasoning as “seriously flawed.”12…….According to John Meier, a prominent American New Testament critic, the idea that the apocryphal gospels offer us new information about Jesus is “largely fantasy.”…….. Indeed, it is the Seminar’s claim to represent the consensus of scholarship that has really burned New Testament scholars. And I want to emphasize I’m not talking about the reactions of conservatives or evangelicals: I’m talking about the broad spectrum of New Testament scholars. For example, Howard Kee denounces the Jesus Seminar as “an academic disgrace,” and says that its conclusions are “prejudicial” and “peripheral,” not “a substantive development in responsible scholarly study of the historical Jesus.”

So there’s academic BU prof, a Canadian , and academic Harvard prof. all calling it implausible. Like I said I don’t think you need to apologize for not being main stream. Acceptance doesn’t imply veracity. You can say “most scholars agree” but their opinion doesn’t prove anything. Instead what matters is the evidence they base their opinion on. William Lane Craig (WLC) seems to do a good job of dismantling their evidence.

Worse, the text is very unreliable in claiming that Crossan ignores Paul.

He’s not saying that Crossan ignores Paul, he’s saying that Crossan ignores what Paul says about Jesus because Paul speaks of a supernatural resurrection. Again it’s his naturalistic presupposition.

I will also mention that Crossan co-wrote “The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright in Dialogue” with an evangelical theologian N T Wright. Please note the title says “in Dialogue”, not “in Argument” or something like it, because even though the two have differing visions of Jesus, nevertheless they both know how to differ respectfully (which is a credit to N T Wright, as this is a rarity amongst evangelicals). Are you suggesting Wright would co-wrote a book with a “fringe extremist theologian”?

William Lane Craig the author of the article I posted contributed to that book too. From the Amazon description: “Two of today’s most important and popular New Testament scholars, John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright, here air their very different understandings of the historical reality and theological meaning of Jesus’ Resurrection. The book highlights points of agreement and disagreement between them and explores the many attendant issues.” I’m all for engaging differing opinions (if that’s not obvious to others about you and I yet!). I just don’t think all of us can be right and it matters where we are wrong. I can love you in your wrongness. If we were neighbors we would cook out together and your kids would play on my trampoline. But I can’t say that where we disagree (about certain things) just doesn’t matter.

So now you claim we need the Holy Spirit to believe… if so, then can you explain why she is so selective and will not enlighten absolutely everyone?

Allow me to offer that the belief behind your question “why is she so selective” is that you believe we deserve enlightening/saving/loving. That God owes it to us. But that’s not faith by grace it’s faith because it is owed to me. To get further into that we are going to have to delve into man’s free will and God’s sovereignty which might be too much for a comment section on Demian’s blog. I would recommend a systemic theology text, my favorite is Dr. Grudem’s. It might help resolve some of the tension between those two ideas but honestly where man’s free will and God’s sovereignty collide I don’t know that I will ever completely understand even in heaven.

And why we are fallen/depraved? Anything we have done?

Here is another basic tenet of Christianity that I think makes a tail not a leg. From the fall in the garden (whether you believe it’s literal or metaphorical), to the Law, to the constant cycle of rebellion, repentance, and restoration of the Israelites, to the necessity of Jesus having to be born in flesh, live a perfect life, and die for our sins, to the restoration Paul groans for in his sinful self, to the promise that one day Jesus will return and create a new heaven and new earth….. the entirety of the Bible speaks to our brokenness and Jesus as the redeemer. It’s all one story. Check out this graphic showing all the cross referencing in the Bible. It’s hard to imagine it any more cross connected.

http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/bibleviz/index.html

You said earlier that you don’t feel broken. I humbly offer that we all do and here is a non-biblical, emotional way all thoughtful people experience that. There are things we do even though we don’t want to do them and despite knowing the consequences. That may be anger, greed, lust, selfishness, timidity, fear of man, etc…. That is your sin nature at work. As to “is it anything we have done” the answer is we are all born that way since Adam but I know you are not suggesting that you have lived a sin free life.

No-one can prove that Jesus is God. And no-one can disprove it. Apparently Jesus is not interested in intervening, because he is rather quiet. Therefore the question of his deity seems not to be of utmost importance (and the onus is on the supporters of the claim to prove it). Surely if God wanted us to believe something, she would provide some more undeniable evidence.

I think there is good historical evidence for the deity of Christ, mainly the gospels and the early church. That has been discussed ad nauseum on Demian’s Is the Gospel what the world really needs post. As to “she would provide some more undeniable evidence”, I think what’s there is pretty undeniable, God coming to earth con carne. A desire to see Jesus giving a high five to Moses embossed on the dark side of the moon (which would be awesome if it had three wolves howling at it on a t-shirt) seems like putting our demands on God more than humbly submitting to our creator and sustainer. As to whether he is quiet, I humbly offer that he is not to me and a multitude of others willing to take Him as He comes.

The reasons I think most NT scholars are okay with the Gospel of Thomas being non-canonical are listed in wiki article you posted. WLC’s argument against it are what I pointed out earlier, it assumes naturalism, likely has a later date and Gnostic influence, and has only found favor because it fits into a PC worldview.

How was that for non-jackassitude? I really do wish we were neighbors (and the house next door is a short sale!). Nobody else on the block likes to talk about this stuff .

Rob,

Thanks for your response.

I hope you are familiar with different Christian traditions. In Anglicanism, for instance, you have the “high” and “low” church, two different traditions, one Catholic and the other protestant. You also have fundamentalist and liberal Anglicans. There is not that much that Anglicans agree on – see what happened when they started ordinating women as priest, or, most recently, openly gay people.

Even if you stick to the New Testament, you will easily see how fragmented the early Christian community was. Just because Pauline writings take up most of the NT, we tend to assume that his tradition was the only one. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even dominant. What you like to call “orthodoxy” is derived from one of many early traditions, it just happened to become dominant when the Roman empire and Christian church joined forces under Constantine. He wanted his empire to be unified by a powerful religion, so suppression of minorities was inevitable, but it was mainly for political purposes. We can still differ in our views respectfully. According to the Book of Acts, the word “Christians” was given to the followers of Jesus, hence Christianity. Therefore what is foundational to Christianity is a recognition of Jesus as a messiah, no less and no more. I guess you and I can agree on that. Does it make us both orthodox? Those “unorthodox” have often been branded as heretics. Yet the word “heresy” simply means a way, a choice. We all choose and so we are all heretics. There is nothing wrong with that. I don’t care much if you call me orthodox or heretic – what I care for is a search for the truth and spiritual development. And this is precisely where I am now in my personal development. Who knows where I will be tomorrow?

And in fact, some time ago I read a book “Christianity for Dummies”. It was authored by 2 rather traditional theologians, who right in the preface admitted that the word Christianity didn’t really mean anything any more – or, if you like, it means many different things to different people.

As to creeds and catechisms, they have a limited usefulness. They try to capture in words our experience of the holy. But the holy cannot be contained in words, so as soon as you put out a creed, it is already outdated. Just like with the Bible, we should respect the creeds, but not let them limit us in experiencing the divine.

It appears that I do not agree with your idea of atonement. Would you care to explain what it means to you? I am familiar with conservative beliefs about it, but they do not make much sense to me.

Crossan indeed discovers new dimensions to Jesus. He is doing his work from within the church, though – and has not been excommunicated as yet! Maybe the church was wrong for centuries? Crossan claims in his “God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now” (2007) that “(t)here was a human being in the first century who was called ‘Divine,’ ‘Son of God,’ ‘God,’ and ‘God from God,’ whose titles were ‘Lord,’ ‘Redeemer,’ ‘Liberator,’ and ‘Saviour of the World.’” “(M)ost Christians probably think that those titles were originally created and uniquely applied to Christ. But before Jesus ever existed, all those terms belonged to Caesar Augustus”. His proposition is that the Jesus movement was egalitarian and revolutionary in opposition to the Roman tyranny and devoted to replacing the Roman empire with the “Realm of God”. Do you find it implausible? Are you still thinking that Jesus, to Crossan, is no-one special? And please, please, provide an example of his circular logic! As to the “exclusive claims” by Jesus, I think Crossan is right. They happen only in the gospel of John, which is the latest canonical gospel, and not really a biography but a theological interpretation of Jesus. In John Jesus does nothing but gives signs. But in an earlier Matthew the same (supposedly) Jesus refuses to give a single sign!

I did a quick search for the scholars you are referring to and failed to find any reference to them as liberals. Which makes me suspicious as to your article. Perhaps its author just did some “quote mining”? However, there is nothing wrong when scholars disagree. It is the only way to search for the truth – by exchanging opinions. You can easily find quotes from other scholars who will have opposite opinions.

Crossan also certainly does not quite agree with what Paul’s says about the resurrection on a literal level. He just knows that Paul never met Jesus and certainly was not a witness to the resurrection. Paul was a mystic, and struggled to express his experience using a limited human language.

Thank you for your quote from Amazon – it does call Crossan one of two today’s most important NT scholars. That was exactly my point when I mentioned his significance…

I do not necessarily belive that God “owes” us love. No, God already IS Love. It’s in the gospels. “so God loved the world”. Not just you or me, the whole world (presumably, Muslims included)…

As to the “fall in the garden” – are you saying you or I are responsible for it in any way? It is a metaphorical story attempting to explain why the world is imperfect despite being created by God. Reading too much into that text can be misleading. What do you mean when you say that Jesus “had to die for our sins”. Are you saying that God is a monster that requires cruel sacrifice and death? I can simply forgive my enemies, surely God is better than me? Is our suffering not enough? I certainly do not see Jesus in the Hebrew Bible, and the Bible is far from a single story. It chronicles the evolution of Yahweh from a Canaanite tribal god and partner of the female deity, Asherah, to a universalist, monotheist God of love. Jesus’ revelation of the holy is the latest we have in the Bible.

I had a look at your “visualisation” and, frankly, have no idea what purpose it serves. Please explain!

I am certainly not perfect, but no, I am not broken. Nothing in the universe is “perfect”, and nothing ever was. The natural state of things is constant change and evolution, which excludes any unchangeable “perfection”. What you call sin can easily be explained as instinctual and inherited from our pre-human ancestors. Anger can be wrong and it can be right. Is pain wrong? It is not comfortable, but it is opur body telling us that something is wrong and asking us to take care of it. So pain is not so bad after all.

Do you agree that Mohammed was the ultimate prohet of God? Because there is good historical evidence for it in the Quran and the early Islam… You know what I mean. I asked for tangible evidence. Any religion can make a similar claim as yours.

What I am suggesting is that God doesn’t mind how you imagine it and what names you give it. You can’t prove that the Bible is better than the Quran or the Mahabharata (and the other way round). Maybe it’s the same God revealing Godself to different people at different times? Or maybe it’s just our different experiences of the same God?

Well, I liked your attitude. However, I still suggest that we do not have to agree on everything. Just like we do not have to wear the same clothes and eat the same food.

Hi Demian,

Thanks for your polite reply, however, I never mentioned Iraq being a religious war and I agree with you that it definitely wasn’t – I think oil might have had something to do with it

I find the three arguments you mention for proof of God’s existence far from plausible. By definition a proof cannot be ‘plausible’ it must be TRUTH otherwise it’s not a proof.

The cosmological argument is flawed as it has the caveat that God does not require a first cause himself. It’s self-refuting.

The teleological argument is completely disproved by evolution. If a person thinks otherwise then they haven’t really grasped the concept of evolution.

The fine-tuning argument is refuted by the anthropic principle and also has the assumption that our universe is the only one that exists or has ever existed. If billions have existed/do exist then we are a statistical inevitability.

Also, it’s a common misunderstanding that Hitler wasn’t religious. In Mein Kampf he wrote “I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord..”

http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm

The fact that he was attacking just one flavour of religion (and not all religions) implies that the Jewish beliefs conflicted with his own religious beliefs. Hitler certainly wasn’t atheist and he most certainly wasn’t on some kind of Darwinian crusade.

Finally, your last paragraph, as I read it, says that conflict is justified provided the parties in conflict REALLY believe in their views? No matter how unreasonable and how unfounded their views are? Surely not. Perhaps I’m misinterpreting, but killing for an ‘idea’ with no hard facts to back up the idea can surely never be justified.

The cosmological argument is flawed as it has the caveat that God does not require a first cause himself. It’s self-refuting.

There are ways that the Kalam Cosmological argument can be questioned mostly dealing with what you believe about time and infinity but this is not the defeater you think it is. It just implies that the first cause is outside of time and space which God would be.

The teleological argument is completely disproved by evolution. If a person thinks otherwise then they haven’t really grasped the concept of evolution.

I don’t find this one as persuasive but offer to think bigger than evolution and natural selection. Consider our solar system. There is no natural selection in solar system creation. It is much more complex than a rubik’s cube but if you found a rubik’s cube on your desk you wouldn’t assume it didn’t have a designer. There is no natural selection in solar system creation.

The fine-tuning argument is refuted by the anthropic principle and also has the assumption that our universe is the only one that exists or has ever existed. If billions have existed/do exist then we are a statistical inevitability.

First since any universe outside of our universe science would have no way of testing or verifying so a mulitverse or multi world hypothesis is speculation and merely a reaction by people who seek to deny a beginning, cause, and design to the universe. Second this hypothetical mulitverse would also need even more remarkable fine tuning than a single universe so it is exceedingly improbable.

The great news about the much higher probability of just being a Boltzmann brain is that the whole universe really is all about you!

Jag, this will be my last comment for a while. Mrs. Rob, the Roblets, and I are going on a little vacay.

Just because Pauline writings take up most of the NT, we tend to assume that his tradition was the only one. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even dominant. What you like to call “orthodoxy” is derived from one of many early traditions, it just happened to become dominant when the Roman empire and Christian church joined forces under Constantine.

But. For a bunch of Jews to believe what they did about Jesus enough to die for it demands an explanation. The survival of the early church is highly improbable. One of the explanations that Christianity survived despite great odds has to be that it’s true and persuasive. I would argue that Constantine picked Christianity because it was popular not that it was popular because Constantine picked it. Just like the NT canon. The used and accepted books were canonized but the canonization did not make them accepted and used.

It appears that I do not agree with your idea of atonement. Would you care to explain what it means to you? I am familiar with conservative beliefs about it, but they do not make much sense to me.

I think a systematic theology text would be better here but in short. Atonement presupposes a just God. We could agree that God would not treat people unfairly right? My guess is that we’d disagree on whether we’ve done anything that deserves punishment. If we have then for God to be just we need to provide atonement or reparations to restore us. In sending Christ to be our atonement our sins can be imputed to him and we are restored. Like I said it deserves a lot more than that.

Are you still thinking that Jesus, to Crossan, is no-one special?

Yes in the sense that Crossan limits Jesus’ uniqueness to being only human. He didn’t do anything that somebody else could not have done. To do this he discounts the accounts of miracles, prophecy, and resurrection. Maybe you can help me understand why Crossan (and maybe you too, you haven’t said explicitly) assumes naturalism. Or better said prove naturalism because I think his case hinges on it and is why he (and maybe you) is so skeptical of the gospels claims. If there is a God and he created the universe surely he can perform miracles too.

And please, please, provide an example of his circular logic!

Here is Craig’s summary of Crossan’s logic in dating the Gospel of Thomas early:

1. The Gospel of Thomas is an early, primary source.
“How do you know?”
2. Because no apocalyptic sayings are found in the Gospel of Thomas.
“Why is that evidence of an early date?”
3. This is evidence of an early date because Jesus wasn’t into Apocalyptic.
“How do you know he wasn’t?”
4. Because the Gospel of Thomas proves he wasn’t.
“Why believe what the Gospel of Thomas says?”
1. The Gospel of Thomas is an early, primary source.

I did a quick search for the scholars you are referring to and failed to find any reference to them as liberals.

I was giving you academic scholars and a Canadian, I don’t know how much more liberal it can get . I guess it will depend on your definition of liberal. If Crossan is mainstream then, no I don’t know of scholars more liberal than that.

Thank you for your quote from Amazon – it does call Crossan one of two today’s most important NT scholars. That was exactly my point when I mentioned his significance…

The quote is from a publisher put on the back of the book they’re trying to sell. I won’t argue that they’re not both significant. One has stood the test of time a little better. I just don’t think they’re both right.

I do not necessarily belive that God “owes” us love. No, God already IS Love. It’s in the gospels. “so God loved the world”. Not just you or me, the whole world (presumably, Muslims included)…

Read the entirety of John 3. Jesus is saying he’s the only way. 3:16 makes us feel good but 3:18 is hard to get around with pluralism.

I had a look at your “visualisation” and, frankly, have no idea what purpose it serves. Please explain!

Each of the 63,779 arches represents a cross reference. It shows the interconnectedness and continuity of the Bible as a whole. Kinda purty ‘eh?

As to the “fall in the garden” – are you saying you or I are responsible for it in any way?

What you call sin can easily be explained as instinctual and inherited from our pre-human ancestors.

What you call instinctual I would call sin nature and agree that it’s inherited. I don’t think you’re responsible for Adam but even if not you have disobeyed God so are just as guilty.

However, I still suggest that we do not have to agree on everything. Just like we do not have to wear the same clothes and eat the same food.

I am skipping around here because I think we’ve gone over most of this before and I’ve got my mind on warmer weather but here’s my challenge to you.

1)Defend naturalism, since I think your non-miracle working Jesus depends on it.

2)Explain how I can believe that faith in Jesus is necessary for salvation and the Muslim can believe that’s not true and yet we’re both right as long as we’re sincere. Sam Harris is a Buddhist but he doesn’t believe in God. He and I can’t both be right. There are too many contradictions for them all to be true.

3) Where does Jesus disagree with what you believe? If he’s real you can’t treat him like a buffet or you’ll only pick the stuff you like and miss reality.

Hi Rob,

I am sure your whole family deserves some holidays. Enjoy.

I am not expert on Constantine, but as far as I know Christianity at his time was still a small minority religion, which until recently had been persecuted. Obviously he must have realised it had a potential, but was it truly “popular”? I am not convinced, will try to research this futher. Looks like you are discounting the story according to which Constantine had a dream before battle in which he saw a big cross and was told that under this sign he would be victorious – I thought you liked beliefs in the supernatural? Are you becoming a “naturalist” like me?

Why is survival of the early church improbable? And even if it is true, does improbable mean the same as impossible? Many minorities, religious and otherwise, survived all kinds of persecutions. It does not necessarily make them all true, though you are perhaps right about being persuasive. And you are certainly right about it demanding an explanation, whether supernatural or not. In fact, interestingly, Crossan well addressed this point in his writings. To save you time, here’s a link to an interview transcript. I find his arguments there very convincing and persuasive. This is certainly not a PC Jesus, but a powerful social and spiritual revolutionary:

http://www.findingmywaymovie.com/johndominiccrossan.html

As for the NT canon, it was a long process and there were many canons – the fist one being that of a “heretic” Marcion, and the gradual emergence of the “orthodox” canon being largely a reaction to Marcion’s. In fact, without Marcion we may not have had the NT canon, or it would have looked very different. It wasn’t until the reformation that the Roman Catholic church confirmed and closed the canon for good(even though Constantine played a role in it too), which was subsequently accepted by protestants as well, despite the fact that Luther had many doubts about such books as the Epistle of James or Revelation, which he considered to be apocrypha. Despite what you are saying, it was the canonisation that made some books read and used and others discarded, hidden or destroyed. Are you familiar with the Nag Hammadi library discovery? There are good arguments to suggest that the books were hidden by Christian monks from a nearby monastery. Despite beaing early Christian writings, those books fell out of favour once an “orthodoxy” emerged, established its own preferred writing and prohibited other book from being read and used.

What does a just God have to do with Jesus’ death? Are you saying that Jesus deserved to die? Or are you saying that it is just for someone else to be punished for another person’s crimes? Imagine that I commit an attrocity and am sentenced to life. Then you approach the court and ask to be punished so I can walk free. The court agrees. Would that be just? It would only be a triumph of legalism, because justice demands not that a punishment is meted out, but that the guilty person is punished and the innocent person is not. If I offend you in some way, I am sure you can simply forgive me without demanding something cruel and unusual (even the US constitution prohibits such things!). For someone else to be punished instead of me does not provide any real atonement and is not a reparation to the victims of the crime at all.

Rob, Crossan does not have a problem with Jesus being called the Son of God, or even God. He just asks that we understand those titles in their context. Maybe Jesus didn’t do anything that somebody else could not have done, but he did something that few even tried!

I hope I can explain why liberal Christianity embraces naturalism. First, we understand that the Bible was written in pre-modern times and uses pre-scientific language. As we are post-modern people, we must not overlook this fact, or we will be misunderstanding the Bible. When miracles are described in the Bible, it is often because its writers imagined God was that way. There is an obvious clash between the Bible, which is full of miracles, angels and God’s appearances, and our world, in which there are no such things. I believe that God does not change and is not any different from the God of thousands of years ago. It is humanity that changes, and we simply understand better how our world works and do not need to invoke miracles any more. Unlike our ancestors, when we hear a thunderstorm, we do not assume that gods above are angry and are throwing down fire to punish the mortals, because we know how atmospheric events work. When a tsunami comes, we are no longer saying that God is punishing sinners. So of course we see our world in a more naturalistic world. But does it mean that we are eliminating God from the world? No, I believe that we understand better what God is and what God isn’t. I do not think God acts through supernatural acts, but I do not have a problem seeing God in nature. When I see a loving person helping the disadvantaged and sick then this is the only miracle I need. I do not see the need to divorce God from nature. I think it is just as divine to see God act through nature.

On the other hand, you seem to assume a very particular God, very human-like, just more powerful. Some kind of a Santa-Claus figure, an old, bearded man who is sometimes jolly and sometimes angry. Someone who “creates” the world, takes a rib out of Adam’s ribcage and performs miracles. It would certainly be nice to have such a big daddy figure up in the sky, but is there any evidence for it? I’d say: show me your God and I will tell you what you are. I am not ignoring the description of God in the Bible that are consistent with your idea of God, it’s just that I take them as a metaphor.

You have provided an excellent example of circular logic. One problem – can you send a link to a text to show that those are really Crossan’s words? The lack of apocalyptic ideas is not the only argument for an early dating of the Gospel of Thomas.

The writers you referred to may well be “academic scholars” (can you be a non-acedemic scholar?), but I still fail to see them as liberal. But you are right – a lot depends on definitions!

Both N T Wright and Crossan realise that they can’t both be right. But the fact that they choose to engage in a dialogue is very encouraging to me.

I have read John chapter 3, and still maintain what I had said. The whole gospel is a theological interpretation, not a biography, and the words it puts in the mouth of Jesus reflect the theology of the time. It was written after Christianity separated from Judaism and the temple was destroyed. It argues that the Christian way is the new, proper way to God now, rather than the Jewish way. and what is the Jesus’ way to God? It’s the way through suffering and persecution, that is how you come closer to God. Of course it is a metaphor again, and does not mean that a Hindu must covert before s/he can experience the holy. This shows again how careful we must be when reading the Bible, and how important it is to understand the socio-historical context.

Of course the Bible contains a lot of cross-references. I never argued against it. It is bound to, as it comes from the same religious tradition, developed over centuries. But it also contains references (and quotes) to many extrabiblical sources, of which most have not survived. Does it mean continuity with those sources too? In a cultural context, yes, but it does not solve the problem that there are hundreds of internal inconsistencies and mutually exclusive information in the Bible. This can be explained when we realise that there were many authors and there was no (or little) ervision over what they wrote.

I am having problems following your logic. I have disobeyed God? When and how? This has nothing to do with being imperfect or failing to do something. To disobey someone means to be given clear instructions and then to transgress them. As far as I know, the Genesis metaphor does include the story of God instructing Adam, but I was never given any such instructions. there fore what exacly am I guilty of, why and how? And how about atheists – how can they disobey God if they don’t even believe in it?

I believe I explained your point 1. already. If you need more, let me know. I also think that it is supernaturalism that needs to be defended. Naturalism is something we can observe every day. How do you prove the obvious?

I am not sure how you understand salvation. But to assume that salvation (whatever it is) is only available to some Christians seems to me to be counterintuitive and illogical. It also certainly goes against the Good Samaritan parable of Jesus. I am not saying that being sincere equals being right. There are many sicere fundamentalists! But it is a requirement as without being open-minded you can’t explore the spiritual realm. What I am saying is that most dogma is impossible to prove and that what we do and how we live is a lot more important. The “truth” cannot be fully grasped and owned by anyone, and my claim is that your little bit is just as good as your Hindu neighbour’s.

As for your point 3, I would send you back to the above Crossan interview. I am trying to reflect Jesus’s ideas and translate them into the 21st century world. I may be doing it imperfectly, it’s not easy task, but it’s still worth trying.

Hi Rob,

Good post, you’ve got some nice answers, but I think will a little more work I can get past your arguments:

1. I have no issue with the first cause for our Universe being outside of our space and time but you’re still saying that an omnipotent being does not require a first cause. Something so advanced that it has achieved omnipotence, but somehow escapes the needs for a first cause. This is just completely nonsensical no matter which space-time continuum (or other continuum) it’s in. I’m not denying a beginning, just a beginning caused by something which clearly requires a beginning itself.

2. Your application of natural selection to the solar system is not justified. For an analogy to work the two systems have to be similar. You’re comparing what amounts to no more than rocks and gas clumps orbiting a star to living beings i.e. Life. They couldn’t be more dissimilar. Likewise, using the rubik’s cube analogy is just a variation on the Watchmaker proof of God – it assumes the Universe is similar to a watch (or rubik’s cube). They’re nothing alike.

3. A multiverse hypothesis is no more of an abstract idea than the idea of God is. A multiverse requires no fine tuning at all – there may be billions of ‘dead’ Universes as their initial conditions were not compatible with life – again just a matter of statistics.

As a true atheist I cannot and will not say that a God does not exist, given evidence I would change my mind in a flash (if I didn’t I would be a hypocrite). It is just undeniably unlikely that one does and even less likely that he’s the Christian/Muslim/”any other religion” God. What make you so sure your God is the true God?

[...] your answer to all this? I would love to hear. —Jonathan:: Subscribe via RSS ::Related articlesHell: What’s at Stake If We Neglect It? (fallenandflawed.com)Do Not Labor for the Food That Perishes (desiringgod.org) [...]

1. I have no issue with the first cause for our Universe being outside of our space and time but you’re still saying that an omnipotent being does not require a first cause. Something so advanced that it has achieved omnipotence, but somehow escapes the needs for a first cause. This is just completely nonsensical no matter which space-time continuum (or other continuum) it’s in. I’m not denying a beginning, just a beginning caused by something which clearly requires a beginning itself.

But if every explanation needs an explanation then nothing is explained. Luke Muehlhauser did this better than I can yesterday on his blog. Commonsenseatheism.com

2. Your application of natural selection to the solar system is not justified. For an analogy to work the two systems have to be similar. You’re comparing what amounts to no more than rocks and gas clumps orbiting a star to living beings i.e. Life. They couldn’t be more dissimilar. Likewise, using the rubik’s cube analogy is just a variation on the Watchmaker proof of God – it assumes the Universe is similar to a watch (or rubik’s cube). They’re nothing alike.

That’s what I’m saying exactly. I’m saying there is order and apparent design in our solar system where there is no life (and therefore no evolutionary forces). Like I said I don’t find it the most convincing argument.

3. A multiverse hypothesis is no more of an abstract idea than the idea of God is. A multiverse requires no fine tuning at all – there may be billions of ‘dead’ Universes as their initial conditions were not compatible with life – again just a matter of statistics.

I agree with your first statement but since a multiverse is forever outside the scope of science and pure speculation, which is not what science is supposed to be about, why pretend it’s science? And it’s not just that the universe or universes need fine tuning to permit life but that they need fine tuning to have matter and exist. Any theory that proposes a multiverse would also require fine tuning to produce the ensemble of universes. Lastly this is my jab at continually calling you a Boltzmann brain. In any world of a multiverse it is exceedingly more likely that you are just a self aware entity projecting the complex world you think you see around you than that the universe we see is really that complex. The odds are so great that it’s irrational to think the world around you is real in a multiverse.

As a true atheist I cannot and will not say that a God does not exist, given evidence I would change my mind in a flash (if I didn’t I would be a hypocrite). It is just undeniably unlikely that one does and even less likely that he’s the Christian/Muslim/”any other religion” God. What make you so sure your God is the true God?

Great. Just make sure you’re not requiring scientific proof for God. Science is a good tool for studying the natural world but if there is a supernatural it won’t be able to study it at all.

I don’t think there is proof for God in the sense that proof makes all other options inconceivable. But I do think there is Reason for God. Hey that would make a great book by Tim Keller that would discuss the flaws of the main arguments against God and provide a lay-level look at philosophical reasons for God. You could probably buy it off Amazon even. Or if you’ve got $160 to spend, the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. It’s a more rigorous look at the philosophical arguments.

For me the surety comes from the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. That sounds like mumbo jumbo if you assume naturalism (or haven’t experienced it) but if God exists then it makes more sense. So if I was trying to convince a non-believer I would use the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, the improbability of the early church, and the philosophical reasons for God we’ve bounced around here. Evidence is there.

Jag,

As for your point 3, I would send you back to the above Crossan interview. I am trying to reflect Jesus’s ideas and translate them into the 21st century world. I may be doing it imperfectly, it’s not easy task, but it’s still worth trying.

I may come back and tackle each of your points when I get back. I know what it takes to put that out there and I appreciate the effort and dialog. But, I’m finding there comes a point in a discussion where you get to the crux of what you disagree on and I think this sums it up. I don’t think it is wise to translate Jesus into our 21st century world. If he is who he claimed to be we should conform our world around him not the other way around. I think it take our cultural milieu and tries to make Jesus fit into it which introduces our wants and desires. If he’s not who he claimed to be than I’m not really interested in anything he said. Or maybe I’m no more interested in what Jesus said than Mark Twain. I am going to read the Crossan article, thanks for posting it.

ahhhhh! Blockquote fail!

Hi Rob,

Why do you assume a universe requires fine tuning just to simply exist? Any evidence for this assumption/requirement? Stephen Hawking put forward the notion of a quantum fluctuation sparking the beginning of the universe. With an understanding of Quantum Mechanics it becomes apparent that this is quite viable.

Again, you assume a multiverse if forever outside the scope of science. Why? What makes you so sure existence of other universes cannot be discovered? Do you have a PhD in theoretical physics perhaps?

You do seem to be clinging to this Boltzmann brain concept. However, this hypothesis completely ignores the possibility of a universe in which mechanisms exist that lead to the creation of complex structures. Surely you’re aware of this major issue with it and this alone relegates it to the ‘interesting idea’ arena.

As for inner witness of the Holy Spirit, perhaps you might consider reading Breaking the Spell by Dan Dennett.

What evidence for the resurrection of Jesus? Evidence most certainly is NOT there.

Finally…regarding philosophy, I think you’ll find that the majority of respected philosophers are atheist…I wonder why this might be?

I enjoy reading your posts, they give me an interesting insight. Thanks

Rob,

You made me think about naturalism. I decided to write a bit more about it, and from a slighlty different angle…

A few years ago the pope visited the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz. Most of the high-profile visit tool place in silence. When time came for the pope to speak to the officials and journalists gathered around him, he said that it was natural to ask where God was when Auschwitz happened. But even he did not have an explanation; he only begged God never to allow this again. This is quite typical of how the Catholic tradition deals with tragedies. Silence is offered instead of an answer, and then they go on living as if nothing happened. In the protestant tradition it is common to look for explanations which usually try to combine a biblical answer with a rational argument. I am familiar with both approaches, but they both don’t solve anything for me.

Not long ago we experienced the Asian tsunami. Just this week, we got the horryfying pictures from Haiti, where many thousands of people lost their lives. Can we reconcile this with an omniscient and benevolent God? Picture this. You are standing next to a busy street, and you see a young child running towards the traffic. You can see that only you can stop it from being hit by speeding cars. Can you afford to do nothing, can you not prevent the tragedy and still be called a good person? If you do nothing, will you later entertain your mates with the story, or will you live with guilt for the rest of your life? This illustrates an important point. Can there be a good and powerful God that does not act ecven though it can and allows tragedies to strike? There can only be one answer. If there is a God, then it is not benevolent, and/or not all-powerful. Perhaps God wants to prevent tragedies but lacks powers to do so. Perhaps God can prevent tragedies but chooses not to. If there is a God that “created” the world, then untimately the same God is responsible for it, and for all tragedies that happen – natural and (arguably) man-made too. If we accept a supernatural concept of God then we are making God a criminal. It is that God that needs redeeming, not us. To an atheist, there is a simple and logical explanation – there is no God. As a Christian, I must consider such a possibility too, of course, but I have more alternatives available. Traditional Christians often claim that they can find answers to all questions in the Bible. And the Bible does depict natural tragedies. Take the Flood. Take Sodom and Gomorrah. In those stories God inflicts tragedies on people indiscriminately, and slaughters women, men and children alike. I can easily imagine someone saying that this is the same thing. That God killed the Haitians. It is possible, and it does not go against the description of God we find in the Pentateuch. But it certainly means a God that is not Love. That is not a benevolent God and that God does not know mercy. I will therefore discount such an explanation, because I cannot worship such a god.

Enter naturalism. When we turn to the science of plate tectonics, we find an amazingly simple explanation. The surface of our planet is covered with a number of plates, which are not fixed and move. If you happen to be near where two (or more) plates meet, every time they rub against each other you will feel it. And Haiti happens to be in such a spot, and is therefore prone to earthquakes. This is a simple, convincing and well documented explanation that does not involve a supernatural God. This example shows how a natural explanation trumps a supernatural one. I do not know of a simple case where it would be the opposite.

The question is, does naturalism leave any place for God? I believe it does. It proves that there is no old, bearded giant living in the clouds, no father figure who punishes or praises us depending on what we do. This is the pre-modern picture of God created in our own image which is very child-like and it must go. Maybe it worked for ancient people, but it no longer works for us, no matter how much we long for it to be true. If we want to look for God, we must look elsewhere. God does not act in supernatural ways. As someone said, we may not be able to see God anywhere except in the actions of other people. God does not act through miracles that break the laws of nature. God acts through you and me. Jewel put it beatifully in one of her songs, which I find to be no less inspired than the Bible – “we are God’s hands”. We are called to be God’s hands and eyes and God’s words too. The real miracle is the love we can give and receive. Waiting for God to come and fix the world is futile, because that is not how God works. If you and I do not do God’s work, it will never be done.

Rabbi Hillel was a contemporary of Jesus, and his interpretation of the Jewish scriptures was similarly liberal. According to a story, he was asked to summarise the scriptures while standing on one leg. Hillel took the challenge and said something like that: “Love God and others. Everything else is just a commentary”. He was right on target in extracting the true “word of God” from the Bible. If I were asked to explain what God I find both in the Bible, and outside it I would offer a similar answer: “God is Love. Everything else is just our fallible interpretation”.

Now if you assume a God that is capable of supernatural acts then this is a very extraordinary claim. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Or blind faith. I will look forward to seeing your extraordinary evidence.

As for Jesus, we are all translating him into 21st century. Crossan is inviting us to understand Jesus in his socio-historical context first, before we attempt the translation.

Please also provide any evidence about who Jesus claimed to be (but NOT what his followers claimed him to be). It could be enlightening to both of us.

Why do you assume a universe requires fine tuning just to simply exist? Any evidence for this assumption/requirement? Stephen Hawking put forward the notion of a quantum fluctuation sparking the beginning of the universe. With an understanding of Quantum Mechanics it becomes apparent that this is quite viable.

The most popular candidate for a World Ensemble today, the inflationary multiverse, does appear to require fine-tuning. For example, M-theory, the theory which supposedly governs the multiverse, works only if there are exactly eleven dimensions—but it does nothing to explain why precisely that number of dimensions should exist.

Again, you assume a multiverse if forever outside the scope of science. Why? What makes you so sure existence of other universes cannot be discovered? Do you have a PhD in theoretical physics perhaps?

Because science is the study of the universe. If it is outside of our universe then it would not be observable. i.e. If we can see, smell, taste, touch, bounce beams off of it then it’s in our universe. Multiverse is conjecture. And no, even though I have a degree in physics and a doctorate but they are not one and the same.

You do seem to be clinging to this Boltzmann brain concept. However, this hypothesis completely ignores the possibility of a universe in which mechanisms exist that lead to the creation of complex structures. Surely you’re aware of this major issue with it and this alone relegates it to the ‘interesting idea’ arena.

No I get you. I’m just saying with the fine tuning required to create the universe (or multiverse) as you see it it is much much much more likely that you are just a brain (complex structure) projecting the rest. It’s every bit as logical as a multiverse.

As for inner witness of the Holy Spirit, perhaps you might consider reading Breaking the Spell by Dan Dennett.

Maybe. If he’s anything like the other “new atheists” I will find him ‘meh’.

What evidence for the resurrection of Jesus? Evidence most certainly is NOT there.

See whatever post me and James W hashed this out after. I think it was letter to a skeptic. Let me know if you have any questions.

Finally…regarding philosophy, I think you’ll find that the majority of respected philosophers are atheist…I wonder why this might be?

Sure, but most universities are secular environments so it’s not surprising. It wasn’t always that way. Colleges used to be Christian institutes. More shocking is that fraternities used to be the same way. Also specifically with philosophy of religion you are seeing the tide turn and more Christian scholars are being given top notch positions, having papers printed, and being given editorships.

From January’s Portland Monthly Magazine

Marilyn Sewell (Unitarian minister): The religion you cite in your book {God is Not Great}is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

Christopher Hitchens: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

MS: Times change and, you know, people’s beliefs change. I don’t believe that you have to be fundamentalist and literalist to be a Christian. You do: You’re something of a fundamentalist, actually.

CH: Well, I’m sorry, fundamentalist simply means those who think that the Bible is a serious book and should be taken seriously.

That’s one of the reasons [there aren't many, by the way] I like Christopher Hitchens: he calls your bluff when he sees it.

Thanks Rob.

Personally, I totally agree with Marilyn Sewell.

What a surprising coalition: militant atheists and religious fundamentalists unite to decide who is a Christian and who isn’t? Well – I’m a middle of the road person. Extremists and absolutists scare me.

Rob – what did you think about my defence of naturalism?

Jag, I appreciate the effort it took to put that together but…

If we accept a supernatural concept of God then we are making God a criminal.

I think your defense of naturalism stems from your misunderstanding of the problem of evil and desire to create a God that isn’t holy but approves of the things that you approve of. I also don’t think you grasp the full range of consequences of such belief. I’m still not clear what a naturalistic God is. Sounds like a square circle to me. You seem to be describing a non-interventionist God who didn’t create and order things the way they are, doesn’t interfere or interact with the universe in any way, and isn’t in dominion over everything. What you’re left with is the ideas of men and whatever they can figure out and make for themselves which would be on the same level as fairy tale. I guess that fits with your pluralism but I don’t know how that fits any definition of God if it’s man-made, man-defined, and man serving. Do you pray to this God? Do you worship it? If so, why? When you say the sincere Muslim goes to heaven what is heaven? Who created it? Who made it good and who decides that sincerity gets you in if there’s nothing supernatural?

I humbly offer that you’ve rationalized a natural, little g god (which I’m still not sure what that is other than just an idea in men’s heads) based on some improper logic and presuppositions. But if there’s nothing super natural in the universe and your faculties of reason and logic are just the product of time, chance, and breeding proclivity then you have no reason to trust your reason and logic. You might as well trust your sense of humor or esthetics as they are products of the same. To me that makes no sense at all.

So I went back and answered your question I think, at least as best as I can understand it. So here is mine. I can name dozens of places where I think God could have done, made, or been better according to me but I submit my desires to His. Where does your idea of God disagree with you or does he capitulate on all points?

Rob,

It all goes down to admiting that God is beyond our understanding. God is bigger than our language and escapes definitions. What might help is to see what other words people use for the same thing: the holy; love; spirit, and the like. It is much easier to see what God isn’t than what God is, but I don’t want to go too far into this and sound negative. I do not have a problem with admitting that I cannot grasp or posses God – no-one can! It’s just that some people fool themselves. Like the Nazis whose soldiers had belt buckles pronouncing “Gott mit uns”. God as a being external to the world, interventionist and supernatural could only exist if it was not good – or not ONLY good. That’s what the ancient Hebrews originally believed. In Genesis God is responsible for good and evil, and I can quote almost ad nauseam from OT where it says that God creates both good and evil. The ancient Hebrew religion was monistic. Where “Satan” appears, like in the book of Job, it is another of God’s attendant spirits, a courtier who can do nothing without God’s permission, and who walks and talks with God. It was only after the Babylonian exile that the Hebrews borrowed the concept of devil from Persian Zoroastranism. Since then, God was only good and Satan bad – and Christianity further developed this syncretic idea.

By recognising this we see how our ideas develop, and how it makes sense to take them metaphorically rather than dogmatically. The concept of the devil was just a new theory at the time that helped people explain evil. But we do not have to remain at that stage if we can find a better explanation, which I believe we can.

A non-theistic God DID NOT create – it always creates. Always interacts. But does not invade the world from time to time breaking the laws it had previously established. Imagining God as a king and lord is creating a God in our own image. It is historically conditioned, invented when people did have lords and kings they were required to bow and kneel before. We live in a totally different world, no-one requires you to kneel and neither does God. Which does not mean that your whole life cannot be a prayer and worship – just a different kind, more spiritual, more mystical, less rigid. We do not have to imagine God the same way as our ancestors did.

The God I embrace is not man-made. It is the kind of God we do experience every day. But we do not experience the kind of suernatural God that the Bible depicts on a literal level. I am sure you did not personally meet such a God, or its angels, because it was only a mataphor anyway. Instead, I believe in a God that – like Paul says – we live in. We are thus part of God too.

Here’s one more thing to show that the Bible is not to be taken literally – did you know that in the Bible God is a supermurderer compared to humble Satan:

http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/rook_hawkins/biblical_errancy/3582

Where does your idea of God disagree with you or does he capitulate on all points?

or does this mean that’s impossible

We are thus part of God too.

It does make sense if you think you’re God that you could interpret scripture anyway you want.

Rob,
Being part of a car (say a screw or transmission belt) does not equal being the whole of a car.

It doesn’t make you the car designer, builder, or mechanic either.

Jag, you still haven’t answered where your God disagrees with you.

I’m sure you can see my point that a God that lines up with you and your biases perfectly might run the risk of being a Stepford God, created by you but not discovered in reality by you.

If he doesn’t disagree with you on anything maybe you could explain why it’s reasonable and good that God agrees with you on everything.

Thanks

It certainly doesn’t make me more than a car part. But then I never claimed anything else.

I like your Stepford God idea, so I will use it a bit now. It can certainly be applied to most religions, especially to the Christian “orthodoxy”. God doesn’t have to agree or disagree with me; my idea of God (or yours) is not God – it’s only our idea of God. It’s a spiritual metaphor/model through which we personalise and domesticate what is beyond our cognitive capacities. To some extent it is like a “theory of God”. First we observe existing beliefs about God and evaluate them. We keep the ones that agree with experience (NOTE: not with what we like), and discard what’s absurd and against common sense (not: what we dislike). Then we propose a new hypothesis. Where it fits our spiriual experience, we keep it until better understanding arises. What needs to be amended is amended. As you see, most religions start with unproven dogma first and then employ countless apologists to prove the dogma. My idea goes against this trend. I don’t want a God created in my image. Not that I wouldn’t want a Stepford father figure in the sky who answers my prayers. But I want a God that can be believed in an experienced. The process I described may seem quite naturalistic, and perhaps it is, but it is also deeply spiritual, as it required constant spiritual development. And it is certainly more difficult than the feelgood fast-food type Stepford religion offered in most “orthodox” churches.

Of course I have my biases, but like I said I can differentiate between God and my idea of God, and I have devised a process that helps me deal with my biases. The process itself is subject to revision and improvement.

Still trying to get to the bottom of this.

So where does your “theory of God” disagree with you? Where does it make sense that God is one way but you wish he was another?

I would wish for an interventionist God, for example, who I can ask for miracles. Who will eventualy invade the world and make everything perfect. Is’t that also the traditional view of the “orthodoxy”? But wishing doesn’t make it so. It simply ain’t gonna happen. God won’t do God’s work FOR us, because God only works through us.

As you see (again) there is no need for the theory to disagree with me. The theory is not dogmatic – it can be adjusted and fine-tuned.

And the encouraging thing is that it is not just my theory. What non-theistic theologians propose is very close to this.

Thanks Jag, I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that I think that makes no sense at all.

How would you label your beliefs? A pantheistic, unitarian, deist?

I humbly offer that if you would read the Word as it presents itself that you’d be in for an overwhelming does of Good News.

I am not quite surprised, Rob. What matters is that it makes sense to me and enables me to grow spiritually. I am glad that we do not all have to believe and worship the same way. It would be boring. I am all for freedom of conscience and religion.

I am not sure what you meant by your last sentence, but if it means what I think it means that you should know that I already know it.

Jag & Rob,

I’ve enjoyed watching this interesting discussion unfold, from your two standpoints both very different to mine.

I have a question for Jag, though.

Based on a few things you’ve said:

By recognising this we see how our ideas develop, and how it makes sense to take them metaphorically rather than dogmatically. The concept of the devil was just a new theory at the time that helped people explain evil. But we do not have to remain at that stage if we can find a better explanation, which I believe we can.

and

But we do not experience the kind of suernatural God that the Bible depicts on a literal level. I am sure you did not personally meet such a God, or its angels, because it was only a mataphor anyway

and

Here’s one more thing to show that the Bible is not to be taken literally

I don’t see how you can claim that the supernatural occurances in the bible are metaphors. I can understand people assigning them to myth, where the events didn’t actually happen or are exaggerated versions of what happened.

Moses didn’t claim that the ten commandments are symbolic for something greater. He claimed that while up on the mountain he actually met god, who physically wrote them.

The Israelites escape through the parted red sea cannot possibly be a metaphor – it was either a supernatural occurrance or it didn’t happen.

Unless I misunderstand you, perhaps you are claiming that they are both myth and metaphor (am i right?). In that case, I don’t see the value of them as metaphors if they are myths. If they are not from a real god, they are no better source than myths from any other civilisation.

James W,

Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

My claim is that the stories of the Bible are not to be taken as history, but metaphor – or myth, if you like. Please note that this would not be the colloquial meaning of the word “myth” (something untrue), but the meaning used in social sciences.

Start with Genesis, for instance. There was no eyewitness at creation. Like some people say, if there were TV news cameras rolling, would they record 7 consecutive days of creation? I don’t think so, and I find clues in the text itself: Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 include two different descriptions of creation, which on literal level are contradictory. We know from Bible scholarship that they come from different traditions. Take the story of the tower of Babel – symbolically powerful, yet literally complete nonsense. We know from linguistics that languages are not static, they change all the time, and language families can be traced to common ancestors. New languages arise through isolation, not supernatural miracles. Not to mention that it is not possible to build a tower that reaches up to God!

Finally, the 10 commandments – if they were to be taken literally as given by God on stone tablets, wouldn’t we have a consistent set?
As it happens, we have 3 different sets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_commandments

The one from Ex 34 is the oldest, and it was modified significantly by tradition, note how the sabbath commandment has no explanation and how it doesn’t even specify which day is holy (Ex 34:21) – any seventh day would do. A later tradition (Deu 5:15) linked the sabbath to the Egyptian exile period (itself a myth, since there is no evidence of Israelites inhabiting Egypt and escaping from it). Still a much later story (Ex 20:17) justifies the sabbath with the story of 7-day creation, introduced probably as late as the Babylonian exile. Isn’t the text tring to tell us something here? What is the real reason to celebrate Sabbath?

By the way, there is no evidence of Moses claiming anything. We do not even know if he really existed. What we know is that the Pentateuch was not written down until more than 10 generations after the supposed time of Moses Of course, the oral tradition was much older, and this explains why we have doublets and triplets – because stories were changed over time and it wasn’t until they were put in writing that they became unchangeable scripture. And yes, the crossing of the Red Sea (or, probably more correctly – The Sea of Reeds) did not happen, just like the Exodus, conquest of Canaan and empire of Solomon never occured.

You are correct – those stories are not in themselves better that other tradition’s stories. The only difference is that those stories are from our spiritual tradition. There are endless analogies between Jesus and Budda, for instance – not to mention Mithras, Horus and other religious figures. Which to me proves that all religions are just branches of the same tree.

In fact, myths are much more powerful than historical events. An even happens once and never again. Myth is something that ALWAYS happens.

James, great questions.

Jag: do social scientists lump fairies and dragons into “myths?” Is any myth just as good as the other? If so, why? And how do you tell? How do you separate religious myths from fairy tales?

This is probably no secret, but I’ve got a problem with the notion that you would be your “faith” into something that’s metaphorical and symbolic. I don’t know, maybe you’ve got good examples of how this works out in the real life, but if I was going to devote my life to something…I don’t want it based on a fuzzy concept or sliding scale or flat-out fabrication. I don’t do this when I fly an airplane or depend on a paycheck or marry someone, so not comfortable doing it here. Curious: Are you comfortable with it? If you are, that’s cool, cause I guess some people can live without that kind of certainty.

Demian,

In sociology, “…myth is defined as a story that is important for the group whether or not it is objectively or probably true. Examples include the death and resurrection of Jesus, which, to Christians, explains the means by which they are freed from sin and is also ostensibly a historical event. But from a mythological outlook, whether or not the event actually occurred is unimportant. Instead, the symbolism of the death of an old “life” and the start of a new “life” is what is most significant. Religious believers may or may not accept such symbolic interpretations.”

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion)

To answer your question then, fairies and dragons can certainly by myths – if you find a community to which those stories are important.

Social sciences analyse myths. They even compare myths for similarities and differences. But what they do NOT and CANNOT do is decide whether one myth is BETTER than others. That is not in the domain of sociology, though it surely is in the domain of theology.

I understand that you have a problem with uncertainty. But when you fly somewhere, what guarantee do you have that you will reach your destination? Some people don’t, despite paying a full fare! Yet plane crashes don’t stop others from flying. When you get married, what certainty do you have that the relationship will last till you die? Or that your partner will be faithful to you? None. You simply take a leap of faith. You assess fares and airlines, and you assess potential partners, then you go for what appears to be the best. sometimes you trust your head, and sometimes your heart. Well – it works the same way in the spiritual realm. We simply choose the myths that appeal to us the most, or accept the ones we inherited. To me, the heart of Christianity is the golden rule – love for what’s around us, God and others. I can guarantee you that if you follow this rule, then even if you die and there happens to be no afterlife, you will not be disappointed. To me this is much more than a fuzzy concept. And I can live with the uncertainties that remain, because somehow they are no longer so important. Thing is: whe we reach beyond what’s material and tangible, suddently everything is metaphorical and symbolic. It must be – since we do not know any experience of it, how can we even have language to describe it?

Jag, I hear what you are saying and agree that in the end we can only talk about things like heaven and God in metaphorical language, but that doesn’t make those things metaphorical or symbolic.

They are rooted–concrete–in reality. We hope.

And yes, we may be flat out surprised how wrong we are when we die about lots of things…and I’m okay with that…but it’s one thing to say we can only “think” of these things in metaphorical language and quite another to say these things are metaphorical.

Which brings me back to myths.

I appreciate the sociological understanding of the term, but are you saying myths aren’t rooted in reality? I’m a junior shrink, so correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t myths usually grow out of something historical?

Demian,

I guess nothing comes from nothing, so most probably every myth has roots in something historical, like you say. After all, there must have been a reason for the myth to arise. Thing is, when we analyse myths, we don’t do it to find out what was historical and what not, but to find out they myth’s universal meaning and application. This is why, like in the definition I quoted above, whether a myth is based on a historical event or not is immaterial. Also note that, unlike written, codified scriptures, myths are revised by every generation, so it is relatively easy to make them universally appealing.

As to the rest of your post – I totally agree with you. I think it goes to prove the point I always try to make – which is that despite superficial differences, deep down “all is one”. Including in the spiritual world.