Glenn Morton wrote:
> ....I know this, he simply came to beleive that Christianity wasn't
> true. For us to place other motives into people, motives which they
> don't say is IMO a way to solve a real problem we have without
> really solving it.
Once again, it would seem that a major issue is faith. We have to
`trust' that the apostles were telling the truth, we need to `trust'
that the prophets where making an intuitive leap of understanding when
they wrote their message, and we have to `trust' that all the
troubling things mentioned in Joshua, parts of the pentituch, and
kings and chronicles have some bigger picture to them. Although the
book of Joshua was probably written boasting about what was done, I
find it quit sickening myself. It would be fairly easy to tip the
balance and say that this was human enterprise, rather than see it in
a long historical picture about the growth and understanding of a
people in a relationship with God.
I would say we need at least two things.
(1) A much better metaphysics. I don't say that `facts' alone will
help the Christian message. At some point, one has to take a stand,
and wrestle with it. However, `facts' can help affirm our faith.
Unlike what Prof. Haas' book states, i.e., that there are few
instances where we come in contact with people bent on destroying our
faith as scientists, I find the situation quite the opposite. I think
that landscape has changed drastically, and it is quite easy to get
mobbed by a group now. [Mind you, these are often the same people who
(in the same breath) criticize the Spanish Inquisition and other mob
brutalities of Christians as the `disease of religion'.] I have even
been called 'irrational' simply for confessing that I believe in God.
How can anyone possibly be so brazenly cock sure about what IS, is
quite beyond my comprehension, yet that is the world I must function
in now as a scientist.
(2) We also need to recognize that this finally falls on `faith'. Are
we worshiping Glenn's Ugabooga god,
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/199911/0062.html
or are we worshiping a real God? How can we be unassailably sure that
this is not the Ugabooga god and we are simply deluding ourselves. We
(as Christians) have adopted a world view (in the final analysis, on
faith and faith alone), and with it comes a lot of ethical foundations
(divine command, for example), that are quite different from what can
ultimately come from a rational athiesm (individual egoism, for
example).
It is clear to me in the end of it all, that human beings are so
driven by their own madness, that they would even kill God (and negate
that God's existence in the process) to follow out thier own deluded
plans. Place me in the lot with the fools who said "crucify him", and
the cruel thugs would tacked on a sign saying "This is Jesus King of
the Jews", that I may understand just how far down I have fallen and
how far away I am from understanding who God really is. In this way,
and only this way, I can begin to understand what it takes to rise
above these things. To repent from following a multitude to do evil,
and to have courage enough to stall a mob on the path to doing evil.
In Grace and by Grace alone we do proceed.
Wayne
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