glenn morton wrote:
>
> George wrote:
> > I have said many times - including the sentence immediately following the
> > statement you just caricatured - things such as
> >
> > "History is important - we can't claim that Christianity would be true
> even
> > Jesus never lived or if he died in bed at a ripe old age."
>
> But you pick and choose what history you think is important.
> We can't have some history be important and other history unimportant just because it fits
> our theological perspective better that way. If Scripture does teach false
> history, then we should know about it. To allow the Bible to be true while
> teaching a false history seems absurd in the highest to me.
If the historicity of the crucifixion isn't more important than that of, e.g.,
the Noachic frood then the Christian church has had its priorities messed up for the
past 2 millennia.
> > You keep misrepresenting my view as a rejection of all historical
> evidence. I wish
> > you'd stop it.
>
> No I don't. I wish you would listen to what I am saying. I place the
> emphasis on the word 'all' in the above sentence. You don't reject ALL
> historical evidence
What you previously said in characterizing my views was, "As it is what I see
being offered is a baseless faith based on faith alone--no evidence please, just
believe!" _No_ evidence.
> but you do reject MUCH historical evidence. You can't
> have a true book teach falsehoods. Period. And you keep saying it isn't
> teaching the whole truth. That is why you think I misrepresent your position
> because you give lip service to some parts of the history being actual fact
To say that I "give lip service to some parts of the history being actual fact"
means that I don't really believe that the things I say are actual fact - such as the
crucifixion - are factual. I trust that you're just using the phrase "lip service" in a
sloppy way.
> but then always allow other things not to be true and then say the Bible can
> be true even if it teaches untrue things. If it teaches falsity, then
> logically it is false. You feel that some subjective lessons you can extract
> from those historically false stories makes it ok for those stories to be
> false. (And I am not talking of the parables so let's avoid that
> red-herring.)
This is your old blindness to the possibility that accounts which are not
"history as it really happened" can convey truth. I guess you have finally been
convinced that parables don't have to be historically accurate, but you apparently still
think that an account has to have a flashing neon sign saying "parable" or "poetry"
before you'll consider the possibility that it shouldn't be read as straight historical
narrative.
But you practice your own selectivity with Gen.1. Your "days of proclamation"
view (which I don't consider a terrible interpretation in itself) is manifestly
non-historical.
>
> > > THat can only be debated if one thinks that Jehovah's revelation from
> the
> > > beginning to the end is true.
> >
> > You have it backwards. How we decide whether Yahweh's revelation is true
> is by
> > evaluating the understanding (by which of course I mean more than just
> intellectual
> > correlation of facts & theories) it provides of life & the world.
>
> And this illustrates why I find your position untenable. If we don't
> evaluate it based upon objective, historical fact then we are evaluating it
> based upon what we feel, or upon 'auras' that we see around it, or simply
> because our parents taught us that it was true and our parents could never
> lie or be wrong about such a matter. Bahai, Islam, Shintoism, Buddhism etc
> all provide an understanding of life and the world--they are just different
> understandings. Why should anyone accept the assumption that the Christian
> understanding is the true understanding? A Bhuddist can say: " How we decide
> whether Buddha's revelation is true is by
> evaluating the understanding (by which of course I mean more than just
> intellectual
> correlation of facts & theories) it provides of life & the world."
>
> The muslim can say:
> How we decide whether Mohammet's revelation is true is by
> evaluating the understanding (by which of course I mean more than just
> intellectual
> correlation of facts & theories) it provides of life & the world."
>
> The Bahai, the Hindu, and the animist can all state the same thing with
> straight faces.
> Everyone can play this meaningless game of
> my-religion-has-the-true-understanding-of-life. Give me evidence that
> Mohammet is wrong--objective evidence. Give me evidence that Christianity
> isn't wrong--objective evidence. But don't tell me that God inspires
> falsehood. If he does inspire falsehood, then IMO he is not to be trusted.
Again I emphasize that historical evidence is relevant to conversations with
people of other faiths. But like it or not, the issues that I pointed out are going to
be a critical part of any such conversation. Present your historical evidence for OT &
NT to a knowledgeable Muslim & he will cheerfully agree with a great deal of it & reject
a few critical parts, such as the death of Jesus on the cross. & because of his
theological presuppositions you're not going to make any headway against his arguments
unless you deal with his theological presuppositions which influence the way he
evaluates historical sources. _A fortiori_, you're going to make no progress with a
Buddhist by arguing about history - as I noted earlier.
The procedure I'm suggesting is actually quite similar to what one does in
physics. Again I refer to the paper I gave at last summer's ASA meeting, which I can
now say is to be published, deo volente, in the Sept. _Perspectives_.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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