I will focus on the necessary points of clarification.
If you want me to come back to something, let me
know.
First, I dont have a double standard with Herodotus
and the Resurrection. The resurrection is attested to
by each of the Gospels, by Pauline epistles, and other
epistles, moreover it is attested to by the reality of
the continuance of the Church down through history
from the Easter proclamation and the experience of
Christ in the lives of countless Christians over two
millenia. There are mutiple indicators for that
event.
I only used Herodotus as an easy example that some
things are reported as "history" by ancient writers
that do not seem to fit our preconceptions well or
that are readily believable to us. That does not mean
that they are false. My point is, even if small parts
of a recollection may be inaccurate, the recollection
as a whole may still be accurate.
I think the point where we differ is how successfuly
the Bible, sans the Church, is as an apologetic
device. I tend to think in this age of cultural
relativism the battle over authoritative texts is lost
as an opening into why something is true. That is
simply how a large segment of society is, if you say
that someone or something says something is true, they
will reply "so, what?"
> One thing which I think comes into play here is that
> you are working
> strictly within a Judeo christian set of
> assumptions. When you have worked
> around the world, as I have, both living and
> traveling to various places and
> seeing other cultures, you realize that your
> personal set of assumptions my
> not be true.
I am not this culturally myopic, I understand this.
It is because I understand that Judeo Christian
assumptions do not hold that the OT cannot be relied
upon as authoritative as an apologetic. I think it is
important to try to correct people's misunderstandings
of what Genesis, for example, means (thanks to YECers)
and thus think the kind of thing you are doing is good
in that regard, but that is my point throughout. You
disagree with YECers interpretation of Genesis. You
still say, Genesis is true, even though the YECer
version is false. You thus have a hermeneutic that is
not scientifically based. You are trying to reconcile
an interpretation of Genesis with science (which I am
not saying cannot be done). But that reconcilliation
differs from other reconcilliations (YECers). Why
should your interpretation be considered right?
BEcause it agrees with science? Maybe you are being
deluded into doing that because you want to continue
to believe? (I am not actually saying that that
statement is true, I disagree with YECers and if you
are going to go through Concordism exercises, then you
have done a very fine job.) I just doubt whether it
will be persuasive to those outside the Judeo
Christian tradition who may view it as ad hoc jiggery
pokery, because the likes of Asimov have already
debunked all the Genesis "myth" in the prejorative
sense. That is my point. There are lots of attempts
at doing this, and who is right, you, Duane Gish,
Schroeder?
> Assumptions in the US
> (especially among evangelicals) about such a society
> would believe that
> there would be crime in the streets and a society
> falling apart. That isn't happening.
I tend to think this is due to the residual of Judeo
Christian ethics that underlies society.
I actually feel safer here than in the
> US. What I say above is
> looking at the higher level assumptions you have,
> which is that Christianity
> is correct and therefore all we have to discuss is
> the finer details of
> Christian theology.
That isn't the case. I am not big on too systematic
of a theology for reasons I have already said. I
think a lot more good would be done in protestant
circles by focusing on the mystery of God, rather than
trying to define God. I forget which of the Church
fathers said something to the effect of everyone who
prays is a theologian. It is the personal experience
of God that helps us understand the meaning of our
life, rather than propositional logic statements about
him.
> whole wider world of
> possiblities.
Having had a keen interest in comparative religion and
mythology from my youth, I am well aware of the wider
possibilities.
> Now, this you need to explain. In normal views of a
> non-divine creation,
> the vacuum seems to be the underlying substrate out
> of which the universe
> arises. Or maybe the branes in the most recent
> theory du jour. Whatever
> this substrate is, did God create it? If he didn't,
> then it is co-eternal
> with God or co-created with God. If God did create
> it, then I see no room
> for it NOT to be ex nihilo.
Well, panentheists would argue that whatever it is is
an essential part of God, thus it would not be created
ex nihilio but out of God's being. The shape that
universe takes would be marked by divine providence
and choice, but not the substrate of the universe
which is part, but not the sum of God. I do not
describe myself as a panentheist, but this seems a
plausible non-ex nihilio beginning that is still
dependent on God.
> I agree. Once again, you are assuming that I fit
> into some Platonic
> idealistic mold out of which concordists are
> stamped, fully formed all with
> the same set of beliefs.
I do not assume, I simply want to make certain that
you aren't. Again, the question that recurs -- as a
general question -- whose concordism is right, and how
should I judge between concordist views. All I am
saying is that for those outside the tradition,
concordism can be lumped together as an exercise in
the futile. Why should I believe YOUR interpretation
of Genesis? (And I am not saying I don't.)
> Want to discuss Wheeler's
> ideas of pre-geometry?
Sure. I do not underestimate you in the slightest.
Really, I don't.
> It goes back to something a
> YEC friend once told me (not everything YECs say is
> false). He said, if God
> can't be creator, how can he be savior.
In my middle age, I am now constantly wary of such
propositional logic statements about God. Heck, even
when I was in high school, I realized that the mistake
everyone made in dialogue with Socrates was accepting
his premises. :)
> If God has no power,
> then how can he have power to raise Jesus from the
> dead?
You are making a logical leap about God having no
power. An interesting thing that you do not address
here is something that scientist-theologians like
Peacocke, Polkinghorne, Barbour, Russell, et al. have
been examining, the causal joints through which God
may work. After all, at some point you have to
address Hume's (mis-)characterization of what miracles
are, even in concordism.
> Then I think both of us would agree that God's
> sustanance is not testable
> and not scientific.
It is not testable. Not everything that is scientific
is testable (string theory, Hartle-Hawking, Tegmark's
all possible worlds exist argument, etc. in
cosmological physics alone are not currently or in
some cases ever testable). You can say does the
universe have characteristics one would expect if
divinely endowed.
> But I would contend that part of caring about people
> SHOULD be the concern
> that they find the truth, both morally and
> theologically.
Yes, but not necessarily scientifically. As Rustum
Roy commented about the discussion of God in cosmology
-- what a small God that is -- the Creation event in
and of itself is of little meaning to the average
person in their daily life. It is the God who is
involved in daily personal life in what is meaningful
to people that is worthy of worship, not a deistic
God. Quite frankly, the workings of theoretical
science (as opposed to applied technologies) mean very
little to most people in their daily life.
On a totaly tangential note to this, if you have read
Origins, that set of interviews with cosmologists, I
was frankly shocked and a little horrified by some of
the responses that came from some of these folks.
Several were of the variety, "of course life is
meaningless and purposeless, meaning and purpose are
naive anthropomorphisms. The universe is absurd,
EXCEPT for the study of physics, which really makes
life worthwhile, and I don't know how other people can
go through this meaningless existence doing jobs that
don't matter like being lawyers or growing food".
While that is a pastiche of the response, it was
certainly the upshot of a good dozen or so
cosmologists, at which point you have to feel sorry
for the degree to which they have become myopic and
narrow and only find meaning in what they do and
reject meaning in much of anything else. Talk about
delusion, those answers seem to me more deluded than
the worst of the "wish fulfillment" attacks on
religious belief.
=== message truncated ===
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