On 10/13/04 1:39 PM, "ed babinski" <ed.babinski@furman.edu> wrote:
> ED: There is an old non-Christian parable that suggests God is like an
> elephant but people from different religions are like blind men touching
> the elephant in different places and trying to describe the entire
> elephant as merely one part of the whole animal's anatomy. One feels a
> leg and says an elephant is like a tree trunk, another feels an ear and
> says an elephant is like a fan, another feel's its trunk and says an
> elephant is like a snake. Is that what you mean by saying that Muslims,
> Hindus, Buddhists, and the like, "experience God differently?"
Yes. One Sacred Being, but many portraits -- each incomplete and less than
wholly accurate -- each portrait having been crafted by creatures with
limited knowledge and a particular cultural history. I think the children's
book, Old Turtle, by Douglas Wood, conveys the idea well.
> ED: You mentioned the time being wasted defending "unrealistic claims"
> about the Bible's revered text. But are you willing to specifically name
> any "realistic claims" of specific events written about in the Bible,
> i.e., specific events whose "reality" you are willing to defend based on
> standards of modern science and history? What is your view say, of the Red
> Sea being parted, or the resurrection stories in 1 Cor. and the Gospels?
I'm not interested at the moment in particular biblical references. The
"unrealistic claims" I spoke of were unrealistic claims about the nature of
the Bible made by people today (the Bible is scientifically correct; the
Bible anticipates the idea of biotic evolution; the Bible is historically
inerrant; statistical cherry-picking proves that the Bible was verbally
inspired, etc......).
Howard
Received on Thu Oct 14 15:23:55 2004
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