I had replied:
>>Yes. Exactly. But this is an argument as to why intellectual frameworks
should not be used to motivate faith. Our frameworks are unreliable.<<
And you responded:
> I think it is an argument that we should be less attached to our theories and
> not so unwilling to change our minds in light of new data. ... But I
> fail to see how I could possibly believe in a religion which required me to
> believe that the sky was pink with purple polkadots. My reason and
> observation would make me wonder if that really was the true religion. Faith
> in a wrong object does not do us any good. The question is how does one
> determine what the correct object to have faith in is?
If believing in Christ required you to believe something that was not true,
then there would be a problem. But that is different than having to believe
something that does not *appear* to be true, or that by some standard does
not appear reasonable. Such belief is faith.
Jesus *said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed?
Blessed {are} they who did not see, and {yet} believed." [John 20:29]
> Evolution is not contrary to His son, although lots of believers believe it
> to be. The issue of creation / evolution does have less to do with what we
> believe about the son.
Yes, so evolution is not contrary to faith in His son. Yet you were saying
that some have lost their faith over the issue. I think their faith was
in something other than the Son. To say it again: we don't need to resolve
questions like evolution/creation to have faith, *if* that faith is based
on the Son.
> It does have a lot to do with what we think of God's character,
I don't see why it should. What difference would it have made if
God had created life through (seemingly) indirect processes?
> the Bible itself
But the Bible has so little to say on this topic, and what it does say
is quite ambiguous. The only conflict is when Science enters in and
says that science is all there is (yet science is not even *about* truth!)
> and how God deals with the world.
In particular, how we view His dealings with us *is* critical, and derives
from whether we really *believe* upon the Son (Matt 25:24-27). If a belief
in evolution leads to a world view that says God is unwilling to intervene,
and that we are directly subject to the elemental principles, and not to
God, then we have accepted a form of religion, yet denied the power of it.
I don't know that this view is any worse than the view that God is angry,
just waiting for an opportunity to bring judgment. Both views contradict
*my* understanding of what He is like.
...
> No, while all that is true, what bothers me is that we christians who worship
> the Creator of the Universe, greet each new scientific discovery about that
> universe as if it had the power to disprove the existence of the Creator
> Himself!!! This strikes me as very odd; that we are afraid that the data from
> the creation will disprove the Creator
My pet peeve is Christians who view each new scientific discovery, or
political trend, or technological advance as validation of their faith
in Christ. We should not be looking to *external* witnesses. Period.
The Big Bang, world governments, banking computers, mideast politics,
social depravity, and whatnot are not important reasons to believe that
Christ is true.
***
You didn't seem to appreciate the OJ example, so let me pick on the
woman politician in Utah who has decided her husband was a lying thief.
She has apparently done so feeling that there is all this incredible
evidence proving that he was a fraud.
The same situation occurs with Christ. People start to present us with
evidence that He is a fraud. Do we stand by Him or bail?
How about the woman in Washington whose husband was convicted of
poisoning her with tainted tylenol to collect insurance? She chose
to stand by him (for quite a while, at least).
The point of these analogies (as well as OJ) is not that the evidence
in their cases is not correct, but that it offends our minds to
consider standing with somebody in light of seemingly overwhelming
evidence that they are a fraud.
To stand by someone in circumstances like that is faith. Sometimes
faith is vindicated, sometimes it is not. But my faith says that,
unlike in some of these human examples, my faith in Christ will *never*
be disappointed.
This doesn't mean that *I* won't be disappointed however.
I have believed in Christ. I believe that He is good, and kind, and
trustworthy. Now suppose that people start to present me evidence
that contradicts that view. And further suppose that some of their
evidence has validity, i.e. because I had inaccurate views of what 'good'
and 'kind' and 'trustworthy' actually meant. The choice is to stand
by Him or bail. Having stood by Him, I *do* have a conflict because
I didn't understand these qualities. But having chosen to stand, I
have to be willing to just rejoice in My heart even though my mind
doesn't understand. Eventually my understanding of 'good', etc, will
grow and the conflict will be resolved. At which point I will be
terribly glad that I didn't bail. (This is a description of a type
of testing of faith that is common, e.g. Deut 8).
The above is what happened to me when I first read the old testament
after having been a believer for some number of months. I met a God
who didn't seem at all like the Jesus I thought I had seen in the
new testament, yet Jesus was supposed to be the exact representation
of His nature. Ultimately I started to understand that my views
of Jesus were too limited by my perceptions of 'good', etc.
But I have also seen another type of response amongst some of my
brothers and sisters in this same circumstance. Rather than let their
understanding of 'good' grow, they have tried to warp the old testament
to fit their limited view. I don't particularly mean those who adopt
heresies about two Gods, but rather those who build philosophic castles
about `ultimate good' and the like.
***
Another tack:
When I was first a believer, I didn't understand what was the big deal
about the faith of Abram. He sure seemed to waiver in unbelief when
he twice tried to deceive about Sarai being his wife. Finally it dawned
on me that faith is most significant when it is unusual. It is relatively
easy to believe the same thing as everybody else around you. But it is
truly remarkable when *nobody* else agrees with you, and all the
circumstantial evidence is contrary.
Most of us don't have much real faith. We mostly believe what is popular
within our own microcosm. Move us to another, and we are incredibly
adaptable.
Most believers who are *sure* evolution is false do so based on the
interpretation of the Bible that is popular in their subculture.
What I think happens to them when (if) their faith gets shaken
by a broader scientific view (e.g. your geology) is that they find
themselves in the midst of a new subculture, and end up having to
choose.
If they reject the beliefs of their previous associations, they may also
reject Christ. This means that they believed in Him as part of a package,
rather than a personal faith. This is why I think we should not package
faith in Christ with anything else. It must be able to stand when
all else fails. When the refining fire comes and our faith is in complete
conflict with our subculture and all `natural' indications are contrary,
we may continue to believe.
This is the faith of Abraham. He believed that God would keep His promise,
even though he and Sarah were getting quite old. He believed that God was
true even when it seemed that He would take Isaac away at Mt Moriah. And
Abraham believed all this without the benefit of the prior example that we
have in him.
***
> Yes and I found your view fascinating and internally consistent. I have
> since found one other problem with your view. About a month ago you wrote:
> > I believe that the power to do evil is from God, but the evil itself
> > is carried out by us. Free will is the freedom to will, not the freedom
> > to act. When God grants us the freedom to act, we carry out that which
> > is in our hearts to do (Matt 15:19). This is why I have suggested that
> > there is no difference in culpability between anger and murder, lust
> > and adultery. There is only a difference in consequence. The power to
> > *will* evil is ours. The authority to carry it out is granted by God.
> > And so we are instructed to pray:
> > And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
> > This indeed means that God *is* responsible for evil. However He is
> > not responsible for sin. He does not tempt anyone towards evil
> > Himself, though clearly He engineers circumstances where the temptation
> > is present (Gen 2:17). Sin is rebellion of the will, and is
> > independent of any actual deed. Sin exists apart from law. But sin is
> > not imputed without law. God has chosen to allow us to carry out our
> > sin that we might repent of the resulting evil and death (Rom 1:28-32).
> > Perhaps it is possible that the universe is only non-mechanistic
> > as it applies to living beings, but is completely mechanistic as
> > it applies to inanimate matter and energy.
> As I understand your view, we can will but God accomplishes what we willed.
> If I will to kill another person, God twiddles with the universe to make
> that happen. I am responsible for the action because God granted me the
> authority and he confirms or upholds that authority by making what I will
> happen.
It is not exactly that He twiddles the universe, but that He implements
the universe (for in Him we live and move and exist).
> Here is the problem I found and I am curious what you would do with this
> fact. Tipler writes:
> "Libet et al. have demonstrated that a 'persons' brain makes a decision to
> act before the 'person' is aware of having decided to act; that is, the
> brain makes the decision and then informs the person of the decision, who
> (mistakenly) believes he or she actually 'made' the decision. In the
> experiment to show this, a spot rotating on a TV screen at a rate of 2.5
> cycles per second is watched by an experimental subject. The subject is
> asked to decide of his or her own free will to bend a finger, and not the
> position of the spot when the decision is made. An electrode attached to the
> head shwos that, on average, a potential change in the brain occurred 0.35
> seconds *before* the person said he or she 'intended' to act." Frank J.
> Tipler, _The Physics of Immortality_, Doubleday, 1994, p. 201
> This would seem to contradict our free will and make someone else the moral
> agent. I must confess that I don't quite know what to do with this factoid
> inside of my views either. Any ideas?
I will have to read more of what Tipler says to see how he concludes that
the person 'mistakenly' believes that they made the decision because I don't
see the problem.
As I understand your explanation, the experiment is setup to measure
the time lag between measuring a potential change in the brain and
noting the dot's location on the screen. The result is that the subject
says the dot was at a particular point when the decision was made when
in fact the dot was at a point 0.35 seconds earlier.
I have some questions.
Doesn't Tipler's conclusion assume that the recording of the dots location
is coincident with our decision to move the finger, and thus concludes
that the decision is subsequent to the potential change? He seems to be
using a model which says that the brain is processing visual input in
realtime, which I don't think is the case (it just appears to be the case).
I would expect that the potential change was coincident with the decision,
and the recording of the dots lagged because of the way our visual system
decodes. I don't see how he eliminated this possibility.
If the dot is moving in a regular pattern, won't its location be tracked
by anticipation? What keeps the subject from deciding to move a finger
next time the dot reaches some particular point (I wouldn't know how
to avoid doing this ... but then I never learned how to tap 2/4 with
one hand while doing 3/4 with the other).
I also don't understand the 0.35 second lag. For a rotation rate of 2.5 HZ,
that represents 87% of a complete rotation. How did the experiment
separate this from the result that is a 113% (0.45 second) lead?
Doesn't the visual systems low sampling rate (20 HZ?) also skew the
results?
Even if such factors were corrected for, why would it be significant
that awareness is not simultaneous with making the decision? Our
awareness is not identical with our will. Don't we often react to
things before we are aware we are reacting? We sometimes say that such
reactions are `involuntary,' but I think that at some level they are
controlled by the will as we can discipline ourselves to learn and
unlearn them.
I take it that the problem you are suggesting is that our will is physically
realized slightly in advance, so how can we be seen as the cause of our will?
Is this right?
If so, I don't see the experiment as demonstrating this. Does Tipler want
it to because he wants to suggest that our will is an illusion? The only
other conclusion would seem to be that causality is broken. This seems much
more harmful to the view of a mechanistic universe than to my view, but
not fatal. People have already been building `quantum erasers' which
can reach back in time change historical events.
--Dave