"Under those circumstances, we should reject his misunderstandings for the
falsehoods they are. Accepting those misunderstandings certainly doesn't
move us closer to the truth!"
Excellent, we agree. Then the trick becomes selecting what are the
"falsehoods" and what aren't. You and I both agree that the reference in
Genesis 2:7 to God making man from dust is a misunderstanding and that the
proper understanding is that refers to God God evolving man from the
primeval materials of the earth. One place where we disagree (I think)
concerns the Fall. I believe that this is another misunderstanding; you
apparently believe it is historical. That's when the sparks can really fly!
"In this way you can't lose at all. No matter what happens Christianity
can't be wrong. But then, I wouldn't see that you have retained very much
either. What is the point of believing a set of beliefs that one refuses to
allow to be refuted regardless of what reality they contradict?"
Had anyone but you said this I would have been upset, because it suggests
you think I believe that Christianity is right for petty, trivial reasons.
I do not. I believe it is true because I believe God has revealed the truth
of it to me. So unless God is lying, I am not prepared to say under what
circumstances I would reject Christianity completely. What I meant was that
if one or more of the details I believed were ever proven to be false, that
simply means I misunderstand them, not that the basic core of Christianity
must be false. As I've said before, details can be wrong, but not the basic
core truths.
"True, but both Islam and Christianity claim no separate contexts for their
authority. Neither would recognize Jesus as Son in Christian lands and
Jesus not as son in Moslem lands. Your analogy fails."
Actually they do. Christianity claims as its source the God of Israel,
where as Muslims claim as their source Allah. Modern liberal Christians and
Muslims tend to agree that YHWY/Jehovah and Allah are one and the same, but
when the two religions first began, the sources were treated as completely
different deities. Heck, even the Christians and Jews of Medieval Europe
considered their respective "gods" as separate! And of course, modern
ultraconservative fundamentalist Christians and Muslims still believe that
Jehovah and Allah are spearate deities. Your second sentence is true, but
my analogy was not about simple time and space; it was about conditions. In
the same cities Christans and Muslims have often lived side-by-side in
peace, each visualizing Jesus in their own way and having lively discussions
over his true nature, and yet each visualization was held by both to be
equally true, even though it was recognized that under the conditions of the
other religion they would be rendered false. Such peaceful settings tended
to last only a generation or two, but they occurred frequently enough in
different locals to believe they were real.
"Logic is not an inappropriate methodology."
But you are not trying to apply basic logic. You are trying to apply the
scientific method. And in science logic doesn't always work. Just ask a
quantum mechanicist if that is true. There are also times when a perfectly
valid argument is factually untrue, so science rejects it no matter how
flawless the logic is. Remember the "pink elephant" syllogism from logic
class? A scientist may agree that if all elephants are pink, then Nellie
the elephant must be pink. But he will go out and check to see if elephants
really are pink, and when he finds they aren't he will reject the
syllogistic claim that Nellie must be pink, because he will dispute the
premise that all elephants are pink.
In theology, however, since hypotheses cannot be directly tested against
spiritual reality, they must be indirectly tested by logic (so theology is
very familiar with logic, thank you very much). Therefore, if someone
proposes the "pink elephant" syllogism in a theological setting, the first
response is not to look for proof of pink elephants in the spiritual
universe, but to ask for a logical argument establishing the possible
existence of pink elephants in the spiritual universe. If that can be done,
then theologians would be willing to believe there is an elephant named
Nellie who is pink. If it cannot be done, then they will tend not to
believe it.
And there are valid logical arguments that recognize that Jesus can be both
Son of God and not Sone of God, _within the contexts of the religions that
make those claims_. What you want to do is reject what sounds "illogical"
and apply a test in reality instead. That's the scientific approach to
logical arguments, not the theological. So you are trying to apply an
inappropriate methodology to theology.
"Don't confuse real with objective. I believe that the spiritual realm is
real. I don't think it is objective."
But objectivity means having an actual existence or _reality_; in other
words, one definition of objective is that which is real. You are probably
thinking of one of the other definitions: of or having to do with a
material object; or uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices, ie
based on observable phenomena. These definitions can only apply to physical
reality, not spiritual reality, but since spiritual reality is real, it is
by that first definition objective.
Kevin L. O'Brien