Reflectorites
[continued]
I have had to split this part-post into two as well.
On Thu, 9 Nov 2000 05:59:24 EST, AutismUK@aol.com wrote:
>SJ>In Daniel 9:25-27 there is a prediction that works out to the very year 27
>AD when Jesus began his public ministry:
>PR>Really. I am amazed you don't know the history of this one.
>SJ>I don't claim to know *everything* about it! But I will be interested to see
>if Paul knows anything more about it than I do.
>PR>Or perhaps you do and didn't want to mention it.
>SJ>There is *nothing* I know about the Bible that I don't "want to mention"! I
>have nothing to hide.
>
>But in this case: 1) I was and am very busy and it was a hurried post
>(witness the unfinished "QQ": in it); and 2) I didn't want to swamp
>Reflectorites with a great mass of detail, since it would probably turn them
>off. That is why I said at the end of it: "I would be happy to work through
>this with anyone who does not dismiss it out of hand as "impossible" but is
>open-minded enough to consider it."
>PR>Notwithstanding the minor details that there are about 4 or 5 decrees,
>3-4 ways of counting the years,
>SJ>I agree that there alternative "ways of counting the years". That is why I
>said from the outset that: "Such prophecy is, of course, not absolute proof,
>and those who deny outright the very possibility of the supernatural no
>doubt have some ingenious ways of getting around it (apart from outright
>`head-in-the-sand' denial)."
>PR>Odd that you didn't mention your years have 360 days in them.
It is not "odd" at all. As I have already explained it was deliberately
brief because: a) at the time I was studying for an exam; and b) I did
not want to overwhelm non-Christians with a mass of detail which
might turn them off-my original post was in response to something that
*Chris* had posted, not something of Paul's.
Also, as it turned out, although I did not fully realise it at the time, the
excerpt from Newman's chapter in Geivett & Habermas' book did not
use the 360-day year method of reckoning, but rather Sabbath year
cycles.
The fact is that I was not then, and am not now, committed to the 360-
day year method of calculation (in fact I did not then known much
about this prophecy, having never studied it in depth before). It is
but one method of calculation used to reconcile Dan 9:24-27 with the
time of Jesus' public ministry. It could well be correct. But it may be
that other methods like Newman's Sabbath year cycle method might be
at least as good, if not better.
>SJ>>But the assumption that Daniel 9's 'sevens' are seven year periods and the
>year is 360 days is a reasonable one since Daniel himself uses it (compare
>Dan 7:25's "time, times and half a time" = 3 1/2 years with the same term in
>Rev 12:14 "time, times and half a time", which by parallel passages in Rev
>13:5 "forty-two months" and Rev 12:6 "1,260 days" 360-day "prophetic
>years" are intended 1260/3.5 = 360 and 42/12 = 3.5
>PR>I would agree that weeks for years is okay.
Good. That's a start!
PR>360 days isn't. There is no reson
>that this is a "parallel passage" other than it makes it "work" and there is
>equally no reason to take this passage as being a 360 day year (other than
>it makes it "work").
There are at least two passages in the Bible (in each Testament) where 360-day
years are used. For example, in Gn 7:11 it says the Flood started "on the
seventeenth day of the second month", lasted for "a hundred and fifty days"
(Gn 7:24; 8:3) and ended "on the seventeenth day of the seventh month"
(Gn 8:4). Thus 5 months comprised a total of 150 days, or 30 days per
month, or 360 months in a year.
This ties in with the original Mesopotamian calendar being "30 x 12 =
360 days":
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[...]
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
calendar
Babylonian calendars
In Mesopotamia the solar year was divided into two seasons, the
"summer," which included the barley harvest in the second half of May
or
in the beginning of June, and the "winter," which roughly corresponded
to
today's fall-winter. Three seasons (Assyria) and four seasons (Anatolia)
were counted in northerly countries, but in Mesopotamia the bipartition
of
the year seemed natural. As late as c. 1800 BC the prognoses for the
welfare of the city of Mari, on the middle Euphrates, were taken for six
months.
The months began at the first visibility of the New Moon, and in the 8th
century BC court astronomers still reported this important observation to
the Assyrian kings. The names of the months differed from city to city,
and within the same Sumerian city of Babylonia a month could have
several names, derived from festivals, from tasks (e.g., sheepshearing)
usually performed in the given month, and so on, according to local needs.
On the other hand, as early as the 27th century BC, the Sumerians had
used artificial time units in referring to the tenure of some high official--
e.g., on N-day of the turn of office of PN, governor. The Sumerian
administration also needed a time unit comprising the whole agricultural
cycle; for example, from the delivery of new barley and the settling of
pertinent accounts to the next crop. This financial year began about two
months after barley cutting. For other purposes, a year began before or
with the harvest. This fluctuating and discontinuous year was not precise
enough for the meticulous accounting of Sumerian scribes, who by 2400
BC already used the schematic year of 30 x 12 = 360 days.
[...]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
And Daniel himself in Dan 7:25 uses the term "time, times and half a time"
(1+2+1/2 = 3 1/2) in a prophecy. Revelation 12:14 uses the same term
"a time, times and half a time". In Rev 12:6 the same time is described
as "1,260 days" and in Rev 13:5 the same period is "forty-two
months". 1260 days/42 = 30 day months. Also 42 months/3.5 = 30 day
months.
Since this last requires a deeper exegesis of Revelation than is possible
in this type of forum (e.g. one would probably have to read Henrikson's
"More Than Conquerors"in order to grasp the Book of Revelation's
underlying sevenfold scheme of `progressive parallelism'). So I don't
really expect Paul to accept this. It is sufficient for me that there is
evidence that the Jews in Bible did sometimes use 360-day years, for it
to be a real possibility that the "sevens" of Daniel 9:24-27 are 7 x 360-
day periods.
PR>It is like the cubit argument that makes Pi 3. It is not true, because there
>is no claim of exact values.
In this case there is no claim that there are *not* exact values either!
PR>Let me ask you this. Suppose that it had worked exactly with 365.25 days
>to a year.
I might ask Paul the same question. "Suppose that it had worked
exactly with 365.25 days to a year"? Would Paul accept it as a genuine
prophecy and evidence of the supernatural? I doubt it. I presume his
personal anti-supernaturalistic philosophy would have the priority over
the evidence. So I suspect that Paul would then claim that either: 1)
Jesus never existed; or 2) Jesus did not exist at that time but the gospel
writers made out that He did; or 3) Jesus did exist at that time but
either: a) the terminus ad quo is wrong; or b) the calculation is wrong;
or c) Jesus read up the prophecy and decided to fulfill it (not
necessarily wrong BTW).
I hope I am wrong regarding my presumption of what Paul would do if
"it had worked exactly with 365.25 days to a year" because as it turns
out there *is* one combination that does:
"The one combination which coincides with known history
throughout starts with the decree of Artaxerxes in his seventh year,
457 B.C. A period of seven weeks or forty- nine years came to a
close about 408 B.C., and the reformation under Ezra and
Nehemiah was conducted during this period and characterized this
period as a whole. .... Then follow sixty-two weeks or 434 years,
coming down through A.D. 26 to the time when Jesus began his
public ministry, A.D. 27, probably early in that year." (Davis J.D.,
"A Dictionary of the Bible," 1966, p.163).
This is another possibility but the "365.25 days to a year" modern
method of calculation is not necessarily automatically correct, because
the Jews between 587BC-70AD used a number of calendars for
religious and secular purposes:
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ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
[...]
The Jewish calendar
The calendar in Jewish history. Present knowledge of the Jewish calendar
in use before the period of the Babylonian Exile is both limited and
uncertain. The Bible refers to calendar matters only incidentally, and the
dating of components of Mosaic Law remains doubtful. The earliest
datable source for the Hebrew calendar is the Gezer Calendar, written
probably in the age of Solomon, in the late 10th century BC. The
inscription indicates the length of main agricultural tasks within the cycle
of 12 lunations. The calendar term here is yereah, which in Hebrew
denotes both "moon" and "month." The second Hebrew term for month,
hodesh, properly means the "newness" of the lunar crescent. Thus, the
Hebrew months were lunar. They are not named in pre-exilic sources
except in the biblical report of the building of Solomon's Temple in I
Kings, where the names of three months, two of them also attested in the
Phoenician calendar, are given; the months are usually numbered rather
than named. The "beginning of the months" was the month of the Passover
(see Judaism: The cycle of the religious year). In some passages, the
Passover month is that of hodesh ha-aviv, the lunation that coincides with
the barley being in the ear. Thus, the Hebrew calendar is tied in with the
course of the Sun, which determines ripening of the grain. It is not
known how the lunar year of 354 days was adjusted to the solar year of 365
days. The Bible never mentions intercalation. The year shana, properly
"change" (of seasons), was the agricultural and, thus, liturgical year. There is no
reference to the New Year's day in the Bible.
After the conquest of Jerusalem (587 BC), the Babylonians introduced
their cyclic calendar (see above Babylonian calendars) and the reckoning
of their regnal years from Nisanu 1, about the spring equinox. The Jews
now had a finite calendar year with a New Year's day, and they adopted
the Babylonian month names, which they continue to use. From 587 BC
until AD 70, the Jewish civil year was Babylonian, except for the period
of Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies (332-200 BC), when the
Macedonian calendar was used. The situation after the destruction of the
Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70 remains unclear. It is not known whether
the Romans introduced their Julian calendar or the calendar that the Jews
of Palestine used after AD 70 for their business transactions. There is no
calendar reference in the New Testament; the contemporary Aramaic
documents from Judaea are rare and prove only that the Jews dated events
according to the years of the Roman emperors. The abundant data in the
Talmudic sources concern only the religious calendar.
[...]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The OT scholar Archer believes that either interpretation is possible:
"There are two ways of computing these 69 heptads (or 483 years).
First, by starting from the decree of Artaxerxes issued to Nehemiah
in 445 B.C. (cf. Neh. 2:4, 8) and reckoning the 483 years as lunar
years of 360 days each, 4 which would be equivalent to 471 solar
years and would result in the date A.D. 31 for the appearance of the
Messiah and His "cutting off" (or crucifixion). ... 4 In. his
Commentary on Daniel (#683), Jerome records this tradition from
Africanus, who in his Tempora says: "On the other hand, the
interval from the twentieth year of Artaxerxes to the time of Christ
completes the figure of seventy weeks, if we reckon according to
the lunar computation of the Hebrews, who did not number their
months according to the movement of the sun, but rather according
to the moon ... For according to their computation, these years can
be made up of months of twenty-nine and one-half days each."
(Archer G.L., "A Survey of Old Testament Introduction," 1966,
p.387)
"Or ... the starting point may be identified with the decree of
Artaxerxes in his seventh year, issued for the benefit of Ezra in 457
B.C. ... 483 solar years from 457 B.C. would come out to A.D. 25
as the time of Christ's ministry." (Archer G.L., 1966, p.387)
PR>Do you really believe apologists would say "Oh this doesn't work, because
>it should be using prophectic years ?"
Yes. The proof is in Archer above. He knows about a "365.25 days to
a year" calculation but still accepts that it could be a 360-day
calculation. Even Davis, after clearly setting out the "365.25 days to a
year" calculation, accepts that the time periods may be "symbolical, and
measure symbolically, not mathematically":
"Nevertheless, notwithstanding the coincidence of the prophecy
with the known events in the history of God's kingdom, and the
significance of this correspondence, yet quite probably the seventy,
and the seven separated from it at the beginning, and the one week
marked of from it at the end, are all symbolical, and measure
symbolically, not mathematically, a vast period in the history of
God's kingdom on earth." (Davis J.D., "A Dictionary of the Bible,"
1966, p.163)
The fact is that Christian evangelical theologians and apologists are
trying to find the best interpretation that fits the most number of facts.
To find that best interpretation they work like scientists do, by a
hypothetico-deductive methodology, assuming that something is a fact
(in this case that Jesus is the Messiah) and then working backwards
with hypotheses to see if a reasonable alternative minor adjustment of
data or interpretation of the data yields a better fit with the assumed
fact. If Paul rejects this methodology, then he would have to reject
much of modern science and in fact evolutionary biology which heavily
employs this hypothetico-deductive methodology.
In this case assuming that Daniel's `sevens' were either 360-day years
or Sabbath year cycles (both of which have support from Scripture)
with a terminus ad quo of 445BC; or straight solar years with a
terminus ad quo of 457BC, they do obtain a fit. The only question is
which is the better fit.
Granted that this means that one cannot absolutely *prove* that Jesus
is the Messiah, but it is part of the cumulative circumstantial evidence
to support the assumption that He was.
>PR>and several target points. This one,
>>I believe, uses the 360 day years to hit its target.
I am glad to see that Paul admits that at least one reasonable
interpretation of Dan 9:24-27 (namely "360 day years") does in fact
"hit its target"!
>PR>[snipped a bit]
SJ>360/365 the conversion factor of 360 day prophetic years
>PR>You see, to me this just looks like cheating.
It only "looks like cheating" to Paul because he works from the
naturalistic assumption that the supernatural is impossible and therefore
Jesus could not possibly be the Messiah.
But since 360-day years were in once in use in Mesopotamia and in the
Bible they cannot be ruled out, especially when it appears that the Jews
may have used different calendars for religious and secular purposes.
PR>A fiddle factor! Figure out how
>to get the "right" answer, torture it out of the Bible and hope nobody
>notices.
Note how Paul exaggerates the use of 360-day years as a "fiddle
factor" and "tortur[ing] it out of the Bible". Yet Paul himself said that
"there is no claim of exact values".
The use of 360-day years (or Sabbath year cycles) is found in Scripture
so their use is legitimate. It would be different is a *real* fiddle factor
of some arbitrary terminus ad quo or adjustment factor (e.g. 361.997)
which was not even found in Scripture, was used.
>SJ>There is in fact one calculation that works out right to the very *day*:
>(quoting someone else to support this).
>PR>Again, this is simply cheating to get the answer you want. I am
>aware of these idiotic calculations.
>[snip nonsense]
Note again Paul's emotional language: "cheating", "idiotic" and
"nonsense". This assumption flows from Paul's basic assumption that
Jesus *cannot* be the Messiah.
SJ>Note that I personally don't claim it that it *has* to be to the exact day.
>Anytime in the 69th `week' 7-year period would do.
It is interesting that Paul does not comment on this.
>PR>Christians are when making this claim for some reason unwilling to
>>mention these minor details.
>SJ>See above my reasons for not mentioning all "these minor details" in my
>first hurried and brief post. As I said "I would be happy to work through
>this" (i.e. the "minor details") "with anyone who does not dismiss it out of
>hand as "impossible" but is open-minded enough to consider it."
>PR>We shall see. It is odd that Christians invariably present this particular
>prophecy without mentioning all the minor details. Why this is I can't
>imagine.
I don't know which "Christians" Paul has in mind. But I have several
Christian apologetic books which mention "all the minor details".
>PR>It is difficult to say for sure because Christian apologists have been
>>so staggeringly dishonest over his particular passage it's difficult to
>>know which you copied.
>SJ>Which "Christian apologists" in particular does Paul claim to "have been so
>staggeringly dishonest"?
>PR>Well, as you appear to have a copy of EDTAV
I presume Paul means Josh McDowell's "Evidence that Deserves a
Verdict"? In that case, the acronym is ETDAV not "EDTAV".
PR>I suggest you turn to the
>section where he calculates the probability of the prophecies being
>fulfilled or not and see if you can spot the glaring errors and mathematical
>illiteracy.
If Paul is referring to "Evidence that Deserves a Verdict" then he can
quote from it if he wants to make his point so that others on the List
can judge for themselves whether Paul is right or not.
As one `mathematical illiterate' I personally have no stake in whether
McDowell is guilty of "mathematical illiteracy"! The point is that
whatever the exact probability, it is intuitively obvious that the chance
of Jesus fulfilling many OT prophecies is astronomical.
Paul tacitly concedes this by his claims that Jesus either contrived to
fulfill the prophecies and/or the gospel writers just made them up. He
knows that if Jesus did happen to fulfill a large number of prophecies
and then was in fact the founder of a world religion, to say it was just a
chance coincidence would be vastly improbable.
>SJ>Here is what theologian Robert C. Newman (who is also an astrophysicist
>>and a leader of the ID movement) writes about this:
PR>[snip]
>SJ>There has been considerable argument about the interpretation of this
>>passage. 30
Note that Newman admits there are alternative interpretations and
gives a footnote to some of them.
PR>A very reasonable interpretation, however, notes the
>>significance of a decree issued by the Persian king Artaxerxes I during his
>>twentieth year (445 B.C.). This edict officially approved Nehemiah's return
>>to Jerusalem to rebuild its walls (Neh 2:1-9)
>PR>This is not true. This is in Nehemiah 2:1-6
Well, "Nehemiah 2:1-6" *is* within "Neh 2:1-9"!
PR>and refers to giving Nehemiah letters of safe conduct.
Yes. And the "safe conduct" was to enable Nehemiah to go to
Jerusalem and "rebuild" it:
Neh 2:5 "and I answered the king, `If it pleases the king and if your
servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in
Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.'"
PR>The decree to rebuild is in 2 Chronicles 36:22-23
>and Ezra 1:1-4, but is in 538BC.
>SJ>This is indeed one of the interpretations that Newman mentions. But it is
>only a decree to "build a temple ... at Jerusalem" (2Chr 36:23; Ezr 1:2).
>The only passage AFAIK that speaks of a "the issuing of the decree to
>restore and rebuild Jerusalem" (Dan 9:25) is Neh 2:5:
>PR>Nehemiah 2:1-9 is about two things
>[1] letters of safe passage 2:7
Paul ignores Neh 2:5 above which is the reason for Nehemiah needing
"letters of safe passage" in the first place!
PR>[2] timber to rebuild the walls 2:8.
The timber was not to "rebuild the walls" but to "make beams for" 1)
the *gates*" of 1) "the citadel by the temple"; and 2 "the city wall"; as
well as or 3) Nehemiah's "residence":
Neh 2:8 "And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king's
forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the
citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I
will occupy?" And because the gracious hand of my God was
upon me, the king granted my requests."
Note that the same word "rebuild" (Heb banah) is found in Dan 9:25
and Neh 2:8, but not in any other of the claimed starting dates.
Also, only Neh 2:8 concerns the building of *Jerusalem* whereas the
others deal with the building of the *temple*. The whole focus of Dan
9 is on Jerusalem (e.g. Dan 9:2, 12 & 16) and so is the whole of
Nehemiah.
>SJ>"There are several commandments or decrees in Israel's history
>which have been suggested as the terminus a quo (beginning) of the
>70 weeks. These are:
>
>[snip]
>And, as we read, he was sent, and he rebuilt Jerusalem." ... "This
>decree then is the 'commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem.'
>There is no other decree authorizing the restoration of the city.
>PR>It doesn't say that !
It *does* say that! Compare:
Dan 9:25 (AV) "Know therefore and understand, that from the
going forth of the commandment to restore and to build
Jerusalem..."
Neh 2:5 (AV) "And I said unto the king, If it please the king, and if
thy servant have found favour in thy sight, that thou wouldest send
me unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers' sepulchres, that I may
build it."
>PR>Using 445BC comes out at 39AD anyway,
It actually comes out as 38AD. There is no 0AD between 1BC and
1AD.
But Paul is assuming that a modern calendar of 365.25 solar days
were used. If Daniel was writing in the 6th century BC, then it
is possible he was still using an earlier 360-day calendar. Remember:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/3/0,5716,108733+10+106114,00.html
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
[...]
The calendar in Jewish history. Present knowledge of the Jewish calendar
in use before the period of the Babylonian Exile is both limited and
uncertain. The Bible refers to calendar matters only incidentally, and the
dating of components of Mosaic Law remains doubtful. The earliest
datable source for the Hebrew calendar is the Gezer Calendar, written
probably in the age of Solomon, in the late 10th century BC. The
inscription indicates the length of main agricultural tasks within the cycle
of 12 lunations. The calendar term here is yereah, which in Hebrew
denotes both "moon" and "month." The second Hebrew term for month,
hodesh, properly means the "newness" of the lunar crescent. Thus, the
Hebrew months were lunar.
[...]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
PR>which is why the cheat of
>>360 day years is used, and here it comes.
>SJ>There is no "cheat of 360 day years". There is good evidence from
>Daniel himself that 360 day years were used in Hebrew prophecy.
>PR>Which you haven't mentioned......
I explained above why I haven't mentioned 360 day years in my first
post.
>SJ>And remember again my quote that the Jewish historian Josephus
>mentioned that the Jews were expecting the Messiah at about this time:
>PR>They were expecting Messiah's every five minutes.
Note how Paul just slides over contrary evidence. Josephus says that
"at that time" the Jews as a whole were expecting the Messiah based
on an "oracle ... found in their sacred scriptures" which "more than all
else incited them ... to the war" against Rome.
Besides, there was no evidence that the Jews "were expecting
Messiah's every five minutes" *before* this period. It was only because
they were expecting the Messiah during and after this period that there
were a lot of false Messiah's at about this time.
>SJ>"But what more than all else incited them [the Jews] to the war
>[revolt against Rome, A.D. 66-73] was an ambiguous oracle,
>likewise found in their sacred scriptures, to the effect that at that
>time one from their country would become ruler of the world. "
>(Josephus, Jewish War 6.5.4., in Newman R.C, in Geivett R.D. &
>Habermas G.R., eds., "In Defense of Miracles," 1997, p.223).
>
>If the Jews were expecting the Messiah by around 66AD in fulfilment of
>prophecy then this one in Daniel 9 is the only one AFAIK they could have
>meant that was in the ballpark. And by using 444 BC, 70 `weeks' and 360
>day years they would have got to AD38. This is not good enough (because
>in fact they were wrong-the Messiah had already come!), but no other
>combination of dates and years is as close.
>
>It is my contention that the 445BC x 69 x 7 x 360/365.25 -1 = ~ 31
>calculation is the one that best fits all the facts.
I wrote the above before I was fully aware of Newman's Sabbath year
cycle method of calculation. Either that or the 360-day year
>PR>Nonsense. The 445BC is a starting date chosen because it works, not because
>what it says.
Again I am pleased that Paul admits that at least one "starting
date...works"! If none of the combinations of starting dates and
methods of calculations worked, then Paul would have an argument.
As it is, he is just using anti-supernaturalist prejudice as an `argument'.
But it is false for Paul to claim that is the only reason it was chosen.
First, other dates work too-see Davis and Archer's argument for a
starting date in the "seventh year of King Artaxerxes" (Ezr 7:7), i.e.
457 B.C.
Second, I chose 445BC because the word "rebuild" (Heb banah) in
Dan 9:25 is found in Neh 2:5, but not in any other of the claimed
starting dates.
PR>The 360 days is a fudge factor tortured out of another part of
>the Bible, because it works.
No. Behind Paul's assumption is that he knows infallibly that Daniel, in
a prophecy involving at least one symbolic element, namely "sevens"
for years (which Paul acknowledges), must have mean 365.25 day
solar years.
This is despite there being evidence: 1) of a 360-day year calendar in
use in Mesopotamian before the Babylonian Captivity that Daniel was a
part of; 2) that the Babylonians only brought their 365.25 day calendar
in about this time (587BC); and 3) the Jews maintaining different
religious and secular calendars from 587BC to at least 70AD.
Also Paul ignores my main point that the *Jews* must have been using
some sort of combination of starting date and calculation method that
yielded an early 1st century AD result because Josephus says they were
expecting the Messiah at about this time.
[continued]
Steve
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen E. (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ Email: sejones@iinet.net.au
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Web: http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Warwick 6024 -> *_,--\_/ Phone: +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, Western Australia v "Test everything." (1 Thess. 5:21)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Contemporary religious thinkers often approach the Argument from
Design with a grim determination that their churches shall not again be
made to look foolish. Recalling what happened when churchmen opposed
first Galileo and then Darwin, they insist that religion must be based not on
science but on faith. Philosophy, they announce, has demonstrated that
Design Arguments lack all force. I hope to have shown that philosophy has
demonstrated no such thing. Our universe, which these religious thinkers
believe to be created by God, does look, greatly though this may dismay
them, very much as if created by God." (Leslie J., "Universes", [1989],
Routledge: London, 1996, reprint, p.22)
Stephen E. Jones | Ph. +61 8 9448 7439 | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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