1/20/01
George Wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: george murphy [mailto:gmurphy@raex.com]
>Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2001 1:42 PM
>
> N.B. The following is not just a reset of our standard debate.
I thought you were the one who didn't want to go another round on this. But
I knew that you couldn't refrain from a go at what I wrote to Paul.
>
> I find your argument in the last 3 paragraphs strange for
>at least a
>couple of reasons. First, verifying the flood story in Genesis in
>the sense you
>speak of proves very little about the truth of Scripture as a
>whole.
It would add to the areas verified. What is strange about that? I find it
very strange to claim that something that appears to refer to a real history
is true in spite of it being as false as grandpa's false teeth, which is
what I see my more liberal brothers doing. (here we go again).
The Bible
>is a collection of writings by different people spread over 1000+
>years, and the
>fact that a couple of its chapters give information about
>something that really
>happened tells us nothing about the truth of its many other
>accounts.
If there were no inspiration of the scripture, I would perfectly well agree
with you. But there is the claim that the Bible is God's word. If it is
nothing but the words of "different people", then what you say is absolutely
correct. But if God engaged in some sort of overarching guidance of what
they wrote, then what you say has no merit.
I must raise this issue. You in the past have spoken about how we should
believe the Genesis because its purpose is to tell us about the nature of
God but not about the detailed lives of a real couple Adam and Eve etc. You
wrote:
>>>Mon Aug 09 21:41:43 1999
The point is that there is a way of speaking about creation which runs
through the OT which is inspired, authoritative, true & which no one with
any sense reads as historical narrative. <<<
Without real history, we have faith based upon faith. If the Bible is
nothing more than the writings of a bunch of people, I see no force in the
claim that the Bible can acheive the purpose above. Afterall, how were a
bunch of men, unguided, to know and reveal the purpose of God? If it is ONLY
the writings of a bunch of men, it may be the mumblings of a maniac. To me,
you are raising a double-edged sword which cuts both positions out of the
realm of possibility-yours and mine. But if it is a divinely inspired (by
this I mean inspiration has some efficacy other than eliciting warm fuzzy
statements about how good the revelation is), then there should be some
connection with history--real history. You can't have the theme you spoke of
run through the Bible without God having guided it. If he guided falsehood,
then he is not to be trusted for the same reason I don't trust the God of
Gosse--both are deceptive Gods.
I would
>think that there are very few skeptics who are committed to the
>position that
>_everything_ in the Bible is false. They can easily say, "Even a blind pig
>finds an acorn once in awhile."
True, but only the religious people say we should believe in the worth of an
account which is historically and scientifically false. To me that is doing
exactly what Paul Seely said we shouldn't do--base our faith on faith
itself.
> Second, there certainly is historical evidence for some biblical
>material - e.g., inscriptions & archaeological remains relating to
>the kings of
>Judah & Israel & the destruction of Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate, &c.
> So if it's
>crucial to have _one_ historical anchor, there are less debatable things to
>choose than the flood.
There is nothing metaphysical about the existence of Pontius Pilot. One
can't draw from his existence that Jesus arose. One can't draw from the
destruction of Israel that they therefore gave the true theology to the
world. And I agree that one can't draw from a verification of the flood that
therefore everything else in the Bible is true however, I would contend that
this would be an event which, if reported correctly (and verifiably) in the
Bible at least gives support for the divine guidance that we believe the
Scripture has.
> A different point: We're not quite as dependent on Paul
>as you suggest
>for evidence supporting the resurrection. While they written some
>time after
>Paul's epistles, the accounts of the empty tomb and of Jesus'
>Easter appearances
>in the gospels can't be entirely discounted by historians.
Then why don't we run to embrace the books of the Bahai, in which the
Bahaullah was miraculously transported from a firing squad so he could
finish his discourse with a disciple? The account was written only 80 years
or so after his death. Historians surely can't discount that either.
My problem with many of your arguments is that if we apply them to other
religions, we must conclude that all other religions are equally true. Given
that they are all mutually exclusive, that process becomes a reductio ad
absurdam.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>
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