Re: ASA, ID, Blogs and my observations

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: glennmorton@entouch.net
  To: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 12:05 AM
  Subject: Re: ASA, ID, Blogs and my observations

  George wrote:

>>>>You have not "explained" this many times but have simply made this assertion which bears little resemblance to reality. 1st, I again point out that you ignore the cross: I know you don't think that's important in this connection but I do & it's misleading for you to continue to imply that I emphasize the resurrection independently of the cross. This isn't the 1st time I've corrected you on that.

  Then the claim of the resurrection of Jesus is one for which there is significant literary & historical support, as the work of critical scholars such as Pannenberg, O'Collins & Wright have shown. Of course this doesn't amount to scientific proof but it's simply false to suggest that there is no more reason to believe the resurrection of Jesus than there is for Adonis et al. (There is also little doubt that Jesus actually lived & a lot that Adonis did.) & it's at least equally misleading to say that the resurrection is not more "tangibly verifiable" than your might-have-been Genesis reconstructions.<<<<

  Look, we are talking about evidence for design in the universe. The cross and the resurrection really can't come into play in thhis game. Sorry, you keep saying that it can but it is totally illogical to say that. Why? IF one believes the resurrection then one cansay that means the universe was designed. But one can't put out much evidence, as you acknowledge, for the historical fact of the resurrection. Thus, it can't be EVIDENCE for design. We can't find any of the original historical documents, we don't really know where the grave is, we can't really be sure that this isn't a similar case to that pulled off by Joseph Smith who got twelve guys to sign a statement that there were these golden tablets with reformed Egyptian hieroglyphs on them. Thus, your starting point is one of belief, not EVIDENCE.

  In the first place you continue to misunderstand my whole approach. I am not trying to prove the existence of God or design on the basis of some relatively neutral scientific or philosophical postulates.

  I am not saying "the resurrection is proof of design." I am saying that in light of God's self- revelation in the cross-resurrection event, we can the activity of that God in the natural world in the phenomena which science studies. (& no, this isn't "fideism" because (a) there is supportive evidence for the cross-resurrection event & (b) the claim that God is revealed in that event is supported by its ability to give deeper significance to our knowledge of the world, similar to the way that the postulates of a scientific theory gain plausibility by the ability of the theory to explain phenomena.)

  Your sketch of the state of evidence supportive of belief in the resurrection is quite misleading. If belief in historical events depended on having "the original documents" then we'd have to throw out most of what we know about classical antiquity. The mss of the NT are much closer to the originals than are those of many other historical works of classical authors that no one raises any questions about - read F.F. Bruce's little book The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? There's good archaeological evidence supportive of the traditional sites for Calvary & the tomb in the Church of the Resurrection.

  Then you make a jump from "not much evidence" (which is not really what I "acknowledged") to "no" evidence. Acceptance of the reality of any historical event involves both evidence and belief. Your statement that my "starting point is one of belief, not EVIDENCE" is pure bluster.

  And when you constantly state things like: "it's at least equally misleading to say that the resurrection is not more "tangibly verifiable" than your might-have-been Genesis reconstructions"

  It shows that you really don't understand the point. It isn't relevant or even particularly important whether my reconstruction (a might have been or a has been) is true. The important point is that there MUST BE SOME PLACE of connection between religion and the tangible. You constantly miss this crucial point. Someone, somewhere, somehow must create a scenario which makes some sort of sence and some sort of touchstone with reality or Christianity is simply a religion for the utterly ignorant or the self-delusional.

  The "point" that I supposedly don't understand is pointless. You arbitrarily define the putative cross-resurrection event as "intangible" & then imagine that just the possibility of imaginary prehistoric scenarios means that somehow you're operating in the realm of the tangible.

  So fire away at my reconstruction, it really doesnt matter if I am wrong. What does matter is that so far 20th century apologists have been grandly successful at divorcing the Scripture from any and all tangible reality, thus making Christianity imaginary.

  Events that took place in 1st century Judea are "intangible," in contrast to the bare possibility that some story - any story - about something that happened 5Myr ago & that nobody before Glenn Morton ever heard of might be true. Words fail me. I feel as if I've entered the bizarro world.

  Shalom
  George
  http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Wed May 25 21:02:40 2005