Re: Call me a fideist

Glenn Morton wrote:

"My point is that any ole religion can do the very same as you just did. And
they feel equally justified in doing so."

Before I encountered God through personal experience, I was appreciably more confident that I had the right religion than I was afterwards. The encounter was so unexpected and foreign that I went to extremes to get reinforcement. God eventually reinforced the encounter in ways that left no doubt in my mind that the encounter was real. Subsequently I reevaluated Judeo-Christian scriptures and concluded that the Bible was spiritually close to God. Closer than the Quran, the Book of Mormon, the Bhagavad Gita. Spiritual closeness is what is most important. Historical accuracy is also important, but there's room for slop. Scriptures don't teach science, and they don't primarily teach history. They teach relationship.

 I see no satisfying answer to your persistent--and relevant, I might add--questions short of taking the route I took: Get confirmation directly from the Source. You think you won't be able to distinguish the experience from that of Shirley MacLaine and her mediums, or of that Russian mystic or whatever that you've mentioned previously. I testify that it's possible to obtain evidence as hard as anything humans can apprehend. Frankly, I would not have been satisfied with less. I get the impression you won't be, either. Seeking hard evidence in the writings isn't going to hack it. That's not where the hard evidence is. God always intended that the hard evidence would lie only in personal relationship with him.

Sorry about your wife. Now we can commiserate about spouses.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Glenn Morton<mailto:glennmorton@entouch.net>
  To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 8:12 PM
  Subject: RE: Call me a fideist

  I am going to try to answer several emails at once. This is to Joel, Terry,
  and Dave. I have just had to fly home from Beijing. My wife is very sick and
  I am very tired tonight and will probably go to bed after this email. I
  don't want anyone to hold back on the vigor of the debate because of this.

  My wife had to get a chest xray to get a visa to live in China. The doctors
  say there is a 70% chance she has lung cancer (she doesn't smoke). They are
  going to remove part of her lung in a couple of weeks. Anyway, debating will
  keep my mind occupied.

  Joel wrote:

>>>Glenn,

  You're absolutely right that the religious world is much bigger than
  North American Christianity but you seem to be failing to fully
  recognize that fact. The well-recognized rise of Christianity in
  Africa and Asia over the last few decades has little to do with the
  sort of apologetic that you and others on this list are trying to
  construct. The concerns of your average African or Asian convert are
  miles away from what we're discussing on this list. That's not to say
  that these discussions aren't important but I'd say you're mistaken to
  think the sort of scientific-type of apologetic you've worked on will
  have much traction beyond North American or European Chrisitanity. In
  my limited observations, most people who convert to Christianity do so
  because of personal testimony and a daily living out of one's calling
  to follow Christ.<<<<

  I actually agree with everything you say here, except that there are a
  couple of things that you miss. I didn't say this apologetic was for
  Africans. At least I don't recall saying that. I am always a bit surprised
  at the things people think I said, which I didn't say. I have spoken about
  the 2% of Europeans who attend church and I think it is largely because no
  one thinks the Bible is real any more. I am concerned with the general
  perception in the western World that the Bible is untrue scientifically and
  historically. And what I find on the ASA web are a large group of people
  saying exactly that. My atheist boss once told me that he didn't believe
  the Bible because it wasn't true. His geology conflicted with what he had
  been taught the Bible taught. An apologetic of the type I am interested in
  is not for the African but for the likes of my boss. It greatly bothers me
  that We Christians in science want to believe that the bible doesn't tell us
  anything about reality but then illogically turn around and say it is a true
  message from God. But most certainly a message that didn't carry much truth
  in it.

  Any member of any religion in the world can perform the same mental
  gymnastics. Acknowledge that their scriptures teach crap about the world,
  but then proclaim proudly that they believe what it teaches. Why is it that
  this simple thing doesn't feel or look odd to most people on this board? It
  sure seems odd to me, but after several days of debate on this, I am
  thinking of committing myself to see if I can get rid of this delusion that
  it is wrong to proclaim as true, that which is utterly false. I know I must
  be the one who is sick cause I am the minority on this issue.

  This is for Terry who wrote:

>
>In my summary of the evidentialist arguement, I did not start with
>"Christianity is true" or "the Bible is true" as you claim. It starts
>with "the Biblical accounts are generally reliable."

  Now, see here is where I don't see people affirming that the Bible accounts
  are 'generally reliable". I doubt more than a handful here actually think
  there was a talking snake, a floating ax head, the drought and rain of
  Elijah, Jonah is clearly fairy tale according to what I have learned here.
  So, how on earth can you make this claim?(I am not directing this at you
  personally Terry but I doubt many would agree that the accounts are
  reliable. And if you make this claim of general reliability, then is it fair
  for me to do to you what Dave Siemans and others do to me when I say exactly
  the same thing? They always try to make it look like I am trying to defend
  every fact in the Bible when what I am trying to defend is that general
  reliability--e.g. that there is some sort of real history behind the
  account. Dave always gets confused and starts wanting to talk about coneys.

  Terry Wrote:
>>> This is empirically verifiable--I'm guess that this is what George is
  getting at to some degree. I will suggest that given the historical nature
  of God's dealings with mankind that history is the primary place where
  Christianity is verified or not. If you reject the historical as being
  fundamentally untrustworthy, you will not find much ground for Christianity
  being true.<<<<

  I don't see George saying that. Maybe he communicates badly or maybe I am a
  dunce student. I see George taking the approach you outline below.

>>>>Affirming the general reliability of scripture you have to deal with the
  person and work of Jesus Christ. His claims are pretty exclusive as I read
  it. That encounter isn't just one that North American Christians have.

  Once you accept the authority of Christ, you get to the claim that
  Christianity and the Bible is true and from then on it's totally logical to
  operate from that basis. But please note that my argument doesn't start
  there.<<<<

  My problem is that one can perfectly mirror this statement for any religion
  by simply plugging in the appropriate name. 2 examples:

>>>>Affirming the general reliability of the texts you have to deal with the
  person and work of Jesus Christ. His claims are pretty exclusive as I read
  it. That encounter isn't just one that North American Christians have.

  Once you accept the authority of Ahura Mazda, you get to the claim that
  Zoroastrianism and the Sacred Texts are true and from then on it's totally
  logical to operate from that basis. But please note that my argument doesn't
  start there.<<<<

>>>>Affirming the general reliability of Daozang writings you have to deal
  with the person and work of Shang Di. His claims are pretty exclusive as I
  read it. That encounter isn't just one that Chinese Daoists have.

  Once you accept the authority of Shang Di, you get to the claim that Daoism
  and the Daozang is true and from then on it's totally logical to operate
  from that basis. But please note that my argument doesn't start there.<<<<

  My point is that any ole religion can do the very same as you just did. And
  they feel equally justified in doing so.

  For some reason, I must be communicating terribly here as usual because this
  mirror image in all aspects of religion seem to me to form the basis of a
  problem in determining which religion is the real religion. Ask any
  adherent to any religion if he has the true religion and he will tell you
  his is the true religion. But of course, they can't all be the true
  religion or God/Shang Di/Ahura Mazda/Jupiter... is psychotic.

  I see only two ways out of this dilemma.

  1. Assume your way out of it--the fideist position.
  2. find the religion which tells you something real about tangible reality
  which would have been hard for them to know. That doesn't mean that one
  proves that a particular religion is the real one. It only makes it
  plausible and the others religions which tell you falsehoods about reality
  are excluded from being candidates for the real religion.

>>>>>That being said, I still have my reservations about the appropriateness
  of the creature deciding whether or not the Creator is true or which version
  of him is true.<<<<<

  Sorry, Terry, This is what everyone is doing whether you admit it or not.

>>> The method of a posteriori confirmation of presuppositions due to their
  "success" in the way we (and everyone) actually lives is also a method of
  rational confirmation--it's not an irrational or a totally circular
  approach. <<<<

  The problem with this is that if you listen to the adherents of other
  religions they will tell you that they too have miracles, they to talk to
  God, I have even had Chinese atheists tell me that they pray to someone, in
  their mind. A posteriori confirmation could merely be a posteriori
  self-delusion. How do you know it isn't that in all cases? I have used this
  before but Ramanujan believed that his bizarre mathematical insights were a
  gift from a Hindu god--a perfect case of a posteriori confirmation of his
  presuppositions.

>>>>Finally, my comment about design which you quickly jump on. There is
  nothing in design arguments that distinguish between any kind of theism.
  That's why Christian theists, Islamic theists, Unification church theists
  can all join together in advocating ID. Personally, I don't think that ID
  folks are being disingenuous when they say that "designed" life on earth
  could be some great experiment by ET's. If design in the sense that they're
  promoting is detectable it doesn't necessarily have any convincing
  apologetic function. ET's are a more logical conclusion to draw for the
  atheist (oh, there i am slipping into presuppositional thinking again).<<<<

  I don't think the ID group went out of its way to tell the Christian
  community from whom most of their funding came from that they were working
  with these other faiths. Now, I agree with you that theists can work
  together for ID but I would ask then, what good is it to any of them. The
  Islamacist says Allah, the Jew, Jehovah; No one says it is ET. There is not
  much progress in the problem I am interested in there.

  This is for David Siemens, who said:

>>>Glenn.

  Your answer confuses me even more. The named individuals without specific
  ages do not enter into the computation, which was carefully done by Ussher
  and others. There are other temporal data given. So the number of names
  given are at best an indication of the minimum period, so there cannot be
  less than the time for 10 generations from Noah to Abram. But this gives no
  hint as to the total period.<<<<

  Well, David, I am sorry that I can't unconfused you.

>>>"Son of man" seems to indicate nothing more than "human being." "Son of
  David" applies to David's descendants. "Sons of Belial" has nothing to do
  with ancestry. The Hebrew idiom has nothing to do with what you try to
  claim, though Simon bar Jonah tells us the name of Peter's parent.<<<

  David, the calculation done by Ussher was using the father son dates and a
  few judicious guesses to get a nonfloating chronology. I fyou don't
  understand that the use of the term, son of, doesn't mean father-son and
  thus can't be used as a dating scheme, I can't unconfused you.

>>>In the end, I still don't know if you have a criterion. <<<<

  In the end, I really don't care if you know or not. It isn't my
  responsibility to teach you how Ussher used the father son names to
  calculate a chronology.

>>>Mine is encapsulated in Galileo's principle that the Bible teaches us how
  to go to heaven, not how the heavens go, extended slightly. <<<

  And then so does the Bhagadvagita, the I Ching, the Book of the Dead, the
  Book of Mormon, The Koran etc. I don't see that you have a criterion for
  choosing between these options. But then, you probably don't care if I know
  it or not either. So we are probably at an impasse here.

>>>I used to try to make the first two chapters of Genesis agree, until I
  read them carefully to determine exactly what was claimed. I had to conclude
  that they what they claimed did not match. So their message can't be
  factual.<<

  That kind of jumps to the conclusion with insufficient evidence. Have you
  ever thought that maybe there is a solution which you were incapable of
  thinking of? Could there be just a wee chance of that being the case? My
  solution is that Gen 1 and 2 are not talking about the same event nor the
  same time. Thus they can both be factual because they are not conflicting
  descriptions of the same event so they shouldn't match. Why would we expect
  descriptions of two separate events to match? I wouldn't. I can't figure
  out why you would, but according to your rapid fire decision that if they
  don't match, they can't be factual, you must have some reason for rejecting
  the concept that they are talking about two separate events. Why don't you
  share your reasoning with us on this?

  Goin to bed after 30+ hours awake. Need some shut eye.
Received on Sun May 29 05:19:35 2005