Re: Signs of Scientism

*All' we have is what we have been told in the Bible and that should be
sufficient.*

Well, no, that is not "all" we have. We have the witness of the first
century chuch in the face of intense persecution, the improbable growth of
the Church, the confirmation of the church fathers and creeds, and other
similar circumstantial evidence that lends plausibility to the Biblical
testimony. Belief in the resurrection is not mere fedeism.

On 1/17/06, Tjalle T Vandergraaf <ttveiv@mts.net> wrote:
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> David: What do you make of the resurrection of Christ, Pim? Did Christ
> really rise from the dead? Was it a "natural" event or was it
> "miraculous?" If it was miraculous, is there any rational basis for
> believing it happened?
>
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> Pim: I was not there to witness it, I was not there to research it so I am
> not sure if the resurrection from the dead really happened. Could it have
> been a deep coma? Could it have been a near death experience? It's hard to
> tell lacking the evidence. So what do I accept as a scientist and what do I
> accept as a Christian? The two are very different. In the end it does not
> really matter though since the meaning of Christ's resurrection is far more
> important than the proven veracity of such an event.
>
> But isn't that the beauty of the Resurrection? There was no human there
> to actually witness the Resurrection! Among the 'evidence' we have is that
> the tomb was empty, a large stone had been rolled away, a few cloths were
> left behind, and the appearance of Jesus in a physical manifestation that
> was real enough so that he could eat fish.
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> We have no physical evidence of the Resurrection. The shroud of Turin is
> most likely not the burial cloth in which Jesus was buried, so we cannot
> extract a DNA sample and check for chromosomes to get an insight in the
> genetic makeup of Jesus. As far as I am aware, there is no fragment of the
> Cross to be analyzed. 'All' we have is what we have been told in the Bible
> and that should be sufficient. Imagine that we had found a relic like a
> burial cloth! We would focus on the reliability of the analytical
> techniques used to prove or disprove the Resurrection.
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> IMHO, the Resurrection is totally different from the created world. Here
> we have material that we can analyze and geological records that give us a
> pretty clear picture of how the world has 'evolved' over the years.
> Therefore, I'm quite comfortable with the Resurrection event as described in
> the Bible and with the comments made by Paul in 1 Cor. 15. I'm equally
> comfortable with a non-literal interpretation of Genesis.
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> Chuck Vandergraaf
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Received on Tue Jan 17 19:19:25 2006