Phil, I find your answer to be absolutely the most honest answer I have gotten to these questions on this list to date. You, at least, seem to see the problem. So many others deny it exists. We may not agree on all the details, but I deeply respect the forthrightness and brutal honesty of your opinion here. Maybe that is because being in the oil industry where we bet multimillions of dollars on someone's judgement of where oil is, I have come to be brutally honest about success, failure, and our ability to know or not know something. Few want to admit that we can't know something. And even fewer want to acknowledge that we have a problem--it is easier to hide one's head than acknowledge a problem. In the oil industry, hiding one's head costs anywhere from $5 million to a billion dollars. I can't afford the luxury.
Phil wrote:
>>>
I think that this is the only epistemology that Scripture affirms. I think that the picture given us all through the Bible is that God meets us personally, speaks to us personally, and proves Himself to be in our lives personally. There is never an equation or a scientific validation available to prove the faith -- we either rely on God being there for us and then He really shows up and meets us, or we have nothing. <<<<
GRM: agreed, but everyone (or at least every religious leader claims to have had God show up for them). Shoot, even the great Ramanujan believed this: "Ramanujan credited his understanding to his family
Goddess, Namagiri, and looked to her for inspiration in his work. He often said, "An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God."
http://srinivasa-ramanujan.area51.ipupdater.com/
Phil continued:
>>>> Apologetics is the icing on the cake, but not the cake itself. The cake is entirely the experience of interacting with God personally and discovering that He really is there. My own faith is weak when I don't pray and I don't have much experience of God meeting me and surprising me often. But when I have been really sanctified in my heart and really sought Him with all my heart, then He has always been there. That's the real reason I believe -- not science or history or logic. And I am not so naive as to believe that other religions don't have experience as one of their key arguments, too, and so I have struggled to evaluate whether I am only fooling myself. But in the end I must conclude that God really has interacted with me, and that other religions may have real experiences (of some sort) too and that this does not contradict Christianity. God really has done remarkable things in my life, in answering prayers in fantastic ways, and in speaking to me directly and through other people. He really has revealed Himself to me, despite the fact that I am a bugger ball most of the time.<<<
As I said earlier tonight, I remain a Christian because I believe God has interacted with me. But, I too could be fooling myself. Someone certainly is fooling themselves. I find it incredible that so many have no doubt that it is always the others who fool themselves but never us.
>>>>It is a dirty game we are playing, being forced to decide whether to believe in Christ. Our souls depend on the outcome, and it seems we are given so little to be able to play the game. Truthfully, it is not a fair game at all. The Biblical perspective is that we really don't deserve to be granted a fair game. We are not neutral a priori. We are enemies of God, not his friends, unless (and only insofar as) He changes us. It is precisely because of our sinfulness that the game seems dirty and unfair to us. It is not a shortcoming in God or in the epistemology he makes available to us. We must know that we are rotten in our sinfulness and therefore really don't deserve a "fair shake" or nothing else makes sense. So that is my epistemology. I think this is the only Biblical epistemology, and if we are looking for scientific or historical proof to the neglect of actually seeking and experiencing the person of God directly and immediately, as someone who doesn't deserve it, then we will always be unhappy with the lack of clear proof. This is not a Wittgensteinian game, because in that game God doesn't actually interact with the participants.<<<<
I bow to your honesty in this. It is a dirty game and there is no other way to say it. Why others can't acknowledge the problem, I really don't know. Maybe it is too tender for them to consider the obvious as it is for a YEC to consider that he might be wrong about science.
I really must say that when you commented: "It is a dirty game we are playing, being forced to decide whether to believe in Christ. Our souls depend on the outcome, and it seems we are given so little to be able to play the game. "
This is precisely the problem that has bugged me for so long, but you said it better than I ever could have. My hat is off to you for being willing to be honest in a way that few are!!!!!!!!!!!!
>>>>I can't explain adequately to my children why I take them to the doctor's office to get a shot. Their lack of maturity prevents them from having a fair epistemology to understand why I would do this to them. They are just subjected to the shot and they cry and feel like it is unfair because I demand that it should happen. How much less should we sinners be given a fair epistemology in our dealings with God, when the Bible says that we are not merely immature but truly enemies of God. Even as Christians, we have done nothing to deserve a fair epistemology.<<<
I don't like this analogy because, like a child, when I had cancer, I knew that the only cure was by doing something I didn't want to do. I complained and didn't like it. Only infants can't understand why we give them shots but by 5 and above they can, they still don't like the pain.
Received on Sun May 28 09:04:28 2006