Re: Let's start with the assumption that I am right!

On Sun Jun 4 14:33 , "George Murphy" sent:

>{You'd have to give some examples of circular logic in the strict sense.
>But if your going to call it "circular logic" when someone argues that
>confidence in his/her initial presuppositions is strengthened a posteriori
>by their ability to explain & make sense of phenomena, so be it. I call it
>the way science generally works & a legitimate way for theology to work.

See, George, given that everyone says that observational/scientific data isn't being
taught in the early accounts, it is hard to see how the presuppositions are being
strengthened a posteriori. If the account is a polemic against other gods and is not a
history, how do you strengthen that presupposition with a posteriori observations?

Secondly, concerning circular logic, it is everywhere. Let's start with the assumption
that God accommodates the science to the ANE cosmology but not to the point where it
interferes with the theology. I believe that is your assumption. Thus the theology of
the Bible is the true theology. The theology tells us how powerful God is and that he is
all-knowing. The theology also tells us that God inspired the Bible to communicate with
mankind. Therefore a powerful omniscient God inspired men to write the Bible. But the
Bible has scientifically false statements in it. Since God is truly powerful and
omniscientthere must be a reason for these false statements. The theology of the Bible
tells us that man could only accept milk. Therefore, God accommodated his message to the
culture of the day but not to the point where it interferes with the theology. Thus the
Bible is the true theology.........

That is circular/tautological.

>
>& it's wrong to say that modern theologians are uninterested in concord with
>reality. Many of them are uninterested in concord of Gen.1-11 read as
>historical narrative with the early history of the earth but that doesn't
>mean that they are unconcerned with the history of Israel, the life, death &
>resurrection of Jesus or agreement between their self-experience & the
>law-gospel claims of the Christian faith. You have elevated the historicity
>of early Genesis to THE issue which determines whether or not one is a
>theological realist. That's far too narrow a view.}

Maybe, but let me point out once again, where I see the importance. If the REAL God
inspired the Bible, then He would know about the creation and could have done a better
job of communicating to mankind the reality. So, in some sense, this

>
>Now, as to your first sentence, I read your article before replying. I
>simply don't
>think you have a persuasive case. If that is to be called ignoring your
>point, so be it.
>While you think I have little respect for theologians, maybe you have too
>much faith in
>the assumptions you use in that article. I disagree that there has been
>
>{1st, the assumptions that I use in that article are things I've discussed
>at length here, in numerous articles in PSCF & other places & in the book
>that I refer to in the article. So I hope that at least long-time
>participants on the asa list will realize that they aren't as sketchy as
>that brief article might make them appear to those not familiar with
>science-theology discussions. Those assumptions are that "true theology and
>recognition of God are in the crucified Christ" (i.e., a theology of the
>cross) & that the divine kenosis displayed in the Incarnation is a key to
>understanding God's action in the world. I have a great deal of faith in
>those claims, though I certainly don't claim to be inerrant in the way I
>work out their implications. But if assumptions are to be questioned, those
>are where we should start.

You put everything into the cross. At first blush that sounds so good. But the
epistemological problem is that you start with the concept that the cross is true and
derive everything from there. But, I will say this, the cross is only true IF and only
if the Bible is true. If the history of the death and resurrection of Christ recounted in
the Gospels is false, then the cross is false. Making the cross the basis works find and
dandy so long as you are dealing with people who share your assumption. But I deal with
many atheists at work and in China I dealt with both atheists and buddhists. If I say to
them, start where you do, it doesn't work. They don't believe the cross, because they
believe the Bible to be false. So, George, if I only dealt with believers, as most
pastors do most of the time, I would be like you. When one gets away from the Church and
sees what the world is like out there, it is a much more complex place. They view us, as
I view the Mormons--pitiful people who are very nice but have this crazy belief system.

>
>OTOH I really don't know what your basic theological position is. (& please
>understand that that isn't meant as a questioning of your Christian
>commitment.)

The problem you have here is that I am very hard to classify because I don't follow in
paths so well trodden that there is little new to discover. And, as you see today with my
Hill flood post, I demand that the consequences be consistent. The positions like yours,
and the YEC position have reached a stalemate. They can be taken no further. They are as
fully developed as they will ever be. And neither of them will solve the problem. We need
a historical-evolutionary view. That is the only real viable compromise for this issue.
The laity, unlike the clergy, want their religion to be real. But the clergy and the
scientists want it to accept modern science. There is only one way to get there--and that
is with an evolutionary interpretation of the Bible which maintains historicity. I will
use a box I have used before but haven't resurrected in a long time. Ignore the .'s
because they will be needed by the awful archive to maintain formatting

Evolution...............................No.evolution
Non.Historical..a....................b..non-historical
Bible.........-------------------------..Bible
..............I........................I
..............I........................I
..............I........................I
..............I........................I
..............I........................I
..............I........................I
...........c..I........................I.d
Evolution......------------------------.No.evolution
Historical.Bible........................Historical
........................................Bible
</pre>

This is a chart of the possible positions on the bible
being historical and evolution. ICR occupies position D, I
only know of one person who occupies B. Most scientists
who are christians occupy A. I occupy C. To my knowledge
no one has previously occupied C in the sense that I
beleive the events are real, not allegorical, not mythical.
We have to think of something, some scenario. Many of
 the most vociferous atheists on Talk Origins were former
Christians of both YEC and more liberal stripes who became
convinced that the Bible was FALSE. Historically and
scientifically false! Unless those in Christian apologetics
provide a scenario which allows the Bible to be true in a
conventional sense of that word, we are failing to provide
the proper level of support to our children in this very
scientific age. If I do like Hugh Ross and tell my kids
that Adam was created less than 60,000 years ago and then
they take an anthro course in college and find the things I
have been talking about, what are they to think? Will they
trust me more? Will they be more firm in their faith? I
doubt it.

I will fully admit that I am a total failure at convincing many people of this course of
action. But failure to convince, doesn't mean failure of the cause itself.

 I mean, what do you organize your thinking out of your faith
>around? What's your basic theological principle for biblical
>interpretation? It seems to me sometimes that it must be "God said it, I
>can concordize it, that settles it" but maybe I'm wrong.}

No, it isn't settled. That is where you go wrong. In my view, unless a religion, any
religion, can solve these tensions, it is doomed to die as education levels rise. But I
can't hold what I view you holding (and you will deny holding) that IF God says it, it
doesn't have to be real but it is still true. (I know you claim that there is reality int
he genesis accounts, but you have argued for God not telling/inspiring the strict truth
here.

If you want my general principle, I don't believe faerie tales. YEC is a faerie tale and
so is much of the Bible if one doesnt want to believe things like talking snakes or
floating ax-heads. Of course I have said all this before to you, but we keep saying the
same thing over and over to each other.

>
>1. any progress in the science/religion area over the past 25 years because
>religion keeps
>saying the same thing. There has, however, been scientific progress.
>
>{Glenn, I know that you're very well read in a lot of fields but I don't
>know how much that applies to theology. Correct me if I'm wrong but I
>suspect that most of the theology you've read has been toward the
>Evangelical-fundamentalist end of the spectrum & that much of it has to do
>with origins issues.

George, I will confess to not being as widely read in theology as I am on many other
topics. But, what little theology I have read has been from those who are far more
liberal than I. You may not think Blocher is to the left of me, but I do. I have also
read a couple of your books, and you are most assuredly not what you perceive me to have
read. I have read Paul Seeley's excellent book and I do consider it to be theology and it
is the toughest one I have encountered. I have a couple of Polkinghorne' books. I have
also read a theology book on Adam, Eve and the Genome, which has very liberal theologians
like Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Laurel Schneider, Theodore Jennings, Ken Stone, and Lee
H. Butler. They are all at Chicago. I actually can't think of a theologian whom I have
read who is conservative as I define that term.

As a rule, I tend to try to read those who would disagree with me rather than reading
those who agree with me. This has a whole variety of uses. I even employed this
technique when preparing Foundation, Fall and Flood. I sent it to 5 YECs and 5 atheists
to have them review it. There is no better way to find your weaknesses than to have your
enemies critique your stuff. Your friends will tell you what you want to hear and thus
are useless.

>If that's the case then you need to look at some other
>theologians. Of course in one sense Christian theology is supposed to "keep
>saying the same thing." If it doesn't keep a strong connection with "the
>same thing" then it's probably heretical. But the work of Barbour,
>Torrance, McGrath, Polkinghorne, N. Murphy, Pannenberg, Santmire,
>Cole-Turner, R.J Russell & T. Peters, just to mention a few, is enough to
>show that what I said about progress in this area was true. & I'll have the
>audacity to add some of my own work because 25 years ago no one was trying
>to deal with science-theology dialogue in terms of Luther's theology of the
>cross.}
>

I have enjoyed your books, but don't find them useful at solving the problem that needs
to be solved.

>{My phrase "if the Holy Spirit acted within the limits of human knowledge"
>referred specifically to the process of inspiration of scripture. So the
>examples you cite are irrelevant to the immediate argument.}

No they are not irrelevant and you shouldn't dismiss them so easily and quickly. If our
faith is because of the H. S. working in our lives, then we are inspired to become
christians. But that means, that God inspires me to believe something which is beyond
human knowledge--the resurrection, walking through walls etc.

>>{This is much ado about not very much. I have no investment in the term
>"accomodation" & use it simply because it's traditional. But the basic idea
>is that God operates within the limits of contemporary human knowledge in
>those fields. That's what needs to be discussed, not the meaning of the
>word "accomodation."}

First off, it is useful to be precise with the language.

Secondly, contemporary human knowledge today is that dead men don't rise after 3 days.
Men don't walk through walls or walk on water. God is clearly working outside the limits
of knowledge of this contemporary culture.

Thirdly, you have no real evidence that God limits himself thusly other than your belief
that this is so. God didn't tell you that he limits himself in the inspiration process.
Shoot, we don't really even know how inspiration works, so it seems a bit presumptuous to
say what God does during it.

>
>I would also like to know how you verify the part of the above paragraph
>which reads:
>
>"to the extent that it didn't obscure important aspects of revelation.'
>
>I would contend that this is an ad hoc theological self-protection
>conjecture. Why?
>Because if human understanding did obscure the important aspects of
>revelation we would
>be wrong. This is the location of your theological assumption that we are
>always right.
>If we aren't right, then that ad hoc assumption can't be true. If we are
>wrong, then God
>DID let the contemporary understanding obscure the important theological
>message. But we
>could not possibly KNOW that God didn't let human understanding mess up the
>revelation.
>I would also say you have no evidence to back up this assertion. You have
>no way to
>verify the truth or falsity of that phrase.
>
>Please tell me how you know that God didn't let human understanding
>interfere with
>theology when he clearly DID let it interfere in other ways.
>
>I chose concordism and the use of verification of the biblical
>interpretation to avoid
>such ad hoc epistemological fixes.
>
>{Yes, it's an assumption that scripture is the inspired witness to God's
>revelation. That's connected with the basic claim I made earlier, that
>God's self-revelation is in Christ. We wouldn't know of that if it weren't
>for scripture.

This is a start. If we wouldn't know it if it weren't for scripture, that implies very
strongly that Scripture is apriori in our knowledge of Christ and that it MUST be true,
or the Christ is NOT God's self-revelation. And if that is true, then it follows that
epistemological priority must be given to the truth of the Scripture. The oreder is this:

Scripture-->knowledge of Christ-->belief in the self-revelation of God-->belief that the
cross is the center of the unvierse.

So, I would contend that in order for scripture to be true it must tell us real things
about history (broadly defined). And that is what the accommodationalists don't want it
to do--tell us any actual history.

In your penultimate email you said I was ignoring a point. Well you are ignoring the
question I have asked. Why couldn't a Tibetan Buddhist, a Mormon, a Great Green Slug
believer or even a follower of good ole' Oogaboogah claim that their gods accomodated the
science for their holybook writers but not to the point where it interfered with the true
theology????

Please don't ignore this question. Can they do this validly? I think I have only gotten
one person on your side to actually answer the question.

>& the biblical witness to Christ receives confirmation from
>the ability of its message to help us understand ourselves and our world.
>

The buddhists would say the same. One of the best geophysicists I worked with in China
would say that Confuscious does the same. He got me to read the Analects and also The
Great Learning. I would have to agree with him that Kong Fu zi is a great help in
understanding our world and ourselves, but then, so is Nicolai Machiavelli.

My point is that what you claim as empirical support is a very weak sort of support.

>& before you go postal over that, tell me how YOU prove that Jesus is Lord,
>Savior &c? How do we get from the things you think show the historical
>reliability of Genesis to the faith claim that Jesus is the Son of God -
>without any "leaps of faith" or any illogical things of that sort?}

Sigh, once again, you haven't been listening. I have about 10 times since I came back
said that proof is not possible. Why is it so hard to get that across? Maybe it is
because people prefer to put on their listen-to-the-yec ear filter when I speak. I even
admitted to you that assumptions are necessary and now you say this. Tsk tsk, you should
try to listen a wee bit better.

As I said before I am looking for observational support, not proof. CAN EVERYONE IN THE
HOUSE PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS? I AM NOT LOOKING FOR PROOF. I AM LOOKING FOR SUPPORTIVE
EVIDENCE THAT IS OBJECTIVE RATHER THAN SUBJECTIVE. Helping us understand ourselves and
the world is totally subjective because a Mormon or a Buddhist would say the same about
their religion---I have actually heard them say it.

>{Your call.}

No, both our calls. you are not entire out of the decision loop here if we go for
another round.
Received on Sun Jun 4 22:42:05 2006