Re: Firmament and the Water above was [asa] Re: Slug

----- Original Message -----
From: "Glenn Morton" <glennmorton@entouch.net>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2006 5:13 AM
Subject: RE: Firmament and the Water above was [asa] Re: Slug
.................

> George Murphy wrote:
>>Accepting as evidence pseudo-historical scenarios which in practice can
>>never be tested is an even easier way.
>
> Actually George, my views can be tested. An oil well core in the Nile
> delta
> pulling some interesting artifact up from the Miocene Pliocene boundary
> would confirm the concept. I didn't say it would be easy. I would also
> point out that much of modern physics is in the same boat being very
> difficult to test (one may need a galaxy sized particle accelerator to
> create the conditions at 10^-43 seconds)--but they are testable in
> principle
> and thus are science. The wag may say that both theories will be confirmed
> at the same time, but it is testable. So I would ask that you withdraw
> your
> statement that it can never be tested or explain why an oil well core
> bringing up an artifact wouldn't be a test of my views. I am not
> confident
> you will answer this issue.

Thanks for a textbook example of chutzpah. You think you can get inside my
head and tell me what I "want" even though I tell you it isn't what I want.
Then you that ask that I "withdraw" my statement with no attention at all to
the nuances I've given it. I've never said that your flood speculation is
untestable in principle. Of course a core in the right place might bring up
an artifact like the log from "Noah's" ark if your scenario was correct but
the possibility is so remote that your concordism is in practice safe. & I
think it's interesting that you always want to talk about your "Noah" guess
instead of your "Adam" one which is even more fantastic.

BTW I don't know if you got my extended demonstration that I don't "want the
Bible to be false." My spam filter got my copy from the list. If you
didn't get it & want to, let me know.

> I would add this, George, at least I am taking the risk of being 100%
> disconfirmed in my views. Science could decide there was not Mediterranean
> infilling and that a subaqueous process deposited the salt. They could
> find
> humanlike activity 10 million years ago and that would kill my views or at
> least hurt them. The only way one can be demonstrated true is by risking
> being wrong.
>
> The accommodationalist approach, as far as I can see has no way to be
> disconfirmed even in the slightests. That is what this entire series of
> threads has been about. If one says, "This verse represents the true
> theology of man that God is trying to communicate to us" how do I
> disprove
> that statement? Do I slap God with a subpoena, put him under oath and ask
> him if this is true? Do I beat Him with rubber hoses to get the truth out
> of Him? If you tell me that a particular passage is the greatest
> theological
> statement of all, how do I measure that? You had tried in a previous post
> to use meaningfulness of Christianity to the lives of people, but I can't
> see how to verify that a Christian life is more meaningfully lived than
> the
> life of a Buddhist. I would be interested in hearing any way to actually
> verify this system of thought, but one can't verify things if one uses
> subjective terms like 'meaningfulness'. The reality is that only some form
> of concordism allows one to verify anything.
>
> But after deciding that parts of the Bible are false, you refuse to draw
> the
> obvious conclusion/worry that we might be no better than the Mormons with
> their laughable archaeology who also fail to draw the conclusion/worry
> that
> they might not quite have the true religion. They too will be at church
> today in spite of their silly archaeology..

We've gone through this over & over. What frustrates me about the whole
thing is your refusal to say anything about your own theological position
or, for that matter, why you're a Christian. You wave off references to the
cross & resurrection of Jesus & evidence for their historicity in an almost
contemptuous way. You berate everyone who thinks he/she can hold an
intelligent version of the Christian faith without accepting the historical
character of Genesis but you make no attempt to explain how you think one is
supposed to get from Genesis to distinctively Christian faith. You expect
everyone else to present an argument for Christianity that meets your
standards of evidence but you refuse to do that yourself.

> I will also answer George's converting to concordism here. George wrote:
>
>>The texts I'm referring to are ones that speak of God's creative work in
> connection with the defeat of a great sea monster,
>>Rahab (Ps.89:8-13, Job 26:12-13), sometimes called Leviathan
>>(Ps.74:12-17).
> Even conservative scholars have often
>>treated these texts as mere poetry or "accomodation" to Babylonian or
> Canaanite myths. But they are history.
>
>
>
> This concept that we concordists are saying that EVERYTHING must be 100%
> literal is nothing but a strawman of Biblical proportions--a boogey
> argument
> to try to scare people away from any form of concordism. It is also a
> very
> weak argument.
>
> This is what I am speaking of George. Given a choice between two ways to
> read the Bible, one that makes it false and the other which might make it
> ok, you chose the path that makes the Bible false.
............................
Is it really possible? Yes, I guess maybe it is. Perhaps I have to explain
the joke. I was parodying your "Adam" pseudo-concordism. I guess it was
too much to hope that you would see how absurd it was rather than going off
on a solemn argument about the Rahab texts.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sun Jun 18 19:36:54 2006