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

This will be my last in this exchange. I'm leaving for a few days. Double
brackets on my recent comments.

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

 -----Original Message-----
> From: George Murphy [mailto:gmurphy@raex.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 7:36 AM
> To: Glenn Morton; asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: Firmament and the Water above was [asa] Re: Slug

{I had said "Accepting as evidence pseudo-historical scenarios which in
practice can
never be tested is an even easier way." Did you not see the qualification
"in practice"?}

But in practice it can be tested. I saw it and I think you are utterly
wrong. Please tell me why a core couldn't verify my views.

{{Apparently we're using the phrase "in practice" differently. The odds
against finding some artifact that has survived from a boat 5Myr old
somewhere around the Mediterranean are very high. The odds against finding
any evidence from your "Adam" scenario are even higher. Assuming, of
course, that any such events ever happened.}}

{If you'll read my recent PSCF article you'll see that I explicitly do not
commit myself to any particular date at which the 1st humans, in a
theological sense,
appeared. In fact, I cite your arguments about Bilzingsleben in note 41.}

I saw that, but, if you agree to Bilzingsleben, what about earlier times
when mankind might have had simpler, less durable temples? We do see art at
1.6 myr ago and recognized facial characteristics in a pebble at 3.2 million
years ago. What do we do with those? Do all altars have to leave evidence
of themselves? Copses condemned in the Scripture don't.

{{Which is beside the point - at least to the point I made above. You
claimed earlier that I (& others) wasn't really taking human evolution
seriously. I was trying to explain that the purpose of my PSCF article was
to present a theological model to help in understanding how, in an
evolutionary picture, sin of the 1st humans could have had effects that
traditional theology has ascribed to original sin. I said quite clearly
that I was not making any assumptions about when & where humanity, in the
theological sense that I defined, came into being. You will see that while
I referred to your claim about Bilzingsleben, I neither endorsed nor denied
those claims. & yes, the emergence of humanity in my sense could have been
even earlier. "Cite" doesn't mean "agree to."

One of the basic rules for any kind of dialogue is to try to understand what
the other person is actually saying. You aren't try very hard to do that
here.}}

{Sorry but this doesn't tell me anything. Your "theological position is
that religion better be TRUE"? Any Muslim, Hindu &c would say the same.
That's at best a meta-statement of your philosophy of religion. You're a
Christian "because [you] think it might actually be true"? What is "it"? I

don't know what you think it means to be a Christian other than that the
Bible is "true" & a Jehovah's Witness or Mormon would endorse that
statement.<<<

GRM: George, you seem to be saying that unless I tell you a theological
position that you can categorize and then disect, my views aren't worth
anything? Come on.

{No, what I've been trying to get you to do is to try to get a theological
conversation started. You refuse to do that. That's your right, but don't
pretend that you're carrying on such a conversation if all you're willing to
do is say "Religion better be true" & then discuss history, geology, &c.}
..................
{Let me show you where I'm trying to go with this. A person who holds
anything like traditional Christian faith believes that because of the life,

death & resurrection he is freed from fear of death, his guilt is taken
away, or his life is given meaning - or some combination of the 3. (I'm
following Tillich's analysis.) Christians even claim to have some
"knowledge" that such things are the case. Why? There is historical
evidence related to those claims - about Jesus & the history in which he's
embedded - but not historical evidence for the faith claims made about the
meaning of Jesus for the person who believes in him. & if a person holds to

your criteria, he/she can never accept those faith claims!}

Not so. What I would prefer to see is that like scientific theories where
some things can be verified, but others can't, one can get enough confidence
from some of the verifications to undergird the rest.. Example: the
standard theory of particle physics. They have lots of confirmations, of
lots of things, but they still lack the Higgs boson. The exact size of the
particle accelerator required for verification of the Higgs boson (which is
central to the modern theory being correct) depends upon the mass of that
particle. The larger the mass, the less likely it is that it will ever be
seen because of the energy requirements for the accelerator. So, modern
physics has believable theories in which the central figure (Higgs boson)
can't be verified, but everyone feels comfortable and accepts that it is
quite likely that the particle exists.

{{Don't give me patronizing lectures about elementary physics! You
obviously have no idea what I'm talking about. The claim that the death &
resurrection of Jesus frees us from fear of death, or from guilt, or from
meaninglessness, is a different KIND of claim from a statement of historical
fact. No matter how much solid historical evidence we could amass - even if
we found & authenticated the diaries of the guards at the tomb verifying
that an angel came & rolled back the stone &c - it would not show that you
could put your ultimate trust in Jesus Christ in life and in death. Being
able to say "Jesus is my Lord" is not a matter of verifying one more elusive
historical fact.

Exhibit A: The book by Pinchas Lapide, _The Resurrection of Jesus: A
Jewish Perspective_ (Augsburg, 1983). He believes that Jesus, as a faithful
Jew, was raised from the dead by the God of Israel. He does _not_ believe
that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel or true God.}}

That is the model I would like to see for Christianity. This concept that
so much of the Bible is factually false but it is still the true theology
would not fly in any science. If all the particles predicted by the
Standard model didn't exist but physicists still believed in the Higgs
boson, they could be rightly criticized for having fideism.

{What you seem to do is to focus singlemindedly in public on historical
evidence for Genesis, rejecting any reference to the meaning conveyed by
distinctively Christian claims.}

Yeah, because those are objectively verifiable or falsifiable. The other,
distinctively Christian things are no more verifiable than this account of
flying humans in about 3000 BC.:

""Devas from their cloud-borne chariots, and Gandharvas from the sky,
Gazed in mute and speechless wonder on the human chiefs from high!"
http://hinduism.about.com/library/weekly/extra/bl-mahabharata8.htm
MAHABHARATA BOOK VIII: BHISHMA-BADHA

{{Thus suggesting that you don't know what "distinctively Christian"
means.}}

  {Then, having convinced yourself that you're
the only one holding to a tough & objective religious position you privately

believe things that you simply can't get to in your tough & objective way. }

So, tell me how we verify the resurrection with the things available to us
today? We have an account, but we can't judge the veracity of it because we
don't really know the character of the writers. Maybe they were out to get
rich by collecting donations. We can verify or falsify particular flood
theories, and particular parts of creation. And frankly the Hindu accounts
are far more in line with modern views than are those of the Bible, at least
if they are taken on face value as traditionally read.

{Or maybe not. Maybe you really do think that Christianity is a collection
of true historical facts & that's it, though I hope that's not the case.}

Why do you hope that Christianity isn't a collection of true historical
facts.

{{Can you read? I mean really, can you READ? Did you not see that I added
"& that's it"? I.e., my sentence meant - to anyone who can read & is
willing to pay attention to meaning - "Maybe you really do think that
Christianity is ONLY a collection of true historical facts & that's it ..."
.

& have I ever said that Christianity has nothing to do with historical
facts? }}

 I proudly hope that. Here is the definition of fact from my desk
dictionary:

"Fact noun 1. something known to have happened, to be true, or to exist."

Am I to read into your amazement at my desire to have a set of historical
facts that you want something that isn't known to have happened, isn't known
to be true and which doesn't exist? Come on, that isn't what you want,
.....is it?

Are we to view the resurrection as something that didn't happen but we
believe it is a great gig so we collect money from little old ladies in the
pews?

{{This is deliberate misrepresentation. I've said repeatedly that I believe
that Jesus was raised from the dead & that good historical arguments can be
made to support that claim. Every time I say that you brush it off. Now
you suggest that I don't think it really happened.}}

Given that that post was about Rahab, and I didn't see a mention of Adam, it
is hard to see how it is a parody of Adam. Maybe I am congenitally dumb,
but Rahab as a proxy for Adam seems a wee bit of a post hoc stretch. Maybe
it went over my head; maybe you didn't communicate worth a bucket of warm
spit.

{Or maybe you're tone deaf when it comes to literature. You've said before
that you don't appreciate fiction - I recall long ago you mentioning The
Lord of the Rings in particular. You're smart, you understand the words,
but you just don't get the music. (I know that "literature" is a grandious
term for my little joke but it's technically correct.) It would be
interesting to know how many others who read my "converting" post did or
didn't realize that it was a parody. (Others, email me privately if you
wish.)}

I guess you didn't communicate your concept very well. Sorry. But the
greatest literature, if it doesn't convey its message isn't worth much. If
Shakespeare really intended Romeo and Juliet to be a comedy, he failed.

{Did you actually believe that I thought that stuff was true? A mutant
intelligent dinosaur?}

No, what I thought you were doing was claiming that was something I had to
accept because I am a concordist. I bet you didn't think I would take it as
a reductio ad absurdam attempt on your part. I saw that mutant intelligent
part as sarcasm, not parody---see you didn't get your message across, at
least to me. Call me dumb, but that is the way it was.

{{I'd prefer to put it as I already did: You don't know how to read
anything beyond a factual accounting of information, & when you try to read
anything else you automatically squash it down into that form & then try to
decide if the facts are true or false. If you prefer to describe yourself
as dumb, that's up to you. I've received several posts from others on the
list saying that they realized that it was a parody. But the precise
lterary genre isn't the point so much as the fact that my "argument" was
constructed in precise analogy with your "Adam" scenario & shows how
fantastic the latter is.}}

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Received on Tue Jun 20 08:16:20 2006