RE: [asa] D'Souza vs. Hitchens - Surrending the debate

Hi Mike, you wrote in part:

>>When books have been written in the name of God and people condemn
each other for believing in different books about the same God, I become

very leery of those who condemn the other book. How can a human being
know the difference when they are raised to believe the Koran and with
love in their hearts and humility in their minds do everything they can
to adhere to its tenets?<<

Authenticity matters. The Bible is far different from the Koran. You
can't compare a collection of books written over a period of fifteen
hundred years by forty-four different authors that all work together to
confirm the Christian faith with history and fulfilled prophecy to a
book supposedly dictated by the angel Gabriel. How could you establish
the authentic authorship of a spirit being? Not that I'm questioning
it, mind you (Do I want bearded gentlemen knocking on my door?), I'm
just saying it can't be authenticated. So those who follow the dictated
writings of Mohammed have nothing but faith to go on. We Christians
have far more. Furthermore, the canon of the Bible was established
before Mohammed lived. How do you know the spirit bringing the message
didn't have a collection of manuscripts in hand written by authors with
whom we are all familiar?

Dick Fischer

Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association

Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History

 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/> www.genesisproclaimed.org

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of mlucid@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 1:02 PM
To: dfsiemensjr@juno.com
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] D'Souza vs. Hitchens - Surrending the debate

Genetically the human of the Old Testament are virtually identical to
the
humans of the New Testament. But their knowledge of God was a world
apart, just like ours is different from those alive when Jesus lived.
Most
dramatically those alive five thousand years ago did not know Jesus did
they?
That alone makes a world of difference with respect to their knowledge
of
God. But more to my point, the intuitive outlook of Old Testament men on

the nature of God was what I imagine to be fairly idiotic in terms of
anthropomorphizing God.

The Old Testament Gods of Israel are all over the map of lower order
human
emotions like vengeful, demanding, jealous etc. That men of that time
needed
a God that was thus disposed is fairly certain in my mind. But that
modern
humans need to see God as the Old Testament God is not at all certain.
By the time Jesus began to set things a little straighter God was seen
in
terms of much higher order emotions like forgiving and merciful etc.
While
God does not change, we do. We evolve. We grow ever smarter and ever
more intuitive of the miracle of creation and Creator and I am willfully
evolving
the character of my faith and the nature of my understanding of God away

from the Old Testament Gods in what I believe to be greater compliance
to
how Jesus depicted the New Testament God.

Taking it one more step, I see my own vision of God as something that
will be seen as laughably anthropomorphic to humans five thousand years
from now and I try to see God in THAT light. What is my responsibility
to elevate God in my own eyes? What is my responsibility to evolve
my appreciation for the transcendence of God beyond my current place
of inherent ignorance?

However I rationalize God will be wanting no matter what I do. But how
I
feel about God in my life is not so wanting. So I let my feelings, my
faith, my instinct for God take a greater hand in my life. I think a
humble
man or woman who holds in their mind the notion that we can never
rationally envision God in adequate terms, can, in further pursuit of
their
faith, feel God in our hearts in a way that shows to us our blindness.
I am
a big believer in the feelings, intuition, heart, and the Holy Spirit
over the
context restricted "certainties" of the rational mind.

As for worshiping a goat? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure no one
worships the actual animal. Maybe some kind of transcendent symbol that

is in the form of a goat, perhaps, or like the cows of the Hindus,
worshiping
life in the form of the stable system of animal husbandry that sustained
them
for centuries, but I don't think anyone actually worships the actual
animals.
Maybe they hold them in reverence, but, heck, I hold all of God's
creation
in a real and constant reverence, particularly animals because they're
kinda like us before the Fall.

But, as an imperfect sinner I am very reluctant to condemn anyone or
anything that is trying to worship. Anyone who places an external deity

over their own volition is acknowledging God. And God is God. And
anyone
who worships the God of Abraham is unambiguously worshiping the same
God I do. Do I condemn them? Not me.

I don't dare condemn anybody for false worship. I'll condemn them for
corrupting worship or corrupting the belief of others in pursuit of
their own
designs, especially if they become physically coercive, but not for
being
different from my own. Not me.

If someone has the same faith as I do, however, I will feel much better
about trying to judge the relative merits of our rational translation
(words)
of our faith because we are both much safer from corrupting each other
in
the process because we are so close to the same belief to begin with.
But I will not judge Wiccans among Christians, much less condemn them.

-Mike (Friend of ASA)

-----Original Message-----
From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>
To: mlucid@aol.com
Cc: gmurphy@raex.com; asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:32 pm
Subject: Re: [asa] D'Souza vs. Hitchens - Surrending the debate

Evidently I have the wrong idea that every person mentioned in the Old
Testament was /Homo sapiens/. But I am at a loss to understand what
species they were. I have also held that all humans today belong to the
same species. What am I missing?

I have had some contact with a Wiccan, and with a person familiar with
witchcraft. Are you trying to tell me that the worship of the "Goat" is
not idolatry?

Additionally, to go back to Jim's reference to atheism, I contend that
religion does not have to consist of worship conducted in a special
place according to a manual. One's religion is determined by what one
holds as ultimate. Those who hold their reason and accomplishment as
ultimate have a religion just as surely as the one who bows to a carved
deity. Those whose ultimate is themselves are idolaters as surely as
animists are. That the former are civilized and the latter primitive
does not change that, in one way or another, they worship something
other than the One who revealed himself to the prophets and apostles.

Dave (ASA)

On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:07:55 -0400 mlucid@aol.com writes:

Yahweh? Man, Yahweh ain't the God I have in my heart or my mind. I'm
faith-bound
to the belief that I do not worship a vengeful God.

You know, the Bible is, to me (among a billion other things) a story of
the evolution
of our ability to understand God. Not the evolution of God, mind you,
but our ability
to comprehend God.

Is the God of the old Testament the God of the New Testament? Of
course. Are
the humans of the old Testament the humans of the New Testament? No
way.

And Hindus and Wiccans? I don't think that we are allowed to pass
judgment on
Hindus and Wiccans with respect to idolatry. That'll be done outside
our ministrations.
We should stick far more closely to passing judgment upon ourselves with
respect
to what is and is not idolatry, even one to the other among us, in here,
sure.

-Mike (Friend of ASA)

-----Original Message-----
From: George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
To: Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net>; ASA <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 6:28 pm
Subject: Re: [asa] D'Souza vs. Hitchens - Surrending the debate

This is not the way scripture speaks. The 1st Commandment is not about
some abstract "God" to whom people they can ascribe any characteristics
& actions they please but about YHWH, the God of Israel. This would be
clearer if there were not the unfortunate practice of quoting it apart
from introduction to the decalogue. "I am YHWH your God, who brought you
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no
other gods before me." I.e., God is defined by what God does. & in the
NT this God isfurther identified as the One revealed in the cross &
resurrection of Jesus.

You seem to assume that "names" of God are more or less arbitrary labels
which people give to the concept of God. Many are but the Bible speaks
of YHWH as God's own self-designation, as in Exodus 3:13-15. & Matthew
28:19 in the same way can be regarded as the self-designation as
"Father, Son and Holy Spirit" of the God revealed in Christ.

With all that I am not saying -

    (a) that we have to address God always by correct names, or

    (b) that knowledge of these names distinguishes good people from
bad. The fundamental sin that we are all guilty of to some extent is
idolatry, violation of the 1st commandment - the point again that Paul
is making in Romans 1. Christians can have idolatrous Christian images
- e.g., the KKK's flaming cross. But this does not make Hindus, Wiccans
&c any less idolators. It seems to me that OTOH you are making the
common mistake of using "idolatry" for only the crassest forms of that
sin & defining the more serious away. The serious ones are what God
spoke of to Ezekiel, "Son of man, these people have taken their idols
into their hearts," & what Calvin meant when he said that the human
imagination is a factory of idols.

Shalom
George
 <http://web.raex.com/%7Egmurphy/> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

----- Original Message -----

From: "Jim Armstrong" < <mailto:jarmstro@qwest.net> jarmstro@qwest.net>

To: "ASA" < <mailto:asa@calvin.edu> asa@calvin.edu>

Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 2:15 PM

Subject: Re: [asa] D'Souza vs. Hitchens - Surrending the debate

> epistemologically
> Sender: <mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu>
asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu
> Precedence: bulk
>
> Well, there's no question that we will differ on this point. However,
my
> sense is that the the reality of the divine creator is neither defined
> by a name nor by the particular model one might use for
> conceptualization.
>
> With respect to name, Creator God is who he is. "God" is just our
> particular name for a supreme creative being who probably needs no
name
> at all [the Bible seeming to commend existence, "I am", rather than
> title].
> Nearly every human being recognizes the existence of such a supreme
> being who is responsible for creation, and responsible for their
> existence in specific. They have a variety of names for that being,
> understandably embodied in their own language. We call Him (Her, It)
> "God", but we use many other names as well (apparently numbering about
> 100 for the Abrahamic traditions, though mostly differing in language
> specifics). Many of these we share with Judaism, and we are not
troubled
> by expressions like G-d or (the somewhat distorted) Jehovah, or
probably
> even "hashem" if its use is understood. However, we would lose some
> fellow travellers (though not all, particularly among missionaries!),
if
> we were to use a name from another Abrahamic tradition like "Allah".
> And yet these are all conveniences of address for the same Abrahamic
> God. Noteably, the choice among them does not change the Creator in
> any way.
>
> Though perhaps a little harder to accept at the outset, by extension
it
> would seem that the name assigned to the divine one would have
> essentially nothing to do with who God is in reality, or with the
> legitimacy of the quest of the seeker who uses any particular
> (presumeably reverential) name. Our Scripture puts it this way,
"...for
> he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a
rewarder
> of them that diligently seek him." It does not say that we must come
> using the correct name.
>
> The model used for conceptualizing God is a somewhat different matter.
> We all have a variety of understandings (even among Christians who
> belong to one of some 30,000 identifiable denominations) about the
exact
> nature and character of the transcendant being that is assigned our
name
> "God". No two of these understandings are exactly alike in detail,
> sometimes differing in very significant detail. But if truth be told,
> even when we speak of "one God", we really don't know with certainty
> whether it/he/she is just a single entity, or whether this numbering
> thing even makes any sense with respect to the transcendant nature of

> God.
>
> In most of our Christian traditions, we are taught to have a problem
> with people groups making painted or wood or clay or stone images of
> what they think God might look like. The images are idols and those
who
> reverence them are idolaters. We in our traditions prefer to stay with
> mental models, not physical ones - but they are models nonetheless
> whether physical or mental. If they are the "other guy's" models, we
are
> inclined to call them "idols". If they are ours, we call them "icons"
or
> "art".
>
> But with perhaps rare exceptions, those objects of pigment or wood or
> clay or stone are not the deities themselves, but representations. So
> are our "icons" and "art".
>
> And that is true of our mental models as well. They too - even the
best
> or most acceptable-to-us mental models - are essentially inferior
> representations, sharing extreme shortfall with respect to the reality
> of transcendent God (continuing to use our more familiar appellation).
>
> Most people groups throughout the world have in common an
understanding
> that they specifically are a people that were created in special
> preferred relationship and favor with that supreme being.
> At least some people groups understand that that supreme being has
also
> given them a special task in the world (usually in the nature of
> conquerer or ambassador).
> Most people groups have an understanding that they must do
something(s)
> to stay in favor (avoid getting out of favor) with that supreme being.
>
> But at the end of the day, none of the specifics of these
understandings
> have any effect whatsoever on who/what that supreme being is in
reality,
> the one whom they seek.
>
> All of these people groups and individuals within them work the same
> essential spiritual problem, namely how to conceptualize, relate to
and
> communicate with the transcendant being who is the Creator (to use
> another name as an example).
>
> I think we can reasonably presume that most are also sincere, whatever
> degree of devotion they might manifest. But there is nothing in the
> preceeding distillation of essentials that says they are seeking
> different supreme beings.
>
> What IS different (in some cases, clearly very different) is the human
> side of the equation, the name(s), nature, story and history, holy
> writings, traditions, understanding of purpose, and practices.
>
> Since every conceptualization of God varies down to a specific
> individual, it is pretty clear that no human understanding of a
> transcendant being and his/her/its nature and intent can be complete
or
> wholly accurate, even though those purported 30,000 identifiable
> Christian denominations (alone) are doing their best to do so. But in
a
> broader view, so are the rest of the folks. It seems to be our need
for
> uniqueness (collective and individual ego, if you will) that underlies
> the dismissive characterizing of other religions as seeking
(idolizing)
> something other than the true supreme being (God, in our language).
But
> each of those other people groups is equally quick to affirm that
their
> quest is for the "one true God", just as ours.
>
> A major difficulty in our time (and probably in all times) is - at the
> core - how people act in the context of their version of the quest (or
> an all too common perversion of it).
> But that STILL has nothing to do with the reality of the supreme being
> (God as we call "him"), or his position as the "one true God".
>
> The crux of the matter is that there is nothing that would say that
the
> prayers of anyone intending to reach the "one true God" are somehow
> deflected by what someone else might think or understand or say about
> them or their prayers. We understand that to be a "direct line".
Again,
> from Hebrews: "...for he that cometh to God must believe that he is,
and
> that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." The name
"God"
> in the passage is our name (and a translation at that), not in any
> measure the full reality, but intended to point to that divine
reality.
>
> In this discussion, I had no intent at all to dismiss the specific
> tenets of Christianity. What I speak of is the universal yearning for
> understanding and relationship with the Creator. In that light, it
seems
> to me unnecessarily dismissive and alienating to categorize those who
> seek the Creator with names and models different than ours as
> "idolaters". The apostle Paul evidently understood that. Such
> dismissive characterization and labelling does nothing constructive to
> "...draw all men unto ... [Him]"
>
> P.S. In the extreme case of one who understands that the physical
world
> is all there is, the label is atheist, not idolater.
>
> Or so it seemeth to me
>
> Blessings - JimA
>
>
>
>
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Received on Thu Nov 1 18:02:37 2007