RobertLW

I apologize if you find my comments insulting. They are not certianly meant to be. As I have said before, I have limited time in which to post and I try to be clear with my posts and as a result I am sometimes very direct. I am simply stating the truth as I understand the truth to be.

I cannot tell you what "rules" you are breaking or sins you are committing, I do not know you. My comments are not meant to be an indictment of any one person, but of a worldview as a whole and so I write that way.

I do not know if you have read the entire thread, but I was an athiest for most of my life. I too did not "truly believe" God to exist and so I do believe I have walked in those shoes. (Unless your speaking of a different set of shoes) It was certianly not my intent to judge any individual, but to evaluate a worldview.

Feel free to e-mail me if you wish to discuss. I am willing to give you a description of "my shoes" but I will not do so in a public forum for personal reasons. Your reasons for disbelief may be similar to what mine used to be.

Again, I apologize if you were insulted.

Robert

blt to go

O.K. Let us be perfectly clear. (Note, both jbernier and I are theist, although I am an atheist to the christian god, so be careful on typecasting )

You reject all other gods because they are false.

WHY are they false?
WHY do they not fully justify true knowledge?

blt to go

No, BGic, I will not play this debate by your rules and only your rules.

If you have no response because my practical application is not reduced to P's and C's, that is O.K.. I will live just fine.

jbernier

Yes. It strikes me as somewhat incongruent that BGic is arguing that only God grounds knowledge let demands that we ground all our statements within what is essentially a logical positivist framework.

jbernier

That is no excuse for bad form. One can still be expedient and polite at the same time.

You are right: You did not judge any individual. Rather you judged the millions of individuals who happen to be atheist. Apparentely judging millions of individuals is better than judging a single individual.

jbernier

I love Xenophanes on this: "Ethiopians say that there gods are flat-nosed and black, Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired" and "I oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses, and oxen to look like oxen, and each would make the gods' bodies have the same shape as they themselves had" (quoted from Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 2nd edition, ed. by Marc Cohen, Patricia Curd and C.D.C. Reeve).

It happens a lot. The Christian concept of God is very heavily rooted in a Hellenistic cultural milieu; it simply does not translate cross-culturally as it is culturally dependent.

Well, you know, maybe the Jews get it right for a bit but then they missed the boat with the whole Messiah thing back in 30 AD and now they are not unlike your average 486 - first-rate in their time but now sadly obsolete.

Indeed. Well put.

jbernier

Uhmmm...yeah...because they are logical fallacies.

You keep making this assertion but I am still unconvinced - you simply have not shown that the assertion is correct (in fact, you cannot because if your assertion is correct than any attempt to demonstrate its effectiveness would be circular and therefore logically fallacious).

If they are authorities they are authorities in very different ways. The "Christian God as authority" model would say that one opens up a book, turns to a relevant page, quotes a few words and says "See, there, look. This is the answer. The Bible says so." The "Scientific method as authority" model would not give a prepackaged text from which to quote for an answer: It would give you a set of conceptual tools by which to look for the answer. One is a dataset the other is a means to create and evaluate datasets. If they are both ultimate authorities (which I am not prepared to grant) then they are very different types of ultimate authorities.

No. You have not given a warrant for the other half of my statement: That you are denying self-authentication to the "ultimate authority" which you state does not self-authenticate.

Now, Ex. 3:14 merely has God saying that "I AM"; if that is all it takes to "self-authenticate" than anyone can self-authenticate as we all are. You are also staking the deck again because, by definition, a methodology cannot say I AM: You are comparing apples and oranges than attacking the orange for not being more like the apple.

Now, Heb. 6:13 merely has God saying that there is none greater than He. That is not a statement about grounding knowledge; it certainly does not speak to inerrancy one way or the other.

In Jer. 49:13 God swears by himself. How does that speak to epistemology?

Etc.

Merely proof-texting a few verses divorced from their literary and historical contexts and which at best tangentially support your assertions does not adequate support make. Either way they do not speak to whether or not their texts are reliable sources of knowledge for these verses are only meaningful if that is the case before we turn to the text.

I agree that the scientific method is no authority.

Then your whole argument falls apart!

By the way, I know that I snipped this out of its context and am making it say something very different than you actually meant. However, that is exactly what you tend to do with the Biblical text so I figure fair is fair.

No. It is not blind because it is rooted in the fully conscious recognition that there is no way to ultimately prove one's presupposition so that eventually one must make a decision - even though one cannot ultimately demonstrate that that position is the only legitimate position one can take. In short it is a recognition of epistemological limits and an attempt to live a honest life in the face of those limits. One takes such a step not blindly but fully aware of the reasons for the step.

First off, remember that I am not an atheist. I am on nobody's "side." I just happen to think that the position you hold is wrong; that has nothing to do with who holds it or who opposes it.

No. The statement "Here I stand" is not the point at which debate ends but rather the point at which debate begins. It is precisely when each participant is fully clear about their first principles that clear, honest, fruitful discussion can
most fully proceed.

Very important question. Kept me up half the night pondering.

First off, a lack of certainty does not necessarily entail confusion; indeed, I am uncertain precisely due to a lack of confusion. The more clearly I see the world the more I realize that there is much more on heaven and earth than can be dreamt of in my philosophy, to more or less quote Shakespeare. The more clearly I see the world the more I realize that there are many things that I simply cannot know for sure. However, that does not mean that I cannot take my best guess or follow my gut instinct; it does not mean that I cannot say "This is what seems most likely or most reasonable from where I stand." However it is always from where I stand because I only stand here and nowhere else. You want to call this arbitrary, fine; but it is not a random arbritrariness but one that is informed by my past experiences, my reflections upon the world, etc.

Again, I am not an atheist so this is precisely irrelevant. It is my work as a Christian theologian-in-training and my attempt to construct a Christian epistemology that is fully honest about the limits of a fundamentally finite human knowledge that has led me to these conclusions. Thus turning this into an atheist versus Christian thingee is not at all warranted.

Let us be clear here: You are not talking about "Christianity" but about "literalist fundamentalist Protestant" worldview. There is a difference. There is nothing in the "Christian" worldview per se that necessitates Biblical inerrancy. I can trot out ten gazillion (exaggeration) major theologians who were not literalists (to name a few: Matthew the Evangelist, John the Evangelist, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, Karl Barth, etc.).

First off, these are all Greek categories of thought that are largely foreign to the Jewish thoughtways that produced the scriptures. In short, they are simply the wrong questions to ask of scriptures as the writers would not have thought in these terms.

Second, for the question of inerrancy it does not matter if "the Bible" makes such claims as "the Bible" did not exist at the time that these books were written. There would be no warrant within "the Bible" itself to extend any such claims to cover the Biblical canons that we now possess.

No. The texts that were later anthologized into "the Bible" existed; "the Bible" as a compiled anthology did not. Hence Marcion could offer his open compilation: That was still an open question. Note that it is still an open question as there still is not a single agreed upon Biblical anthology.

And you just assert it. There we stand.

First off, I have not said "It's just that way" so that statement is precisely false and irrelevant.

Second, my entire comments here are based upon my reflections upon the question "How do I know my epistemology is correct?" The honest truth is that one cannot fully ever know for certain. One can reflect upon the world and say "This epistemology makes the most sense." However one cannot know for certain that one is wholly correct. That is simply beyond finite human understanding.

That is precisely my position. So what's the beef?

Which is only standard for certain forms of Christianity. It is not standard across the entire faith.

No, I did not say any of those things. I am saying that if there was once a Christianity which existed with "fuzzy" boundaries around the canon, in which the line between canon and non-canon was unclear - and if there is still one today, as there demonstrably is - then one must affirm two things: 1) That a Christianity with "fuzzy" boundaries around the canon can exist today; 2) If How can we be dogmatic in saying that the canon is the only source for knowledge when we cannot even be sure about what constitutes the canon?

No, I do not ignore that fact (to be precise certain Christian communities have copies of certain texts that later ended up in the Biblical canon). I also acknowledge, however, that these were not recognized as canonical by the Catholic/Orthodox church (which cannot properly be said to exist until at least the late 2nd century and realistically into the 4th).

No. That rule is an afterthought - a reflection upon the 1st century. It is not necessarily the case that it reflects 1st century thought or practice. Remember that the 4th and 5th century fathers were further removed from the apostles than we are from George Washington.

Because it didn't. There is a history here that must be taken seriously if we are to take "the Bible" seriously.

Actually, it was the English Protestants who removed the Apocrypha. This happened not in the Reformation but later when the people who funded the SPCK (virtually the only publishers of English Bibles for centuries) refused to give said funding if the Apocrypha was not removed.

jbernier

This may be against the rules to say but I must ask: Do you have any idea how patronizing and pedantic you sound when you say such a thing?

You obviously think that I am an idiot who can't get your simple, obvious, statements straight (never mind that your statements are far from simple or obvious, except, perhaps for those who have a very strong background in formal logic - which, by the way, is not a requirement for posting in this forum). Therefore I will once again withdraw from our conversation.

blt to go

Actually, jess, while this is insulting (and wrong) it is the logical progression as laid out in Romans 1, and hence (while most christians have the tact to not state it) it is what most christians feel. Most christians are wrong.

Note the progression as laid out: (those at home who are atheist can read along and see how far along you are!) [numbers are verses in Romans 1]

1. God is evident in nature (20)
2. the "godless and wicked" men suppress the truth (18 and 21)
3. Thinking becomes futile (21)
4. Hearts are darkened (21)
5. Exchange the glory of god for images like man, animals and reptiles (22)
6. Worship and serve created things (25)
7. Women become lesbians (26)
8. Men become homosexuals (27)
9. They will murder (29)
10. They will disobey their parents (30)

There are actually more, but 10 is a round number. Yep, clear as a bell. If you do not believe in the god of the bible, you are going gay, will murder and finally (gasp!) disobey your parents!

This is simply an argument in anticipation. It is like saying, "Only a complete moron would argue with my position......."

And then if you start to argue, the other side says, "Yep, a moron."

Paul, in Romans, is saying that if you don't believe in christianity, you are a gay, lying, gossiping, murdering, arrogant person who disobeys your parents.

Unfortunately, many christians take that literally, and presume that any one who is an "atheist" is so to justify their wicked, wicked lives.

jbernier

Right on both counts.

Whoa, whoa. Stop the exegesis train!

First point, Paul is saying nothing about Christianity as, for Paul, "Christianity" does not exist as a religion distinct from "Judaism." Paul conceives of himself as a good Jew who has come to recognize that the Messianic age has begun.

Second point, we must ask "What is Paul's rationale here?" In his thinking why would disbelief in God lead to all these things? The standard answer is that sin corrupts the soul and the character of the individual person, leading to unnatural desires, etc. This is really a super-spiritualized reading of Paul. I read Paul very differently. I see Paul as saying "Look, experience and scripture confirm that one cannot transcend one's own humanity and it is part of one's humanity to behave in a selfish and self-serving manner. Since one cannot transcend one's humanity any hope of redemption from this selfish and self-serving way of being is through something greater than oneself and one's humanity. I have experienced that something in my encounter with Christ Jesus. Through imitation of the faith of Christ Jesus, made possible by the grace of God revealed in Christ, we can transcend our finite humanities, becoming like unto God. However, to not imitate Christ is to not transcend our own humanity and thus be mired in our selfish and self-serving way of being."

The point of the above is that Paul has a singleness of vision. He has had an experience that he views as a direct encounter with the Risen Christ. This has changed his view on life; before he was a Jew who anticipated the Messiah, now he became a Jew who proclaimed that Messiah had come. His works are concerned with working out what that means to the Jewish and Gentile people who are now constituting new communities devoted to the veneration of this Messiah. Thus he is concerned with what we might call "Messianic ethics": An ethical stance built upon the idea that now is the Messianic age and that demands that, if they wish to follow Messiah, human beings live according to the implications of this age.

Let us be clear, though: Paul's singleness of vision comes to us not through a systematic work written on a Pentium III and published by University of Chicago Press. It comes to us through a series of letters on old manuscripts, copied an unknowable number of times, translated into other languages. The fact that his vision is found within letters, not a systematic work, means that it is hard to get a handle on his larger thought in any sort of fashion. The tendency, then, is to read his individual statements outside of the larger themes with which he is concerned. Hence the unbalanced treatment of Romans' "Those who do not accept God do so as a conscious denial of Christ": This is actually an integral part of his larger ethics but divorced from those ethics it just sounds harsh. Within that larger ethical structure we see a man that was so passionately moved by his encounter with Christ Jesus that he simply cannot believe that others cannot see what is so passionately obvious to him.