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Join Date: Mar 2002
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More from the first show:
Quote:
PJ: [snip] That [stroke] brought a whole new sense of adventure ... and a new sense of who I was and what my life and thinking was based upon. I feel more confident as a result of that whole experience now of something that I knew in a way before ... that we as Christians know something that the world doesn't know and that it very badly needs to find out about -- that reality starts with God and with Christ, the incarnation, the death and resurrection of Jesus. If you know that that's really true and it's the foundation of your life, then you can meet crises in life with entirely different attitude and confidence than I would have had before. Just as in intellectual life. In chapter two, I talk about how the Christian workers, missionaries, that's what I think of them as, people like myself, to the univeristies. We have to go to the universities. Now we don't got to be apologetic. We're not saying please tolerate us, we're harmless. I tell the universities we know something that you need to learn. You have taken a terrible wrong turn. And you've gone wrong in a lot of ways. Your science has gone wrong. Your ethics has gone wrong. Because you've got the wrong foundations.
So... it is ... That's foundational truth. You see, everyone has a way of thinking ... a way of leading their lives. You can call it a paradigm. And the paradigm is based on one overriding paradigm fact. For a Muslim that paradigm fact is the Quran, and the message of Mohammed. You don't argue with a Moslem that the Quran is unreasonable or something like that because to him the Quran is the standard of reason. So that's that. Likewise, for a Darwinist, the paradigm fact is that we evolved from animals by a mindless process and God had no part in ... on it. We're on our own -- for better or for worse. The darwinists think it's for better. We're free from all those moral commands, from that meddling man in the sky God -- one way or another, we're free. That's their paradigm fact. That's the way they think and that's the way they behave. For the Christian, the paradigm fact is that God created us and God then send ... sent his son to live and die for us. And validated that with the resurrection from the death. Now this isn't something you just believe. It's got to be something that defines everything else you believe.
As the gospel of John says it's the light that shines from the darkness. [snip] So, the truth of Christ is not just a single truth. It is the light that illuminates everything else. It enables you to find all those other truths. I... When I was able to see that the foundational truth of the scientific materialist the foundational paradigm was in fact false... That's the theory of evolution, the theory that man evolved by a mindless process and then invented God. I realized, my Gosh, that's overturned the whole world that I was brought up to believe in. Like everyone else I was probably indoctrinated into believing in evolutionary naturalism from my youth. When I discovered that it was all a delusion. That it was not based on scientific evidence. That it was an arbitrary belief that's based on bluff and doctrination. But then that changed my whole perspective. I had to replace it with this other paradigm fact the fact of Christ. And that took an intellectual awakening and struggle and then even this spritiual awakening that occured in the stroke rehabilitation hospital. I like to even joke about that a little bit. I say "God has thrown me a particularly difficult case and has given me a little special treatment there, for which I am grateful." (hahuh)
Hank: And we're all grateful for this particular point in your life. That God has sustained you and continued to use you. You bring up the whole issue, Philip, about the religion of Islam. And one of the questions that you want us to ask is: What is the appropriate understanding of religion where it refers to nations where substantial numbers of Christians, Agnostics, Jews, Muslims all need to live together in peace.
PJ: Mmhmmm
Hank: How do you answer that question?
PJ: Well, what we can't give away is give away the question of religious truth, or go for the too easy answer of relativism that says, well, all religions are just human inventions. This assumes what I call the paradigm fact the most important fact in history ... was the invention of modern science and the Darwinian theory ... because see that tells us how we were created -- we have to have a creation story. Everybody does, every culuture does. So then we go from that story and we say it doesn't matter what your religion is. They're all the same. They're all human inventions and they're all different paths to the same God who's imaginary.
Now what the events of Sept. 11 and the resulting terrorism the look we've had at the world of Islam showed us is that it's not true. It really does matter what you belive about God. Because you're dealing with something very real and something that becomes the basis of a whole life. So our faith, I think, should be shattered in that naturalistic Dawrinian understanding, that it doesn't really matter because we're created by Nature. And as that is, then we understand it as vitally important which God you are going to worship. What is the true Gaad. And we have to bear witness to that.
Now I give a message of tolerance. Because we do not want to say that well, the way to deal with the problem of these religions, when the truth is important, is for the strongest one to use violence to overcome the others (hahah) That doesn't lead to truth. And That isn't the way of Christ, either. The Christian church had its greatest moments and its greatest success in those wonderful early years when its martyrs (martyr means witnesses) that showed how deeply they understood their faith and lived by it... that it was the paradigm fact that governed all that they did. The martyrs were incredible people, and the desert fathers. Some of them even seem extreme by modern standards. And people will laugh at what they did. But they showed that they meant it, they meant what they believed. Now some of these Muslims, these extremists, are showing us that they mean what they believe ... by the suicide bombing, by sacrificing their lives to kill Christians and Jews. Now they're taking the wrong path. So we have to show that we believe every bit as much as they do, and are every bit as confident ... that we have a true confidence in what will happen to us after death. And then we react to it in a different way, in a way that follows the leadership of Christ. We have to bring religious truth back into the picture and stand for it. And we must stand for it in a Christ like way.
Now one thing that I want to do is to pursue the all important intellectual questions. I believe that once this nation realizes that God is real and not imaginary and that evolution is a hoax. The naturalistic evolution theory that has dominated us for so long ... people are going to turn to Christianity. And some of them will turn to New Age spritiuality or something . But this is a weak alternative. Some will turn to Islam But I think this is a weak alternative if Christians can live by their faith. That uhh... it, that uh... We have the truth by our side if we can show it as the early Christians did. But tolerance doesn't mean giving away truth.
Hank: [snip] One of the things that I note in your book and of course have noted in knowing you over the years is that you're wildlly optimistic. On pg. 119, you write: "I predict the foundations of modernism will be profoundly shaken. And in the 21st century, the public becomes aware that the actual data of science disconfirm the ambitious claims the Darwinists make for the power of natural selection." Now how can you be so sure that we're going to do the work necessary to lay the train tracks in an opposite direction?
PJ: Because I follow the scientific events from day to day. I know that the actual course of scientific discovery is going very clearly against Darwinism. The theory is being maintained as a faith with its tremendous cultural power and wealth. But they're constantly having to explain away new evidence instead of to crow with triumph. And even in the political arena we win the occasional victory as in the case of the Ohio school board couple months ago, where they opened the door just a little bit to challenging Darwinism in the public school. It's this tiny victory but any victory against that juggernaut is a turning of the tide. Moreover I think there are going to be other things that happen in the scientific world. Most people don't know about it yet. Those who follow the details do. But the gentic paradigm that genes are everything has been (I discuss this in detail in Ch. 1 of the Wedge of Truth) are greatly oversold. The miracle cures of genetic therapies aren't coming truth. There may be a financial crash. It is not a good time to invest in that technology.
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02-27-2003, 10:50 AM
