The Dark Forest of Questions

@Phil:

My last post wasn’t meant to be a fighting stance – maybe a friendly arm wrestle. It was an “I’m ready!” enthusiasm.I threw out a few teasers to get your response. Simple, short, straighforward questions – no answers – no, perhaps, too many answer – a whole package of material, in factm just for me.

I, like all of us, has 24 hours in my day – the great equalizer. I’m intrigued, but not enough let to want to read long article about what I view is a very dubious claim.

Take a quick shot at my questions – or give me the readers’ digest version, something more concise, a teaser even. If there seems to be anything of merit, then I’ll follow you down the rabbit hole.

Christie:
In the interest of trust and openness I will try some quick summary statements and the rest will be up to you.

1) Evidence of God in Science & Math: Reading some of the worlds leading cosmologists (Hawking, Dawkins, Ross, Behe), etc., they make long and interesting claims of the intricacy of the universe and the balance of the natural elements and gravitational forces necessary for life to exist on this planet. One quick point: the size, speed, position, and mass of galaxies a billion or more light years away from our (that’s a billion, trillion miles!) galaxy impacts the size, speed, and mass of our own and if that or any particular galaxy was 1% different than they currently are life could not exist here. That’s their claims … I can give you book after book to read it.

Some have calculated (amazing to be sure but I am most definitely NOT a cosmologist so I will not weigh in on their methods, accuracy, etc … I only comment on their widely accepted conclusions) that the chance that life would exist on this planet as a random occurrence is something in the order of 1 in 10,000,000,000 to the 125th power! That number is greater than the total of every particle in the entire known universe! Assuming there are only 2 possibilities (life is here randomly or it is here with intent or purposefully: ie created) then the odds of that second option being true are 99.99999999999999 …. 9% likely since the odds of random existence is 00.00000000000 …1% likely. So, for me, the science clearly makes the case for a Creator. (Oh yeah Dawkins is on tape/video affirming this view!!!)

There is so much more (thermodynamics etc etc) but this was for the interest of very brief summary.

2) Archaeological Evidence for the trustworthiness of Scripture: We have by far more manuscript evidence of the Scriptures than for any other book of antiquity BY FAR. In fact, the evidence for the OT and NT that we have today being an exact copy of the original is almost certain. We have more manuscript evidence that Jesus’ words are His own than we do that Shakespeare’s words were his own! For the NT we have over 38,000 manuscripts or portions thereof … in second place is Homer with 600+!! We have manuscript evidence of the NT within 30-50 years of the time of the events … the closest for Homer is I believe about 600 years!! At one time the oldest Hebrew bibles were from 600 a.d. … but the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery took us back to approximately 300 B.C. and we have full books of Daniel, Isaiah, and I believe Jeremiah and Ezekiel that are word for word what the 600 a.d. copies were! 900 years bridged in one archaeological find. I can on and on and on.

What does this mean? That there is a God?? Not necessarily. But the commonly held concept that “we don’t know what was originally written” has been debunked scientifically beyond any reasonable doubt. I can on and on about the uniqueness of Scripture but it’s fidelity to the original is scientifically beyond reasonable doubt.

Being that we have copies of documents from 300 b.c. that predicted detailed events that happened long after … the odds of those being true in some random sense (like Jean Dixon etc) are slim to none.

3) Evidence of Jesus’ Claims through logistics: We have many historical documents, outside scripture, that affirm the life of Jesus, and death of Jesus (even at Pilates hands!), and the “myth” of His resurrection! These are outside Scripture.

We have evidence outside Scripture of the horrific death of some of His apostles. We have MUCH historical evidence of the unbelievable amount of persecution and suffering that His followers endured … for centuries and still continues today.

We know that His claims are believed even unto death for so many.

C.S. Lewis says it best. We know that Jesus claims to be God and the rest of Scripture affirms that claim. We know that others who walked with Him and lived with Him and witnessed His miracles believed it. Either He was God. He was a liar. Or He was a lunatic. There is no other viable choice. That can be teased out in great length of course but this is only a very cursory discussion.

There, that is a very small portion of what I believe is very credible evidence … evidence that strengthens my faith and affirms my own personal experience(s) and explains or informs my understanding of people and the world around us.

Gary:

I must say … again … your accusations are just plain misguided because they are in fact wrong.

I only questioned someone’s background in the Scripture because they first stated they had “read it seven times.” In a court of law it is commonly held that when someone claims something based on expertise then they can be questioned as to the level of their expertise. You questioned me on mine and I directly answered without any issues or hard feelings. Whether you accepted them as valid is up to you.

Secondly, further explaining an answer and apologizing if I left the impression of a different answer is NOT backpeddling based on your commonly held definition of the term (a definition I agree with btw.) If someone cannot further explain an answer without being accused of attempting to change their “wrong” answer (in your view) without admitting mistake then I guess you hold people to an impossibly high standard and as you say “one that you cannot keep yourself.” In fact, you seem much more cocksure of your answers than I do of mine!

But to be clear, again, while I cannot know God (or anything else for that matter) exhaustively … I can make definitive statements. When I represent God as Love I can confidently say that God is exactly as I say. When I say I know that gravity exists I can confidently say that is exactly as I stated. I’m not really certain why that disturbs you.

Interestingly, I don’t recall you disagreeing with my take on God but rather a “word or two” I used in my description. That is pulling short hairs and being disagreeable (in my opinion) nothing more than for the sake of being disagreeable.

You can have the last word about me if you must. I’m done “defending” myself! lololol

@Phil:

Let’s first go back to the claim you actually made: that all of these field will obviously, if purused without bias, support your particular worldview.

I never said I disagreed with your worldview, or that these fields contradicted your worldview, or that there are *some* things in each of these fields that *could* be viewed as supporting *some aspect* of your worldview, or that your worldview might be correct even in spite of these fields. I think I made that clear from the beginning.

What I was trying to illustrate is that all of these fields have a wide range of results – some of which *might* be seen to *in some ways* support *some* of what you presented as your worldview. But they also have a lot of conslusions that either seem to contradict or neither support not contradict your claims. So I put out a few areas where I felt the fields in question *did not* support your worldview. I don’t see any response to those issues.

I will respond to what you did provide:

1) Yes, familiar with this.

2) The manuscripts don’t always actually match – so claiming an exact replica or the original is going a bit far. But, more importantly, all that only goes to show that a manuscript, much like what we think it is, what written at about the time we think it probably was. It doesn’t say anything about the veracity of the manuscript, no more than copies of Shakespeare contribute to proving that Romeo and Julliet happened.

3) This is still history/anthropology. (Missing any connection to “logistics”, here.) Again, only illustrates that someone named Jesus very likely lived, people believed things about Him and died for it. Whose contesting that? It doesn’t go very far to proving he is God. I have equal evidence in any religion that a person existed, was followed, and was suffered and died for.

Phil, I get that this would affirm and strengthen you faith…

But think about what you *actually claimed*. What you are talking about is such a small segments in only a few fields that appear in harmony with a belief in God. That is so, so short of saying that essentially all human intellectual endeavour for the past 3000 years directly supports not only the existence of a God, but your particular views on the nature of that God and the truth of the bible.

We can go further, but I need some recognition and your claims above and your original statement are not even remotely on the same scale.

Hi Phil,

It may seem like nit-picking to you, but the word ‘exactly’ in the sentence, “I can tell you that the God of Scripture is exactly as I described Him” really does make a difference.

When I was a believer, I would easily and happily tell you about the God of Scripture exactly as I percieved or understood him.

I do think I get the idea of where you are coming from… that we can say God is love, or God wants the best for us… and that isn’t presuming we know all about God.

But…there is a difference stating that God is love, and stating that God is exactly as you described him. One is what you percieve God to be, the other is a declaration that God is what you say he is. I wish I could explain this better, because I think it might give you some insight as to how some of the conversations here go off the rails a bit.

I can say, having never seen how waves develop in the ocean, that ‘waves come from the rain on the sea’, or waves come from the wind’…and I may or may not be right. But it is different from me saying, I know how the waves are written about in the book, the books says they are from the moon’s pull, and the waves of the book are exactly as I describe them.

Okay…maybe this is pulling a metaphor way too thin….but… in this scenario, I actually give the RIGHT answer to the ‘exactly as I describe’… and yet, it is still an approach that is problematic.

In the first instance, though it is wrong, you are asserting a belief. The waves come from the rain on the ocean. Which is incorrect, but you are stating what you believe.

In the second instance, though it is correct, you are asserting that your knowledge is right because what you believe is the same as what is written in the book.

In a sense, it is like saying, the X talked about in the book is exactly the X I describe, regardless of the fact that there are any number of other descriptions of X other have from the same book. My description is right, because it is my understanding in the book and because that is my understanding, and it is right, it is the right understanding.

You may not experience it as that circular, but at times it is.

It is why I made the TM (trademark) after ‘true believer’ because, as I’ve said, many other people have been completely certain that their description (sorry, previously where I said understanding it would have been more accurate to say description) is right.

One of the problems that sometimes is the starting point for believers to have doubts, is when the leaders, the elders, the priest and rabbis and preachers… disagree. Suddenly, there are competing views of ‘right’… this is one of the reasons why organized church very much wants a homogenous theology.

Roman Catholicism makes it very easy… by any orthodox standards, you believe what the church has laid down in its cannons and doctrine, or you aren’t truly a Roman Catholic in good standing. Dislike it as we may, they have weathered the storms without splintering, but at the expense of loss of adherents and at great cost to people’s well-being.

Protestants just like to keep making the splinters smaller and smaller… you’re a Mooglian, but not just a Mooglian, you are a Reformed Mooglian, but then some reform mooglians disagreed about syntax, so now there are the Reformed Mooglian OrderNOTtheWords…and then some of them go all wiggy about spelling and you’ve got the Reformed Mooglian OrderNAWTtheWRDZ. Of course that led to the Majuscule schism.

No doubt at times there is anger or resentment, and that may come through in posts. I don’t see anything that is clearly a personal attack, though I think you and Gary both get your hackles raised a bit quick with each other at times (that is to say I think both of you at times don’t give each other the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t an attack…and EQUALLY, that at times you both feign innocence to remarks that were perhaps a bit edgy).

While the blog is open to all, the fact that many are non-believers or agnostic or very open believers means that in totality the more fundamental orthodox believer will be in the minority. It is not an ‘us’ against ‘them’, but that several groups of people have more in common.. that is, a far less rigid or structured view of god and religion.

That said, everyone is welcome, but you may notice that some of us that have lived through having others telling us what to believe, and to believe it on their authority, or to believe it on god’s authority as they understand it… well, lots of us have been down that road and don’t buy it, because we’ve had numerous people tell us that, and they don’t tell us all the same thing, and well… we decide our own truths for our own selves.

Even my very conservative Roman Catholic brother gave me kudos when I said that if nothing else, as a Baptist, my two cherished beliefs were in soul liberty and seperation of church and state…so, if god was there and I was completly wrong not to believe in him, then at least he knew every step of my journey, and in the end my salvation, or lack of it, was between me and god.

I have no idea if this will help, or only muddy the waters.

And, speaking only for myself, having had the habit of engaging in fairly intense, harsh conversations on political blogs, where discussion moves quickly, bullshit is called continually, and trolls are hung out to dry, and fools not suffered and anything appearing foolish tossed in for good measure, where throwing out the baby with the bath water is a fine honed sport…. well, I sometimes bring some of those ways of thinking and operating to this blog… I dont’ mean to, it is almost like muscle memory…someone throws out a straw man arguement or circular logic, or some other logical fallacy, and well…sometimes I jump at it the way I would over at other blogs without maybe taking a moment to re-adjust my attitude.

For those that might say I should have the same attitude here, over there, you obviously haven’t swam with sharks and believe the political blogs are not somewhere where you want to let your guard down, or be terribly sympathetic… they often eat their own.

Um…right, I think I mentioned something in another post about not posting after ten pm as being a good idea.

Oh, and as to the all of the world archeology, science, etc … I will simply say that Christine’s post covers my opinions there as well. Again, you’ve gone from your experience, to trying to meld what others have said to back up your experience. Dawkins is one of the last people that would make a case for the creator. What you are referring to is an argument often referred to as ‘the watchmaker’ that because of the design there must be a designer. In fact, Dawkins book was called the BLIND watchmaker for that very fact, as he argues the OPPOSITE…that in fact the design shows clear evidence of natural selection, not of a creator. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker)

It is this kind of mix-up where there is concern for how you marshall your support. Dawkins is expressly atheist.

As well, I forget who mentioned it several times, about you using the term ‘logistics’ as one of the fields along with archealogy etc… and how they didn’t understand it. That is because logistics “is the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of destination in order to meet the requirements of customers or corporations.” and is often used in regards to military. I believe you may have meant the subsection of philosophy that is logic…

In philosophy, Logic (from the Greek ?????? logik?)[1] is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science. It examines general forms which arguments may take, which forms are valid, and which are fallacies. In philosophy, the study of logic is applied in most major areas: ontology, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics. In mathematics, it is the study of valid inferences within some formal language.[2] Logic is also studied in argumentation theory.[3] (wikipedia)

I may be wrong and you may have meant logistics (in which case I can see no way that it applies) or you may have meant something else. However, should you have meant logic, then it is very troublesome indeed, because despite Thomas Aquinas and a few others, there is far more in the body of philosophy that would argue there is no god.

Apologies to those that hate long posts that spam the thread. And apologies for being pendantic, you can take the school marm out of the school, but you can’t take the pendantic out of the schoolmarm.