Subject:
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Re: Mercy? (Was Re: My Prayer on this National Day of Prayer)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sat, 22 Sep 2001 21:00:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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1433 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Ian Warfield writes:
> > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> > See http://news.lugnet.com/off-topic/debate/?n=12873 for a start.
> > Incidentally, Jesus was God in the flesh, and we have the recorded history
> > right in the Bible.
>
> Sorry, that's not recorded history. It's a literary chronicle--"history" as
> we know it today was part of the Greco-Roman tradition, not the Judaeo-
> Christian one.
I'm not clear on the difference. Anyway, the Gospels were written in Greek,
from within the Roman Empire.
> That, and the synoptic gospels have significant problems innate to their
> production. We don't even need to discuss the problems inherent in the
> canonification of Biblical books, do we? The truth of the Bible's fantastic
> claims is dependent on believing those writing and selecting its books were
> divinely inspired. Both are unprovable--some of the historical details can
> be corroborated, but that's because the Bible rested its veneer of veracity
> upon known place names and personal names, and a functionalist account of
> actual events. Then, as now, the Bible is often propaganda.
These are faith issues. They can't be "proven" either way.
> Embellishment, by the way, is quite common in historical chronicles. It's
> common in modern writing as well! Read the collected stories that we call
> the "Epic of Gilgamesh" to see what I mean.
If the books were divinely inspired, then they aren't embellished. If they
weren't, they might have been embellished. But this is another unprovable
point, and resolves to a faith issue.
> > > Religion operates within a faith paradigm. For example, if a miracle
> > > occurred that sufficiently defied natural laws (e.g., the planes stopping
> > > just inches from the WTC walls) then I think your postulate about people not
> > > understanding would be moot.
> >
> > Possibly so. But then the hijackers would be making the accusations. God
> > loves even them so much that He does not deny them their free will.
>
> Then God can't act at all--not in *any* way. Why would there be any divine
> inspiration at *all* if God's Prime Directive exists? Or is this God picking
> and choosing his battles as a capricious Roman deity might?
Free will means that God is not directing our actions like a puppeteer.
This does not mean that God is not free to intervene in other ways. He has
access to the laws of physics and chance, so He can manipulate these without
violating free will.
Closer to the boundary would be God's inspiration. I would assume that God
can show people things without violating their intellectual free will. For
example, He can place a thought on the edge of their consciousness, but
whether they choose to dwell on that thought or act on that thought is
entirely up to them.
Even closer than that: there have been experiments where scientists have
used probes to stimulate memories in the brain. Subjects were able to tell
whether a certain memory was stimulated by the probe or whether they thought
it of their own accord. If these scientists did not violate their subjects'
intellectual free will in this way, then God could do the same thing and not
violate it either.
> > > When science tries to make statements about the existence of God, or when
> > > religion tries to make statements about the conclusions of science (note:
> > > I'm not saying the *practice* here, because religion does come into
> > > bioethics quite strongly)
> >
> > Ah, but you bring up another point of contention here. If there was no God,
> > there would be no objective standard of right and wrong, which would leave
> > the moral system in bioethics completely without a logical foundation.
>
> Sure. Then science would be conducted functionally with a specific goal in
> mind rather than navigating a minefield of subjective moralities. Bioethics
> exists because of the need to navigate subjective religion. The existence or
> non-existence of a God doesn't even come into the picture--only the existence
> of religion, which isn't really doubtable unless one is a serious nihilist (in
> which case one has much much bigger problems ;) ).
<snipped the next paragraph as it was covered in a different post>
> > ...There is a lot of junk science and junk religion floating around, which
> > can distract people from what is actually valid.
>
> I'm pretty well-qualified to know the difference where science is concerned.
> Scientific Creation = junk science, more clearly in its YEC variety but often
> also in its OEC variant.
>
> As for junk religion, how does one decide what junk religion is? I have a
> feeling it's more subjective than most of us would like to think.
True; junk religion, I would think, is entirely subjective. I probably
should have said "misrepresentation of religion".
>
> best
>
> LFB
--Ian
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