richard williams

2009-04-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

everything is consolidated at http://rmwilliamsjr.net
and mirrored at http://rmwilliamsjr.livejournal.com

2003-07-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

hi.
thanks for visiting here.
i've moved to http://livejournal.com/~rmwilliamsjr
mostly because of the commenting ability.
hope to see your comments over there.

richard williams

2003-03-19T15:55:00.000-08:00

capturing a quote from stephen jones at ced groups yahoo

-------------------------------------------------

Group

Here is a six-months old Christian History magazine article debunking the
commonly held myth that the history of Christianity and science has been
typified by warfare, and also the flat Earth myth:

"What other myths about science and Christianity are commonly
accepted today? One obvious one maintains that before Columbus,
Europeans believed nearly unanimously in a flat earth-a belief
allegedly drawn from certain biblical statements and enforced by the
medieval church. This myth seems to have had an eighteenth-
century origin, elaborated and popularized by Washington Irving,
who flagrantly fabricated evidence for it in his four-volume history
of Columbus. The myth was then picked up by White and others.
The truth is that it's almost impossible to find an educated person
after Aristotle (d. 322 b.c.) who doubts that the earth is a sphere. In
the Middle Ages, you couldn't emerge from any kind of education,
cathedral school or university, without being perfectly clear about
the earth's sphericity and even its approximate circumference. Why
does the myth live on? Because it is a great illustration of other
myths people fervently believe in, such as the barbaric ignorance of
medieval people and the warfare thesis. You don't easily give up
your best illustration of a deeply held belief."

Steve

PS: See the tagline quote by evolutionists George Johnson who points out that
if the major events of life's history happened "by nothing more than one chance
event after another, selected by the filter of evolution" (i.e. natural
selection), then they are "an awfully long string of `too good to be true's'"!

==========================================================================
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/2002/004/17.44.html

Christian History
Issue 76, Fall 2002, Vol. XXI, No. 10, Page 44

The Link: Natural Adversaries?
Historian David Lindberg shows that Christianity and science are not at
war-and never have been.

Has Christianity always warred with science? Or, conversely, did
Christianity create science? CH asked David Lindberg, Hilldale Professor
Emeritus of the History of Science and currently director of the Institute
for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin.

And he should know. Lindberg specializes in the history of medieval and
early modern science, especially the interaction between science and
religion. His Beginnings of Western Science (University of Chicago Press,
1992) is an oft-translated standard in the field. He is also currently the
general editor, jointly with Ronald Numbers, of the forthcoming eight-
volume Cambridge History of Science.

Many people today have a sense that the church has always tried to quash
science. Is this, indeed, the case?

This view is known as the "warfare thesis." It originated in the seventeenth
century, but it came into its own with certain radical thinkers of the French
Enlightenment. These people were eager to condemn the Catholic Church
and went on the attack against it. So, for example, the Marquis de
Condorcet (1743-1794), a mathematician and philosopher, assured his
readers that Christianity's ascension during the Middle Ages resulted in "the
complete decadence of philosophy and the sciences."

So how did this myth get from eighteenth-century France to twenty-first-
century North America?

The men mostly responsible are John William Draper (1811-1882) and
Andrew Dixon White (1832-1918). The more influential of the two was
White, first president of Cornell University, who evoked strong opposition
from religious critics for the secular curriculum (emphasizing the natural
sciences) that he established at Cornell.

White responded with bitter attacks on his critics, culminating in his two-
volume History of the Conflict Between Science and Religion (1874).
White's book, still in print, continues to be powerfully influential.

What other myths about science and Christianity are commonly accepted
today?

One obvious one maintains that before Columbus, Europeans believed
nearly unanimously in a flat earth-a belief allegedly drawn from certain
biblical statements and enforced by the medieval church.

This myth seems to have had an eighteenth-century origin, elaborated and
popularized by Washington Irving, who flagrantly fabricated evidence for it
in his four-volume history of Columbus. The myth was then picked up by
White and others.

The truth is that it's almost impossible to find an educated person after
Aristotle (d. 322 b.c.) who doubts that the earth is a sphere. In the Middle
Ages, you couldn't emerge from any kind of education, cathedral school or
university, without being perfectly clear about the earth's sphericity and
even its approximate circumference.

Why does the myth live on?

Because it is a great illustration of other myths people fervently believe in,
such as the barbaric ignorance of medieval people and the warfare thesis.
You don't easily give up your best illustration of a deeply held belief.

Was there conflict between Christianity and science before the scientific
revolution?

Christianity and science had a complex relationship.

Before Christ's birth, Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, and Galen had written
treatises on scientific questions. These books entered medieval
Christendom during the twelfth century in Latin translation from Greek and
Arabic versions. Christian scholars immediately realized that these books
were incredibly impressive and valuable, teaching them how to think about
a wide range of scientific questions.

But it was also clear that this body of writings (especially those by
Aristotle) contained theological land-mines.

Aristotle believed in the eternity of the world.

He also judged the world to be deterministic, with no room for divine
providence and divine action.

And Aristotle's philosophy was set within a rationalistic framework that
maintained that true knowledge could be achieved only through
observation and reason-thereby ruling out revelation as a source of truth.

Now one of the most durable myths about science and religion is that the
church responded to these theologically dangerous teachings by
suppressing Aristotle's writings and the rest of the ancient Greek scientific
tradition.

What really happened?

Medieval scholars (university professors, including theology professors)
were confronted by a terrible dilemma. They were not prepared to
compromise the central doctrines of Christian theology. But they also
recognized that the classical sciences had great explanatory power.

They preferred peace to warfare, so they looked for ways to accommodate
this powerful tradition. They corrected the ancient sources where that
seemed necessary, and on occasion they reinterpreted theological doctrines.
And they argued vigorously for the usefulness of the classical sciences.

There were certainly skirmishes, including several cases in which a
university scholar was condemned for teaching doctrines judged
dangerous, but most of these were local and temporary. And there was
never anything approaching intellectual warfare between theologians and
scientists.

Roger Bacon, an outstanding scientist of the thirteenth century, is a good
example of some of these developments. Borrowing a theme from St.
Augustine, he argued that the classical scientific tradition could be the
faithful handmaiden of theology and religion.

Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great also contributed to this enterprise.
They worked their way through Aristotle's writings line by line, looking for
ways to reinterpret him or revise Christian theological doctrines to make
them consistent with each other.

The point is that in the end, Christendom made its peace with the classical
tradition. Aristotle's writings became the centerpiece of medieval university
education, and the church became their greatest patron.

What guided medieval scholars as they worked out this accommodation?

St. Augustine (354-430), the most influential theologian of the Middle
Ages, gave them their principal tool. Augustine had cautioned that
Christians should not make fools of themselves by reading their astronomy
from the Bible. Don't embarrass the Christian faith with half-baked science.

Here's what Augustine wrote in his Literal Commentary on Genesis:

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the
heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit
of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable
eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about
the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he
holds as certain from reason and experience.

"Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a
Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking
nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an
embarrassing situation, in which people reveal vast ignorance in a Christian
and laugh that ignorance to scorn."

The result of Bacon's work, and Aquinas's, and Albert's, and that of many
others less well known, was a Christianized Aristotle and an
Aristotelianized Christianity.

And does this Christianization affect or limit science in any way?

It depends on the area. In technical areas-the mathematical sciences,
medicine, and other "non-worldview" sciences-not in the least. For
example, in the history of geometrical optics (a favorite study of medieval
scholars and one of my own historical specialties), I have yet to find a
single theoretical claim that is in any way altered by the Christian context in
which that research took place.

Did Christianization ever motivate scientific investigation?

Definitely. For example, Roger Bacon argued that if you wanted to
interpret scriptural passages that touch on the heavens or other objects of
scientific investigation, you had to have scientific knowledge. And quite a
large amount of scientific content is found in medieval theological treatises.

Given everything you've said, what can we conclude about the causes of
the scientific revolution?

There are two widely-held theories, both involving religion. One maintains
that the scientific revolution was the product of European secularization, as
Christianity lost its hold on educated Europeans. The other claims that the
scientific revolution was a product of religious reform-specifically, the
Protestant Reformation.

In my opinion, neither of these positions is defensible. Many factors
contributed to the scientific revolution, but it was most fundamentally a
continuation and outgrowth of medieval institutions (the universities) and
of the Christianized classical scientific tradition of the Middle Ages.

So neither Protestants nor Catholics invented modern science. Their
theology or worldview was not the ground or source from which modern
science emerged; but they did provide a context within which the natural
sciences developed and flourished.

Copyright (c) 2002 by the author or Christianity Today
International/Christian History magazine.

[...]

Copyright (c) 1994-2002 Christianity Today International

==========================================================================

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In the next chapter of the adaptationists' story, the fruit of these chance
alliances, the internally elaborate eukaryotic cells, diversified through
random variation and selection, developing various specialties. Some were
adept at using their cilia for locomotion, others for sensing the existence of
harmful chemicals, others for responding to light. And then these
eukaryotes formed alliances of their own. A light-seeking eukaryote that
happened to stick to a eukaryote with a swiftly lashing tail would beat its
competitors in the race to find the brightest sunlight, the nectar for its
chloroplasts. And so is born a primitive organism. With more feats of
imagination one can come up with a story of how more complex animals
with kidney cells, liver cells, and brain cells came to be. The stories are
driven by a compelling logic. But at every step of the process, a great deal
of luck is involved. To the believers in laws of complexity, these rather ad
hoc explanations begin to sound like Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.
How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, How the Tiger Got His Stripes. How
the Algae Got Its Chloroplasts, How the Sperm Cell Got Its Tail. When
they hear their colleagues straining perhaps a little too mightily to squeeze
every thing into the Darwinian framework, some biologists call the result
an evolutionary Just So story: a compelling tale based on scant evidence,
which sometimes has the facile ring of reasoning after the fact. Could the
complexity we see around us come from nothing more than one chance
event after another, selected by the filter of evolution? This strikes some
skeptics as an awfully long string of `too good to be true's.'" (Johnson G.,
"Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order," [1995],
Penguin Books: London, 1997, pp.236-237)
Stephen E. Jones sejones@i... or senojes@y...
Home: http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

2003-03-16T09:04:00.000-08:00

to capture Stephen Jones post on CED. permission has been granted conditional to this link:

link back to original posting it is not always available and may be subject to joining group.

Group

Here is 81 year old English philosopher Mary Midgley's review of
Darwinist philosopher Daniel Dennett's new book "Freedom Evolves".

Interestingly, Midgley notes that Dennett seems to have quietly dumped his
view that Darwinism is a "universal acid":

"In this book Dennett does, on the whole, supply these excellent
qualities. He uses a much more conciliatory tone than he did in
Darwin's Dangerous Idea. There is no more fighting talk here of
Darwinism being a "universal acid", eating through all other
thought-systems and radically transforming them. There is not
much rhetoric about sky-hooks, and there is absolutely nothing
about the fashionable doctrine now known as "evolutionary
psychology".

But Midgley notes, "Only one relic of extreme neo-Darwinism remains,
namely, the doctrine of memes":

"Memes are supposed to be a kind of parasitical quasi-organism
that function as genes (or possibly as units) of culture, producing
behaviour patterns by infesting people's minds just as biological
parasites infest their bodies. These mythical entities were invented,
somewhat casually, by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene as a
supplement to his story of the causal supremacy of genes, and the
current huge popularity of evolutionary thinking has caused the idea
to catch on despite its wildness. It supplies people outside the
physical sciences with something that looks to them like a scientific
explanation of culture - "scientific" because it looks vaguely like
genetics, and because it does not mention human thought and
feeling. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea Dennett ardently embraced this
story, offering memetics as the only truly scientific way of
explaining culture. .... Yet, quite gratuitously, alongside this
admirably realistic approach, Dennett still insists that memes - he
explains them as comparable to liver-flukes, genuinely external
to humans and having their own interests to promote - are its
true scientific explanation."

But the problem is, "On memetic principles, the only reason why he and
others campaign so ardently for neo-Darwinism must be that a neo-
Darwinist meme (or fluke) has infested their brains, forcing them to act in
this way"!:

"Occam, however, was surely wise in suggesting that we should not
multiply entities beyond necessity. Might we not reasonably ask:
how does memetics apply to Dennett's own case? On memetic
principles, the only reason why he and others campaign so ardently
for neo-Darwinism must be that a neo-Darwinist meme (or fluke)
has infested their brains, forcing them to act in this way. That is, of
course, a less welcome notion than the similar explanation of the
idea of God which is their favourite example. (As Dawkins put it,
God is perhaps a computer virus.) But if you propose the method
seriously you must apply it consistently."

Steve

==========================================================================
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,904441,00.html

Guardian

[...]

Fate by fluke

Daniel Dennett has charted a new and welcome course between free will
and scientific determinism in Freedom Evolves, says Mary Midgley

Saturday March 1, 2003
The Guardian

Buy Freedom Evolves at Amazon.co.uk

Freedom Evolves
by Daniel C Dennett
309pp, Allen Lane, o20
"Concern about free will is the driving force behind most of the resistance
to materialism generally and neo-Darwinism in particular.

"Free will is an evolved creation of human activity and beliefs, and it is just
as real as such other creations as music and money... Recognising our
uniqueness as reflective, communicating animals does not require any
'human exceptionalism' that must shake a defiant fist at Darwin... We may
thus concede that material forces ultimately govern behaviour, and yet at
the same time reject the notion that people are always and everywhere
motivated by material self-interest."

This is the burden of Daniel Dennett's new book and it is really welcome.
As he points out, educated people today are often trapped in a strange kind
of double-think on this topic. Officially, they believe physical science calls
for determinism, which proves they have no control over their lives. But in
actual living, most of the time they assume they do have this control. They
ignore their supposedly scientific beliefs rather as their ancestors often
ignored threats of eternal punishment. Yet those beliefs can still cause deep
underlying anxiety, confusion, guilt and a sense of futility.

Dennett shows he has grasped this odd situation. He quotes, with some
alarm, a passage from a science-fiction book in which an amoral character
triumphantly cites Dennett's book Consciousness Explained as proving
finally that we have no free will, we cannot control our actions, and thus
that we can have no duties. He rightly insists he never said this. But he
does see now why people may think he did.

The trouble is that, in these discussions, what chiefly gets across to the
reader is not so much the detailed arguments as the general tone, the
rhetoric, the way the emphasis lies. And writers like Dennett, who want to
promote a worldview centring on science, are indeed often somewhat
hostile to the concept of free will. They treat it as an ally of traditional
religion and a prop of the penal system. They do not readily notice that it is
just as necessary to today's secular morality, which centres on personal
autonomy. These campaigners aim to get rid of the immortal soul. But the
last thing they want to do is to lose individual freedom.

In this book Dennett does at last grasp this nettle. He tries much harder
than he has before to show that he understands the importance of our inner
life. He devotes much of the book to dissecting the mistaken notion that
"science" requires us to write off that inner life as an ineffectual shadow.
Determinism, he says, is not fatalism. Fatalism teaches that human effort
makes no difference to what happens, and we know this is false. Human
effort often does make that difference. What makes this effectiveness seem
impossible is not science but the rhetoric that has depicted the mind as a
separate, helpless substance being pushed around by matter.

That rhetoric grew out of Descartes' dualism and an atomistic simplification
that dates from the 17th century - the conviction that a single simple
pattern, found in the interaction of its smallest particles, must govern the
whole of nature. Particle physics, which at that time dealt in very simple
ultimate particles like billiard balls, must therefore supply the model for all
other interactions. All complexity was secondary and somehow unreal.

Since that time, as Dennett points out, all the sciences, including physics,
have dropped that over-simple model. They find complexity and variety of
patterns everywhere. That is why we now need scientific pluralism - the
careful, systematic use of different thinking in different contexts to answer
different questions.

In particular, we are now finding steadily increasing complexity throughout
the developing spectrum of organic life. The more complex creatures
become, the wider is the range of activities open to them. And with that
increase goes a steadily increasing degree of freedom: "The freedom of the
bird to fly wherever it wants is definitely a kind of freedom, a distinct
improvement on the freedom of the jellyfish to float wherever it floats, but
a poor cousin of our human freedom... Human freedom, in part a product
of the revolution begat of language and culture, is about as different from
bird freedom as language is different from birdsong. But to understand the
richer phenomenon, one must first understand its more modest components
and predecessors."

Interestingly, this evolutionary view of human freedom is quite close to the
one Steven Rose suggested in his excellent book Lifelines. Thus, two
writers who started from opposite positions in the sociobiology debate
have both, on reflection, reached similar conclusions on the relation
between freedom and evolution. They both make the central point that our
conscious inner life is not some sort of irrelevant supernatural intrusion on
the working of our physical bodies but a crucial part of their design. We
have evolved as beings that can feel and think in a way that makes us able
to direct our actions. This means, of course, that the self is a much larger
and more complex thing than the detached soul which Descartes thought
was the essence of our being. We operate as whole people. Our minds and
bodies are aspects of us, not separate items. They do not need to compete
for the driving seat.

As Dennett points out, this holistic approach certainly works better than
the simple libertarian attempt to avoid fatalism by interrupting determinism
with patches of quantum indeterminacy - an attempt that could only
produce spasms of randomness, not freedom. Dennett's and Rose's path
between randomness and fatalism is surely essentially the right one. But it
needs to be worked out with great care and sensibility.

In this book Dennett does, on the whole, supply these excellent qualities.
He uses a much more conciliatory tone than he did in Darwin's Dangerous
Idea. There is no more fighting talk here of Darwinism being a "universal
acid", eating through all other thought-systems and radically transforming
them. There is not much rhetoric about sky-hooks, and there is absolutely
nothing about the fashionable doctrine now known as "evolutionary
psychology". Only one relic of extreme neo-Darwinism remains, namely,
the doctrine of memes.

Memes are supposed to be a kind of parasitical quasi-organism that
function as genes (or possibly as units) of culture, producing behaviour
patterns by infesting people's minds just as biological parasites infest their
bodies. These mythical entities were invented, somewhat casually, by
Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene as a supplement to his story of the
causal supremacy of genes, and the current huge popularity of evolutionary
thinking has caused the idea to catch on despite its wildness. It supplies
people outside the physical sciences with something that looks to them like
a scientific explanation of culture - "scientific" because it looks vaguely
like
genetics, and because it does not mention human thought and feeling.

In Darwin's Dangerous Idea Dennett ardently embraced this story, offering
memetics as the only truly scientific way of explaining culture. But in
Freedom Evolves he does not really need this device any longer. The need
for it has vanished because he is now endorsing human thought and feeling
as real parts of nature - genuine activities, not supernatural extras - part of
normal causality and therefore capable of explaining what happens in
culture. Yet, quite gratuitously, alongside this admirably realistic approach,
Dennett still insists that memes - he explains them as comparable to liver-
flukes, genuinely external to humans and having their own interests to
promote - are its true scientific explanation.

Occam, however, was surely wise in suggesting that we should not
multiply entities beyond necessity. Might we not reasonably ask: how does
memetics apply to Dennett's own case? On memetic principles, the only
reason why he and others campaign so ardently for neo-Darwinism must be
that a neo-Darwinist meme (or fluke) has infested their brains, forcing them
to act in this way. That is, of course, a less welcome notion than the similar
explanation of the idea of God which is their favourite example. (As
Dawkins put it, God is perhaps a computer virus.) But if you propose the
method seriously you must apply it consistently.

And if you do that, you should surely see that it is pure fatalism. This
quaint remnant is perhaps the only serious flaw in an otherwise really
admirable and helpful book.

£ Mary Midgley's most recent book is Science and Poetry (Routledge)

Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
==========================================================================

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Three mechanisms are supposed to prevent behavior that can lead to fraud
and compromise in scientific research. The first is the peer review system,
by which committees of specialists in a field determine the merit of the
individual proposals submitted for funding. The second is the referee
system, by which scientific papers are sent out for review to qualified
reviewers who recommend whether the papers should be published,
changed, or rejected. The third mechanism is the replication of
experiments. In theory, other scientists attempt the same experiment; if
they cannot replicate the results, the claimed result is dismissed.
Replication of experiments, however, rarely takes place; there is almost no
money available for it, or in it. Why should peer reviewers allocate some of
the limited funds to duplicate what has already been done? Also, a scientist
who simply replicates other researchers' results would soon be labeled a
hack and wouldn't get further funding. Instead, rival scientists try to
establish their reputations by extending the results in some way. ... Grant
peer review, journal peer review, and experiment replication are supposed
to make science self-correcting. But Impure Science illustrates that
preeminent people involved in science are repeatedly defeating these
mechanisms. If science is at all self-correcting in the United States, it is
despite the efforts of some of these powerful individuals, not because of
their efforts." (Bell R.I., "Impure Science: Fraud, Compromise and Political
Influence in Scientific Research," John Wiley & Sons: New York NY,
1992, p.xiv)
Stephen E. Jones sejones@i... or senojes@y...
Home: http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

2003-03-12T07:47:00.000-08:00

trying to capture a link filled message to review and follow links
-----------------------------------------
A set of measurements related to each other by a linear
independent relationships, is consider a `space'. Such spaces
are as real as most theories can achieve. The three dimensional
space human can visualize is but one example of these spaces.
Adding time (i. e. an event measurement) to the formula does not
significantly change the logic of the mathematical operations.
Hence, spaces can be any number of dimensions including infinitely
dimensional.

The does not mean there isn't any problems with
current `scientific' theories. The ubiquitous word
`natural' applied to everything as if it was explanatory is a prime
example.
`Natural' is often used to cover a blatant pathetic fallacy
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/PatheticFallacy.html
or a neon fallacy ( saying nature has the properties of a machine).
Machines are devices constructed by intelligence for specific
purposes. If one wish to assert, that humans are the only intelligent
entities in the universe than attributing intelligence to inanimate
objects is fallacious. On the other hand, I personally do not assert
that intelligence and natural are the only two types of entities in
the universe. I stated this at the beginning as my philosophical
position. The universe is a large place and may contain a number of
objects, some may be intelligent and `natural' or `unnatural'.
Considering the Fermi's Paradox
http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ThereIsNoFermiParadox1985.htm
I believe my position is more potentially objective than its
converse.

On the question of the constancy of speed of light. There is
quite a number of reasons to believe the speed of light is a
constant independent of epoch it originates in or it position in the
universe. The largest explosion in the universe does not indicate a
significant shift in the speed of light value for intense radiation
levels.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0010/0010322.pdf

You may be referencing the GZK cutoff
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/Papers/Preprints/GZK/paper.pdf , where
material particles can not approach the speed of light due the
microwave background. This is only a theoretical limit and there is
some grave doubt it even exists.
http://www.p-ng.si/public/pao/paop.html

The Gabon "natural nuclear reactor" provides data for the
1.7 Billion year epoch as to the constancy of several physical
parameters.
http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/centre/waisrc/OKLO/index.shtml
http://crpg.cnrs-nancy.fr/MODEL3D/oklo.html
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/9606/9606486.pdf
http://www.astro.psu.edu/~cwc/qsogroup/alpha/
http://camb.demonhosting.co.uk/JConfAbs/5/869.pdf
http://sdg.lcs.mit.edu/~ilya_shl/alex/
http://sdg.lcs.mit.edu/~ilya_shl/alex/76c_oklo_fundamental_nuclear_con
stants.pdf
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/9606/9606486.pdf
This "natural nuclear reactor" operated for some 1+ million
years at
1 X 10^20 neutron flux or 1X10^7 times greater than modern reactors
with no control rods and a low power output.
Completely avoiding the positive void coefficient regime of Chernobyl.
http://www.geocities.com/graham_young_uk/Chernobyl.html
Comments on CMB.
This is a better description of the data analysis.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0302/0302496.pdf

2003-03-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

to capture excellent essay at:
new gnosticism

The New Gnosticism
Is It "The Age of the Spirit" or "The Spirit of the Age?"

By Michael Horton

Entertainment Weekly is not exactly an evangelical house-organ, and yet, like many secular periodicals these days, it seems to observe more truth than a number of evangelical magazines and journals. In its October 7, 1994 issue, Jeff Gordinier wrote,

In a year when TV airwaves are aflutter with winged spirits, the bestseller lists are clogged with divine manuscripts and visions of the afterlife, and gangsta-rappers are elbowed aside on the pop charts for the hushed prayers of Benedictine monks, you don't have to look hard to find that pop culture is going gaga for spirituality. [However,] seekers of the day are apt to peel away the tough theological stuff and pluck out the most dulcet elements of faith, coming up with a soothing sampler of Judeo-Christian imagery, Eastern meditation, self-help lingo, a vaguely conservative craving for 'virtue,' and a loopy New Age pursuit of 'peace.' This happy free-for-all, appealing to Baptists and stargazers alike, comes off more like Forrest Gump's ubiquitous 'boxa chocolates' than like any real system of belief. You never know what you're going to get.

There could hardly have been a better description of the dilemma in which the ancient church found itself, from the time of the apostles until the third century. It is a heresy that is constantly threatening the orthodoxy of the church and it is as old as Satan's lie, "You shall be as gods." It is called "Gnosticism." St. Paul called the Gnostic prophets "super-apostles" who apparently knew more than God. They see into the heavenly secrets and offer techniques for escaping earthly existence. "Timothy," the Apostle warned, "guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the profane chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge; by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith" (2 Tm 6:20). "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God" (2 Cor 10:5). The super-apostles had preached, he says, a different gospel and a different spirit. "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light" (2 Cor 11:13). The reference here is to the Gnostic emphasis on the Angel of Light versus the Angel of Darkness.

Not far beneath the surface of much of the New Testament, especially the Gospel of John and the Epistles, is a running polemic against the most dangerous heresy in church history. According to one of its early opponents, St. Clement of Alexandria, Gnosticism (from the Greek word gnosis, meaning "knowledge") consisted of the knowledge "of who we were or where we were placed, whither we hasten, from what we are redeemed, what birth is and what rebirth" (Excerpta ex Theodoto 78.2). Knowledge of these secrets was considered redemptive. The purpose of this article will be to explain the origins and identity of Gnosticism in an effort to establish the point that contemporary American religion, whether liberal or conservative, evangelical or New Age, Mormon or Pentecostal, represents a revival of this ancient heresy.

The Old Gnosticism
From a number of secondary sources we are able to gain a portrait which allows us to see the main features:

1. Eclectic and polymorphic. A "cut-and-paste" spirituality emerges from the Gnostic writings. As Philip Lee observes, "Gnostic syncretism...believes everything in general for the purpose of avoiding a belief in something in particular. In the case of Christian Gnosticism, what is being avoided is the particularity of the Gospel, that which is a 'stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.'"1 It is generally agreed that Gnosticism emerged as a form of mystical Christian spirituality blended together with Greek paganism. We recall Paul in Athens, in the Areopagus, where "people did nothing but discuss the latest ideas" (Acts 17:21), telling the Greeks that they were "very religious." Gnosticism was an attempt to incorporate the seeker spirituality of the Greeks into Christianity.

In its very nature, it was diverse and capable of amalgamation and assimilation of various religious systems. Biblical religion, by contrast, insisted upon the uniqueness of divine self-disclosure in Scripture and in God's redemptive acts. There is one God (Yahweh) who is known in the written and Living Word. Many of the church fathers were simply exasperated by trying to figure out what the Gnostic texts actually meant, whereas Christianity held distinct, easily understood and well-defined doctrinal convictions.

2. Individualistic and subjective. While the writings are extremely esoteric and mystical, there is an obvious thread of individualism and an inward focus characteristic of mysticism. As in Greek Platonism, the subject (the knower) has priority over the object (the known), and the path to spirituality is through inwardness, meditation, and self-realization.

3. Immanence over transcendence. In terms of the individual's relation to God, the Gnostic stresses God's nearness over his distant holiness and sovereignty. In fact, the individual self is a "spark" of the One (God). As one scholar puts it, "The self is the indwelling of God."2 There is a direct intimacy between the divine and the self that requires no mediation. In Gnostic literature, the relationship between "God" and the self is often described in romantic and even erotic language.

4. Spirit over matter. Sometimes called in our day "mind over matter," the Greek and Gnostic worldview is dualistic. That is, it divides the world into matter (evil) and spirit (good). Evil, suffering, illness and death are all attributed to the existence of matter and the "Fall" was not from innocence to rebellion (as in the biblical account), but from pure spirit to physical bodies. Imprisoned in a material world, the self is alienated from its true home. This theme of a war between Light and Darkness, Spirit and Matter, the Divine Within and the World Outside, and the sense of alienation, despair, loneliness and abandonment in the physical world, is the recurring key to understanding Gnosticism.3 In our day, Matthew Fox, repeating the warning of self-described Gnostic psychologist C. J. Jung, expresses this sentiment well: "One way to kill the soul is to worship a God outside you" (Roof, p. 75).

5. Anti-institutional orientation. Associated with matter and the physical imprisonment of the self, institutions are viewed as spiritual enemies. The Outside God and the Outside Church are enemies of the soul, directing the self away from one's own inner experience to others and to formal structures of authority, creeds, doctrines, rituals and sacraments. St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. A.D. 110) charged, "They have no concern for love, none for the widow, the orphan, the afflicted, the prisoner, the hungry, the thirsty. They stay away from the Eucharist and prayer."4 This did not mean, however, that they did not form communities, but these were ascetic sects that served to nurture individual rather than communal concerns, and experiential rather than liturgical and doctrinal forms of public worship.

6. Anti-sacramental. Closely related to its suspicion of the church as an institution was Gnosticism's disregard for sacraments. If the self enjoyed a direct and immediate relationship with God's Spirit, and knowledge came through a secret revelation of a mystical nature, surely the introduction of material means of grace-the printed word (accessible to everyone), water (in Baptism), and bread and wine (the Eucharist)-actually become impediments to real fellowship with God. They are insufficiently "spiritual" for Gnostic piety, as rebirth (a prominent Gnostic theme) is by the Spirit in opposition to matter. Furthermore, the gnosis (Revelation Knowledge) was based on the idea that only a few really knew the secrets, while Christianity's emphasis on Word and sacrament, available to anyone who could read or eat, challenged this private, spiritual elitism.

7. Anti-historical. Lee notes, "Gnostic 'knowledge' is unrelated in any vital sense either to nature or to history" (p. 102). As spirit is opposed to matter, and individual inwardness is opposed to an institutional church, eternity is opposed to time. Salvation for the Gnostic is redemption from the body, institutions, and the grinding process of history into which the pure self is mercilessly thrown.

In biblical religion, God not only created the world (material as well as spiritual), and pronounced it "good," but also created matter and history in which to unfold his salvation. In fact, Christianity's cardinal belief in salvation by God becoming flesh, and by his fleshly resurrection promising resurrection of our bodies, was anathema to Gnosticism, as it was foolishness to Greeks who generally saw spirit as good, and matter as evil. In Christianity, redemption does not take place in a super-spiritual sphere above real human history, but within it. Gnosticism, however, emphasizes instead the self's personal, direct encounter with God here and now, and has little or no place for the historical events of God's saving activity.

8. Anti-Jewish. While biblical religion focused on God's personal involvement with the world in creation and redemption, through the bloody sacrifices that anticipated the Messiah, Gnosticism harbored a deep distrust of the Old Testament God. In fact, two Gnostic sects appear in this connection. Marcion (d. A.D. 160) rejected the Old Testament entirely on the basis that it represented a wrathful Judge who created matter and imprisoned souls in history, while the New Testament God (Jesus) was the God of Love. The Creator-God (Old Testament) and the Redeemer-God (New Testament) were viewed as opposites in Marcionism. In addition to the Old Testament, Luke's Gospel and Paul's epistles underwent radical revisions.

In the following century, Mani, a Persian evangelist whose ideas spread quickly to the West and were embraced by St. Augustine before his conversion, founded a powerful sect of Manichaeism. Once again, it was deeply dualistic (spirit vs. matter, Light vs. Darkness, etc.) and championed salvation chiefly in terms of secret knowledge of the principles for overcoming the world, nature, and history through spiritual ascent.

9. Feminist. Ancient Gnosticism, as we have seen, divided the world into spirit and matter as columns of "good" and "bad." They defined characteristics of femininity as love, freedom, affirmation, and nurture, and these were in the "good" column, while those of masculinity were defined as justice, law, wrath, and strength, and put in the "bad" column. This is in sharp contrast to the Christian God who, in both Testaments, is a good, gracious, loving and saving, as well as just, holy and sovereign Father. "Sophia," the Greek word for "wisdom," after the goddess of wisdom, became the "God" of many Gnostics. The 13th-century mystic, Meister Eckhart, wrote, "What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth," and this image is replete in the mystical literature. "Ancient Gnosticism," Lee writes, "loathed the patriarchal and authoritarian qualities of official Christianity. From the Gnostic point of view, the structure and discipline of the Church stifled the spirit" (p. 158). The antipathy toward nature was reflected in the Gnostic celebration of the "androgynous [i.e., sexless] self." While the body may be either male or female, the spirit is "free."

One must beware of concluding that the "knowledge" championed by the Gnostics was the same thing that we mean normally by the term. Lee observes:

The difference between orthodox knowledge and Gnostic knowledge has been described as the difference between open revelation and secret revelation. Although it is true for both faiths that the Holy Spirit is at work to open the eyes of the believer that he may know the truth, within orthodox thought the Holy Spirit's work takes place in the presence of, and in terms of, given historical data and within the context of the Holy Catholic Church. Thus, in the Apostles' Creed, the article affirming belief in the Holy Spirit is securely nestled between belief in the person and work of Jesus Christ and a willingness to learn from the Holy Catholic Church" (p. 101).

Gnostic "knowledge" is not only anti-historical and subjective; it is anti-intellectual and immediate. This is why St. Irenaeus called it "pseudo-knowledge" and Paul told Timothy it was "knowledge falsely called" (1 Tm 6:20). It preferred what we often call "heart knowledge" to "head knowledge," although Christianity knew no such dichotomy.

Especially popular in Alexandria, Gnosticism threatened Christianity's very existence, not as an external threat, but as an internal rival. In other words, it attempted to reinterpret biblical religion and reshape it into something other than that which was announced by the prophets, fulfilled in Christ and proclaimed by the apostles. Even as Christianity officially condemned the heresy, and the ancient fathers wrote voluminously on the subject, the philosophical influence of Greek Platonism continued to shape the medieval church. Nevertheless, whenever the unadulterated Gnostic tenets would reappear, as in such medieval sects as the Albigensians, the Cathari (Pure Ones) and Bogemils, the church reasserted its apostolic and catholic condemnations. At the time of the Reformation, the Anabaptists revived Gnosticism, and a number of Renaissance humanists, including Petrarch, had also embraced this revival.

A number of scholars, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, have argued that the Reformation represented not only a reaction against Pelagianism (the ancient heresy of works-righteousness), but also against Gnosticism. By charging that the church had allowed Greek philosophy priority in interpreting Scripture, the Reformers recovered the Bible's clear declarations on creation, redemption, worship, the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of the church, Word and sacrament, and a host of related teachings.

The New Gnosticism
Without offering a chronicle on Gnosticism throughout church history, our purpose here is simply to refer to that portion of history that most directly bears on the current revival.

A trip to the local bookstore confirms that there is a revival of explicit Gnostic spirituality in American culture, with the New Age movement claiming direct descent.5 Often passing for psychology, philosophy and religion, Gnosticism is now back with a vengeance and forms the broad parameters (if there are any) for the smorgasbord of American spirituality. After two world wars, Westerners have become disillusioned with the grand scheme of turning this world into Paradise Restored. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Andre Malraux poured their energies into lamenting the sense of despair and alienation, and the theme of humanity being "thrown" into the world, imprisoned in evil material structures is prominent in their work. The popularity of existentialism blended with an older Transcendentalism that was always seething just beneath the surface of the American consciousness to produce a post-war generation of "seekers" who were ripe for Gnostic spirituality. It is that older Transcendentalism that must be explained before we can understand the ways in which modern evangelicalism and liberalism represent sister "denominations" in what Harold Bloom calls "The American Religion: Gnosticism."

Mysticism has a long tradition within Christianity, and although it developed out of the same influences and centers as Gnosticism itself, it was deemed acceptable even by some who had opposed the heresy. The "ladder of spiritual ascent" and the dualism between spirit and matter, the inwardness and related themes, remind us that the difference is a matter of degree. In a sympathetic treatment, titled, Mysticism in the Wesleyan Tradition (Zondervan, 1989), United Methodist theologian Robert G. Tuttle, Jr. traces the influences of Greek and Roman Catholic mysticism on John Wesley. Through the various Holiness groups in America, evangelicalism was heavily influenced by a form of spirituality that was considered by many, especially at Princeton Seminary, to be a rival to the historic Christianity recovered in the Reformation. But there were other influences in the culture that contributed to the Gnostic awakening in America. Just as the medieval church was unwittingly shaped by Greek Platonic influences, modern American Christianity, both liberal and evangelical, is shaped by Romanticism-itself a revival of Greek and Gnostic influences.

The Romantics include such worthies as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), who resigned his Boston Unitarian pastorate in 1832 because he could no longer accept institutional religion and refused to serve "Communion." (Since Unitarians do not have a genuine Communion, it is difficult to regard this as a major departure.) After all, Emerson said, he was himself a spark of God and enjoyed direct access without an incarnate Mediator and the impediments of physical sacraments. At Harvard, Emerson declared that orthodox Christianity was dead, and the only way forward was to recover the "spiritual" dimension of religion. The jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes was a great fan of Emerson's. Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) was closely associated with Emerson and other "Transcendentalists," as many of the American Romantics were now being called. The Westminster Dictionary of Church History defines Transcendentalism as "an optimistic, mystic and naturalistic state of mind rather than a system of thought," which had "a wide influence on American literature, philosophy, and religion. Based on English romanticism (Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlyle) and German philosophical idealism, it found Calvinistic orthodoxy too harsh and Unitarian liberalism too arid. It emphasized individual experience as sacred, unique, and authoritative."

The sense of alienation is apparent in Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Taking no root, I soon weary of any soil in which I may be temporarily deposited. The same impatience I may feel, or conceive of, as regards this earthly life."6 If this feeling was true in the early 19th century, it is certainly exacerbated by the influences of modernity: the rootlessness precipitated by rapid travel, mobility, displacement of families, and technological advances that tend to dehumanize existence. As for the Gnostic preoccupation with spirit, and the eternal over matter and time, Emerson declared, "I am to invite men drenched in Time to recover themselves and come out of time, and taste their native immortal air."7 Like the ancient Gnostics who, according to St. Ignatius, did not bother themselves with the physical needs of this world, Emerson's spiritual arrogance knew no bounds: "I have quite other slaves to free than those negroes, to wit, imprisoned spirits...They have no other watchman, or lover, or defender, but I."8

The recurring note in Romanticism, and especially in its American Transcendental variety, is personal experience: the self's transcendence of community, flesh, history, creed, doctrine, church, Word and sacraments, to ascend to the lofty heights of deity. Each individual self is "God" and requires no mediation for access to the divine.

We do not have to look very far to see the influence of this movement on 19th-century Protestantism. The revivalistic evangelicals wanted to escape from this world by a personal experience of being born again, and successive experiences: A second blessing or a rededication would revive the soul in its flight toward Deity and full surrender. Doctrine was considered an encumbrance, as were creeds, liturgies and sacraments, and the anti-intellectual strain of Gnosticism reared its ugly head. In orthodox Christianity, grace redeems this world; in Gnosticism, it redeems the self from nature. Grace did not save nature, but provided a way of escape. At the same time, "the liberals," according to Philip Lee, "made ample room for nature on their stage by moving grace into the wings. There remained in both camps a Gnostic separation of Creation from Redemption" (p. 93).

At this point, psychology was born and took root quickly in America more than anywhere else. It offered an alternative to theology, as the study of the self and self-consciousness replaced the study of God and his redemptive acts. George Ripley declared during this period, "The time has come when a revision of theology is demanded. Let the study of theology commence with the study of human consciousness."9 But this psychological orientation not only demanded the first word, it ended up swallowing everything within reach and the stage was set for the therapeutic revolution of the 20th century, with peace of mind and eventually self-esteem becoming more important than sin and grace. Narcissism (self-worship) became legitimate and, in fact, the only religious duty. Although C. J. Jung, a father of modern psychology, was openly and self-described as a Gnostic, his mysticism is easily absorbed into the greater Gnostic ooze of contemporary pop-psychology and recovery movements.

The preaching also turned from the objective emphasis on God's saving work in Christ, to techniques for self- improvement, psychologically and morally conceived. Considered too offensive for the immortal and innocent self, the Law was not suitable for preaching unless it could be shown that it was somehow beneficial for personal transformation. Divine commands had to be seen as attainable and reasonable principles for self-enhancement and universal love. Damnation was entirely out of place as a purpose for the Law, or for any sociable discourse. Similarly, the Gospel, hardly distinguishable now from the Gnostic law, became a secret formula (gnosis) for rebirth, self-realization, and the personal unmediated experience with the Divine. This was true equally for liberals and evangelicals, Unitarians and revivalists, as well as for the many Gnostic cults that were born in this environment (Christian Science, Unity, Adventism, etc.), however differently each may have stated it.

Horace Bushnell marks the departure from an evangelical Calvinism to an evangelical Romanticism: "My heart wants the Father; my heart wants the Son; my heart wants the Holy Ghost....My heart says the Bible has a Trinity for me, and I mean to hold by my heart. I am glad a man can do it when there is no other mooring."10 The Mormon "testimony" is quite similar when its truth-claims are founded upon a "burning in the bosom." Similarly, when evangelicals sing Romantic hymns such as, "He Lives," with the line, "You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart," they have little trouble accommodating to the Romanticism of Schleiermacher, father of modern liberalism, when he said that the essence of Christianity is "the feeling of absolute dependence." And when evangelicals eschew creeds, doctrines, liturgies, and sacraments over personal experience, how can they quibble with the liberal Adolf von Harnack, who believed that "the authentically spiritual is composed of those things that are inward, spontaneous and ethical as opposed to the outward, organized, ceremonial and dogmatic"?11 Gnosticism becomes the tie that binds.

At last, we come to our own century. A number of books have been published in recent years pointing up the "Gnosticization" of American religion, including Philip Lee's, Against The Protestant Gnostics (Oxford, 1987), and Harold Bloom's, The American Religion (Simon and Schuster, 1992). Although Bloom, a distinguished Yale professor, and the nation's leading literary critic, identifies himself as a Jewish Gnostic, he provides a provocative insight into the popularization of Gnosticism. Other studies have pointed tangentially to this same condition, such as those of professors James D. Hunter (University of Virginia), Wade Clark Roof (University of California), and Robert Wuthnow (Princeton University). Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart also point in the same direction.

In spite of their rivalry, fundamentalism and liberalism "both essentially proclaim a Christ who does not redeem," but merely reveals, according to Lee (p. 107). All of these writers point to the breakdown in the Reformation's orthodox stance in both conservative and liberal camps as opening the door to Transcendentalism and, finally, to the current orientation. Beyond the liberal-evangelical split, Wade Clark Roof now says we cannot discern any real differences between New Age and evangelical spirituality on a number of counts. This new Gnosticism "celebrates experience rather than doctrine; the personal rather than the institutional; the mythic and dreamlike over the cognitive; people's religion over official religion; soft, caring images of deity over hard, impersonal images; the feminine and the androgynous over the masculine" (Roof, p. 132). Although Roof does not make the point, these are clearly the tenets of ancient Gnosticism.

Note Lee's point on Christ as Revealer [Gnosis] over Christ as Redeemer:

Another way to shed light on the American tendency to regard Christ as revealer only is, to observe the American fascination with technique. For the evangelicals, conversion is a technique, a necessary one, for salvation. The history of Israel and the life of Jesus, which indeed were often spiritualized beyond recognition, were important only insofar as they could be employed to bring sinners to repentance (p. 109).

Lee says that the liberal approach to the Scriptures, "following its Transcendental heritage," was to see them as "techniques for living the Christian life" and the Bible became "a rich source of those truths that we, in our hearts, already know" (p. 111). But this is now precisely the same attitude often taken by evangelicals to the Scriptures. Both liberals and evangelicals disdain doctrine for personal experience, and objective truth for personal transformation, and in this sense, each is, in its own way, Gnostic. The anti-intellectualism is understandable, according to Lee. "If God is immanent, present within our psyche, if we already have the truth within, then why go through all the hassle of studying theology?" (p. 111). Isn't this precisely the point of the division many of us grew up with between head knowledge and heart knowledge? The former is intellectual, the latter spiritual-that is, gnosis. James D. Hunter observes, "The spiritual aspects of Evangelical life are increasingly approached by means of an interpreted in terms of 'principles,' 'rules,' 'steps,' 'laws,' 'codes,' 'guidelines,' and the like."12 Wade Clark Roof adds, "Salvation as a theological doctrine...becomes reduced to simple steps, easy procedures, and formulas for psychological rewards. The approach to religious truth changes-away from any objective grounds on which it must be judged, to a more subjective, more instrumental understanding of what it does for the believer, and how it can do what it does most efficiently" (p. 195).

Pentecostalism represents an even greater dependence on Gnostic tendencies. Lee writes, "Just as faith healing held an important place among the medieval Gnostics of southern France, it has also been a significant element in the more extreme sects of Protestantism...The Savior God is pitted against the natural God, and before millions of television viewers the Savior God prevails" (p. 119). Roman Catholic scholar Ronald Knox's work, Enthusiasm (Oxford, 1950) remains a classic study of this subject. Even the desire to speak in tongues, as if the biblical idea of tongues was a super-natural language unknown to mortals, shows the desire to escape even natural human language in a direct spiritual encounter of immediate ecstasy. Although the biblical writers were well aware of this practice of "ecstatic utterances" in pagan religion, they did not use the Greek word for this practice, but instead chose glossai (lit., "languages"), leading us to conclude that tongues refers in the New Testament to known earthly speech.

The outer edges of Pentecostalism are especially blatant in Gnostic emphases, as a number of works have shown, including The Agony of Deceit.13 Salvation is knowledge-"Revelation Knowledge" (Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Paul Crouch and other "faith teachers" use the upper case to distinguish this from mere written revelation). The Word that truly saves is not the written text of Scripture, proclaiming Christ the Redeemer, but is rather the "Rhema" Word that is spoken directly to the spirit by God's Spirit. Bloom writes, "Paul was arguing against Corinthian Enthusiasts or Gnostics, and yet I wonder why his strictures have not discouraged American Pentecostals more than they seem to have done...Pentecostalism is American shamanism," although the author himself applauds the Gnostic tendency. Bloom concludes of this group, "To know also that one is completely free-the Emersonian Wildness-because one's solitude is shared with the Holy Spirit, carries the rapture to a Sublime elevation. And though Assemblies of God theology is officially Trinitarian, in praxis the Pentecostal knows only Oneness, and calls the Holy Spirit by the name of Jesus, not the Jesus of the Gospels or even the Christ of Paul, but the American Jesus, a Pentecostal like oneself."14 (It is worth noting that the Assemblies of God were involved in a rift within Pentecostalism over this very point, siding with the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity over "Oneness Pentecostals.")

For those of us who were raised in fundamentalist, evangelical or pentecostal sects, the experience of "rebirth" comes neither through the Word of the Gospel nor through the water of Baptism, but through a "Spirit Baptism" that is direct and immediate. The Word is primarily seen as an instrument for coaxing the individual into accepting the new birth. The new birth, especially if one judges by the testimonies of converts, is not so much the result of hearing with human ears, in human words, a declaration of things that happened in human history. In short, it is not so much the preaching of the Cross, but the preaching of "my personal relationship with Jesus," the day when "Jesus came into my heart," that is central. Lee again: "Whereas classical Calvinism had held that the Christian's assurance of salvation was guaranteed only through Christ and his Church, with his means of grace, now assurance could be found only in the personal experience of having been born again. This was a radical shift, for Calvin had considered any attempt to put 'conversion in the power of man himself' to be gross popery." In fact, "Rebirth in God is the exact opposite of rebirth into a new and more acceptable self, as the self-acclaimed born again Christians would see the event" (pp. 144, 255).

Norman Vincent Peale exploited the "peace of mind" craze earlier this century, a movement that borrowed its capital from Transcendentalism directly. Nevertheless, the liberal Peale was hailed as a great evangelist by evangelical Billy Graham and was asked to participate in the crusades. Lee once again notes the tie that binds: "For both of them, Christianity is understood from a Gnostic point of view....The real world with which religion has to do is the world within" (p. 199). This is not to suggest that Billy Graham is a liberal! Rather, it is to argue that in our day Gnosticism unites more than orthodox Christianity divides.

Also in terms of their views of Christ, liberals and evangelicals reveal a common Gnostic tendency. While the liberals divided the Jesus of History (a normal Jew who lived in first-century Palestine) from the Christ of Faith (resurrected God-Man), proclaiming that the Spirit of Christ lives and calls us into vital communion even though his body is not raised, evangelicals often seem to worship the spirit of Jesus apart from his humanity. "Jesus in my heart," at the end of the day, is more important for personal Christian experience, piety, and worship than Jesus in history. Although evangelicals insist on a historical resurrection as a matter of official creed, in actual practice, one wonders why it is important if the spirit of Jesus is in one's heart? After all, no one believes that Jesus takes up physical residence in one's heart, so what can we mean by "asking Jesus into our heart" other than inviting his spirit? Little is said of the biblical notion that it is the Holy Spirit who unites us not to the spirit of Jesus in our hearts, but to the God-Man in heaven according to both his divine and human natures.

In Gnosticism, not only the object of faith (Christ), but the act of faith, becomes radically revised. In Christianity, faith is trust in God's specific promise of salvation through Christ. In Gnosticism, faith is magic. It is a technique for getting what we want by believing in it strongly enough. As C. Peter Wagner, an advocate of the Vineyard movement, puts it, "Empirical evidence also validates the absolute necessity of faith or whatever else you want to call it-possibility thinking or goal setting-as a prerequisite for church growth."15 Is faith really a synonym for possibility thinking and goal setting? Then would not everyone possess faith? Or is faith a unique gift from God to trust in Christ, as in biblical teaching? The Second Helvetic Confession (a 16th century Reformed statement) declares, "Christian faith is not an opinion or human conviction, but a most firm trust and a clear and steadfast assent of the mind, and then a most certain apprehension of the truth of God presented in the Scriptures and in the Apostles' Creed, and thus also of God himself, the greatest good, and especially of God's promise and of Christ who is the fulfillment of all promises."

But Wagner's worldview is also dominated by the Gnostic fascination with dualism between Light and Darkness, as spiritual warfare takes on an increasingly super-spiritual preoccupation. Like Frank Peretti's novels, this popular view of spiritual warfare in which individual believers decide the outcome of battles between good angels and bad angels is too close to Manichaean Gnosticism for comfort.

The Gnostic revolution has been demonstrating its elasticity in recent years in the spirituality of the baby boomers, whose interest in the sacred has been celebrated in national periodicals, the study of which has become something of a cottage industry. Wade Clark Roof sampled a wide variety of seekers. For instance, Sonny D'Antonio, raised Roman Catholic, considers himself "a believer, but not a belonger." "The material parts of the church turned me off," he says (p. 18). Mollie Stone, raised a Pentecostal, tried Native American spirituality, then Quakerism for its "inner peace," and is "turned on" to Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery groups, although she is not herself an alcoholic or related to one. As for churches? "Creeds and doctrines divide people," she says (p. 23). Roof observes, "The distinction between 'spirit' and 'institution' is of major importance." Although Roof does not point to Gnosticism, his studies mark undeniable parallels: "Spirit is the inner, experiential aspect of religion; institution is the outer, established form of religion. This distinction is increasingly pertinent because of the strong emphasis on self in contemporary culture and the related shift from objective to subjective ways of ordering experience" (p. 30). Religion is too restricting, but spirituality offers a way of plugging into the divine with the correct spiritual technology. Roof explains, "As a computer programmer who happens to be an evangelical put it, without any prompting on our part: 'We all access God differently'" (p. 258).

The whole point of Christianity, however, is that one cannot "access" God at all! He must come to us through a personal Word (God in flesh) and a written Word (Scripture), and when we do come to him it must be through Christ, and we come to Christ through the ordained means. It might offend the Gnostic and narcissistic individualism of our age, but we do not "all access God differently."

Roof refers to the Outer and Inner Worlds, the former suspect while the latter is always respected. "Direct experience is always more trustworthy, if for no other reason than because of its 'inwardness' and 'within-ness'-two qualities that have come to be much appreciated in a highly expressive, narcissistic culture" (p. 67). But it is the surveys themselves that bear the greatest interest. Fifty-three percent of the Boomers said it was "'more important to be alone and to meditate' than to worship with others" (p. 70). But this was as true for many evangelicals as New Agers. Linda, one respondent, an evangelical who likes James Dobson and believes that America is in moral trouble, tells us, "You don't have to go to church. I think the reason I do is because it helps me to grow. It's especially good for my family, to teach them the good and moral things" (p. 105). In other words, the church imparts knowledge, not of sin and salvation by Christ's atonement, but by practical techniques for Christian living. It is purely narcissistic and individualistic as well as moralistic. The church that will get the vote of the seeker, then, is the church that offers (and delivers) more gnosis-saving techniques and secret formulae-than others. In fact, according to Roof's surveys, 80 percent of Americans believe "an individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any churches or synagogues" (p. 256). "Respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the statement, 'People have God within them, so churches aren't really necessary.' Right to the point, the question taps two views common to spiritual seekers: one, an immanent as opposed to a transcendent view of God; and two, an anti-institutional stance toward religion." The results? "Sixty percent of seekers view God in this mystical sense..." (p. 84). The mystical seekers' spirituality "is rooted more in their own biographies and experiences than in any grand religious narrative that purports to provide answers for all times and in all places," and this blends easily with secular or pagan modes of thought (p. 85). In Christianity, it is Christ's crisis experience on a Roman scaffold outside center-city Jerusalem; in Gnosticism, it is Linda's crisis experience that counts.

If experience is most trustworthy, and the cognitive (intellectual) aspects of a religion are downplayed ("Heart Knowledge" over "Head Knowledge"), what is to keep us from another "Dark Ages" of gross superstition? Belief in ESP, astrology and reincarnation is actually highest among college graduates, says Roof (p. 71). The "unknown God" of ancient Greece turns out to be not so distant from the spirituality of the nineties. As Roof puts it, even the "god" of evangelicals is amorphous and undefined: "This God is thought of in very human terms: God, as it were, is created in one's own image," and one might add, God is created in one's own experience. Even the evangelicals, Roof notes, "put a strong emphasis on the moral aspects of faith" over cognitive belief. The American Religion is united in its affirmation that, "It's not so much what you believe, or which religion you follow, it's how you live" (p. 186). Jesus is not as much a Savior as a moral Hero, Teacher and Guide for the gnostikoi- "those in the know." "Not just dropouts, but many loyalists and returnees speak of Jesus in a way that is vague theologically, but morally uplifting.... Theological language seems to have given way to psychological interpretations. If there is one theme throughout that characterizes the languages of boomer faith, it is the subjectivist character of the affirmations: 'I feel,' 'I have found,' 'I believe'" (p. 203).

One thing that needs to be said before concluding this article is that the critique of Gnosticism should not (indeed, must not) down-play the necessity of a living, personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. However, it is given by the Holy Spirit, not attained by us. We do not "appropriate" salvation and the gifts of the Spirit; the Spirit confers Christ and all of his blessings to the believer, in communion with the whole church. While we focus on the objective content of the Faith (Christ and him crucified and raised for our salvation), we must not, in reaction, jettison the subjective application of redemption. In any case, we must always keep in mind that our friendship with God (which is a wonderful promise in the Gospel) is expressed in joyful obedience, not in the narcissistic pursuit of "intimacy" as an end in itself.

In the next article, I want to relate all of this background-much of it thick in the theoretical language and tedious description-to the practical issues of Christian life and worship. I also want to offer a way out of the Gnostic maze.

Notes
1. Philip Lee, Against The Protestant Gnostics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p.80.
2. Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of The Baby Boom Generation (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 76.
3. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, second edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), pp. 50-75.
4. Henry Bettenson, The Later Christian Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 103.
5. Marylin Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy (New York: St. Martin's, 1987), p. 120. Claiming the Gnostics by name, Ferguson states, "Like that of the founding fathers and of the American Transcendentalists of the mid-1800s, the dream of the Aquarian Conspiracy in America is a framework for nonmaterialist expansion: autonomy, awakening, creativity-and reconciliation." The movement is "reluctant to create hierarchical structures" and is "averse to dogma." She says, "By integrating magic and science, art and technology, it will succeed where all the king's horses and all the king's men have failed."
6. Cited in Vernon L. Parrington, The Romantic Revolution in America, vol. 2 of Main Currents in American Thought (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), pp. 441-2.
7. Emerson, Journals, ed E. W. Emerson, vol. 5, p. 288.
8. Ibid., vol. 8, p. 316.
9. Cited in Lee, p. 104.
10. Martin Marty, The Righteous Empire (New York: Dial, 1970), pp. 184-7
11. Cited in Lee, p. 155.
12. James D. Hunter, American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandry of Modernity (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1983), p. 75.
13. See The Agony of Deceit, ed. Michael Horton (Chicago: Moody Press, 1991)
14. Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), p. 177.
15. Cited in Lee, p. 210.

2003-03-05T22:39:00.000-08:00

capturing one of Stephen Jones's tag lines it is the first time i have heard this....

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The final fallacy of this sort that we will consider is known as poisoning
the well. In such arguments an attempt is made to place the opponent in a
position from which he or she is unable to reply. This form of the fallacy
received its name from John Henry Cardinal Newman, a nineteenth-century
British churchman, in one of his frequent controversies with the clergyman
and novelist Charles Kingsley. During the course of their dispute, Kingsley
suggested that Newman, as a Roman Catholic priest, did not place the
highest value on truth. Newman protested that such an accusation made it
impossible for him, or for any other Catholic, to state his case. For how
could he prove to Kingsley that he had more regard for truth than for
anything else if Kingsley presupposed that he did not? Kingsley had
automatically ruled out anything that Newman might offer in defense.
Kingsley, in other words, had poisoned the well of discourse, making it
impossible for anyone to partake of it. ... Anyone attempting to rebut these
arguments would be hard pressed to do so, for anything he or she said
would only seem to strengthen the accusation against the person saying it.
The very attempt to reply succeeds only in placing someone in an even
more impossible position. It is as if, being accused of talking too much, one
cannot argue against the accusation without condemning one self; the more
one talks the more one helps establish the truth of the accusation. And that
is perhaps what such unfair tactics are ultimately designed to do: by
discrediting in advance the only source from which evidence either for or
against a particular position can arise, they seek to avoid opposition by
precluding discussion." (Engel S.M., "With Good Reason: An Introduction
to Informal Fallacies," St. Martin's Press: New York, Fourth Edition, 1990,
pp.195-196)

2003-03-05T15:06:00.000-08:00

i want to capture these references
-------------------------------------------------
Hi Sonnikke, I have been gone for a while, had to switch jobs when my old BioTech turned turtle, although hopefully it will transmute into a Phoenix. You asked for more info concerning pathways for gene control and duplication of genes for evolution. One major family of pathways involved in gene control which crosses species lines are the MAP Kinase proteins and their related protein families. Here is one very good reference providing informatio concerning the relationships
http://link.springer-ny.com/link/service/journals/00239/papers/49n5p567.pdf
(Sorry that I am not putting it in HTML format but I am short on time this morning). PLease note the clustering of the related p38 and JNK families with the related Yeast gene family for osmotic shock. These genes and their associated proteins play a different role than the mitogen activated proteins. Control generally occurs via a feedback style loop of the transcription factor substrates and the initiated gene product. Some of the apparently unrelated or difficult to trace families may be the result of looking at the active site rather than the docking site, of course the docking site data was not available at the time of publication of the paper. Here is a short reference for that as well.
http://www4.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?uid=20122677&form=6&db=m&Dopt=b

This type of duplication of a gene and use of the protein for a different function is rather common.

Another pathway, although not dealing with translational control of genes, is the clotting activity of horseshoe crabs. This is important as, based on current understanding, the Horseshoe crab is a very old and succesfull species. The reason that I like this pathway is that it trashes one of Dr. Behe's examples of Irreducible Complexity, namely blood clotting. Here is a little info on the crab and the clotting system.
http://www.mbl.edu/animals/Limulus/blood/bang.html
Please note the occurance of one the signs of an "Unsuccessful" pathway acording to Behe, namely the clotting of the entire organism due to an unusually severe infection. However, in the open circulatory pathway of the crab this generally is not a problem. Subsequent modifications to a similar pathway, here is a decent paper on this.
http://biochem.wustl.edu/~enrico/tibs02_krem.pdf

So you see, duplication really can account for complex, even "Irreducibly complex", pathways

------------------

2003-03-04T23:45:00.000-08:00

an email i dont want to lose

---------------------------------------------------------------

I think that Robert M. Price's book, Beyond Born Again
(on the web) is one of the best for any Evangelical
Christian to read who wants his peculiar concerns to
be addressed and challenged. It's written by a former
Evangelical for Evangelical readers. [Price's latest
work, Deconstructing Jesus, was a little beyond me.
After writing Beyond Born Again he obtained two Ph.D.s
in N.T. in both N.T. theology and N.T. history, and so
he now interacts with a host of varied hypotheses and
interpretations raised by Jesus Seminar people, and I
cannot follow all of the hypotheses! He is currently
of the opinion that we possess even less certainties
regarding what is known (and can be known) about the
historical Jesus than most people in the Seminar would
readily admit.]

My collection of testimonies, Leaving the Fold, has,
like Bob's book, garnered responses from Evangelicals
and Former Evangelicals like myself who either felt
challanged by it, or who were grateful that there were
others out there like them who had wrestled with the
same questions and wound up on the more moderate side
of the fence.

Of course there are a lot of interesting books out
there. But there is only one truly fabulous website
that I know of that features all known Christian texts
and different approaches to the historical Jesus and
more links than you can shake a mouse at:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com

Speaking of your question in particular -- pagan
connections with Christianity -- one of the most
recent and most talked about books on the topic is

The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan
God?
by Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy

[A wide-reaching review of pagan ideas and influences
on Christianity, along with interesting parallels. Of
course it is not necessary to agree with the author's
thesis that Jesus never existed in order to be
entranced by all the parallels between paganism and
Christianity.]

--------

Two interesting recent books try to pinpoint "earlier
Jesuses" and "earler Messiahs" before Jesus of
Nazareth:

Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ
by Alvar Ellegard
[I haven't read this one, but I do know that this
author's hypothesis is different from that of the one
below.]

The Messiah before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the
Dead Sea Scrolls
by Israel Knohl, David Maisel (Translator)
[I've skimmed this one and it raises some fascinating
questions and explores some fascinating parallels.]

Along with the above books, I suggest the works of
Geza Vermes -- from his book, Jesus the Jew, to his
recent, The Changing Faces of Jesus, both of which
mention charismatic Jewish wonder workers and healers
who lived near the time of Jesus and who addressed God
as "Father."

--------

The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a
Mythical Christ? : Challenging the Existence of an
Historical Jesus
by Earl Doherty

Mr. Doherty has an extensive website that includes
many of his arguments and most recent articles and
responses to his critics. Type his last name and book
title into the www.google.com search box and you'll
find his writings.

------------

If you want to discover more works on paganism and
Christianity, try www.amazon.com and do a book
search using the words "pagan and christian." Here's
some of the more interesting books that my own search
pulled up at amazon:

Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience
by Gus, Ph.D. Dizerega
[A curious book written by a pagan that preacefully
points out similarities of beliefs and their
expression among both modern day pagans and
Christians.]

------

Pagan & Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning
by Edward Carpenter
Book Description
Contents: Solar Myths and Christian Festivals; The
Symbolism of the Zodiac; Totem-Sacraments and
Eucharists; Food and Vegetation Magic; Magicians,
Kings and Gods; Rites of Expiation and Redemption;
Pagan Initiations and the Second Birth; Myth of the
Golden Age; The Saviour-God and the Virgin-Mother;
Ritual Dancing; The Sex-Taboo; The Genesis of
Christianity; The Meaning of it All; The Ancient
Mysteries; The Exodus of Christianity; Conclusion;
Appendix on the Teachings of the Upanishads: Rest; The
Nature of the Self.

About the Author
Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was a well-regarded
English poet and scholar. He studied at Brighton
College and then entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
Carpenter was close friend to E. M. Forster and
Laurence Houseman and was a member of The Fabian
Society.

Another older work like the above is

Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism: With an
Essay on Baal Worship, on the Assyrian Sacred "Grove,"
and Other Allied Symbols - 1915
by Thomas Inman

[I am unsure how accurate such older works are, since
the information maybe be based on inaccurate sources
or translations.]

Customers who bought this book also bought:

Aryan Sun Myths: The Origin of Religions by Sarah E.
Titcomb, et al (Paperback)

The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold by
Acharya S (Paperback)

Paganism and Christianity, 100-425 C.E.: A Sourcebook
by Ramsay MacMullen (Editor), Eugene N. Lane (Editor)
(Paperback)

A History of Pagan Europe by Prudence Jones, Nigel
Pennick (Contributor) (Paperback)

The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook: Sacred Texts of

the Mystery Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean
World by Marvin W. Meyer (Editor) (Paperback

--------

Pagans and Christians
by Robin Lane Fox
[A relatively recently published work that I have
enjoyed reading, though it is quite long and you have
to choose which sections interest you the most.]

REVIEWS:

The Christian Church does not talk much about how it
obtained dominance in the European world. One reads of
BIble stories and martyrs and popes but nothing on the
events that led to the overthrow of the gods of a
religious people. In this book, one discovers that
early Christians were the "Atheists" since they did
not worship a pagan god.

Pagan gods were wondrously easygoing. Each town or
family had their own god. Acceptance or rejection was
entirely personal. Gods could be adopted, created,
borrowed or discarded depending on the social
circumstance. Christianity demands that only "God"
(Jesus) receive adoration, thus setting up a conflict
that resulted in one side winning and outlawing the
former gods.

What is particularly interesting is the daily life of
the people and how their religion affected them.
Pagans were generous with their money, held services,
performed rituals and prayed for success or money.
Even more interesting is the manner in which
Christianity adapted and adopted from pagans - both in
theology and ritual. The mystical union of god and man
was a uniquely pagan thought as was the "Mind of God".
We read about the ferocious fights concerning divinity
("Was Jesus one or separate with God?"), scripture
(books were "voted" holy at synods) and ceremony.
Christianity owes at least as much to paganism as it
does Judaism. Get this book and The Unauthorized
Version, Fox's other masterpiece.

***

I came away from reading this wonderful book with a
feeling of "those sly dogs" refering to the
Christians. After reading this book your eyes will be
opened to how everything we accept as truth today has
a very spotted past. The book describes how the
Christian Church learned from their Pagan past how to
manipulate its flock. A practice that goes on to this
day. The exegete, Mr. Fox digs up the dirt so to speak
on the most pios of institutions. The book is vast and
very detailed. Not one to pick up for mindless
Christian entertainment. You might just learn the
flawed truth about our most hallowed institutions and
be set free. This is not a book for fundamentalist and
will be damned by them.

It was interesting to find out that the early church
was not prosectuted for it faith...A lession the
church has learned to use today on those they consider
"unsavory". I came away with the impression that the
Christian church today is and was no better than the
pagans it drew most of their traditions from.

***

Doubtless, the author knows his subject. But, like
many contemporary academics, he is unable to clearly
and concisely state a thesis, marshal the facts and
arguments and to then move on. I suspect this type of
thing results from a fear of making oneself an easy
taget for some carping, caviling "scholar".

The author, with his undisciplined, meandering style,
managed to turn a fascinating subject and his own deep
knowledge into an insufferably long (799 pages) and
tedious mass of mush. It is hardly surprising that
this book is out of print.

Yes, there are some fine nuggets to be mined herein.
However, they are easy to miss when your eyes are
glazed over. This book is not recommended for the
general reader looking for an interesting, informative
book of manageable length.

-------------

The Pagan Background of Early Christianity.
by William Reginald Halliday
Publisher: Cooper Square Press; (January 1970)

REVIEW:

This work is a printed version of W.R. Halliday's
series of lectures to the Board of Biblical Studies of
the University of Liverpool, and due to the nature of
his audience, many connections between Christianity
and pagan religion are left unsaid. He argues that
Christianity was a product of its time, often drawing
from the same pool of symbols, thoughts, and rituals
which were used by the pagan religions. Of the myriad
of pagan religions, Halliday limits his discussion to
the state religion of Rome, the Stoics, Epicureans,
Cynics, and Mithraites. There was no reference to the
influence of Druids, Bacchanalians, or other Hellenic
or Oriental cults on Christian practices. His argument
is convincing, and his conclusion, that Christianity
filled a spiritual void by blending ritual,
philosophy, and a moral code seems to bear weight.
Overall, his comparison of Christian ritual and pagan
practices is compelling, but this work's narrow scope
and often tedious format impede it's usefulness.

----------

Pagan Saviours: Pagan Elements in Christian Ritual and
Doctrine

Availability: THIS TITLE IS CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE.
If you would like to purchase this title, we recommend
that you occasionally check this page to see if it has
become available.

Paperback: 24 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.25 x
8.25 x 5.75
Publisher: Ishk Book Service; (January 2000)

--------

Pagan-Christian Conflict over Miracle in the Second
Century (Patristic Monograph Series, 10)
by Harold Remus

----------

Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity: A Sourcebook
by A. D. Lee
Table of Contents
Preface Conventions and Abbreviations Acknowledgments
Introduction Part 1. Pagans and Christians Through
Time 1. Pagans in the Third Century 2. Christians in
the Third Century 3. Pagans and Christians During the
tetrarchy 4. Constantine 5. Pagans and Christians in
the Mis Fourth Century 6. Pagans and Christians in the
Late Fourth Century 7. Christianization and its Limits
in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries Part 2. Other
Religious Groups 8. Jews 9. Zoroastrians 10.
Manichaeans Part 3. Themes in Late Antique
Christianity 11. Ascetics 12. Bishops 13. Material
Resources 14. Church Life 15. Women 16. Pilgrims and
Holy Places Glossary Editions Bibliography Index of
Sources General Index

About the Author
A.D. Lee is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient
History at the University of Wales, Lampeter. He is
the author of Information and Frontiers: Roman FOreign
Relations in Late Antiquity (1993) and is a
contributor to the Cambridge Ancient History

---------

--- richard williams
wrote:
> thank you very much.
> i just finished skimming his book you quoted earlier
> on CED
> and will printout and slowly read his stuff tonight
> and tomorrow, i hope...i would never have found it
> without your help.
>
> do you know of good books or sites on early
> christian
> and
> pagan relationships?
>
> looking for something like mithras worship and
> christian syncretism.
>
> thanks again
>
> richard williams
>
> --- Edward Babinski wrote:
> >
> > I believe this is the exact site address for
> Price's
> > BEYOND BORN AGAIN:
> >
>
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_again/
> >
> > Robert M. Price on the arguments used by
> Evangelical
> > apologists to "prove" Jesus's Divinity:
> >
> > A False Trilemma
> >
>
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_again/chap7.html
> >
> > Jesus God's Son
> >
>
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/son.html
> >
> > Doctrinal History of the Controversy:
> >
> > When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define
> > Christianity during the Last Days of Rome
> > by Richard E. Rubenstein
> >
> > The above struggle "to define Christianity" never
> > ended. The Bible raises more questions than it
> > answers.
> >
> > A supplementary reading list on "The Trinity"
> would
> > include:
> >
> > --- Patristic source material:
> > [1] Rusch W.G. The Trinitarian Controversy
> (reader)
> > ****
> > [2] Rusch W.G. The Christological Controversy
> > (reader)
> > ****
> >
> > --- Orthodox apologia for the Trinity:
> > [3] Dunn J.D. Christology (essays) ***
> >
> >
> > --- Egyptology
> > [4] Griffiths J.G. Triads and Trinity
> (distinguished
> > egyptologist's account of pagan origins of the
> > Trinity, heavy going) ***
> >
> > --- Apologia for non-Trinitarian views:
> > [5] Broughton J.H. & Southgate P.J. The Trinity
> True
> > or False (the most comprehensive scriptural
> > arguments
> > against both the Trinity and the related doctrine
> of
> > Preexistence, with, interestingly, two alternative
> > approaches to John 1)*****
> > [6] Buzzard A.F. & Hunting C.F. The Doctrine of
> the
> > Trinity (broadly similar to Broughton & Southgate
> > but
> > less comprehensive on the scripture sections, and
> > not
> > as strong in the treatment of Preexistence. The
> > book's
> > plus point is a fuller treatment of historical
> > development)****
> > [7] Holt B. Jesus God or the Son of God (critique
> of
> > the concept of Jesus as "god" which goes
> > considerably
> > further down this road than the two previous
> books,
> > but paradoxically contains an apologia for the
> > literal
> > preexistence of Jesus in heaven before birth).***
> > [8] Graeser M.H., Lynn J.A., & Schoenheit J.W. One
> > God
> > and One Lord (popularist and unfortunately
> sloppily
> > proofread critique of the Trinity, no substitute
> for
> > either Broughton or Buzzard, or both)*
> > [9] Sigal, Gerald. The Jew and the Christian
> > Missionary (discusses some of the ways Christians
> > use
> > the Old and New Testament Scriptures)
> >
> > NB: some of these books are currently only
> available
> > from Amazon's international websites - although
> > shipping rates and times are very reasonable.
> >
> >
> >
> > OTHER WEBSITES:
> >
> > www.earlychristianwritings.com
> > (The Definitive Basic Information and Study Site
> for
> > Ancient Christian Literature, Including the
> Gospels,
> > Patristic Literature and many other Early
> Christian
> > Texts).
> >
> > Gospel of Matthew (info on its dating,
> > interpretations, many links)
> > http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/matthew.html
> >
> > Gospel of John (info on its dating,
> interpretations,
> > many links)
> > http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/john.html
> >
> > Geza Vermes on the Fourth Gospel (from his latest
> > book, The Changing Faces of Jesus)
> >
>
http://www.penguin.co.uk/Book/BookFrame?0140265244_EXC
> >
> > Book of Revelation (Apocalypse of John) (info on
> its
> > dating, interpretations, many links)
> >
>
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/revelation.html
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
> > http://taxes.yahoo.com/
>
>
> =====
> richard williams....................
> thinkcreation2002@yahoo.com
> http://fastucson.net/~rmwillia ......creation
> evolution homepage
> http://rmwilliamsjr.blogspot.com ....blog
> http://myhq.com/public/t/h/thinkcreation ...sorted
> CED bookmark list
> http://myhq.com/public/r/w/rwilliam ........unsorted
> CURRENT bookmark list
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CEreadingstudy/join
> .... reading group
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
> http://taxes.yahoo.com/

________________________________________

2003-03-03T19:44:00.000-08:00

hugh ross
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4149.asp--->quoted in
"
Ross argues that science alone can drive men to the correct
understanding of our origin and hence see the necessity of a Creator.
But this assumes that fallible men using a man-made (and hence
fallible) methodology (science — in particular origins science7) with
an incorrect postulate (atheism) can come to the truth about God. It
would be most unexpected and illogical for a system of thought to
reach a conclusion that is in contradiction to one of the basic
postulates of that system.

This paradox underscores Ross's greatest misconception of how modern
science works vis-à-vis the question of origins. As Johnson has
pointed out, modern science, even origins science, by its very nature
starts with the assumption of materialism.8 This assumption excludes
consideration of any metaphysical reality, and leads to such quotes as
those of the late Carl Sagan, `The cosmos is all that is or ever was
or ever will be.'9 This assumption is blatantly atheistic. That does
not mean that all, or even most, scientists are atheists. It merely
means that the total exclusion of any possibility of a Deity makes
most of modern science an atheistic enterprise, at least tacitly.
"
---------------

the argument as expressed in these two paragraphs is key not just for
dr. faulkner's criticism of h.ross's science but it is key for any
conservative christian's understanding of science.

what's going on? the paragraphs outline the noetic consequences of
sin. the first result is that science operates on false premises. the
conclusion is that science is atheistic. the second conclusion is that
we can not trust anything science says about origins(historical)
versus normal (operational) science because this in particular is
where atheism will differ from the truth.

outlined as---
1. human beings are fallible.
2. the noetic effects of the fall are such that "our understanding is
darkened and we exchange the truth of god for a lie", even christians
are not free of this in our lives.
3. science requires(strong) or uses(weaker) two
assumptions/propositions/presuppostions. materialism atheism
4. the conclusions are forgone. atheistic scientism

------------
1---i dont believe that atheism is a low level assumption of science.i
believe science and scientists in general are agnostic in their
assumptions about god. i dont think science as a methodology assumes
god as christians conceive of him as creator/sustainer/redeemmer does
not exist but rather a weaker form of irrelevance. god is not part of
scientific explanations, we assume his presence is not necessary as an
operational explanation. this is not the same thing as a high level
conclusion that god does not exist. but this is not a key part of the
argument.

2-what is key are two points: the noetic effects of sin, and the use
of assumptions as working tools,(bridging hypothesis)

there seems to be a continuium of "how bad" the noetic effects of sin
are understood in the christian community. there appear to be those
who would say that the effects are so serious that unbelievers can not
say anything with expressing their hatred for god underneath what they
say. i'm thinking of some theonomist who would say that there are
virtually no points of contact with the unbeliever and that christians
ought to build a parallel christian institution next to each
unbelieving worldly one. science, university, etc etc.

on the other hand there are those who would minimize this noetic
consequences of sin to the point that it is just a stain to be washed
away. the truth must be somewhere in the middle. key element would be
to decide the point of contact with unbelievers or unbelieving
institutions like science.

as i read the pca discussions on the framework perspective (see
capo.org for links). i believe where on the continium(just how bad are
the noetic effects of the fall) you personally fall is how you will
decide the gen1-2 issues.

i find myself defending the view that the system of science, with
ideas of depersonalization, peer review, multiplicity of sources etc
are designed to combat the effects of sin(early in the history of
science consciously). all people know that they err, science is a
deliberate attempt to minimize this error. so what happens is that i
conclude that science rolls back the effect of sin so to speak. this
is an opposite conclusion to the pca brethren who conclude that
science as it looks closer at things to do with people and their
responsiblity to god, becomes more sinful in order to escape the
consequences of concluding that god creates in YEC style. i believe
this is a difference in degree not kind.

the second idea in the article that is of crucial importance is
materialism(from other AiG papers he might very well have added
uniformitarism) as a working hypothesis of science.

i would disagree with dr. faulkner that it is the presence of these
hypothesis that makes science (potentially) atheistic, rather it is an
unwarranted extension of the hypothesis that is causing the movement
towards an atheistic science.

i believe we need materialistic and uniformity assumptions to bridge
the gap between our theories and the data. it is when people draw an
unwarranted conclusion that since the usage of materialistic
principles has yielded us so much power therefore materialism as a
philosophy must be true. it is as if in using a tape measure to
measure a table i conclude that it will likewise be the right tool to
measure the world. it is again the noetic consequences of sin pushing
the unbeliever to justify his rebellion against god that logically
pushes him to desire materialism as a balwark of his world and life
view. it is a misuse of a tool. it is a confusion of levels. the lower
level of materialism as a working assumption in order to do science
and the radical acceptance of the proposition of "things are all there
is and all that is important".

it is on this level. the unwarranted assumption that you can extend
working hypothesis of uniformity materialism etc. to form a world and
life view that i would chose to attack scientism, materialism atheism
etc....not on the level of those elements being working tools.

2003-03-03T07:37:00.000-08:00

from a discussion on "how is a christian to relate to nationalism?" at full discussion

i wrote:

i look on constantine as one of the truely wrong synthesis or syncetisms that the church has undergone in its 2000 years of involvement in this world

my studies of the issue revolve around the radical reformation and its denial of the doctrine of 'corpus christianum' or the idea that the body of Christ existed in the physical communities of europe. of particular help was _The Reformers and Their Stepchildren_, by Leonard Verduin.

as such i think that the ideas of the historical peace churches are more biblical and christian than those of the reformed like presbyterian on this issue. following augustine and the doctrine of the two swords the reformed churches did not challenge this false idea of the unity of the church and state. either in the reformation nor in the subsequent nearly 500 years.

it was in the historical analysis of christianity in america that the separation of church and state arose, mostly as a compromise not to allow any particular sect alignment with political power. this was more pragmatic than the spiritual analysis of the anabaptist churches, but a step in the right direction.

i think the final step is to understand that political power is a necessary evil. to be very careful not to confuse spiritual and political domains, example is national flags in churches. for our citizenship is in heaven, not in this world where we are strangers in a strange land, finding it impossible to sing the songs of a political nature when they ask for an allegience we owe only to Christ and His kingdom yet to come.

one of the places we can watch these things work out will be in the burgeoning churches in africa, south america and asia where they will have to come to grips with the legacy of colonialism and its unique confusion of political power from the barrel of a gun and the spiritual power of a christianity that worked hand in glove with the colonial powers
. i think liberation theology is just the beginning of such re-theologizing.

thanks for listening.
richard williams

quote:
Of course, in the case of the Civil War, God might even have used the genius of Lee and Jackson, because it was only because of the successes of the south in 1862 and prolongation of war, that Lincoln decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. If the South had been quickly and easily beaten, the slaves would have remained slaves longer, perhaps, indefinitely.

the war between the states was not over slavery.

it is literally a BIG issue.

i'd like to quote at length from
my blog

quote:
more on racism

gordon, my mom, my grandfather, were racists. i have on several occasions said things that reflected my upbringing and sounded racist. to those people that i hurt, i can onlysay i'm sorry.

i spent several hours reading the CI site
example of christian identity arguments
i have an emotional matrix tied through my mom, years of waking up as a child and seeing the confederate flag over my head. i remember the goosebumps as an elementary school student and hearing dixie sung as the flag was raised. i'm a sucker for lost causes. after calvin my favorite theologian is robert dabney, whos book _defense of virginia_ is one of my favorite. and then there is gordon.

with all this emotional baggage, i approach the issue of racism and the issue behind it of slavery, like it is the minefield that will do me in.

the church in 1800 uniformally interpreted certain passages of scripture as supportive of slavery. the left wing that criticised this was primarily quaker. the interpretative principle is use literal, man-in-the-street understanding of a passage unless it is, for some good reason, not the right way to interpret it.
there are numerous places in the NT where paul speaks about slaves and slavery. he nowhere condemns it. therefore take those verses as defacto support of slavery.
but during the 1800's the church under pressure slowly admitted that it's stance on slavery was cultural, and in fact the church had no right to support slavery. the same thing occurred in the union of south africa over apartheid.

dabney defended the southern viewpoint, in particular the separation of the races from verses in genesis discussing the godly and the ungodly lines. where the rest of the church "lifted" the verses up to a different approach, dabney remained at the literal which supported his cultural determined view on slavery. i think this is dabney holding despite better principles in view, inconsistency.

but the CI folks are consistent. they continue to interpret verses as against what he terms Equalitarianism. a subset of their beliefs is the separation of the races. justification is the same verses as used to justify slavery, showing the supposed lower culture of the african races.

the issue is how to amend our hermenutic.
we start with the idea that the literal is to be preferred.
we kick it upstairs when we have to.

dabney didnt kick the issue of racism up stairs, but rather held onto it, using a literal hermenutic on the verses past its "pull by date"

culturally the CI, AiG, and many fundamentalist are direct heirs of dabney and southern culture. AiG consciously distances themselves from the CI and from the literal interpretation by reference to another set of verses that show the oneness of mankind. (i havent read kenhams books, this is just off the website)

the plain view of scripture is supportive of racism and of slavery, it is only by 'de-literalisation' or some other technic that we can understand these verses from a social mileui standpoint and say: i understand the scriptures appear to support slavery, but this is a cultural context not necessary for our time"

what we do is deny the applicability of these verses to our culture.

as a principle we all are "contaminated" by our culture. we read scriptures with eyes different than those to whom it was first written. the reason that slavery and racism is an issue as directed at AiG is that their literal hermenutic is not being applied consistently. they "pop up" the issues surrounding racism precisely for political social reasons.
they could not survive as a big spokesperson for the creationist if they were identified as racist. now i am not privy to any thinking at AiG, but the achilles heel of the fundamentalist movement as it grows out of the south is the incipid racism that it brings along. the pca is fighting it on several fronts as it grows out of the south into the west and northwest. people tend to be cut out of a whole piece of cloth, if we havent examined issues in particular we tend to assume them from our culture. race relations is an issue the the whole society has been aware of for 40 years, it is almost impossible not to take a stand somewhere on the issue.

AiG has because of their strong stand against racism distanced themselves from the CI folks and for that matter most of the pca people i know. they can only do so by changing their hermenutically principle to raise the plain meaning of certain verses into another plane.

this is exactly the same process the oec use to understand the creation week and similiar passages. the denial that the literal plain man in the pew technic works on these verses.

so this is the point.

dabney failed to change his literal interpretive principles.
CI consciously follow dabney and continue to hold to separation of the races, several verses in genesis are classic focus. AiG holds to the same hermenutical principles as does CI but they differ on this issue. they do so by changing interpretative principles.

but the hold issue on evolution and creation from the AiG is that this is accommodationist, capitulation to an unbelieving world. this process of theologizing is to be done without input from the world. scripture interprets scripture. science is not to influence theological principles.

but they, inconsistently as compared to CI, have modified their principles as applied to these verses. under political and social pressures that would destroy their ministry if they were branded as racist.

therefore racism as slavery before it is an issue where the world pushed the church into changing its interpretative principles, at least with respect to a few verses( i believe it was bigger than that but that is another discussion).

since AiG has modified the body of theology it is heir to, in particular, in order to be successful in the world. it has no right to insist that the verses in genesis for a 6 24 hour day be interpreted literally, since it is science not theology demanding the change.

there is another interesting issue here. is fundamentalism as we see it today, AiG in particular the heirs of dabney theologically? i need to look into that one, since my readings would have me believe that the fundamental theology is not reformed but arminian, not postmil but dispensationalist. i think of the pca as the successor of dabney and the theology of the old south. looking at the papers where the pca has stuggled with the issues of evolution and creation makes me believe that there are different hermenutically principles involved. the problem comes with the CI folks who are reformed, at least the several sites that i make reference to. there were others but their theology turned me off and i didnt continue to study them.
richard 9:56 AM Tuesday, January 28, 2003

quote:
Of course, in the case of the Civil War, God might even have used the genius of Lee and Jackson, because it was only because of the successes of the south in 1862 and prolongation of war, that Lincoln decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. If the South had been quickly and easily beaten, the slaves would have remained slaves longer, perhaps, indefinitely.

the war between the states was not over slavery.

it is literally a BIG issue.

i'd like to quote at length from
my blog

quote:
more on racism

gordon, my mom, my grandfather, were racists. i have on several occasions said things that reflected my upbringing and sounded racist. to those people that i hurt, i can onlysay i'm sorry.

i spent several hours reading the CI site
example of christian identity arguments
i have an emotional matrix tied through my mom, years of waking up as a child and seeing the confederate flag over my head. i remember the goosebumps as an elementary school student and hearing dixie sung as the flag was raised. i'm a sucker for lost causes. after calvin my favorite theologian is robert dabney, whos book _defense of virginia_ is one of my favorite. and then there is gordon.

with all this emotional baggage, i approach the issue of racism and the issue behind it of slavery, like it is the minefield that will do me in.

the church in 1800 uniformally interpreted certain passages of scripture as supportive of slavery. the left wing that criticised this was primarily quaker. the interpretative principle is use literal, man-in-the-street understanding of a passage unless it is, for some good reason, not the right way to interpret it.
there are numerous places in the NT where paul speaks about slaves and slavery. he nowhere condemns it. therefore take those verses as defacto support of slavery.
but during the 1800's the church under pressure slowly admitted that it's stance on slavery was cultural, and in fact the church had no right to support slavery. the same thing occurred in the union of south africa over apartheid.

dabney defended the southern viewpoint, in particular the separation of the races from verses in genesis discussing the godly and the ungodly lines. where the rest of the church "lifted" the verses up to a different approach, dabney remained at the literal which supported his cultural determined view on slavery. i think this is dabney holding despite better principles in view, inconsistency.

but the CI folks are consistent. they continue to interpret verses as against what he terms Equalitarianism. a subset of their beliefs is the separation of the races. justification is the same verses as used to justify slavery, showing the supposed lower culture of the african races.

the issue is how to amend our hermenutic.
we start with the idea that the literal is to be preferred.
we kick it upstairs when we have to.

dabney didnt kick the issue of racism up stairs, but rather held onto it, using a literal hermenutic on the verses past its "pull by date"

culturally the CI, AiG, and many fundamentalist are direct heirs of dabney and southern culture. AiG consciously distances themselves from the CI and from the literal interpretation by reference to another set of verses that show the oneness of mankind. (i havent read kenhams books, this is just off the website)

the plain view of scripture is supportive of racism and of slavery, it is only by 'de-literalisation' or some other technic that we can understand these verses from a social mileui standpoint and say: i understand the scriptures appear to support slavery, but this is a cultural context not necessary for our time"

what we do is deny the applicability of these verses to our culture.

as a principle we all are "contaminated" by our culture. we read scriptures with eyes different than those to whom it was first written. the reason that slavery and racism is an issue as directed at AiG is that their literal hermenutic is not being applied consistently. they "pop up" the issues surrounding racism precisely for political social reasons.
they could not survive as a big spokesperson for the creationist if they were identified as racist. now i am not privy to any thinking at AiG, but the achilles heel of the fundamentalist movement as it grows out of the south is the incipid racism that it brings along. the pca is fighting it on several fronts as it grows out of the south into the west and northwest. people tend to be cut out of a whole piece of cloth, if we havent examined issues in particular we tend to assume them from our culture. race relations is an issue the the whole society has been aware of for 40 years, it is almost impossible not to take a stand somewhere on the issue.

AiG has because of their strong stand against racism distanced themselves from the CI folks and for that matter most of the pca people i know. they can only do so by changing their hermenutically principle to raise the plain meaning of certain verses into another plane.

this is exactly the same process the oec use to understand the creation week and similiar passages. the denial that the literal plain man in the pew technic works on these verses.

so this is the point.

dabney failed to change his literal interpretive principles.
CI consciously follow dabney and continue to hold to separation of the races, several verses in genesis are classic focus. AiG holds to the same hermenutical principles as does CI but they differ on this issue. they do so by changing interpretative principles.

but the hold issue on evolution and creation from the AiG is that this is accommodationist, capitulation to an unbelieving world. this process of theologizing is to be done without input from the world. scripture interprets scripture. science is not to influence theological principles.

but they, inconsistently as compared to CI, have modified their principles as applied to these verses. under political and social pressures that would destroy their ministry if they were branded as racist.

therefore racism as slavery before it is an issue where the world pushed the church into changing its interpretative principles, at least with respect to a few verses( i believe it was bigger than that but that is another discussion).

since AiG has modified the body of theology it is heir to, in particular, in order to be successful in the world. it has no right to insist that the verses in genesis for a 6 24 hour day be interpreted literally, since it is science not theology demanding the change.

there is another interesting issue here. is fundamentalism as we see it today, AiG in particular the heirs of dabney theologically? i need to look into that one, since my readings would have me believe that the fundamental theology is not reformed but arminian, not postmil but dispensationalist. i think of the pca as the successor of dabney and the theology of the old south. looking at the papers where the pca has stuggled with the issues of evolution and creation makes me believe that there are different hermenutically principles involved. the problem comes with the CI folks who are reformed, at least the several sites that i make reference to. there were others but their theology turned me off and i didnt continue to study them.
richard 9:56 AM Tuesday, January 28, 2003

i'm glad you replied over here. since this is where the question started.

your reply is very instructive, thanks for taking the time to answer so completely. we are actually talking past each other in a significant way...

quote: How close does the Church or Christians get to certain "movements?" It is not that hard to figure out. The church makes mistakes along the way, but, over time, the church tends to be self-correcting. When the church does things that are dumb and stupid, their projects fail and backfire, and the church regrets what it has done.

for it is here that we are saying very significant ly different things. you see God very intimately involved in political and social movements. even to the extent of controlling or determining elections like bush jr and gore. i dont criticize such a position per se, i just think it drawing the line between the faith and the dominant culture, much to close for my comfort.

i see both sides of most issues. i see Christians on both sides using their beliefs about God and faith and the Scriptures in similiar ways. but coming to radically different conclusions. i would only have to point to abortion and creation evolution to demonstrate this point.

i am interested in why the differing conclusions. what makes a common consensus on a great deal of thinking lead some to one end and others equally committed to the other end of the spectrum?

i personally am very saddened at the events subsequent to the presidental election and how they interact with a extremely conservative view in the White House. i am not conservative, i dont personally believe that God desires any particular person in the White HOuse in His declarative willing, as you apparently do.

but i am interested in your viewpoint and thanks for sharing it with all of us. i learned a lot from it. a book on the topic that i found extraordinarily important was _naked public square_ he very much continues the discussion over at first things

as to the constantinian synthesis, there is a long and productive history of the church interacting with it. i mentioned _reformers and their stepchildren_ there is another _radical reformation_ by williams. likewise tremendous info available on the web with search for "constantine synthesis". i think i understand your viewpoint, i just dont agree with it.

i am just concerned with intertwining the faith with big things like democracy, freedom, Americanism so that we would tend to interpret history in some grand spenserian pattern. where we see freedom as this great IDEA that runs through, and gives meaning to history. so that anything helping this idea is good, and anything hindering it is bad. i see things much more dialectic matter, where ideas of different kinds of freedom and its antithesis slavery or domination,
merge and twine and fight to become separated.

I will try to analyze the lines of reasoning and thought in your message, rather than reply to specific paragraphs.

first, constantinian synthesis:(i got 264 hits on yahoo, most judaic and anabaptist, with a few college class syllabus)
outline of hauerwas _resident aliens_ mennonite analysis

you're going to find the terms used by anyone from an anabaptist position or influenced as i am from their history. i referred to two books influential on me earlier. its a common term in historical analysis.

second, your view of church state relations, or believer-government relations stems from a particular hermeneutic where analysis from the OT nation state of Israel is carried over relatively intact to be applied to the Church in the NT.

the problem is one-the church is spiritual not temporal. the state and church are separate spheres and how they interact is a topic in historical theology. the view where the state is dominate over church is erastian but they both cooperate in ultimate purposes. is in where the church supplies clergy for the military as you so well document, is an example.
That is a second problem, where the constantian synthesis is continued as you explain and the church prays for the state to be victorious over its enemies. As far as i am aware, the only major denominations in the US that are as Erastian as you write are: LDS and right wing Lutheran as Missouri synod, but please forgive my ignorance, as it has been nearly 20 years since i did any real reading on this topic. Most of the reformed churches modified their standards, like the Westminster confession, in the early 1800's as a result of the American experience in cultural and political pluralism.
free church article on church govt.

My own view is far closer to the historic peace churches than reformed, i reluctantly confess. I believe the NT teaches us that we are strangers in the land, refugees from heaven, without citizenship in this world. Our faith is transnational, i have more in common with the brethren in china than i do with another american who does not believe the faith. I see a Patton like attachment of the faith to govt, as you well describe, awkward at best, for many of those germans who died were lutherans.

i believe that the cultural captivity of the faith to particulars of the american experience is at best unfortunate, and at worse a great compromise of the faith.

the issues as a Christian center around Romans 12 and the doctrine of a just state. something that the Church has obviously not settled yet.

and sincere thanks for your most interesting message.

richard williams

---------------------------------------
at this point i dont plan to participate anymore in the discussion since it is off topic for my thinking. i want to concentrate on the CED debate.

2003-03-03T07:16:00.000-08:00

i dont know what happened to get an empty header posted just now.

When i joined this group i was surprised and rather pleased when after
searching Stephen's website to find that he had gone back to school in
his fifties in order to get a degree in biology, as a direct result of
his discussions on the net with respect to CED.

why? first, i know from experience how hard it is, and what
committment it takes to got to university as an older nontraditional
student. so i sympathize.

but more importantly it shows a desire, a committment to the
discussion that most people don't have, and from the response to his
message about qualifications dont understand.

my graduate advisor in seminary was an extraordinary man. his reading
was simply huge. on his own, not sermon related, he read at least 25
books per week. then there was another 5 directly for the sermon. then
he had two grad students studying directly with him. my reading list
for the year i worked with him was never less than 10 books per week.
to be read and discussed every thurs morning. the other grad student
was thurs afternoon. we all 3 ate lunch together.

so he was reading at least 50 books per week. now his favorite quote
about this topic was "everyone has a right to their opinion but no one
has a right to demand that i take their opinion seriously unless they
have done their homework"

now i contend that is what Stephen has demonstrated to the whole world
by going back to school.
that is what he is saying when he asks for qualifications to back up
personal views.

but that goes against the 'democratic' impulses of our society. we
seem to have this radial equalitarism that relativizes all people to
broadly the same level. one vote one person type of mentality.

this doesnt work in the sciences, probably doesnt work anywhere else
except to support a political myth, but that is another discussion.
doing your homework is SIGNIFICANT. that i simply why i prefer most
atheistic evolutionist over lots of creationist junk. they have done
there homework. the creationist have not.

if you want me, and by example i believe Stephen would support this,
to take your opinions seriously then demonstrate that you have done
your homework. now it is true, that in many ways a posting to an
internet group like this is self-authenticating. in that the ideas
themselves are their best support. but i am sure everyone operates on
the same idea that i have, i look at names, some people have done
their homework and as a result i give those people more authority to
demand that i take their opinions seriously.

so once again, the burden of a relationship of this message to the
overall discussion of CED?

how to judge the quality of a piece of writing in the field? the
authors academic qualifications are a legitmate question for the
reader to inquire to, and to expect an answer for. to avoid an answer
is to require your audience to assume a negative answer.

richard williams
who has a ba in biochem from ucsd.
1 year towards a mar from westminster seminary
and finished most of the requirements for ba in computer sci,
electrical engineering and philosophy from univ of arizona.

2003-03-01T15:20:00.000-08:00

trying to capture a long quote......again i did NOT write this

original message required as per copying instruction on CED groups.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My sig line for this topic...
The Personal Savior.
"I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ." If
you are an Evangelical Christian you can remember
saying these words probably more times than you can
count. If on the other hand you are not "Born Again,"
you may have heard this phrase from an Evangelical
inviting you to establish such a relationship with
Christ. You may have had to ask just what the
Evangelical Christian meant -- how is it possible to
have a "personal relationship" with an individual of
the past? Even if Jesus actually rose from the dead
and is alive today, how can one "relate" to him as to
another flesh-and-blood person? I first heard this
question broached in a fascinating work by Richard
Coleman (Issues of Theological Warfare: Evangelicals
and Liberals). Even as a convinced Evangelical of
several years' standing, I could not help but admit
this was a good question. Yet I have seldom either
heard or read a discussion of it. In this chapter I
want to explore what Evangelicals seem to mean, and to
think they mean, when they claim to have a "personal
relationship with Jesus Christ." Hopefully such an
analysis can serve to clarify the use of Evangelical
religious language on a major subject.

When asked what his "personal relationship"
terminology refers to, an Evangelical will often press
for an almost literal application. If Jesus is alive
today, why should one not be able to know him
personally? Much Evangelical rhetoric suggests literal
interaction between individuals. A beloved hymn
describes how "he walks with me, and he talks with me,
and he tells me I am his own," etc. A common
evangelistic slogan defines Christianity as "not a
religion; it's a relationship." A couple of problems
immediately become apparent, at least to an outsider.

Everyday relationships between individuals depend upon
conversational interaction available by sense
impression. Conversations may be carried on at long
distances and with time intervals (say, by letter or
telephone), but there must be such interaction. Is
Jesus available in this way? Obviously not. When a
Born Again Christian claims that "I speak to him in
prayer; he speaks to me through the words of the
Bible," this is really metaphorical and does not
satisfy the requirement.

A second difficulty is the individualized, concrete
picture of Jesus implied in such a claim to have a
personal relationship with him. If the risen Jesus is
still another individual analogous to ourselves (and
this is dubious on the basis of New Testament texts
such as 1 Corinthians 15:45), we find ourselves asking
absurd questions like, has Jesus gotten older and
wiser in the two thousand years since the Incarnation.
Or, how does he listen to all those prayers at the
same time?

Richard Coleman at least sees the first problem here.
A personal relationship with Jesus is different
insofar as we will never have the opportunity to know
him in his earthly existence. The relationship must
therefore be formed on what we can learn about Jesus
secondhand rather than by a firsthand experience; but
this is no different from forming a personal
relationship with somebody by correspondence. [1]
Though Coleman does sense the difficulty, his solution
is wholly inadequate. As we have suggested,
correspondence is in fact firsthand experience of
another in that he is communicating specifically and
intentionally with you. Coleman's suggestion would
also imply the possibility of "personal relationships"
with Julius Caesar by reading the Gallic Wars, or with
Abraham Lincoln by reading Sandburg's biography of
him. My point is not that Coleman has not said
anything significant. It is merely to point out that
he has failed to justify the use of "personal
relationship" language for the kind of religious
experience he means to describe, i.e., an "encounter"
with the Jesus of the gospels.

Let me dwell a moment upon the real religious value in
Coleman's argument. His idea is very similar to that
of nineteenth century theologian Wilhelm Herrmann, one
of Karl Barth's mentors. Herrmann contended that
Christians experience that power and love of God only
in the New Testament's portrayal of the "inner life"
of Jesus. As we are transfixed by the pictures of the
personality there revealed, we are flooded by the
grace of God. According to Herrmann, "the communion of
the Christian with God" is mediated by our loving
apprehension of the portrait of Jesus in the gospels.
However, Herrmann vigorously denies that this devotion
is tantamount to a "personal relationship with...
Christ" [2] which pietists claimed to have. This
latter, he says, is an illusion. The apprehension of a
portrait of someone's "inner life" is not a
relationship with that person himself. Coleman's
argument really amounts to Herrmann's view that the
New Testament picture of Jesus is essential to
Christian devotion. This would certainly be a valid
point worth making, but since there is no
"interpersonal give-and-take, "personal relationship"
language is not appropriate, as Coleman tries to
argue.

What else might an Evangelical refer to as a "personal
relationship with Christ?" A second option might be
that he knows Christ as a spiritual being with whom he
is in psychic communication. Several UFO cultists and
New Age channelers have claimed that Jesus literally
communicates with them via internally "heard" voices.
But Born Again Christians do not seem to want to make
Jesus into a disembodied "spirit guide" or "space
brother". An analogous phenomenon that is accepted
among them concerns occasional visions of Jesus. These
are granted to certain individuals, usually
Pentecostals. In these appearances, Jesus actually
speaks to the individual, giving a particular
direction or word of comfort. Again, we may gladly
recognize the spiritual value of such occurrences, but
this kind of thing is not likely to be what
Evangelicals refer to with their "personal
relationship" language. They themselves recognize such
expereiences to be rather extraordinary, different
from that "relationship" enjoyed daily by all
believers.

Perhaps the Evangelical means that he experiences the
reassuring presence of a divine providence in his
life. This is obviously true; there is no question but
that Evangelicals expereience this. But again we have
to ask if "personal relationship" terminology is
appropriate for this. One may pray to such a divine
presence, and one may even interpret general feelings
of comfort and reassurance as a response to one's
prayers. But is this really the kind of give-and-take
interaction between individuals implied in a "personal
relationship"? Along the same lines, it must be asked
why such a spiritual presence is to be characerized as
"Jesus Christ"? Do not all religious people of
whatever persuasion claim to experience such a divine
presence guiding and comforting them? Obviously in
principle there cannot be much continuity between the
historical figure we know as "Jesus Christ" on the one
hand, and such a rather amorphous benevolent
"presence" on the other. One may reply, "Yes, but it
is through faith in Jesus Christ that I experience
this 'benevolent presence.'" Once again we have an
altogether valid, and valuable, point here. But it
could more accurately be communicated with a phrase
like "I know God through Jesus Christ." This phrase,
unlike the phrase, "I have a personal relationship
with Christ," has a solid exegetical foundation in the
New Testament. And like the latter, the former is
already a venerable part of Evangelical vocabulary.

A final inadequate meaning of the Evangelical claim we
are discussing amounts to what I call the "figment of
faith." I do not think I am in error when I suggest
that many Born Again Christians, in effect, mentally
imagine a picture of Jesus listening to them. They
pray to this imagined figure and even think themselves
to receive some kind of answer or guidance from it.
This phenomenon is perhaps most analogous to that of a
child's "imaginary playmate" with whom he pretends to
frolic when there are no flesh-and-blood playmates
about. [3] I suggest this based upon my own
observation during twelve years in the Evangelical
movement, but I also find other writers referring to
it. Herrmann comments:

It is of course not difficult for an imaginative
person so to conjure up the Person opf Christ before
himself that the picture shall take a kind of sensuous
distinctness.... Someone thinks he sees Jesus Himself,
and consequently begins to commune with Him. But what
such a person communes with in this fashion is not
Christ Himself, but a picture that the man's own
imagination has put together. [4]

C. S. Lewis describes a similar state of affairs in
The Screwtape Letters. "Screwtape" describes a
Christian at prayer:

If you examine the object to which he is attending,
you will find that it is a composite object containing
many... ingredients. There will be [e.g.] images
derived from pictures of [Christ] as He appeared
during... the Incarnation.... I have known cases where
what the [person] called his "God" was actually
located... inside his own head.... [Such a Christian
will be] praying to it-- to the thing that he has
made, not to the Person who has made him. [5]
I do not want to deny the religious value of even such
a devotional "figment of faith" if one is able to
avoid making an idol of it as Herrmann and Lewis warn
against. A la Paul Tillich, such an imaginary figure
might truly function as a transparent "symbol" through
which the worshipper encounters the Holy itself. But
once such a figment is recognized for what it is, a
better alternative might be sought.

Do I have any such alternatives to offer? Let me
suggest two. The first is suggested by the insightful
analysis of theologian Don Cupitt. [6] The reader has
probably heard the familiar distinction made by
Evangelicals between "knowing" and (merely) "knowing
about." The idea is that the impersonal, abstract, and
secondhand knowledge about someone is vastly inferior
to personal knowledge of that individual. This is no
doubt true in the realm of knowable individuals like
ourselves. But we have just seen how difficult it is
to place a "relationship" with Christ in this realm.
Cupitt suggests that a slightly different distinction
be drawn. There is a personal kind of "knowing about"
that is superior to an impersonal kind of "knowing
about." For instance, one may know about love
theoretically, say from movies or psychology books,
but it is quite a different thing to know about love
from being in love yourself. Note however that even in
the latter case one is not "acquainted" with "love" as
if it were a "Thou" in its own right. One "knows love"
in that he knows about it from experience.

In the same way one could meaningfully claim that he
"knows Jesus Christ" without claiming personal
acquaintance with him. One could "know" him in that
one truly discerns and grows in the presence of his
Spirit as encountered in his Word or his Body, the
Church. The difference is obvious between this, and a
trivial "knowing about" Christ in that one merely
knows, e.g., that he lived two thousand years ago.

Though Cupitt's redefinition salvages the term
"knowing Christ," it does not deal directly with our
phrase "having a personal relationship with Christ."
Here our second alternative can help. I want to call
attention to what I believe was the original
connotation of this phrase. Keep in mind the
revivalistic context of its origin. Revivalists felt
that the churches were full of "nominal Christians" to
whom commitment to Christ was a rather abstract
proposition. It was a mere religious inheritence from
one's culture. "Faith" in Christ was impersonal and
cold. In this context, revivalists pressed home
questions like "You may intellectually believe Christ
is the Savior, but do you take him as your personal
Savior?" Was one's relationship to Christ merely one
of social convention, or was it a personal
relationship? In short, the issue was not whether you
related to Christ as an individual person, but whether
you took your commitment to Christ as a matter of
personal (i.e., existential) concern. The "personal"
is focused on my side of the relationship, not
Christ's.

I am not ignoring the fact that this element is still
very much present in Evangelical rhetoric. In fact, I
am happy to be able to recognize this. I merely
suggest that greater clarity would result if "personal
relationship" language could be restricted to meaning
"personal commitment." The phrase itself need not be
discarded, as long as in using it Evangelicals are
careful to avoid the conceptually confusing dead ends
reviewed earlier. The cause of evangelism could not
but be helped.

Before concluding this chapter I would like to examine
a little more closely what is supposed to be going on
in a pietist or devotional "relationship with Christ."
Just how is a relationship with Christ a life-changing
thing? I am going to take a brief dip into into the
area of Evangelical spirituality, specifically, the
"deeper life." Incidentally, in view of my earlier
observations, I think it will be interesting to note
just how little the following devotional dynamics seem
to depend on one's being able to relate to Jesus
Christ as an individual person. Though, e.g., Miles J.
Stanford calls it an "intimate fellowship"[7] I
suggest that the devotional process about to be
described is pretty much a solo performance even as
described in its own terms.

According to many devotional writers and speakers
(e.g., Andrew Murry, Abide in Christ), the secret of
the "victorious Christian life" is "abiding in Christ"
(cf. John, chapter 15). The idea is that no one can
live the Christian life except Christ himself. But
since Christ is supposed to dwell in Christians, the
believer can "let go, and let God." i.e., let him
produce spirituality through the believer. As Watchman
Nee says, God "has given only one gift to meet all our
needs: his Son Christ Jesus. As I look to him to live
out his life in me, he will be humble and patient and
loving and everything else I need-- in my stead."[8]
Stanford says it in a slightly different way, giving
us an important clue about the how of it: "It is now a
matter of walking by faith and receiving,
appropriating, from the everlasting source within."
[9] "Appropriating" says it all. The idea is that in
his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus Christ has won
a "once-for-all" victory over sin. By personally
"appropriating" that redemption, a person becomes a
regenerate, justified child of God. As such he has
access to "the unsearchable riches of Christ," a sort
of ethical and spiritual treasure-trove, imagined in
almost pictorial terms as being stored in "the
heavenlies." This last is an archetypal realm where in
Platonic fashion the ideal spiritual realities,
including Christ himself, dwell. This picture
accurately reflects the double-tiered apocalyptic
worldview of the New Testament, as described by New
Testament scholar Johannes Weiss:

...there existed a twofold world, and thus also a
twofold occurence of events. The world of history is
only the lower floor of the world's structure. The
world of angels and spirits is erected above that....
Moreover, what happens on earth has its exact parallel
in heaven. All history is only the consequence,
effect, or parallel copy of heavenly events.... But
while those realities have transpired in the realm
between heaven and earth, they must now be fought out
on earth. [10] Thus, upstairs "in the heavenlies" God
already sees Christians as perfect; on the earthly,
lower plane, believers must "catch up" by
appropriating these "riches of Christ," a divine
potentiality for spiritual growth. This is the
distinction between "positional" and "experiential
truth" mentioned briefly in Chapter 3. It is this
heavenly "positional truth" which is "appropriated" as
you become experientially what you already are "in
Christ". Here, too, I suggest that this picture is
pretty accurate to the Pauline strand of New Testament
thought. Bultmann agrees that according to Paul, "The
way the believer becomes what he already is
consists... in the constant appropriation of grace by
faith."[11]

In his "quiet time" of devotional Bible reading,
meditation, and prayer, the Evangelical thinks deeply
about all this. He may concentrate steadily on a
particular virtue, say patience, and reflect on how
"in Christ" it is his for the asking. He may "strive
for the victory" or "rest in the victory," depending
on the preferred idiom. And after a while, presumably,
his life begins to manifest more patience.
Psychologically speaking, how should we understand the
process?

We find a surprising parallel to this kind of
"devotional victory" in a shamanistic litany analyzed
by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss in his essay
"The Effectiveness of Symbols."[12] The incantation is
used to facilitate troublesome births. Without ever
touching or medicating the afflcited woman, the shaman
summons all sorts of potent spirit-entities to battle
the woman's illness (also personified as a spirit).
The woman hears what is in effect a blow-by-blow
account of the mythological contest. At the end of the
ritual, the shaman announces the the afflicting spirit
has been vanquished. The woman, relieved at last,
gives birth! How did it work? Levi-Strauss suggests
that while the woman's worldview and culture allow her
no understanding of the actual medical-psychosomatic
causes of her illness, the mythical beings of the
incantation give her, as it were, a handle on her
condition. Once she is given a personalized,
objectified schema to interpret the otherwise
mystifying condition, she is psychologically able to
deal with it effectively.

I think that functionally speaking, pretty much the
same process is at work in the struggles of the
Evangelical pietist. From experience he knows only
defeat in his attempts to be more virtuous (in our
example, to be patient). How can he hope to control
his unpredictable emotions? "For that which I do, I
understand not" (Romans 7:15). The belief in Christ as
a champion over sins, presiding over a supramundane
"treasury of merit" provides an interpretive schema
with which finally to "get the victory." The pietist
envisions Christ on the cross defeating the sin, e.g.,
of impatience. By "appropriating" this victory for
himself, the pietist at last has a handle on his
condition. "He's shared with me / His victory / He won
in days of old" (Keith Green). The cosmic drama
enacted thus in his imagination functions pretty much
the same way as the shaman's litany of spirit-warfare.
Eventually, patiences evidences itself.

All this begins to answer the question of how
Evangelicals can say things like "I experience the
power of Christ's cross." Short of experiencing the
stigmata, what can this mean? Wouldn't the Evangelical
pietist in our example only be able to say that he has
experienced patience? But his devotional meditation on
the riches of Christ has led him so closely to
associate "patience" with "the cross," that
experiencing the first seems to him tantamount to
having experienced the second. While he yearned
repeatedly for patience he was vividly picturing the
crucified Christ and his "spiritual riches." As the
first "sank in," so did the second. Watchman Nee
illustrates this process when he discusses "the facts
of the Cross." He says that "Faith can 'substantiate'
them and make them real in our experience."[13] In the
same way, of course, experience is taken to be proof
of various religious belief-systems in the context of
which it occurs.

I suppose that the above analysis does not really
reflect on the ultimate truth of the positional
truth-appropriation schema, except that the analysis
indicates that it is all explainable without recourse
to divine intervention. That is, I think that most
Evangelicals believe that "sanctification" results
from the supernatural infusion of the Holy Spirit,
whereas I have suggested that the process is quite
explainable in natural terms. But perhaps it would not
be a bad thing merely to posit that God uses
"secondary causes" in the sanctification process. We
find a similar situation in Bill Gothard's teaching
about scriptural meditation. Citing Joshua 1:8 ("This
book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but
thou shalt meditate therein day and night... for...
then thou shalt have good success."), Gothard promotes
meditation on the Bible practically as a good luck
charm. God wants people to meditate on his word and
rewards them if they do. This seems to be the only
connection between the action and the result. But
later in the seminar Gothard seems to feel uneasy with
this and supplies quite a different link, an intrinsic
one, between the two: the reason meditation brings
success is that biblical principles contain
down-to-earth common sense about how to succeed in
life, and the more one familiarizes himself with these
principles the more astute and successful he will
become. Suddenly there is no need for special divine
intervention in human fortunes. Yet Gothard and his
fans seem satisfied with this. And perhaps they should
be! I only use this example to illustrate how
"spiritual growth in Christ" need not presuppose a
framework of supernatural power as pietist rhetoric
often suggests.

Now that I have reached the end of this section on
Born Again Christian experience, let me suggest how it
might prepare the reader for what is to follow. Back
in the introductory section, "Testimony Time," I
proposed that Evangelical apologetics and theology
(the subjects of the next two sections) seemed to
function as bodyguards for pietism. If my analyses
have been at all cogent, the reader may not be sure
that the much-vaunted Evangelical pietism can really
bear the weight of the claims made for it. Can this
really be the only answer for modern man's existential
dilemmas? Is it so compellingly superior to other ways
of understanding and coping with life? I think these
questions might make the reader willing to take a
second look at the apologetics and theology predicated
on this piety.

Now, I am quite aware that the truth question is not
so easily answered. Even if the experiential results
were not satisfying, Evangelical doctrine might still
be true. (In fact something like this is surely
envisioned in exhortations to bear one's cross for
Christ.) However, I suspect that in fact many
Evangelicals do not separate the truth question from
the pragmatic one. Though theoretically they might
hold their doctrinal views on their own merits, my
guess is that they were first pietists, and only
became interested in apologetics and theology as means
of propagating and defending that pietism. The egg
came before the chicken. And if the preceding chapters
have made such a reader a bit less unwilling or afraid
to rethink his religious experience, may I invite him
to feel free to rethink his apologetics and theology
as well. [from Beyond Born Again, by Robert M. Price]

__________________________________________________

2003-03-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

i am looking for more scientific forums. trying one at:
sci forum

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[QUOTE]I would like to propose that the problem is therefore entirely psychological and not theological. There are no scientific problems with the theory of evolution by means of natural selection and the scientific community is quite at ease with it. There is, however, a great unwillingness to accept this theory in society. Humans are so egocentric that they will not accept that they are just part of life, instead of the crown of life. Hence, the pope states that humans might be the product of evolution, but god added souls. Hardline creationists cannot even accept this and are even more threatened by the fear of being just a simple branch in the bush of life.[/QUOTE]

i've actually thought about this issue, in reference to the YEC creationist however. I think of it as the slippery slope to unbelief argument. they hold strongly to, what to us is unreasonable, unthinking positions, simply because to do otherwise is to fall down the slippery slope to unbelief.

i'm actually trying to do the studies in a bottom up manner. at this point i am really hesitant about getting too deeply thinking about the conclusions or logic of holding to a particular viewpoint, without having investigated the groundwork items carefully.

so i'd like to go back to genes and homology.

assume for a moment that God is directing evolution in a significant manner.
for sake of proposed mechanism, say He is at some level a breeder of creatures, bringing the right ones together at the right time. Very analogously to the Bene Gesserit breeding program in Dune, but on a massive scale with all living things.

from our viewpoint could we see it? too much of live is random, who meets whom, why we fall in love, how many children etc. etc. if God is doing something like this could we detect it in a signficant matter?

what i am thinking about is that the traditional providence arguments for God are sufficent to propose this kind of lowlevel involvement of God. furthermore i dont believe we have an way to detect it, with the naturalist tools available to us.

the only argument for it is that it violates the principle of simplicity. that is occam's razor, dont propose God's involvement unless absolutely necessary.

so we need to look at if randomness is sufficent for the explanation of man's consciousness. i'd look at the idea of a video tape of the entire process of evolution, the contention is that if evolution's tape was replayed it would be entirely different. that is due to the randomness factor things would arise differently the second time.

now if God intends a self conscious moral being to arise , and involves Himself to this end. the tape would create something like us again. but since replaying the tape is not possible (although i wonder if intelligent life on other planets would qualify?) this seems to be simply a thought experiment.

richard williams

2003-02-28T21:16:00.000-08:00

from CED message on the myth of the destruction of the library of alexandria by christians

----NOTE THIS IS NOT MY WRITING---------------------

Date: Sat Jun 29, 2002 10:27 am
Subject: The myth of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria by Christians

ADVERTISEMENT

Group,

I would like to address a common myth that does the rounds again and again
on the circuit of atheist, free thinker, internet infidel and anti-Christian
sites. It also appears on many anti-ID/creationist sites and boards.This
concerns the story that mobs of Christians destroyed the Great Library of
Alexandria burning all the books in the process and brutally murdering the
pagan mathematician, Hypatia. This tall story is periodically dragged out,
dusted off and paraded around to confirm how beastly and barbaric the early
Christians were and to confirm the smug prejudices of those who wish to tar
and feather Christians and creationists today.

I apologise in advance for the number of quotes but I believe these, and the
links given, are necessary to establish the truth of the matter.

Here is the legendary story:

"Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, is also the patron saint of arsonists.
As Christianity slowly strangled the life out of classical culture in the
forth century it became more and more difficult to be a pagan. There stood
in Alexandria the great temple of Serapis called the Serapeum and attached
to it was the Great Library of Alexandria where all the wisdom of the
ancients was preserved. Now Theophilus knew that as long as this knowledge
existed people would be less inclined to believe the bible so he set about
destroying the pagan temples. But the Serapeum was a huge structure, high on
a mound and beyond the abilities of the raging Christian fanatics to
assault. Faced with this edifice, the Patriarch sent word to Rome. There the
Emperor Theodosius the Great, who had ordered that paganism be annihilated,
gave his permission for the destruction of the Serapeum. Realising they had
no chance, the priests and priestesses fled their temple and the mob moved
in. The vast structure was razed to it foundations and the scrolls from the
library were burnt in huge pyres in the streets of Alexandria."
http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm

What follows are a selection of typical quotes from the hundreds of websites
sites that perpetuate this propaganda myth. I am sorry for the mind-numbing
repetition of fiction, falsehoods and half truths (as will be demonstrated)
but this is par for the course for the cavalier disregard for historical
facts on many of these sites:

"In 391 Christians burned down one of the world's greatest libraries in
Alexandria, believed to have housed over 700,000 scrolls. All of the books
of the Gnostic Basilides, Porphyry's 36 volumes, papyrus rolls of 27 schools
of the Mysteries, and 270,000 ancient documents gathered by Ptolemy
Philadelphyus were turned to ash."
The secular humanist site:
http://my.ohio.voyager.net/~dionisio/controversies/essay-science.html

"Perhaps the greatest single intellectual loss of the classical world was
the destruction of the library of Alexandria. At one time, it was reputed to
house about 700,000 books on subjects ranging from literature and history to
science and philosophy. In the year 391, the bishop of Alexandria,
Theophilus (d.412), in his quest to destroy paganism, lead a group of crazed
monks and laymen, destroyed all the books in the great library."
a skeptic's guide to Christianity
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/bookburn.html

"It was nascent Christianity that destroyed the academic knowledge of
pagans, who were the first educative force in Europe. After burning the
Library of Alexandria, destroying the majority of writings and books by
pagan scholars, (hiding a few away in church vaults), they exterminated
anyone who was pagan; exemplified in the brutal murder of Hypatia. They
plunged the world into a thousand years of darkness, the only knowledge
remaining retained and hidden by the church. Only by the steadfastness of
courageous scientists such as Galileo was the church forced to withdraw its
influence over the lives of the people. Each step forward was fiercely
opposed by the church. The church fathers recognized clearly that learning
and wisdom, truth in the classic meaning, were, as they still are, the
eternal adversaries of faith and dogma."
From the site IN REASON WE TRUST: REASON RULES AMERICA
http://www.aztriad.com/jesus.html

"In 415 AD, a young female librarian, Hypatia of Alexandria, Egypt
mathematically proved not only that the Earth was round, but that it
revolved around the Sun (contrary to Christian belief). She was innocent
and ignorant of propaganda that unjustly placed her as the protagonist of
deadly conflicts between Christians and Jews and was slaughtered by a
Christian mob. As a pagan, Hypatia was completely unrelated to the holy war
between the followers of the same God. The Library of Alexandria was
subsequently burned to the ground to destroy all documents supporting the
heresy of an Earth that was not at the center of the universe. A Christian
tradition that is (sadly) still in practice today. This one act began the
Dark ages. A millennium in which any text that did not praise God was
forbidden and experimentation with any science might be punishable by
death."
from The Evolution of Genesis :An introduction to the origins of the
Creation myth site
http://evolutionofgenesis.homestead.com/evil.html

"Probably one of the most unforgivable acts of the early Christians was the
killing of Hypatia in March of 415 a. d., which was soon followed by the
departure from Alexandria of most of the scholars who were associated with
the great library. Not long after that, the library itself was destroyed,
including the burning of all of the remaining books which the departing
scholars had not taken with them. What we know today of the great library
comes from the few books removed by the departing scholars, along with
letters from the scholars which were preserved in other places. This sparse
record gives us so many tantalizing clues as to the contents of the great
library... But unless someone discovers how to construct a time machine, all
of this is lost to us forever, thanks be to the local Christian patriarch,
St. Cyril, and his followers, who set out to burn the pagan books which they
believed Christians had no use for."
From the "Agnostic Church" homepage http://www.agnostic.org/BIBLEH.htm

"They're not just coming, they've been around since tribal legends, the fall
of The Great Library of Alexandria, witch hunts in Europe and in Salem, and
they're here today still; people like Ham have a long and bloody history
behind them already of which they claim to be proud. Biblical literalists
like Ham and company are what inspire the Taliban to be so certain their
martyrs will be serviced in heaven by 72 virgins for eternity."
"The Archon, a place where we apply logic and reason before superstition and
pseudoscience. No brain, no gain!"
http://www.the-archon.com/Essays/museum.htm

"And then there are other matters, like the mad monks led by Saint Cyril,
the patron saint of arsonists, who burned the Great Library at Alexandria,
destroying 600,000 volumes of knowledge of the ancient world--the greatest
property crime of all time."
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2000/murphy1.html

"The destruction of the great ancient Egyptian Library of Alexandria under
the reign of Ptolemy with its estimated millions of books and manuscripts
was a horrendous crime against all civilization. The burning and looting was
organised by monk-led mobs of Christians in the year AD 389. The foremost
librarian and scientist, Hypatia was dragged out of the library, stripped
and torn apart by the Christian mobs armed with jagged seashells."
from The Canadian Atheist, Issue 1 Winter 1994/95
http://home.istar.ca/~tcas/canat1.html

"When the great library at Alexandria was ransacked by Christian fanatics in
387... an inestimable wealth of gnostic literature must have been destroyed.
Until the nineteenth century the main source of knowledge of Gnosticism was,
ironically, in the writings of the Church Fathers, who in their refutations
summarised gnostic texts and often quoted at length from them."
Stuart Holroyd, The Elements of Gnosticism, p.22, 1994
http://members.tripod.com/~gnostica/

"The evolution/creation conflict is not a battle between to two equal
theories, it is a battle between truth and deceit. Creationists like to say
that evolution is 'just a theory', well creationism is just a primitive
superstition. In 415 AD the Alexandria Library was burned to the ground and
the scientist who ran it was beaten to death by catholic monks, because they
considered scientific work heretical. The damage done to science and
enlightenment by this primitive act is incalculable."
from the RAGE AGAINST THEISM webpage
http://home.mweb.co.za/it/iti04330/atheist1.htm

Again, I invite readers to do their own Google search of the Web and
confirm just how common this story is, and the sort of sites on which it
appears and the miasma of contradictions contained therein.

The problem with this story is it a total fabrication, a piece of fiction
masquerading as historical fact designed and perpetuated solely as
propaganda against Christians. It is not my intention to reinvent the wheel
by detailing a point by point rebuttal; this has already been done in
several thorough and scholarly examinations of this story available on the
Net. I wish merely to point out where this topic can be investigated more
fully for those who wish to uncover the truth. I shall merely present a
summary of the historical facts from a number of sources:

1.The Mysterious Fate of the Great Library of Alexandria
http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm an article based on the existing primary
sources:

"An awful lot of ink has been splashed around about the destruction of the
Great Library. You can blame Christians, Moslems or Julius Caesar depending
on taste. But the only way to find the truth is a careful examination of the
original sources. This essay goes over them with a fine-toothed comb and
finds that while Christians and Moslems were almost certainly innocent, the
Romans just might have a lot to answer for."

"Burning down libraries
The idea of deliberating setting fire to a repository of knowledge appals us
in a way that few other crimes can do. As demonstrated by the astronomical
sums paid at auction, we value art far more than human life. Tens of
thousands of Afghans could die in war without anyone in the West caring very
much but, as the BBC reported, when the Taleban demolish a couple of ancient
statues, there is world wide horror and condemnation.

This attitude has meant that the false accusation that Edward Gibbon laid at
the door of the Patriarch Theophilus in chapter 28 of his Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire regarding the Great Library of Alexandria has been
tremendously damaging to Christianity and is repeated by every author with a
bone to pick. But although we can establish that this library was not
destroyed by a Christian mob, were there not other ancient libraries that
did suffer exactly that fate? The saying that there is no smoke without fire
would seem to be exceedingly appropriate in this case. I do not for a second
claim to have analysed every ancient source but I have read a good deal and
have only located one example of deliberate destruction of an entire library
recorded by the chroniclers.

The chronicler in question is John of Antioch about whom we know almost
nothing. He was a Greek speaking Christian historian who may have lived
between the sixth and tenth centuries. All his works are lost and only
fragments of his chronicle remain preserved in other places. Among them is
the following passage from the great Byzantine encyclopaedia called the Suda
in the article on the Emperor Jovian:

Emperor Hadrian had built a beautiful temple for the worship of his father
Trajan which, on the orders of Emperor Julian, the eunuch Theophilus had
made into a library. Jovian, at the urging of his wife, burned the temple
with all the books in it with his concubines laughing and setting the fire.

Scholars believe that it is John of Antioch is being quoted. The Suda itself
is full of snippets of information but it is treated with justifiable
caution by the scholars who have studied it. Certainly, it is very often
wrong but usually not deliberately. Instead it just quotes earlier authors
uncritically and repeats their mistakes...

The pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus was actually with Jovian in Antioch
and does not breath a word about any libraries... Although Jovian was a
Christian he is recorded by the rhetor Themistius to have insisted on
tolerance towards pagans. The great pagan orator Libanius who lived in
Antioch at the time and from whom we have speeches, lectures and no less
than 1,500 letters, makes no mention of the library's destruction. We have
no other record of there being a temple of Trajan built by Hadrian in
Antioch.

John was writing several hundred years after the library burning is supposed
to have taken place but no one else mentions it.... All the counter
arguments depend on silence which demonstrates just how hard it is to prove
a negative... If we knew that burning down libraries was the sort of thing
that Jovian or other Christians actually did, we might have a case for
believing it happened here but as it is a single example it cannot be
allowed to simply reinforce our prejudices. Still, this remains the only
possible record of a library being deliberately destroyed that I have been
able to find in the sources and those who with an anti-Christian axe to
grind should use this case rather than Alexandria. Furthermore, it does
illustrate that Christian writers were happy to report such things and
repeat them from other sources. Contrary to the allegations of many
sceptics, the Christian scribes made no effort to censor this alleged
misdeed of Jovian even though he was a Christian emperor."
http://www.bede.org.uk/literature.htm#biblio

2. ...Did the Christians burn/destroy all the classical literature?
by Glenn Miller http://www.christian-thinktank.com This extensive and
voluminously referenced work is summarised here:

a)"The pre-Constantine church did NOT do 'burnings' or destruction of
classical works and/or libraries.

b)The early church leaders widely and favorably used classical works in
their writings, maintained them in their personal libraries, and made
attempts to preserve them.

c)The pre-Constantine church was the victim of a thorough-going Christian
book burning campaign by the Roman Emperors.

d)A few post-Constantine Christian Emperors 'traded' censorship initiatives
with a few Non-Christian Roman Emperors, but the overall effect on classical
texts were minimal.

e)The post-Constantine church was NOT responsible for the burning of the
famous main library at Alexandria.

f)The destruction of the classical works and libraries of the ancient world
was the result of accidental fires, neglect, the barbarian invasions,
de-urbanization, and the destruction of the educational system/public
records systems by those invasions.

g)The Western institutional church--although considerably uneven in its
estimates of the value of various classical authors--nevertheless had a
number of individuals and institutions that almost single-handedly preserved
the classical works that we enjoy today.

h)The Eastern institutional church preserved the major mass of Greek mss.
that was used to 'fuel' the Renaissance in Western Europe.

i)The vast majority of the censorship/book burnings of the later church were
insubstantial--either symbolic directed at non-classical works."

Miller's work is profusely annotated and repays close inspection.

Miller addresses the popular statements of Ellerbe:
"... Christians burned down one of the world's greatest libraries in
Alexandria, said to have housed 700,000 rolls. All the books of the Gnostic
Basilides, Porphyry's 36 volumes, papyrus rolls of 27 schools of the
Mysteries, and 270,000 ancient documents gathered by Ptolemy Philadelphus
were burned. Ancient academies of learning were closed. Education for anyone
outside of the Church came to an end..."
Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History, p. 46, 1995
http://members.tripod.com/~gnostica/

"The problem with this is that it is ABYSMALLY inaccurate. If one compares
the statements of Ellerbe with the works of ACTUAL academic scholars in the
field one can see how wrong this statement is. The actual history of the
famous Museum library of Alex (which is said to have housed 500,000 rolls)
goes like this:

1)Ptolemy Soter (Ptolemy I, 367-282bc) built a shine to the Muses (a
Museion) and brought outstanding scholars to live there Books and Readers in
the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p177
The History and Power of Writing by Henri-Jean Martin (trans. Lydia
Cochrane), Univ. of Chicago: 1994 p55.

2) it was a communal society of men of science and letters , and was located
in the royal precinct
Books and Readers in the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p178

3) later, a smaller library (for overflow) was built OUTSIDE the palace
area--called the "daughter" library. It contained less than 8% of the total
holdings of the combined' libraries, and was connected to a pagan shrine
(the Serapeum).
Books and Readers in the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995
p179-180

4)The major library (Museion) was without peer in the 3rd century , and
probably had most extant classical works.
Books and Readers in the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p180
The History and Power of Writing by Henri-Jean Martin (trans. Lydia
Cochrane), Univ. of Chicago: 1994 p55
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris,
Scarecrow:1995. p45

5) Then--trouble begins: "Then, around 145 bce, the persecution of
Alexandrian scholars and their disciples by [Ptolemy VII Physcon] Euergetes
II resulted in an emigration of academic talent from the Museion and a loss
of distinction in its librarians." Books and Readers in the Early Church,
Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p180

6) "Ptolemy VIII [Lathyros, Soter II] (Cacergetes) came to the throne.
Having been forced to leave Alexandria by his enemies, he returned in the
course of a civil war (89-88bc) and burned much of the city. The students
and fellows of the Museum were at least temporarily scattered...Though never
reaching their former greatness, the Museum and its library were
reconstituted and survived for several hundred years longer." Note: most of
the damage to the library occurred before the birth of Christ!
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris, Scarecrow:1995
p46

7) Then, in 47 BC when Julius Caesar was conquering Egypt, the Library was
partially destroyed
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris, Scarecrow:1995
p46
Books and Readers in the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p180

8) In the first century AD, some of the volumes in the library were moved to
Rome to replenish libraries there
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris, Scarecrow:1995
p46

9)Finally, the main Museum and library was destroyed in 273 AD, when the
Roman Emperor Aurelian burned much of Alexandria--including most of the
Palace area.
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris, Scarecrow:1995
p46-47
Books and Readers in the Early Church, Harry Y. Gamble, Yale: 1995 p180
The History and Power of Writing by Henri-Jean Martin (trans. Lydia
Cochrane), Univ. of Chicago: 1994 p56.

10) It is possible that the Museum (already a shadow of the glory of the
first one) was rebuilt "on a smaller scale."
History of Libraries in the Western World, Michael H. Harris, Scarecrow:1995
p47

11) But "A few years later, the city was completely sacked by Diocletian.
The Museum, which had enjoyed long periods of renewed splendor during
Imperial times and which had recently been restored once more to its old
glory thanks to the notable efforts of the mathematician Diophantus, must
have suffered terrible damage."
The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, by Luciano Canfora,
Univ. of Calif: 1987. p87

12. The small, daughter library--the Serapeum--was thought to have survived
and WAS destroyed by the Patriarch Theophilis in 391, under the directives
of Emperor Theodosius in 391. Note--this is NOT the famous library at
all...it was a very small temple library. "

3. The Beauty of Reasoning: A Re-examination of Hypatia of Alexandra. Bryan
J. Whitfield, The Mathematics Educator, Vol.6 No. 1
http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/DEPT/TME/Issues/v6n1/v6n1.pdf.

" From the sixth-century writings of Damascius to more recent writers like
Charles Kingsley, Edward Gibbon, and Carl Sagan, the tragedy of Hypatia's
death has been used as an occasion for a miscreant euhemerization that
falsifies historical fact, at best in the service of a larger narrative, at
worst in the service of propaganda. These tendentious historians present
Hypatia as a noble pagan martyr, a sacrificial virgin murdered at the
instigation of Cyril, the evil Christian bishop of Alexandria, for her
refusal to abandon the religion of the Greeks. She becomes the embodiment of
Hellenism destroyed by the onslaught of mindless Christianity, the epitome
of the end of the wisdom of the ancients.This rendering of Hypatia's death
may be high drama, but it is poor history that does a disservice to
Hypatia's real contributions and ignores the continuation of the Alexandrian
philosophical tradition after her death. Examination of her significance
must begin, therefore, with a refutation of this idealized portrait and then
continue with a development of her life and work using more reliable
historical sources as well as legitimate inferences that may be drawn from
the intellectual and cultural context in which she lived."

"Attempts to use the death of Hypatia for polemical ends began with the work
of the Athenian scholar Damascius, the last head of the Academy before it
was closed by Justinian. He wrote in exile, as one of the last of the
pagans,and was anxious to exploit the scandal of Hypatia's
death.Consequently, he placed responsibility for her death in the hands of
Cyril's men so that readers would picture her as the martyr of Hellenism,
comparable to the heroized Emperor Julian, who had sought to restore
paganism as the of the empire and was reportedly killed by a traitorous
Christian."

4. The Primary Sources for the Life and Work of Hypatia of Alexandria by
Michael A. B. Deakin
History of Mathematics Paper 63 August 1995 Mathematics Department, Monash
University, Australia
http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Hypatia/primary-sources.html

"...it should be said that works of fiction (whether the fiction is
intentional or not!) are not historical sources at all. Regrettably much of
what is readily available on Hypatia derives from fictional, rather than
historical, sources.
The life of Hypatia of Alexandria depends on a small amount of primary
material, and anything going outside that is either fiction or speculation
and in a good account should be flagged as such.

5. Ellen N. Brundige, The Library of Alexandria: The Legend of the Library
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/Students/Ellen/Museum.html

"The library of Alexandria is a legend. Not a myth, but a legend. The
destruction of the library of the ancient world has been retold many times
and attributed to just as many different factions and rulers, not for the
purpose of chronicling that ediface of education, but as political slander.
Much ink has been spilled, ancient and modern, over the 40,000 volumes
housed in grain depots near the harbor, which were supposedly incinerated
when Julius Caesar torched the fleet of Cleopatra's brother and rival
monarch. So says Livy, apparently, in one of his lost books, which Seneca
quotes. The figure of Hypatia, a fifth-century scholar and mathematician of
Alexandria, being dragged from her chariot from an angry Pagan-hating mob of
monks who flayed her alive then burned her upon the remnants of the old
Library, has found her way into legend as well, thanks to a few contemporary
sources which survived.Yet while we know of many rumors of the destruction
of "The Library" (in fact, there were at least three different libraries
coexisting in the city), and know of whole schools of Alexandrian scholars
and scholarship, there is scant data about the whereabouts, layout,
holdings, organization, administration, and physical structure of the
place."

The actual fate of the Library of Alexandria is unknown but it is likely to
be less exciting and propaganda-friendly than is popularly supposed:

"The story that Theophilus destroyed a library is clearly a fiction that we
can very precisely lay at the door of Edward Gibbon. It is in his monumental
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that we first find the allegation made.
Gibbon seems mainly concerned to clear the Arabs of the responsibility of
destroying the library and allows his marked anti-Christian prejudice to
cloud his better judgement. His excellent footnotes show he had exactly the
same sources as we do but drew the wrong conclusions.

The burning of the library at Alexandria has been referred to as a tragic
loss of information and knowledge. Livy wrote that the library was destroyed
when Julius Caesar torched the fleet of Cleopatra's brother and rival
monarch. Another myth is that Hypatia, a fifth-century scholar and
mathematician of Alexandria, was dragged from her chariot by an angry
Pagan-hating mob of Christian monks. The Christians had her burned alive in
the library to in a fit of religious fervor."

The Library at Alexandria - And Other Information Management Tragedies,
Paula Gamonal
http://www.ravenwerks.com/practices/the.htm

"Unfortunately, no traces of the original library at Alexandria remain. The
story of what happened to it is shrouded in legend and controversy. A
well-known and controversial theory is that the library was burned to the
ground by Julius Caesar in 48 B.C. when, according to some accounts, he set
fire to an enemy fleet and inadvertently burned the library too. There is
also a disputed legend that says Mark Antony presented Cleopatra with
200,000 scrolls from another library as a gift to help replace the lost
works.Some chroniclers say that in the fourth century A.D., after
Christianity had become the state religion, Theophilus I, the bishop of
Alexandria, spurred his followers to destroy the pagan temple that housed
the daughter library. Others, however, argue that the books might have been
removed or sold.

The upwelling of anti-pagan fervor culminates in the role of Hypatia, a
fifth-century mathematician and philosopher whose father had taught
mathematics at the school associated with the library. The glamorous and
intellectual Hypatia earned the enmity of Bishop Cyril, leader of the
Christian church. Some say Cyril had a mob attack and kill her in 415 A.D.
Other sources claim she was flayed and thrown on a pile of burning pagan
books. Still other accounts have Hypatia peeled to death with oyster shells
or stabbed with pieces of pottery. A final legend surrounding the library of
Alexandria comes with the arrival of the Arabs in the middle of the seventh
century A.D. Supposedly the invading Arabs destroyed the books because they
believed everything true or useful to be contained in the Koran, but this
legend is likely an anti-Arab fabrication from the time of the Crusades.

The truth behind the loss of the library of Alexandria may be less dramatic
than the stories that swirl around it. It is possible that the scrolls
simply disintegrated, or that they fell out of fashion with the advent of
vellum to replace papyrus. It is possible that other centers of learning
such as Constantinople replaced the primacy of the library at Alexandria.
According to Canfora, it was hard to preserve books in large urban libraries
that were prone to being attacked, and the safest locations for books were
more remote places such as monasteries and private collections.
Mystery, melodrama, reversal, and renewal by Jane C. McFann, Reading Today
February/March 2002
http://www.reading.org/publications/rty/archives/ancient_library.html

"The surprising thing is not that some books got burned in the conflict
between moribund
paganism and nascent Christianity, but that the burned books
were so few. When early Christianity had to fight for its life
and when it found obnoxious matter in so much of the pagan
literature, it really exercised great tolerance in destroying few
books except those that contained heresies or frontal attacks
upon itself."
"Books for the Burning" Clarence A. Forbes University of Nebraska, American
Philological Society 67 (1936), pp.114-25.
http://www.tertullian.org/articles/forbes_books_for_the_burning.htm
(This article cites the known cases of books intentionally burned with no
mention of the Library of Alexandria).

This post has focussed on the myth of the Christian burning of the Library
of Alexandria. It has not dealt substantially with the equally erroneous
myth that the early church generally destroyed the literary heritage of the
Classical world, which I may examine in another post.

So what is the source of this myth? There are some fragmentary and
contradictory early sources but several writers have pointed to Edward
Gibbon as the main originator of the legend in its current manifestation.

'Gibbon, who otherwise presents such an evocative picture of the destruction
of the Temple of Serapis, is mistaken when he says (XXVIII) that "The
valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed" by Theophilus,
whom he characterizes as "the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue; a bold,
bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold, and with blood."
That the temple did have a library is related by Ammianus, as well as by
Epiphanius, who, writing in AD 392, speaks of a second library "in the
Serapeum, called its daughter." But there is no support for the presumption
that it was destroyed at the same time as the temple or even that it still
existed by then.'
http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~snlrc/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/paganism/serapeum.ht
ml

But probably the most influential piece on which the legend depends is a
speech given to the Independent Religious Society in Chicago and published
by "The Rationalist" in May 1915 by Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian entitled
"The Martyrdom of Hypatia (or The Death of the Classical World)". It is a
piece of over-heated and vitriolic anti-Christian polemic that has set the
standard for the myth that gets promulgated all over the web by the
advocates of "reason" and "free thought".

The full text of this article can be read here and on a number of pagan and
rationalist (!) sites.
"A bit overwrought" is the assessment of one of this article's admirers:

The Martyrdom of Hypatia (or The Death of the Classical World)
by Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian
http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Hypatia/Mangasarian.html

I post this piece, and others like it, because it is "de rigueur" among many
of the opponents of Christianity and ID to claim that Christians are liars,
uneducated, stupid, ignorant, back woods yokels, misquoters of sources,
misrepresenters of facts, lacking in intelligence and reasoning ability,
flat-earthers, book-burners, controlled by the ideas of others - and a huge
list of other insulting and offensive slanders.

"Religion takes gullible people and makes them stupid, small-minded,
bigoted, and ignorant... and no less gullible."
http://www.kilnet.org/fragrant.html And he should know a stupid,
small-minded, ignorant gullible bigot when he sees one...

As demonstrated by the morally upright and intellectually superior statement
above when I turn to many of the comments and websites of their opponents I
see the very same and more - abusive language and profanity, libellous
insults, poor spelling and grammar and adolescent anti-Christian ravings all
thrown together in a mish-mash of repeated "sound bites", sophomoric slogans
and embarrassingly ignorant mythologising. Now if the assessment is true
about some Christians - who can't help it according to the enlightened
mindset of the free thinkers - then why is it so prevalent among the
supposedly educated intellectual giants of rationalism who spew forth their
venom all over the Net? If some Christians or creationists publish myths
on the Net because they are "liars, uneducated, stupid, etc." what excuse is
there for the enormous - and I mean enormous - amount of fabrication,
half-truth, old wives tales and myth that appear on many anti-ID, atheist
and "free thought" sites?

So what really happened to the great Library?

"Whatever the truth, the Great Library, wrapped in myths and legend, has
come to epitomize the ideal of free thought and independent scholarship.
'One ghostly image haunts all of us charged with preserving the creative
heritage of humanity: the specter of the great, lost Library of Alexandria,'
said James H. Billington, the US. Librarian of Congress, in a 1993 speech."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/08/0806_wirelibrary.html

Forget the facts, what matters is the myth, the legend, the ideal...the lie

Mark Gosling

2003-02-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

from
CED
this is Stephen Jones talking, moderator of the group.
permission to copy has been given, provided backlink as done above is maintained...
-----------------PLEASE NOTE THIS IS AN EXTENDED QUOTE IT IS NOT MY WRITING------------------

The "essence of idolatry" is "severing of the world from God", which is
what "those who cannot discern God's action in the world", to whom "the
world is a self-contained, self-sufficient, self-explanatory, self-ordering
system" in which "they view themselves as autonomous and the world as
independent of God":

"Throughout Scripture the fundamental divide separating humans is
between those who can discern God's action in the world and those
who are blind to it. Those who can discern God's action in the
world that Scripture calls "spiritual"; those who cannot, Scripture
calls "natural" or "soulish."' For those who cannot discern God's
action in the world, the world is a self-contained, self-sufficient,
self-explanatory, self-ordering system. Consequently they view
themselves as autonomous and the world as independent of God.
This severing of the world from God is the essence of idolatry and
is in the end always what keeps us from knowing God. Severing the
world from God, or alternatively viewing the world as nature, is the
essence of humanity's fall." (Dembski W.A., "Intelligent Design:
The Bridge Between Science and Theology," InterVarsity Press:
Downers Grove IL, 1999, p.99).

"Naturalism leads irresistibly to idolatry" because "idolatry is ...
investing the world with a significance it does not deserve":

"Naturalism leads irresistibly to idolatry. As we read Scripture
today, we often wonder at all the excitement about idols and graven
images. Idolatry is uniformly condemned in the Old Testament, and
yet we are less horrified than amused at the idol makers who
fashion an idol from a piece of rock or wood and bow down before
it. It all seems rather ludicrous to us enlightened Westerners. If we
speak about idols at all these days, we speak of money, reputation
and power. But these are not properly speaking idols. They can
become idols, but in themselves they are not idols. Although in
ancient times graven images were the most obvious sign of idolatry,
idolatry is not so much a matter of investing any particular object
with extraordinary significance. Rather it is a matter of investing the
world with a significance it does not deserve. We need to ask our
selves why anyone would want to worship a material object in the
first place. The ancients certainly knew as well as we that a carved
figure by itself holds no special significance. What is significant
about a graven image is not the image itself but what it signifies.
Some images in the East, for instance, are hollow on the inside and
have a hole so that the reality signified by the image may enter the
image and thus become the proper object of worship for the
worshiper. Similarly in making a golden calf for the Israelites and
claiming that here were Israel's gods that had led them out of
Egypt, Aaron was not attributing to this chunk of metal any special
power." (Dembski, 1999, p.101).

"Idolatry is always a denial of the Creator, for it sets the creation above the
Creator":

"The problem is that all our images can signify only other things in
creation and not the One who gave creation its being in the first
place. A graven image signifies something else in the world, some
power, some influence, some favor that the worshiper wants to tap
into. The tacit assumption here is that what needs to be tapped into
is part of the world, not the God who created the world in the first
place. Idolatry is always a denial of the Creator, for it sets the
creation above the Creator and thereby transforms creation into
nature." (Dembski, 1999, p.102).

"idolatry ... is *foolishness*:

"The Bible uses many words and images to characterize idolatry,
but the most apt is *foolishness*. What can be more foolish than to
elevate what is second best to what is best? It's like preferring the
publisher of Shakespeare to Shakespeare himself. It's like preferring
golden eggs to the goose that lays the golden eggs. Because the
creation is so marvelous, it is easy to understand why we become
enamored of it. But as Maximus the Confessor reminds us in his
Four Centuries on Love, "If the creation is so marvelous, how
much more marvelous, is the one who created it?" The creation is
good and even very good. But it is not best. God is best. In fact,
God so far surpasses what is second best that giving anything
eminence comparable to God is simply outrageous." (Dembski,
1999, p.103. Emphasis in original).

"Naturalism['s] ... key tenet is the self-sufficiency of nature; it "affirms
not
so much that God does not exist as that God need not exist"; "the dyed-in-
the-wool naturalist" is therefore, from the Bible's perspective, an idolater,
who has "praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and
stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know", in preference to "the God in
whose hand" his "breath is, and ... all" his/her "ways":

"Naturalism is in the air we breathe. It pervades our cultural
atmosphere. We see it whenever the mysteries of the faith are
ridiculed. We see it whenever a PBS nature program credits nature
for some object of wonder instead of God. ... We see it, alas,
whenever we forget God and worship the creature more than the
Creator. ... Within Western culture, naturalism has become the
default position for all serious inquiry. From biblical studies to law
to education to science to the arts, inquiry is allowed to proceed
only under the supposition that nature is self-contained. To be sure,
this is not to require that we explicitly deny God's existence. God
could, after all, have created the world to be self-contained.
Nonetheless for the sake of inquiry we are required to pretend that
God does not exist and proceed accordingly. Naturalism affirms not
so much that God does not exist as that God need not exist. It's not
that God is dead so much as that God is absent. And because God
is absent, intellectual honesty demands that we get about our work
without invoking him. This is the received wisdom.... Naturalism is
an ideology. Its key tenet is the self-sufficiency of nature. Within
Western culture its most virulent form is known as scientific
naturalism. Scientific naturalism locates the self-sufficiency of nature
in the natural laws of science. Accordingly scientific naturalism
would have us to understand the universe entirely in terms of such
laws. Thus in particular, since human beings are a part of the
universe, who we are and what we do must ultimately be
understood in naturalistic terms; This is not to deny our humanity.
But it is to reinterpret our humanity as the consequence of brute
material processes that were not consciously aiming at us. Nor is
this to deny God. But it is to affirm that if God exists, he was
marvelously adept at covering his tracks and giving no evidence
that he ever interacted with the world. To be sure, there is no
logical contradiction for the scientific naturalist to affirm God's
existence, but this can be done only by making God a superfluous
rider on top of a self-contained account of the world. ... Theists
know that naturalism is false. Nature is not self-sufficient. God
created nature as well as any laws by which nature operates. Not
only has God created the world, but God upholds the world
moment by moment. Daniel's words to Belshazzar hold equally for
the dyed-in-the-wool naturalist: 'Thou hast praised the gods of
silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor
hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and
whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified" (Daniel 5:23 KJV)."
(Dembski, 1999, pp.103-104. Emphasis in original)

Note the "we". Dembski (and I) recognise that "Naturalism is in the air we"
(including Christians in Western societies) breathe" and so it is largely
unrecognised even by most Christians. I know that I personally have had
to work hard at first recognising, and then eradicating, naturalistic ways
of thinking that I had simply absorbed through the "cultural atmosphere"
I grew up in.

"Naturalism is idolatry by another name" because "it assigns ultimate value
to" nature:

"This is why idolatry-worshiping the creation rather than the
Creator-is so completely backwards, for it assigns ultimate value to
something that is inherently incapable of achieving ultimate value.
Creation, especially a fallen creation can at best reflect God's glory.
Idolatry, on the other hand contends that creation fully
comprehends God's glory. Idolatry turns the creation into the
ultimate reality. We've seen this before. It is called naturalism. No
doubt, contemporary scientific naturalism is a lot more
sophisticated than pagan fertility cults, but the difference is
superficial. Naturalism is idolatry by another name." (Dembski,
1999, p.226)

2003-02-28T16:36:00.000-08:00

jesus journal

2003-02-28T08:47:00.000-08:00

_meaning of creation_ by conrad hyers

my review posted to amazon---

5 of 5 stars
towards a exegetical solution in the creation evolution mess
February 9, 2003
it is one of those drop everything and read now type of books. very
much appropriate to a discussion of gen 1 and 2, and the extended
discussion of creation evolution, with attention to the relationship
of religion and science.

his thesis is that the first two chapters of genesis are polemic
against the neighboring cultures of the hebrews. simply put genesis
has nothing to do with modern science at all. we impose our catagories
of thought, but more importantly we impose what we want to hear onto
these chapters.

just a few quotes will help:
it is quite doubtful that these texts have waited in obscurity through
the millennia for their hidden meanings to be revealed by modern
science. it is at least a good possibility that the "real meaning" was
understood by the authors themselves. pg 3

and in response to henry morris who wrote "the creation account is
clear, definite, sequential and matter-of-fact, giving every
appearance of straightforward historical narrative"

---hyers writes on pg 23 "this may indeed be the way things appear to
certain modern interpreters at considerable remove from the context in
which the texts were written, living in an age so dominated by
scientific and historical modes of thought. It may also be the way
things appear to those for whom modern science and historiography
offer the criteria by which religious statements are to be understood
and judged to be true or false. Yet it is by no means obvious that
this represents the literary form or religious concern of the Genesis
writers"

the problem of the debate over origins from genesis is like pogo said
in the widely quoted cartoon "we have met the enemy and he is US".
the reason we have so much smoke over genesis is that we forgot the
first rule of hermenutics. approach the text as the first readers did,
with their assumptions, their world and life view. with the issues
they were interested in understanding in the forefront. NOT OURS. the
extension of scripture to all times and ages is done after this
culture and historic criticism. not before.

therefore genesis is a religious not a scientific document addressed
to the questions of that time. polytheism, and sacralization of the
physical world. this is in alignment with _battle for god_ by karen
armstrong and her analysis of logos and mythos. our problem is that we
so depreciate mythos as being NOT TRUE that we very much miss the
point of the first two chapters of Genesis....

------------------------end of my quote---------------------------

and two pieces from boar's Head tavern at
http://www.internetmonk.com/blogger.htm

The Meaning of Creation by Conrad Hyers (John Knox Press) This is a
Grand Slam. A book I underlined till the pages were ripped. Here is a
review. I could not agree more BUY THIS BOOK!

"Probably the finest book ever written on this topic. Hyers points out
the hermeneutical dilemmas associated with the reading of the Genesis
creation accounts. The Creation/Evolution controversy should never
have arrived at a scientific level, and Hyers wants his audience to
understand why. This well written work separates itself from the
hodgepodge of works that have come out the past several years
attempting to integrate theology and science. Hyers' work does not add
another trumpet to that redundant performance. Rather, he looks at the
literary genre and how it is being violated by the literalists. He
also examines how our modern literalistic culture places a harmful
interpretive shade over our eyes as we read ancient texts written
during a time rich with allegory. And he explains the neglect of
authorial intent in the Genesis creation accounts--texts which appear
to be more of a response to one or both of the ancient cosmologies
neighboring the Hebrews. Hyers is sensitive to those who cling to
traditional interpretations of the creation accounts in Genesis, and
is careful not to insult the intelligence of anyone. Hyers is a
conservative theologian, but his definition of conservative is to
conserve the original meaning of the text, as opposed to conserving a
traditional interpretation of the text."

and two links to conrad hyers' essays:
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/literalism.htm
http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?1031

---------------------end of quote----------------------------------

i actually found the book while researching how to reply to AiG's
arguments about Genesis. It was perhaps the 3 or 4th commentary on
Genesis that i read specially for this issue.

its short, well written, only slightly liberal/JPD-based. if you
really want to get a hold of what the not-YEC not-AiG are saying this
is the best(imho) book to start with.

richard williams

richard williams.................... thinkcreation2002@y...
http://fastucson.net/~rmwillia ......creation evolution homepage
http://rmwilliamsjr.blogspot.com ....blog
http://myhq.com/public/t/h/thinkcreation ...sorted CED bookmark list
http://myhq.com/public/r/w/rwilliam ........unsorted CURRENT bookmark list

2003-02-28T08:02:00.000-08:00

working on a new yahoo discussion group. blessingsyou. got here from a message on apologetics about the constantine's synthesis.

-----------------------------
--- In blessingyou@yahoogroups.com, "martnluther " wrote:
snip snip
> Secular movements are flawed and we judge them by the gospel.
> However, secular movements are also used by God to accomplish his
> purposes and we judge and praise them by the gospel.
>
>
snip snip, trying to isolate one line of thought....

this looks to be a good synopsis of your position.
that is the judgement of God upon secular movements, including political ones, 1-done to further God's purposes 2-done in order to further the godly line(Abraham in OT. Christians in NT) 3-our criteria for judging these movements is to be the gospel.

i dont have a problem with principles like this at all. they appear to be straightforward and Biblical. My problem is with "how close" does the Church or Christians get to movements. "How close" does theology begin to intertwine with particular cultural or political movements?

my first big issue in Christianity was theonomy, now called reconstructionist or dominion theology. It is divisive in the churches we attend. in fact, it has like creation been a object of a study committee in the PCA, although not nearly as divisive as YEC's. So most of my thinking on the issue is really a long running discussion with Rushdoony, North, Bahnsen etc..

Plus as you can see from my post at apologetics.com i have had a long history of struggle with racism and my unconquered unvanquished Southern roots. It is their, the christian identity, the very right wing southerners that i think of as the ultimate intertwining of culture and the faith. completely unable to extricate themselves from the union(no pun intended).

so i have deep and long standing issues on the topic of nationalistic movements as it is currently being worded. your postings show a much milder form of the syncretism that i label as constantine's heresy, the alignment of Christianity with power rather than with powerlessness and poverty as it was for 300 years, and is by its(Christianity's) very nature. and if it boils down to the few principles i drew out of your postings, then i have no real argument with your position.

2003-02-27T12:49:00.000-08:00

on the problem of seeing ourselves as others do.

my experience in china, where everyone stares, has me often coming back to the thought of seeing ourselves as others do.

our self images are apparently fixed sometime near the end of puberty, 16-19. we carry that outdated image inside our heads for the rest of our life. seldom modifying it, seldom really challenging it.

but i am aware of a part of me that strives for recognition from others. i can see in my emotions as i read a response to my messages on discussion groups, where i am please to be supported, downcast to be challenged, especially when they are right, and i wrong.

but most of all, i think about china. all heads turn. you literally leave a wake of people talking about you where ever you go. it is enough to cause some people to not go out, to be so shy, that they miss the experience of china by staying inside.

that summer i walked so much in china, was the only time i managed to loose weight, with mom's death just 2 weeks after i got back, i lost the ground i had gained so sacrifically there. it is time to regain the initiciative against my overweight, and remember the lessons of china. try to use the social pressure i felt then to work with my desires.

2003-02-27T08:44:00.000-08:00

philosophy games link
take the test!!

2003-02-27T08:32:00.000-08:00

posting at apologetics.com in response to a question about how should a christian approach nationalism

i look on constantine as one of the truely wrong synthesis or syncetisms that the church has undergone in its 2000 years of involvement in this world

my studies of the issue revolve around the radical reformation and its denial of the doctrine of 'corpus christianum' or the idea that the body of Christ existed in the physical communities of europe. of particular help was _The Reformers and Their Stepchildren_, by Leonard Verduin.

as such i think that the ideas of the historical peace churches are more biblical and christian than those of the reformed like presbyterian on this issue. following augustine and the doctrine of the two swords the reformed churches did not challenge this false idea of the unity of the church and state. either in the reformation nor in the subsequent nearly 500 years.

it was in the historical analysis of christianity in america that the separation of church and state arose, mostly as a compromise not to allow any particular sect alignment with political power. this was more pragmatic than the spiritual analysis of the anabaptist churches, but a step in the right direction.

i think the final step is to understand that political power is a necessary evil. to be very careful not to confuse spiritual and political domains, example is national flags in churches. for our citizenship is in heaven, not in this world where we are strangers in a strange land, finding it impossible to sing the songs of a political nature when they ask for an allegience we owe only to Christ and His kingdom yet to come.

one of the places we can watch these things work out will be in the burgeoning churches in africa, south america and asia where they will have to come to grips with the legacy of colonialism and its unique confusion of political power from the barrel of a gun and the spiritual power of a christianity that worked hand in glove with the colonial powers
. i think liberation theology is just the beginning of such re-theologizing.

thanks for listening.
richard williams

2003-02-27T08:13:00.000-08:00

mr rogers died today.
i'm seeing more references to it as i read through blogs and emails.
lots of people greatly respected him.

alma's mom watched his show every day she was here.
it was one of the few things she really wanted to do.

i even teased her the days she missed it, that mr rogers emailed me that she wasnt watching. it really hurt the ratings for the over 80 watching group. i'm not sure she understood that i was joking.....

one thing i have often heard from old folks is that all their friends have died, and that all they do is go to funerals (remember the movie where to 2 old ladies go out to funerals on weds? took place in scotland i think)

hope mom clark hears he died, nicely. it will hurt her.

2003-02-27T07:32:00.000-08:00

--- In CreationEvolutionDesign@yahoogroups.com, "richard williams
" wrote:
> i know Stephen is working on the rules of this discussion group.
>
> i went looking for examples of book group or discussion group rules:
>
> found this
> http://www.internetmonk.com/rules.htm
>
>
> i really do take myself too seriously at times.
> therefore i will read this group daily as an antidote.
>
> richard williams

sorry i forgot Stephen's rule that message ought to contain more than
the URL. and contain some discussion of the item....

therefore since it is short---

quote

Posting Guidelines for the Boar's Head Tavern

1. It's a good place. Make it better and we'll like you.
2. Persons requesting to be added to the blog will be asked to
submit a personal/theological/vocational bio to me. You also can
expect to wait a few days to get on.
3. If you are a legalist or a sensitive type, you are probably not
going to be very happy here, because there is a lot of humor, ranting
and skewering of various targets, so if you are looking for the
typical Christian discussion area, I would move on. Seriously.
4. All points of view are hanging around here somewhere, so if
sounds like it's all a bunch of men or Calvinists or Republicans or
worship traditionalists or ______________ or Oprah fans (!!) don't be
fooled and post something you'll regret. There is actually quite a bit
of diversity on here. Baptists. Pentecostals. Catholics. The
uncategorized.
5. People really do read this. I mean LOTS of people, so before you
post it, think about it.
6. People's feelings can get hurt (though we might hate to admit
it.) And it usually happens because you are upset that someone holds a
different opinion than you, or you forget that discussing opinions
doesn't involve making personal judgments about people you only know
on the other side of a monitor.
7. We basically accept the Christian profession of anyone who says
they are a Christian, and I will delete anyone who decides to question
that in the course of a post, based upon a disagreement over
legitimate issues.
8. Please do a reasonably brief bio on yourself when you start
posting regularly, and if there is something we need to know in under
to not run you over, please tell us. I mean, if you are a midget, and
you don't mind the risk that midget jokes will one day appear on the
blog, then keep it a secret. But if your short status is an emotional
issue with you and could cause hard feelings, please let us know.
Either at the beginning, or when appropriate.
9. If you join, I will list your email addy on the page while you
are an active poster unless you tell me not to do so.
10. It ranges from the serious to the trivial, sometimes the really
serious and sometimes the extremely trivial. If you assume it will
always be one thing or another, you will be wrong.
11. I'm no prude, but keep the language and humor pg-13 please. It's
mostly boys and we tend to act like it.
12. Try to start posts with the name of the person to whom you are
responding. (And it's MATTHEW, not Matt.) If you have a nickname you
prefer, tell us and we'll use it.
13. If you make a statement of reality or fact, it is perfectly
fair- and not rude- to ask you to produce some credible evidence that
backs you up. That is particularly appropriate when claims about
individuals are made. Ex: Luther and Calvin believed in the perpetual
virginity of Mary. Ken said it, I asked for references. He came up
with them. I was wrong. Imagine that.
14. If you are a liberal or a big fan of TBN or overly enamored of
your own opinions it may occasionally get ugly, and if you read the
stuff on Internetmonk.com you won't be surprised at what may be said.
(If you haven't read the main site, you might do so before falling
into the fray. We welcome all points of view, but it can get pretty
lively.)
15. Don't take all the alcohol discussion too seriously.
16. We cannot discuss the War Between the States. We've proven it,
so remember, I warned you.
17. Please be careful with blogger when posting pictures, sounds or
wild html tricks. I will delete all pictures within 24 hours unless I
don't
18. If you don't post for two weeks, I will probably take you off
the list. I think Blogger gets buggy with too many posters. Just write
me and I'll put you back. (Ask Rob...really!)
19. There are some points of view so offensive even I don't want to
listen to them. So if you become so obnoxious no one wants to post
anymore, I'll show you the door, but I'll warn you first. Maybe.
20. Members of BHT are encouraged to use the e-mail directory to
admonish one another. IOW, if you have a gripe about someone else,
tell them, not just me. Lurkers- that goes for you to.
21. Don't sell anything on here unless you ask me and I say OK.
22. If you really liked the Left Behind Books, I am happy for you.
Really. But that's just one example of things lots of people are into
that I'm really not into, so be forewarned. Others: Jabez. TBN.
Revivals. Invitationalism. CCM. P&W.
23. Really long posts are tolerated. But there are limits to the
human attention span, and many readers will not read long posts. After
a while they conclude you have nothing interesting to say.
24. Don't repeat yourself unless your mind is going and you can't
help it.
25. One word: Spelling. OK- I know I'm not perfect, but try, OK?
26. On the infamous DEAD HORSE (Heated discussion of Calvinism vs.
Arminianism). There seems to be some evidence that extensive
discussion of the topic may be discouraging other discussion and
participation on the blog. As the PRIMARY OFFENDER, I (MSpencer) take
full responsibility for this problem. But, hey, it's my nickel.
Anyway, some further rule regarding this MAY be forthcoming. At
present, let me mildly admonish all of us to remember that we've
covered a lot of ground here. NEW POSTERS: Let me please admonish you
NOT to try and cover this topic as if it hasn't been covered. We have
pretty much ridden the horse till it dropped. We've heard it all.
Several times and no one has changed their mind.
27. The CALVINISTS are right.
28. I am waiting for the tithes and offerings to start arriving.

end quote.

like the author(s) i am a self-conscious calvinist.
rules 26 and 27 are HILARIOUS, he even has a dead horse link to those
conversations.....

so what does this have to do with the discussion of Creation Evolution
Design. fundamental rule #1?

when discussing serious topics with great intellectual concentration
we forget to laugh. at ourselves and at our most precious and sacred,
heart felt principles.

i've spend almost every waking hour on the topic for several months
now. my to be read reading pile is now housed in 5 32 gallon plastic
tubs. i am further behind then when i started. but you know what....

these rules reminded me to laugh...

richard williams
http://fastucson.net/~rmwillia

2003-02-26T09:18:00.000-08:00

a series of messages i wrote on science apologetics

> > reason: is it from God? does God reason in much the same way that
we
> > do? more specifically; is our logic something derived from creation
> or
> > something we impose onto a "unreasoning/unreasonable" creation?
> >
>
> I would like to see you develop these ideas a little more. I do not
> necessarily see a link between humans creating reason and creation
> being unreasonable. In other words, if God has revealed an orderly
> creation to us, then we may be able to impose our rules on to the
> observed creation in order to describe what we observe. As the
> observed creation obviously isn't entirely orderly, this can be done
> with a disordered universe as well.
>
snip snip...

i quess i start with:
i am impressed at the ability of science to capture some very amazing
things about the universe.
there seems to be no reason why, at very significant levels, the
universe is 'understandable' 'pervious to' 'amiable to' our 'reason'
'rationality' 'technic of science'.

i think that is where i start the train of thought. why does science
not just work, but capture some essential essence of the universe?
it is a little like the wonder i have when math, invented simply as an
intellectual exercise, finds application years after the original
theory was laid down.

now from a Christian perspective, that a reasonable God created the
universe, so that it reflects some of His attributes like reason,
consistency, it is explainable maybe even expected that science would
achieve such simple yet widely applicable theories.

but modern science is secular, it doesnt have a Christian perspective
on the universe like this, maybe the argument could be made that
science derived from a Christian world and life view, and as a result
has this idea of the reasonableness of the universe, but i dont think
this is a fruitful way of looking at it. rather i see modern physics
propose a universe of structure but not necessarily one corresponding
to human reason or rationality. i think leading edge researchers are
surprised and awed that their theories seem to capture something real
out there in a particularly beautiful way.

i think we make working assumptions about being able to manipulate the
things out there. assumptions like 'there are no demons in the world
that will punish us for looking too closely at them' (desacralization)
but i dont believe a high order assumption that the universe is
rational or reason 'all the way down' is a necessary assumption in
modern science.

but in the observer observed relationship, we need to look at our own
reason or rationality as well. and that is problematic, both from a
scientific evolutionary view and from a traditional Christian
viewpoint.

but to keep the discussion managable perhaps we ought to bite off just
the piece "is the universe reasonable ? " first.

Subject: Re: is faith rational?

snip snip, trying to isolate one line of thought.
>
> > if on the other hand, we do reason analogously to God, this reason
> > does try to reach God but can not due to the effects of sin, then
> God
> > can heal the effects and reason can "comprehend" God in some way.
> > faith in this scheme becomes the right reason beyond human reason.
> not
> > something contrary to reason, but something that fixs broken sinful
> > reason.
> > i believe to put the gap between faith and reason is dangerous, it
> > readily leads to things that i do not wish to say. on the otherhand
> > putting the two-faith and reason on the one side of a great divide
> and
> > putting unregenerate reason without faith on the other side fits
the
> > pieces better.
> >
>
> This is interesting because I think equating faith and reason is like
> equating black and white. Faith and reason are opposites. Why not
> just call them both reason? Or why not just call them both faith?
> Are they this synonymous? No! I think we have different words for
> them because they are very different things. I see them as different
> as black and white. Why try to marry these two concepts when they
> describe completely different methods of viewing truth? Ultimately,
> faith is believing things for which you have no evidence; no
> underlying principle supports faith based statements. Reason,
> although impossible to do without faith in axioms, allows one to
> build arguments on the axiomatic principles.
>
> So why do faith and reason belong on the same side of the great
> divide?
>
> tk

i think we are defining reason in similar ways. a particular type of
thought, bounded by certain ways of operating. i often use it in the
same way i use rationality, the whole complex of inductive, deductive,
facts, definitions etc.

i think what is important in reason is the 'steps', analogously to a
simple geometric proof. how is it that we accept the reasonableness of
a stepwise proof? in some deep way we share a set of axioms and the
ways we can handle them, the proof convinces us of its truthfulness,
or its reasonableness by reference to this logical system. what i am
interested in is this 'convincing' activity.

when i started the learning curve on creation-evolution last sept, one
of the first big articles i read was a paper on pseudogenes. what is
important is that it convinced me that humans and chimps shared a
common ancestor. what happens in some way is that we accept a body of
logic, theories, reasonableness; from this we draw 'reasonable'
conclusions, a process of being convinced.

i imagine faith is similar, what is different is the system that
surrounds us as we are involved in the process of being convinced. its
axioms, facts, etc are analogous to reason's but they are different.
In a historical faith like Christianity, part of faith's system is the
rational system. faith looks like something on top of, in addition to
rationality, rather that being opposed to it.

that is why your statement "faith is believing things for which you
have no evidence" is something i would question. for i look at faith
not as something i believe despite the evidence but rather something i
believe in addition to the evidence. faith is like a additional level
of certainity that you add to just not quite enough.

maybe a law analogy would help clarify my thoughts here.

we have introduced different burdens of proof.
fundamentally because we recognize that evidence and convincing are
probability based.

civil trials have something like preponderance. like 51% is good
enough.
criminal have something called, 'beyond reasonable doubt", maybe we
set a level of 95%+

faith essential takes a 'beyond reasonable doubt and makes it certain.
or maybe takes preponderance and makes it 'beyond reasonable doubt'
depending on the topic. when we are unable to reasonable move up the
limits yet we think in order to operate we need the next level of
certainity, then faith jumps in an pushes the topic up a level.

Subject: is faith rational?

i've been trying to work out an example of how faith builds on reason
not opposed to it.

i think the resurrection of Jesus is the key element of Christian
theology. i believe to have faith in the resurrection is not contrary
to reason thus:

we have reasonable testimony from eyewitnesses.
just because i have never seen anyone rise from the dead, as an
inductive proof, it is possible to believe that someone did. the
reasons would be supernatural, the why and how, of the resurrection.
but unlike science, theology is certainly not limited to naturalist
reasons.
as a matter of a bigger circle of previous knowledge the Scriptures
provide all kinds of supporting evidence, prophecy, consistent
interpretation etc.

now take another possible resurrection scene.
rather than a crucifixion, say Jesus was excecuted by chopping off
His head like the Chinese did in the same time frame. and that the
Gospels futhermore have Jesus returning from the dead with His head
in his hands. this is contrary to beliefs that it is required to have
your central nervous system intact to live. likewise you could
imagine the head talking, this contradicts the need for air to
originate in the lungs and be pushed past the vocal cords to make the
words. this in a real way is contrary to reason. to believe this i
would have to have faith despite reason. while in the actual
resurrection i believe because of the evidence. i see a significance
difference between the two.

richard williams