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

2003-02-24T08:30:00.000-08:00

what's at stake? and is creationism especially YEC the best or right way to defend it?
------------------------------------------------------------
from the following long quote from Miller:
" Morris had been unable to answer the geological data on the earth's age I had presented the night before, and it had badly damaged his credibility with the audience. Nonetheless, he looked me straight in the eyes. "Ken, you're intelligent, you're well-meaning, and you're energetic. But you are also young, and you don't realize what's at stake. In a question of such importance, scientific data aren't the ultimate authority. Even you know that science is wrong sometimes."

This is the slippery slope to unbelief argument that has so occupied my mind for the last few months.

The God revealed to us through the Scriptures is real, and He really created the universe. Now if at this point in time it looks as if the entire edifice of science is going to prove that religion is just a module in our evolutionarily designed brains, and that belief in God will soon, like belief in dwarves, and pixies be looked at as a mental problem. That does not change the nature of the universe. What we believe doesn't effect the world, it effects our activities in the world, but it doesnt change the world at all. If this is Gods' world, then no matter what current scientific thinking is, or how it explains away God, that edifice that science builds doesnt in any way change the facts about the world, only how people think about those facts.

that is why a fundamental scientific mindset tempered by the knowledge that God has revealed in Scripture things that are not shown to us in nature, the love and justice that revolves around Jesus,
is not ultimately afraid of science, despite its growing scientism. Morris expressed a fear that on a very low level, the age of the earth and of the universe, that science necessarily is wrong because to believe in an old earth is to challenge the fundamental Biblical believes he holds so valuable.

But scientism is wrong first on its metaphysical level, it is building idols to replace the Biblical God with. It is a system in competition with traditional theism. Furthermore it has made some good sound Biblically derived ideas fundamental and central to its vision of man and the world we inhabit. Foremost is the idea that the universe is desacralized, the creation is not God, and the subsequent understanding that it is good for Man to investigate and understand this world we find ourselves within.

As Christians we understand that creation is not God, that it was created good but because of our sinfulness it is fallen and is not longer good in very significant ways. But more importantly we realized that we are not good, that our minds are not clear but clouded. That our reason is not a good or fair judge of the evidence but it is in fact in rebellion towards God, justifying that rebellion by and with the elements it pulls from the world and presents as evidence that there is no God. Science even as a methodology, even as a technic of observation and explanation does not have clean hands in the debate about God, but rather will share with unregenerate man the desire to slay God and make Him irrelevant to the entire conversation of modern science. So in significant ways i end up agreeing with A. Kuyper that there are two sciences, regenerate and unregenerate which from the examination of the smallest fact, to the expounding of the grandest theory of everything are at odds because they worship different Gods.

Science is wrong from the top down, it is not as easy a proposition that to believe in a young earth. To hold to faith despite the facts. What i am calling an unreasonable faith versus a faithful reason. It is to look like modern science from the outside, to believe in an old universe, that God uses evolution to create, to look to many Christians as if you have abandoned the faith. When in fact, you are agreeing with the secularist, materialist, naturalist, evolutionist etc from the facts up, but not the metaphysics, not the religion. And now the real work needs to begin, how to go back over those facts and demonstrate that having a different metaphysics changes even what appears as a brute fact into an interpreted fact that supports the Biblical God.

This will be a much more difficult science than creation science ever aspired to be, For it means not to distance yourself from a mortal enemy in scientism, but to live intimately with it. Intertwined with the work of science, looking to be indistinguishable, open to every attack from the brethren as being compromisers, collaborationists. In order that you understand not just the science as well as do the secularist but that you have another whole field to master, theology. To then start the process of rebuilding science with Biblical presuppositions, with a Godly metaphysics.

It is rather more easy to just put your foot down, here i stand on a 6000 year old earth, i can do no other, God so help me. Then to take a longer view that this is God's world, and rightly guided science will support theism, will support much of the Scriptures. The problem is that man is in rebellion towards the God of this universe and he will always try to substitute worship of the creation for righteous worship of The Creator. We may play the same tune on the bandwagon of science as do the secularist, but we play for a different reason, and for a different audience.

2003-02-24T07:48:00.000-08:00

this is a long extract from keith miller's book _finding darwin's god_ p 172-173
----------------------------------------------------------------
Are such opponents of evolution sincere? Several years ago, I was invited to Tampa, Florida, to debate the issue of evolution with Henry Morris, founder of the Institute for Creation Research and one of the most influential of the young-earth creationists. The debate had been occasioned by the passage of a curriculum mandating the inclusion of so-called creation science in high school biology. In front of a large audience, I hammered Morris repeatedly with the many errors of "flood geology" and did my best to show the enormous weight of scientific evidence behind evolution. One never knows how such a debate goes, but the local science teachers in attendance were jubilant that I scored a scientific victory.17

As luck would have it, the organizers of this event had booked rooms for both Dr. Morris and myself in a local motel. When I walked into the coffee shop the next morning, I noticed Morris at a table by himself finishing breakfast. Flushed with confidence from the debate, I asked if I might join him. The elderly Morris was a bit shaken, but he agreed. I ordered a nice breakfast, and then got right to the point. "Do you actually believe all this stuff?"

I suppose I might have expected a wink and a nod. We had both been paid for our debate appearances, and perhaps I expected him to acknowledge that he made a pretty good living from the creation business. He did nothing of the sort. Henry Morris made it clear to me that he believed everything he had said the night before. "But Dr. Morris, so much of what you argued is wrong, starting with the age of the earth!" Morris had been unable to answer the geological data on the earth's age I had presented the night before, and it had badly damaged his credibility with the audience. Nonetheless, he looked me straight in the eyes. "Ken, you're intelligent, you're well-meaning, and you're energetic. But you are also young, and you don't realize what's at stake. In a question of such importance, scientific data aren't the ultimate authority. Even you know that science is wrong sometimes."

Indeed I did. Morris continued so that I could get a feeling for what that ultimate authority was. "Scripture tells us what the right conclusion is. And if science, momentarily, doesn't agree with it, then we have to keep working until we get the right answer. But I have no doubts as to what that answer will be." Morris then excused himself, and I was left to ponder what he had said. I had sat down thinking the man a charlatan, but I left appreciating the depth, the power; and the sincerity of his convictions. Nonetheless, however one might admire Morris's strength of character; convictions that allow science to be bent beyond recognition are not merely unjustified - they are dangerous in the intellectual and even in the moral sense, because they corrupt and compromise the integrity of human reason.

My impromptu breakfast with Henry Morris taught me an important lesson-the appeal of creationism is emotional, not scientific. I might be able to lay out graphs and charts and diagrams, to cite laboratory experiments and field observations, to describe the details of one evolutionary sequence after another; but to the true believers of creationism, these would all be sound and fury, signifying nothing. The truth would always be somewhere else.

2003-02-22T13:25:00.000-08:00

Three Wooden Crosses: Randy Travis.

Unknown.
(© Unknown.)
From "Rise And Shine", © 2002, Warner.

A farmer and a teacher, a hooker and a preacher,
Ridin' on a midnight bus bound for Mexico.
One's headed for vacation, one for higher education,
An' two of them were searchin' for lost souls.
That driver never ever saw the stop sign.
An' eighteen wheelers can't stop on a dime.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, Heaven only knows.
I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.

That farmer left a harvest, a home and eighty acres,
The faith an' love for growin' things in his young son's heart.
An' that teacher left her wisdom in the minds of lots of children:
Did her best to give 'em all a better start.
An' that preacher whispered: "Can't you see the Promised Land?"
As he laid his blood-stained bible in that hooker's hand.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, Heaven only knows.
I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.

That's the story that our preacher told last Sunday.
As he held that blood-stained bible up,
For all of us to see.
He said: "Bless the farmer, and the teacher, an' the preacher;
"Who gave this Bible to my mamma,
"Who read it to me."

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, now I guess we know.
It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway.

2003-02-22T12:20:00.000-08:00

QUOTE

If a person believes in evolution (macro) and believes also in a God, they must believe that this God created pain and suffering- based on the macro evolutionary processes. If pain and suffering has been created by God to bring about change and advancement than how can we say that this God is good. The bible teaches that in the Beginning God created everything good and he called it very good. It teaches that man brought death into existence and through that, pain and suffering. From the christian perspective we can say that GOD IS GOOD as God did not make the world as it is, with pain and suffering. But a theistic macro evolutionist cannot.

I have seen the argument that confuses theodicy with an old earth position before in AiG. The problem of evil is so complex it is really sad to see a deliberate attempt to use it to discredit an origins theory while trying to use it to booster your own. Look carefully at Gen 2:17, God curses the ground for Adam's sake. Even in your truncated, literalistic view GOD is the author of evil, period. Dont try to align your young earth view with some GOD is good and created no evil position in the theodicy problem while at the same time accusing old earth creationists of introducing evil into a good world. Try to do some careful thinking on the issue. Theodicy is a BIG problem, with a omnipotent, omniscent GOD there is no solution to the question without trust that GOD can solve it. But you do such a great disservice to the Christian community to imply that a YEC position solves it, and an OEC introduces it. This is simply not true. Both positions believe in a such a God as will yield an intracible theodicy question. I apologize for the tone of the message here, but it is this type of ad hominen argument that has the majority of Christians so confused on the question of origins and Genesis. Not even to mention the very bad effect on apologetics that a reasonably educated secularist can see the issues clearly than most of the members of our own community.
Separate the question of evil from the question of origins, you do yourself and your cause a great disservice by confusing them. In either system, YEC or OEC, the question of the introduction of evil into a world created by God needs to be faced. This is such a massive question that careful thinking will see that either system has the problem and to introduce it repeatly into the question of origins as if your side has solved it simply by saying that God created the world good is begging the question, in the worst possible way.

first, you are right, the curse is Gen 3:17, i am very sorry to have made the error. i am without excuse.

Again you repeat the YEC line that evil is introduced into the world with Adam's sin. That is good for my argument. Maybe if i calm down a little and explain myself better and more completely.

Here is the YEC argument as i understand it:
God pronounces the world good, several times during creation week.
If, as OEC contend, these days are long ages, then death must be present, logically so, during those long ages. death is evil, therefore evil introduced before the fall of Adam. Therefore theodicy, the problem of evil, falls onto the OEC position, thus disproving the OEC position UNLESS you desire God to be the author of evil. or to assert the presence of evil before the fall.

To me this is a massive confusion of the problem of evil, theodicy, and the problem of origins.
Certainly we will make great reference to origins to work on the problem of evil, but this is an attempt to shortcircuit the discussion(imho) by casting the OEC position as particularly hard to work with evil.

For evidence you may wish to read the AiG pages on the problem of death before the fall.
AiG on death before the fall

It is not that theodicy is such a problem that it ought not to be addressed. it is that the YEC criticism of death before the fall so confuses the two issues: theodicy, and origins, that it seems to use theodicy as a criticism of the OEC position. Essentially forcing the OEC position to uniquely answer theodicy before it can finish the elaboration of its origin question.

Theodicy stems first from the character of God, as omnipotent and omniscient. period. it has nothing to do with long ages, or short recent creation week. Yet the YEC issue a strong criticism of long ages by making death during those long ages such an issue. that is what i mean by confusion. separate the two issues.

First, OEC have death entering into the world before Adam's disobedience and God's curse on him, Eve and creation. In both systems YEC and OEC it is God's curse of creation that involves the creation of evil.

i need to be a little more careful with words however:
as the westminster confession states so compactly:

QUOTE
I. God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

the problem of sin, of evil. of theodicy. is how does God allow, without being the moral agent responsible for, ie author? that is another topic, for another place. my desire is to show how YEC confuse the two topics: origins and theodicy. in such a way as to excuse the OEC of introducing death, hence evil into a world labelled good by God, thus in essence accusing the OEC of all the problems of theodicy, while absolving the YEC position since it has such a short period of time from animal creation to Adam's fall that death might not have occurred until the curse.

At this point, it appears that i am hypersensitive to the issue, for this i apologize. For AiG in particular, seems so intent on burdening the OEC position with the stigma of introducing death into an old world, thus by inference denying the goodness of creation. This argument seems so sound to common sense that many Christians are apparently buying into the YEC scheme on this point alone.(i have several webpages where people attribute to the problem of death their firm conviction the YEC are properly interpreting Genesis).

It appears to be pushing the whole burden of theodicy onto the OEC position. when in fact any consistent Christian has a serious problem with theodicy no matter what their position on origins is.

--------

maybe to switch viewpoints will help me clarify what i think is going on:

QUOTE

I don't think the YEC need to argue about the goodness of God or the introduction of evil by God because the bible clearly states that evil was brought about by man. I think it is the theistic macro evolutuionists that must face that because their belief stands in opposition to the biblical view that man brought evil and death into the world rather than God.

You can see clearly that your quote requires the TE position to deal with theodicy as a part of their origins system. While YEC does not. It is as if you make solving theodicy a prerequiste for a consistent TE position on origins. When in fact, theodicy is unsolvable part of any Christian's world. The logic being that since TE as an explanation of origins requires a solution to theodicy before it can finish the origins explanation, that it can not be true, or complete....etc.

since both TE and OEC have death before the fall, since most people would interpret death as evil. therefore TE and OEC introduce evil before the fall. That pushes the problem of evil into the ages before the fall, this is what i mean by "putting the burden of theodicy onto the OEC position". in time, as a matter of priority, or as a matter of needing to explain, the OEC position encounters this question of death, in the form of the question of evil. The reason you dont think you need to argue the theodicy issue is that you have pushed it temporally onto the OEC position. Essentially requiring them to answer the unanswerable as part of their origins explanation. That is the point i am so desparately trying to make, in my own incoherent way. We have a common problem as Christians- theodicy, the YEC push the burden of the question onto the OEC since they see the problem earlier in their logic. The inplication being that the OEC position introduces evil/death into a good world.

The OEC position is that the death of not-human previous to the fall, is not evil, in the same sense that Adam's spiritual death after the Fall is a punishment for the evil of disobedience.

I guess all i what is to explain is how theodicy is confused with the death of creatures before the Fall.
This is what i mean by the confusion of big issues. the YEC position unreasonably confuses a already very confusing situation by its unwarranted introduction of theodicy into the conversation.

Again i apologize for the misquote of Scripture, the curse is Gen 3:17.
and for the strident tone, i really ought to be more respectful in tone, i usually am.

thanks for listening and sticky with the discussion despite me.
i hope this helps at least understand my position.

I feel so inadequate to the task of trying to clarify what i am referring to as the confusion of theodicy and origins. but like all insights it so dominates one's thinking that you see it everywhere.

QUOTE

I don't think I have just said that God created the world good and left it at that. I stated very clearly that the biblical view that God created the world to be VERY GOOD. The bible is very clear that death came after the fall as the result of God's judgement on man. if you believe that God created man so that he could suffer from things such as famine, rape, war, hunger, poverty.....so that he could progress and things today have always been from the beginning than from God's action- what would you call Him. If I am wrong than how would you address this issue that theist macroevolutionists must ultimately face? Secondly, what other reasons would I need to have to bring up the issue of the goodness of God when I am addressing the THEISTIC macroevolutionist view. How would I go about doing such a thing when the very nature of the discussion has to do with God and macro evolution. I fail to see why this is an ad hominen.

The Bible is clear that evil entered into the world with Adam's disobedience.
It's, (evils) potential existed before in the person of the snake, and in the potential for Adam's disobedience due to his(adam's) genuine freedom to choose. The actualization of evil came with the act of disobedience.

It is also clear that the death of God's curse, in Gen 3:17, is the spiritual death of Adam first, and his(adam's) subsequent physical death as punishment for sin. It is a jump from this to the death of animals before the fall. i believe an unwarranted jump done for the express purpose of moving theodicy onto anyone who believes anything but a literal creation week, and a young earth position. As proof i offer your words--"famine rape war hunger poverty. These are theodicy questions. By making the logical jumps from evil in disobedience, to spiritual death for Adam in the curse to physical death, to physical death for animals. You push the burden of theodicy onto the TE origins position. How to justify the death and suffering of animals before Adam's fall, as a theodicy question. Thus effectively requiring TE to solve the unsolvable(theodicy) as a exercise in the origins problem to explain the presence of death in the pre Fall world. Essentially, God couldn't create evil in the world, death of animals is evil, therefore God couldnt create in long ages, since death occurs in them. Furthermore since death entered into the world with Adam's sin, no animal death could have occurred previous to Adam's fall.

A two pronged attack on long creation ages, predictated on the curse being physical death, not just of Adam/Eve but of all creatures. Since i interpret the curse to be first, spiritual, second a later physical death as a result of the spiritual death, the curse has nothing to do with creatures dying at all. Secondly evil is a catagory only applicable to the human sphere of ethics. 3.5 billion years of evolution have no ethical content at all, God can pronounce the universe GOOD at any point up to the curse where He Himself creates the punishments for sin, where the world begins to reflect the evil that man introduced into the world.

Now that feels a lot better as an adequate defense of my thoughts.
thanks for the opportunity.

richard williams

2003-02-22T08:35:00.000-08:00

begin to work on the methodological naturalism essay.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
i am working on the problem of methodological naturalism.
i have just the outline begun at: http://www.azstarnet.com/~rmwillia/methodological_naturalism.html

your essay on naturalism in science is such an excellent synopsis of the issue that i really wanted to talk to you about it.

"this restriction to natural causes for natural events is what gives science its explanatory power."
This sentence is fanastic because it leads to some very interesting ideas.

first how you mean for it to say. since we are restricted to naturalistic answers, we can not introduce a 'science stopper' type of supernatural explanation thus forcing the naturalist to pursue the chain of explanations to their lowest possible levels. it is understanding in this basic underlying level that gives science it's great explanatory power(likewise later to been discussed predictive power). for unlike pure technic which often halts when it has a good enough tool, science with this deep explanatory theoretical level just keeps on producing higher levels of technological objects.

sciences explanatory power comes from the complete chains of reasoning down to a fundamental level of scientific theorizing. a big side benefit is that naturalism allows lots of different kinds of people to cooperate on this scientific enterprise. without naturalism we would break up into little pieces like religion/theology does and argue each in their little hole. to a great extend the explanatory power comes from sheer volume. the fact that supernatural explanations are often 'science stoppers' is the flip side of your argument, that they stop science prematurely.

second, it is not the restriction to naturalism that gives science its explanatory power however.
the restriction allows science to reach those levels. it is a necessary condition, but neither sufficient nor CAUSATIVE.

like me try to explain.

explanatory power is a judgement of utility on science. we think of science as being good because it works. the better it works, ie wide/great explanatory power the better it is. these are moral/ethical judgements where we try to understand science as a system. it is because utility is such a common and such a high ethical value that you can use it to support naturalism without people thinking twice about it.

but for me it re-anchors the discussion into the realm of people's desires.
so the full line of reasonings becomes: i believe that utility is good, things that work are good, explanatory power makes science work very good, naturalism allows explanatory chains of reasoning to extend as far as possible in the material world, this gives us the greatest explanatory power likewise a good thing.

the causative agent is the curiousity of mankind, which if allowed to pushes these explanatory chains downward through the layers of scientific theory.
if i visualize science like the little kid who keeps asking why. each layer is a substantially deeper, more complex, more scientific, less technological explanation. but naturalistic methodology doesnt cause it, it allows it.

richard williams

2003-02-21T13:42:00.000-08:00

There is an undercurrent in the YEC community, not just their
representatives here or on other discussion boards but in AiG, ICR,
and in print. I am not quite sure what to label it, but i am sure you
all will help.

Here's is their line of reasoning:

Scripture requires obedience to its framework. Analogous to God
requiring obedience from His creation-us.

Science and its representatives, unbelieving secular materialist (go
add your favorite words here) propose an evolutionary method for
explaining the same kinds of things that the Bible explains. origin of
man, reason for our existence, how to live a good life, and what
happens to us after death.

Then they align Faith with them, and allow the opposite in their mind
Reason to default to the OTHER, to the DARK SIDE, evolutionary science.

Then they defend their actions on the grounds that it is more faithful
to God to follow their led then it is to follow the secularists.

What seems so cut and dried to them is really a false set of
dichomotomies that cut the world into the wrong pieces.

Faith is not opposed to reason. It is as if to the YEC to believe the
most wild unreasonable thing is to be congratulated on his ability to
ignore the facts and hold onto faith despite the obvious.

But in the Scripture faith is never presented opposite the facts, it
is presented as a addendum to the facts. The way to interpret the
facts properly by added the thing that is missing from the facts. It
as if the facts take you almost all the way, but faith is needed to
get to the finish point. Faith is never presented as unreasonable, it
is presented as extra reason, past reason, beyond reason, but not
opposite.

again i see this position as defending the indefensible. I see God as
requiring faithful reason from us, not unreasonable faith.

richard williams

2003-02-21T08:56:00.000-08:00

problem of induction
----------------------------
nice complete essay piece on arrow of time as well.

2003-02-20T08:34:00.000-08:00

post to reformed group on yahoo.

------------------------------------------------
Here's a brief outline of my current big overview picture of evolution.

I've being thinking about the parable of the wheat and the tares.

From the theonomists i get a historical view of two world and life views becoming more aware of themselves and the consequences of their thinking. The Christian community and for want of a better description the secularist naturalist community.

My immediate issue is to understand if we, as Christians especially those informed by insights from such theologians as Abraham Kuyper and C. Vantil are justified in using a tool called methodological naturalism.

I have a couple of principles to bring to bear on the subject:

1-I understand that tools, methods etc carry with them more than just simply an objective existence. Tools remake their users in very significant ways. They not only direct the users attention in specific ways, (the message of the old joke about the man whose only tool is a hammer) but their use itself 'bias' the users in ways particular to the tool that the user may be unaware of even.

2-we are to be consistent in our lives. Consistent to the best and biggest, most important principles we believe. I am thinking of a scene in a movie where the priest is walking down the line of blasting cannons sprinkling holy water on them and blessing them. Just because a tool works in some significant ways, that is no reason to adopt it IF it is wrong in some high level reasoning.

3-then i have the usual conservative reformed thought- this is God's world, it reflects His reasoning and His character. common grace allows God to rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, but for different reasons, but it is the same rain. The noetic effects of sin will blind reason in very broad ways so that we can not completely trust our vision of the universe. the two books of God are Scripture and the universe in very important ways they will not contradict each other or themselves.
-------
So i look at the adoption of methodological naturalism simply as a technic, as a 'hammer', as a tool that allows several important things to happen:

1-allows all humans to cooperate to an immense degree in the scientific enterprise. for at some very important level we see the same world. a subproblem is "is this a tower of babel issue?" but for right now i will ignore this potential and concentrate on the 'fact' that cooperation is good. building a structure of science is good in just the fact that people cooperate together, peaceably.

2-science appears for all evidence to be yielding fundamentally important true insights into the creation. that is the edifice of modern science appears to be correctly describing the universe we live in, that God made.

3-a question of utility, in that the knowledge is truely predictive and is very useful, in that it really works effectively. I take these to be not just support for the truthfulness or correctness of the edifice of science but to be things that God intends for us to do. Think God's thoughts after Him, to have dominion...

Now the big problem is the relationship of methodological to metaphysical naturalism. We will always be metaphysical supernaturalists, we will always anchor our thoughts in the person of God. I understand that metaphysical naturalism is a statement by unregenerate, natural man that he is the ultimate determiner of truth and arbitrator of what is significant and what is not important. I have no problem in dealing with the metaphysical position as at war with God. my problem is how far to co operate in the use of the methodological principle.

Kuyer would have the Christian community build a second science parallel to the one we have, with a difference all the way down in the very facts it works with. Vantil in his analysis of "no brute facts" would point us towards the same solution. We would share the world with the secularist but at a very significant level we would be in different intellectual worlds since we would insist that on the level of the facts our worlds collide. Let allow the entire edifices of the two sciences would differ at every interpretive point. Every branch, every choice between options would be judged on very different sets of assumptions.

interesting enough is the idea that this 2nd science is what the young earth creationists are doing. i dont believe it, i have come to the conclusion that the YEC are political/social creatures with a religious not a scientific agenda. but to the outsider it would look like the YEC are doing what Kuyer proposed. This just complicates the problem without showing any real light on what this 2nd science might look like.
-----------

So the issue appears to be:
1-adopt methodological naturalism as a working principle aware that at some point, yet to be determined, the believing scientist would jump off the wagon and in essence declare that it broke at this point. That furthermore another supernaturalist methodology along will explain properly. I see this as how to understand Howard Vantil who is the most vocal conservative Christian supporting the whole edifice of modern evolutionary biology.

2-scrap the methodological naturalism and strive to build a supernaturalist methodology consistent from its inception to the principles of supernaturalism.

So this is where i am rather stuck. I am concentrating my reading on the first generation to encounter Darwin. Roughly 1850-1900, reading as much as i can about how Princeton scholars reacted to Darwin and to the preaching of A. Huxley. I have several profitable books on the pile now but am always interested in reading recommendations.

What is complicating the issue is that Biblical higher criticism arose at the same time, from the same evolutionary mindset. With the two pieces, darwinian evolution and higher criticism, the church really divided in the 1920's with those who allow/encouraged the principles, including methodological naturalism, to criticize/modify the faith and those who resisted rewritting the basics of the faith.
I am conscious of being in the stream of modern day conservative, more fundamentalist thought, so i watch the leading edge of the liberal church for signs that the principles they adopted in the early 19th C drive them to unbelieving positions. I in fact, see that as the case, so i know there is a logic towards adopting tools, where the tools force changes in the big picture, despite the tool users better judgement.

thanks for listening,
you can see my problem, maybe you can see a way to solve it as well.

richard williams

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

links

plantinga on methodological naturalism

vuletic

ebon musings

2003-02-19T07:48:00.000-08:00

at apologetics.com

You bring up several points, i'll respond to just one.

quote: But the one thing I still don't understand is the need for a god. And what I understand even less is why we should need a biblical god.

You should find several different answers to this question in the Christian community. One answer will follow Augustine's God-shaped piece analogy. Another long standing reply will argue first that mankind is inescapably religious, and secondly will point to the usual evidential apologetics for Christianity. I think these fail to adequately penetrate a scientific frame of mind for several reasons.

First, Augustine's argument presupposes that the people look internally and feel this God-shaped piece. The problem with a scientific frame of mind, especially one with knowledge of current psychological or religious theory is that an explanation is already given for such a piece. It is explained as an evolutionary mechanism to cement together human communities so that they function more efficently. An origin of alturism argument writ large. So even if someone is aware of their God-shaped piece the argument doesn't resonate with them as it did since Augustine's day.

The argument that man is inescapably religious falls short because it doesnt assume that man's inescapably religious nature can only be satisfactorily filled by the Christian Gospel. It assumes a two step process where the second step is 'normal' Christian apologetics.

The modern scientifically based, secular frame of mind, has in many significant ways been inoculated against the Christian Gospel because it has internalized many of the significant elements of the faith, without accepting the crucial elements that involve supernaturalist explanations.

One of these crucial elements is the origin and subsequent fall of man's consciousness. It is critical to both a Christian world and life view and to a secular scientific one as the individual, the person who is being presented the message is himself/herself the product of this chain of events.

Who are you, who am i, who is the next person that reads these lines? In one creation story, we are the results of aeons of evolutionary mechanism that honed and fashioned a me that sits here now. And a you. That leads me to the problem of "how do I trust the mind of a monkey?", how is it that my consciousness is able to grasp of much of the universe in a way that is both satisfactory and functional? I am interested in consciousness research, i find it both interesting and mildly amusing the there seems to be a religious module in human brains. Likewise i am interested in the current debate over socio-biology and the origin of alturism, for there is an understanding that here are things that need explanation.

but science essentially jumps the explanation fence and assumes that if we havent found a naturalistic answer that he will in the future. So that the adherents of this world and life view are not internally bothered that there remains so many things unanswered. Analogous to places where orthodox Christians posit the unfathomable mysteries of God, science poses a future solution to all problems. This is adequate to feed most hungers for answers now, for like StarTrek becomes our mythos, the answers may not be known now but they will be.

The problem is that science is hitting the basic unknowables of the universe in very significant ways. This is the take home message of Heisenberg's uncertain principle, Godel's proof relating consistency and completeness, quantum mechanics explanations of both wave and particle. We know now that there will be many questions that we can direct to the universe that we will not be able to answer, and we will know that we can not answer them. Science essentially will always find itself with important explanatory gaps, rooted in the very nature of the universe it proposes to study.

There is another very important angle to me concerning the "mind of a monkey problem" and that is the message of ecology. If there every was an important thing to learn from a science it is the lesson of "unintended consequences" from ecology and how the modern world is undermining its very material basis of life. It is pure, unadulrated HUBRIS to read ecology and not see that mankind both as individuals and as groups is screwing up the world-bigtime. And Science and its powerful tools hooked to the doctrine of unintended consequences is explanation enough.

It is things like this that illustrate Science and Scientism as the faith it is. It is a religion, a religion of MAN, it is part of a faith that has been around since mankind was first conscious of himself and the world around us. It is MAN's self centered, egotistical faith that we can by the strength of our arms and the brillance of our thoughts conquer both the universe and ourselves. In many ways it is our first faith, that our mother's breasts exist only to supply us with nourishment. And most of modern mankind never outgrow this first ego-centric faith that the world is here to produce us. That the universe exists only to feed, cloth, and supply playtoys for us.

We may give lip service in science to Galileo moving the center of the solar system from the earth to the sun. We may believe that evolution is random and directionless. But Scientism is the fundamental egotism that the universe exists only as matter for us to manipulate. That is is good to learn physics in order to build bombs to incinerate countless people, again. that MAN is the MEASURE of all things.

If you dont see the fundamental contradictions in the faith of scientism then you are simply blinded by the light. the light that mankind has achieved by careful study of the universe as if it existed only for our benefit. From Edison' electric light to the flash of atomic bombs, we are blinded by our own creations. The raw power, the simple utilitarian functionality has blinded us to the fact that they are TOOLS. things to do a job, to fulfull a function.

But science cant supply those ends, it supplies only means, and as the old joke about a man whose only tool is a hammer. Science turns ends into means. It co-opts philosophy to supply imaginary ends to its tools. it becomes itself a god, and feeds upon its adherents. People are goal orientated. The very fact that we will all die means at some level we must get something done. Something we label good, righteous, beautiful. But this are qualities. This are how we judge between competing goals or priorities. Science can't give you things ideas. Only a faith can.

No, i find it much easier to believe in the traditional orthodox Christian God who explains to me carefully that i am not the center of the universe, He is. that my studies of the universe are not for making more toys, in more malls, in more countries forever. but that the purpose of my life is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Scientism, like most religious inverts God planned order, and puts the created on a platform, speaking ex cathedra Scientism tells us "what you see is what you get" even if in doing so we will destroy the world that supports our lives.

science is a mean to ends that it can't define, scientism is a faith that it has found those ends inside the created universe, and therefore substituted the creation for the Creator.

2003-02-18T08:01:00.000-08:00

reply on apolegtics.com

As people we build systems of thought, we try to relate our experiences of the world together. For those in power in any society religion presents a unique opportunity to co-opt and use to support the present holders of power. To the cynical and more realist that is what Constantine tried to do with Christianity in the 5th century. this continued and aggravated the problem that all theistic religions have with becoming intertwined with the cultures they find themselves in. These are problems not of the religion but of the religion-tied-to-closely-to-culture. They need to be critized as such, but separated from the claims of the religion itself.

Christianity has intertwined in significant ways with Western European or American culture. It has also supplied the intellectual underpinnings for many pieces of the philosophic thought systems for our shared culture. Many of the most cogent and serious questions directed at the faith are actually problems of this intertwining where Christians themselves mistook culture for crucial elements of the faith.

Take a simple example from your second letter. Swearing an oath in court on the Bible. In fact it is not done anymore for various reason. The fact of the matter is that the Bible itself prohibits the practice. Matt 5:33-37 clearly teaches that the practice is not right. Yet it evolved in a primarily Christian context despite the teachings of the religion. So what we have is a proper criticism of an improper intertwining of religion and pieces of the cultural complex it finds itself in historically.

The real criticism of Christianity itself that you propose is that it is nothing more than a pale reflection of Isis worship.
[URL=http://www.askwhy.co.uk/awmob/awpagan/pag280RELOsiris.html]
Osiris and Isis, the Heavenly Mother[/URL]
likewise there are criticisms levelled against Christianity about it being a type of Mythras worship
[URL=http://www.litjournal.com/docs/fea_pagan2.html]
the hidden legacy[/URL]

But in these discussions the problem of syncretism agains raises its many faceted head. But since Christianity is a revealed religion with a historical book the solution is in the words of the book rather than being located in the way different times interpreted/exgeted that book for their times.

The big question on the Scriptures concerning this is how God uses the mental structures of both the writers of the various pieces and how He uses the cultural complex of the times in order to present a book that is on one hand cultural and on the other hand timeless, directed at believers through out time. It is in this discussion that you will find answers on the relationship of Christianity to Isis. Not so much to Mythras because the New Testament was written before the massive influence of Persian orientated Mythras worship in Roman military culture.

One only for a moment needs to reflect that the Hebrew spent generations in Egypt to realize that common themes and vocabulary must have influenced the Hebrew Bible. But before discussing those issues i wonder if the issue is really about the connections of the Bible to Isis or whether that is just an issue of tactics. Christianity has problems, as long as it relies on faulty, error prone, self seeking human beings to propagate its thoughts, we will continue to misinterpret and misuse it. But somehow each person works on separating out what is human dross from what is God given revelation. That is the crucial key to the faith. It proposes a system of thought where the creator, sustainer of the universe is also known as the redeemer. Where the God becomes human to be a sacrifice for sin. Now sacrifice is a common theme in history and in the world today. In many important ways Christianity is first given meaning in Roman terms. but it is the timeless, themes underneath and through these terms that makes Christianity unique.

This is where the parallels to Isis fail. Mythos is always presented outside historical time, stories of redemption, sacrifice, payback are common themes in human thought. The unique contribution of Hebrew thought was to historize the discussion. To posit a real God behind the activities of the universe. To believe that a real human being who walked in 1st century Palestine. Who died a criminal's death for sedition. And whose followers didnt seek power but oftentimes found death testifying that they saw a risen Lord.

scientism as religion.

There is an undercurrent through both your letters and likewise throughout the scientific community of a faith in science. This is a religious-like projection of science as method into the world of philosophy/religion/metaphysics. It is rapidly becoming the faith of our age. supported by its own creation story-evolution, buttressed by its own priesthood of secular believers in the progress of science and its ability to explain all. and thus to save us all from our own impulses and our own ignorance.

This scientism is comfortable and fits well the people of our age. Which is above all else utilitiarian. What works is good, right, and even beautiful. But it is a faith. It many significant ways it is Christianity without the supernaturalism. It is a logical way of seeing the progression throughout history of crucial ideas. This is often what secular people see as the throwing off of supernatural myth. but it is a faith in people. the same people who brought us so much horror in the past, only now unrestrained by any concept of a judgement for their crimes after death.

To get a handle on scientism as faith you need to see how modern societies answer their religious questions:
how did i get here?
where am i going?
and how do i live a good life in between?

While you are involved in that activity, realize that in one significant way that Christianity gave birth to the modern scientism is in the accent on the individual and his/her ability to judge, accept, receive wisdom. This is a piece of both faiths, although i personally doubt that it is fundamental part of a Biblical view.

But try to look internally and see that you exercise a faith, not unlike mine in general terms. It is a faith in science, in historical progress, in utility. Then look under the hood, and see if your faith, in mankind, is due to historical events, badly misplaced.

richard williams

2003-02-17T17:47:00.000-08:00

non euclidean geometry

The Ontology and Cosmology of Non-Euclidean Geometry

Two Philosophical Mistakes in Poincaré

Creative Thinking and
Critical Thinking
in Science

2003-02-17T08:20:00.000-08:00

on apologetics.com in response to a secularist post that the bible was significantly flawed and the faith foolishness....

am curious about why you would take a significant amount of time to write your essay here? you must obviously be aware that your time on earth here is limited. since death marks the end of all your activities and completely takes you out of the discussion here and on any other places that you post, you are wasting a significant amount of time writing about and thinking about religion which obviously from your message is of negative survival value.

instead you ought to be making babies and teaching them as best you can so that your genes and your ideas are passed down to the next generation in as efficent and effective manner as possible.

but yet you are here, wasting your time, writing about a obsolete and psychologically damaging creation of people's minds called the Christian faith. why? there are much more interesting science related sites to be reading and getting information out of while you are teaching your kids about the great evils of organized religion and how beneficial this new age is where religion is dying out as fast as secularist can make it.

but you are here. why? is it because you wish to enflame people into some kind of heated debate where everyone shouts and loudly insists that Christianity is not at all like the thing you described.

but that would mean you would be spending even more time here, now reading as well as writing more. reading Christian posts which obviously as worthless are a waste of time, like reading the Bible, i assume you did read it before you wrote your message. so again that would involve more wasting your time.

so i dont understand why you would take the time to post here. it is the secularists who never visit an apologetics site that are consistent to their beliefs. it is those who when they encounter the Christian Gospel who just yawn briefly and ignore it that are consistent to their secular beliefs. those who get upset and think about things or respond to things that are thinking maybe my beliefs are so air tight as i thought.

so maybe there is a chance you are actually here to learn. in that case, think about spending your time wisely, for death ends all of our posting to useless and useful places. ends all our activities and what happens next after death will show the significance of the science sites and the apologetics sites you visited in life. additionally death will separate you forever from the wife you mention and from all the little kiddies you so carefully raised and taught the secularist gospel to. think a moment about that and why you are wasting so much time replying to a faith that is so backwards, so ancient, so full of lies and deliberate falsehoods.

and if you return to reply to me now, i will assume that you havent anything better to do with the thin slice of time you are allotted on this earth than to talk about what the Bible really means, or what the faith really teaches.

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

question came up on religionscience yahoo groups about euclidean geometric system. investigate.

question:
in light of noneuclidean geometries and space time looks like a hyperbolic space, what is true about euclidean system? what can we learn about the chain of events seen in topic?

2003-02-16T15:18:00.000-08:00

logos and mythos
-----------------------

star trek is mythos.
to be believable to our culture it must be historical, even though it is in the future we find it belivable since it is a projection of current culture. the themes star trek covers, and often the way it does it are the same themes mythos has always engaged in. what makes people fight. what gives plain lives meaning and significance.

2003-02-14T21:38:00.000-08:00

--- In ontheoriginofspecies@yahoogroups.com,

>
> Hello Richard, I don't see any point to limiting the discussion to christianity,or even the supernatural. Not all pseudo science is supernatural.Lysenkoism is an example.I am assuming from your address that you are a creationist.
> A methodological approach would only establish continuity in the praxis. I am fully fully aware of methodological theonomy.Thing is do we make the model to fit the facts or do we make the facts to fit the model?
> I need to know more about your position before I can discuss further.

i'm working on the issues. i really dont have a well developed position. mostly i find that i learn what i believe in the give and take of the arguments.

my big question now(to me) is certainly related to the essay as posted.
and it is related to your statement "do we make a model to fit the facts or do we make the facts to fit the model?"

the essay works backwards from the metaphysical position that a naturalist thinks is true to the methodology adopted (in order to analyze the universe effectively) to what can it accomplish in the physical world. in particular to fulfull its aims of explaining the real world(truthfully). i believe this is analogous to making the facts fit the model.

maybe an example from another field i need to know/work on just now will help clarify my thoughts a little on this matter.

in tax law. you are responsible for keeping records. but the level/sophistication of the record keeping is not specified. rather there is this general rule "you are responsible for keeping the records that a person, both reasonable and prudent, in your occupation who exercising due diligence and a responsible matter would do"[these are my words, not a quote]. what that means is that the standard is not explicit, but if you run a multimillion dollar per year business you better not be keeping your records in a shoe box. likewise i once went to tax court with a simple ledger, one entry per dollars in/out, and that was sufficent.

what this has to do with the essay and the matter at hand is that both start with the individual and have expectations of his behavior. but neither specify exactly what the elements of the behavior must be inorder to be consistent with the metaphysical position. just as the definition of naturalist methodology was that which is performed by a metaphysical naturalist. top down reasoning. build the models, look for the data to fit[an exageration] both apparently deductive reasoning models. no particular elements, like no particular bookkeeping requirements are specified as being in keeping with/being necessary to the situation.

so the tool in each case-one methodological naturalism, in the other bookeeping rules- is just what the person doing it says it is. i am more than just uncomfortable with this type of setup. basically because it anchors the tool into the consciousness of the tooluser. how would you criticize bad tool formation? that's why judges are needed in tax courts, because the standards are not well defined. balancing and analysis is needed. what is a reasonable person? likewise who's methodological naturalism? it appears in most cases simple to devolve to what works, what is efficent, what seems reasonable.

my basic argument with the model is something like:
you get what you put into the model.
tools bias the outcome, (to a man with just a hammer, all problems are thought of as nails)
if you start with naturalism how do you end up with anything but naturalism?

the object of the essay appears to be how to use methodological naturalism to decide questions of supernatural intervention. a direct attack back on the ID people and their outspoken desire to drive a wedge between naturalist methodologies and metaphysical naturalism.

sorry the message got so long, it didnt start out that way. *grin*

thanks for listening.
richard williams

2003-02-14T09:32:00.000-08:00

--- In ontheoriginofspecies@yahoogroups.com,

entire paper
>
> Library: Modern Documents : Mark Vuletic: Methodological Naturalism and the Supernatural
>

> Supernatural forces, if they exist, cannot be observed, measured, or recorded by the procedures of science - that's simply what the word "supernatural" means. There can be no limit to the kinds and shapes of supernatural forces and forms the human mind is capable of conjuring up from "nowhere." Scientists therefore have no alternative but to ignore "claims" of the existence of supernatural forces and causes.
> Methodological naturalism leaves no room for appeals to the supernatural.
> Science must follow the procedures of methodological naturalism to accomplish its aims.

> First, I take methodological naturalism to be the practice of adhering to the kind of methodology a metaphysical naturalist devoted to fulfilling the aims of science would adhere to. Methodological supernaturalism, correspondingly, is the practice of adhering to the kind of methodology a metaphysical supernaturalist devoted to fulfilling the aims of science would adhere to. Astute readers will note that these two categories are not altogether mutually exclusive - a point which will resurface later on in the paper.

------my reply follows

as someone who is struggling with the nexus of issues around methodological naturalism this paper doesnt help much at all.

he DEFINES MN to be the way a metaphysical naturalist would reason.

but to a theist the whole problem with methodological vs metaphysical is that metaphysical principles are by definition NOT science. for a theist the very problem is the relationship of methodological to philosophic in the angle that to adopt the method entails an eventual adoption of the philosophy to be consistent. the whole idea for a theist is NOT to adopt the ways a metaphysical naturalist would do, but rather look at what principles by the nature of the physical world we can agree on.

frankly i am rather surprised at the definition. for if the definition is true, and philosophic supernaturalists accept it then the only logical reason is for the two to completely part company from the very beginning of the scientific enterprises and lead to what Abraham Kuyer called the two sciences position, from the very definitions.

what i would expect from a paper like this is to show how much the two positions: philosophic super/naturalist share in the use of methodological naturalism as a TECHNIC of observing the universe to produce science. the point would be to try to figure out where the two in order to be consistent to their philosophic principles would part company on use of the methodological principles.

but rather than an explanation framed in shared principles we get a "tongue-in-cheek" parallelism of how the two methodological super/naturalism would work side by side. with comments like:
" If the methodological supernaturalist remains devoted to
empiricism as a means of collecting data, I would expect him to eventually end
up with a whole pantheon of different dwarves that correspond to the different
types of chemical bonds that can exist"

the paper, imho, is nothing more than a nasty polemic against philosophic supernaturalism by showing that it can do only silly thing s with its principle of methodological supernaturalism.

when this is a straw man issue to begin with.
for a philosophic supernaturalist the issue is when to switch methodological principles. when does the naturalist methodological principle break because the issue can NOT be explained in terms of matter in motion, but must instead be explained in terms of supernatural intervention.

from a Christian viewpoint the issue is clearer than just from a general supernaturalist position. the Christian God is the creator of the world and as such created a reasonable world which is separate from God. as such it is to be expected that methodological naturalism works, is in many ways and adequate description of what goes on in the real world. In fact this is the world and life view that gave rise to science as a methodology in the first place. the issue is if there are places where the method breaks in that the supernatural does intervene(deism-no theist-maybe/yes) and to try to figure out where if so.

at first reading the paper is interesting but not real instructive, at subsequent readings his faulty definitions and desire to belittle get the best of his argument.

richard williams
http://fastucson.net/~rmwillia
http://rmwilliamsjr.blogspot.com

2003-02-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

still thinking about the little girl song
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

>
> Then I will share what I know of the -many- sides.
>
> Naturalists, including myself, do not believe that supernatural
> means or events explain or have explained anything, ever. To infer
> a devious motive (e.g. 'in order to avoid the point') will only
> polarize the discussion and inhibit an objective discourse.
>

i can map a piece of the discussion:

i understand that what i believe about things colors the facts that i see "out there" in the world. but i dont know how significantly this "coloring" process is.

i see a logic in what we expect is what we get.

now try to unify these two ideas with the difference that a naturalist and a supernaturalist would say about the world.

if we say, i accept the working hypothesis of naturalism. for instance, methodological principles of "the world is made up of matter", "forces i see in action today, here, are the same forces i can hypothesis into the past and into different parts of the universe", "there is no reason to expect the supernatural will intervene in a natural world" (i am trying to word the big 3 assumptions of materialism, uniformity, naturalism as best i can)

my problem is that by accepting the presuppositions do i bias the conclusions in a significant way? that is by ruling out God's activity in the natural world via the naturalism principle do i by necessity blind myself to His activity?

going back to the piece of your reply that i quoted above:
>Naturalists, including myself, do not believe that supernatural
> means or events explain or have explained anything, ever

there is a statement of utility there. worded differently than you do but i think substantially the same--my principle of naturalism has never been violated in the past and therefore i have no need to reexamine its usage now because it has been effective in its explanatory power.

i think this is exactly why the arguments about presuppositions etc are not entirely a circular waste-of-time arguments. because we can choose to change presuppositions if we believe we have sufficient reason to do so. then we begin to rework the systems to make them consistent with our new changed presupposition(s).

------

maybe something a little more concrete will help me define this thought. go back to the song of the little girl. my presupposition in the discussion is that there are several levels to interpret the song at: highest level is something like the big picture of how the song fits into my world and life view. this is the level my idea that people in our culture take mythos and think of it in terms belonging to logos. its an example of a good story with a moralizing principle.

now there are lower levels. one deals with the intentions of the creator of the words. now was (s)he building on a story that (s)he heard? made up from a dream? just thought up out of the air?
i dont know. say for arguments sake (s)he is conscious of dreaming it up one night and awoke in the morning and wrote the song in an instant of inspiration.

does that change my high level theorizing about how modern scientifically trained people tend to over intellectualize things and look for historical and scientific explanations first? nay. because my argument rests on how people react to the song, whether or not it has an historical basis in the real world is irrelevant in my argument.

but say instead of looking at the song in these ways we look at it as proof that Jesus exists and will comfort those in need. going back to the breakpoint argument that the story evokes something in people because they need to believe. the unstated conclusion in breakpoint is that since people have the need there must be a "thing" to fulfill that need.

now this argument needs the historical basis in the song. people will be motivated to search for the author and maybe for the little girl herself. i see the logic of the argument pushing people to act in a historical manner.

what they expect to find conditions what they believe they have found.
in essential ways it sets up the universe of discourse where they look for answers to their questions. it narrows the search to a pre-conceived arena, in a significant way channels their energies into finding a particular kind of answer.

----end of post, it was too long, let alone continue

now the significant fact to me is that so many people call the radio station with the question "did it really happen?"

why? because if it really happened they that supports a very high level idea that Jesus exists and will comfort the afflicted. it involves proof to them of a continuing presence of Jesus and thereby miracles into this world of ours. They are looking for proof in an historical and scientific sense.

Now someone who finds the little girl. asks her if she really saw Jesus next to her. If you are a naturalist you KNOW that Jesus can not have been there physically, spiritually, emotional or what ever the case. It must be explained in naturalistic terms. She must if she believes it be imagining it in a very psychological way. For as a naturalistic would say "we know that Jesus can't do such a thing, therefore we must find another logical reasons for her belief". Now is this "closing the door" to supernaturalistic explanations legitimate? It is if the world/universe is naturalistic. It is legitimate if the presupposition is true. How do you know that the presupposition is true? because in all of my experience i have never needed to posit the supernatural for an explanation, therefore i do not need to do so now.

but that is an argument from induction. induction has a fatal flaw. it doesnt work quite as advertised. the best it yields is probabilistic knowledge not absolute truth.

2003-02-12T22:25:00.000-08:00

i need to start using the blog to take notes:
notes to myself and quotes from discussions to work on.
reading list blog ought to become, like stephen jones quote data base, a tool for reflection and stored knowledge.

reply from stephen jones on ced about my kuyper-warfield quotes in marsden. must remember to keep these two men in mind as archtypes...

on two sciences

And that therefore a science based on those false materialistic-naturalistic
"starting points and frameworks of assumptions", would, to the extent that
it depends on those false, "starting points and frameworks of assumptions",
be itself false.

But note that it says "*some* conclusions". In the vast majority of
cases, "Christians and non-Christians would reach" the same "conclusions".
There is a huge overlap of common ground. The Earth goes round the sun and
E=mc^2 in both of these "two kinds of sciences".

It is mainly in the area of *origins* that the "different starting points
and frameworks of assumptions" of "these "two kinds of sciences" come into
conflict.

-----

But there's another definition held implicitly in the scientific
establishment, and it is tantamount to the philosophy of materialism
or naturalism. This is the idea that science may legitimately employ
only natural causes in explaining everything we observe. The way
this definition of science operates is to outlaw any questioning of
naturalistic evolution.

------

there are two different things i need to learn from this reply:
1-continue to work on methodological naturalism/materialism as working axioms, but be aware that there is a good chance that using them IMPLIES the full blown philosophy.

2-continue to work on the 2 sciences angle, but widen it to the "wedge of truth" with ID to 2 definitions of science. just be aware that kuyers criticism is much deeper than ID.

2003-02-12T14:53:00.000-08:00

the big question of this project will end up being is evolution directional-----

i am simply not prepared to tackle that issue yet.
but i would like to start thinking about it.

use dennetts image of creatures exploring a genotypic landscape, that looks like a topographic map.

random mutations yield the spread of the organism.
natural selection prunes the population each generation.

if at one generation you put a dot representing the average organism.
then each subsequent generation do the same, then connect the dots.

is there motion towards something?
or is it a random walk?

2003-02-12T11:30:00.000-08:00

from open letter to dembski from dawkins

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
I am now sixty years old and increasingly conscious that time is finite. The thing I really resent about people like you and Johnson and Behe is that you are a gratuitous waste of precious time. You hold scientists back by forcing them spell out what is wrong with your supernatural spooks, instead of getting on with trying to gain a real explanation of how the world works.
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

i once wrote a paper about creationists being a loyal opposition to evolutionary science. maybe i will be able to find it in the boxes in the library, now there is a place for such things.

but dawkins is not expressing gratitude towards ID for being a loyal opposition, but anger at them for being a disloyal pain in the arse.

back to the question:
is ID the kuyperian 2nd science?

Holding Fast the Great Concession of Faith: Science, Apologetics, and Orthodoxy

2003-02-12T10:13:00.000-08:00

logos and mythos
-------------------------

the country western song about the little girl just played on the radio. the song is about a little girl with abusive parents, eventually the mom is killed by the dad and he commits suicide. the little girl goes to live with a Christian family, the first day of sunday school she asked who is that man on the cross. i know he got off, for he held me tight the night my parent's died.

not only is it a good song, like the best in country it is a ballad with a heart tugging theme. but the reaction to the song betrays the way we think. for almost every time it plays someone calls in an asks "is it true?'.

the question shows how far mythos has been absorbed into logos.
the stories into historical narratives, the great(ok, country might to YOU be not so great *grin*)ballads of our culture can only be interpreted as HISTORY, never as myths....

its sad. for history really needs to be rewritten for each generation, but really good stories are timeless and forever fresh and revealing of new insights and new roads to explore.

we truely truncate ourselves. how sad.
because we equate history with true and myth with false. again an issue cut wrongly.

see breakpoint article for another take on the song

2003-02-12T09:11:00.000-08:00

> > Likewise, God proving himself is revelation, not reason.
>

>
> > The impetus for reason
> > originates within human beings. The impetus for revelation
> > originates in God. This is precisely why I think reason and faith
> > are different.
>
> > Reason is a system of
> > man-made rules that fail miserably in attempts to describe OR COME
> > TO God. Faith is a process of God giving us eyes to see what God
> > sees. Reason is man centered, faith is God centered. The impetus
> > for reason is derived from man; the impetus for faith is originated

> is fallen, and he uses his mind to reason against God, he is still
> using something that is a supernatural gift. That makes it difficult

> You are using several different terms or ideas here. There is God's
> reason and man's reason, which are completely different. There is
the
> mind, and logical evidence, which you are saying that God can use.
> Now, if I understand you correctly, you believe that when God
connects
> with our minds through logical evidence, that is revelation (or God's
> reason?). It is no longer man's reason.
>

i cut and snipped a lot of the message. i sincerely hope that i did
not do injustice to either post. i want to show one strand of thought.

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?

the person quoted in the original message contends that there exists a
gap between revelation and reason, the gap is of God, of man.

the second person, who wrote the message, contends that God both
reasons and reveals. furthermore that sin degradates our reasoning.

these are not the same positions, more than semantics, more than
definitions, but real differences.

it revolves around "where is the gap that we perceive between
ourselves and God reflected in the way we think?" do we think like God
but in much smaller thoughts? or is God's thinking so much different
than ours that a new facility must be given to believers in other to
think like Him?

specifically if human reason is not analogous to Divine Reason in some
very important and significant ways then God would need to give us
faith in order to comprehend Him at all.

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.

thanks for listening.

2003-02-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

two sciences
-----------------

from george marsden's _understanding fundamentalism and evangelicalism_ from chapter 5 titled "the evangelical love affair with enlightment science":

pg. 122-3 "Kuyper denied that there was one unified science for the human race. Rather, he argued that because there are 'two kinds of people' regenerate and unregenerate, there are 'two kinds of sciences'... but insofar as any science was a theoretical discipline, Christians and non-Christians would reach some conclusions that were different in important ways. Each would be equally scientific, but they would be working from different starting points and frameworks of assumptions."

"to BB Warfield, Kuyper's view was sheer nonsense. Warfield was a man of his age at least to the extent of believing that science was an objective, unified, and cumulative enterprise of the entire race." pg 123

pg 126 "Why were the Princetonians and so many of their twentieth-centry conservative, evangelical, intellectual dependents so committed in principle to a scientifically based culture even while the scientifically based culture of the twentieth centry was undermining belief in the very truths of the Bible they held most dear?"
--------------------------------------------
first, as does marsden i will begin to think of the two types as kuyperian and warfieldian. the only consistent kuyperians i am aware of are the theonomians, dominion, reconstructists; most of the conservative church is not. How about them creation scientists? aren't they trying to build a second regenerate science? i dont believe so, they are working on a theological enterprise which happens to be talking about science. but on the other hand, i think that there may be a number of kuyperian types in the ID movement, i will look at this angle.

so as i begin to finish off the fundamentalism as movement readings i will go find my copy of kuyper's sacred theology and reread it.

2003-02-11T15:28:00.000-08:00

working on _meaning of creation_ particularly if gen1-2 are polemics directed against the neighboring cultures polytheism.

creation and the flood

search for _The Polemic Nature of the Genesis Cosmology_ by Gerhard Hasel

criticism of kline

lots on creation myths

adam and anthropology

reformed against framework

surprise same title as chapter in _meaning of creation_

dancing on the titanic

2003-02-11T10:52:00.000-08:00

i am still interested in a dialogue with stephen over at ced on the issue of his position in the debate axis and what it is measuring. however i dont think he read my first message, but i am hesitant about pushing it. he responded by my questioning the degree of supernatural intervention with an analysis of kind, back to the significant argument of the great divide between those who believe that naturalism will explain all and those who have a committment to supernaturalism....so i will try once more with the following message posted to CED.
------

> *** Moderator: As a newcomer, Richard would be unaware that I have a
> long-standing policy that members don't put other members' names in the
> subject line of posts to CED, since it unncessarily personalises the debate
> and can be a form of ad hominem. See:

RW:where can i find a copy of the rules of engagement for CED?
i searched without success on your homepage and on the CED yahoo homepage. i am only back to message numbered 3900 or so i my catching up, therefore i am unaware of many of the rules.

>
> RW>at: http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/faqiposs.html
> >
> >contains the following interesting statement:
> >As can be seen, the main defining characteristic is primarily the
> >decree to which supernatural
> >intervention by God is allowed, and secondarily the age of the
> >Universe and Earth.
> >
> >

> RW>i don't see a difference in degree here
>
> Whether Richard wants to "see" it or not, clearly, 1) whether God
> intervened in natural history? and 2) if so how often? *are* "difference[s]
> in degree".
>
> And clearly that *is* a (if not the) primary distinguishing characteristic of
> positions on the creation-evolution spectrum, ranging from positions that:
>

RW:it is exactly the conclusion that you made that the great divide in the CE debate is between those who support some form of supernaturalism versus those who deny the principle entirely and whole therefore to a consistent philosophic naturalism, that encouraged me to look at the axis of your faqiposs.html

therefore how do you measure degree of committment or how often a principle whose acceptance or rejection is of primary concern? in essence your axis in faqiposs is a discrete principle. either one believes in some supernatural intervention or does not. degree at that point is immaterial. it is for this very reason that i searched for another way to express the axis....i am not sure you looked at the option i presented. there is no engagement with the issue in this message.

schematically: xxxxxxxxxxx

yec oec pmc te
xxxxxxxxxx
de ne

where a axis to distinguish positions ought to look like:

x
x
x
x
x etc. etc.

there are at least 4 places where a Christian can support a supernatural creation event:

1-as you point out the infusion of a soul into a person.
i would extend that to the 2-creation of the new man at regeneration.

furthermore two elements at adam's creation which are the archtype for individual's creation. 3-adam as a living being, the clay + the breath of God. and by extension the creation of the human race, something captured by the traditional 4-federalship arguments for adam.

additional depending on position on your chart one could hypothesis:
unique supernatural creation of progenitor of each kind---oec
unique supernatural creation of each species/genus---yec

nonetheless, how do you measure these committments to supernatural intervention? how many? how often? plus if committment to supernaturalism is the key element, arent you front loading the argument for who would want less of an essential characteristic?
so logically everyone would pile to the maximum supernaturalism end to be consistent....

my idea was that if you flip the axis around. look at where the methodological naturalism principle breaks across the bow of supernatural intervention, then the continum makes interesting sense.

for there are a series of concentric spheres:
universe, world, living things, humanity.

where our concerns with supernatural intervention make us challenge the principle of methodological naturalism as it applies to each sphere in turn from larger to smaller. it is as if we can as believers allow the world it's independence from God until it gets to an issue too important to allow naturalism to explain it all away.

YEC challenge naturalistic presuppositions at the very largest sphere, at the age of the earth. they would say that the principle of naturalism blinds people from the very beginning of scientific investigation: astronomy and physics.

OEC would allow naturalistic methodology free rein at this level. but would balk at application of it at the transition of kinds to another kind.

TE would challenge the methodological naturalism not at the level of the living things but at a smaller sphere of man's unique formation. the key element to me being the creation of adam from pre-existing chimplike protohuman or physical dust and what it means to be in the image of God.

What this does is admit that the great divide is committment to supernaturalism at some level. rather than try to quantitize how much, rather see at what level the supernaturalistic intervention is committed.

i still am interested in what you think about this, rather than a reaction to my questioning how to measure degree of supernatural intervention. although i would be curious about how to measure the amount of supernatural intervention necessary to distinguish between a oec and yec position.

richard williams
blog at http://rmwilliamsjr.blogspot.com
homepage at http://www.fastucson.net/~rmwillia

2003-02-10T17:42:00.000-08:00

continuing to carefully read stephen jones' site:

mediate progressive creationist

of particular interest to me is:
Probably the main difference between PMC and PC is that some PCs believe that God created some things ex nihilo after the original creation of Genesis 1:1. PMC would maintain that God created everything mediately (i.e. not ex nihilo) after the original immediate creation of the raw materials in Genesis 1:1. That is God created by modifying existing materials, working (naturally and supernaturally) through natural processes. An exception to this might be the infusion of man's soul.

The difference between PMC and TE is less clear because it is hard to know what TE is anymore. Much of what passes for TE is really Deistic Evolution (DE), or even just Naturalistic Evolution (NE) held by those who also happen to be Christians.

so much better granularity then just OEC and TE.....nice.

infusion of adam's soul
made in the image of God
creation of individual soul's
creation of the new man.

the 4 places to concentrate study on to work out the details of a TE position. mediate and immediate are good principles to keep in mind as well. Howard Vantil writes directly to this issue, coming down very hard on the immediate at creation, and a fully gifted creation having whatever it takes to get to now via only mediate works of God.

the problem will remain however, like providence. how do we see it differently from a secular evolutionist if we hide all the supernatural events inside people????

since he hasnt experienced the new birth there is a decreasing point of contact, again.

2003-02-10T17:06:00.000-08:00

chris pointed out to me that my essay
related issues is not very clear. so i rewrote it. while doing so i found stephen jones faq on positions in the CED so well done that i imported it as the line up of positions in the issue

while studying his continum as defined:
As can be seen, the main defining characteristic is primarily the degree to which supernatural
intervention by God is allowed, and secondarily the age of the Universe and Earth.

i have a problem on how to define: how much or how often i would expect God to intervene supernaturally in creation. so i looked for another way to express the axis....

i posted this to CED to elicit some help, plus i wrote chris:

at:http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/faqiposs.html

contains the following interesting statement:
As can be seen, the main defining characteristic is primarily the
decree to which supernatural
intervention by God is allowed, and secondarily the age of the
Universe and Earth.

(i take decree is misspelling of degree)

i don't see a difference in degree here but rather something else that
interests me.

start with a set of concentric spheres:
universe, earth, living things, man

look at the axioms/presuppositions/assumptions of science that
creationists most often point to: materialism uniformity naturalism

if you think of the sufficency of the assumptions for explanation at
each subsequently smaller spheres.

yec jump off science's bandwagon at the first level...age of universe
oec off the parade at level of living things.
te somewhere on level of man

de at the level of explanation of the whole thing---ie before big bang
and the ne stay on for the whole show and take presupposition of
methodological naturalism to logical conclusion of philosophic naturalism.

so is this a level of the sufficency of naturalism as a explanatory
principle? This appears better than to measure
amount/degree/commitment to supernaturalism because i don't know how
to quantize my own supernaturalism let alone someone elses....but i do
think i know where my understanding of the applicability of naturalism
would be challenged by secular thought....

this also fits the general idea that the closer to humanity the
discussion gets the more important these assumptions become in the
analysis. hence the greater chance/amount a supernaturalist would
differ with the conclusions of a naturalist based on a difference in
committment to these presuppositions.

thanks for consideration of this.

richard williams

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

it looks like a good way to describe what is going on.
first because it relies not on quantity but simply on the assent that the naturalistic presuppositions break at the given level, somewhere not yet specified.

i am uncomfortable with quantity of supernatural intervention as i detect at least the following ways God intervenes in creation:

providence, as i see it the moment to moment sustaining of the very elements of creation. the image being His hand holding up the world so that if He would momentarily remove His hand the universe would cease to exist.

two points in the creation of man's soul. first is each individual and the second is the creation of the new man in Christ. both supernatural.

but in the CED we are usually referring to supernatural events where God makes some kind of creature in order to bridge a gap that naturalistic forces are unable to do, given that the descendents of that creature are either alive or in the fossil record as extinct beings. I think what stephen is trying to quantitize is how often God would be required to intervene in the natural order of evolution.

but how to differentiate yec from oec?
they can differ only in age of universe, and agree at every other point. my idea of interlocking spheres, like russian dolls, posits a differences in levels that distinguishes these positions.

but why is this interesting?
if we posit God's supernatural intervention as directly opposite the big 3 naturalistic presuppositions: materialism, uniformity, naturalism. i would be forced to move as far towards God's supernatural intervention as possible to acknowledge His soverignity. But if in fact it is a question of where, of what level the supernatural BREAKS those assumptions then we ought to concentrate our energies on questions occurring at that level.

Additionally this incorporates stephen's insight that the BIG peak is between those who allow supernatural intervention and those who would deny its applicability all together. If you make a continum where supernaturalism is the axis then the characteristic is analog, but if instead you approach it from breaking the assumptions, then supernaturalism can remain digital: yes or no. It also clears up the methodological naturalism as not opposed to supernaturalism per se but at what level you need introduce supernatural explanations.

I like the solution. i look forward to discussion on the topic.

2003-02-10T16:12:00.000-08:00

apologetics discussion board

2003-02-09T11:13:00.000-08:00

the great divide
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

something resonates inside of me with stephen's idea that the great divide in the CED is between those who accept the supernatural explanations potential and those who dont.

i have been mislead by the polarization technic of the YEC, who so strongly differentiate themselves from anyone with the idea of an old earth. i saw the divide as between acceptance of the scientific idea of an old earth and the literalistic biblioidolatry that held stubbornly to a young earth. i had accepted their division in the discussion, as defending myself from their charges of accomodationist to unbelieving science seemed the important issue.

but this is not the most significant division.
the big division amongst men will always be Christ and Him crucified. how do i/we interpret this event. as supernatural, and the intrusion into our natural world of the world of God which lies underneath our world. God sustains via His providence all that exists, but i am not sure how we would see it. but there is no missing the call for the resurrection. it is and will always remain an event unable to be discussed without reference to the supernatural.

so as a Christian, i must always be aware that the real division is for or against Christ. this division is NOT evident in the argument for a young or old earth, despite the strenduous arguments from the YEC. but to force the issue of methodological naturalism to always remain a provisional tool. never able to say that the universe will be one day explained with the use of this tool. that is a big divide.

2003-02-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

the principle of not causing your brother to stumble ought to be invoked in my lack of capitalization of Christ Christian Jesus God Lord. stephen initially thought that i was a troll, evidence was the lack of capitalization of significant words.

i dont believe to capitalize or not to capitalize is significant.
however to give people the wrong idea is significant.

therefore i will make genuine attempt to capitalize those words in the future. remembering stephen's words as i do so. consciously not trying to have anything give affront but the ideas.....

2003-02-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

how do we distinguish between the use of the tool provisional methodological naturalism and the philosophic position naturalism?

by the hope that the PN has that the tool MN is sufficent to answer all questions in the universe. he will point to the past and say look all the gaps that God used to inhabit are being filled. this activity will continue until all potential supernatural gaps are filled and explaining using MN. thus vendicating the principle's elevation to a philosophic principle from a provisional tool.

a Christian on the other hand, internally understands the supernatural, for we are a new creation in Christ Jesus, our point of contact with the supernatural is internally resonating. we furthermore point to at least 3 supernatural events which will never be explained with use of MN. creation, the birth/life/death/resurrection of the Lord. and the final judgement. we therefore know that MN is a provisional tool. adopted for various reasons but unable to penetrate to the core of reality.

2003-02-08T19:49:00.000-08:00

reading stephen's pages:
from his id page at:http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/faqdntsl.html

Philosophical: The dominant philosophical position underlying science today is the twin assumptions of materialism ("matter is all there is") and naturalism ("the universe is a closed system of natural cause and effect"). These philosophical assumptions are embodied in Darwinism, the dominant theory of biological origins and development. Darwinism acknowledges the appearance of design in nature, but assumes that is merely an illusion. All three philosophical positions : Darwinism, materialism and naturalism, deny the reality of design, and therefore the scientific legitimacy of ID. Therefore a major part of ID's efforts to date has been in mounting counter arguments against materialism, naturalism and Darwinism, as well as asserting its own scientific legitimacy. ID's fundamental strategy in loosening the grip of materialist philosophy on science it calls "The Wedge". This aims to exploit the logical `crack' between the fact that empirical science and materialistic philosophy are not necessarily the same thing.
--------------------------------------------

why does science make these assumptions?
and are they as strong as he perceives? ie methodological naturalism vs philosophic naturalism. materialism as a hope for premise---everything will be explained in materialist terms given enough time vs. materialist answers are to be preferred....

2003-02-08T19:33:00.000-08:00

this is stephen's question from CED groups yahoo---------

RW>i am most aware of this because of two articles that because of their
>logic and forcefulness pushed my thinking into theistic evolutionary
>paths from a long held old earth creationist position.
>
>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/
>http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html

Being a newcomer Richard would be unaware that just posting URLs is not
acceptable on CED. That is because: 1) CED has 60+ members and they
cannot all be expected to go off and read webbed articles on other sites;
and 2) CED is a *debate* where members are expected to state their
position(s) either in their own words, or the words of other's *that they are
prepared to defend, right here on CED.

So I will leave it to Richard to explain: 1) what was his "old earth
creationist position" 2) what was it in these "two articles" that 3) "pushed"
his "thinking into theistic evolutionary paths"? and 4) what does Richard
mean by "theistic evolution"; and 5) what distinguishes Richard's "theistic
evolution" from atheistic evolution?
-----------------
start with the plagarized pseudogene article....
-------this is the crucial paragraph on pseudogenes-----
All of the examples of functionless sequences shared between humans and chimpanzees reinforce the argument for evolution that would be compelling even if only one example were known. This argument can be understood by analogy with the legal cases discussed earlier in which shared errors were recognized as proof of copying. The appearance of the same "error"--that is, the same useless pseudogene or Alu sequence or endogenous retrovirus at the same position in human and ape DNA--cannot logically be explained by independent origins of the two sequences. The creationist argument discussed earlier--that similarities in DNA sequence simply reflect the creator's plans for similar protein function in similar species--does not apply to sequences that do not have any function for the organism that harbors them. The possibility of identical genetic accidents creating the same two pseudogene or Alu or endogenous retrovirus independently in two different species by chance is so unlikely that it can be dismissed. As in the copyright cases discussed earlier, such shared "errors" indicate that copying of some sort must have occurred. Since there is no known mechanism by which sequences from modern apes could be copied into the same position of human DNA or vice versa, the existence of shared pseudogenes or retroposons leads to the logical conclusion that both the human and ape sequences were copied from ancestral sequences that must have arisen in a common ancestor of humans and apes
----------------------------------------------------

why is it so important to me, as to push me to accept a TE rather than OEC position?

the big difference, imho, between oec and te is the idea of kinds. i was aware 20 years ago that there was no way to tie down the idea of kinds. it was acceptable however to lend on the idea to hold evolution in a micro-like state. kinds represented a bulwark of activity that had to be performed by god, whether miraclously or not. evolution, as i thought, properly understood could not explain/predict crossing over these boundaries. whether genus up to phylum(swim, fly, crawl) i didnt care.

the crucial issue for christians is the unique position of adam. three options are readily apparently possible. 1-unique creation from dust of the earth, analgously to potter spitting into clay and making a figure, how the rabbis interpret the passage in the talmud. 2-creation of adam from existing chimp-human ancestor. adding the breath of life and creating in the image of god. fundamentally the roman catholic position. goes along well with superaddendum theology. 3-naturalist evolution where god doesnt have to intervene in a supernatural way at all to create man from chimp-man ancestor.

what the plagarized gene does is makes it look like god used 2 or 3 and not one. otherwise god would be open to charge of lying to us and making it look as if evolution occurred and it did not. on these grounds i eliminate 1 and forced to adopt te position.

what distinguishes te from de(deistic evolution) or ne(naturalist evolution) stephen's terms.

god appears to have told us that he operates in 3 distinctly different ways in creation: 1-as creator 2-as sustainer 3-as redemmer

sustainer is concept of providence. gods hand as it where underneath the very elements of the universe, sustaining it from moment to moment.

redemmer involves the new creation of the new man with the new heart. a new creation replacing the old man. miraclous, supernatural.

god as creator is the problem here.
1-creates then leaves---deism....i reject notion
2-creates then intervenes when needed...see howard van til for discussion of fully gifted creation...
2a-creates and guides the whole process. bridging the gaps where necessary. appears to be stephen's pc catagory. same areas of problems: the kinds and adam.

2b-guides in order to achieve particular goals. explains origin of man versus blind chance. argues against s.j.goulds replay tape of evolution and get another world.

the solution to the issue revolves around several things. first is god still creating or is he at rest?
if he is at rest, as the church appears to teach, except in the redemming field, then he ought to be using existing material to build with, not creatio ex nihilo since creation.

this question seems to revolve around means used. do we have scriptural warrant to believe that god creates new matter in the universe. or just reworking the old? i dont know. miracles dont require new matter. lazarus was raised from the dead without creating new fundamental particles. the question of is jesus' heavenly body a new creation? appears to be......

2003-02-08T18:48:00.000-08:00

stephen.

i dont understand your attitude but i will try to explain a few things you asked.

1-i dont capitalize much at all. it is a habit from programming under unix. if you would take a few moments to briefly examine my blog at
http://rmwilliamsjr.blogspot.com you would see that. simply a common trait i picked up innocently.
the one exception is that i rarely capitalize i and that is due to a desire to be conscious of things i learned from ee. cummings. ...

to read into that i dont capitalize a atheistic mindset is just a little over....i dont use apostrophes often either in online communication. what does that imply?

2-you asked an honest question.
to quote the first page of my homepage at
http://www.fastucson.net/~rmwillia

" taking some time off(almost 3 years now) from life to tie up loose intellectual ends. you know the burning questions that you felt and argued about all night long when you where younger but got lost in the business of life, and wife, and kids, and money etc etc.
so about 2 months ago i revisited my old friend and heartbreaker evolution and creation. i've been through a pile of books and many sleepless nights staring at the roof thinking.
ok....more than enough background. basically i am finding myself moving to a theistic evolutionary viewpoint. now the church has forcefully condemned the position as wrong. (op pca)
the question boils down to the role of reason in our/my life. i understand, i think, the ramifications of "I believe in order that i might understand". committed to the proposition that reason does not escape the effects of the fall and can/will lead us astray, that is why the church's position is important to me. "

this is from a letter i wrote sep 11th 2002. as i embarked on the study of creation-evolution that eventually ended up with me writing this to you.
i wrote about my mom's suicide on the blog and how that pushes me to try to get closure on an issue that took me first to ucsd to study biology and later to westminster to study theology. it's in the blog. dated. and in black and white. issues i'm wrestling with, and why i think creation evolution is a very important topic.

the fact that i care about what the bible has to say about scientific things implies that i have some emotional attachment to the bible as gods revelation to us. otherwise it just wouldnt matter.

3-i dont usually respond at all to personal attacks. i think it gets in the way of learning to emotionally respond to them. if you'd like to see this in action you can read the rtb-groups message base where i have been posting for about 2 months. despite rather unpleasant company, i feel i am learning something there and it helps to bounce ideas off people who really respond to them.

4-so we are back to the first page of my website. why i am here and what i expect to gain with the conversation with you and with the other members of the group.

i think you have worked through many of the issues that i will be working through over the next few months. having that experience i think you can helpfully critize ideas i am working on...(see the essays link off my homepage).

so back to the real issue.

stephen writes in the previous message--->

No, "the framework" determines in advance what *can* be "facts". Every
"fact" that does not fit "the framework" of atheistic materialism-naturalism,
is declared to be a non-"fact".

i dont believe it is that simple.
there are a few pieces of the puzzle available.

a---m. polanyi with his distinction of distal and proximal shows that theory formation occurs at the level of fact in what we see and what we dont see. backup evidence is early childhood acquisition of faces. theory formation preceeds fact gathering in some very important ways.

b---paul's argument in romans 1:20 leads us to believe that the unbeliever will not see or accept "facts" in contradiction to his rebellion towards god.

abraham kuyer is the most consistent theologian i know of following up this idea and leading to the formation of a separate christian science. although the theonomists would also plead this case strongly.

i am working on how i think about this issue with the idea that science is a "christian" enterprise. in the way that it uses some very low level assumptions that it inherited from the culture it developed from. these presumpositions, assumptions, axioms, whatever you wish to call them, are important pieces of the framework of science. and analogously to how sin is its own reward and punishment. good ideas have good consequences. i see this happening in science. starting from a base in common grace, science has principles that "minimize" the effects of sin.

the big issue is how far are christians to co-operate in the scientific enterprise? YEC constantly accuse me of capitulation and accomodation to unbelievers in accepting the old age of the earth.
there appears to be no issues that can not be reconciled between scripture and an old earth.

so you move up to the next big issue. it is really the issue i see separating oec and te. the issue of kinds, with the kind human being the real point. this is the importance of these two sites i quoted earlier:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/

this being the most important.
i was consciously oec when i started this project back in sept. this paper pushed me towards an acceptance of te because the plagarism angle seems to make god to be a liar if he did not use a pre-existent being to create adam.

so back to my home page. this view is forcible condemned by the church. so again. i go looking for help to understand.....

richard williams

2003-02-04T09:28:00.000-08:00

is science atheistic?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

is science atheistic because it assumes that any question can be answered in terms of matter in motion? is the atheistic idea that matter in motion is all there is a direct result of using materialistic presuppositions?

0r less strongly: if you assume in your scientific programs that the question of miracles is irrelevant do your therefore tell god he is irrelevant?

are they natural conclusions to make from the assumption of materialistic thinking, or are they unwarranted extensions of a belief that science ought to be agnostic with respect to a miracle working god?

there was a book of poetry that alma and i read together years ago. it was written by a CRC. in there was a poem "i dont care" in which he as a young person had answered a question about god with the words "i dont care" which to the teacher meant "god damn". is a statement like "to science questions of god are irrelevance" in the same class? at least the theonists are consistent, and would build theistic science and new christian universities...

2003-02-03T09:44:00.000-08:00

the distinction by AiG of origin and operational sciences.
------------------------------------------------------------------
is it the same thing as the distinction of historical and experimental?
No. AiG has an agenda behind their distinction, they divide things that way in order to deny the applicability of particular assumptions in origins studies.

the historical and experimental distinction flows naturally out of our experience of time. we are all too conscious of the one way arrow of time, and our subsequent inability to modify things that happened in the past. this makes historical studies unable to participate directly in the goal of experimental science, ie to design/frame/form hypothesis and then test them. historical studies are rather more like the detective stories some are fond of reading. it investigates the past, not thereby released from experimental support but rather experimental support takes a backseat to the cause-effect analysis to predict the likihood of effects happening in such and such a way. we only have to cite CSI to eliminate any argument that detective work is like sherlock holmes smoking a pipe and theorizing without any significant laboratory work needed.

but thereis a tenuousness and unpredictability of the historical studies due to their intrinstic probabilistic underpinnings. it is likely to have happened such and such, or it seems reasonable to believe. our legal system is proof enough of the unreliability of detective work to assure that the historical studies are never able to say. this is certainly what happened.

but tenuousness and uncertainity is not what AiG is seeking in it's false division. it wants to change not degree of tools available in the historical studies but rather rule inadmissible the use of tools such as uniformity, materialist, predictive assumptions in the origins studies all together so that science must be silent on those questions. thus leaving the field open only to the scriptures to speak. the division of historical and experimental is one of degree. the present is forever retreating into the past. yesterday's experiment is historical, last years but an memory and 300 years ago a historical oddity. time pushes the distinction, beginning with one of kind, but continuing to one of degree. yesterday is in the past as certainly as 300 years ago. but yet we speak convidently of historical things. we do not rule out everything because it is past, only we increase probabilities, we speak less certainly as events receed in our collective memories. the fact that the beginning of life on earth was a long time ago is not one of kind from yesterday's experiment, as AiG would contend. but one of degree.

2003-02-03T08:50:00.000-08:00

on rtb-groups there is a member who participates who posted his essay at AiG...the link to his article is in my message. it is worth the time to read. the two paragraphs i quoted as excellent places to start a discussion.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1st-thank you for the link to your essay in the messages above.

from:
dr faulkner's AiG essay--->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.
"
---------------
2nd-
this 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.

------------
this is longer then i would like. but it is because the article's two paragraphs give me much to think about. it is really why i am here to read and discuss these kind of issues.

thanks
richard williams

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

it was already too long to post. so i will continue here.
can science lead us to god? no.
can science say true things about the world? yes. the methodology tends to decrease the noetic effects of sin.
as science says things about man versus when it talks about things, are there increasing rebellion towards god, in that it is closer to home and the conclusion are more inescapable. ? probably

2003-02-02T19:39:00.000-08:00

2003-02-02T09:31:00.000-08:00

--- In RTB_Discussion_Group@yahoogroups.com, XXXXX wrote---
> Where does compromise begin?
>
> by Charles Taylor, M.A., Ph.D., PGCE, LRAM, FIL, Cert. Theol.
>
snip snip snip.
> does, interpret it. That's sometimes the trouble. We're so busy
> looking at the various spiritual applications that we overlook the
> historical aspects. Christianity is unique in being a historical
> faith, and if we downplay the history, we end up being just
> another religious philosophy.
>
snip snip snip

it's a good article. well reasoned. timely. certainly an article that any conservative christian would assent to.

scripture is written on various interpretive levels.
the historical, as we envision the bottom level, anchors it into this world. jesus was a real man, issues that took the church 400 years to hammer out. spilling not just ink but real red blood in doing so.

the underlying message of the article, and in case i'd miss it, entitled where does compromise begin? the implication is that an interpretive scheme which decreases the percentage of historical interpretation is compromise and will end up like bultmann, a liberal.

--------
our problem is that we hold to several doctrines that are all important. and not equally important. i believe i have then in prioritized order.

first is the reliability of scripture.
second is principles like try to interpret scripture first with literal man-in-the-street commonsense ideas as applied to those it was first addressed to.
third but realize that scripture is literally a letter addressed to the church in all the ages, until jesus returns.
fourth a closed canon
fifth an evolving historical theology which changes and adapts the message of god to different cultures and historical epoches. the bible may be cultural but the message it contains is timeless and cultureless.

the author of the message takes two books, daniel and jonah of examples of how people have demythologized the verses. dehistorized. in response to as he puts it, the desire to eliminate the miracles.

-----
in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth.

to believe that god created it in one 6 day 24 hour creation week is not any more miraculous then to believe that god used evolution to do it. i dont compromise the gospel to believe that the days are not 24 hours long.

my desire is to open the book of nature and to understand what god has written there. if anything i hold to a higher view of history than does a YEC. for i believe the fossils, the radioactive data, the things god has written in the very nature of the universe. the history is real. i dont hypothezie light created as if the stars where very far away, when in fact they are 6K years old.. i dont call scientists grossly mistaken for seeing evidence of a very ancient earth. i take history seriously.

i take sides with science against an overly literal, unwarrantly historicized genesis 1 and 2, whose proponets are polarizing the church into warring camps when the only distinction ought to be the resurrection of jesus and its significance(to know nothing but jesus and him crucified). i take sides with science, not to diminish the meaning of scripture but to put it into the framework that god intends for us to understand it.

the universe exists. it is god's creation. if something is clearly understood from a scientific viewpoint that appears to be in conflict with scripture then i first reevaluate the meaning of the science, but if it appears from a general christian preceptive to be valid. and if i can see christians with a high view of scripture believing those things from science. then i need to re evaluate my interpretation of scripture.

we are heirs to a different way of looking at the world than were the ancient hebrews who first heard the words of genesis. a big part of that world is science. it is something that i will take seriously, i will be careful to do my homework in the field, i will believe god when he says that he created the heavens and the earth. not a deceiver who is casting a great spell on the scientific world so that they see what is not there. especially since that scientific world contains many believers who see genesis as supportive of a very old earth.

so yes, i believe as the author of your quote does, that history is important. the history as discovered by biology and geology and astronomy. this side is better use of my reason that to side with the YEC and hold to a literal view of an ancient world where myth and stories where the primary means of explanation. god accommodated himself to our frailities, he spoke our languages, he took upon himself the form of a man. the world of man, that god spoke genesis to
is a different world from the one we inhabit. we cloth our arguments in terms that the hebrews never would have, dna ribosomes, stellar clusters ... yet the meaning and significance is not changed.

in the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth.

richard williams

2003-01-31T12:42:00.000-08:00

on polarization
---------------------------

from NYC answerman:
If I may attempt to summarize: One should have faith, but not only
faith. A
certain amount of rational skepticism is also necessary. Is this
something you
agree with? I believe this is a modern way of thinking. I also think it is
where "creation science" comes from. Creationism is an attempt to
rationalize
mythology. It's an application of modern logic to ancient folklore.
The problem
lies with the belief of Biblical inerrancy and what that means. Most
creationists I debate with seem to think that to doubt the literacy of the
Bible is equal to doubting God and just as damning.
------------

his last line is a theme i have been seeing expressed commonly and
strongly on the websites and on the boards by YEC. i am calling it the
polarization technique. the YEC have so managed to confuse the issue
of salvation with the issue of a literal hermenutic as applied
particularly to gen1-2 that they fall prey to the problem of loosing
salvation if the literalness of gen is weakened. you have only to look
at an essay at
AiG:http://answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v22n3_templeton.asp

to see that the fervor and general emotionalism with which they carry
on the discussion is the result of the fear that if you relax the
literalness of genesis you will end up like templeton----an atheist...

this so front end loads the discussion that they can not listen or
change their minds on the topic because their eternal salvation is
tied up with the interpretation of 2 chapters in genesis....sad

by so polarizing the discussion that there exists in many conservative
churches just two positions: the YEC and the atheist. thus making the
transition to oec positions tantamount to a desertion of the faith.

what probably began as a debate technic-polarization, is ending up as
a serious "backing up into a wall with no where to go" for the YEC.
they have aligned all the scriptural options to their position with
the devil-extreme polarization- so that now any of the membership is
pushed by logic all the way down the slippery slope to unbelief.the
issue could be a simple one of the age of the earth now ends up as a
discussion of the entire faith.....

there needs to be a way to depolarize the discussion, so people can
see the multiplicity of views on the subject of the age of the world,
while still holding to a high view of scripture, and with no
neccessity of deserting the faith because you would rather accept the
scientific viewpoint of an old earth. the problem is with such extreme
polarization it is logical for young inquirying minds to challenge the
young earth doctrine and because of the tie to the entire faith, the
next logical position is radical skepticism of the entire faith. they
dont have built in stopping positions like oec to halt the skepticism
at.....

in this way the yec polarization ought to increase the numbers of
people completely leaving the faith rather than moving towards a more
liberal church. itself a reflection of "dog bite me once-shame on the
dog, dog allowed to bite me twice shame on me". where logic has people
deserting the faith because they see that their extreme fervor in
gen1-2 was misplaced. therefore no fervor is indicated, rather than an
analysis of fervor in what.

richard williams

2003-01-30T11:18:00.000-08:00

________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 16:28:26 -0000
From: "richard williams "

Subject: a thank you to kurt

i wish to thank kurt for the discussions he has taken the time to
write here. for as i reflect on the last few weeks i realize than he
has taught me more faster than i could have learned had i spent the
time i did here, rather reading.

i learned something of my commitments in the heat of argument.

1-i have a commitment just to general niceness. i can get upset when
called names but it is nothing like the deep sadness that i feel if i
have hurt someone else. i will beause of the time spent reading your
writings pay closer attention to the tone and choice of my words. so i
will not hurt others with my writing. -=civility=-

2-being here as strengthened my resolve simply to listen. to pay
attention to words then to the underlying concerns. reading a printed
book is certainly some one's words but it is different here where
there is a person today, now behind those words. utimately i would
desire to understand that person by listening.-=listen=-

3-but most important i relearned the essential lesson of "willing
suspension of disbelief". the idea that in order to learn you must
quiet the responses inside that cloud the listening process. that to
be willing to listen and to understand means running the risk of
changing your posts. it is this attitude of desiring to understand
that i will continue to make a priority knowing that God made the
universe and if i truely seek His face that i risk changing wrong
concepts and holding on to the true. -=be prepared to change=-

4-dorothy day the founder of the catholic workers had a mentor in the
person of Peter Maurin. i chanced across his book-easy essays- years
ago while avoiding studying and walking the stacks at the university.
his mantra was -=clarify clarify clarify=-....

richard williams

______________________

2003-01-29T09:52:00.000-08:00

i'm listening to chinese love songs on monte jade, part of the live365 network. my mind drifts off to beijing. walking with alma south of our hotel along the pedestrian shoping mall whether we stood and watched the huge rubber bands yank 3 people at at time 4 stories up into the air. (i hope they aren't chinese rubber bands was all of our first thought)

it was what was across the street that interests me now. the roman catholic cathedral where the chinese converts held off the boxers during the boxer rebellion.

it's a beautiful building, locked, alone, sterile.
a sad wonder of the position of christianity especial one tied so strongly to anything outside of china, inside a secular culture. a museum, a masoleum, where you display the dead of the past, to sorrow, tearup; but where there are certainly no living answers.

contrast that to the huge buddhist temple just north of the zoo and panda reserve, where we ate a vegetarian meal that justin managed to negotiate. it was alive, bursting with activity. with a huge beautifully trimmed tree to sit underneath. what a difference people, their activities and beliefs make, even to an outsider who can't ask anything important of them.

2003-01-29T08:58:00.000-08:00

the slippery slope to modernity
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
something that has been made apparent to me during the conversations with YEC, is that their major concern is with the problem of the slippery slope.

they see things happening in the society around them that they dont like, at all. their response is like the claim of a precusor golden age, how did we fall so far as to....

they then try to grab onto certainities, absolutes like an absolute literalistic interpretation of scripture. in order to have a rock to hold on to emotional, to avoid being swept down this slippery slope towards where they are certain there is great evil.

because their fundamental problem is fear of the consequences of particular beliefs; whether evolution, pluralism, cultural relativity etc etc. talking to them about the issues is almost irrelevant. for it is not really about evolution as a scientific theory, it is about the consequences of evolutionary thinking, the slippery slope to morality, anthropology, inerrant scripture, politics...etc

modernity requires a real high tolerance for uncertainity and ambiguity. i can remember the problems i had trying to absorb elements of physics. it semed like i was forever investigating paradoxes and keept trying to get a concrete example in mind to work with....

so perhaps the best tactic in arguing is actually top down where you look at the big issues that are those of real concern to the YEC, for they are not interested in a bottom up argument or they would have been persuaded look ago that the universe is ancient and the chinese didnt have enough time to walk from eden *grin* before carving cow scapula that are 5K years old.

all this scientific talk is just muddying the waters for what is the big issue is a fear that modernity will cause them to loose their faith in a literal gen1-2. which from there is all downhill to.....US.

richard williams

2003-01-28T09:56:00.000-08:00

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
CI
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.

2003-01-28T08:30:00.000-08:00

my current ravings at rtb--

--- In RTB_Discussion_Group@yahoogroups.com,XXXX
wrote:
XXXXX you miss the point.

follow the thinking.

i have been reading AiG.
i come across exactly what you mention. the conscious differentiation by AiG from an element of traditional southern american cultural context-racism.

neat i think, how does he do it? distancing himself from the right wing of the same movement? i know from past studies in history that this is a big trick that i have never seen done successfully. i want to learn more.

so i go looking for the right wing southern folks. i know they are there, i've been there. so i find the christian identity folks and post their link to my first messages so you too can follow my reasonings.

so i renew an acquaintance with the issues of slavery in the south. find my old copy of dabney's books. and poof. what do i find: a consistent literal interpretation that focus's in on verses in genesis. as well as paul's generalized teaching about roman slavery.

nice. leads to the big question. AiG denies the applicability of these verses to slavery-racism etc. it homes in on acts and one race, one body. good thinking. that is the common church idea in america. it is however not the common cultural thinking in the south.

the problem is the hermenutic. literalness, plain teaching for simple folks, it is the hermenutic used until it is attacked from the left. under pressure the church reinterprets using a more sophisticate, more reasoned, less literal approach...why?
because the literal technic was shown to be wrong!!!!!!!!
just as i do not support slavery.......dabney did.
just as i believe the earth revolves around the sun
just as i deny the doctrine of the two swords.....formulated by augustine.

i think that the church, conservative, traditional, bible believing, will reevaluate its position on 6 24 hr day creation week, under pressure from believers who want to reconcile their deeply held scientific understanding with their likewise deeply held convictions that the bible is the very word of god.

that is my whole point.....
look at the CI, they sit in the same pews as do you, their hermenutic is a consistent literalism on an issue that you differ over.

kurt you have successfully convinced me that creationism is not a scientific movement, which like OEC was my viewpoint for 25+ years. it is a social political movement born out of american fundamentalism. the more i read AiG and the like(i know kenham is ozzy)the more this principle becomes the way to see the issues.

versus how i saw things when i started here. i thought creationist were interested in the scientific issues. the points where a difference in world and life view would be most obvious and more discussible.

nay. question assumptions. not work on the interpretation of the facts.

richard williams

2003-01-27T09:11:00.000-08:00

kurt in his message said rightly that the slavery issue was a misreading of scripture brought about by a confounding of unscriptural principle with the bible.

likewise the arguments about galileo revolve around unscriptural principles being confused with true bible values.

my point is that those untwisting, those clarifications that result in him believing as do i, that the earth is not the center of the universe, that the earth revolves around the sun. that man should not own another man, that the legacy of racism is wrong and ought to be fought.

these beliefs are the result of the world challenging the church to change its long held, tightly held, scriptural justified, hermenutically based beliefs. the church by re examing their position were charged with accommodationism capitulation etc. the same charges as you bring here. the same charges that the CI use against their foes.

the issues are not the same, but the way their defenders justify them even today are----

he bottom of the issue is however similar, the exegesis of particular passages of scripture being used to justify a belief at variance with the larger society. the church responds with a study committee to take up the issue(after all we are presbyterian*grin*). the BIG result being a change in the interpretation of key passages of scripture.

imho. this will happen in the conservative churches as well leaving behind a faithful remnant like the CI, who do not go along with the majority viewpoint. but for us they are living reminders of hard fought battles in the past were the church was deeply divided over the interpretation of scripture.

and that is my fundamental point, evolution like slavery is a big issue in the understanding of historical theology, where we look to see how the church modifies its most deeply held and long cherished beliefs under fire from someone, often external to the church itself.

ps....let the debate subside for a note....
thanks for the book pointer Christianity on Trial i ordered it, looks to be right on topic.

as an aside, we personally go through the issues of the day, like evolution, emotionally tied up in them. where analogies exist to past events where emotions arent so attached like to galileo, it is good/easier to examine. but where past battles are still being fought as in the issue of slavery and its aftermath racism. emotions are still to high to objectively see how things work sometimes. i do not mean to hurt anyone's feelings and i apologize if i do so inadvertantly. but with the issue still a live one in the church it needs to be looked at as instructuve on how the creation-evolution debate can be likewise solved.

2003-01-27T08:41:00.000-08:00

---
> Richard Williams has made a classical ploy of cheap rhetoric
> called "guilt by association", and has also distorted the real
> history.
>
--->i used a whole message to reply to the argument that this is guilt
by association arugment.

> astronomy. Then they used verses from NON-HISTORICAL books like the
> Psalms, which were NOT INTENDING to teach a cosmological view, to
> support this "science". And it "scientific establishment" of its day,
> the Aristotelians of the Universities, who first opposed Galileo, and
> the Church mistakenly followed their lead. So the lesson from Galileo
> is NOT that the church "wrongly opposed science" but that the church
> wrongly adopted the science of its day to interpret Scripture. This
> is all well documented at
> http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/geocentrism.asp.
>
>
> And how can anyone blame a literal interpretation of the Bible for
> thinking that black people are the result of "the curse of Ham" WHEN
> THERE IS NO SUCH THING!! The curse was on CANAAN!. And in our
> experience, those who oppose inter-racial marriages are do NOT agree
> with the AiG/ICR view of Genesis, but many hold the Gap Theory. E.g.
> Bob Jones University, which until recently had a rule against inter-
> racial marriage, also refuses to say that the Gap Theory is contrary
> to Scripture. Also, note VERY CAREFULLY that people like Ken Ham use
> the grammatical-historical hermeneutic of Scripture as the CORRECTIVE
> to racist attitudes!!
>

this is EXACTLY my point. you are heir to a changing conception of
scripture. as am i. our forefathers justified slavery on biblical
exegetical grounds. we deny these arguments because the church has
responded to an external force......
in your words the church has capitulated to the politics of the
day(back in mid 1800's) and changed its beliefs.

look at the arguments from the right wing CI, they deny that the
arguments against slavery from the 1800's are valid. step back from
the heat of the argument and see this point.

in the early 1800's the church believed in justifying slavery with the
same assurance of correctness that you justify a 6-24hr creation week.

you are heirs to exactly the same hermenutic principles of literal
interpretation of genesis, this was their bedrock arguments. read
them. curse of ham. etc. they made the same arguments that the CI do.
to change our biblical based beliefs is CAPITULATION to an unbelieving
world.

yet the YEC, in the AIG site, distance theyselves from these
interpretations and REINTERPRET scripture. just as the descendents of
the boer struggle in the dutch reformed church. etc.

the church DOES change with response to the world. these undercuts
your arguments that a young earth is no more than an accommodationism
to science. it is a realistic reapprasial of our beliefs ABOUT how we
interpret scripture. just as our forefathers struggled with slavery.
as we today struggle with racism. the CI are CONSISTENT on the issue.
i am consciously not consistent, i do not believe as did robert dabney
and as do many reformed presbyterian conservatives in the south that
racism can be justified from the bible. but the BIG point is that they
are consistently applying the SAME hermenutically principles with the
same argument about capitulation to evolutionary thinking as you do to
me....except they(the CI) apply the label evolutionist to anyone who
disagrees with their interpretation of scripture. in particular to
someone like KenHam.

historical theology is the picture of a changing concept of an
unchanging god anchored to a book with a closed canon. the issue of
slavery provoked exactly the same responses from its defenders as you
level at me. capitulation accommodationism evolutionary
thinking......and you can read them on the CI site where people are
arguing exactly the same way as they did in robert dabney's day.

2003-01-27T08:14:00.000-08:00

is the racism/slavery issue a guilt by association argument?
-=-=-=-=-no....and here is why-=-=-=-=
i agree with kurt that the racism charge against the YEC looks like a quilt by association argument but in this case it is not. here's why.

i have 3 distinct lines of thought, i am aware of, leading to the argument. 1-geocentric and christian identity form a rightwing to the YEC movement. they are generally the same people, bible belt US. cultural socially and historically form a social-political-cultural movement that has particular distinct viewpoints that differ from the general american-western consensus. the root principle is an adherence to a particular scripture hermenutic. it is this principle of literalism that i wish to critized/understand/discuss. i think if you read the link you will see exactly the same scripture arguments presented as proof of "separation of the races"

2-i was explicit that i got to the reasoning by reading AiG, especial KenHam's book on _one blood_. i view the book, i do not have a copy so i will gratefully desire specific info on how it handles the issue, as an attempt to distance himself and the YEC movement from the christian identity movement. this however is a political and sociology question, how do you handle the rightwing of movements that you are a part of. i repeat myself, but there is not difference in principles between the YEC and CI. they share a very important stance on the bible, the YEC can not disavowl the CI on principle without calling into question the hermenutic.

3-your argument directed towards OEC in particular is that they are accommodationist/capitulation to science etc. the issue of slavery in the western world is a very serious problem with how the hermenutic we hold is effected by the world. i really appreciate robert dabney's writings, i share his hermenutic in many ways, but he was deadly wrong on the issue of race, which he consciously derived from the scriptures. very much like his descendents in the south do today. so how i approach the issue was been modified by the world. it shows how the world impinges on my interpretation of scripture. this is the very issue i am trying to make understood.

we, the church as well as individuals, respond to the world. one way is to modify received understandings with regard to this new data. slavery, race, the conquest of the world by a few white christian nations of europe, are related topics to how history changes scriptural hermenutically principles.

Ken Ham from all indications on the AiG website is not a racist. i explicitly deny that i am using a "quilt by association" argument. but rather i am trying to explore how he distances himself from another community-southern primarily baptist but the site i linked to is presbyterian conservative, literal hermenutic, they use the idea of capitulation to the world to discribe those who would integrate schools and blame the entire progress on the acceptance of evolution. as does AiG and KenHam. where they explicitly blame the acceptance of evolution for the appearance of racism.....

race is a loaded issue, i have struggled with the issue for many years, but for the above reasons i believe that it is a very good way to show that accommodationism capitulation argument is deathly flawed in that this process of modifying your beliefs is not only necessary but historically done, you are a result of it. AiG and the CI sites come to different conclusions using the SAME principles on the issue of race.

it is a continuation of the argument that the church no longer justifies slavery on biblical grounds...why? the hermenutic with respect to those passages clearly justifying slavery have changed. except in the CI community. they are holding to the same principles as did most christians at the turn of the 18th c. it was in the 19th c that the antislavery movement modified scriptural principles and changed the world. the CI are consistent in their arguments that this represents capitulation to the world. go read the site. it is excellently written and presents a consistently literal scripture hermenutic, just as do the YEC. the community is the same as the YEC, the arguments, the tone, the desires, the whole thing reads just like the creationist sites. why? they are part of the same community, not a quilt by association argument where you tar one group for anothers sins. but they are the same community. the CI form the right more consist but politically incorrect wing of the YEC.

it is an extension of my desire to see how the YEC deal with dessenters in their ranks, i started with the geocentric. these rightwingers accuse the main bunch of YEC of selling out to the world on the issue of race, by extension and argument to slavery. and furthermore they, the CI, blame evolutionary thinking as the culprit!!!!

i will ask again, go read their site. see how the arguments against integration, against equalitarism, against evolution are the same as the YEC.

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