tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-115162152024-03-18T11:14:00.307-07:00Metacrock's Blogworking every hour God sends to oppose the machinations of the Evil Trump!Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comBlogger2135125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-45175674303055769122024-03-17T09:34:00.000-07:002024-03-17T14:34:22.828-07:00Sorry for eliminating postI elemiated the post because all the side bar stuff was going to the bottom. I don't know why. I hope that fixes it.
I can't fix it. I need to hear from everyone wno post here If we just goon as iswould be ok Or shall I sart a new blog?Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-87781285063687704412024-03-15T07:34:00.000-07:002024-03-18T07:21:30.508-07:00What is the Soul? It seems almost a universal belief among atheists on the net (with some notable exceptions) that science has explained all of consciousness, reduced "mind" to an illusory nature, a side effect of brain chemistry. Atheists argue this fantasy from the stand point of the soul or the spirit, reducing dualistic aspects of religious thought to only the material realm, thus confirming their naturalism and eliminating what they see as privative religious thinking. The problem is, this is sheer fantasy. The atheist delusion that the whole of science accepts this conclusion as fact and as a matter of course is totally contradicted by the major physicists (Pennrose) and the Nobel Laureates who support many of the new forms of dualism or quantum versions of consciousness.<br /><br />Atheists argue this issue on two grounds: (1) that there is no data of any kind whatsoever supporting any sort of soul or spirit; (2) that alterations to brain chemistry seem to alter consciousness in many ways. Thus they conclude that brain chemistry is what "mind" reduce to, and there is nothing more than that and there need be nothing more than that. To answer the first point first, what atheists have in mind on the issue of soul is something like Casper the friendly ghost. They seem to think that religious thinking has not advanced sufficiently to get past the vaper notion of a by gone era. But not all religious view points understand things in is way.<br /><br />"Soul," in my parlance, is a veg term which is given no consistent use in the Bible. What emerges from the Biblical text most often is the idea that "soul" is a symbolic term referring to the over all life of the individual, especially with reference to the religious sphere, <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">the telos of the individual's life goal</span>, the after life. This is not to say that "soul" is what lives on, except in the symbolic sense. In other words, we do not have souls, <b><i>we are souls</i></b>. Thus the Bible speaks of a certain number of "souls" going down into Egypt, or we speak of "lost souls" and "saving souls."<br /><br />It is <b><i>Spirit</i></b> that I think of as the thing that lives after death. Spirit is the "life force" in a metaphorical sense. Now this doesn't mean it's a mysterious energy, for I understand "spirit" in the way that Albert Schweitzer did, as mind: <b><i>Spirit = mind.</i></b> Mind is an immaterial aspect of brain which produces consciousness, self awareness, and that is what lives on after death. Of course the atheist will argue that the mind is a side effect of brain chemistry, below (page 3) I present a boat load of data to show that this is simply not the case. Mind transcends brain. Of course we should be prepared to assume that mind is produced by brain function, that is "caused" by having a brain; but just being caused by the brain doesn't mean that the mind is reduced to the brain. As for living without a brain, we are talking about a state of after life. Of course we shouldn't expect minds to go running around planet earth without brains while people are still alive, but in the state of after life, where one transcends the material, why not? Some Christians might raise the issue of "resurrection body," but when Jesus was still in the flesh, after the resurrection, he told Mary he had not yet ascended to the father, and implied that his body would be transformed. Paul says he was raised a life giving spirit; he doesn't say he was a life giving spirit immediately upon raising.So perhaps in the state of after life the "resurrection body" is pure spirit? That is to say, the resurrection body is pure mind; being taken up into God's presence the mind coheres through some divine measure we know not of? That seems like the simplest solution to consider to me.<br /><br />As for the issue of brain chemistry and changing brain function changes consciousness, there is a problem here between correlation and causality. There is a very strong correlation between brain damage and changes of consciousness, but there is no way to prove that this is because the mind is reduce able to the brain. If the mind is dependent upon the brain as a soft ware package is dependent upon hardware, then of course damaging the hard ware would make the soft ware inaccessible, but it would not mean that soft are is reduceable to hardware.<br /></span></span><br />This idea always leaves atheists cold and usually they just ignore it on message boards. But it really does answer all the problems connected with belief in life after death and soul. It is not an entity that lives separately from the body. Its' the symbol of the over all life in relation to God. Mind is spirit, this means there is no Casper like aspect of humans that lives on after death. Mind may or may not live on after death, but as mind and we can ponder "resurrection body" another time. This makes after life something of a physical thing. If we are ideas in the mind of God this is not hard to understand. All God need to do so save our maind matrix is just think about it adhering<br>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-7023485695619846322024-03-04T03:14:00.000-08:002024-03-04T03:14:54.800-08:00The Point of Religion<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTJKC6hHWsnowkzFe8u9MC1Sv4ws0_mAIpMAQ&usqp=CAU" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="191" data-original-width="264" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTJKC6hHWsnowkzFe8u9MC1Sv4ws0_mAIpMAQ&usqp=CAU"/></a></div>
My original statement: "religion is justified on its own terms."<br>
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Pix: If your argument is right, then the belief that Thor controls thunder "is justified on its own terms". Do you really think that is the case?<br>
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Me: Only if you have a comic book understanding of religion. You think religion is a big bully boy in the clouds and you better do what he says then know nothing about religion. My statement boils down to there is ultimate transformative experience that resolves the issue in the human problematic and gives meaning to existence. One such example of this transformative experience is the feeling of utter dependence. That feeling justifies the need to resolve the problematic.<br>
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Atheists tend to see religion as competing strong men. They are always justopossimg individual deities against each other, Like in man's post human ampliofied the most powerful people and projected them imto skay riding status and that's all religion can ever be for atheists. Meanwhile thinking religious people moved on.<br>
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What follows is a statement I wrote so long ago the name Metacrock still seemed new. The statement was part of my page on Biblical revelation so it analyzes the religious a priori in terms of the Bible and specifically questions of the historicity of the Bible. I think it does expand the meaning of my statement about the point of religion.<br>
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All religions seek to do three things.<br>
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All religions seek to do three things:<br>
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a) to identify the human problematic,<br>
b) to identify an ultimate transformative experience (UTE) which resolves the<br> problematic, and<br>
c) to mediate between the two.<br>
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But not all religions are equal. All are relative to the truth but not all are equal. Some mediate the UTE better than others, or in a more accessible way than others. Given the foregoing, my criteria are that:<br>
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1) a religious tradition reflects a human problematic which is meaningful in terms of what we find in the world.<br>
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2) the UTE be found to really resolve the problematic<br>
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3) it mediates the UTE in such a way as to be effective and accessible.<br>
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4) its putative and crucial historical claims be historically probable given the ontological and epistemological assumptions that are required within the inner logic of that belief system.<br>
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5) it be consistent with itself and with the external world in a way that touches these factors.<br>
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These mean that I am not interested in piddling Biblical contradictions such as how many women went to the tomb, ect. but in terms of the major claims of the faith as they touch the human problematic and its resolution.<br>
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How Does the Bible fulfill these criteria? First, what is the Bible? Is it a rule book? Is it a manual of discipline? Is it a science textbook? A history book? No it is none of these. The Bible, the Canon, the NT in particular, is a means of bestowing Grace. What does that mean? It means first, it is not an epistemology! It is not a method of knowing how we know, nor is it a history book. It is a means of coming into contact with the UTE mentioned above. This means that the primary thing it has to do to demonstrate its veracity is not be accurate historically, although it is that in the main; but rather, its task is to connect one to the depository of truth in the teachings of Jesus such that one is made open to the ultimate transformative experience. Thus the main thing the Bible has to do to fulfill these criteria is to communicate this transformation. This can only be judged phenomenologically. It is not a matter of proving that the events are true, although there are ensconces where that becomes important.<br>
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Thus the main problem is not the existence of these piddling so-called contradictions (and my experience is 90% of them stem from not knowing how to read a text), but rather the extent to which the world and life stack up to the picture presented as a fallen world, engaged in the human problematic and transformed by the light of Christ. Now that means that the extent to which the problematic is adequately reflected, that being sin, separation from God, meaninglessness, the wages of sin, the dregs of life, and so forth, vs. the saving power of God's grace to transform life and change the direction in which one lives to face God and to hope and future. This is something that cannot be decided by the historical aspects or by any objective account. It is merely the individual's problem to understand and to experience. That is the nature of what religion does and the extent to which Christianity does it more accessibly and more efficaciously is the extent to which it should be seen as valid.<br>
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The efficacy is not an objective issue either, but the fact that only a couple of religions in the world share the concept of Grace should be a clue. No other religion (save Pure Land Buddhism) have this notion. For all the others there is a problem of one's own efforts. The Grace mediates and administrates through Scriptures is experienced in the life of the believer, and can be found also in prayer, in the sacraments and so forth.<br>
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Where the historical questions should enter into it are where the mediation of the UTE hedges upon these historical aspects. Obviously the existence of Jesus of Nazareth would be one, his death on the cross another. The Resurrection of course, doctrinally is also crucial, but since that cannot be established in an empirical sense, seeing as no historical question can be, we must use historical probability. That is not blunted by the minor discrepancies in the number of women at the tomb or who got there first. That sort of thinking is to think in terms of a video documentary. We expect the NT to have the sort of accuracy we find in a court room because we are moderns and we watch too much television. The number of women and when they got to the tomb etc. does not have a bearing on whether the tomb actually existed, was guarded and was found empty. Nor does it really change the fact that people claimed to have seen Jesus after his death alive and well and ascending into heaven. We can view the different strands of NT witness as separate sources, since they were not written as one book, but by different authors at different times and brought together later.<br>
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The historicity of the NT is a logical assumption given the nature of the works. We can expect that the Gospels will be polemical. We do not need to assume, however, that they will be fabricated from whole cloth. They are the product of the communities that redacted them. That is viewed as a fatal weakness in fundamentalist circles, tantamount to saying that they are lies. But that is silly. In reality there is no particular reason why the community cannot be a witness. The differences in the accounts are produced by either the ordering of periscopes to underscore various theological points or the use of witnesses who fanned out through the various communities and whose individual view points make up the variety of the text. This is not to be confused with contradiction simply because it reflects differences in individual's view points and distracts us from the more important points of agreement; the tomb was empty, the Lord was seen risen, there were people who put their hands in his nail prints, etc.<br>
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The overall question about Biblical contradiction goes back to the basic nature of the text. What sort of text is it? Is it a Sunday school book? A science textbook? A history book? And how does inspiration work? The question about the nature of inspiration is the most crucial. This is because the basic notion of the fundamentalists is that of verbal plenary inspiration. If we assume that this is the only sort of inspiration then we have a problem. One mistake and verbal plenary inspiration is out the window. The assumption that every verse is inspired and every word is true comes not from the Church fathers or from the Christian tradition. It actually starts with Humanists in the Renaissance and finds its final development in the 19th century with people like J. N. Drably and Warfield. (see, Avery Dulles Models of Revelation).<br>
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One of my major reasons for rejecting this model of revelation is because it is not true to the nature of transformation. Verbal plenary inspiration assumes that God uses authors like we use pencils or like businessmen use secretaries, to take dictation (that is). But why should we assume that this is the only form of inspiration? Only because we have been conditioned by American Christianity to assume that this must be the case. This comes from the Reformation's tendency to see the Bible as epistemology rather than as a means of bestowing grace (see William Abraham, Canon and Criterion). Why should be approach the text with this kind of baggage? We should approach it, not assuming that Moses et al. were fundamentalist preachers, but that they experienced God in their lives through the transformative power of the Spirit and that their writings and readings are a reflection of this experience. That is more in keeping with the nature of religion as we find it around the world. That being the case, we should have no problem with finding that mythology of Babylonian and Suzerain cultures are used in Genesis, with the view toward standing them on their heads, or that some passages are idealized history that reflect a nationalistic agenda. But the experiences of God come through in the text in spite of these problems because the text itself, when viewed in dialectical relation between reader and text (Barth/Dulles) does bestow grace and does enable transformation.<br>
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After all the Biblical texts were not written as "The Bible" but were compiled from a huge voluminous body of works which were accepted as scripture or as "holy books" for quite some time before they were collected and put in a single list and even longer before they were printed as one book: the Bible. Therefore, that this book may contradict itself on some points is of no consequence. Rather than reflecting dictation, or literal writing as though the author was merely a pencil in the hands of God, what they really reflect is the record of people's experiences of God in their lives and the way in which those experiences suggested their choice of material/redaction. In short, inspiration of scripture is a product of the transformation afore mentioned. It is the verbalization of inner-experience which mediates grace, and in turn it mediates grace itself.<br>
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The Bible is not the Perfect Revelation of God to humanity. Jesus is that perfect revelation. The Gospels are merely the record of Jesus' teachings, deposited with the communities and encoded for safe keeping in the list chosen through Apostolic backing to assure Christian identity. For that matter the Bible as a whole is a reflection of the experience of transformation and as such, since it was the product of human agents we can expect it to have human flaws. The extent to which those flaws are negligible can be judge the ability of that deposit of truth to adequately promote transformation. Christ authorizes the Apostles, the Apostles authorize the community, the community authorizes the tradition, and the tradition authorizes the canon.<br>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com46tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-54640564544261558262024-02-25T22:19:00.000-08:002024-02-25T22:19:17.049-08:00historicity of the empty tomb<a href="http://s36.photobucket.com/albums/e46/Spazmoticat/?action=view&current=emptytomb.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e46/Spazmoticat/emptytomb.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />
<blockquote>But in the last several years, a remarkable change seems to have taken place, and the scepticism that so characterized earlier treatments of this problem appears to be fast receding. Though some theologians still insist with Bultmann that the resurrection is not a historical event, this incident is certainly presented in the gospels as a historical event, one of the manifestations of which was that the tomb of Jesus was reputedly found empty on the first day of the week by several of his women followers; this fact, at least, is therefore in principle historically verifiable. But how credible is the evidence for the historicity of Jesus's empty tomb?<b>[1]</b></blockquote>
The canonical authors give limited but acurate accounts of the kind of tomb that would have been used, <b>[2]</b> There is no first century account other than the Gospels early church writers do point to the empty tomb.If there was an empty tomb why would the early apologists the apostoli fathers not mention it? Because they didn't think about things the way we do.They had no concept of a modern courtroom much less courtroom evidence.<br>
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According to both Eusebius and Jerome,Hadrian (c. A.D. 135) built a temple to both Jupiter and Venus on the site of the tomb, that is how christians marked the site of the tomb. When the Jeswis-Christians fled Jerusalem after the revolt of 134 they aprized gentile christians of this knowledge. That also indicates that the tomb was vindicated at that time since Romans desecrated the site. <b>[3]</b><br>
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From the second half of the second century we have the Gospel of Peter (aka GPet).GPet gives us a look at the empty tomb reflecting the notion that the empty tomb was well established by that time.<br>
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<blockquote> For the stone was large, and we were afraid lest anyone see us. And if we are unable, let us throw against the door what we bring in memory of him; let us weep and beat ourselves until we come to our homes."<br>
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[55] And having gone off, they found the sepulcher opened. And having come forward, they bent down there and saw there a certain young man seated in the middle of the sepulcher, comely and clothed with a splendid robe, who said to them:<br>
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[56] "Why have you come? Whom do you seek? Not that one who was crucified? He is risen and gone away. But if you do not believe, bend down and see the place where he lay, because he is not here. For he is risen and gone away to there whence he was sent."<b>[4]</b></blockquote>
There are critics, such as Mark Cameron support idea of GPet as reflecting an ancient and independent tradition.<b>[5]</b>"John Dominic Crossan argues that the Gospel of Peter, as it is found in the modern day, was composed in the 2nd century but incorporates a passion narrative source that predates all other known passion accounts."<b>[6]</b><br>
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There are writers after the second century who allude to the empty tomb, "Of these the most explicit and of the greatest importance is Eusebius, who writes of the Tomb as an eyewitness, or as one having received his information from eyewitnesses."<b>[7]</b><br>
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I have made a much more involved page with lots of documentation going into great detail on the subject,Its on my original website Doxa, 9t's ca;ed <a href="https://doxa.ws/Jesus_pages/Resurrection/Tomb_yes.html">"have tomb,will argue."</a><b>[8]</b><br>
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I invite the reader to read that essay.<br>
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NOTES<br>
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[1]William Lane Craig, "The Historicity of the empty tomb of Jesus,"extract, Cambridge Unversity Press,1985,
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/abs/historicity-of-the-empty-tomb-of-jesus1/39C53623AC0517088951E31CF346B540<br>
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[2]Gary D. Myers,"the Empty Tomb: archeaology and early Chuch writers Point to Jesus Tomb" NOBTS, (MARCH 28, 2016)
https://www.nobts.edu/news/articles/2016/the-empty-tomb-archaeology-early-church-writers-point-to-jesus-tomb.html
Myers is the director of public relations at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary<br>
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[3] Ibid.<br>
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[4]:Gospel of Peter," Linius,org,1998;2020<br>
https://www.livius.org/sources/content/gospel-of-peter/<br>
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[5]Walter Richard Cassels, Supernatural Religion - An Inquiry Into the Reality of Divine Revelation, Read Books, 2010. Vol. 1, p. 419–422<br>
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[6]Crossan, John Dominic. The Cross that Spoke, pp. 16–30. Wipf and Stock, 1988.<br>
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[7]Op cit,Myers fn2.<br>
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https://www.nobts.edu/news/articles/2016/the-empty-tomb-archaeology-early-church-writers-point-to-jesus-tomb.html<br>
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[8]Joseph Hinman, "Have Tomb,Will Argue," Doxa, apologetocs website, 2010.<br>
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<a href="https://doxa.ws/Jesus_pages/Resurrection/Tomb_yes.html">https://doxa.ws/Jesus_pages/Resurrection/Tomb_yes.html</a><br><br>
https://doxa.ws/Jesus_pages/Resurrection/Tomb_yes.html<br>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-73655236934089573542024-02-18T23:02:00.000-08:002024-02-20T22:16:10.823-08:00My answer to those who say Christianity in America is in decline. Civilixation is indecline, books are in decline learning is in decline. Thinking is in decline. Democracy is in decline, dencency is in decline, everything that has made modern life worth living is in declie, so why npt christianity? That is npthing more than the great falling away preduced at theend times.Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-17084470111579759062024-02-18T20:06:00.000-08:002024-03-01T00:31:28.513-08:00Arguments for the Existence of God<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://cosmicpursuits.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Crab-Nebula-1024x907.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="709" data-original-width="800" src="https://cosmicpursuits.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Crab-Nebula-1024x907.jpg"/></a></div><br>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.8em; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;">
<b>I. <a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2009/01/cosmological-argumemts.html">Cosmological Argument</a><br>
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II. <a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2015/10/fine-tuning-argument-part-1.html">Fine Tuning Argument</a><https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69C29ZNTZgYbr>
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dialogue o FT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69C29ZNTZgY
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III.<a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2015/12/thomas-reid-argument-or-from-epistemic.html">Religious Experience </a><br>
<br><a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2015/12/thomas-reid-argument-or-from-epistemic.html">.....A.Thomas Reid argument</a><br>
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<br>.....B.<a href="http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2009/01/essays-and-arguments-on-my-religous.html">The Empirical Study of Religious Experience</a><br>
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IV.<a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2011/06/transcendental-signifier-argument.html">The Transcendental Signifier Argument</a><br>
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V.<a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2010/08/modal-argument.html">Hartshorne's Modal Argument</a></b><br>
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VI. <a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2016/05/argument-from-laws-of-nature.html">Argumemt from Laws of Nature</a><br>
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These arguments re not offered as absolute proof that God exists but as the basis for a rational warrant for belief.
https://literariness.org/2016/03/22/jacques-derrida-transcendental-signified/
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-1150003879424913102024-02-10T22:27:00.000-08:002024-02-11T22:08:40.448-08:00The Empirical Trace of God?The atheists with whom I converse on the net seem to think that I really believe the studies I conclude that God exists they make a big thing of pointing out that they don/t. Of course they don't claim they do but those atheists just don't listen whenI explain my argument.<br>
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"I am skeptical" says:<br>
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<blockquote>I'm not belittling anything. I'm telling you that personal experience does not constitute empirical evidence. I'm telling you that all those studies make no such claim, and you are reading that into them. They don't show the causation that you infer from them. You can have all the experiences you like. Be happy with it. I have experiences, too. But don't try to tell a scientist that it's empirical evidence, because it isn't. And all the positive effects your studies point out are not the product God unless you can show actual evidence that they are. Those studies don't say that. You haven't shown it.<b>[1]</b> </blockquote>
The problem is we have two different concepts of reality working here, Notice his major concern is that there be scientific proof of God, Anythig short of that is not proof. This is not science but ideology. Science does not prescribe itself as the only form of knowledge, that is the ideology of scientism.I work by a new standard of proof, called "rational warrant." Rather than prove absolutely that God exists I seek to warrant belief. Atheists criticize fait by cayingitis believing things without a reason, That implies that having a good reason should be enough. This argument supplies a good reason to believe.<br>
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Why should we assume that such experiences are experiences of the divine? The first reason is because the content of the experience is largely that of the divine. Even when the experience is interpreted by the receiver not be about God the receiver has been known to act in way consistently with belief in God, and the experience described is the same experience as those described by those who say ‘this was God.’ Ergo it’s just a matter of interpretation. The vast majority of those who have these experiences do believe they are about God.<b>[2]</b><br>
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<blockquote>In a survey of thousands of people who reported having experienced personal encounters with God, Johns Hopkins researchers report that more than two-thirds of self-identified atheists shed that label after their encounter. Moreover, the researchers say, a majority of respondents attributed lasting positive changes in their psychological health—e.g., life satisfaction, purpose, and meaning—even decades after their initial experience.<b>[3]</b></blockquote><br>
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Secondly, there is a voluminous and ancient tradition of writing about experiences by people from all over the world, and the brunt of this tradition is that it’s an experience of the divine. Literary and philosophical works such as Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill,<b>[4]</b><br>
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<blockquote>Experiences that people describe as encounters with God or a representative of God have been reported for thousands of years, and they likely form the basis of many of the world's religions," says lead researcher Roland Griffiths, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "And although modern Western medicine doesn't typically consider 'spiritual' or 'religious' experiences as one of the tools in the arsenal against sickness, our findings suggest that these encounters often lead to improvements in mental health."<b>[5]</b></blockquote>
The works of W.T. Stace <b>[6]</b> and many other such writings which catalogue these experiences, and many more works of the experiences of individual mystics by the mystics themselves reflect t. Thirdly, grounded in empirical evidence, the universal nature of such experiences implies the experience of a source external to the human mind encountered by all who have such experiences. When I say “external” I mean it originates externally but is experienced internally. This includes human brain structure and brain chemistry as a conduit not that it circumvents natural processes. The works of W.T. Stace are very influential. He shows that, as Ralph Hood Jr. put it, “within and eventually outside of the great faith traditions mysticism has flourished.”<b>[7]</b> Stace offers five characteristics that demonstrate the commonalities to mystical experience; these are characteristics that are found universally in all cultures and in all forms of mystical experience:<br>
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The contemporary interest in the empirical research of mysticism can be traced to Stace’s (Stace, 1960) demarcation of the phenomenological characteristics of mystical experiences (Hood, 1975). In Stace’s conceptualization, mystical experiences had five characteristics (Hood, 1985, p.176):<br>
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1. The mystical experience is noetic. The person having the experience perceives it as a valid source of knowledge and not just a subjective experience.<br>
2. The mystical experience is ineffable, it cannot simply be described in words.<br>
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3. The mystical experience is holy. While this is the religious aspect of the experience it is not necessarily expressed in any particular theological terms.<br>
4. The mystical experience is profound yet enjoyable and characterized by positive affect.<br>
5. The mystical experience is paradoxical. It defies logic. Further analysis of reported mystical experiences suggests that the one essential feature of mysticism is an experience of unity (Hood, 1985).<br>
<br> The experience of unity involves a process of ego loss and is generally expressed in one of three ways (Hood, 1 976a). The ego is absorbed into that which transcends it, or an inward process by which the ego gains pure awareness of self, or a combination of the two.<b>[8]</b><br>
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The experiences themselves are real and they have a total transformative effect upon thelifeofthe experoecer Thisisnot a trick or psychological problem it's real. The question is: what inexperienced? We have major reasons to think it's God:<br>
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(1)We would not even have religion without it. What are the odds this "imaginary" thing would affect the validity of the most hated aspect of life for atheists?<br>
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(2) The effects of the experience match the major promises made by God about redemption.<br>
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(3) the experiences themselves are the same the world over despite different names of deities,which indicates they are all dealing with the same reality.<br>
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"But don't try to tell a scientist that it's empirical evidence, because it isn't." The studies themselves are empirical in the scientific sense, the researchers say so."Three empirical instruments have been developed to date. They are the Mysticism Scale by Hood (1975), a specific question by Greeley (1974) and the State of Consciousness Inventory by Alexander (1982; <b>[9]</b> the data is empirical we are extrapolating from that.This is done in science as with smoking causes cancer before they had a causal mechanism.<br>
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The experience of mystical consciousness itself is empirical: Definitions from Oxford Languages ·
em·pir·i·cal
/imˈpirək(ə)l/
adjective
based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.<br>
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"they provided considerable empirical evidence to support their argument"<b>[10]</b> Webster:"originating in or based on observation or experience. empirical data. 2. : relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory.``<b>[11]</b> In scientific terms: "Empirical research is based on observed and measured phenomena and derives knowledge from actual experience rather than from theory or belief.Jan 5, 2024"<b>[12]</b> That wpi;d still indclude the actual experience of God as emirical.<br>
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Science offers it's specialized version of empirical that fits scientific learning. But why should that be the standard by which all belief is measured? Even so the data is scientifically empirical, we are extrapolating to ask what does that data teach us?<br>
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Notes<br>
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[1] "Is there evidence for an infinite loving God?" <i>Metacrock's Blog</i>FEBRUARY 03, 2024
https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2024/02/is-there-evidence-for-infinite-loving.html
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[2] Joseph Hinman, <i>Trace of God:Rational warrant for Belief</i>.Colorado Springs:Grand Viaduct, 2014.<br>
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[3]Vanessa McMains. <br>"Profound Experiences Linked to Mental Health Benifits," HUB,Johns Hopkins Unversity. Apr 26, 2019,
https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/04/26/experiencing-god-psychedelics-mental-health/<br>
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[4] Evelyn Underhill, <i>Mysticism: A study on the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual consciousness</i>. New York: Dutton, 1911.<br>
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[5]OP Cit, Vanessa McMains<br>
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[6] W.T. Stace, <i>Teachings of the Mystics: Selections from the Greatest Mystics and Mystical Writers of the World.</i> New American Library 1960. A good General overview of Stace’s understanding of mysticism is Mystical Experience Registry: Mysticism Defined by W.T. Stace. found onine at URL: http://www.bodysoulandspirit.net/mystical_experiences/learn/experts_define/stace.shtml
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[7] Ralph Hood Jr. “The Common Core Thesis in the Study of Mysticism.” In <i>Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion</i>. Patrick Mcnamara ed. West Port CT: Prager Publications, 2006, 119-235. Google books on line version: URL http://books.google.com.cu/books?id=0bzj3RtT3zIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true visited 8/20/2012<br>
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[8]Robert J. Voyle, “The Impact of Mystical Experiences Upon Christian Maturity.” originally published in pdf format: http://www.voyle.com/impact.pdf. google html version here: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:avred7zleAEJ Voyle is quoting Hood in 1985, Hood in return is speaking Stace. <br>:www.voyle.com/impact.pdf+Hood+scale+and+religious+experience&hl=en&gl =us&ct=clnk&cd=2&ie=UTF-8\\<br>
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[9]Vanessa McMains, op cit<br>
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[10] About 32,400,000 results (0.32 seconds)
based on experiments or experience rather than ideas or theories. empirical evidence/knowledge/research.empirical adjective - Oxford Learner's Dictionaries
<br><br>
Oxford Learner's Dictionaries
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com › english<br>
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[11]Empirical, Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster<br>
https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › empirical<br>
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[12]"Empirical Research in the Social Sciences and Education," Penn state University libraries<br>
https://guides.libraries.psu.edu ›Jan 5, 2024
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-74503415661943838112024-02-03T20:22:00.000-08:002024-02-05T11:08:16.619-08:00Is there evidence for an infinite loving God?
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<a href="http://s36.photobucket.com/albums/e46/Spazmoticat/?action=view&current=FromWithinCreation.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e46/Spazmoticat/FromWithinCreation.jpg" /></a><br />
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On <a href="https://randalrauser.com/2022/10/defending-christians-who-do-not-doubt-gods-existence/">Randal Rauser's Blog</a> Daniel Wilcox speaking to atheist Dana Harpar: "I agree with you and others that there is no evidence for the infinite and loving God of many Christians or for any of the revealed religions at all."I think I've given plenty of good reason to believe in God and to make a leap of faith. Now I will argue if God does exist God is the loving God of revealed religion,ie of Christianity.
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I could appeal to devine revelation then argue for the validity of the Bible. That would be a profuntory answer, one expected of any apologist and guronteed to turn off skeptics. Instead I have two arguments:<br>
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I.The nature of religious experience.<br>
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II.The Phenomenology of Christian love<br>
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I.experience.<br>
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The nature of religious experrience as a whole demostrates the loving nature of God. I will use Mystical experience (ME) as my argument but it applies beyond that.There are two core aspects to mystical experience: (1) a profound sense of the undifferentiated unity of all things, and (2) A profound sense of God's all pervasive Love. This second aspect is at the core of the experience and is so much a part of it that lift is missing that is a good reason to doubt that it is a true mystical experience.<br>
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Mystical experience is backed empirically to such an extent that it almost constitutes proof of God's existence.200+ studies over 50 years all showing the validity of the experience with no counter study, not one. The experience is overwhelmingly positive and transformative, makes your life better across the board.What I mean by this is illustrated by a sample of one of the studies, a summary of findings from two.This was published on my religious experience argument back in the summer.<br>
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Wuthnow study:<br>
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*Say their lives are more meaningful,<br>
*think about meaning and purpose<br>
*Know what purpose of life is<br>
Meditate more<br>
*Score higher on self-rated personal talents and capabilities<br>
*Less likely to value material possessions, high pay, job security, fame, and having lots of friends<br>
*Greater value on work for social change, solving social problems, helping needy<br>
*Reflective, inner-directed, self-aware, self-confident life style<br>
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Noble:<br>
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*Experience more productive of psychological health than illness<br>
*Less authoritarian and dogmatic<br>
*More assertive, imaginative, self-sufficient<br>
*intelligent, relaxed<br>
*High ego strength,<br>
*relationships, symbolization, values,<br>
*integration, allocentrism,<br>
*psychological maturity,<br>
*self-acceptance, self-worth,<br>
*autonomy, authenticity, need for solitude,<br>
*increased love and compassion<br>
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Short-Term Effects (usually people who did not previously know of these experiences)
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<b>[1]</b><br>
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II. Phenomenology<br>
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Love is more than just a feeling of butterflies in the stomach. It is an experience as well as an ideal. It's concept but it os a;so ex[eroenced,phenomenological apprehension.<br>
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I don't feel very loving right now, but I don't have to feel any way to talk about love, because love is not merely a feeling. A lot of people think that love is just the special way of feeling about a person, or the warm fuzzy that comes from being with a certain person. Love is much more than just a special way of feeling. It is also a value, a commitment, a sense of orientation toward others, a philosophy, a way of being in the world (an existential engagement).<br>
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There are degrees of love and kinds of love. The Greeks called sexual and romantic love Eros From which we get our word "erotic." The kind of love friends feel they called Phileo or "brotherly love" (as in "Philadelphia"). The highest form of love they called Agape. That is usually the kind of love the Bible speaks of when it speaks of God's love for us. 1 John tells us "He who loves knows God for God is love."<br>
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Agape Means: the will to value the other, or the will to the good of the other; the desire for the other to have the best. It entails the idea of according the other all rights and human dignity. It is not personal, it's a commitment to all people. Agape is sometimes translated Charity (as in kJ trains 1 Corinthians 13 "if I speak with the tongue of men and of angles and have not charity") but this is more condescending and patronizing than the actual meaning of the term. Charity can be paternalistic in the negative sense, controlling, colonizing, derogatory. Agape is a totally positive thing; one must actually seek the good of the other whatever that may be, even against one's own interest.<br>
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Now I will start saying "crazy stuff," these are things that I have theorized about and I guess they make up the radical edge of my own philosophy because they have been scoffed at plenty of times on these boards. But I don't care I'm saying it anyway.<br>
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<b>Basis of everything: connection with Being</b><br>
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When I say love is the basis of everything, I mean it really is. I believe that when the Bible says "God is love" it means it literally. In other words, we should put an "itself" there. God is "love itself,": the thing that love is actually the essence of what God is. Now you may ask how can God be both being itself and love itself? Because these two are inextricably bound up together.<br>
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Love is giving, the idea of seeking the good of the other, according the other full human dignity equal to one's own, these are ideas that entail give over, supplying the other with something. It's a positivity in the sense that it supplies an actual thing to someone. Being also shares these qualifications. Being is giving in the sense that it bettors itself upon the beings and they have their existence. It is positive in the sense that it is something and not taking something away, it's not a void as nothingness is, but moves in the direction of filling a void; nothingness becomes being, the existence of things.<br>
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So love and being are really the same impulse and they both unite in the spirit of God. God is the basis of all being, of all reality. God's character is love; that is God seeks the good of the other and bestows upon us the ultimate human dignity of being a child of God.<br>
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<b>Motivating force behind creation</b><br>
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Love is the basic motivating force behind creation. God's motive urge to create was not out of a need due to looniness, but out of a desire to create as an artist, and desire is fueled by love. Art is love, artists love art, as revolutionaries love. Revolutionaries are in love and their revolutions are often expressions of love, what He Guava called "a strange kind of love, not to see more shiny factories but for people." So God creates as a need to bestow love, which entails the bestowing of being.
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Now let's not have a bunch of lectures about "perfection" based upon not knowing what perfection is. Let's not have a buck of Aristotle thrown in as though it were the Bible. There is no baseline for comparison from which one can really make the judgment that need is imperfection; especially the sort of need one feels to be creative or to bestow love; that is a different sort of need than the need for food or shelter.
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<b>Basis of morality</b><br>
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Love is the basis of morality. Love is the background of the moral universe, as Joseph Fletcher said. Austin said it too. That means all moral decisions are made with ultimate reference to God's love which is the driving force behind morality. Many people think Christian morality is about stopping impurity. These people regard sex as the greatest offense and think that basically sin = sex. But nothing is further from the truth. Sin is not sex, sin is an unloosing nature, or a selfish desire to act in an unloosing manner.<br>
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Love requires selfless giving over OT the other for the good of the other. That means all moral actions must ultimately be evaluated with reference to their motivational properties. That's why Jesus spoke as he did in the sermon on the mount: if you hate you are a murderer. Because the motivation itself is the true essence of the sin, the rejecting of love and acceptance of self as the orbit creates the motive that eventually leads to the act. He is not saying that the act sin OT sinful of course, but that the sin begins with the motive not just with the act. In that sense morality is somewhat teleological, although I normally eschew teleological ethics. I am not saying that the morality of a given act is based upon outcome, but that the end toward which moral motions are given is the goal of doing love.<br>
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Love is too central to the nature of the faith to be floating out as a mindless idea divorced from divine consciousness.<br>
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[1] Joseph Hinman,"Argument from Religious Experience (for existence of God),"Metacrock's Blog."(AUGUST 31, 2022)
<a href="https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2022/08/argument-from-religious-experience-for.html%20%20%20">https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2022/08/argument-from-religious-experience-for.html</a>
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0982408765">https://www.amazon.com/dp/0982408765</a>
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<i>God, Science, and Ideology</i> by Joseph Hinman is a very important book. Hinman was a PhD candidate in the UT system, his field was history of ideas and he studied the history and philosophy of science. He brings this knowledge to the critique of athye8ist ideology on the internet. Hinman summarizes 20years of arguments with atheist apologist and takes down some of the major atheists figures such as Richard Dawkins,
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-24151705333225204572024-01-28T18:50:00.000-08:002024-01-28T22:37:39.399-08:00The Dark Side of the Bible: "wipe them out" passages.<br>
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I was recently conversing with an atheist, who for lack of anything better to say, pulled out the old bit about how oppressive the Bible is. Of course he had to multiply examples with quote after quote about stoning the women and killing others and making slaves obey, yada yada yada, like I haven't thought about this. Like I was a political organizer in the central America movement for years and a seminary student in a very liberal seminary, and I never gave a thought to the social relations in the Bible!<br>
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I said the verse about the slaughter of the Amalektie infants was an interpolation. He responds with bo'd coup verses, one after another, all supposedly saying the same things (of course they really didn't say the same thing, just many things that offend the twentieth century sensibility). Since there are just way too many verses to respond once for one, and it's all just multiplying examples, I will list some general principles that I think answer the overall situation viz God and social oppression, especially as it relates to the OT.<br>
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(1)But first, it's important to recognize the objective.<br>
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The atheist has to show that belief in God, specifically the Hebrew God, made the situation worse. If it didn't worsen the lot of the people of that era, then where's the blame? To do that they have to do two things:<br>
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(a) compare to surrounding culture<br>
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(b) show that the problem comes directly from belief in the kind of God the Hebrews had, as opposed to other types of the day.<br>
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(2) Can't hold up ancient world people to modern standards.<br>
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We can't expect people in the ancient world, who lived prior to the modern western concepts of autonomy, individualism and democracy and expect them to have learned better at Woodstock. They didn't have Woodstock to learn from and they weren't hippies, they had no sexaul revoltuion and they couldnt' go to a corner drug store and read about it in a teen magazine or a tabloid.<br>
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(3) Social Evolution not Revoltuion<br>
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Christ didn't explain to people how to build nuclear power plants or the theory of germs and antiseptic surgery, he didn't write medical books to make their lives better. He did some religious thing and went away again. That's because his mission was primarily spiritual. He was not a social revolutionary, even though what he said would be very revolutionary if it were practiced.<br>
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But basically God keeps pace with the understanding of people. The atheists seem to think that everything should be a vast revelation, unfolding of the new world before everyone's eyes. I've already sketched out my theory of soteriological drama in which God wants an individual search in the heart, and that's why he doesnt' pull back the veil of the sky, reveal heaven and set up shop on earth.<br>
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God allows us to make the journey. He allows us to set up our own society to apply the principles we learn to internalize on our spiritual search as part of our ethical understanding concerning living in the world. Thus God allows Society to evolve at its own place and allows the understanding of people to guide social reform and revolution.<br>
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Naturally things will look a lot rougher at the beginning than at the end. The ancient world will be a lot more primitive and barbaric than the modern world. That's just the concept of social evolution.<br>
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(4)The Bible is personal revelation not a guide to social utopia<br>
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What throws a lot of people off is that God seemed to be leading a nation in the OT. One would then expect that he would introduce that nation to the proper social enlightenment. We forget a lot of those texts were political propaganda. The basic function of the OT is to form a cultural background so the mission of the messiah makes sense. The real nature of Biblical revelation is the dialectical relationship between the reader and text. In other words, don't be suckered by ancient nationalism.<br>
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(5) The God led society was progressive<br>
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When you compare those barbaric practices of the Hebrews with those of surrounding cultures they were better. They were more progressive. Consider the nature of war; most slaves were captives taken in war, for most nations around that day a woman captured in war was just a thing to be used as the captor saw fit. She would never again have any kind of rights or consideration and in many cases be killed. In Hebrew culture she was protected form rape and in seven years had a chance to free herself.<br>
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*poor people could glean parts of the harvest for themselves<br>
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*everyone got land *women went to Moses and demanded their fair share and it was given them<br>
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*Women takne in slavery protected from rape<br>
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*in Jubilee year the captives could free themselves.<br>
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*court system setup to hear complaints of people<br>
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Actually most of this stuff is more progressive than Trump's social agenda.<br>
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(6) Christian principles led to modern concepts of personhood and human rights.<br>
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the slave owners in the American south followed their econimic interest. But the workers int he underground RR who tended to be christains, and quakers and abolitinoists over all followed their reilgious princples,and they oppossed salvery, and closed down the slave trade in the 1820's before the civil war, and latter supported the union and helped end the insittution of slavery in the Confederacy and went on to push for women's rights as well.<br>
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*First Women's suffrage group in America Phoebe Palmer and Methodist Women's Association<br>
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* first organized Abolition group in America, very same people, Methodist women<br>
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*Chrarles Finney crusaded against slavery and supported the abolition movement,and brought the entire second great awakening into the cause. He said "revolution is of God when the intelligence and understanding of the people exceeds the oppression being done to them."<br>
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* *Pesant revolts in south Germany for rights of the poor<br>
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*Olympia, Deaconess of Constantinople gave her personal fortune to free slaves. St. John Crysostom led a social reform movement that was headed by man Deaconesses of his diocese.<br>
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*Christians for Socialism in 20th century chile<br>
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*CLamb Central america<br>
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*Snadinistas printed bibles tought Bible in literacy campign<br>
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*Father Ernesto Cardinal in Nicaragua, Father Camillio Tores in Bolivia, all over Latin America Priests and nuns lead social and poltiical revolution against US cold war poltiics and social oppression.<br>
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*1930s America Christians for socialism and industrial action<br>
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*Dorothy Day supports christian socialism and starts comminites to bring soup kitchens to poor and share all goods in common.<br>
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In every time and place, in every social setting some chrsitrians have wored against the oppression to be the salt and light.<br>
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It's a journey of the individual heart but it plays itself out in the way we relate to each other.<br>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-9814977555012048592024-01-15T12:26:00.000-08:002024-01-15T12:26:04.518-08:00Are All Cosmologists Atheists?v
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<br /><a href="http://photobucket.com/" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" border="0" src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/Metacrock/starbkgnd.jpg" style="border: none; position: relative;" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />In the previous post I commented on Sean Carroll, astro-physicist and atheist soldier who wave the banner of scientism. He writes an article:"Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists"</a> <span style="color: blue;"><strong>[1]</strong><span style="color: black;">Actually,</span><strong> </strong><span style="color: black;">he offers no data on the views of cosmologists. I offered reasons in the previous post as to why I think the title here is hyperballe. Good data shows that the majority of scientists believe in God <strong><span style="color: blue;">[2]</span></strong> While it may not be true of cosmologists I have no reason to believe it is not. But this is not the real issue. he real issue is that Carroll's arguments are merely ideological/ all he's doing is imposing a naturalistic ideology upon epistemology and then insisting that he has the mystique of science to back it up. In other word it's just propaganda.</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Let's start with his conclusion:</span><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
The question we have addressed is, ”Thinking as good scientists and observing the world in which we live, is it more reasonable to conclude that a materialist or theist picture is most likely to ultimately provide a comprehensive description of the universe?” Although I don’t imagine I have changed many people’s minds, I do hope that my reasoning has been clear. We are looking for a complete, coherent, and simple understanding of reality.</blockquote>
That seems ok so far but here's where he wants to wind up:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
Given what we know about the universe, there seems to be no reason to invoke God as part of this description. In the various ways in which God might have been judged to be a helpful hypothesis — such as explaining the initial conditions for the universe, or the particular set of fields and couplings discovered by particle physics — there are alternative explanations which do not require anything outside a completely formal, materialist description. I am therefore led to conclude that adding God would just make things more complicated, and this hypothesis should be rejected by scientific standards. It’s a venerable conclusion, brought up to date by modern cosmology; but the dialogue between people who feel differently will undoubtedly last a good while longer.</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />The problem is "what we know" means what we know by the methods that I choose, those methods are chosen because they yield the results I want; other forms of knowledge I do not have to regard. He argues for a self contained paradigm and true to Thomas Kun's theory he absorbs anomalies into the paradigm so as not to admit that they are contradictions and he defends the paradigm like a political regime. My overall argument is that his rejection of theism is ideological not scientific.<br /><br />In his abstract to the article he makes his purpose clear, that purpose I to rule out belief in God by moving it of the map as an issue. The way to do that is to assert science's role as the only form of knowlege:<br /><blockquote>
<strong>Abstract</strong><br />Science and religion both make claims about the fundamental workings of the universe. Although these claims are not a priori incompatible (we could imagine being brought to religious belief through scientific investigation), I will argue that in practice they diverge. If we believe that the methods of science can be used to discriminate between fundamental pictures of reality,<strong><em>we are led to a strictly materialist conception</em></strong> of the universe. While the details of modern cosmology are not a necessary part of this argument, they provide interesting clues as to how an ultimate picture may be constructed. [emphasis mine]<span style="color: blue;"><strong> [3]</strong></span></blockquote>
Why would we be led to be led to a meticulously materialist view just because we believe that the methods of science can be used to <strong><em>discriminate</em> </strong>between fundamental views? It sounds like he is saying that science can determine the truth between differing views. He actually says ifwe believe that it can He's aware that it can't. He knows all he's really doing is just advocating an ideological view point that blinds itself to other possibilities.<br /><strong></strong><br />As further evidence of his commitment as a solider of atheism he opposes any sort of peaceful coexistence between science and religion:<br /><strong></strong><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
One increasingly hears rumors of a reconciliation between science and religion. In major news magazines as well as at academic conferences, the claim is made that that belief in the success of science in describing the workings of the world is no longer thought to be in conflict with faith in God. I would like to argue against this trend, in favor of a more old-fashioned point of view that is still more characteristic of most scientists, who tend to disbelieve in any religious component to the workings of the universe<strong><span style="color: blue;">.[4]</span></strong></blockquote>
<br /><br />He disavows any claim to statistical accuracy in the title saying, "The title ''Why cosmologists are atheists'' was chosen ...simply to bring attention to the fact that I am presenting a common and venerable point of view, not advancing a new and insightful line of reasoning." <strong><span style="color: blue;">[5]</span></strong> That's a new one, I can make false claims about support because I don't mean them and somehow the fact that I'm advocating traditional views guarantees it's veracity. Talk about propaganda! This "common and venerable view" is outmoded and has been left behind by many in scientific circles. Stpehen J, Guild with his non overlapping magisteria found peace with religion by recognizing that religion and science have different purposes<span style="color: blue;"><strong>.[6] </strong><span style="color: black;">The National Science Teachers Association echos the same concept that science and religion cover differing domains of knowledge. “Explanations involving non-naturalistic or supernatural events, whether or not explicit reference is made to a supernatural being, are outside the realm of science and not part of a valid scientific curriculum.” </span></span><span style="color: blue;"><strong>[7]</strong></span><br /><br />"Essentially I will be defending a position that has come down to us from the Enlightenment, and which has been sharpened along the way by various advances in scientific understanding. In particular, " No scientific understanding has ruled out God. He's appealing to tradition and the emotional investment he's made in enlightenment thinking. "Since very early on, religion has provided a certain way of making sense of the world -- a reason why things are the way they are." I suspect that what he means by that is that religion offered an explanation of the workings of the physical world, such as the river floods because God is mad at us. I have a hard time thinking that Carroll really has a conception of what religion is about. part of what I base that upon is the the things he thinks beat it out:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
In modern times, scientific explorations have provided their own pictures of how the world works, ones which rarely confirm the pre-existing religious pictures. Roughly speaking, science has worked to apparently undermine religious belief by calling into question the crucial explanatory aspects of that belief; it follows that other aspects (moral, spiritual, cultural) lose the warrants for their validity. I will argue that this disagreement is not a priori necessary, but nevertheless does arise as a consequence of the scientific method,</blockquote>
<br />Of course before one can say "X has overcome Y" she/he must know what Y is about. Since science doesn't talk about existential or phenomenological matters one cam only conclude that he must think religion is about explaining where the sun came from and why it rains. This especially so since view he is juxtaposing is cosmology. So he must think that understanding the nature of reality is jus a matter of understanding the cosmic layout, planets and stars.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
The essence of materialism is to model the world as a formal system, which is both unambiguous and complete as a description of reality. A materialist model may be said to consist of four elements. First, we model the world as some formal (mathematical) structure. (General relativity describes the world as a curved manifold with a Lorentzian metric, while quantum mechanics describes the world as a state in some Hilbert space.</blockquote>
Complete as a description of reality? That assumes of course that your methods are up to the task of probing all of reality. He speaks of a complete description and yet look at all that he leaves out/, First I refer the reader to <a href="http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2016/02/can-science-really-prove-basis-of.html" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;">my recent essay</a> "can science prove the basis of modern physics?"<span style="color: blue;"><strong> [8] </strong></span><span style="color: black;">How can he claim a complete description when it can't tell us what the basic building blocks are made out of? Materialism has to rule out miracles. It will rule them out as a matter of course. That is an ideological imperative. Then in a move of pure circular reasoning it will appeal to it's own authority in declaring miracles to be scientifically disproved. All that really means is that they conflict with the ideological scheme of things. Miracles are a part of my reality. They are paert of other people's observations and have been documented scientifically<strong><span style="color: blue;">.[9]</span></strong> <strong><span style="color: blue;">[10]</span></strong>Any description of the universe that rules them out without genuinely disproving them is incomplete. Then of course there are issues of phenomenological and existential import.</span><br /><br /><div class="western" style="line-height: 14.85px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<a href="http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2016/02/are-all-cosmologists-atheists-answering_19.html" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;">see part2</a></div>
<br /><br />sources<br /><br />[1] <a href="http://preposterousuniverse.com/" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;">Sean M. Carroll</a>, "<a href="http://preposterousuniverse.com/writings/nd-paper/" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;">Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists</a>;" On line resource, Prepared for <em>God and Physical Cosmology: Russian-Anglo American Conference on Cosmology and Theology</em>, Notre Dame, January/February 2003. Published in <i>Faith and Philosophy</i> <strong>22</strong>, 622 (2005). See also the <a href="http://preposterousuniverse.com/writings/nd-paper/nd-paper.pdf" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;">pdf version</a>. URL:<a href="http://preposterousuniverse.com/writings/nd-paper/" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;">http://preposterousuniverse.com/writings/nd-paper/</a> accessed Feb 12, 2016.<br /><br />Carroll is at the California Institute of Technology.<br /><br />[2] Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, “How Religious Are America's College and University Pr<span style="font-size: x-small;">ofe</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">ssors.” SSRC, (published feb. 2007), PDF URL, accessed 9/4/15 The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the<a href="http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Gross_Simmons.pdf" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;">http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Gross_Simmons.pdf</a> Association for the Sociology of Religion. </span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">They present a bar graph that show about 35% professor's ar elite research universities believe in God with no doubt. About 27% believe but sometimes have doubts. About 38% are atheists. That actually means that 60% are not atheists. True that's not cosmologists but there is good reason to think the majority of cosmologists are not atheists. The most atheistic groups in the study were psychologists (61%), biologists (about 61%), and mechanical engineers (50%), not physicists (among whose ranks cosmologists number). <span style="color: black;"> “</span><span style="color: black;">Contrary to popular Opinion, atheists and agnostics do not comprise a majority of professors..."</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black;"></span></span><br /><div class="sdendnote">
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<br />[3] Carroll, op. cit.<br /><br />[4] Ibid. "Introduction."<br /><br />[5] Ibid. all further quotes by Carroll are from this article.<br /><br />[6] <span class="reference-text"><cite class="citation book"> Stephen Jay <span class="reference-text"><cite class="citation book">Gould</cite></span>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocks_of_Ages" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;" title="Rocks of Ages">Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life</a>. New York: Ballantine Books. ,2002,</cite></span><br /><br />[7] <span style="background: rgb(102, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: white;">Statement on Teaching Evolution, National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT). Adopted by the NABT Board of Directors on March 15, 1995</span></span>. no page given, in Three Statememts in Support of Teaching Evolution From Science and Science Education Organizations, A National Science Teachers Association Position Statement (see fn 4) online URL <span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="http://www.nap.edu/read/5787/chapter/11#127" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.nap.edu/read/5787/chapter/11#127</span></a></u></span> (accesed 1/26/2016)<br /><br />[8] Joe Hinman, Can Science prove the basis of modern Physics?" <em>Metacrock's blog,</em>Feb. 1, 2016, <a href="http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2016/02/can-science-really-prove-basis-of.html" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;">URL:http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2016/02/can-science-really-prove-basis-of.html</a> accessed 2/14/16.<br />[9] Bernard Francis et al, “The Lourdes Medical Cures Re-visited,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (10.1093/jhmas/jrs041) 2012 pdf downloaded SMU page 1-28 all the page numbers given are from pdf<br /><br /><div class="MsoEndnoteText">
Bernard Francis is former professor Emeritus of medicine, Unversite Claude Bernard Lyon. Elisabeth Sternberg taught at National Institute of Mental Health and The National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. Elisabeth Fee was at National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.</div>
<br />[10] Jacalyn Duffin, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Medical-Miracles-Doctors-Saints-Healing/dp/019533650X" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #0058cd;">Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints and Healing:</span></a> Medical Miracles in the Modern World. Oxford University Press; 1 edition (November 21, 2008<br /><br />from Bio on Amazon.com<br /> Jacalyn Duffin, M.D. (Toronto 1974), FRCP(C) (1979), Ph.D. (Sorbonne 1985), is Professor in the Hannah Chair of the History of Medicine at Queen's University in Kingston where she has taught in medicine, philosophy, history, and law for more than twenty years. A practicing hematologist, a historian, a mother and grandmother, she has served as President of both the American Association for the History of Medicine and the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine. She holds a number of awards and honours for research, writing, service, and teaching. She is the author of five books, editor of two anthologies, and has published many research articles. Her most recent book is an analysis of the medical aspects of canonization, Medical Miracles; Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern World, Oxford University Press, 2009. It was awarded the Hannah Medal of the Royal Society of Canada...<br /><br />See also <a href="http://www.doxa.ws/other/miracles5.html" style="color: #ff8832; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #0058cd;">Doxa</span></a>. miracles pages<br /><br /><br /><br /><hr />
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<br>Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-89805258435330172362024-01-07T22:50:00.000-08:002024-01-11T04:32:15.572-08:00Three best arguments: answering SkepticalI.Fine Trining. Skeptical argues:
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- How is order an indication of God? Order occurs spontaneously. You would need to argue that order can only happen as a result of a conscious mind. But we know that's not true. The "laws of physics" are the product of human minds observing and abstracting the behavior of physical things, but they don't govern that behavior.</blockquote>
First of all, the fine tuning argument does not say order implies God. It does not turn on order. I have no idea where he got that.It's about the specific combination of factors that allow for life to develop that is not the same as infuring God from order in the universe.<br>
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Secondly,when he asserts that major structures in the universe,such as natural law, do not require mind or ordering he's begging the question. He's assuming his position as a guide to settle the argument.
-<blockquote> And the universe is not fine-tuned for life. Rather, life is fine-tuned by evolution to exist in its environment. If your assertion were true, we should expect to find more of it, everywhere we look.</blockquote>
That doesn't follow,"life is fine tuned by evolution..." means nothing, come on what does it mean? Saying that the universe is fine tuned means circumstances are arranged such that life can develop. What does it mean to say life is fine tuned by evolution and why is that not the same as saying the universe is fine tuned to produce life?<br>
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<blockquote> But as far as we know life doesn't exist in most parts of the universe. Our planet is one place out of many that is an exception, because it happens to be conducive to life.</blockquote>
Fine tuning would mean small adjustments not sweeping change. So a fine tuned universe would be very similar in many respects to a non life bearing universe. So what does that do to the argument, to say Earth is a little corner where life is possible? So what? Then he harps on my major source of information:
-<blockquote>...Paul Davies is paid to put a religious spin on science, making it sound as if his religious views were legitimate scientific conclusions, which they are not. Nagel, too, is a religious-leaning philosopher who makes his living peddling religious ideas to a religious audience. You can't put much stock in these guys as sources of unbiased information.</blockquote><br>
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Notice he doesn't document anything. Who is paying him and why? My disposition is that Skepie is assuming the Templeton prize is payment, Davies is a highly respected scientist who teaches at Arizona State and other places: He was a popular atheist apologist. Ye already won the Templeton prize so the money is his He doesn't have to earn it.<br>
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<blockquote>Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and best-selling science author. He has published about 30 books and hundreds of research papers and review articles across a range of scientific fields...Among his many awards are the 1995 Templeton Prize, the Faraday Prize from The Royal Society, the Kelvin Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics, the Robinson Cosmology Prize and the Bicentenary Medal of Chile. He was made a member of the Order of Australia in the 2007 Queen's birthday honours list and the asteroid 6870 Pauldavies is named after him. This is all courtesy of that highly biased religious source Arizona State University.<b>[1]</b></blockquote><br>
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The idea that he's being paid to make pro religious arguments is ludicrous.<br>
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II.The religious experience argument:<br>
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Skep says: "Religious or mystical experience is a natural function of the human brain. It occurs with a broad range of intensities and associated mental imagery." Actually, mystical experience is supposed to be beyond images so that statement is a direct contradiction to any real knowledge of the subject.<br>
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He then demonstrates the poor state of his knowledge of Hood's work. "Ralph Hood can try to categorize it as 'legitimate' or not, but his position would be challenged by millions of people who have had these kinds of experiences induced by means other than what Hood would allow." What he means by this is a real puzzle. Where does Hood say anything about what means mystical union is allowed? Clearly he has never read Hood and pieced together his own version of what Hood probably says being a fundamentalist christian. But Hood is not a Christian of any sort.Skeptical does not know the basics of his work. Hood has devised a means of controlling for a true mystical experience based upon British philosopher W.T. Stace who studied the great mystics of the world. He says nothing about disalloying meaning or obtaining the state.<br>
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Skeptical says:<blockquote>In many cultures, they use drugs to induce it, but Hood can't tell them that their experience is not legitimate. In our own culture, churches use psychological manipulation to induce religious experiences. The fact is that mystical experience is pretty easy to trigger, either in your own mind, or in someone else's. There is zero real scientific evidence that God is behind it.</blockquote><br>
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Drugs do not induce mystical consciousness, I talk about this in detail in my book.<b>[2]</b> His argument is begging the question. Hood's M scale is validated as a means of determining if one has actually had the kind of experiences the mystics of the world have called "mystical union." Why would people who really have the experience express indignation at Hoods work when he's merely showing them they have it? Fir those who have not really had it shouldn't they face the truth? Skep has no evidence that there would be a conflagration.<br>
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<blockquote>- "You might want to claim that atheists are threatened by science that supports a religious conclusion, but you would be wrong. Just show us legitimate science to support your religious conclusions." Obviously they are. I have shown legitimate science that supports my view, the work of Ralph Hood.<br>
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<blockquote>Despite the fact that you have written a book, we are still waiting. If your conclusions were valid, it would certainly draw attention, but that book hasn't made even a tiny ripple in the scientific community.</blockquote><br>
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That's a really childish understanding of the way academic publishing works. I don't have a big publishing company behind me and this was my first book, I am not in the PhD club.Here is Randel Rouser's interview with me on that book. Also reviewed by Lantz Miller is an academic journal.that's not bad for a first effort.<b>[3]</b>My life is a failure in that I did not achieve any of the goals I set for myself. God wont see me that way because I led people to him, One soul snatched from the jaws of hell matters more than the Nobel prize.<br>
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III.Laws of nature.<br>
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He omitted the title hoping to confuse this with argument I. That's clear from the point below:"How is this argument distinct from the first one?"<br>
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- "mind is the most efficient and dependable source of ordering we know". That's pure hogwash. Order occurs as a result of thermodynamics, in scales ranging from subatomic to stellar. And there is no valid reason to think that there must be a mind behind it. Simple observation provides prima facie evidence that order is spontaneous.<br>
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I talk about the most efficient source of ording he asserts any king of ordering means we don't need to think about that, He's just ignoring the issue I raise and putting in own straw man. He clearly confused this with a design argument. He asks "How is this argument distinct from the first one?" Argument I is fine tuning it asserts that success inproduciglife implsy devine hel since life is so improbable. This argument asserts the mind is implied in order. Clearly not the same even though they use similar ideas.<br>
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[1] Arizona State University, "Paul Davies Regents Professor (FSC), Department of Physics Regents Professor (FSC), The Beyond Center." no Date given.https://search.asu.edu/profile/979476<br>
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[2] Joseph Hinman, <i>The Trace of God, A Rational Warrant for Belief.</i> Grand viaduct, 2014,61, 296,
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[3] Searching ffir God In Mystical Experience, An Interview with Joseph Hinman, January 8, 2019 by Randal Rauser.https://randalrauser.com/2019/01/searching-for-god-in-mystical-experience-an-interview-with-joseph-hinman/<br> Review by Lantz Miller,https://philarchive.org/rec/MILROT-11
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Joe HinmanPhone: 469-601-7946Website: The Religious A PrioriBlog: Metacrock's Blog
My book, TheJoseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-82589013268924772932024-01-02T19:36:00.000-08:002024-01-03T23:05:08.348-08:00for im-skepticalfrom a fried of mine for I am skeptocal:
"This is a kind of appeal to authority. The religionist claims to be an atheist or a former atheist. Therefore, the audience is expected to believe his theistic or religion-friendly assertions. It works for Nagel. Joe does it. You do it, too."
So how is Nagel a "religionist" or "religion-friendly" exactly? By not being a thorough-going scientific-reductionist? Because his theories can be interpreted in such a way that religionists can use them to support their claims doesn't make him "religion-friendly".
The bigger issue, I think, is science; how much epistemic scope do we assume that science has? To me, that's an even more fundamental question than religion. That's the kind of question that Nagel is asking, and why he's gotten the scientific community so angry, and the kind of question Russell was asking when he proposed neutral monism, before he abandoned it.
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-62287628460981918532024-01-01T05:49:00.000-08:002024-01-01T05:49:27.578-08:00what is the supernaturalhttps://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2017/09/christianity-and-supernatural-part-2.html?m=0
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By Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) - September 10, 2017
Mathias Joseph Scheeben
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The Supernatural was something very different than it is now. This is important because that original meaning, which Christian spiritually was predicated upon, is empirically provable and and can be shown to be real by simple scientific means. We have to understand the original concept, there are two thinkers who tried to restore the concept to it’s original form and we need to listen to what they tried to say. The first one was Matthias Joseph Scheeben (born, 1 March, 1835; died at Cologne, 21 July, 1888.) His major work was Nature and Grace. [17] Scheeben was a mystic who contemplated and studied divine grace and hypostatic union. He was also a greatly accomplished academic and was a fine scholar of scholastic theology. He studied at the Gregorian University at Rome and taught dogmatic theology at the Episcopal seminary.<br>
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at Cologne. Scheeben was the chief defender of the faith against rationalism in the nineteenth century. The generation after his death ( in Cologne in 1888) regarded him as one of the greatest minds of Catholic thought in his day. He left three major works: Nature and Grace (1861), The Mysteries of Christianity (1865), and the massive yet unfinished Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics. Among his major accomplishnents were defense of Vatican I's defense of infallibility, defense of religious freedom against Bismark's attempt to control the Catholic Church.<br>
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His books were repeatedly republished in Germany up into the 1960s and translated into other European languages, including English (the Dogmatics, alas, only in highly truncated form). Since the Second Vatican Council, though, he has mostly been neglected by theological teachers and students who have wrongly imagined the nineteenth-century Catholic tradition to be a period of anti-modern darkness….The Catholic world of a hundred or more years ago was quite right, I think, to see the Cologne seminary professor as perhaps the finest modern Catholic dogmatic theologian. His writings not only yield rare insight into the mysteries of Christian faith, they draw the attentive reader ever more deeply into the mysteries themselves. Scheeben is more important now than he has ever been. He can teach a theological generation that has sold its inestimable birthright how to restore and renew dogmatic theology.[18<br>
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The other thinker is Eugene R. Fairweather (2 November 1920-) an Anglican scholar and translator of Church fathers from Ottowa. MA in Philosophy form University of Toronto (1943) Ordained priest in 1944 and became tutor at Trinity college Toronto same year. He studied theology at Union theological seminary and earned his Th.D. in 1949. He had an honorary doctorate from McGill University. At the time he wrote his article “Christianity and the Supernatural” he was editor of the Canadian Journal of Theology and professor of dogmatic theology and ethics at Trinity College, Toronto.[19]Fairweather quotes Scheeben and bases part of his view upon Scheeben’s.
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Fairweather’s view of the supernatural is contrary to the notion of two opposing realms, or a dualism. He uses the phrase “two-sidedness,” there is a “two-sidedness” about reality but it’s not a real dualism. The Supernatural is that which is above the natural in a certain sense but it is also working in the natural. There are supernatural effects in the natural realm that make up part of human life. Essentially we can say that “the supernatural” (supernature) is an ontology. Fiarweather doesn’t use that term but that’s essentially what he’s describing. Ontology is a philosophical description of reality. Supernature describes reality in that it is the ground and end of the natural. What that means is unpacked by Fairweather : an ordered relation of means to immediate ends with respect to their final ends. “The Essential structure of the Christian faith has a real two-sidedness about it, which may at first lead the unwary into a dualism and then encourage the attempt to resolve the dualism by an exclusive emphasis upon one or the other [side] of the severed element of complete Christianity.”[20] He explains the ordered relation several times through paring off opposites or supposed opposites: human/divine; immanent/transcendent; realm of Grace/realm of nature. All of these he refers to as “ordered relations.”[21] If this was Derrida we would call them binary oppositions. In calling them “ordered” he is surely saying one is ‘above’ the other in some sense. They are not necessarily oppositions because that’s his whole point, not a true dualism.<br>
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Supernature is working in nature. It’s not breaking in unwelcome but is drawing the workings of nature to a higher level. Fairweather describes it as the “ground and end of nature.” In other words it is the basis upon which nature comes to be and the goal toward which nature moves. Now it’s true that science removes the teleological from nature it doesn’t see it as moving toward a goal but that’s because it can’t consider anything beyond its own domain. Science is supposed to be empirical consideration of the natural realm and is practitioners often profess disdain for the metaphysical while inso doing keep a running commentary on metaphysics. Of course modern science become a form of metaphysics by infusing itself with philosophical assumptions and then declaring there is nothing beyond the natural/material realm. That is to say, when it is dominated by secularist ideology that is the direction in which science is cast. Be that as it may, theologically we can take a broader view and we see a goal oriented aspect to the natural. Supernatural effects draw the natural toward supernature. That is to say human nature responds to the calling of God in elevating humans to a higher level of consciousness. There is another example of the ground and end of nature. Fairweather doesn’t give this example, but I think it applies. This is Martin Luther King’s statement about the “arch of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” Nothing in nature bends toward justice, if by “nature” we mean rocks and trees but there is more to the natural realm than just those aspects that science studies. Humans are part of the realm of the natural and it is part of our social world that we understand concepts of justice. Due to our own purposive nature we bend the arch of the moral universe toward justice. <br>
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Long before Dionysius spoke of huper hamousios “From an early period the concept of 'that which is above nature’ had been seized upon by Christian Theologians as an appropriate means of stating the core of the gospel...” [22] Origen...[185-254] tells how God raises man above human nature…and makes him change into a better and divine nature.”[23] John Chrysostom (347-407) speaks of humans having received grace “health beauty honor and dignities far exceeding our nature.”[24] That view has persisted even in modern times. “In the West the most concise expression of the idea is to be found in the Leonine prayer ‘grant us to be partakers of his divinity who deigned to become partakers of our humanity.’”[25] “In these and a multitude of patristic texts the essential point is just this, that God, who is essentially supernatural perfects with a perfection beyond creaturely comprehension. Nevertheless, supernature elevates human creatures to a true participation in divine life an indwelling of God in man and man in God.”[26] The important point here is that human nature is being raised to the higher level of divine. We can see this manifests itself through the experience commonly known as “mystical.” That I will take up shortly, First, let’s turn to Scheeben to document further the nature of the supernatural. Supernatural is the power of God to raise us to this higher level.<br>
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The Trace of God, by Joseph Hinman, on Amazon. The 200 studies in this book prove that Mystical experience is real, this article just proved that the original concept of SN is mystical experiemce. Therefore, SN is real.<br>
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[17] Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009 (paperback) originally unpublished 1856.<br>
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[18] Bruce D. Marshall. “Renewing Dogmatic theology: Mathias Joseph Scheeben Teaches Us the Virtues Theologians Need.” First Things. May 2012. On line version:http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/04/renewing-dogmatic-theology accessed 11/8/2013
Bruce D. Marshall is professor of Christian doctrine at Perkins School of Theology.(c) 2012 Institute of Religion and Public Life<br>
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[19] Editor’s introduction to Eugene R. Fairweather, “Christianity and the Supernatural,” op.cit.<br>
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[20] Ibid, Fairweather,.237.<br>
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[21]Ibid.<br>
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[22] Ibid.<br>
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[23 ]Fairweather, ibid (239).<br>
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[24] ibid<br>
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[25] Fairweather quoting Leonine prayer, ibid.<br>
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[26] Ibid<br>
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Here Fairweather seemsto contradict Saler who says there is no term in the writings of the so called “church fathers” that could be translated as “supernatural” until Cyril and Dionysius, here Fairweather says the Patristic texts God is suernatural. He is back reading the term based up the concept. The term isn't really used by his pre Crylian examples.<br>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-76368780852256002272023-12-26T21:54:00.000-08:002023-12-26T22:12:47.042-08:003 best God Arguments<b>I. Fine tuning</b>
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(1)the universe must be structured in very exact ways to produce life.
(2)these criteria are so exacting that hitting them all is very improbable.
(3)that gives us a good reason to think the game is fixed.
(4) God is the most likely fixer
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The argument says simply that the universe must be structured in very exact ways to produce life. It's so exacting as to be totally improbable. Because it's so improbable that gives us a good reason to think the game is fixed. This differs from the ordinary design argument because we have something to compare it to, all that is not the target level,<br>
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A. Universe Displays purposive order Max Planck (1858-1947), Nobel Prize winner and founder of modern physics. 5 "According to everything taught by the exact sciences about the immense realm of nature, a certain order prevails--one independent of the human mind . . . this order can be formulated in terms of purposeful activity. There is evidence of an intelligent order of the universe to which both man and nature are subservient."<br>
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......(1)laws have simplicity and elegance.<br>
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"The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance, and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe, " said astrophysicist Paul Davies in his book Superforce (1984). The famous Russian physicist, Alexander Polyakov put it this way in Fortune magazine (October, 1986)<br>
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......(2) Universe is fine tuned for life<br>
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Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous British astronomer and agnostic, in The Intelligent Universe ..commented on the cosmological coincidences discussed by Mackie, "Such properties seem to run through the fabric of the natural world like a thread of happy coincidences. But there are so many odd coincidences essential to life that some explanation seems required to account for them."<br>
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Paul Davies, Author of God and The New Physics, and The Mind of God, skeptic turned believer due to the new evidence on design. From First Things, Tempelton Award address:
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"All the richness and diversity of matter and energy we observe today has emerged since the beginning in a long and complicated sequence of self- organizing physical processes. The laws of physics not only permit a universe to originate spontaneously, but they encourage it to organize and complexify itself to the point where conscious beings emerge who can look back on the great cosmic drama and reflect on what it all means."<br>
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...The laws that characterize our actual universe, as opposed to an infinite number of alternative possible universes, seem almost contrived-fine-tuned, some commentators have claimed-so that life and consciousness may emerge. To quote Dyson again: it is almost as if "the universe knew we were coming." I cannot prove to you that this is design, but whatever it is it is certainly very clever."Paul Davies, Tempelton Award Address,in First Things<br>
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"Humanity is Cosmically spoecial,: The Washington post: Howard A. Smith is a lecturer in the Harvard University Department of Astronomy and a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/humanity-is-cosmically-special-heres-how-we-know/2016/11/25/cd327520-b0cc-11e6-8616-52b15787add0_story.html?utm_term=.0378288d2447
The first result — the anthropic principle — has been accepted by physicists for 43 years. The universe, far from being a collection of random accidents, appears to be stupendously perfect and fine-tuned for life. The strengths of the four forces that operate in the universe — gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear interactions (the latter two dominate only at the level of atoms) — for example, have values critically suited for life, and were they even a few percent different, we would not be here. The most extreme example is the big bang creation: Even an infinitesimal change to its explosive expansion value would preclude life. The frequent response from physicists offers a speculative solution: an infinite number of universes — we are just living in the one with the right value. But modern philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and pioneering quantum physicists such as John Wheeler have argued instead that intelligent beings must somehow be the directed goal of such a curiously fine-tuned cosmos.</blockquote>
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<b>II. Religious experience</b><br>
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<blockquote>The M scale is a survey devised by psychologist Ralph Hood to function as a control on religious experience so that we can understand weather or not a recipient has had real mystical experience. It's the main methodology used in studies today in studies on religious experience. I write about it extensively in my book.<br>
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A British philosopher reads all the mystics of the world and summarizes the things they say that mark their experiences as unique and draws up a list.<br>
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50 years latter studies all over the world ask various people chosen at random if they ever had these experiences, 32 items. all those who say "Yes I have had these" choose the very same things the msytics that Stace read said they had.<br>
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the those don't check "I have had this" don't have the same things that mystics say they had.<br>
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It would be ridiculous to assume that pest ants in Iran and India read Stace. the things they saying they experienced are unique they are not things people normally experience. Since the people can't ling, the odds of them all in six countries saying exactly what they need to say in 32 items to confirm Stace, then it's pretty obvious that Stace got it right.<br>
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there has to be a certain kind of experience that some people have that has these characteristics and marks them out as those who have experienced something most people don't experience.<br>
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now when we examine the characteristics they say they had they are all about God. the are about experiencing the divine even if they didn't believe in the divine. Moreover, those who have those experiences across the board have these amazing revitalization of their lives.<br>
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when psychologists compare the characteristics to those of mental illness, delusion, and other pathological states they find no comparison. So that is not what it is.
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The M Scale is the major validating construct in social science research that demonstrates the validity of religious experience. By that I mean it shows when a person's responses coincide with the theories of W.T. Stace. Because several studies validate the scale in a half dozen different cultures from Sweden to Iran to India and Japan, we have a standard that tells us when a person has a valid mystical experience and when they do not. For example some researchers feel they have evoked religoius experience becuase they go someone with a dream about Jesus who felt something when they shocked him and they this proves he had an experience so they evoked it by shocking him. Yet Stace's theories don't include dreams so there's no way to say this is a mystical experience.<br>
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On the other hand Stace finds that all the major mystics speak of undifferentiated unity so he theorize that this is the core of mysticism.<br>
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It's threatening to a lot of atheists to think that some scientific research could validate some aspect of belief becuase you have so much vested in believing that science disproves all religion. Yet the M scale is validated and it is accepted as the standard in psychology of religion and in the research of religious experience. The modern studies using the M scale find that a significant portion of people who claim t have had an experience state that it was undifferentiated unity. When enough of the correlations stack up then we know someone has had an experience. They could not get that many people to lie about the same things in all those different cultures.<br>
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This is the lynch pin of my religious experience studies because it shows a standard by which we can validate and establish controls for knowing when a religiosity experience is really a valid one and when it's not. If you can establish that you can study it by studying the effects f the experience on the experience. If you can't determine what is a valid religious experience you can't determine the effects of having such an experience. Though M scale we can. That's why atheists are just duty bound to treat the m scale like crap.</blockquote><br>
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<b>III laws of nature</b><br>
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<blockquote>The argument:
1) mind is the most efficient and dependable source of ordering we know,<br>
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(2) Random ordering is usually inefficient and the odds are against it's dependability.
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(3) The Universe Displays a Law-like efficiency and dependability in the workings of it's natural machinations.<br>
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(4) Such efficiency and dependability is indicative of mind as ordering principle (from 1,3), therefore, it is logical to assume mind as the best explanation for the dependability of the universe..<br>
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(5) A mind that orders the universe fits the major job description for God, Thus mind is the best explanation, assuming the choices are mind vs random chance.<br>
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Notice I said nothing about law implying a law giver. The rational for mind is not based upon analogies to law. This does raise the one real sticking point, premises 1-2. Can we prove that mind is the best explanation for law-like regularity? I'm going to assume that it's pretty obvious that (P3) universe displays like-like efficiency. Also I don't think it will be such a struggle to prove 4-5 linking a mind that orders the universe with God. Therefore I wont bother to argue those here. Thus I will concern myself primarily with P's 1-2.<br>
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All the richness and diversity of matter and energy we observe today has emerged since the beginning in a long and complicated sequence of self- organizing physical processes. The laws of physics not only permit a universe to originate spontaneously, but they encourage it to organize and complexify itself to the point where conscious beings emerge who can look back on the great cosmic drama and reflect on what it all means."<br>
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...The laws that characterize our actual universe, as opposed to an infinite number of alternative possible universes, seem almost contrived-fine-tuned, some commentators have claimed-so that life and consciousness may emerge. To quote Dyson again: it is almost as if "the universe knew we were coming." I cannot prove to you that this is design, but whatever it is it is certainly very clever][6]</blockquote><br>
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sources on argument 3
Sources<br>
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[1] Bradly Bowen, Adamson's Cru [de] Arguments for God part 1, Secular Outpost, (April 25, 2016) blog URL:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/04/25/adamsons-crude-arguments-for-god-part-1/
accessed April 28, 2016<br>
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[2] Marlyn Adamson, "Is There a God," Every Student, Published by Campus Crusade for Christ
On line resource, URL: http://www.everystudent.com/features/isthere.html
She sites fn 11:Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great about Christianity; (Regnery Publishing, Inc, 2007, chapter<br>
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[3] I recently posted on criteria by which to judge best explanation.<br>
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[4] Ratzsch, Del and Koperski, Jeffrey, "Teleological Arguments for God's Existence", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/teleological-arguments/>.<br>
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[5] Peter Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation. 1st Edition. London: Routledge (1991, 58): quoted in Ratzsch, Ibid.<br>
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[6] ."Paul Davies, "Physics and the Mind o God; Templeton Award Address, First Things ON LINE URL
http://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/003-physics-and-the-mind-of-god-the-templeton-prize-address-24 accessed 1/1/16<br>
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Paul Davies is Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Adelaide in Australia and the twenty-fifth recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which he received on May 3, 1995 at Westminster Abbey. His books include The Mind of God, God and New Physics, The Cosmic Blueprint, Superforce, and Other Worlds.
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-25022750789518960232023-12-07T14:37:00.000-08:002023-12-11T08:44:38.809-08:00On Burden of Proof in God TalkAtheists are fond of saying the believer has the burden of proof (BOP) because we believe in the positive existence of something. I think that is true in so far as it goes. Of course the atheist who simley doesn't believe has noburdenif proof, He/she is really advocating at that point, ;but I real dust up with a board full of atheists who suggested that the moment athestss proclaim as a fact "there is no God" they take ona BOP.
The board exploded with angry insults and statmemts about how stupid I am. No one this stupid would be in graduate school, spoken by people who have never been in graduate school. They kept reiterating that you can't prove a negative so they have no burden of proof. But they are mistaken about what is a negative and what is a positive statement; They think a positive statement is one that affirdmd=s the existence of something. But the proclamation "there is no God" is a positive statement because it asserts as a positive fact a certain condition (ie no God) as the nature of thngs.They never did really grasp the concept,I quoted a logician but they just go by the atheist party line.
Does the BOP really matter? Logically it does and yet I think it's unfair to impose the term "Proof" or to insist that God must be proven. They think that is only logical given the advocacy of a positive existence. But proof is not possible, not because there is no God but because there is an epistemological gap imposed by the transcendent.
How would one go about proving something that is not given in sense data? How would one prove the existence of something removed totally from physical presence? Speaking of actual proof is unfair. If we use the term there should be an understanding that it's in a practical sense and means belief is warranted not that it is absolutely demontrated.It's unfair to expect religion to embody the kind of hard proof demanded in science.Science deals in tangibility,God is transcendent.Proving God would be like proving the laws of physics. Where are they? can we go to the place they are kept? they are spread throughout reality, they are too basic and tangible. But they are real, as is God.
Of course atheists will argue this is a real come down. It's not. God does not want to be turned on and off like a light switch or demonstrated as though he were an artifact.God wants to enter into a reationship with us.At least accordimg to standard Christian theology.Thus under the right circumstances God will reveal himself to us.
The real burden of faith is that the payoff comes after we are all gone from this life. we can't be justified to critics in any absolute sense until later, i can well imagine that will be satisfying and scarry.
<blockquote>Since atheists are making the claim that God does not exist, then they need to offer evidence for that claim. As you can see above, atheism is not the “lack of a belief in God.” This is agnosticism. Instead, atheism is the positive assertion that God does not exist. If atheism is merely a “lack of belief in God,” then on this redefinition, babies are atheists because technically they lack a belief in God! Or as philosopher William Lane Craig has argued, his cat is technically an atheist on this definition. The same would be true for infants and the mentally disabled. But is this really what we mean when we use the term “atheist”? Of course not. Atheism is not merely a psychological state of mind; it is a philosophical position that is defensible. Consider the various ways that philosophers have defined “atheism” in the philosophical literature:
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (1995): “[Atheism is] the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense denotes merely not believing in God and is consistent with agnosticism. A stricter sense denotes a belief that there is no God; this use has become the standard one.”2023. <b>[1]</b></blockquote> <a href="https://www.evidenceunseen.com/articles/truth/the-burden-of-proof/">https://www.evidenceunseen.com/articles/truth/the-burden-of-proof/ </a>
In lue of proof we have warrant, That says despite not being able to prove absolutely we still have good reason to believe in this position,
[1]James M. Rochfordm "the Burden of Proof,: <i>Evidence Unseen</i>Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-71640626487170653452023-11-30T20:42:00.000-08:002023-12-03T22:01:21.434-08:00Faith is not belief without evidence
I am tired of hearing atheists say "faith is believing things without evidence." No definition of faith in Christianity says that.Let's Get this out of the way up front. Heb 11:1: faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the argument (argumentum) of things that are not apparent.Most translations say "evidence of things not seen."This does not say faith is belief without evidence it says faith itself is a kind of evidence because it points to the reality that caused one to have faith.<br>
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The most important dictionary in theology is the <i>Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology.</i> There are two kinds, one for theologians and one for ideas. Let's consult the latter.
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faith (Gr. pistis, Lat. fides, “trust,” “belief”) In Christianity, belief, trust, and obedience to God as revealed in Jesus Christ. It is the means of salvation (Eph. 2:8–9) or eternal life (John 6:40). Faith affects all dimensions of one’s existence: intellect, emotions, and will. See also salvation.<b>[1]</b><br>
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According to that definition there is nothing like a lack of evidence. There Is no hint that faith involves a lack of evidence. Consulting the same source for different uses of the term "faith:"
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faith, explicit (Lat. fides explicita) Faith in that of which one has knowledge. Thus the term may be understood as referring to what one professes to believe because of what is known.<b>[2]</b>
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Here faith is equated with knowledge. Since evidence involves knowledge and builds on knowledge it would seem that faith is actually dependent upon evidence rather than being without it.<br>
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faith, implicit (Lat. fides implicita) The Roman Catholic view that one believes as true “what the church believes,” even without certain knowledge. It was rejected by the Protestant Reformers as a true faith because the element of knowledge was lacking.<b>[3]</b><br>
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The Catholic view seems closer to being without evidence, but not an exact fit. In any case that view was rejected by the reformers and is not really compatible with the Protestant view.The Protestant view rests upon knowledge, which again, would have to involve evidence at some point. Thus direct contradiction to the atheist bromide.<br>
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Then we turn to the protestant notion of "saving faith." That is faith that saves. Remember Paul tells us salvation is by Grace through faith:“For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8).<b>[4]</b><br>
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faith, saving. The gift of God through the Holy Spirit whereby one accepts and believes the promises of the Gospel as the reception of salvation through the life and the work of Jesus Christ. One is incorporated into Christ, participates in his benefits, and is an heir of eternal life.<b>
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No indication is given that there is no preliminary basis for belief which might involve evidence.Before one can trust God one must believe that God is. None of these definitions preclude basing that initial belief upon evidence. It is after one accepts the conviction that God is real that faith might supersede evidence in matters such as trusting God for salvation.<br>
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Let's turn to some major figures in Christian theology to see if they define faith as belief without evidence:<br>
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St. Augustine<br>
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Faith, to Augustine, is a humble posture of seeking and confession, in which the individual confesses their sin and brokenness before God, and by his Grace, is cleansed. The individual surrenders to the God who is already present in the soul. This initial work begins the process of cleansing the soul so that it can see clearly. As the individual continues to seek God, the soul is continually cleansed as a gracious process, which slowly flakes away the filth of the Fall. Augustine believed that much could be known through Platonic meditation: eternal things and God’s presence could be apprehended, but God could be known only for a moment.<b>[5]</b><br>
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Thomas Aquinas<br>
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Popular accounts of religion sometimes construe faith as a blind, uncritical acceptance of myopic doctrine. According to Richard Dawkins, “faith is a state of mind that leads people to believe something—it doesn’t matter what—in the total absence of supporting evidence...Such a view of faith might resonate with contemporary skeptics of religion. But as we shall see, this view is not remotely like the one Aquinas—or historic Christianity for that matter—endorses.<br>
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To begin with, Aquinas takes faith to be an intellectual virtue or habit, the object of which is God (ST IIaIIae 1.1; 4.2). There are other things that fall under the purview of faith, such as the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation. But we do not affirm these specific doctrines unless they have some relation to God. According to Aquinas, these doctrines serve to explicate God’s nature and provide us with a richer understanding of the one in whom our perfect happiness consists (Ibid.).<b>[6]</b><br>
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Here again knowledge, an intellectual thing, compatible with evidence. How could faith be based upon knowledge and be an intellectual act and yet without evidence? By intellectual he means one consciously assents to belief.<br>
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Marin Luther<br>
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... faith is God's work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God. (John 1:13). It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn't stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever. He stumbles around and looks for faith and good works, even though he does not know what faith or good works are. Yet he gossips and chatters about faith and good works with many words.
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Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace.<b>[7]</b><br>
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John Wesley<br>
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With a deep conviction, Wesley repeatedly stresses the necessity of faith. ‘Saving faith is a sure trust and confidence which a man has in God, that by the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven, and he is reconciled to the favour of God.’1 It is also clear that Wesley sees faith as a gift of God, although he does not emphasize that very much.<b>[8]</b><br>
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There is an initial coming to faith where one decides "I do believe in God." In that stage evidence is not a contradiction to belief. Most of the activity of faith involves personal trust in God's salvation and his providential care. In this regard evidece is irrelivant, unless we want to think of the content of personal experience of God as evidence.It is evidence of God's goodness. I think for the most part evidence is irrelevant to faith. Faith is not belief without evidence, it's the content of a relationship with God and is based upon the private experience of God's love.<br>
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<b>Notes</b><br>
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[1] "Faith," The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms,SECOND EDITION, Revised and Expanded,Donald K. McKim ed.,Louiscille Kentucky:John Knox Press, 2014. https://www.mybibleteacher.net/uploads/1/2/4/6/124618875/the_westminster_dictionary_of_theological_terms_by_donald_k._mckim__z-lib.org_.epub.pdf<br>
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[2] Ibid.<br>
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[3] Ibid.<br>
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[4] Ibid.<br>
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[5] Mark Hansard, "Faith and Reason, Part 2 Augustine," Intervaristy: Emerging Scholars Network, (August 18,2018) https://blog.emergingscholars.org/2018/08/faith-and-reason-part-2-augustine-summer-2018-series/<br>
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[6]Shawn Floyd,"Aquinas Philosoph8ical Theology,"Internet Encyclopedia of Philosphy, https://iep.utm.edu/thomas-aquinas-political-theology/#SH3a<br>
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[7]An excerpt from "An Introduction to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans," Luther's German Bible of 1522 by Martin Luther, 1483-1546.<br>
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Translated by Rev. Robert E. Smith from DR. MARTIN LUTHER'S VERMISCHTE DEUTSCHE SCHRIFTEN. Johann K. Irmischer, ed. Vol. 63 Erlangen: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854), pp.124-125. [EA 63:124-125] https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/martin-luthers-definition-faith<br>
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[8]J. W. Maris, "John Wesley's Concept of Faith," Christian Library taken from Lux Mundi 2010 https://www.christianstudylibrary.org/article/john-wesleys-concept-faith<br>
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0982408765<br>
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Joseph Hinman's new book is God, Science and Ideology. Hinman argues that atheists and skeptics who use science as a barrier to belief in God are not basing doubt on science itself but upon an ideology that adherer's to science in certain instances. This ideology, "scientism," assumes that science is the only valid form of knowledge and rules out religious belief. Hinman argues that science is neutral with respect to belief in God … In this book Hinman with atheist positions on topics such as consciousness and the nature of knowledge, puts to rest to arguments of Lawrence M. Krauss, Victor J. Stenger, and Richard Dawkins, and delimits the areas for potential God arguments.
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Monday, August 29, 2022<br>
<br>Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-24534008635679460502023-11-26T21:29:00.000-08:002023-11-26T22:13:36.945-08:00"The Bible is Just Mythology"
The most radical view will be that of mythology in the Bible. This is a difficult concept for most Christians to grasp, because most of us are taught that "myth" means a lie, that it's a dirty word, an insult, and that it is really debunking the Bible or rejecting it as God's word. The problem is in our understanding of myth. "Myth" does not mean lie; it does not mean something that is necessarily untrue. It is a literary genre—a way of telling a story. In Genesis, for example, the creation story and the story of the Garden are mythological. They are based on Babylonian and Sumerian myths that contain the same elements and follow the same outlines. But three things must be noted: 1) Myth is not a dirty word, not a lie. Myth is a very healthy thing. 2) The point of the myth is the point the story is making--not the literal historical events of the story. So the point of mythologizing creation is not to transmit historical events but to make a point. We will look more closely at these two points. 3) I don't assume mythology in the Bible out of any tendency to doubt miracles or the supernatural, I believe in them. I base this purely on the way the text is written.<br>
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In Kerenyi's essays <i>on a Science of Mythology</i><b>[1]</b> we find the two figures of the maiden and the Krone. These are standard figures repeated throughout myths of every culture. They serve different functions, but are symbolic of the same woman at different times in her life. The Krone is the enlightener, the guide, the old wise woman who guides the younger into maidenhood. In Genesis we find something different. Here the Pagan myths follow the same outline and contain many of the same characters (Adam and Adapa—see, Cornfeld <i>Archaeology of the Bible</i><b>[2]</b> 1976).<br>
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But in Genesis we find something different. The chaotic creation story of Babylon is ordered and the source of creation is different. Rather than being emerging out of Tiamot (chaos) we find "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Order is imposed. We have a logical and orderly progression (as opposed to the Pagan primordial chaos). The seven days of creation represent perfection and it is another aspect of order, seven periods, the seventh being rest. Moreover, the point of the story changes. In the Babylonian myth the primordial chaos is the ages of creation, and there is no moral overtone, the story revolves around other things. This is a common element in mythology, a world in which the myths happen, mythological time and place. All of these elements taken together are called Myths, and every mythos has a cosmogony, an explanation of creation and being (I didn't say there were no explanations in myth.). We find these elements in the Genesis story, Cosmogony included. But, the point of the story becomes moral: it becomes a story about man rebelling against God, the entrance of sin into the world. So the Genesis account is a literary rendering of pagan myth, but it stands that myth on its head. It is saying God is the true source of creation and the true point is that life is about knowing God.
The mythological elements are more common in the early books of the Bible. The material becomes more historical as we go along. How do we know? Because the mythical elements of the first account immediately drop away. Elements such as the talking serpent, the timeless time ("in the beginning"), the firmament and other aspects of the myth all drop away. The firmament was the ancient world's notion of the world itself. It was a flat earth set upon angular pillars, with a dome over it. On the inside of the dome stars were stuck on, and it contained doors in the dome through which snow and rain could be forced through by the gods (that's why Genesis says "he divided the waters above the firmament from the waters below”). We are clearly in a mythological world in Genesis. The Great flood is mythology as well, as all nations have their flood myths. But as we move through the Bible things become more historical.<br>
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The NT is not mythological at all. The Resurrection of Christ is an historical event and can be argued as such (see Resurrection page). Christ is a flesh and blood historical person who can be validated as having existed. The resurrection is set in an historical setting, names, dates, places are all historically verifiable and many have been validated. So the major point I'm making is that God uses myth to communicate to humanity. The mythical elements create the sort of psychological healing and force of literary strength and guidance that any mythos conjures up. God is novelist, he inspires myth. That is to say, the inner experience model led the redactors to remake ancient myth with a divine message. But the Bible is not all mythology; in fact most of it is an historical record and has been largely validated as such.<br>
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The upshot of all of this is that there is no need to argue evolution or the great flood. Evolution is just a scientific understanding of the development of life. It doesn't contradict the true account because we don't have a "true" scientific account. In Genesis, God was not trying to write a science text book. We are not told how life developed after creation. That is a point of concern for science not theology.<br>
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How do we know the Bible is the Word of God? Not because it contains big amazing miracle prophecy fulfillments, not because it reveals scientific information which no one could know at the time of writing, but for the simplest of reasons. Because it does what religious literature should do, it is transformative.<br>
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Notes<br>
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[1]C.G. Jung and Carl Kerenyi, <i>Essays on a Science of Mythology</i>Oakton VAL Mythos, 1969.
[2] Gaalya Cornfeld, <i>Archaeology of the Bible Book by Book</i>,New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-75261699743752336172023-11-19T14:50:00.000-08:002023-11-19T14:58:02.998-08:00Interview with Randal Rauser<a href="https://randalrauser.com/2019/01/god-in-a-transcendental-signifier-a-conversation-with-joseph-hinman/">https://randalrauser.com/2019/01/god-in-a-transcendental-signifier-a-conversation-with-joseph-hinman/</a><bt>
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I am under the weather so I don't feel like prepearing a real essay tonight. This is my Randal Rouser interview about my secomd book. It's on his site,this is the link.
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-38461373689654451012023-11-13T10:27:00.000-08:002023-11-13T10:27:36.402-08:00Evolutionary Development of The God Concept part 1
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/Metacrock/220px-GuaTewet_tree_of_life-LHFage_zps5d6fe999.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="220" src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/Metacrock/220px-GuaTewet_tree_of_life-LHFage_zps5d6fe999.jpg"/></a></div>
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An Atheist on Cadre blog linked to a Wiki article (an article flagged as needing work be that as it may) saying:<br>
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Barbara King argues that while non-human primates are not religious, they do exhibit some traits that would have been necessary for the evolution of religion. These traits include high intelligence, a capacity for symbolic communication, a sense of social norms, realization of "self" and a concept of continuity.[1][2] There is inconclusive evidence that Homo neanderthalensis may have buried their dead which is evidence of the use of ritual. The use of burial rituals is thought to be evidence of religious activity, and there is no other evidence that religion existed in human culture before humans reached behavioral modernity.<br>
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That is supposed to prove that religion is made up entirely by humans with no
God involved. I suggest that evolutionary nature of religion in and of itself is not enough to rule out God,After all of God users evolution in creation then we should expect God to allow evolutionary nature of religion to shape human development. Here is my article (part 1) showing how the evolutionary nature of religious development is not contrary to God.<br>
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All experiences of the divine must be filtered through cultural constructs, or symbols. God is beyond our understanding, thus beyond language. If we are talk about our experiences, however badly, we must filter them through culture.<br>
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RELIGION, although inherent in man, borrows its expressions from the setting or milieu in which man appears. The forms through which man expresses the supernatural are all drawn from the cultural heritage and the environment known to him, and are structured according to his dominant patterns of experience.In a hunting culture this means that the main target of observation, the animal, is the ferment of suggestive influence on representations of the supernatural. This must not be interpreted as meaning that all ideas of the supernatural necessarily take animal form. First of all, spirits do appear also as human beings, although generally less frequently; the high-god, for instance, if he exists, is often thought of as a being of human appearance. Second, although spirits may manifest themselves as animals they may evince a human character and often also human modes of action.<b>[1]</b><br>
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Narrative is psychologically important to humans because it enables us to put things in perspective, to put ourselves into the story and to understand. Anything can be narrative. Even when events are taken as historical and the consciousness of myth falls away, the narrative is no less naratival. The resurrection of Christ, the existence of Jesus and his claims to be Messiah, all I take to be history and truth. Yet these are also part of the meta-narrative of Christianity. The meat-narrative is not closed or not an ideology or truth regime as long as it can be open to outside voices and to adult itself to them. For that reason the narrative hast to be fluid. The reason for this is that it has to explain the word in a new way to each new generation. To the extent that it can keep doing this it continues to be relevant and survives. This is equivalent to Kuhn’s paradigm absorbing the anomalies. Even when a certain set of fact is held out as historical and more that, but “the truth” such as Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, there is still an interpretation, a spin an understanding of just exactly how to put it, that varies from time to time and culture to culture. The facts of the event don’t change, the historical significance of it doesn’t change, but the way of relating it to each generation anew does change. This is not say that ideology doesn’t change, but the change is much slower and less obvious and less fluid. Even when the meta-narrative of a given religious tradition features factual material it’s not closed in the sense that ideology is closed and it’s still fluid.<br>
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This is not to say that religious traditions don’t get infected with ideology. When traditions take on ideology they usually form something more than Orthodoxy, something like “fundamentalism.” Orthodoxy is just the recognition of stable boundaries that ground the fluid nature of the narrative in expression of continuity. While ideology seeks to create a black hole, like the eternal conflict between communism and anti-communism, that absorbs all light and allows nothing to escape; the attempt to suck everything in one eternal understanding. Ideology in religious tradition probably is most often he result of literalizing the metaphors. When we forget that the metaphor bridges the gap between what we know and we don’t know—through comparison--and that it contains a “like” and a “not-like” dimension, we begin to associate the metaphor with truth in literal way then we begin to formulate ideology. Critics of religious thinking might be apt to confuse dogma with ideology. Religious ideas are not automatically ideological, dogma is not automatically ideological. It’s the literalistic elements in some religious thinking (not all of course) that closes off the realm of discourse and crates a closed truth regime. The danger of form ideology may be acute in a religious setting since it is easy to confuse the metaphor with literal truth by casting over it the aura of the sacred. We often associate the things pertaining to belief in God with God, and in so doing forger a literalism that closes off discourse. Yet religious belief as a whole is too fluid to be fully ideological. Ideology is self protecting and self perpetuating. Thomas Kuhn’s talk about damage control in paradigm defense is a good example of the self defending nature of ideology. While meta-narrative often reflects concepts of divine truth, it’s too changeable to be ideological. Even though theology resists change and novelty is a bad thing in theological parlance, meta-narrative changes in spite of it all. The fact of changed is noted in the many examples of different versions of the same myth. One such change turns upon a burning question that must be raised at this point, why did religious thinking move from numatic realization to a theocentric nature?<br>
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Why “God?” The same can be asked of the female form? Why a pseudo-parental, suzerain figure who creates the world and is in charge of the cosmos? Why not, since this model is obviously a metaphor comparing the unknown with some aspect of reality we know well, why that aspect and not another? What did people worship before they worshipped gods? Anthropology tells us that the shamanistic style of animism is older than the concept of a creator god.<b>[2]</b> This form of belief dates back to the stone age. Native American tribe “Shosoni, like other hunting people in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, have an idea of a “master of the animals,” or an “owner,” a supernatural being who is in charge of the animals:<br>
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Hunting peoples in Africa, Europe, Asia and America have developed the idea of a supernatural owner of the animal species, or of all animals, who protects them, commands them, and at request from hunters delivers them to be slayed and eaten. The concept is not infrequent in North America. The master of animals is a spirit, generally figured as an animal. The Shoshoni have possibly in very remote times known the coyote, or rather the mythical Coyote, as a master of animals. With the impact of Plains Indian culture the buffalo and the eagle have halfway achieved the position as master of animals and master of birds, respectively. In all fairness it should be pointed out, however, that this type of concept is very little noticeable among the Shoshoni.<b>[3]</b><br>
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We must be cautious but since “shamanism” is connected to animism this owner of the animals might imply a transition between animistic thinking and beliefs in gods. We can’t say that all religions evolved in the same way in every location, but it does seem that in general it was an evolution from nameless “spirits” to specific pantheon of gods. The development of the concept of God was probably influenced by thoughts of parents, of tribal chiefs, or the leader, long before they became complex enough to fit a suzerain model. Yet it does seem that the concept of God evolved out of an understanding of nature oriented religion and evolved slowly over time based upon comparison with the authority figures we know best in life.<br>
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In his work The Evolution of God,<b>[4]</b> Robert Wright distills the work of anthropology over the last two centuries and demonstrates an evolutionary development, form early superstition that personified nature (pre-historic people talking to the wind)<b>[5]</b>, through a polytheistic origin in pre-Hebrew Israelite culture,<b>[6]</b> to monotheistic innovation with the God of the Bible.<b>[7]</b> Wright is distilling a huge body of work that stretches back to the ninetieth century, the work of countless archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists. Another such successful distiller of scholarship in recent years is Karen Armstrong. In her work A History of God: The 4000 year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, <b>[8]</b> she presents a similar evolutionary story, focusing specifically upon the Biblical religions. She sees the pre-historical religious scene through the eyes of wonderment at the world around us. The cave paintings she understands as an attempt to record participation in the all pervasive aspect of the enchanted world.<b>[9]</b> The general agreement between scholarship, social sciences, and the work of anthropologists is that the concept of God is a product of the evolution of human thought.<b>[10]</b> At one time the concept was not, then it began and it has developed over time. Of course the great body of this work is coming out of naturalistic assumptions, especially in the ninetieth century. In the anthropological study of the evolution of religion those assumptions centered around the concept of projection in human thinking. People are projecting the relationship with the father or the king. This assumption can be traced to the work of Ludwig Feuerbach, social critic and precursor to Marxian analysis (God is the mask of money). He understood the concept of projection in terms of Hegel’s philosophy of spirit.<b>[11]</b> In The Essence of Christianity Feuerbach argues that superhuman deities are involuntary projections based upon the attributes of human nature.<b>[12]</b> How this thesis came to be the basis of modern anthropological understanding of religious evolution is not hard to seek. As Harvey puts it “It became the Bible to a group of revolutionary thinkers including, Arnold Ruge, the Bauers, Karl Marx, Richard Wagner, Frederic Engles.<b>[13]</b> This circle became a major part of the basis of modern social thought. While modern anthropology has not necessarily played out Feuerbach’s actual inversion of Hegel it has taken its que from him by making assumptions about theoroes of prodjection of one kind or another.
Hegel did not think of God as some projection of human imagination. Feuerbach inverted Hegel’s concept to produce the idea. Hegel understood stages of human culture as “moments in the unfolding of absolute spirit.”<b>[14]</b> Thus, as Harvey points out, the various stages in religious development can be seen as stages in the self manifestation of Spirit.<b>[15]</b> In other words, from the cave paintings, to the shamans and the wind talkers to the highest aspirations of Judo-Christian ethics, Spirit (God), is making himself aware of himself by moving through progressive revelation to humanity. “In other words, the history of religion culminating in Christianity was a progressive revelation of the truth that the absolute is not merely an impersonal substance but a subject.”<b>[16]</b> Feuerbach inverts this principal by asserting that finite spirit is becoming aware of itself through externalizing its own attributes and then projecting them into magnified from.<b>[17]</b> On Feuerbach’s part this was the result of a long struggle with idealism. Be that as it may, and for both sides, it’s clearly the roots of ideology. It sowed the seeds of ideology in terms of the social sciences naturalistic assumptions. Now we find those same kinds of assumptions being made with regard to the laws of physics. Paul Davies has been quoted to say that the traditional view of the laws of physics are just seventeenth century monotheism without God, “Then God got killed off and the laws just free-floated in a conceptual vacuum but retained their theological properties,”<b>[18]</b> The assumption of modernity is always that belief in God is dying out, religion is of the past, these are the things that are dying. Armstrong sounds the death knell and starts singing the dirge in first book. She observes that “one of the reasons why religion seems irrelevant today is that many of us no longer have the sense that we are surrounded by the unseen.”<b>[19]</b> It’s so irrelevant she’s writing books about it.As Thomas Borges, the Sandinista leader said, "that God refuses to die."20<br>
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(Original publication Tuesday, March 21, 2017)
<b>sources</b><br>
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[1] Ake Hultkrantz, “Attitudes Toward Animals in Shashoni Indian Religion,” Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 4, No. 2. (Spring, 1970) © World Wisdom, Inc. no page listed,online archive, URL:
http://www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/Public/articles/browse_g.aspx?ID=131, accessed 3/21/13<br>
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[2] Weston La Barre, “Shamanic Origins of Religion and Medicine,” Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, vol 11, (1-2) Jan. June 1979 no page listed, PDF, URL: http://www.cnsproductions.com/pdf/LaBarre.pdf accessed 3/22/13.<br>
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[3] Hultkrantz, op. cit. the author also cites other works by himself on the matter: Cf. Hultkrantz, The Owner of the Animals in the Religion of the North American Indians (in Hultkrantz, ed., The Supernatural Owners of Nature, Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 1, 1961). Hultkrantz, The Masters of the Animals among the Wind River Shoshoni (Ethnos, Vol. 26:4, 1961).<br>
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[4] Robert Wright, The Evolution of God, New York: Back Bay Books, reprint edition, 2010. The book was Originally published in 2009. The company “Back Bay books:" is an imprint of Hachette Books, through Little Brown and company. Wright studied sociobiology at Princeton and taught at Princeton and University of Pennsyania. He edits <i>New Republic</i> and does journalistic writing of science, especially sociobiology.<br>
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[5] Wright, ibid, 9
[6] ibid. 10
[7] ibid, 11
[8] Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994.
[9] Ibid, 4-6
[10] T. M. Manickam,, Dharma According Manu and Moses, Bangalore : Dharmaram Publications, 1977,6.
[11] Van A. Harvey, Feuerbach and The Interpretation of Religion, Carmbridge: Press Syndicate for the University of Cambridge, Cambridge Studies in Religion and Critical Thought, 1995/1997, 4.
Harvey is professor emeritus, taught religious studies at Stanford Univesity. His Ph.D. from Yale in 1957. His thesis supervisor was H.Richard Neibhur.<br>
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[12] Cited by Harvey, ibid., 25.<br>
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[13] ibid, 26<br>
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[14] ibid.<br>
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[15] ibid.<br>
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[16] ibid.<br>
[17] ibid, 27<br>
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[18] Dennis Overbye, quoting email message from Paul Davies, “Laws of Nature, Source Unknown,” “Science” New York Times. December 19, 2007. on line edition URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/science/18law.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& accessed, 3/25/13.<br>
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[19] Armstrong, op.cit. 4.<br>
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[20]Redding, <i>What Difference does a revolution make</i>?
I no longer have the book and can't find a reference to it. He quoted the famous leader of the Sandinistas, the founder of their party. Borge wrote to other revolutionaries with the proposal of a united front. He was a Christian even though he was a communist revolutionary.He wrote ro Father Ernesto Cardinal and told him "I tried to kill a God I thought oppressed the poor but God would not die." He tried to be a communist atheist but God kept coming back in his heart. Instead God led him to reach out to mainstream reformers.
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-59433433107353059462023-11-05T23:10:00.001-08:002023-11-05T23:42:56.321-08:00Being itself, and the Personal God.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905-1988)
I feel like I talk too much about Tillich and not enough about other theologians who agreed that God is being itself. Balthasar is not as well known but is as deeply respected as Tillich in Catholic circles. He believed God is being itself and personal.<br>
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Balthasar one of the most interesting and brilliant figures of the twentieth century, yet hardly anyone has heard of him outside the confines of academic theology. Even most theological students in the Proestant world are not very familiar with his works. He was a friend of John Paul II, called “the most cultured man of our time by Henri de Lubac. His achievements are called ‘breathtaking’ my one of the major catholic theologians of the century, Carl Rahner.<b>[1]</b> He wrote over a thousand books and articles. He was born in Lucerne Switzerland, 1905, and Grew up a Catholic, son of a pious mother.<b>[2]</b> He took his doctorate from the Liberal Protestant University of Zurich, having grown up educated by Benedictines and Jesuits. He became a Jesuit priest. He worked as a student Chaplin in the 30s. He became good friends with Protestant theologian Karl Barth, one of the greats of the century.<br>
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Balthasar was unable to work as a full fledged Jesuit priest due to the war years and the arrangement the government had between Protestants and Catholics, he was seen as belonging to the area of south Germany. He made a living as a translator and lecturer and editor. He ran publications and started a spiritual community. He spent most of his adult life this way, in association with a woman named Speyr who was never recognized as a mystic by the church. He had miracles and visions but being unrecognized, Balthasar’s community was not accepted and he was unable to gain a post. This situation dominated his life in the 40s,50’s, and 60s. He had to leave the Jesuits. He also lectured in these years on spiritual topics and made a living that way, but his health deteriorated as a result. In the 60s he began to be recognized as a theologian and was given honors and doctorates. In 1988 John Paul II made him a cardinal. That was also the year of his death. His community of st. John was a publishing house and he ran a journal called Communio. These eventually found great success in the 70s and were recognized by the Vatican. The major avenue to his success was his books and his lectures.<b>[3]</b><br>
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Balthasar’s overall theological project centers upon the dualities between human conflict with ourselves and our place in being. Examples of the dualities that fascinate Balthasar include: our own contingency and that of the world around us in contrast to the sense of being itself.<b>[4]</b> Balthasar openly and obvious equates being with God. In his work about Balthasar’s live, David L. Schindler includes a short article by Balthasar himself called “a Resume of my Thought.”<b>[5]<b>-</b></b>] He begins this “resume” by talking about the dilemma between human contingency and limitation in contrast to the infinite nature of being. This does not necessitate asserting God up fornt although he’s not concerned with a “proof.” His thesis is that all human philosophy either explicitly or tacitly concerns itself with this topic and by implication tacitly affirms the infinite and the absolute.<b>[6]</b> He comes to the conclusion that the duality is inescapable. The finite is not the infinite. Even the monism of the east is seen through nuanced dualities. Thus he asks the question “why are we not God?” The basis of the question is that we are aspects of being. We are products of being, yet we are contingent being, Why are we contingent and not necessary? The solutions that he ponders seem to end in one way or another with an indignant God creating a finite world out of need or alienation from his own infinity. He finds that only the God of the Bible offers a satisfactory answer, and that answer is in a sense the opposite of what we would think.<br>
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The common human tendency is to think God created because he needed something. Balthasar is hinting, I think, that God creates because its his nature as being to foment more being, in other words, its creative and God is Creative. It is not for God’s need that he creates but for what will become our need once we are created. In other words, God created us so that we can enjoy being, not because he needed us because once a part of being we would need and would be fulfilled in the need by love.
No Philosophy could give a satisfactory response to that question [why did infinte create finite?] St Paul would say to philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to obtain the Divine. That is why all pre Christian philosophy is theological at its summit. But, in fact, the true response to philosophy could only be given by Being himself, revealing himself from himself. Will man be capable of understanding this revelation? The affirmative response will be given only by the God of the Bible. On the one hand this God, creator of the world and of man, knows his creature. “I who have created the eye do not see? I who have created the ear do not hear?” And we add who who have created language, could not speak and make myself heard?” This posits a counterpart: to be able to hear and understand the auto-revelation of God man must in himself be a search for God, a question posed to him. Thus there is Biblical theology without a religious philosophy. Human reason must be open to the infinite.<b>[7]</b>Notice how he capitalizes “B” in being and refers to being as “himself.” He personifies being and clearly speaks of it as the creator.<br>
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Balthasar sees the understanding of the revelation of “being himself” (my phrase based upon his) to humanity as rooted in the most fundamental human relationship. He says, “the infant is brought to consciousness of himself only by love, by the smile of his mother. In that encounter the horizon of all unlimited opens unto him.”<b>[8]</b> What he means by that is it is only through being por soir, for itself, in other words, consciousness, that we are able to comprehend the infinite and that only in contrast to the finite. Before we can do that, however, we have to become aware of ourselves so we can know we are finite. I think he’s making an implication that love is a link to being itself, and that through our encounter with love, the mother, we encounter the father, so to speak—by way of encountering love. We can see this in four truths that Balthasar finds rooted in this encounter:
(1) realizing that he Is other to the mother, the only way the child realizes he loves the mother; (2) love is good, therefore, being is good; (3) love is true, therefore, being is true; (4) love evokes joy therefore being is beautiful.<b>[9]</b> Notice the link between being and love. He is one of the rare theologians to point out this curial link.The one, the true, the good, the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attributes of being, because they surpass all the limits of essence, and are coextensive with Being. If there is an insurmountable distance between God and his creature, but if there is also an analogy between them which cannot be resolved in any form of identity, there must also exist an analogy between the transcendentals—between those of the creature and those in God.<b>[10]</b>
In this quotation he as much as equates being and God, since he speaks of the attributes of being then connects the understanding of these to the link between God and the creature. There is more to be said about Balthasar based upon this observation and it will figure importantly in two more chapters, including the last one, and the over all conclusion.<br>
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Balthasar confirms for me so many things I thought but didn't have the courage to say, or that I "sort of thought" but didn't have the intellect to formulate. I think he boldly and unabashedly resoled the problem of paradox between personal God and being itself. He was the first to show me the link bewteen being and love (although Tillich does mention it but I saw it in Balthasar first). He capitalizes "B" in "Being" and speak of Being a "he." The idea that God created not becasue he "needed to" but becasue his nature is creative.<br>
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[1] Joel Graver, “a Short Biography,” website:Hans Urs Von Balthasar, an Internet Archieve. URL sighted: http://www.lasalle.edu/~garver/bio.htm (visited 12/3/10).<br>
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[2] Ibid<br>
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[3] Ibid.<br>
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[4] Ibid, “overview of Balthasar’s project: URL: http://www.joelgarver.com/writ/theo/balt/overview.htm<br>
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[5] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “A Resume of my Thought,” in David L. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work. San Francisco:Ignatious Press, 1991, on like version p1-2 URL:
http://books.google.com/books?id=LLhBuwGFEugC&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=Hans+Urs+Von+Balthasar+connection+between+Love+and+Being&source=bl&ots=E6-L_5GF4p&sig=A-MzjMjMmqjBqRmAaUOWGYiOUww&hl=en&ei=xrTSSdLiJdqJnAe4tNTgBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#v=onepage&q=Hans%20Urs%20Von%20Balthasar%20connection%20between%20Love%20and%20Being&f=true<br>
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[6] Ibid, 1<br>
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[7] Ibid., 3<br>
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[8] Ibid.<br>
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[9] Ibid.<br>
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[10] Ibid.<br>
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Posted by Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) at 5:22 AM
Labels: apologetics, being itself, existential theology, God takl, Hans urs Von Balthasar, Paul Tillich, Personal God, philosophy of religoin <br>
<br>Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-84167237562931092552023-10-29T23:27:00.000-07:002023-10-29T23:27:02.136-07:00Historical validity of the Gospel<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/P52_recto.jpg/250px-P52_recto.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="250" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/P52_recto.jpg/250px-P52_recto.jpg"/></a></div>
What ever happened to the Bible? Go on any message board where atheists congregate and start a discussion of any kind that invovles using the Bible as an authority and they will immediately say things that sound as though the Bible doesn't even exist. They regard it as such a pile of crap they wont even tolerate the possibility that it might be defended. One time on a message board (CARM) someone said that I have no way of distinguishing which passages are mythology and which are not. This is an atheist who knows me and knows I'm somewhat liberal. This guy was saying I can't distinguish true passages from ad ons but I just choose what I like. I listed a criteria for understanding mythology, it was a criteria based upon historical critical methods. This is what this other atheist responded. We also discussed the validation of the Bible as a historical artifact. I said the Gospels were historical artifacts that testify to the beliefs of the people who wrote them. That seems like a fairly a priori sort of statement--true by definition--but people are so bad at understanding logic they think that a priori must be a violation of logic instead a kind of logic, becuase they have been led to accept the phrase that teaches them to confuse true by definition with circular reasoning. So the second major issue for the day was historical life of Jesus and the inability of the Gospels to furnish any sort of historical documentation for the same. I listed three ways that we can validate the Gospels historically and this was one response:<br>
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<blockquote>Originally Posted by Westvleteren View Post<br>
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There is no method that allows the Bible to corroborate itself, as soon as you said that it nullified any possible argument you could make. Quite simply it is asinine. And no I could not care less that you are a PhD candidate as it has no bearing on the validity of your assertions.
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I had said that by historical critical methods we can corroborate the Gospels as historical evidence of Jesus' existence. I also laid out an extensive criteria for determining what is mythology and what is not. I didn't claim the Bible corroborates itself. There is obviously a method or no book could ever be corroborated. That method is called "historical critical method." This is so basic and these guys act like I made it up. They are practically saying there's no such thing as historical criticism. This more than more than anything else shows the Orwellian nature of atheism. Anything that they can't out argue by reason or historical fact they merely claim doesn't exist and make to go away because they don't like it. They just brain wash their mentions into thinking "there can't be such a thing as historical critical methods."<br>
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Doesn't it seem really imbecilic to think that there's this one book that can't be corroborated? I used three different senses in which a book can be corroborated in order to show how foolish it is to make the statement "no method could exist that would do this." Each sense in which the Gospels can be corroborated (use the Gospels since the historical Jesus was the issue) I use another kind of book. Let's look at the three aspects of the historical critical method that verify the Gospels, and then at the criteria for understanding mythology from historically based writing. Three ways of corroborating the Gospels:<br>
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I. The authority of the teaching for the tradition<br>
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Most scholars point to the fact that the four canonical Gospels were already used by most of the church by the time of the canon[Martin Franzmann (The Word of the Lord Grows, St Louis: Concordia, 1961, 287-295)]. They bear the stamp of approval of those who were in charge of the teaching for the tradition. The problem is modern skeptics refuse to accept the facts, despise the truth, refuse to accept any sort of defense regardless of how good it is and basically refuse to even investigate the facts. If one actually examined the facts there is no way one can conclude other than that the four canonical gospels are the most logical choices of all the writings we have. Of the 34 lost gospels of which we have copies, fragments, theories, or any sort of inking only the four canonical Gospels makes sense as candidates for the canon. The Gospel according to Thomas has a historical core that probably goes back to the time of late first century. Yet it also has obviously late, maybe 3d century, heavily gnostic material. The Gospel of Peter had material that is corroborated as independent of the synoptic or of of John (see Ray Brown, Death of the Messiah) yet it encases this material in a clearly late framework. Only the canonical Gospels can be bore out as early dated, the trend is to even earlier dates, and at the same time has this vast body of attestation including the final inclusion in the canon. Skeptics also overlook the extent to which these 34 lost gospels supplement and corroborate the canonical Gospels. Most of the historical core of Thomas is in agreement with the synoptic.<br>
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American Theological Library Association<br>
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More than half of the material in the gospel of Thomas (79 sayings) is paralleled in the canonical gospels:<br>
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27 sayings are in Mark & the other synoptic<br>
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46 parallel Q material (in Matthew & Luke)*
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12 echo material special to Matthew; &
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1 is only in Luke.<br>
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* [Q parallels include 7 sayings where Mark has a variant version]<br>
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Thomas is important for synoptic studies for two reasons:<br>
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Form: It proves that collections of Jesus sayings with no narrative were known in the early church. Thus, it gives indirect support to the hypothesis of a synoptic sayings source, Q.
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Contents: Its version of some Jesus sayings is simpler than the synoptic parallels.<br>
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For the past 40 years scholars have debated whether Thomas is directly dependent on the synoptic gospels or not. Some have maintained the traditional view that Thomas is a 2nd or 3rd c. gnostic composition whose author extracted Jesus sayings from a Coptic translation of the NT & edited them to fit a gnostic worldview. Most recent experts on Thomas, however, regard it as an early sayings collection based on oral tradition rather than any canonical text.<br>
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There are four main reasons why scholars who have studied Thomas conclude that it is independent of synoptic tradition:<br>
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No narrative frame: If the compiler of Thomas drew these sayings from the canonical narrative gospels, he removed every trace of the stories in which the synoptic writers embed them.
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Non-synoptic order: If the compiler of Thomas drew these sayings from the synoptic gospels, he totally scrambled them, separating adjoining sayings & scattering them at random. No one has yet proven that the sayings in Thomas are arranged according to any logical pattern.
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Random parallels: Sayings in Thomas sometimes echo Mark, sometimes Matthew, sometimes Luke. There is no clear pattern of dependence on any one text.
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More primitive form: Sayings in Thomas are often logically simpler than their synoptic counterparts. If the compiler drew these sayings from the synoptic gospels, he edited out the traits characteristic of each writer. While some synoptic parallels in Thomas have gnostic embellishments, these are easily removed.<br>
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Together these traits of Thomas make it highly unlikely that any synoptic gospel was used as its source. In fact, the random, eclectic character of the contents of Thomas makes it a more primitive composition than the synoptic sayings source that scholars call "Q." While many individual sayings in Thomas may be of late gnostic origin, the core of the collection (sayings with synoptic parallels) is probably as old or older than the composition of the canonical gospel narratives (50-90 CE). To date this gospel any later makes it hard to explain the general lack of features dependent on the synoptics.(Copyright © 1997- 2008 by Mahlon H. Smith
All rights reserved.)<br>
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[For more details see Crossan, J.D. Four Other Gospels (Sonoma CA: Polebridge Press, 1992) pp. 3-38 or Patterson, S. J. in Q-Thomas Reader (Sonoma CA: Polebridge Press, 1990) pp. 77-127.]<br>
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The old independent core of Peter supports the idea of guards on the tomb, meaning it also supports the crucifixion, the tomb, and the resurrection, empty tomb.<br>
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What this means for us so far is that the stamp of approval given by inclusion in the canon means several things:<br>
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(1) it means the church as a whole already recognized those books as valid based upon the teaching handed down from the Apostles through the Bishops.<br>
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(2) That is corroborated historically and can be verified by the extra canonical materials that agree with the readings, such as Thomas and Peter.<br>
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(3) The very fact inclusion in the canon is a priori testament to this fact, since apostolic affirmation was part of the criteria.<br>
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An examination of how the canon came to be will bear this out. This is written by me based upon the Franzman source above. It's found on my website Doxa> Bible> The Canon: how do they know the got the right books?<br>
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this was originally part ofa much longer work, to see the whole thing here's a link: https://religiousapriorijesus-bible.blogspot.com/2011/08/historical-validity-of-gospels-part-1.html
<br>Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-48468406268811055052023-10-22T20:51:00.001-07:002023-10-22T21:50:34.690-07:00Discussion on Mystical experience argument
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I have been arguing wth atheists on face book. Very few rational discussions.This is one of the few rational discusions I had there, Ths guy,Travis Cottreau, is the nicest and most intelkigent opponent I have found there. <br>
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<b>Travis Cottreau</b>
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There are a few issues in your blog post.
Mystical experience doesn't mean the spirit world exists. It is an experience. People have mystical experience in lots of extreme situations including but not exclusively psychedelics.<br>
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I think jumping to god existing from this is a bit of a stretch. I think it's good to collect the information and talk about it. I don't think it quite means what you think it means.
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Most theories out there for quantum physics and cosmology are WAY ahead of the practical experiments for them, so, they will be theoretical and mathematical.
String theory isn't something just you have an issue with. There are lots of psycists who have abandoned it. Note: they move on to something equally incomprehensible to us. Loop quantum gravity say.
But they are trying to form a framework that can make predictions. It's a fair thing to do and I wouldn't say "you can't see it so it doesn't exist". If it is able to make predictions, then you assume it is somehow related to reality.
I don't get how "god exists" is the same kind of claim. The whole "I can't see/hear/smell god" is a dumb argument. What they should be saying is that there doesn't seem to be a difference between no god and a god that doesn't interact with the world in any way that we can detect.</blockquote>
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30m
<b>Joe Hinman</b>
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Travis Cottreau my argument is that the experience has more empiricism behind it than do these theories of physics which are only backed mathematically,The link between the experience and God is easy, logical, and obvious. God is in the content of the experience, Itis n experience of Gd so say 90% if those who have it. its the basis of religion, it;s in every religion, the experiences are all they same even though they should not be. they means theres an external reality,
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Reply\\\\
<b>Travis Cottreau</b>
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<blockquote>clearly not the case though. They aren't ONLY mathematical. They are mathematical purely for predicting real world observations.
However, if you get something that is predicting real world observations, there might be other implications to it that we have not observed. So,.something like many worlds or Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics are like this. The math can be seen in a couple of ways. They aren't the only ones either.
"Only backed mathematically" is spoken by a non physicist, non mathematician. 🙂
The link is by no means easy, logical and obvious. Hindu versus Buddhist versus Christian versus Muslim all look different. People have content in their experiences that don't exist all the time. I don't know why you are trusting this one but not others. It might be because you want to believe?
There are lots of these experiences, but they vary by culture and background of the participants. They don't go outside of their culture very often.
I agree that it is probably the basis of religion. This is why there are so many different religions, because the expeirences are all different.
You are not white washing the actual results and trying to make them all the same when they are varied.</blockquote>
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5h
Edited
<b>Joe Hinman</b>
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Travis Cottreau subatomic particles and multiverses have no support except mathematical constructs, mystical experience has real first hand empirical proof.the latter are empirical the farmer are theological only''''\\\\\==We are talking about one certain kind of experience not all experiences. Of course you can find different experiences among the world religions but not among mystical experience, All mystical experiences have same contents and the same reactions, Religions do very by culture that's because religion is cultural not genetic. Thus we should expect mystical experiences to be different, the M scale studies prove they are not, they are the same in India, Arabia, Japan, England and so on."You are not white washing the actual results and trying to make them all the same when they are varied." I read tbe studies I didn't colate them, Contact Dr Hood if you dont believe me,
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1m
<b>Travis Cottreau</b>
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<blockquote>Subatomic particles create trails in cloud chambers at CERN, you aren't going to win that one.
Multiverses are a consequence of a theory that predicts outcomes, specifically the Schrödinger wave equation. That's without any kind of measurement collapse.
Mystical experiences are experiences. They are as much proof of anything as tasting chocolate is proof of a chocolate god.
I have read a book on mystical experiences and they are not all identical. Unless you are making the claim that what you are talking about are only one, specific kind of experience?
I'll read some of your references. I suspect I understand what you are saying but I'm not sure.
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10m
<b>Joe Hinman</b>
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SAPs aside, Multiverse has no empirical backing it not hard to find a lot of scientists who say MV may never be provable. Even if is that is not the point That doesn;'t disprove the emprical nature of the religious experiences.
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-61981715204738077302023-10-15T22:00:00.000-07:002023-10-15T22:00:41.999-07:00Things Tangible and Things Unseen<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://s.abcnews.com/images/Technology/HT_proton_collision_nt_130703_16x9_1600.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" src="https://s.abcnews.com/images/Technology/HT_proton_collision_nt_130703_16x9_1600.jpg"/></a></div>
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A statement on a blog by an atheist that well illustrates a major attitude of skepticism and new atheists that one encounters all over the net.<br>
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Roger Higman:<br>
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<blockquote>But God is a figment of your imagination. S/he can't be seen,heard or sensed in any way and all claims for what s/he thinks or says are just figments of the imagination of other people. At least science is based on things we can all see, hear, smell and taste.<b>[1]</b></blockquote>
He must mean things like sub atomic strings, dark matter, quarks, nuetrinos,the big bang, and other things we clearly see and smell every day? As for figments of imagination I demonstrated in The Trace of God that 200 peer reviewed studies in journal articles demonstrate that mystical experince is good for you and that it is a valid experiece of something that is being experienced with the same qualia by people from all faiths all over the world.<b>[2]</b> Thus it seems God has more of a basis in empirical evidence than do subatomic particles.<br>
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Here is Part of an article I wrote for this blog back in 2020,"Can Science really Prove The Basis of Modern Physics?" (JULY 13, 2020):<br>
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Are there realms beyond the natural? Of course there can be no direct evidence, even a direct look at them would stand apart from our received version of reality and thus be suspect. The plaintive cry of the materialists that “there is no evidence for the supernatural” is fallacious to the core. How can there be evidence when any evidence that might be would automatically be suspect? Moreover, science itself gives us reason to think there might be. Quantum physics is about unseen realms, but they are the world of the extremely tiny. This is the fundamental basis of reality, what’s beneath or behind everything. They talk about “particles” but in reality they are not particles. They are not bits of stuff. They are not solid matter.<b>[3]</b> Treating particles as points is also problematic. This is where string theory comes in. This is where string theory comes in. In string theory fundamental particles aren't treated as zero-dimensional points. Instead they are one-dimensional vibrating strings or loops. The maths is hair-raising, and the direct evidence non-existent, but it does provide a way out of the current theoretical cul-de-sac. It even provides a route to unifying gravity with the other three fundamental forces - a problem which has baffled the best brains for decades. The problem is, you need to invoke extra dimensions to make the equations work in string-theory and its variants: 10 spacetime dimensions to be precise. Or 11 (M-theory). Or maybe 26. In any case, loads more dimensions than four.<br>
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So where are they then? One idea is that they are right under our noses, but compacted to the quantum scale so that they are imperceptible. "Hang on a minute", you might think,"How can you ever prove the existence of something that, by definition, is impossible to perceive?" It's a fair point, and there are scientists who criticize string theory for its weak predictive power and testability. Leaving that to one side, how can you conceptualize extra dimensions?<b>[4]</b> There is no direct evidence of these unseen realms and they may be unprovable. Why are they assumed with such confidence and yet reductionists make the opposite assumption about spiritual realms? It’s not because the quantum universe realms are tangible or solid or material they are not. Scientists can’t really describe what they are, except that they are mathematical. In fact why can’t they be the same realms?<br>
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Then there’s the concept of the multiverse. This is not subatomic in size but beyond our space/time continuum. These would be other universes perhaps like our own, certainly the size of our own, but beyond our realm of space/time. Some scientists accept the idea that the same rules would apply in all of these universes, but some don’t.<br>
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Beyond it [our cosmic visual horizon—42 billion light years] could be many—even infinitely many—domains much like the one we see. Each has a different initial distribution of matter, but the same laws of physics operate in all. Nearly all cosmologists today (including me) accept this type of multiverse, which Max Tegmark calls “level 1.” Yet some go further. They suggest completely different kinds of universes, with different physics, different histories, maybe different numbers of spatial dimensions. Most will be sterile, although some will be teeming with life. A chief proponent of this “level 2” multiverse is Alexander Vilenkin, who paints a dramatic picture of an infinite set of universes with an infinite number of galaxies, an infinite number of planets and an infinite number of people with your name who are reading this article.<b>[5]</b>
Well there are two important things to note here. First, that neither string theory nor multiverse may ever be proved empirically. There’s a professor at Columbia named Peter Woit who writes the blog Not Even Wrong dedicated to showing that string theory can’t be proved.<b>[6]</b> There is no proof for it or against it. It can’t be disproved so it can’t be proved either.<b>[7]</b> That means the idea will be around for a long time because without disproving it they can’t get rid of it. Yet without any means of disproving it, it can’t be deemed a scientific fact. Remember it’s not about proving things, it's about disproving them. Yet science is willing to consider their possibility and takes them quite seriously. There is no empirical evidence of these things. They posit the dimensions purely as a mathematical solution so the equations work not because they have any real evidence.<b>[8]</b><br>
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We could make the argument that we have several possibilities for other worlds and those possibilities suggest more: we have the idea of being “outside time.” There’s no proof that this is a place one can actually go to, but the idea of it suggests the possibility, there’s the world of antimatter, there are worlds in string membranes, and there are other dimensions tucked away and folded into our own. In terms of the multiverse scientists might argue that they conceive of these as “naturalistic.” They would be like our world with physical laws and hard material substances and physical things. As we have seen there are those who go further and postulate the “rules change” idea. We probably should assume the rules work the same way because its all we know. We do assume this in making God arguments such as the cosmological argument. Yet the possibility exists that there could be other realms that are not physical and not “natural” as we know that concept. The probability of that increases when we realize that these realms are beyond our space/time thus they are beyond the domain of our cause and effect, and we know as “natural.” It really all goes back to the philosophical and ideological assumption about rules. There is no way to prove it either way. Ruling out the possibility of a spiritual realm based upon the fact that we don’t live in it would be stupid. The idea that “we never see any proof of it” is basically the same thing as saying “we don’t live it so it must not exist.” Of course this field is going to be suspect, and who can blame the critics? Anyone with a penchant for the unknown can set up shop and speculate about what might be “out there.” Yet science itself offers the possibility in the form of modern physics, the only rationale for closing that off is the distaste for religion.<br>
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All that is solid melts into air<br>
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This line by Marx deals with society, social and political institutions, but in thinking about the topic of SN it suggests a very different issue. The reductionist/materialists and phsyicalists assume and often argue that there is no proof of anything not material and not ' ‘physical” (energy is a form of matter). The hard tangible nature of the physical is taken as the standard for reality while the notion of something beyond our ability to dietetic is seen in a skeptical way, even though the major developments in physics are based upon it. Is the physical world as tangible and solid as we think? Science talks about “particles” and constructs models of atoms made of wooden tubes and little balls this gives us the psychological impression that the world of the very tiny is based upon little solid balls. In reality subatomic particles are not made out of little balls, nor are these ‘particles” tangible or solid. In fact we could make a strong argument that no one even knows what they are made of.<br>
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We keep talking about "particles", but this word doesn't adequately sum up the type of matter that particle physicists deal with. In physics, particles aren't usually tiny bits of stuff. When you start talking about fundamental particles like quarks that have a volume of zero, or virtual particles that have no volume and pop in and out of existence just like that, it is stretching the everyday meaning of the word "particle" a bit far. Thinking about particles as points sooner or later leads the equations up a blind alley. Understanding what is happening at the smallest scale of matter needs a new vocabulary, new maths, and very possibly new dimensions. This is where string theory comes in. In string theory fundamental particles aren't treated as zero-dimensional points. Instead they are one-dimensional vibrating strings or loops. The maths is hair-raising, and the direct evidence non-existent, but it does provide a way out of the current theoretical cul-de-sac. It even provides a route to unifying gravity with the other three fundamental forces - a problem which has baffled the best brains for decades. The problem is, you need to invoke extra dimensions to make the equations work in string-theory and its variants: 10 spacetime dimensions to be precise. Or 11 (M-theory). Or maybe 26. In any case, loads more dimensions than 4.<b>[9]</b><br>
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Particles are not solid; they are not very tiny chunks of solid stuff. They have no volume nor do they have the kind of stable existence we do. They “pop” in and out of existence! This is not proof for the supernatural. It might imply that the seeming solidity of “reality” is illusory. There are two kinds of subatomic particles, elementary and composite. Composites are made out of smaller particles. Now we hear it said that elementary particles are not made out of other particles. It’s substructure is unknown. They may or may not be made of smaller particles. That means we really don’t know what subatomic particles are made of. That means scientists are willing to believe in things they don’t understand.<b>[10]</b> While it is not definite enough to prove anything except that we don’t know the basis of reality, it does prove that and also the possibilities for the ultimate truth of this are still wide open. To rule out “the supernatural '' (by the wrong concept) on the assumption that we have no scientific proof of it is utterly arrogance and bombast. For all we know what we take to be solid unshakable reality might be nothing more than God’s day dream. Granted, there is end to the spinning of moon beams and we can talk all day about what ‘might be,’ so we need evidence and arguments to warrant the placing of confidence in propositions. We have confidence in placing evidence; it doesn’t have to be scientific although some of it is. That will come in the next chapter. The point here is that there is no basis for the snide dismissal of concepts such as supernatural and supernature.<br>
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Notes<br>
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[1]"The God Cpnsclusion,"Facebook, No date given. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid026zwX5w1B83ewVadJz8osCAANt6u7D7ZLVnyMkcU2umBVo5C3qmi7oQe86WVkCfmVl&id=110569734986874&comment_id=776115883509430&reply_comment_id=1133078190613576¬if_id=1660685142035948¬if_t=feed_comment_reply&ref=notif<br>
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[2]Joseph Hinman, The Trace of God: Rational Warrant for Belief, 2014,' On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Trace-God-Rational-Warrant-Belief/dp/0982408714 In this, my first book, I discuss a body of scientific work in psychology (200 studies going back to the 1960s The jist of these studes is that relgioius experomce is an experience of something real.Although we cant [rove that God is the thimg experoence thyatis the best explaination.<br>
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[3] “are there other dimensions,” Large Hadron Collider. Website. Science and Facilities Council, 2012 URL: http://www.lhc.ac.uk/The%20Particle%20Detectives/Take%205/13686.aspx<br>
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[4] Ibid.<br>
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[5] George F.R. Ellis. “Does the Miltiverse Really Exist [preview]” Scientific American (July 19, 2011) On line version URL: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-the-multiverse-really-exist George F.R. Ellis is Professor Emeritus in Mathematics at University of Cape Town. He’s been professor of Cosmic Physics at SISSA (Trieste)<br>
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[6] Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong, Posted on September 18, 2012 by woi blog, URL: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/<br>
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[7] ibid, “Welcome to the Multiverse,” Posted on May 21, 2012 by woit URL: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4715<br>
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[8] Mohsen Kermanshahi. Universal Theory. “String Theory.” Website URL:http://www.universaltheory.org/html/others/stringtheory5.htm<br>
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[9] STFC ibid, op cit.<br>
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[10] Giorgio Giacomelli; Maurizio Spurio Particles and Fundamental Interactions: An Introduction to Particle Physics (2nd ed.). Italy: Springer-Verlag, science and Business media, 2009, pp. 1–3.<br>
<br>Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-33176509435797870222023-10-09T01:26:00.003-07:002023-10-09T01:30:17.709-07:00What is the Supernatural?The term "supernatural" comes from the term "supernauturalator" or "Supernature." Dionysius the Areopagite (around 500AD) began talking of God as the supernaturalator, meaning that God's higher nature was the telos toward which our "lower" natures were drawn. St.Augustine has spoken of Divine nature as "Supernature" or the higher form of nature, but that is speaking of nature in you, like human nature and divine nature.<br>
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In the beginning the issue was not a place, "the realm of the supernatural '' but the issue was the nature inside a man. Human nature, vs. divine nature. The Supernatural was divine nature that drew the human up to itself and vivified it with the power (dunimos) to live a holy life. This is the sort of thing Paul was talking about when he said "when I am weak I am strong." Or "we have this treasure in earthen vessels." The weak human nature which can't resist sin is transformed by the power of the Godly nature, through the spirit and becomes strong enough to resist sin, to be self sacrificing, to die for others ect ect.<br>
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This was the "supernatural" prior to the reformation. It was tied in with the sacraments and the mass. That's partly why the Protestants would rebel against it. Austine (late 300s early 400s) spoke of Christians not hating rocks and trees, in answer to the assertion that Christians didn't like nature. But the extension of the natural world as "nature" didn't come until later. The idea of "the natural" was at first based upon the idea of human nature, of biological life, life form life, that's what the Latin natura is about.<br>
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Prior to the reformation Christian theologians did not see the supernatural as a separate reality, an invisible realm, or a place where God dwells that we can't see. After the reformation reality was bifurcated. Now there came to be two realms, and they juxtaposed to each other. The realm of Supernature, is correlated to that of Grace, and is holy and sacred, but the early realm is "natural" and bad it's mired in sin and natural urges.<br>
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But all of that represents a degraded form of thinking after going through the mill of the Protestant Catholic split. The basic split is characterized by rationalism vs fideism. The Catholics are rationalists, because they believe God is motivated by divine purpose and wisdom, the Protestants were fideists, meaning that faith alone apart form reason because God is motivated by will and sheer acceptation, the desire to prove sovereignty above all else.<br>
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The rationalistic view offered a single harmony, a harmonious reality, governed by God's reasoned nature and orchestrated in a multifarious ways. This single reality continued a two sided nature, or a multi-facets, but it was one harmonious reality in which human nature was regenerated through divine nature. But the Protestant view left Christian theology with two waring reality, that which is removed from our empirical knowledge and that in which we live.<br>
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The true Christian view of the Supernatural doesn't see the two realms as juxtaposed but as one reality in which the natural moves toward its' ground and ends in divine nature. It is this tendency to move toward the ground and end, that produces miracles. A miracle is merely nature bending toward the higher aspect of Supernature.<br>
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But with the Protestant division between divine sovereignty, acceptation and will motivating the universe, we mistake univocity and equivvocity for nature and supernature. We think nature and supernature are not alike, they are at war, so difference marks the relationship of the two. But to make the Supernatural more available they stress some aspect of nature and put it over against the rest of nature and pretend that makes it supernatural, this is univocity, it's the same. So will and acceptation, sovereignty, God has to prove that he is in charge, these are all aspects of univocity.<br>
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It's the natural extension of this bifurcation that sets up two realms and sees nature as "everything that exists." or "all of material reality" that sets up the atheist idea that supernatural is unnecessary and doesn't exist.<br>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-64321611644311212782023-10-01T21:49:00.001-07:002023-10-01T22:03:26.782-07:00An Atheists Request.
On CARM (atheist message board) Vladimir posts:<br>
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Could I request something from any believers here, who have a good relationship with God and who regularly pray to God for guidance and direction and who hear God's voice (no matter how subtle)?<br>
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Next time that you pray, could you ask God to tell any of the non-believers here something profound?<br>
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A message from God himself for the non-believers here would be appreciated.<br>
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I'm being serious. Not joking.<br>
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I'm sure this sounds perfectly reasonable to many atheists. It's like a scientific test, what better way to prove that no one is "up there answering prayers?" There are some problems with approach. The irony is I remember an atheist on CARM who had as a signature some quote about "if God revealed himself to me I would not believe my senses." So he's saying een if God revealed himself I wouldn't believe is. So why ask? I know all atheists aren't saying that, but at least for that one guy it's a real pretense to ask questions like this.<br>
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The major problem is it's a means of circumventing the search in the heart that God has designed belief to be. The search is real imporant becuase it enables us to interlace the values of the good. If God did force his presence upon the world in such a way that no one could doubt many would resent it. the more lib service they felt forced to give the more deeply they would resent it. But those who seek for the truth and find in a leap of faith have a personal commitment of love. It's that existential aspect that people most fear, and this is most necessary to the search; the point whereon realizes the nature of ones own being is that of content upon God. That's the moment of truth, the only choices are get "real" with God in your heart (repent and change) or reject the whole thing and live in pretense telling yourself "i'm a smart tough cool skeptic."<br>
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Meta:<br>
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<blockquote>the evidence is he communicated with us. your evidence that he doesn't is just that you haven't open enough to receive it. that is not a disproof. your narrow mindedness is not a disproof of God.<br></blockquote>
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Originally Posted by A Hermit View Post<br>
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Then you have no reason to expect anyone else to believe, do you?
I never said I EXPECT anyone to believe me. I expect people to listen and think about my reasons but so atheist ever do.<br>
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META:<br>
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<blockquote>Those are a rather different order of belief though; I have a mother and brothers and went to school too; on the other hand you're telling me that the almighty, all loving creator of the universe chooses to talk to you, but not to me; or on the other hand that I'm too stupid/ignorant/selfish/small minded/evil/not fully human enough to measure up to your standards when it comes to appreciating the depth and beauty of life because I don't choose to embrace you language for it.<br></blockquote>
<blockquote>"talk" here is metaphor right? I didn't say God wont communicate with you. You are decided to ignore and pretend it's unreal the communication that he did do and to close off the possibly of future communication. that's your deal.<br>
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Yes you do or you wouldn't work so hard at convincing me and others, or react so strongly to something as innocuous as my last comment...<br>
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<blockquote>I'm not out to destroy or damn anyone or anything; just to suggest an alternative point of view. Why does that make you so angry?<br>
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Originally Posted by Electric Skeptic View Post<br>
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God is (supposedly) omnipotent. If he tried to communicate to anyone, he would do so. Claims that he tries but fails mean that he is not omnipotent.
If you believe God to be not omnipotent, fine. If you do not, you are contradicting yourself.<br>
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No, you do not prove God at all.<br>
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Meta:<br>
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<blockquote>I have discussed in the past the problem with the concept of omnipotence and how it's an anti quested concept. that's become your excuse. the one thing God requires you to do is the one thing you refuse to do.<br>
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becuase you refuse to do it your big excuse is "it's God's fault I rejected him because he didn't make it so overwhelming enough I couldn't deny it."<br>
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that's an excuse. that's not searching.<br>
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<blockquote>"you don't prove God at all!" can't you see what an excuse that is? I say over and over again. Its' not about proof, can't prove it because God is beyond understanding. the battle is in the heart. you have to search in your heart and when God reveals himself that's where he iwll do it."<br>
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<blockquote>your answer to all that is "but he didn't do it MY WAY so I'm absolved of all responsibility!"<br>
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as long as you refuse to repent and seek God in the heart! there ant gonna be no revelation.<br></blockquote>
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why should the king of existence surrender to your terms? YOU surrender! you take his terms!<br>
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Posted by Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) 2012Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com31