Materialism Vanishes

The Argument:Science works by paradigm shifts, paradigm shifts have occurred, and are still occurring, which include into naturalistic understanding idea that only 100 years ago would have been excluded as "magic" or as "supernatural." Thus we can see that scinece cannot be used to rule out the Sueprnatural becuause more and more it incorporates ideas of it into the naturalisitc schemeatta.


Many see a new Dualism emerging which is compatible with either SN or Naturalist assumptions.

Many atheists seem to think that science exclusive domain of atheism, and that it's function is to get rid of religion. But scinece is neutral, scinece is no more a creature of atheism than it is a creature of theism.Ontological judgements, that is ideas about the major sturcure of reality, are beyond the domain of science.
The argument turns on the basic historical fact that atheists have lost the ground uponwhich they dismissed God from science in the first place. In their book God and Nature Lindberg and Numbers demonstrate that the moment at which this happened was when La Place said "I have no need of that hypothesis," meaning the idea that God created the universe. What he meant was that God was not needed as an explaintion because we now have naturlistic cause and effect, which explains everything. But the atheist has cashed in cause and effect to over come the Big Bang. Materialists are now willing to consider ideas like the self caused universe, Hawkings unbounded condition which removes cause completely as a consideration; or based upon quantum theory they are willing to accept the notion that causality is an illusion, that the universe could just pop up out of nothing. With that committment they lose the ground upon which they first removed God from consideration.

Now perhaps they still do not need God as a causal explaintion, but in the Religious a pirori argument, and in the innate religious instrict argument I say that belief was never predicated upon a need for explaination in the first palce. Nevertheless, the fact still remians, the reason for dismissing God was the sufficiency of natural causation as explaination, with that gone there is no longer any grounds for dismissing consideration of God from the universe.

I will argue that more than that is going. There is a paradigm shift underway which demonstrates a total change in sceintific thinking in many areas and over many disciplines. That change demonstrates that the materialist concept is wrong; there is more to reality than just the material world. There are other aspects to the material world wich are non-deterministic, non-mechanistic, and which call into question the whole presupposition of excluding the supernatural from consideration.


1)Materialism is the antithesis of belief in God, it rules out any such belife on the grounds that a deterministic, reductionist, or mechanistic understanding of the natural world is all that is needed to explain the natrual world.


2) Materialism is wrong on all these counts; it is not based upon scientfic objective or "ultimate" proof, but is culturally constructed.


3) Materialism is simply inadequate--from the standpoint of modern physics.


4) Paraigm shifts in many different field have led to the includion of concepts that once would have been anti-materialist.


5) Therefore, materialism is inadequate and Reductionism is misguided (at best).


6) "Bigger" views of the universe have emerged, and are being accepted/developed by the academic community.


7)These "bigger universes" include fundamental mechanisms (non-mystical ones!) for mind to 'exist' and to interact with 'matter'.


8) materialism is wrong, therefore, the door is open to the possibility of God and the supernatural.

Now this argument doesn't prove the Christian God, it could open the possibility to a supernatural without God, or a Buddhistic concept of reality, but the step away form total materialism brins us closer to some sort of belief in God.


B. Paradigm Shifts.

1) Thomas S. Kuhn.


Kuhn's famous theory was that scientific thought works through paradigm acquisition, and that paradigms change when they can no longer absorb anomalies into the model and must account for them in some other way. This theory entails the idea that science is culturally constructed, but Kuhn was not "hard project," that is he did not think that science was totally a construct or that it didn't describe true states of affairs in the world. However, our ideas about science are culturally rooted and our understanding of the world in a scientific fashion is rooted in culture. For this reason he thought that science is not linear cumulative progress.




a. Scientific progress not cumulative.


"scientific revolutions are here taken to be those non-cumulative developmental episodes replaced in whole or in part by a new one..." (Thomas kuhn The Structure of scientific Revolutions," (92)



b. Paradigm Shifts.

"In section X we shall discover how closely the view of science as cumulating is entangled with a dominate epistemology that takes knowledge to be a construction placed directly upon raw sense data by the mind. And in section XI we shall examine the strong support provided to the same historiographic scheme by the techniques of effective science pedagogy. Nevertheless, despite the immense plausibility of that ideal image, there is increasing reason to wonder whether it can possibly be an image of science. After the pre-paradgim period the assimilation of all new theories and of almost all new sorts of phenomena has demanded the destruction of a prior paradigm and a consequent conflict between cometing schools of scientific thought. Cumulative anticipation of unanticipated novelties proves to be an almost nonexistent exception to the rule of scientific development.The man who takes historic fact seriously must suspect that science does not tend toward the ideal that our image of its cumulativeness has suggested. Perhaps it is another sort of enterprise."(Ibid,94)

c. P shift not based rationally upon data.

"The choice [between paradigms] is not and cannot be determined merely by the evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science, for these depend in part upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms enter as they must into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses it's own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defense...the status of the circular argument is only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (96).

Kuhn is not alone in these observations, major scientific thinkers have questioned scientific 'pretense of objectivity' thoughout the century:


This 'bigger' aspect can also be seen in Rosenberg's 'liberal naturalism' [CS:JCS:3.1.77]:

"The question of scientific objectivity becomes more compelling when one considers that doubts about the reductive paradigm are by no means new. William James (1890), Charles Sherrington (1951), Erwin Schrodinger (1944, 1958), Karl Popper and John Eccles (1977)--among others--have insisted that the reductive view is inadequate to describe reality. This is not a fringe group. They are among the most thoughtful and highly honored philosophers and scientists of the past century. How is it that their deeply held and vividly expressed views have been so widely ignored? Is it not that we need to see the world as better organized than the evidence suggests?

"Appropriately, the most ambitious chapter of this section is the final one by Willis Harman. Is the conceptual framework of science sufficiently broad to encompass the phenomenon of consciousness, he asks, or must it be somehow enlarged to fit the facts of mental reality? Attempting an answer, he considers the degree to which science can claim to be objective and to what extent it is influenced by the culture in which it is immersed. Those who disagree might pause to consider the religious perspective from which modern science has emerged.

"There is reason to suppose that the roots of our bias toward determinism lie deeper in our cultural history than many are accustomed to suppose. Indeed, it is possible that this bias may even predate modern scientific methods. In his analysis of thirteenth-century European philosophy, Henry Adams (1904) archly observed: "Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity the right to contradict himself, which is one of Man's chief pleasures." One wonders to what extent reductive science has merely replaced Thomas's God with the theory of everything."

2) Paradigm Shifts in last 30 years change materialist conceptions.


a. Medicine.


Medical paradigm shift *Medical Schools and Doctors accept Healing more readily.

Christian Science Monitory, Monday, Sept. 15, 1999

http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1997/09/15/us/us.6.html "Research Starts to Bridge GAp Between Prayer and Medicine.


"The growing dialogue between the disciplines of faith and medicine, was probed this past weekend at the Religion Newswriters Association's annual meeting here. Increasingly, medical institutions are exploring the role of prayer in healing. Three years ago, only three US medical schools in offered courses on spirituality and health. Today, there are 30."


This quotation is old, it's now 120 schools or so.

*Most Doctors Have experience with healing and medical opinion changing.

Ibid.

Larry Dossey, author of several books on the subject, says that he, like most doctors, has witnessed "miracle cures." But the quality of research on the subject varies greatly.

US TOO International, Inc.

Prostate Cancer Survivor Support Groups

US TOO Prostate Cancer Communicator Article
Volume No. 1, Issue No. 6 (January ­ June, 1997)
Survivor's Corner - Issue 6

"I am motivated to write about the healing power of prayer because many men I talk with are not only asking questions about prostate cancer statistics but have a feeling of being depressed after being diagnosed. Some are in a quandary as to what to do if PSA rises after treatment."

"A recent article was titled, "Physicians believe in the power of prayer," and stated that 269 doctors were surveyed and 99% said they were convinced that religious belief can heal."We've seen the power of belief," said Dr. Herbert Benson, author of Timeless Healing which offers scientific evidence that faith has helped to cure medical conditions. Prayer helps and the prayers of others can help in your recovery and healing."

* Good Studies Exist, Skeptics Pick On Worst Studies. Ibid. Skeptics, [Larry Dossey] says, tend to point to the weakest studies. Good scientific method, he says however, requires the medical community to look at the best work to "see what it shows us." Dr. Dossey adds that "I'm not trying to hold prayer hostage to science. I don't think prayer needs science to validate it."

b. Cosmology (end of cause and effect).

Physicists are now embroiled in integrating metaphysical notions into science and in atheists assume them as though they were fact. The self causing universe, something from nothing, multiple universes, all beyond the pale of scientific investigation, all assumed as totally proven facts by the materialists.


*No Physics to explian something from nothing.



John Mather, NASA's principal investigator of the cosmic background radiation's spectral curve with the COBE satellite, stated: "We have equations that describe the transformation of one thing into another, but we have no equations whatever for creating space and time. And the concept doesn't even make sense, in English. So I don't think we have words or concepts to even think about creating something from nothing. And I certainly don't know of any work that seriously would explain it when it can't even state the concept."[John Mather, interview with Fred Heeren on May 11, 1994, cited in his book Show Me God (1998), Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 119-120.]
That is describing the excepted theory, that the universe seems to pop up from nothing, yet physicists just accept it and assume that its possible even with no physics to explian it. That is a total paradigm shift.

*Multiverse is unscientific metaphysics.

Sten Odenwald, Gaddard, Nasa: http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/a11215.html

"yes there could be other universes out there, but they would be unobservable no matter how old our universe became...even infinitly old!! So, such universes have no meaning to science because there is no experiment we can perform to detect them."


Some physicists, such as Oldenwald, are aware of this, but that doesn't stop the the materalists from continuing the assumption. So if it is religious metaphysics its bad, but if its metaphysics the materialist can use it's "ok."



c.Consciousness--re-entry of dualism.

There is a revolution in thought about consciousness underway that may include several paradigm shifts at once. It includes an interdisciplinary mix of Philosophers, psychologists, cognitive sciences, physicists, and other disciplines. Some of the more radical theories being advanced by physicists include the notion that consciousness is Quantum, that it is located non-spacilly and non-physically. see the consciousness argument for further details. But the most exciting aspect of this controversy is the fact that it has led to a reemergence of dualism. Glenn Miller does an excellent job researching this topic, most of his evidence comes form the Journal of Consciousness Studies. He also does a good job of putting into persecutive the new dualism and its implications: : http://www.webcom.com/ctt/hmosoul.html


"Now, given this turbulence, re-evaluation, and re-definition going on the field, what is the status of DUALISM?

"Well, the first thing that comes to MY mind is that 'dualism' simply changed its public relations firm and won acceptance!

Strangely enough, the way this was accomplished was simply by defining reality 'bigger'. As one allows consciousness or mind INTO 'nature' as a fundamental 'thing' itself (with causal powers), the dual-worlds were simply collapsed into one 'bigger' world that has both elements in it! Dualism (in most, but not all, senses of the term) was simply given a new name, such as "naturalistic dualism" (Chalmers) or "liberal naturalism" (Rosenberg). No one puts this as clearly as Todd Moody, in responding to someone's 'fear of dualism' [JCS:2.4.371]:

"It's true that I am not troubled by this, in part because I don't find such a sharp line of demarcation between dualistic and materialistic metaphysics in the first place. If we cannot escape the conclusion that the physical description of the world is incomplete (as Elitzur states and many others agree), the main thing is to try to find a more complete one and not worry about whether it resembles previous versions of materialism or dualism"

The New York Times,April 16, 1996Arizona Conference Grapples With Mysteries of Human ConsciousnessBy SANDRA BLAKESLEE[T] UCSON, Ariz.
http://www.as.wvu.edu/~tmiles/myster.html

"The next major group of consciousness seekers might be called modern dualists. Agreeing with the hard problem, they feel that something else is needed to explain people's subjective experiences. And they have lots of ideas about what this might be.According to Chalmers, scientists need to come up with new fundamental laws of nature. Physicists postulate that certain properties -- gravity, space-time, electromagnetism -- are basic to any understanding of the universe, he said. 'My approach is to think of conscious experience itself as a fundamental property of the universe,' he said. Thus the world has two kinds of information, one physical, one experiential. The challenge is to make theoretical connections between physical processes and conscious experience, Chalmers said.Another form of dualism involves the mysteries of quantum mechanics. Dr. Roger Penrose from the University of Oxford in England argued that consciousness is the link between the quantum world, in which a single object can exist in two places at the same time, and the so-called classical world of familiar objects where this cannot happen.Moreover, with Hameroff, he has proposed a theory that the switch from quantum to classical states occurs inside certain proteins call microtubules. The brain's microtubules, they argue, are ideally situated to perform this transformation, producing 'occasions of experience' that with the flow of time give rise to stream of consciousness thought.The notion came under vigorous attack."

Glenn Miller.

"It is very difficult to avoid this conclusion of 'emergent dualism' (chortle, chortle)with all the proposals floating around (reviewed above). The mind as 'immaterial'--in the sense of classical matter--is also accepted as a brute fact! Consider some of the statements and concessions (bold, my emphasis; italics, their emphasis):"

The introductory chapter in CS:TSC (p.1) opens with this statement: "This volume begins with a series of philosophical chapters devoted mostly to the explanatory chasm between reductionist mechanisms and the subjective phenomenon of conscious experience. The chasm is do daunting that many support 'dualism', the notion that the mind is distinct from the brain and merely interacts with it."

Erich Harth, (Univ. of Syracuse, Dept. of Physics) [CS:TSC:611ff] notes that dualism is "not quite as dead as some would have us believe" (p.619), and then goes on to show that the most common objection to old-style dualism just doesn't wash [p.620]:

Miller

"Physicists, predictably [in a quantum wave probability sense, of course..;>)], are very open to this interpenetration of mind/matter: Compare the free-floating quote of noted physicist Feynman:" "Mind must be a sort of dynamical pattern, not so much founded in a neurobiological substrate as floating above it, independent of it" [cited in CS:DP:24]

Hameroff's model [CS:JCS:108] claims to be both reductionist AND dualist:

"As a model of consciousness, quantum coherence in microtubules is reductionist in that a specific molecular structure is featured as a site for consciousness. It is seemingly dualist in that the quantum realm (which is actually intrinsic to all of nature) is seen to act through microtubules."

Atmanspacher gives his view that the dual-world is just this 'bigger' one-world [JCS:1.2.168-9]:

"One of the hot topics in this respect concerns the question of whether material reality and its non-material counterpart can indeed be considered as independent from each other as the concept of Cartesian dualism assumes. The most precise and best formalized indications for a negative answer to this question can be found in quantum theory."

"Two important concepts that present evidence against any ultimate relevance of the corresponding dualism are the concepts of complexity and meaning. In addition to quantum theory, these concepts reflect tendencies to bridge the Cartesian cut from both realms, that of physics as well as that of cognitive science..."

Grush and Churchland [CS:JCS:2.1.10-29] express amazement at how many 'intellectual materials' seem to have 'strong dualist hankerings' (p.27). They talk about these 'residual dualist hankerings' as being a rather widespread phenomenon.

An interesting possible example of this is in Hodgson' book The Mind Matters. In the review of the book [JCS:2.1.93], Squires makes this comment:

"Often I find in this book that the author is almost saying that within a person there is something that is in its essence not physics, but then he realises that this is dualism, which he feels should be avoided, so he tries to escape. These escapes are unsatisfactory."

Chalmers actually refers to his position as 'naturalistic dualism' and says that it does qualify as a type of dualism, but an innocent dualism [e.g. CS:JCS:2.3.210]

McGinn notes that "recent philosophy has become accustomed to the idea of mental causation" [CS:JCS:2.3.223]




d. Psychology of Religion.

See the Religious Instrict argument where I show that a whole discipline arose, transactional analysis, based upon Abraham Maslow's theoires of mystical experince. Documentation on that page demonstates that phychology no longer approaches religion as suspect, but understands it as healthy and normative for human being, and approches unbelief as suspect. There are also studies presented showing the benfits of religion for metal health.,



3) New laws of Physics.



In the NYT Quote from Chalmers above he proposes coming up with a new law of physics to explain the basic property of nature known as "consciousness." He is not the only one to propose this, as one can see from quotations of physicists in the consciousness argument. When theorists start proposing new laws of physics one can be fairly sure that a paradigm shift is underway. This is even more the case when the new law of physics is proposed to explain something that the old paradigm had reduced practically out of existence. The old reductionist/materialist paradigm reduced consciousness to mere epiphenomenal status and located it as brain function. It is the inadequacy of this understanding which has led some scientists to call for a new law!

CARM sux

those guys are such totally diso;noest idiots it's not even worth it to try to make peace with them. I apolgoized to monron Slick for saying he was stuid (he is) and that hes' a liar(he is) I never apologize to those dishonest idiots again. I shoudl have tired to make peace or go back.Jesus said be reconciled to your brother but did he tell us what to do whent he bother is totally false has no honor?

I was banned agian. what grave insult did I utter?I started winning argumetns. that's the only deal. I attacked no one. they are just as dishonest as you can get.

I apologized and that liar sai "O that's ok" but he didnt' say I'm not a false teacher.so It' ok if I run interfearence for them with the atheists, but just dont' take me seriously as a Chrisitain.

they are not Christians. They are flase brothers.


I bad slick from this Blog and all neiophite suck ups.

Method: Science in the hands of Skeptics and Beleivers

I find the following state of affairs to be a good description of the current state of dialectic between atheists and theists on the boards:

(1) Theists have a vast array of knowledge and argumentation built up over 2000 years, which basically amounts to a ton evidence for the existence of God. It's not absolute proof, because true, sure enough, actual absolute proof is just damn hard to come by on anything--even most scientific things; which is why they invented inductive reasoning. Science accepts correlation's as signs of caudal relationships, it doesn't ever actually observe causality at work. But that kind of indicative relationship is not good for atheists when a God argument is involved. Then it must be absolute demonstration and direct observation.

(2) This double standard always works in favor of the atheist and never in favor of the theist. I suspect that's because Theists are trying to persuade atheists that a certain state of affairs is the case, and at the same time we are apt to be less critical of our own reasons for believing that. Atheists make a habit of denial and pride themselves on it.

Why is it a double standard? Because when it works to establish a unified system of naturalistic observation the atheist is only too happy to appeal to "we never see" "we always see" and "there is a strong correlation." We never see a man raised from the dead. We never see a severed limb restored. The correlation's between naturalistic cause and effect are rock solid and always work, so science gives us truth, and religion doesn't. But when those same kinds of correlation's are used to support a God argument, they are just no darn good. to wit: we never see anything pop out of absolute noting, we never even see absolute nothing, even QM particles seem to emerge from prior conditions such as Vacuum flux, so they are not really proof of something form nothing. But O tisg tosh, that doesn't prove anything and certainly QM proves that the universe could just pop up out of nothing!

(3) "laws of physics" are not real laws, they are only descriptions, aggregates of our observations. So they can't be used to argue for God in any way. But, when it comes to miraculous claims, the observations of such must always be discounted because they violate our standard norm for observation, and we must always assume they are wrong no matter how well documented or how inexplicable. We must always assume that only naturalistic events can happen, even though the whole concept of a naturalism can only be nothing more than an aggregate of our observations about the world; and surely they are anything but exhaustive. Thus one wood think that since our observations are not enough to establish immutable laws of the universe, they would not be enough to establish a metaphysics which says that only material realms exist and only materially caused events can happen! But guess again...!

(4) The Theistic panoply of argumentation is a going concern. Quentin Smith, the top atheist philosopher says that 80% of philosophers today are theists. But when one uses philosophy in a God argument, it's just some left over junk from the middle ages; even though my God arguments are based upon S 5 modal logic which didn't exist even before the 1960s and most of the major God arguers are still living.

(5) They pooh pooh philosophy because it doesn't' produce objective concrete results. But they can't produce any scientific evidence to answer the most basic philosophical questions, and the more adept atheists will admit that it isn't the job of science to answer those questions anyway. Scientific evidence cannot give us answers on the most basic philosophical questions, rather than seeing this as a failing in science (or better yet, evidence of differing magister) they rather just chalice it up to the failing of the question! The question is no good because our methods dot' answer it!

(6) What it appears to me is the case is this; some methods are better tailed for philosophy. Those methods are more likely to yield a God argument and even a rational warrant for belief, because God is a philosophical question and not a scientific one. God is a matter of faint, after all, and in matters of faith a rational warrant is the best one should even hope for. But that's not good enough for atheists, they disparage the whole idea of a philosophical question (at least the scientistic ones do--that's not all of them, but some) yet they want an open ended universe with no hard and fast truth and no hard and fast morality!

(7)So it seems that if one accepts certain methods one can prove God within the nature of that language game. now of course one can reject those language games and choose others that are not quite as cozy with the divine and that's OK too. Niether approach is indicative of one's intelligence or one's morality. But, it does mean that since it may be just as rational given the choice of axioms and methodologies, then what that taps out to is belief in God is rationally warrented--it may not be only rational conclusion but it is one ratinal conclusion Now i know all these guys like Barron and HRG will say "hey I'm fine with that." But then when push comes to shove they will be back again insisting that the lack of absolute proof leaves the method that yields God arguments in doubt, rather than the other way around. I don't see why either should be privileged. Why can't we just say that one method is better suited for one kind of question, the other for the other?

and if one of them says 'why should I ask those questions?' I say 'why shouldn't we leave the choice of questions to the questioner?

Sermon for the day: Psalm 104, the Process Psalm

Garden of the gods



I've been off line for weeks due to the move to a more long term apartment. hopefully we will be more settaled for a bit and I can get back to posting. This is just a token in promise of more subtantial article soon.



The reason a lot of people think a God argument should spell out which reilgion is true is because they think God is a big guy in the sky. They think an argument should prove "which God" as well as that there is a God. This is becasue they don't understand the necessity of God as being itself. If one understood thatl God is eteranl necessary being they would see that only one God is possible and any idea or concept of God that includes necessity and transcendence is a sign marker pointing toward the divine. In fact contingent gods in a sense piont to this as well.


The following Psalm, if read literally demonstrates the way they understand God in anthropomorphic terms. The Psalm could also be understood in such a way as to give us a more expansive understanding of God.


Psa 104

104:1 Bless the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty.


Psa 104:2 Who coverest [thyself] with light as [with] a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:


Psa 104:3 Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind:


Psa 104:4 Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire:


Psa 104:5 [Who] laid the foundations of the earth, [that] it should not be removed for ever.


Psa 104:6 Thou coveredst it with the deep as [with] a garment: the waters stood above the mountains.


Psa 104:7 At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away.


Psa 104:8 They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them.


Psa 104:9 Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.


Psa 104:10 He sendeth the springs into the valleys, [which] run among the hills.


Psa 104:11 They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench their thirst.


Psa 104:12 By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, [which] sing among the branches.


Psa 104:13 He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works.


Psa 104:14 He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;


Psa 104:15 And wine [that] maketh glad the heart of man, [and] oil to make [his] face to shine, and bread [which] strengtheneth man's heart.


Psa 104:16 The trees of the LORD are full [of sap]; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted;


Psa 104:17 Where the birds make their nests: [as for] the stork, the fir trees [are] her house.


Psa 104:18 The high hills [are] a refuge for the wild goats; [and] the rocks for the conies.


Psa 104:19 He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.


Psa 104:20 Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep [forth].


Psa 104:21 The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God.


Psa 104:22 The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens.


Psa 104:23 Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.


Psa 104:24 O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.


Psa 104:25 [So is] this great and wide sea, wherein [are] things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.


Psa 104:26 There go the ships: [there is] that leviathan, [whom] thou hast made to play therein.


Psa 104:27 These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give [them] their meat in due season.


Psa 104:28 [That] thou givest them they gather: thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good.


Psa 104:29 Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.


Psa 104:30 Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.


Psa 104:31 The glory of the LORD shall endure for ever: the LORD shall rejoice in his works.


Psa 104:32 He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke.


Psa 104:33 I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.


Psa 104:34 My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the LORD.


Psa 104:35 Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless thou the LORD, O my soul. Praise ye the LORD.

If you read this litterally you see God looking in on all of the earth and nothing happens until God says "let the grass grow" and it grows. If some day God decides not to make the grass grow, it doesn't. So we get the idea of God wandering about in his "pj's" with a cup of moring coffee saying "I don't feel like growing any grass today." In other words, it's a very human, man-like view of God. But this psalm gives us a much more expansive understanding if we read it for the suggestions brought up by the imagery rather than the literal statements. We see God relating to creation in process.

In other words, an unfolding and evolving universe is a process, God is part of that process, the initator and the sustainer, but not in the shade tree mechanic way that is pictured above. God "causes" the grass to grow, we are told, but God does not have to ride herd daily on the growing of Grass. The grass just grows, its ultimate reison d'etre is God.

This passage is great for process theology because it shows the whole of creation harmoniouisly working according to God's plan, and in harmony with God who experiences its working and while not riding herd on it like a farmer,is at least part of the balance overall.

Psa 104:2 Who coverest [thyself] with light as [with] a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:


Psa 104:3 Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind:

The foundations of reality are alid out by God's rule. This is a very anthropomorphic way to picture it, but what it is really telling us is that God is the basis for all that is, and the foudnation of the evolving universe and the laws that govern it. God is the author of the laws of phsyics. But more than that. God, in his concresent pole, is part of the evolution of the universe, he's here pictured riding the winds and clouds as chiots, but clearly its' he's invovled with and in the workings of nature. He's intimately related in a dynamic way with the unfolding of natural law.




Psa 104:5 [Who] laid the foundations of the earth, [that] it should not be removed for ever.


Psa 104:6 Thou coveredst it with the deep as [with] a garment: the waters stood above the mountains.

Psa 104:7 At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away.


Psa 104:8 They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them.


Psa 104:9 Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.


Psa 104:10 He sendeth the springs into the valleys, [which] run among the hills.


Psa 104:11 They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench their thirst.


Psa 104:12 By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, [which] sing among the branches.

God has laid out the basis of laws that run the universe, and is seen here as the ulimate cuasal agents in an automatic process that runs by itself. God is the ultimate cause of all things.

Note on God arguments and Religious Tradition

In the previous post I bloged an old thread from my old message board when it was called "have theology, will argue" (now Doxa Forums).

The major issue began as the lack of specificity in putative state of affairs (PSA) as "something vs nothing." I argue that there must be a PSA such that necessary being always existed (in some form) as opposed to total absolute nothingness, but I refuse to ever specify what that "Something" is. That's because (1) it would be foolish to even try (2)I should have to because that's not the point.

The point is not to spell out which God is real or which religous tradition to join. I think that's what a lot of skeptics, and perhaps believers too, expect form a God argument. But they shouldn't, because that's not the point. The religious traditions are dealt with in another way, God's arguments are merely to show the possibility of the logical warrant for belief in some sort of God.

But there is a better reason not to spell out the initial conditions, the PSA; we are dealing with the ultimate abstract realities of being and nothingness. We are dealing with being at a level prior to any formation of understanding that biological organisms might formulate on a dust mote orbiting a star. That is all that need be spelled out for the conditions of the argument.

People want more, they want to have a clear cut reference point for either rejecting or accepting the Bible and Christianity. But part of the point is that they understand God as a big guy on a throne with a beard who sits there and says "let the grass grow" and it grows. So

Religious traditions are chosen because they mediate transformative power. One choosing a tradition becasue it speaks to her with clearity and comfortably aborbs and puts at rest fears about the ultimate concerns. That is the function of a religious community, and a tradition is merely the community in action. This is the basis of deciding which reigion has the best handel on understanding God, not the basis of a God argument itself.

Reity: An Argument for Existence of God.

this was a thread on my old message boards "Have Theology, Will Argue" (from 2004). I was reading through and found it interesting.I thought to re do it into an essay, but I think it's better with the original comments and responses to them left in.

Reity = the ultimate necessary state of affairs, ultimate reality).

Deicision Paradigm:


Modus Ponens

If p than q,
P, therefore, p.


If Riety, then God.
Riety, therefore, God.


There must be some ultimate state of affiars, and since nothingness as a Putative State of Affairs (PSA) is impossilbe, than the there must be a state of reity such that "something" is the ultimate state of affiars.Since the most basic defintion of God is "the ground of understanding" (Flew)whatever is at the top of the metaphycial hierarchy, than whatever is the ultimate state of affiars is by deftion in a position to function as God in that methaphysical ecnonomy in which it exists.

.

Argument:


1) God is Synonimous with the State of Riety.


The Concept of God functions as Riety in any metaphysical system: God is the Transendental Signifer, the Mark that gives meaning to all other marks,the basic state of affairs that conditions all other affairs, ultimate reality

2) Nothingness as a putative state of affairs is impossible.


a)Marked by its own contradiction (Reity is something so it can't be total nothingness).



b)Nothingness would be a timless state, thus no change, no cause, no becoming.



c) Contradicts everything in our experience and no reason to think it would be.



3) Some Eternal state of Affiars has to have always been.



a) If nothingness as PSA is impossible, than some state eternal state of affairs had to always exist.(law of excluded middle).



b) Being cannot, therefore, be merely possible but must be ontologically necessary.



4) Since The concept of God and the reality of Riety fit the same defitions we should asssume they share the same identity.


5) Therefore, God is the state of Riety, and must therefore exist.

Asiety:


(Latin: a, from; se, self)

The property by which a being exists of and from self, a property belonging to God alone, who exists without other cause than Himself, who is independent and self-sufficient; regarded by many Fathers and theologians as the best way of expressing the very essence of God.






New Catholic Dictionary - Catholic Encyclopedia; Pohle.Preuss, God: His Knowability, Essence, and Attributes, Saint Louis, 1921 (ed.)


www.ovrlnd.com/Apologetic...OfGod.html

from

From the Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (ISBN 0-8010-2151-0)


Aseity (Self-Existence). Most classical theists see God's Aseity or Pure Existence as a key attribute. The early church fathers, as well as Augustine (354-430), Anselm (1033-1109), and Aquinas, continually cite the Bible in support of this position. In defending God's self-existence (aseity) classical theists such as Aquinas are fond of citing Exodus 3:14 where God identifies Himself to Moses as "I Am that I Am." This they understand to refer to God as Pure Being or Existence.




Now of course one might ask:What do you mean "ultimate state of affairs", and where have you established it "must be"?

The skeptic might charge that God is a loaded term: If the definition of "God" is "whatever is the ultimate state of affairs", then perhaps we are not even arguing for that which we believe "God" to be.
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the argument doesn't depend upon any particular PSA (putative state of affiars), other than the fact that it can't be nothingness. It works just as well if a singularity or no bounded condition. The problem, therefore, works itself out to be that we haven't really said anything. God is just "whatever there is." That would just produce a fairly tautologial statment. Whatever is the case is the case. Why say that? You can't disagree with it, but that's what I'm saying. The first state of the uinverse whatever that is. But let's be clear about one thing. I am not saying that the state of affairs would be God. I am saying only that such a state of something rather than nothing is indicative of God.

Nevertheless, the fact reamains that we can only discuss whether this is a valid argument if there is some intelligible conclusion that we are arguing for. To have an argument, one needs to have sentences which express propositions. If there is just a meaningless jumble of words, then there is no argument to address and no conclusion who truth can actually be debated. But there is a difference in providing a meaningful conclusion and having to spell out matters which are beyond the basic scope of the arugment. Many sketpics have compalined about not understanding my rguments without really having a valid objection to them other than their own lack of knolwedge. such is the case with the transcendental signifier argument.

The terms "Transendental Signifer," "the Mark that gives meaning to all other marks," "the basic state of affairs that conditions all other affairs" and "ultimate reality" all mean absolutely nothing to me. How about others here? Do you have any notion of what any of those terms might possibly mean?

These terms mean something to Derrida, and Rorty, and Heidegger, and Husseral and half the academic world, so you are just going to have to come up to speed.
MetacrockHave Theology, Will Argue.




I know what it means. I studied Derrida tought for four years at Doctoral level.

see my TS argument.
MetacrockHave Theology, Will Argue.

SRB7
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SRB
The terms "Transendental Signifer," "the Mark that gives meaning to all other marks," "the basic state of affairs that conditions all other affairs" and "ultimate reality" all mean absolutely nothing to me....What do you think those terms might mean?

Meta
I know what it means. I studied Derrida tought for four years at Doctoral level.

see my TS argument.
[/quote]
Can you give a definition of any of those terms here?

SRB

Metacrock
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which terms?

But really now, about the TS what is hard to understand about the top of a hierarchy? you can understand the concept of hierarchy right? So you can understand the concept that a hierarchy has a first principle right? So what's hard to understand about the idea that any first principle which unites a metaphysical hierarchy explaining the meaning of the cosmos is a Transcendental signifier? What is hard about that? The Uber Mench,the world soul, the zeit geuist, God, the dialectic, the Atmon, those are all exampels. What's hard about that?

MetacrockHave Theology, Will Argue.

Edited by: Metacrock at: 4/10/04 3:14 am

SRB7
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SRB
The terms "Transendental Signifer," "the Mark that gives meaning to all other marks," "the basic state of affairs that conditions all other affairs" and "ultimate reality" all mean absolutely nothing to me....What do you think those terms might mean?

Meta
which terms?
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The terms I would like defined are: "Transendental Signifer," "the Mark that gives meaning to all other marks," "the basic state of affairs that conditions all other affairs" and "ultimate reality." If they mean different things, then I would like a definition for each.



Quote:
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Meta
But really now, about the TS what is hard to understand about the top of a hierarchy? you can understand the concept of hierarchy right? So you can understand the concept that a hierarchy has a first principle right?
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Yes and yes.


Quote:
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So what's hard to understand about the idea that any first principle which unites a metaphysical hierarchy explaining the meaning of the cosmos is a Transcendental signifier?

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I have no notion of what it might mean to be a "first principle which unites a metaphysical hierarchy explaining the meaning of the cosmos." A family tree is a hierarchy where the next level up consists of the parents of the level below. What does a level consist of in the hierarchy you are trying to describe, and how does one level relate to the level above (or below) it? Until you say, nobody can have any idea what you are talking about. The "first principle" in a heirarchical family tree would presumably be the chronologically earliest member of the family for which records exist. What would be the "first principle" in the case of the heirarchy you are trying to describe? By "the cosmos" do you mean "the observable universe" or do you mean "absolutely everything that exists," or something else still?

SRB

Edited by: SRB7 at: 4/11/04 3:05 am

Metacrock
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SRB
The terms "Transendental Signifer," "the Mark that gives meaning to all other marks," "the basic state of affairs that conditions all other affairs" and "ultimate reality" all mean absolutely nothing to me....What do you think those terms might mean?

Meta
which terms?
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The terms I would like defined are: "Transendental Signifer," "the Mark that gives meaning to all other marks," "the basic state of affairs that conditions all other affairs" and "ultimate reality." If they mean different things, then I would like a definition for each.


Mark that gives meaning to all other marks would be reason? Man, you want me to give you a university education here and now? I think it's clear alredy what I'm talking about. the first principel, the basic thing at the top of any metaphysial hierarachy.

like God.



Quote:
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Meta
But really now, about the TS what is hard to understand about the top of a hierarchy? you can understand the concept of hierarchy right? So you can understand the concept that a hierarchy has a first principle right?
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Yes and yes.


Quote:
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So what's hard to understand about the idea that any first principle which unites a metaphysical hierarchy explaining the meaning of the cosmos is a Transcendental signifier?

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I have no notion of what it might mean to be a "first principle which unites a metaphysical hierarchy explaining the meaning of the cosmos." A family tree is a hierarchy where the next level up consists of the parents of the level below. What does a level consist of in the hierarchy you are trying to describe, and how does one level relate to the level above (or below) it? Until you say, nobody can have any idea what you are talking about. The "first principle" in a heirarchical family tree would presumably be the chronologically earliest member of the family for which records exist. What would be the "first principle" in the case of the heirarchy you are trying to describe? By "the cosmos" do you mean "the observable universe" or do you mean "absolutely everything that exists," or something else still?

then I guess the 1st principelf the cosmos would be the thing that makes it all right? Necessary Being. Being itself.
MetacrockHave Theology, Will Argue.

SRB7
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SRB
The terms I would like defined are: "Transendental Signifer," "the Mark that gives meaning to all other marks," "the basic state of affairs that conditions all other affairs" and "ultimate reality." If they mean different things, then I would like a definition for each.

Meta
Mark that gives meaning to all other marks would be reason? Man, you want me to give you a university education here and now? I think it's clear alredy what I'm talking about. the first principel, the basic thing at the top of any metaphysial hierarachy.

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I strongly lean towards the view that those four terms are all meaningless gibberish. According to you, are they supposed to each mean the same thing, or are they supposed to mean different things?


Quote:
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Meta
So what's hard to understand about the idea that any first principle which unites a metaphysical hierarchy explaining the meaning of the cosmos is a Transcendental signifier?

SRB
I have no notion of what it might mean to be a "first principle which unites a metaphysical hierarchy explaining the meaning of the cosmos." A family tree is a hierarchy where the next level up consists of the parents of the level below. What does a level consist of in the hierarchy you are trying to describe, and how does one level relate to the level above (or below) it? Until you say, nobody can have any idea what you are talking about. The "first principle" in a hierarchical family tree would presumably be the chronologically earliest member of the family for which records exist. What would be the "first principle" in the case of the hierarchy you are trying to describe? By "the cosmos" do you mean "the observable universe" or do you mean "absolutely everything that exists," or something else still?

Meta
then I guess the 1st principelf the cosmos would be the thing that makes it all right? Necessary Being. Being itself.

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How does one level on the unspecified hierarchy that you keep talking about relate to the level above it? Does everything that exists appear somewhere in your hierarchy? If so, roughly where do hedgehogs appear, where do chickens appear and where does the number three appear? In what order do hedgehogs, chickens and the number three get ranked on your hierarchy?

What do you mean when you say, above, "makes it all right"?

As for the term "necessary being," I wouldn't want to touch it with a barge pole. I am a noncognitivist with regard talk of "necessary being."

SRB

Edited by: SRB7 at: 4/11/04 2:54 pm

Metacrock
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SRB

Quote:
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The terms I would like defined are: "Transendental Signifer," "the Mark that gives meaning to all other marks," "the basic state of affairs that conditions all other affairs" and "ultimate reality." If they mean different things, then I would like a definition for each.

Meta
Mark that gives meaning to all other marks would be reason? Man, you want me to give you a university education here and now? I think it's clear alredy what I'm talking about. the first principel, the basic thing at the top of any metaphysial hierarachy.
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SRB: I strongly lean towards the view that those four terms are all meaningless gibberish. According to you, are they supposed to each mean the same thing, or are they supposed to mean different things?[/quote]



[fon color=lightskyblue]you are alone in that opinon. Those are all excepted terms. The whole Derrridan project of the 80s and 90s was based upon using the term Tanscendental sgnifier. I think that is a sig of ingorance, not to know the major terms and not to be able to accept them as valid terms.[/font]







Quote:
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Meta
So what's hard to understand about the idea that any first principle which unites a metaphysical hierarchy explaining the meaning of the cosmos is a Transcendental signifier?

SRB
I have no notion of what it might mean to be a "first principle which unites a metaphysical hierarchy explaining the meaning of the cosmos." A family tree is a hierarchy where the next level up consists of the parents of the level below. What does a level consist of in the hierarchy you are trying to describe, and how does one level relate to the level above (or below) it? Until you say, nobody can have any idea what you are talking about. The "first principle" in a hierarchical family tree would presumably be the chronologically earliest member of the family for which records exist. What would be the "first principle" in the case of the hierarchy you are trying to describe? By "the cosmos" do you mean "the observable universe" or do you mean "absolutely everything that exists," or something else still?

Meta
then I guess the 1st principelf the cosmos would be the thing that makes it all right? Necessary Being. Being itself.
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Quote:
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How does one level on the unspecified hierarchy that you keep talking about relate to the level above it? Does everything that exists appear somewhere in your hierarchy? If so, roughly where do hedgehogs appear, where do chickens appear and where does the number three appear? In what order do hedgehogs, chickens and the number three get ranked on your hierarchy?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




EzCode Parsing Error: color=lightskyblue]would you waste your time discussing auto mechanics with some one said thigs like "well I dont' accept 'exhuast pipe' as a valid term. I accept that an inatek manifold might be a car part, but where does an inatek manifold go? Does it go in the trunck so you can take things into the trunk? That's about the level on which you are dealing here.

anyone's metaphyscal hieararchy as to have a frst principle watever that may be.An any suh 1st princpel is a Transcendental signifier. I can tell you where put your hedge hogs. and in[/font]

What do you mean when you say, above, "makes it all right"?

As for the term "necessary being," I wouldn't want to touch it with a barge pole. I am a noncognitivist with regard talk of "necessary being."

SRB


[fon color=lightskyblue]if that' what you want to call it. I have another term for it.[
MetacrockHave Theology, Will Argue.

Bible is literature

I'm really sick of the way skeptics take themselves so seriously to express anger toward God when it's clearly obvious that God isn't the way the straw men have set him up to be. Most of this tendency goes back to taking the Bible literally. The flip side of this is the way some Christians learn to justify teh literal image as though it's really he point of the Bible an never stop to ask themselves, "what is this text really saying to me?"

The fact that most of the OT is narrative is a que for us. We should think "read between lines." It's not magic, it's literature you read it the way you would any other literature. You can understand the author probably has a point to make that is not obvious and the literal surface of the story is not the point, because in a narrative other than a children's story it seldom is. Even in children's stories we can sometimes sense that more is going on than just the gingerbread house where the witch eats children. I mean, come on. The step mother tries to kill the kids and you don't think more is going on than the surface of the story?

So take the flood for example. What kind of text is it? We should always ask this first. Its' mythology. How do we know? Because it's just like other texts of the same myth that are much older. So obvioulsy the Hebrew redactors, in using a popular universal story that had been a mainstay of thier world for thousands of years (the origianal Suemrian epic is copied by the Babylonians and datesa bout 2000 years older than Genesis--in the Sumerian myth of Eden the Sumerian Adam is named Adam, but Eve is Adapa. In Sumerian flood story--Gilgamesh--Noah is Upnapishtim).

While the skeptic looks at the flood and says "O gee, God is cruel and evil to kill all those people, he must have afraid to let people have fun" or whatever they might say, we know that'snot the point. We have to look past the sruface plot. It's not about God being angry and killing everyone,that's just a plot device because they used a pagan myth that was already around. That's just part of the story that's a given for them. So let's ask ourselves why would they uset his story rather than make up their own? Because they have a point to make about what the pagan story says. What is says basically is that the gods were capcrecious. They destroyed the world because people were making too much noise.It also says Upnapistem survived the flood so Gilgamesh seeks him out to learn the secret of eternal life. The Hebrews are saying God is not caprious but if he did destroy the world he would do so for moral reasons and for good reasons not because they are making too much noise.

Our modern skeptics who know so little of the ancient world can only compare the story with our value system and since they expect everything to hold their values (modern skeptics are so ethnocentric) they conclude that gods not good because he doesn't hold their values. They just don't see that actually Genesis is closer to expressing the value with which they agree than are the original myths from which barrows. Then the point about eternal life, the point in Genesis is that God will keep us safe throuig the danger and give us new life if we hold fast in faith. Eternal life comes from faith in God, not form fate or luck.

These are the kinds of ponits being made by the story, not "you better shape up or God will kill you." The cruelty of God in tho flood story is just handed down from a previous version and has nothing to do with thei real encounter of th divine that Christians expernce. Of course God would never really kill all the people of the world in that way.

But here's antoher point, we might be killing ourselves and since we aren't willing ot lsiten to God he can't warn us.

Visit my other Blog: Fundy Watch

I have put up a blog to deal exclusively with fundamentalism, so I can use this one for pure theology. Right now it has the same post as here, Dick Army Lashes out at Dobson. But it will soon contain more; I will put new material and fundy material from this blog as well.


Fundy Watch

Dick Army takes down Dobson

These are not my words, this is the actual article





September 28, 2006


Armey Lashes Out Against Dobson, Values Voters Conservative Christians take it on the chin from an unexpected source. Former Texas Congressman Dick Armey, once a stalwart ally in the culture wars, appears to be turning his back on Christian conservatives and their leaders. The former majority leader of the House of Representatives reportedly told Ryan Sager, author of a new book on the Republican Party, that values voters and their leaders — especially Focus on the Family Action Chairman Dr. James Dobson — are "nasty bullies." In the interview, Armey responded pointedly when Sager asked why he thought Christian conservatives seemed more powerful now than in the 1990s. "To a large extent, because Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies," Armey said. "I pray devoutly every day, but being a Christian is no excuse for being stupid. There's a high demagoguery coefficient to issues like prayer in schools. Demagoguery doesn't work unless it's dumb . . . These issues are easy for the intellectually lazy and can appeal to a large demographic."



Focus on the Family Action President Jim Daly said it's shocking the former congressman would attack millions of values voters who helped Armey and other social conservatives gain control of Congress.

"Values voters expect to hear such cruel insults from the Left," he said, "but not from a champion of family values, as Mr. Armey once claimed to be."


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__._,_.___

Something is Not Nothing, but Nothing is Something, or Something Like That.

This is a comment from anonymous (that most prolific of all posters) on a blogpiece concerning my God Argument, "Argument From Cosmological Necessity.".The original argument turns on the idea that something must always have existed.

anon: While I will grant nothingness as a PSA seems to me to be an impossibility, since we would not be able to get out of the state of entropy that nothingness implies.

That's exacctly the point of the argument! That means that nothing as a "Putative state of affairs" (PSA) is impossible, thus we did not start with nothing, we had to start with some eternally existing "something."

However, to say that the spark, or counterpoint, or whatever it is that keeps the universe "real" and happening is "God" is a stretch. But what if it is God, as in a creator. To think that anything as massive as a counterbalance to the entirety of our known universal reality would even consider us important is ridiculous.

That's because you are identifying God with the big guy in the sky sort of thinking. You see the divine as an old man up in the clouds with the particular personality of some religious document. You need to learn to understand those images as metaphors.

Would something with that much force and power then create something as infintesimal as a human son to teach us a lesson? I hardly think so. Would that force even bother to notice Man in the great expanse of the universe that God created?

What do we have to base that judgement upon? Even that thought is anthropomorphic, and anthropocentric. you have nothing to base it on. You have no concept of what it would mean for God to do that much less how it seems to God or if God doesn't do such things all the time. After all, how can we measure economies of scale with infinity. The big guy in the sky is big, and everything he does is big, but if we are talking about infinity there is "big" or "small." the micro can be just as infinite as the macro.

There is so much of man in the Judeo-Christian manifestation of God that just has to be wrong. Kingdom's. God the Father. Lord.

Christianity is about us. The fundies are upset because they think God would hand down a "perfect" revelation from on high. But he's handing it to a flawed humanity. He hands it down through humans because it is for humans. So it has to be encoded and filtered through our cultural constructs because we have to understand it. The best the we can do is to understand it analogically. We can only know that our connections are metaphors but we can have the direct connection in mystical experience which is beyond words.

These are all human concepts. If God is the Father, then who is our Mother? Men can fertilize, but he cannot create.

"father" is obviously metaphor. Who is the revleation for? If it is for us shouldn't we understand it? Why would God communicate with us in ways totally incomprohensible?

I am not saying there isn't something, but I highly doubt it's anything like the men who wrote the Old Testament envision.

I think the Christian understanding has warped our persective about how the Jews actually saw God. They knew God was more than just a big guy on a throne. See the visions of Iasiaha about the throne Cheriot, these are metahors not litteral statements about how God looks! They are like the sumbols in the Book of Revelation. They are like images in modern art, they only suggest things.

Man has been wrong about the nature of his God through every epoch. We "know" that there is no Zeus on Olympus. No Odin in Valhalla. No Jupiter. No Osis. Yet it's ok to believe in a J-C God, Allah or Vishnu? We call theirs a "mythology" and ours are "beliefs"? "Ancient" man beleived just as ferverantly in the Gods as those of the faith do now.

You are literalizing the metahors. you are hung up on the litteral.

You can't have it both ways

O I already do!

Matt slick is a faith destoryer

It serves me right for going back. and I expected it. it still makes me angry taht taht childish petty minded little hick you can't has no brains and can't think can't defend himself intellectually so he has to ban everyone who disagrees with him.

I was being very good.I did not attack anyone I attack no one no one non one. I complitmented. I complemented their side. they banned me and said it wa for attacking people. that's because they are fools and they cant' ratinoally deal with an opponent.

I cliam them anathema. they are false teachers of a false gospel and I declair them anathema.

answer to Matt Slick

since I was gone from CARM (banned) Matt bad a big show down and banned all the bad people and put everything right. He put up this "sticky" to answer it all and here's my response:

Quote:Matt SlickThere has been a great deal of friction here on the discussion board about the issue of inerrancy. Unfortunately, the "he said she said" argument-counter-argument has cascaded into an avalanche of problems, accusations, defense, etc.. I cannot wade through all of the nuances of each person's feelings, perceived injury, redefinitions, modifications of positions, etc. in order to properly put the matter to rest.

that is no excuse for reducing the whole issue to one of "bible good" or "bible bad." the whole thing from start to finnish revovles around the issue that there are better ways to understand inspriation than the verbal plenary model. You don't even bother to ask what they are. you just assume I am saying "bible bad." "bad man say bible bad, bonk bonk on head." there is no excuse for not even bothering to understand the basis of the argument and just lunching off against against a straw man argument that hasn't even been advanced.

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People are now coming to me with complaints about various related issues and want me to take their side, to see their reasons, to address wrongs against them, etc. I've had enough. This is adding a great deal of stress in my life and I don't need it, especially lately. Therefore, I want to make it known what CARM stands for regarding this matter of inerrancy.

instead of taking such a knee jerk reaction and just saying 'It's too complecited for me to sort out so all the non inerrency people are wrong and banned." Why don't you just start witht he basics, if inerrency peopl are slandering non inerrency people, they are viiolating rules, why not eforce the rules against them too? that would have stopped a lot of it.

but to lash out with these bold prnoucements about who is a chirsian and who is a false teacher when you don't even take the time to understand the issues is just the hieght of irresponsibility. Its also just stabbing me in the back. I've been posting here ten years, I think you at least owe me a fair hearing. I'm not asking for anything that isn't just a basic right of any accussed person.

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CARM's position: God inspired his prophets and apostles to write perfect Scripture that contained absolutely no error whatsoever in any way. CARM will defend this position and oppose those who attack God's word.
Unfortunately there are people who claim that God either failed, but was not able to, or chose to not ensure that his original writings didn't have any mistakes in them. I wholeheartedly denounce this error. I'm not interested in wading through a morass of ambiguous accusations and inane defenses of various positions stating that the Bible contains only myth, or is part myth, or partly inspired, mostly inspired, etc.

that's all fine and good. It's a totally indefensable position and its' stick inside the box with super gule. it's not going anywhere and it will never lead any sort of thinking sekptic to the Lord. But if it makes you feel better, fine. I am not willing to say you are not a christian because you dont' agree with me. that seems to be your once answer to any disagreement you fall into.

I know you will probably zap this as soon as it is put up. and I know you will ban me for saying it. but I'm saying it, you are irresponsible and childish and you are not fair and you are not willing to meet the menimal requirements for the sor to intellectual apologistecs to which aspire. you think it's just a matter of rattling off a bunck of quotes from C.S. Lewish Moreland so forth that makes you smart and you feel good arout it all and you never have to think about it. Thinking about is the basis of what you must do to be an apologetist and to think about it you must understand what the other guy is saying.

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As far as I'm concerned Satan is using this argument and many people associated with it, to accomplish division in the body of Christ, to try and damage this Ministry, to distract people from focusing their energies on the real enemy outside the church (atheists, cults, false religions, etc), and much more. Furthermore, undoubtedly the unbelievers who see the internal bickering, or mocking the name of Christ because of the actions of those claim to follow him.

you are making division because you are not willing to listen you allow us to be slandareda and you help do the salandering beause you aren't willing to do the actual work of lisgening and thinking and debating.

I'm sorry your life is hard, this is just part of the deal. this is what you sign on for when you want to be in apologetics.

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Having said that, in my opinion, those who cast doubt upon God's Word are dangerous people. They have helped to damage the faith of new believers, provided a venue of ridicule by unbelievers, and helped bring division in the body of Christ.

More slader and you have no right to say it and no basisfor saying it. you have no facts and no evidence to back you up. I have tons of email form people all the time who tell me I saved their faith. I hear from people every day who say this. you have no idea. you are just making it up because it seems to you this is what should be the case, therefore, it is the case. But it is not. By the time I get through exapliaing what my position means they believe Jesus ten times over.

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These are serious problems. Apparently they don't care. Apparently they want to let us know that we are ignorant, that we are uneducated, and that we are the idolaters. I find it interesting that the ones who defend the word of God and his originals in his perfection, are attacked and maligned

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Apparenlty it doesn't matter to you that your position is without any historical precident at all, and it obviously doesn't matter to you that you slander views help by esteemed christians such as Lewish and Luther and Cardnidal Dulles and others. That "they are insulting my lack of education because they are so arrogant" card is just the excuse for nothign having command of the facts.

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Part of me wants to put a stop to this issue and part of me doesn't want to. Truth must be defended. But, if I silence the topic, then people will claim I can't handle it or made a bad choice, etc. Everybody is ready to complain and whine and demand that their side be seen and vindicated. Instead of turning the other cheek, they reach out and strike.

I'm sure part of you wants to put a stop to it. I'm sure if you could swing it you would live in a world where no one had the right to their on views. But you can't change the fact that skeptics see the problems you gloss over. And you can never win them over with dishonesty and pretending that the problems aren't there and then patting yourself on the back for being a bold man of God because you reuse to listen; you think being narrowmineded makes you brave.

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Like I said, it seems that no matter what I do I always get attacked, and if I don't respond, I'm attacked for not responding. One thing is for sure, my position as head of this Ministry is quite difficult and sometimes it can be agitating and very stressful.

why don't you try dealing honestly with other people's points of view.

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So, I believe that the position that innerancy was never the church's position is absolutely ludicrous.

show me the creed! show me the council! quote the passage from the coincil? do you not how the chruch worked historically? they did things by coucnils rememeber? show me what council adopted something called "inerrency?"

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I believe that the position that innerancy amounts to idolatry, is flat out stupid. Yes, stupid.

I never said inerrency is idolotry, I said putting it on a level where it superceeds personal relationship with Jesus and teatin it as the basis of the whole gospel is idolotry.

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I believe that the position that inerrancy takes the focus off of the message and onto written words, is hobwash.

what's going on right now? how did all this start? The inerrency guys wouldn't let me deal with skeptics in the way I have come to see is most effective befcause they could not get aruond the inerrency thing.

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I believe that errantists who hold to orthodox Christian theology, do so inconsistently since they hold to truth while believe in the original basis for the truth was errant to begin with.

that's the kind of distortion that comes form not listening. NO one has said that the source fo thruth is inerrency. NO church, no council no creed, no one ever said it. It is only if you assume the model of verbal pleanry inspriation that mistakes and inacruacies mean a mistaken source of inspriation. If you undersatnd inspriation as filtered through human undersanding, which obviosuly it is since it is writen to us, then inaccruacies don't mean anything in terms of the nature of the source. In other words, God wasn't trying to write a memo form the office. the bible is something else it is not a rule book, a memo, an owners manuel it is not a set of ruels to live buy. It's a work of literature.

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I know one thing for sure. The devil has certainly used this argument and people to bring many of us to fatigue and to cause division within the body of Christ. Well done attackers of God's word.

Of cousre you see noly your side. They salndered me, they lied about me, that's ok. waving the flag of inerrency is just a carte blanch to say anything. they even said the physical bible is God, that's ok, any blasphemy is fine as long as one wave the flag of inerrency. But it's not ideolotry, it's just repalced Chrsit as the object of worship.


the major defining statment on inerrency, the defining momement when then the idea became a doctrine, was the Chicago statment in the 19th century. That statment ends in the following:

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We offer this Statement in a spirit, not of contention, but of humility and love, which we purpose by God's grace to maintain in any future dialogue arising out of what we have said. We gladly acknowledge that many who deny the inerrancy of Scripture do not display the consequences of this denial in the rest of their belief and behavior, and we are conscious that we who confess this doctrine often deny it in life by failing to bring our thoughts and deeds, our traditions and habits, into true subjection to the divine Word.

We invite response to this statement from any who see reason to amend its affirmations about Scripture by the light of Scripture itself, under whose infallible authority we stand as we speak. We claim no personal infallibility for the witness we bear, and for any help which enables us to strengthen this testimony to God's Word we shall be grateful.

* The Exposition is not printed here but can be obtained by writing us at the Oakland office: ICBI / P.O. Box 13261 / Oakland, CA 94661 / (415)-339-1064.


they have said two things here that are crucial:

(1) not buying into inerrnecy doesnt' mean you aren't a true Chrisitian

(2) living the Gospel is more important than accepting any particualr doctrine about how the Bible is inspired.


*no creed, no coucil, no doctrine, no preacher, no convention, no bible verse anywhere ever made belief in inerrency the test of Christianity.

*It is true there was no doctrine of inerrench until the nineteeth century. Matt can poo poo it but study chruch history you see its true; how do you think Martin Luther was able to question the validity of the book of James?



The issues we were discussing had to do with other methods of undersatnding revolation besides seeing it as verbal plenary inspriation. Verbal Plenary means all the verbs are inspried. But that makes the Bible like a memo from the boss intead of a literary work, which is closer to being what it is.

The bible is complex, it is not just one thing and to have a accurate view we need a complex view. skeptics know there are problems with the Bible. we can best answers these problems by being honsest about them and not trying to pawn off an artificail concept such as "a perfect God makes a perfect bible." that's what Johesph Smith said. That was Smith's big line, his gold tablets were perfect and he knew the regular bible wasnt' perfect, if you perfect in the sense of litteral meaning and mathematical accuracy.

An adequate model of how inspiration works requires a complex view of what inspiration is. none of us said the bible is wrong or its full of lies we never said it's errent."

In theoloy error means theological error. certainly no one is saying that. We are saying there some inacuracies and they are clear on the page, you can only deny them by playing "the emperor has beuatiful new closthes." The empoeror has no closthes and the skpetics know the Bible has some inconsistancies. As long as we try to make all kinds of acruracy out to be the mark of theological perfection we will have problems we can' answer. Only if we understand the message as more important that we escape the problems.

The real issue is understanding it as figurative and as employing litrary devices, because that's where 90% of the problem comes in. MOst of the problems skeptics point out have to do with these things not with truth of the Gospel but with failure to understand the use of litrary devices.

Shaking the Dust at CARM

After ten years of fighting along side fellow Christians against the forces of atheism, unbelief, and Jesus mytherism, I have finally been betrayed by the narrow mindedness and callous stupidity of those who should be my allies. Just last summer Diane S. chief moderator of CARM boards sent me a PM saying "we thank God for you...you are called to do battle with the atheists." Now she issues a papal as though she's the pope warning posters to beware false teachers. It's clear, even though I'm not mentioned, that she means me since I was leaing the forces of reason against narrow minded bibliolotry. Her papal bull says:

There are people on these forums claiming to be Christians, they are supporting and teaching that Bible is a "myth", that it contains errors and you should believe its message but not every word or verse, you should even deny the OT as mythology and not factual events.........they are false teachers that we are taught by our God, would enter the church, with their "itching ears"..They want to erase what they do not want to believe and suggest it is error....... The word inerrancy means without error, the CARM administration and ministry believes as well as the majority of Evangelical Christians, do support and testify that God's word is WITHOUT ERROR in the "original manuscripts," it is "inerrant" to the words written in the "original documents"....Those claiming to be Christian on these forums, that are calling us "Bible idolators" because we believe His word is without error are false teachers.....do not trust what they have posted to you in their attacks on Scripture. The CARM administration will warn our posters, since we have received complaints of the many false teachers now coming to these forums, they are false teachers, you should trust God's word and not such men....

Please be aware it is your cults, false religions, Mormons that make the same arguments about God's word. Please be WARNED......again, they are false teachers. I will respond when I see such false teachings to warn you, do not trust the words of any person that will deny the Word of God and suggest it is a "myth" or in error....

I consider this an utter betrayal and knife in the back. The reference to the Bible as "myth" is a clear reference to me since I'm one of the oly two who spoke of "mythology in the Bible." Of cousre what I meant by that was a far cry from calling the bible a myth. Little distinctions like that don't matter to these guys. You don't have to worry about little things like accruacy and fairness when you control the zap button. Before demonstrating the unfairness of her statment I will set the stage by dscribing what my position turely is and what the general issues were about.

Basically there was a board split 50-50 with most of the major apologists who actually know what they are talking about on my side, the rest (the feeble minded who can't argue and use "bible said it, I believe it, that settles it" kind of logic) taking sides with the literalist biblioloters previously discussed on this blog. This was the group that says the bible literally is Jesus. Of course when Diane denounced that view and proclaimed it "error" the major proponent of it dropped it like a hot potato (that would be "Carico") and began qualifying it in ways she would never do for us before.

The basic issue began with an argument about evolution. Can a "true Christian" accept evolution or must one reject modern science in favor of faith? My position that I had set out. on inspiration is designed to allow one to accept modern science, evolution and the whole modern boat load of scientific goodies without giving up faith or denouncing the bible as "in error." To do this I have to step back from the traditional Verbal Plenary model of inspiration and look at other models that allowed greater room in understanding the kinds of texts that might be presented.


The creation story of Genesis, if taken in the Verbal Plenary since, where God is the boss dictating a memo to a secretary, then it is just understood straight forward and literally most of the time. If that is the case then the Bible has error, because science disproves creationism, the firmament, the flood, and other aspects of Genesis. We should interpret those figuratively, such as day = age, but then we are moving away from the model. If we adopt another model, we might be able to understand the creation account as Hebrew authors turning pagan myth on its head. This is not error because its not an attempt at scientific accuracy. It's an attempt to work within the knowledge categories of that time, without establishing any greater intent to impose those categories upon modern times.

Thus new models of revelation might understand the Bible as diverse, consisting of different kinds of texts. The Genesis text uses muthology to teach theological truth, that is not error, and it's not a lie, it's a sophisticated use of ancient understanding. But that's not good enough for the Bibliolotors. They can't understand the position because they are not smart enough. They have to keep it simple, Bible = good, or Bible bad! Those are the options for the bibliolotry crowd.To be spescific my view is that of dialectical retrival, which was brought out by the totally unorhtodx figure of Carndinal Avery Dulles who is very conservative and was appointed by JPII. These views are brought out in his work (written prior to becoming a Cardinal (Models of Revealation). The idea is that a dialetical relation exists between the author and the source of inspiration. The Bible is a diversity of different kinds of texts, and inspiration sometimes takes the form of the wirters on words, sometimes of dictator word for word from God, sometimes just of the authors own impressions based upon encounter with the ddivine. The common charactoristic is the encoutner; the Bible is the result of divine/human encounter. It is the importation of truth from the divine, but the ony question is in what way this is accomplished, it is not always in the same mannar. While methods of inspairtion very, it is always truth and thus we cannot speak of error in the larger theological sense. There may be inacuracies in the recording of some passages, or in their understanding, but there are no lies, no wrong teachings, no over all "error" in the more serious sense.In addition to the dialectical relation between author and divine, there is a dialetical relationship between the reader and the text.
what that means is the reader doesn't always get the same thing out of the reading. The piont counter point of dialatic can contian uninspried as well as inspired text, but the over all effect is a sublation process, just like with Hegel, where the progress of the dialectic continues to build upward, in this case, to reveal truth in every incounter the reader takes to the text.


Now let's look at the official CARM warning about the evil false teachers:

There are people on these forums claiming to be Christians, they are supporting and teaching that Bible is a "myth",

People claiming to be Christians. So the biliolotry crowd cannot take Paul at his word and see that "another Jesus" is defined by Grace, the cross, the resurrection, it is not defined by one's take on scripture. No passage anywhere in the Bible tells us that Christian identity is dependent upon accepting Verbal Plenary Inspiration as a theological position. Moreover, what did they think I was for 10 years? When they said "we thank God for you... you are called to fight the atheists" they should have said "and to be a false teacher." How could they have been so fooled for ten years? because they don't listen. They can't think.

But to say that I teach that the Bible is a myth is totally wrong and a lie. I never said that, I never said anything of the kind. I said it's only theological baggage from the Reformation that tells us Genesis is a literal scientific account of creation and to understand it as Hebrew writers dealing with pagan myth is a totally orthodox position given that certain other attitudes are in place as well. But of course this is way too complex for them.

that it contains errors and you should believe its message but not every word or verse,

I can't understand why this is would not be a minmally acceptable position. I think most conservatives would agree that it is at least possible to accept such a position and be thought of as a real christian, even if they themeselves think it's a weak position. Where do these guys getting off deicing this is beyond the line of Chritsian belief?

where does the Bible say we must believe every word or verse? This was a major issue in all the harrangs for a month. The bible never says to have a bible. It never auhtorizes itself. It never says "this God's word." The may be logical reason to string together ideas like Paul's use of the term Scripture and Jesus identiifcation with the "the law and prophits" as valid divisions of scirpture. But these are still ideas, conscturcts that make up a big theory of inspriation, they are not divine mandates and each one of them can be taken in different ways. No one has the right to make these things indicative of Christian identity!

you should even deny the OT as mythology and not factual events.........

No one said this. I certainly did not say it and the other person, Matrix who argued for Mythology in parts of scripture (and ironically is an inerrentist) did not say it. I emphaically said the oppossite when I made it very clear that certian protions of scripture (when the phrophets say "thus says the Lord" for example) are actually literal dictation from God word for word!

they are false teachers that we are taught by our God, would enter the church, with their "itching ears".They want to erase what they do not want to believe and suggest it is error.......

no one involved on our side of the debate ever said anything about the bible being in error. I reputated the use of the word error as a means of describing our side, I did so repeatedly. I said specifically that error in the more important sense is theological, not merely factual and that is not in the Bible. Factual matter of accuracy do not count as "error" in a theological sense. That's not good enough. They have to have us believe in the firmament and in God inspiring Paul to forget his coat and the whole nine yards.

The word inerrancy means without error, the CARM administration and ministry believes as well as the majority of Evangelical Christians, do support and testify that God's word is WITHOUT ERROR in the "original manuscripts," it is "inerrant" to the words written in the "original documents"...

Inerrency doesnt' mean wihtout any inacrruacy. Even Karl C.F. Henry allowed minor mistakes in the text. So did Luther. these people have no thoelogical knowledge at all.This has nothing to do with the issues at hand. The original documents are not at issue here. They don't even address the distinction between in accuracy and error.


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Those claiming to be Christian on these forums

,



Of course none of this is mandated in the bible, it's all a matter of interpretation they have to make it a matter of Christian identity. True Christian believes in verbal Plenary inspiration. How is it that Paul did not use that standard and mentions nothing about a position on inspiration in Galations one where he explains the true Gospel? This is obvious proof that these people biblioloters because they have made the bible indicative of all of Christian faith.

that are calling us "Bible idolators" because we believe His word is without error are false teachers....

she has no right to say that, no one has made these people popes, They have authority over no one, except the little kingdom of CARM where they can be as arbitrary and unfair and hyocritical as they wish to be.


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do not trust what they have posted to you in their attacks on Scripture.

In the name Jesus Christ do they have to characterize it as "attacks." Who is attacking? that's the thanks get for 10 years of salving to win people to the Lord and to answer atheists who Matt Slick doesn't have the brains to confront. he couldn't argue his way out of a paper bag. If it wasn't for circular reasoning he would have no reasoning at all. The point was to defend the Bible This was all a defense that would be understood by modern people and that would allow one not to have to throw away one's brains. But the problem is they do not want a modern world friendly form of understanding the Gospel. They only have their little power when they can set up a little kingdom where an embittered minority try to hide form the modern world and live in a fantasy world of 19th century piety.

The CARM administration will warn our posters, since we have received complaints of the many false teachers now coming to these forums, they are false teachers, you should trust God's word and not such men....

Makes it sound as though I just started posting there doesn't it? I was the last one left from the God squad of 98. I have been posting there every day since then. I have argued with atheits almost every day since 98. I was arguing with them the day My father died, as a means of dealing with Greif. But that means nothing to these hypocrites. the thrill making a big prononcement far out weighs any sentimental stuff like friendship, loyalty, or even fairness.

Please be aware it is your cults, false religions, Mormons that make the same arguments about God's word. Please be WARNED......again, they are false teachers. I will respond when I see such false teachings to warn you, do not trust the words of any person that will deny the Word of God and suggest it is a "myth" or in error....

Well I warn my friends Matt Slick and Diane S. are hypocrates. liars. waves without foam, leaders of of the leagion of barinwahsed zombies. I shake the dust the at thenm.

they are preaching another Gospel. their Jesus is the Bible. they make the Bible the issue of salvation and thus risk theirs because they don't heed the very book they pretend to care so much about.


they are conducting a witch hunt.

shake shake sahke that dust.