Testing The Christian Apologists

I probably shouldn’t insert myself in your conversation with jar but I will anyway.I suggest that you might start with the understanding that the entire Bible is written by fallible men, and that in many cases it is written from their imaginations. (There are the historical books as well where the writers have their own biases.) However, I contend that God reaches out and inspires us through our imaginations.For example we have a little guy in our church who is severely autistic and is non-verbal. His mother is a wonderful woman and when I see her holding and loving that little guy I see God in that love. In my imagination I see God loving us in the same way as she loves her autistic son. It is hardly conclusive evidence and I suppose that is where faith comes into it.I believe that the Bible can be read in one sense as a cohesive narrative. As you read through the early chapter I see a progressive understanding of the nature of God from the vengeful God that wants to destroy the enemies of Israel, through the latter prophets such as Isaiah, until the Israel story climaxes in Jesus who perfectly embodied the Father’s nature.It seems to me that to understand the OT we have to do it through the lens of the understanding of God’s nature and its meaning to our live as we see it in Jesus. If we want to understand the meaning of Jesus we need to do it through the OT as the writers of the NT frame much of what they write around the OT.
I suggest that if we try to understand the Scriptures as being inerrant in terms of a 21st century mindset we close ourselves off to hearing what God has to say to us through our imaginations.One easy example, as we have covered many times before, is when we read accounts of Yahweh committing and/or ordering genocide and contrast that with Jesus telling us to love our enemies, which were to His target audience the Romans. Those divergent understandings of God cannot be reconciled in spite of what some will say. When we read the accounts of genocide through the lens of Jesus we can know that God did not command or commit genocide. We can also see that the results, of believing in a violent and vengeful god, were hardly fruitful. We can also see that we have to be very discerning when people tell us what it is that God wants us to do.

People promote that mental processes evaluate whether or not a theory is true.
And mental processes are quite capable of doing such a thing.
God, as in an intelligent creator, was required to make mental processes possible.It is all belief.

But there is evidence all around us. The fact that mental processes exist is evidence. We can perceive beauty, we are capable of love, empathy, joy, sorrow, hate etc. It is all evidence.Is it scientific? No. However we can look at the evidence of all that life is and choose to believe that they have an intelligent root or believe that it has all come about through a series of random processes and chance. None of that is really pertinent. I look at all of those things and see God in it. That is my belief and yours, (if I may be so bold), is that those exist without an intelligent first cause. But you keep answering a different question. You say that those mental processes can carry on without God. The question is whether or not the mental processes exist, (with or without interference), as a result of God or any intelligent first cause for that matter.Again, we both hold to our beliefs. Your belief is that there is no god. That is a forever belief. If no intelligent creator exists now, then he won't exist in the future either. Therefore to hold that as true now makes it belief. If there is sufficient evidence in the future to cause you to change your mind then it is simply that you have changed your beliefs.

I disagree with both of you. (There's a surprise )What I believe that Faith means by faith is faith in a specific Christian doctrine. I contend that we are called to have faith in Jesus' command to love and then to live that faith out.Ringo's idea that it is only what we do that matters I think misses the point as well. I suggest that it is the motivation, or our heart, for the things that we do that matter. If we are doing a good thing that benefits others but at no cost to the self that is fine. However, it is having sufficient faith, regardless of our religious beliefs, to believe that doing something beneficial to others at some personal cost is what we are called as humans to do, and then living by that faith, that is of value to God.Edited by GDR, : It is a little embarrassing to leave a typo in the heading

Not really. They were just doing what they were doing without consideration of whether it was for Jesus or not. Their motivation was simply to do the loving thing not about following Him. Sure, from a practical human POV that is correct, but from a POV of what we are called to by God in the Bible in general, or in Matthew 25 or my signature specifically, is Jesus' message of love. How the application of that love plays out is not always going to be perfect in an imperfect world.

They were simply doing what they were motivated to do without thinking that it had anything to do with Jesus. It isn't really about simply God's POV, but understanding the Christian POV of what God's POV is. What we are talking about here is the individual's relationship with God. Whether a loving act has a positive or negative outcome is an answer to a different question.

Just a thought on this The question is how are we to understand the Bible, particularly as Christians.I know the bible says that the Scriptures are inspired by God. I'd suggest that Beethoven's gift of music was inspired by God, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't have been made better. I'd suggest as well that C S Lewis was inspired by God to write what he did, but that doesn't mean that what he wrote was inerrant or dictated by God.I suggest that we should read the Bible as a library of books written with numerous motivations, but that God can use literature full of human biases and even failings to inform us and to change our hearts.Let's look at what Paul, (assuming he wrote it), says in 2nd Corinthians.

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1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. 3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 4 Such confidence we have through Christ before God. 5 Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. 6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenantnot of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
The Greater Glory of the New Covenant
7 Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was, 8 will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? 9 If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! 10 For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. 11 And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts! 12 Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. 13 We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. 14 But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. 15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

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The message is clear. It isn't about what is written in a book, but about what is written on our hearts. Hopefully the Spirit, (or that still small voice of God), will speak to us through the Scriptures and change our hearts to hearts that love others, even at the expense of the self.The Bible can and has been used to justify almost anything you like when we use it as a rule book. This is why I think it is important that we stand against Biblical inerrancy as it not only disavows what Jesus actually taught but that it actually hinders the work of the God-given vocation that we as humans are called to. That vocation is the thoughtful and loving stewardship of all of God's creation.

It may be splitting hairs but I don't agree with that. I'd say that our behaviour is the symptom of what is actually judged. I believe that judgement is about the heart, or the motivation for our behaviour. I think that there is a huge difference, (even though the behaviour is still the same), between the person who donates a sum of money to a cause and gets public recognition as the person who gives the same sum anonymously. The behaviour looks the same but the motivation can be very different.The same is true of someone of little means who donates a sum to a cause as compared to someone who is wealthy that donates an even greater sum.I think that from a philosophical POV CS Lewis does a great job of making that issue clear in both "The Great Divorce" and "The Last Battle".

Sure if your motivation is self serving even at the expense of others.

Good post jar. It is semantics but I think rather than saying that there were different gods it is more accurate to say that there were different understandings about the nature of God and how that nature was to impact their lives. Throughout the Bible we see a progressive understanding of the nature of God from the punitive and angry understanding in books like Numbers etc, to the more loving suffering servant in Isaiah. The Israel story climaxes in Jesus where we are told things such as that we are to love our enemies instead of annihilating them.

I certainly agree that there is a basic gulf in belief between the two. however, I don't agree that Christians and secular humanist can't have complete agreement on the social construct of our societies.Both secular humanists and Christians can be found across the whole spectrum of political belief. In our own country we have the province that espouses secular humanism, (the BQ leader promoted the ides that the province is secular and gained the most seats), is the province that wants to limit immigration and bans religious symbols. In contrast it is churches across the country that have been most active in sponsoring refugee families both financially and with the help they need to settle here.Edited by GDR, : typo

Hi PhatIMHO it isn't about God's magic working on my behalf. And again IMHO, you do have the God's spirit, His still small voice or that God meme in all of us that does nudge towards having hearts that choose the loving thing as opposed to the selfish thing.The problem with all religions is that they are so often marketed for lack of a better term, as providing a better life in the here and now. I also disagree with Tangle when he says that the point is to give us as individuals a better life in the world to come. If someone believes that being a Christian is about gaining a benefit for the self then I suggest that just maybe they have it backwards.If we use Jesus as a model we can see that He lived a life born as an illegitimate child to a lower class family, lived a life, (from what we know of it), that was largely dependent on others for food and shelter. He was despised by many, and He was tortured and died a slow excruciatingly painful and humiliating death. His early followers ,as I’ll show, often suffered similar fates.There is no reason to believe that by being a Christian we’ll live lives that are easy. I forget where but the Bible even says that the rain falls on the good and the bad.Christianity is not a religion that is based on what is in it for us as individuals. It is about us as individuals serving God’s good creation.
It is a religion founded on the progressive understanding of the nature of God by the ancient Jews and the belief that God resurrected Jesus and with that, we can then have confidence in the life, message of Jesus. There is a line that we sometimes use in church about our faith which is so complex so simple, so clear so mysterious. It is so simple and clear in that it is all about loving others and all of creation. However, when we look at the philosophy and theology of the faith it is complex and mysterious. We can understand that when we look at the variety of views that are presented to us.I suggest that if you want to understand how the Christian life was supposed to be led that it is best to go back to the early church before Constantine legalized it in 313 AD and then became the religion of the Roman Empire in 380AD. That of course screwed the up whole Christian message as Christianity then became a road to political power,a nd also allowed in a lot of Greek mythology.I quoted this in another thread but here it is again from a book by Alan Kreider about the first 300 years of Christianity.

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Candidates for baptism came from differing backgrounds — Jewish and pagan, Greek and Roman. They also were of both sexes and a range of social classes. Most were poor and some were slaves, but a few were comfortably well-off. Some of the candidates were illiterate. Somehow the church’s teaching was meant to reach all of these, for all were important in the Christian church. The teachers conveyed to the candidates that, although they valued education, refined learning was not the point; the instruction was not designed to produce sophisticated thought but character and virtuous living.

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The church’s growth was the product, not of the Christians’ persuasive powers, but of their convincing life style.

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This was the model of the early church in the face of persecution. Here is a quote from Tacitus.

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Nero punished a race of men who were hated for their evil practices. These men were called Christians. He got a number of people to confess. On their evidence a number of Christians were convicted and put to death with dreadful cruelty. Some were covered with the skins of wild beasts and left to be eaten by dogs. Others were nailed to the cross. Many were burned alive and set on fire to serve as torches at night.

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We also know that Christians were often put to death simply for entertainment. Maybe we don’t have it all that bad.The one thing that we can hold on to as Christians is a faith that ultimately we will be part of a world that is based solely on love, peace and with perfect justice. In the meantime we are called to live that out in the present life as per my signature.

Hi Phat
In reading what Turek has to say he makes the whole point of being a Christian is that one gets saved. Again, he puts the whole point of Christianity as being focused on self benefit. That is 180 degrees from what we see in Jesus. The whole point of Christianity is to serve, not be served.

No, the point of serving is because that is what your heart calls you to. Look at the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. The sheep did what they did without any thought of self benefit. They essentially wonder what on earth Jesus is talking about when He tells them that what they did was for Him.Look at the parable of the good Samaritan. He is just loving his neighbour and Jesus makes the point about the good guy being a Samaritan and not someone from His own culture. Yes and no. Jesus' message is that we are called to become members of the "Kingdom of God". (or "Kingdom of Heaven" as Matthew puts it. The point of being part of that Kingdom is the call upon humanity to live out God's command to love within this world. If we have hearts that embrace that command to love it would have an effect of what happens in the next life but it isn't the point. However Paul says this in Ephesians 1:

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10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillmentto bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

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Paul does say that it is about the unity of ALL things. We have the model of Jesus coming into this world to rule by serving, so maybe as Christians in the next life we'll be there serving and who will there be to serve - the atheists of course. The problem is that Christianity has over the centuries picked up all sorts of baggage, and part of that is the whole emphasis of personal salvation, as well as personal benefits in this life, being the primary point of it all is part of that baggage. The so called prosperity gospel is the extreme example of that.This is particularly true in the part of the world where Phat lives.

No that is not the basic message. I don't agree with all that came out of the reformation but I do agree that salvation doesn't come from works. Paul writes this in Romans 2:

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15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.

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It is about responding to that still small voice of God or our conscience that we all have if you like.You are simply spouting off your views of what you understand about Christianity. Why do you assume that you understand it more than I do, or more than anyone else? Christian scholars like N T Wright, John Polkinghorne and numerous others would disagree with you. That doesn't make them or me right, but it does show that there is strong support for my beliefs of what is basic to Christianity.