Evidence for God from Science

Kurieuo wrote:It depends. I believe there are specific OT Laws that were specifically for Israel to follow (e.g., the Sabbath, many Levitical Laws re: the sacrificial system, etc), and then some that are more universal and moral laws. Much of the NT reiterates many specific things that are still wrong.

Those specifically for Israel, one might still find moral values or meanings that apply. For example, it is good that we rest, and rest in the Lord... but whether it is done on the 7th day whether a Saturday or Sunday is I think irrelevant. Or the sacrificial system which shows the consequences of sin (death) and foreshadows the final Sacrificial Lamb that was Christ and God Himself.

In Christ, the Law has been overridden by God's grace for all those in Christ such that our hearts are of primary focus. But, those without Christ still stand condemned by the Law in whatever shape or form it might be. For many, they may not need look to the Mosaic Law for it is God has placed a law written on our very hearts that condemns us. (Romans 2:14-16)

So... I'm sure there are parts of what I've written above that you'd disagree with, or wish I'd take further... but nonetheless I see the Law is very relevant for Christians for it is how we become directly aware of God's standard that we fail to live up to, along with the wrath that we ought to incur from a fully righteous God.

Kurieuo wrote:Then you must account for Romans 2:14:

"For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively [physis] the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves,"

Physis also translated "nature" shows that the Law is in our very physical being. And then Romans 2:15 which reads:

"in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts [kardia], their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them,"

Verse 15 identifies the Law as being in the inner depths of who we are, in our soul.

The only explanation is that there are certain universal laws (God's righteous standard) installed into us.

Jac3510 wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:The accommodation theory is a very valid one, unless people believe that God can speak to ancient man in ways that ancient man can't understand and yet, somehow, ancient man not only understood BUT was able to pass on that message/vision to others without any problem.

We as human use it all that time.
When I say that it's colder than Winnipeg in February, that is accommodating my message to Canadians and it will mean very little to people from Brazil.

The God gave the hebrews statutes that were specific to THEM and to what they were set apart to become is clear in the OT.
That some of them were even "bad" statutes is also suggested according to some and debatable according to others ( I tend to agree with the literal reading of Ezekiel in that regard and do think that certain statutes that were "not good" were given to the Isrealites) hints at God accomodating His Law giving to specific circumstances.
God's frustration with the Hebrew people is pretty clear through out the OT AND NT.
I just can't fathom God NOT accommodating Us.

Well that's just a matter of an impassible difference between us. And anyone who agrees that accommodation is an absolutely unacceptable concept will have no problem rejecting your argument, given that it's the basis of your position here.

Jac3510 wrote:They tend to come up wrt to miracles. Here's something I found on Google that makes for easy reading:

http://www.ccel.us/miracles.ch3.html

I don't doubt the sincerity of those who hold an accommodationist heremenutic. They're truly trying to understand how God could say something they know is so clearly wrong. There are only three logical options. One is that they are wrong that the thing is wrong, which is, of course, unacceptable to us. The second is that God is wrong, which is theologically unacceptable. The third is that the people to whom God was speaking were wrong in holding that particular belief, but for the sake of communication, God accommodated their ignorance to get across a larger point. The problem with that belief, though, is that it effectively makes God a liar, because He is 1) saying something He knows is not true and 2) intentionally affirming something in someone else's belief system He knows is not true.

God does not accommodate our ignorance. He speaks truth--true that is true in each and every generation--in ways that the original audience can understand it. We can't say that God commanded this or that immorality because that's the best He could do under the circumstances. It's still commanding immorality. We can't say God told people the earth was flat because that is what they already believed. We can't say Jesus pretended miracles were real (e.g.,the Jonah story) even though He knew they were not because He was 2000 years (conveniently, of course, it's 2000 and not 2500 . . . who knows what humans will discover about the universe long after we're dead and gone) ahead of His time.

So, again, those who are okay with saying God accommodates us (implicitly or explicitly), then they can adopt your solution. For those who think that an accommodation hermeneutic is fundamentally flawed, then we have to seek another option.

PaulSacramento wrote:I don't think that it is a question of trying to reconcile what was written in the bible VS what we know to be fact because, well, God did NOT write the bible, man did.
IMO, that God created the universe, that He created our world and that is was good ( or very good) means that it was NOT perfect and that it is in need of redemption means that it is with error and I include the bible in that as well. No matter how inspired the writers were, they were NOT perfect and if all that God created in in a process of redemption then why not the bible?

Jac3510 wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:I don't think that it is a question of trying to reconcile what was written in the bible VS what we know to be fact because, well, God did NOT write the bible, man did.
IMO, that God created the universe, that He created our world and that is was good ( or very good) means that it was NOT perfect and that it is in need of redemption means that it is with error and I include the bible in that as well. No matter how inspired the writers were, they were NOT perfect and if all that God created in in a process of redemption then why not the bible?

I think we've discussed this before. We disagree on two levels.

1. I believe in an essentially inerrant Bible. Your position disallows that by nature. At best, you can affirm an accidentally inerrant Bible, which is no useful doctrine of inerrancy at all.
2. Scripture does not say that men were inspired to write the Bible. It says that Scripture itself is inspired. The men need not be perfect. The documents they produced are.

The problem with rejecting either of those premises is that you are left with absolute subjectivity over what parts of Scripture to affirm. You can simply appeal to the imperfection of the authors of Scripture to disregard the points you deal with. The real problem, though, is the whole goose and gander thing. If you are allowed to do that, then so is everyone else. So when you point out something you think the Bible truly teaches, you have no logical rebuttal when someone rejects your claim saying, "Yes, I know the Bible teaches that, but really, that's just the words of fallible men. They were wrong on that."

You can justify absolutely ANYTHING that way.

So, again, while I appreciate and do not doubt in the least your sincerity, I strongly reject the positions you have advocated in this thread. I just as strongly encourage you reject them and return to a proper position on the inspiration of Scripture. What you are teaching now is false and dangerous doctrine. Sincerely, of course, but false all the same.

edit:

Yes, we talked about it here.

Jac3510 wrote:And as I said to you before, we just plainly disagree. You are arguing from a position outside the mainstream of Christian thought, not just the mainstream of evangelical thought. So given the purpose of discussion boards, I don't think there is any need to continue this. Those people who reject biblical inerrancy may be able to accept your conclusions. For those of us who hold that the Bible is inerrant, your conclusions must be rejected. Most of the people here accept the Bible's inerrancy, so . . . I guess all I have to say at this point is, "QED."

Inerrancy

Inerrancy is freedom from error. The inerrancy of Scripture is a consequence of its divine inspiration. Whatever the Bible teaches, God teaches, because God is the principal author of Scripture and His teaching is necessarily true.

We attribute this quality of inerrancy in the first place to the original Biblical books written by the pen of the sacred writers themselves, and, secondly to reproductions of the Bible, but only in so far as these agree with the original sacred books. Though all the original copies of the books of the Bible have long disappeared and though certain copies of the Bible may contain errors due to copyists, translators, editors, and printers, yet in most cases the true reading can be established with the aid of the old copies and versions.

This absolute inerrancy and authority of the Bible is taught by Sacred Scripture itself. Our Lord, the Apostles and Evangelists regarded any passage from Scripture as the word of God, as necessarily true, as final and supreme authority. They affirm that "Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35), that "one jot, or one title shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled" (Matthew 5:18) and that the "Scriptures shall be fulfilled" (Matthew 26 :54).

The Christian Church has from the very beginning associated inerrancy with the divine inspiration of Scripture. There are few doctrines on which the agreement of the early Fathers and Christian writers was so unanimous and emphatic as the inerrancy of the Bible. The conviction of the Fathers on this point was not something which was apparent to them from a reading or study of the Scriptures, since the difficulties of the Bible present themselves even to a casual reader. Rather, it was a traditional teaching which they inherited from the Church with the Bible.

In recent years the principle of Biblical inerrancy was emphatically reaffirmed by Leo XIII: "So far is it from being the case that error can be compatible with inspiration, that, on the contrary, it not only of its very nature precludes the presence of error, but as necessarily excludes it and forbids it as God, the Supreme Truth, necessarily cannot be the Author of error." A believing Christian then may never question whether the teaching of the Bible is true. Should doubts arise in his mind as to the meaning of certain statements in the Scriptures, he must be guided by the well-known rule of St. Augustine: "If in these books I meet anything which seems contrary to truth, I shall not hesitate to conclude either that the text is faulty, or that the translator has not expressed the meaning of the passage, or that I myself do not understand it."

The Bible, it must be remembered, is a large and ancient book, the product of a civilization and of conditions quite different from ours. It was written mostly by Orientals, whose ways of thinking and speaking were unlike ours, and in languages that we at times do not well understand.

Since at times our data are only what we find in the Bible, we lack the necessary information to reconstruct a given incident with all its details. Occasionally the Bible embodies hyperboles, allegories, parables, etc. To determine what the sacred writer meant to teach in a particular instance, we must first determine the literary form into which he cast his teaching. Again, we must make some allowances for poetic license in those books of the Old Testament which are poetry.

Finally, much of the Bible deals with supernatural truths which of their very nature do not admit of direct proof.

Jac3510 wrote:I guess all I have to say at this point is, "QED."

1over137 wrote:

Jac3510 wrote:I guess all I have to say at this point is, "QED."

QED? Quantum electrodynamics?

I wanna make it clear that what I reject is not bible inerrancy per say, I believe that the bible is without error for the purpose it was created.
I reject the view that the bible is literal and concrete in every way.
I reject the view that translations are without error and I reject the view that the bible MUST be without error to have any value.

We will have to agree to disagree which is fine since people have been doing that down through the ages.

I do NOT feel I am arguing outside mainstream Christian though by the way, for the simple reason that I DO view that bible as inerrant and infallible in what matters: pointing the way to Christ.

No one says that translations have no errors. That is another strawman. But you are wrong that an errant Bible has any value.

In the introduction to his book Credible Christianity, Anglican Bishop Hugh Montefiore, makes this comment:
The doctrine of biblical inerrancy seems inherently improbable, for two reasons. Firstly, the Scriptures contain what seem to be evident errors and contradictions (although great ingenuity has been applied to explain these away). Secondly, the books of the Old and New Testaments did not gain their place within the "canon", or list of approved books, as soon as they were written. The Old Testament canon was not closed until late in the Apostolic age, and the New Testament canon was not finally closed until the fourth century. If all the Bible's contents were inerrant, one would have thought that this would have become apparent within a much shorter period.[55]

the 19th century Anglican biblical scholar S. R. Driver held a contrary view, saying that, "as inspiration does not suppress the individuality of the biblical writers, so it does not altogether neutralise their human infirmities or confer upon them immunity from error".[41] Similarly, J.K. Mozley, an early 20th-century Anglican theologian has argued:
That the Bible is inspired is, indeed, a primary Christian conviction; it is from this that certain consequences have been drawn, such as infallibility and inerrancy, which retain their place in Christian thought because they are held to be bound up with the affirmation of inspiration. But the deductions can be rejected without any ambiguity as to the fact of inspiration. Neither 'fundamentalists' nor sceptics are to be followed at this point... the Bible is inspired because it is the adequate and indispensable vehicle of revelation; but inspiration does not amount to dictation by God.[42]

In the Nicene Creed Christians confess their belief that the Holy Spirit "has spoken through the prophets". This creed has been normative for Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans and all mainline Protestant denominations except for those descended from the non-credal Stone-Campbell movement. As noted by Alister E. McGrath, "An important element in any discussion of the manner in which Scripture is inspired, and the significance which is attached to this, is 2 Timothy 3:16-17, which speaks of Scripture as 'God-breathed' (theopneustos)". According to McGrath, "the reformers did not see the issue of inspiration as linked with the absolute historical reliability or factual inerrancy of the biblical texts". He says, "The development of ideas of 'biblical infallibility' or 'inerrancy' within Protestantism can be traced to the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century".[34]
People who believe in inerrancy think that the Bible does not merely contain the Word of God, but every word of it is, because of verbal inspiration, the direct, immediate word of God.[35] The Lutheran Apology of the Augsburg Confession identifies Holy Scripture with the Word of God[36] and calls the Holy Spirit the author of the Bible.[37] Because of this, Lutherans confess in the Formula of Concord, "we receive and embrace with our whole heart the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the pure, clear fountain of Israel".[38] Lutherans (and other Protestants) believe apocryphal books are neither inspired nor written by prophets, and that they contain errors and were never included in the "Palestinian Canon" that Jesus and the Apostles are said to have used,[39] and therefore are not a part of Holy Scripture.[40] The prophetic and apostolic Scriptures are authentic as written by the prophets and apostles. A correct translation of their writings is God's Word because it has the same meaning as the original Hebrew and Greek.[40] A mistranslation is not God's word, and no human authority can invest it with divine authority.[40]
However, the 19th century Anglican biblical scholar S. R. Driver held a contrary view, saying that, "as inspiration does not suppress the individuality of the biblical writers, so it does not altogether neutralise their human infirmities or confer upon them immunity from error".[41] Similarly, J.K. Mozley, an early 20th-century Anglican theologian has argued:
That the Bible is inspired is, indeed, a primary Christian conviction; it is from this that certain consequences have been drawn, such as infallibility and inerrancy, which retain their place in Christian thought because they are held to be bound up with the affirmation of inspiration. But the deductions can be rejected without any ambiguity as to the fact of inspiration. Neither 'fundamentalists' nor sceptics are to be followed at this point... the Bible is inspired because it is the adequate and indispensable vehicle of revelation; but inspiration does not amount to dictation by God.[42]