Posted on 01/23/2010 4:09:32 PM PST by NYer
I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you. 1 Corinthians 11:2
Most Protestant Christians believe that the Bible is the only source concerning faith. According to them, there is no need for Apostolic Tradition or an authoritative, teaching Church. All that they need is the Bible in order to learn about the faith and to live a Christian life. The "Bible Alone" teaching can be appealing in its simplicity, but it suffers from fundamental problems. A few are considered here.
First the Bible itself states that not everything important to the Christian faith is recorded in it. For example, not everything that Christ did is recorded in the inspired Books:
But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. [John 21:25; RSV]
According to John 20:31, some things have been recorded in the Gospel in order to come to know Christ; however, John 21:25 suggests that there is still more to know about Him. At least for St. John the Apostle, there was more that he needed to teach which was not recorded in the Bible:
I had much to write you, but I would rather not write with pen and ink; I hope to see you soon, and we will talk together face to face. [3 John 13-14]
Also St. Paul instructs Timothy on how to orally pass on the teachings of the faith:
...what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. [2 Tim. 2:2]
St. Paul even commands (2 Thess. 3:6) the Thessalonian Christians to follow the oral Traditions of the Apostles:
So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us (Apostles), either by word of mouth (oral) or by letter (Epistle). [2 Thess. 2:15]
These commands promoting Oral Tradition would be quite strange, if only the Bible were needed to pass on the entire Christian faith.
A second problem with the "Bible Alone" teaching is canonicity - i.e. which Books belong in the Bible? It must be remembered that the Books of the Bible were written individually along with other religious books. Centuries later the Church compiled together the inspired Books under one cover to form the "Bible." A big question in the early Church was which books are the inspired written Word of God. (Inspired=written by men but authored by God; See Catechism of the Catholic Church 106.)
Scripture did not come with an "inspired" Table of Contents. Nowhere in the sacred texts are all the Books listed. There are some Books cited in the sacred writings but these lists are vague and incomplete (Acts 28:23; 2 Peter 3:16). There are also references to books not found in the Bible, such as St. Paul's Epistle to the Laodiceans (Col. 4:16). St. Paul even encourages the Colossians to read this epistle, but still it is not in the Bible. Jesus in the Gospel never attempts to list the "official" Books of the Old Testament (OT). This issue was hotly debated in His day. Today Protestant and Catholic Christians disagree over which Books belong in the OT. Catholics follow the list in the Septuagint (2nd century B.C. Greek translation of the Hebrew Scripture) while Protestants follow the list used by the Pharisees. A list from Jesus could have eliminated this problem, but no such list is found in the Gospel. As a result the Bible needs a visible authority outside of itself to list the inspired sacred Books. This authority must be guided by the Holy Spirit since these Books are from the Holy Spirit.
Some Christians claim that the Table of Contents in their Bible lists the inspired Books. Even though found in modern Bibles, the Table of Contents is still not inspired. It is not the Word of God but words added later by human editors, much similar to footnotes. The Table of Contents is basically the opinion of the publishing editor. Others may claim that the closing verses in the Book of Revelation, specifically Rev. 22:18-19, cap off the Bible and define all the preceding Books as inspired by God. But do these verses apply to the whole Bible or only the Book of Revelation? Another flaw with this idea is that not all Bibles have the same number of Books. As alluded to above, Catholic and Protestant Bibles contain different numbers of OT Books, yet all these Bibles close with the same verses: Rev. 22:18ff. Both cannot be right. Finally the Book of Deuteronomy contains similar verses (4:2 & 12:32). Does this imply that the Books after Deuteronomy are not inspired by God? No.
A third problem with the "Bible Alone" teaching is proper understanding of critical Bible passages. Most Protestant Christians promote personal interpretation of the Bible, i.e. anyone can interpret these passages by himself. Unfortunately this leads to chaos. For example over Baptism, some Protestants accept the validity of infant Baptism, while others do not. Some believe in the necessity of Baptism for salvation, citing Mark 16:16, while others disagree by citing John 3:16. They all claim to be Bible-based, but still they disagree over fundamental issues regarding salvation. Sadly the "Yellow Pages" phone directory is a witness to the many "Bible-Based" churches who disagree with each other over key issues of the Christian faith. Personal interpretation of the Bible naturally leads to a mire of human doctrines as a result of differing personal opinions.
The Bible was not written as a catechism. It is a collection of many different styles of writing - poetry, history, parables, letters, songs, etc. - requiring different ways of understanding. Sometimes Jesus in the Gospel purposely taught in figurative language and parables, which makes literal interpretation impossible. Even St. Peter admits that St. Paul's Epistles can be difficult to understand:
...Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. [2 Peter 3:15-16]
Finally the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:30ff needed St. Philip to explain the Book of Isaiah. Obviously not everyone can understand the meaning of Scripture by simply reading it. More is required. These difficulties in the Bible demand an independent visible teaching authority that is guided by the Holy Spirit.
Even the Bible points to the importance of the Church for teaching the Truth. According to St. Peter in the Bible:
First of all you must understand this, that no prophesy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. [2 Peter 1:20-21]
At least prophecies in the Bible are not a matter of personal interpretation. These prophesies must be properly interpreted by "men moved by the Holy Spirit" since the Holy Spirit is the Author. These "men" are the Bishops of the Church - the successors to the Apostles (Acts 20:28-32). Finally the Bible does not call itself the bulwark of the truth; however, St. Paul does make reference to the Church in those terms:
...the household of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth. [1 Tim. 3:15]
According to the Bible, the Church is "the pillar and bulwark of the truth."
All Christians, including Catholics, should read the Bible in order to grow more in the faith; however, we still need the Church. The Church is needed to accurately pass on Apostolic Tradition (Romans 10:17), define the canon of the Bible (i.e. list the inspired Books), safeguard the accurate transmission (e.g. translations) of the Bible and interpret key passages, all with guidance from the Holy Spirit according to God's Will. The Church is needed for other reasons too. It must be understood that the Church is not merely men making arbitrary decisions but men executing authority from God guided by the Holy Spirit. The Church may at times be tested by scandals or scarred by the sins of men. We may sometimes disagree with the policies of the Church, but she is still the instrument of the Holy Spirit. This visible Church is the one built by Jesus Christ on St. Peter, the rock (Matt. 16:18-19; John 1:24). This is the Catholic Church.
Dawkins would love that expression, but reality does not mean the same thing to all people. The correct opposite of "real" is "unreal" and the boundary between them is still altogether subjective.
Speaking of delusions, take Dawkins himself. He said:
If he were really atheist, he wouldn't care. Dawkins is anti-God and more specifically, anti-Christ.
As his book title suggests, in Dawkins' sense of "reality" anyone who knows and believes in God is delusional.
Mind is a man-made construct. It presperesents mental activity.
An oscillating universe would be a closed universe with an endless cycle of contractions and expansions...After several cycles, the disorder and entropy would preclude another expansion.
That's not a settled matter. Quantum mechanics suggest that all "memory" (information") would be lost at the point of singularity and that each new BB would be an entirely new beginning. Since no physical laws apply at the moment of singularity, why would the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
Besides, the recent discovery of "dark energy" has raised hopes for reconsidering oscillating universe. As recently as 2007 a "phantom energy" cyclic universe model has been proposed, so the notion that this idea is dead is obviously misleading.
Of course, in his time, Einstein never heard of the singularity and the inflationary universe
Actually, Einstein is the one who originally proposed an oscillating universe hypothesis in 1930.
Here you disposed of the Law of Causality.
The expansion of the Universe points to a "beginning" — of expansion, not necessarily of the Universe itself. The Universe was not created out of nothing if the Big Bang is the "beginning" of the universe. There would be nothing to explode.You will need to take it up with Einstein, Eddington, Penzias, Wilson, Hoyl, Smoot. This is well accepted science.
They do not point to the beginning of the Universe as regards its existencel; just it's expansion. There is nothing in their evidence or logic that mandates that the Universe did not exist prior to that moment and that it continuous to expand and collapse and expand endlessly, in perpetuity; nothing in their work proves "God" or even the necessity of a "God", or an "ex nihilo" creation. An eternal God, like an eternal Universe are conjectures and possibilities, not facts.So now that you make the assertion, make your case. Your saying it does not make the case. Your comments are absurd.
No one here is talking the Steady State Theory. The Big Bang Theory only points to a point in time when the expansion began, not the existence itself. There is a difference.Again, make your case. You might just as soon involk your fallacy of pink unicorns. Your assertion hold up neither to science, logic or reason.
Einsteins Theory uses what physical evidence? Perhaps you should practice what you preach and scientifically prove your "God" theory. Both are arguments based on ignorance, and an apparent absurdity — namely that something (either God or the Universe) existed eternally, something that exists uncreated, without a cause. Science can only operate in this space-time, matter, energy continuum. That began at the singularity. But the Cause existed prior to that moment of creation. Science cannot hope to enter that metaphysical realm prior to the moment of creation. Yet here you are discussing this subject with me. But, I forget, you have disposed of the Law of Causality.
Why would any sane person bother to condemn so heartily a being he claims does not exist in the first place? Why would he write a book about it?
If he were really atheist, he wouldn’t care. Dawkins is anti-God and more specifically, anti-Christ.
As his book title suggests, in Dawkins’ sense of “reality” anyone who knows and believes in God is delusional.
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INDEED.
For that matter, why would there be a fluctuation at all (invoking time from a mathematical point of zero dimensions) or a wave propagation invoking spatial dimensions?
Steinhardt's cyclic model is the closest to the original oscillating universe model. The theory fails precisely because it requires pre-existing temporal dimensionality (real time) and preserves physical laws from cycle to cycle.
A good many Life After Death/NDE experiencers and related researchers have documented
that consciousness/mind
endures after death.
They have observed things in that room and in other rooms nearby that the body on the table could have not seen nor had any knowledge of.
Oh, don't be ridiculous! See how many people you know can keep their hand on a red-hot stove for more than brief moment. Or better yet how many would be willing to jump of a top of a sky scraper.
Speaking of delusions, take Dawkins himself. He said:
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." — Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)
That's pretty much right on the money. Can you show me otherwise?
Why would any sane person bother to condemn so heartily a being he claims does not exist in the first place? Why would he write a book about it?
Because there are people who not only believe that such a being exists but act on its behalf!
anyone who knows and believes in God is delusional
Not anyone; only those who can't tell a difference between a belief and reality. Some people have hope but they know it is just that — faith, not fact.
It could have had mulitple of causes. Your Intelligent design is junk science. The sicnece community says so. Now you will tlel me the sicnece ocmmunity doesn't know science? You can dress up your Intelligent Design any way you want, it's still junk science peddled as science.
Science cannot hope to enter that metaphysical realm prior to the moment of creation.
I am not interested in metaphysical specualtions presented as "facts." If we don't know how it all began then we don't know. No need to create deities or oscillating universes.
If we can presuppose an eternal "being" we can preusppose an eternal anything. It doesn't have to be God.
That's for sure!
It seems to me the point about beliefs is that they are certainly real enough to be tested against the facts of reality. Because as already noted, they are certainly real enough to serve as causes of real effects in the natural world (which naturally includes man and his activities).
When you boil it down, a Second Reality is the systematic construction of a belief. Or alternatively, it is a "dream" that seeks to displace the natural world, so to erect the activist's dream systematically as the new "truth" of reality.
Progressive activists of all stripes follow this model, most notably the currently sitting POTUS....
Eric Vöegelin had some thoughts on this topic (to put it mildly):
The Utopian dreamworlds ... are worlds indeed, with an internal logic and language of their own, paralleling the world in which we live.I think kosta50 and Markbsnr tend to regard the belief issue as a problem of disordered (or at least deluded) personal subjectivity. At least that seems to be the gist of many posts by now. If the disorder consists in the person holding a belief that is unreal, then on their theory, there's really nothing to worry about: A belief isn't real, and thus can't cause anything. Of course, this is entirely to ignore the question of the disordering of society by means of socially effective utopian beliefs (i.e., Second Realities). Which obviously, undeniably have been causes of unimaginably monstrous convulsions in human history.If dream [i.e., "belief"] and reality were as neatly different worlds as their conceptual distinction might tempt us to assume, the question concerning the sense of imperfection [of the world that actually exists, or First Reality] would not pose too much of a problem. The real imperfections, one might say, lose such sense as they have in reality when they are transferred into the dreamworld and in the wake of the transfer acquire the absurdity that radiates from the absurd dream of perfection. Having understood the problem, one might then be inclined to let the dreamers dream and, for one's own part, to go on with the business of living in our imperfect reality.
If we adopted this attitude, however, we would let ourselves be victimized, theoretically and practically, by the metaphorical use of the term world. Though the dream "world" is not the real "world," the dreamer believes it truly to be the one world in which we all have to live.... As we know, the dreamers not only deny the dream character of their symbolism but, on the contrary, claim for it the status of a superior insight into the truth of reality. And even if we reject this claim as nonsense, the dreamer who raises it with social effectiveness is still very much a part of the reality in which we live — as all too many who could not believe that totalitarian activists would inflict their murderous nonsense on real human beings had to discover to their grief.... [bolds added]
Beyond the individual cases of existential disorder, the style becomes a public grotesque when, with the lapse of time, the social scene fills up with little emperors who each claim to be the possessor of the one and only truth; and it becomes lethal when some of them take themselves seriously enough to engage in mass murder of everyone who dares to disagree."Stuff" DID, does, and always will happen in consequence of beliefs — at both the personal and social levels.
As I said before — if a belief has phenomenal effects, it's certainly real enough.
All these scientific theories fail because they cannot (as of now) be demonstrated factually. They are all theories, including the God theory disguised as "Intelligent Design," which is not even science. Why can't Evangelical Christians just say "we don't know, but we believe God made it?" After all the Church does humbly admit "we believe..." and not "we know..."
Are you suffering an opinion/delusion that I’m interested in your disinterest in my opinions?
I respond to your blather for a variety of readers, as well as for my own reasons.
I’m confident your scroll button works.
Betty boop, we have been through this before. Please correct your spelling of his name. It's VÖGELIN or VOEGELIN — but not VÖEGELIN
By ignoring this friendly advice you are just embarrassing yourself, considering that you have been reading his books for so many years. Either get rid of the unlaut or the "e" following the "o." Remember, Ö in German = OE in English transliteration.
unlaut=umlaut
This is anthropomorphizing. If the question is whether I discern God as I do my wife, the answer is no.
mark
That is your scientific, emperic proof? You are not having a serious discussion.
I am not interested in metaphysical specualtions presented as "facts
One of you first questions to me was to ask to "define God". Which is it? You are either interested or not interested. You want to choose your favor of the month. Then you say, "If we can presuppose an eternal "being" we can preusppose an eternal anything. It doesn't have to be God." But you are back in that metaphysical realm.
Consistency is not your strong suit. (I don't mean that in an impolite way.
Does evil exist in the world? (I am not trying to be funny)
Don't put words in my mouth. This is not the gist of my posts (nor, I think Kosta's). The question is whether belief and knowledge are the same or whether they are different. I do not speak of delusion in terms of belief except, as Kosta noted, when belief gets in the way of reality.
A belief isn't real, and thus can't cause anything.
Are you even reading what is posted? I never said that a belief is not real to the person holding it; I said that that belief may not be real in the real world. Kosta believes in pink unicorns on Jupiter. That Kosta believes in pink unicorns on Jupiter is real. Whether there really are pink unicorns on Jupiter is another issue.
In other words, the belief is real, but the reality is wrong. And if Kosta claims that he knows that there are pink unicorns on Jupiter, then he is delusional. Does this help?
The Second Law is a physical law; and so, like all the other known physical laws, it did not exist in the original Planck era; i.e., the first 10–43 of the first second, post-Bang.... Viewed in retrospect, all the physical laws "break down" there. I.e., they didn't exist until after the Planck era.
But this refers to the Big Bang model. Does your oscillating universe conjecture have a Second Law? Evidently it has a notion of space and time. But this model cannot account for the origin of any of these things — not space, nor time, nor law. Nor matter even. It simply posits that space and time are "eternally there" as the context for the boom and bust oscillation over a hypothetical eternity, according to what must, in this model, be sui-generis law (which looks like a self-contradiction to me); and matter and form are the "magical" (because inexplicable) results....
As if the human mind could ever grasp what eternity is — on the basis of direct observation and experience as a finite intelligence.
You still haven't explained to me HOW you know the "mind is a euphemism." You simply make an additional assertion about it, i.e., that it is "a man-made construct" that "prerepresents mental activity."
But this is plainly gibberish! I challenge you to elucidate what these terms actually mean — in reality, that is.
You wrote: "Quantum mechanics suggest that all 'memory' ('information') would be lost at the point of singularity and that each new BB would be an entirely new beginning."
Arguably, quantum mechanics suggests all kinds of things: There are as many interpretations of quantum mechanics as there are quantum physicists. One wonders in the present case why one would want to entirely conflate "memory" and "information."
I like what Richard Feynman, father of the path integral principle, had to say about this issue: No one really knows what's going on in the quantum world. From this I gather one is free to speculate whatever one wishes; actually testing one's speculation is another matter entirely. Especially if one is reasoning from what is unutterably uncertain and unarticulable to first principles of the universe.
You wrote: "the recent discovery of 'dark energy' has raised hopes for reconsidering oscillating universe."
Methinks the operative word there is "hopes." Thus you suggest a fundamental belief is at work here. There are many scientists nowadays who would cut off their right arm if they could "prove" the universe didn't have/need a beginning. Good luck to them all!
My suspicion is they will be disappointed in the end.
BTW, Einstein also proposed the cosmological constant. Later he regretted this publicly. If he liked oscillating universes, maybe that was just the "platonist" in him....
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