Posted on 05/01/2011 7:24:18 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
The squabble between Darwin lobbyists who openly hate religion and those who only quietly disdain it grows ever more personal, bitter and pathetic. On one side, evangelizing New or "Gnu" (ha ha) Atheists like Jerry Coyne and his acolytes at Why Evolution Is True. Dr. Coyne is a biologist who teaches and ostensibly researches at the University of Chicago but has a heck of a lot of free time on his hands for blogging and posting pictures of cute cats.
On the other side, so-called accommodationists like the crowd at the National Center for Science Education, who attack the New Atheists for the political offense of being rude to religious believers and supposedly messing up the alliance between religious and irreligious Darwinists.
I say "supposedly" because there's no evidence any substantial body of opinion is actually being changed on religion or evolution by anything the open haters or the quiet disdainers say. Everyone seems to seriously think they're either going to defeat religion, or merely "creationism," or both by blogging for an audience of fellow Darwinists.
Want to see what I mean? This is all pretty strictly a battle of stinkbugs in a bottle. Try to follow it without getting a headache.
Coyne recently drew excited applause from fellow biologist-atheist-blogger PZ Myers for Coyne's "open letter" (published on his blog) to the NCSE and its British equivalent, the British Centre for Science Education. In the letter, Coyne took umbrage at criticism of the New Atheists, mostly on blogs, emanating from the two accommodationist organizations. He vowed that,
We will continue to answer the misguided attacks [on the New Atheists] by people like Josh Rosenau, Roger Stanyard, and Nick Matzke so long as they keep mounting those attacks.Like the NCSE, the BCSE seeks to pump up Darwin in the public mind without scaring religious people. This guy called Stanyard at the BCSE complains of losing a night's sleep over the nastiness of the rhetoric on Coyne's blog. Coyne in turn complained that Stanyard complained that a blog commenter complained that Nick Matzke, formerly of the NCSE, is like "vermin." Coyne also hit out at blogger Jason Rosenhouse for an "epic"-length blog post complaining of New Atheist "incivility." In the blog, Rosenhouse, who teaches math at James Madison University, wrote an update about how he had revised an insulting comment about the NCSE's Josh Rosenau that he, Rosenhouse, made in a previous version of the post.
That last bit briefly confused me. In occasionally skimming the writings of Jason Rosenhouse and Josh Rosenau in the past, I realized now I had been assuming they were the same person. They are not!
It goes on and on. In the course of his own blog post, Professor Coyne disavowed name-calling and berated Stanyard (remember him? The British guy) for "glomming onto" the Matzke-vermin insult like "white on rice, or Kwok on a Leica." What's a Kwok? Not a what but a who -- John Kwok, presumably a pseudonym, one of the most tirelessly obsessive commenters on Darwinist blog sites. Besides lashing at intelligent design, he often writes of his interest in photographic gear such as a camera by Leica. I have the impression that Kwok irritates even fellow Darwinists.
There's no need to keep all the names straight in your head. I certainly can't. I'm only taking your time, recounting just a small part of one confused exchange, to illustrate the culture of these Darwinists who write so impassionedly about religion, whether for abolishing it or befriending it. Writes Coyne in reply to Stanyard,
I'd suggest, then, that you lay off telling us what to do until you've read about our goals. The fact is that we'll always be fighting creationism until religion goes away, and when it does the fight will be over, as it is in Scandinavia.A skeptic might suggest that turning America into Scandinavia, as far as religion goes, is an outsized goal, more like a delusion, for this group as they sit hunched over their computers shooting intemperate comments back and forth at each other all day. Or in poor Stanyard's case, all night.
There's a feverish, terrarium-like and oxygen-starved quality to this world of online Darwinists and atheists. It could only be sustained by the isolation of the Internet. They don't seem to realize that the public accepts Darwinism to the extent it does -- which is not much -- primarily because of what William James would call the sheer, simple "prestige" that the opinion grants. Arguments and evidence have little to do with it.
The prestige of Darwinism is not going to be affected by how the battle between Jerry Coyne and the NCSE turns out. New Atheist arguments are hobbled by the same isolation from what people think and feel. I have not yet read anything by any of these gentlemen or ladies, whether the open haters or the quiet disdainers, that conveys anything like a real comprehension of religious feeling or thought.
Even as they fight over the most effective way to relate to "religion," the open atheists and the accomodationists speak of an abstraction, a cartoon, that no actual religious person would recognize. No one is going to be persuaded if he doesn't already wish to be persuaded for other personal reasons. No faith is under threat from the likes of Jerry Coyne.
Fallacy of classification. The rest of the Word is not Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Word.
If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into [your] house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds. - 2 John 1:7-11
Okay but that does not mean we don't have anything to do with them. How else are they informed and of what use is the admonition to "...[be] ready always to [give] an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: "?
I don't think John meant that we should not invite atheists to church. I think he means we don't let them "preach".
Precisely!
Remember that you are reading something that was written after the fact, and with an agenda, and that no other sources from outside of the community recorded anything that was recorded in Christian literature. Therefore the evidence is inconclusive and suspect.
As to the growth of the church there are no reliable sources that indicate how many Christians were there. There was no clear division between the Christians and the Jews in the first century to begin with, since Christianity was a Jewish sect. In the second century, there were many Gnostic sects, all claiming to be "Christian", etc. Subsequent centuries (all the way up to the seventh) see the spread of Manichaeanism, not Christianity, as one of the largest religions in the known world.
The success of the church is due entirely to the fact that 1700 years ago, Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the only permitted (state) religion in Rome, a decision entirely based on his superstitious interpretation of a dream he had.
Manichaenism = Manichaeism
The swoon theory is so ludicrous as to be comedy.
We are to believe that Jesus, whipped by the Romans as they did before an execution, who had his bread plucked out, who had a crown of thorns pressed into his head, who suffered tremendous blood and fluid loss from aforementioned treatment, who then had whatever he was wearing that most likely adhered to his skin as the blood dried, ripped off his body, reopening the wounds, having had dirty, nails driven into his hands and feet, with all the possibility of tetanus that entails, whose joints were likely dislocated from the cross being dropped into the ground, who could hardly breathe for the time hanging naked in the air, with no food, little water, and a spear trust into his side that poured out the precious little remaining blood and water his body contained (another tetanus site), merely *passed out* from this mistreatment and revived in the coolness of the tomb.
Not considering that he would have long before gone into shock, would likely be infected with massive infections, and suffered fluid loss that would have been near impossible to replace.
Anyone in such condition would be a challenge for the most advanced medical care ICU to keep alive today. In those days? You have got to be kidding me.
Only a God hating atheist, desperate beyond reason to *prove* that the resurrection could be explained away some other way, could even begin to think that that scenario would even be remotely credible.
For all atheists laud themselves for their mental prowess and deride others for believing fairy tales, fantasy, folklore, and superstition, they make such idiots of themselves presenting that scenario as a feasible alternative to an actual resurrection.
What the atheists fail to see is that for Jesus to have survived the crucifixion enough to have only *swooned* and revive with no medical attention, get out of the tomb, past the Roman guard and walk though the streets of Jerusalem looking well enough to be considered risen, would be every bit as much a miracle as the resurrection. All the atheists are doing is asking people to believe their miracle instead of Scripture's.
Actually from the 3rd to the 7th centuries Manichaeism eclipsed Christianity manyfold.
As for the Jews, only some sects were close to Christian apocalypticism. Mainline Judaism (basically the Sadducees and the Pharisees) rejected any possibility of a man being a God, the Christian angeology and certainly the resurrection claims.
The 1st century Jewish diapsora does not define Judaism. The followers of Christ (aka the Nazarines) in Israel were basically rejected by the rabbinic Judaism by the end of the first century and declared usurpers or apostatea along with Gnostcis (i.e. the minim). At this time the daily prayer curse directed at the minim (the Birkat HaMinim) was instituted and is recited to this day every morning as part of the 12 blesisngs.
The Christians were no longer permitted in the synagogues by the time of the destruction of the Church of Jerusalem and the scattering of James' followers. It is also important to theologically distinguish between the Christians Paul was creating on his territory and the Law-observing Christians in the Jerusalem Church.
Thank you!
I think this sounds very similar to the varying ways different groups of people that call themselves "Christians" approach the Bible (which could also be considered a highly controversial book if interpreted outside the Apostolic teachings of the Church). It sounds like the Sunnis are the Sola Scriptura folks like our Protestants and they treat the Koran as infallible. Then they cherry pick which verses best suit their egos and justify their personal agendas.
The Sufis sound more like the people of the Church in that the Church too comes close to rejecting much of the Bible (the nasty vindictive Gods of the Old testament, justifiable rape, infanticide, slavery).
I look at the Bible like a souvenir World Series program. It's a great keepsake that has been beautifully put together. It's fun to take it out and read through the stuff that was going on when your team was in the World Series. It has articles about how great the designated hitter is to baseball, and it may have an article or two about why there should be no DH. There will be stories about some of the players and what kind of year they had told by eyewitnesses to their seasons, and because the men who witness the games are human and fallible, there is going to be some stats or aspects of the stories they get wrong, and maybe even misrepresent a story or two on accident. If someone were to come up to me and say, "Hey, tell me about the World Series experience!" I wouldn't hand them my program and say, "Read this! It'll tell you all about it!"
That's not to say that a thorough reading of that souvenir program won't really help bring you back to the time of that World Series or really get the juices flowing almost like it did when it really happened.
My grand kids may love to read my old World Series program years from now, and they may consider it a priceless keepsake from a special time, but it will never replace the incredible stories of the games I can act out in front of them with my voice rising and falling and my body language expressing the drama of each game, or even each pitch in an important sequence.
To me, the Bible is nice souvenir, but it's not even 1/10th of the whole story. When I see Protestant preachers thumping the Bible around and acting like all we need to know is in that book, it makes me laff. It's like watching a vender at a game hawk his programs as if all you need to know about baseball is in that over sized pamphlet.
To which kosta replied: Proving that God exists would not be worthless, bb! It would be the greatest discovery known to mankind.
Did you notice how kosta totally refused to acknowledge my point? But then, I supposed he had to refuse, since to acknowledge it would implicitly entail the recognition that God, as transcendent Being, is not reducible to human techniques of proof. Which was my entire point.
To so reduce Him is to treat Him as if He were an entirely immanent existent, like any other ordinary object of the natural world — which He is not. Hence my conclusion that any such proof would be worthless, in that it can tell us nothing about God, but only about how some men would like to reason about Him. That is to say, to falsely reason about Him — by bringing Him "down" to the level of an object of ordinary human observation and experience.
If such a thing could be done, however — which it cannot — faith would be altogether unnecessary. As a radical skeptic, kosta has no use for faith. Hence he is looking for "the greatest discovery known to mankind" that would obviate the need for faith.
Yet any person who could make such a "discovery" would have to be "a god" himself....
Kosta denies the transcendence of God. Or at the very least, seems entirely skeptical on this point.
Also I suggested earlier that kosta got the definition of "Christian" entirely right, in that he said people who don't believe in the Triune God and the Risen Christ are "not Christians." He ticked off a list of such, but didn't put his own name on it — as I imagine he should have done.
For note he states the case in the negative — that is, by an inversion.
Earlier, I suggested that atheists have a weird way of "inverting" Truth. Kosta's negative definition is yet another good example of this.
Kosta INSISTS he is not an atheist. But to me, "if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck."
Kosta seems to be a thoroughly dogmatic thinker. His dogma is entirely sui generis, having little if anything to do with the real world. It is rather the projection of his internal world of wishes, preferences, and dreams....
I anticipate his clever reply to this observation: In all likelihood, he'll say I am doing the same exact thing. He has to say that; for my insight is qualitatively different than his because I recognize the transcendence of God, and he does not. If there is no transcendence, then I am wrong, and merely projecting my own internal dream world. And thus he and I are "'doing the same thing."
To compound the difficulty, I doubt he and I are speaking the same language. Though we are both nominally conversing in English, our world views are so far apart that the words we respectively use often seem to refer to entirely different external objects....
An analogy comes to mind. Our respective use of language is like the difference between an analog and a digital recording....
Also I am reminded of David Hilbert's attempt to "reduce" the mathematical language of number theory to pure syntax by excising all semantic elements. It didn't work. Kurt Gödel (i.e., the Incompletness Theorem) showed why. But this has been discussed here before so I won't repeat myself.
All things considered, I strongly doubt that kosta is a "good-faith" correspondent.... And I'm getting a little tired of his "jerking me around" like this — by refusing to engage points, trying to change the subject, or attempting to steer the argument in directions more favorable to this peculiar methods.
Or so it seems to me, FWIW.
Thank you ever so much for writing, dearest sister in Christ, and for your kind words of support!
Yes, it's called Vulgate, the one Trent declared as "inerrant". It reads:
The Greek versions, all copies, read
The word anothen never means again or a anew, but rather from above, from the top. There is only ONE instance where Paul uses a unique combination palin anothen which literally means "again from above" but in the context it is understood as simply "again". Maybe it was an inadvertent mistake.
In fact the whole John 3:3-4 is suspect because such pun, even if it were, could not have been understood as such by Nicodemus in Aramaic because in Aramaic the word 'from above' and 'again' are not even close. And it's a real stretch to even imply that Jesus used a really strange Greek hyperbole to a member of the Sanhedrin.
John made it up. I know this is sacrilege to most people, especially, because "born again" is the cornerstone for some Christians, but the conversation simply never took place. It's a tel John made up.
it’s a tel = it’s a tale
What did I tell you? You give the exact example that there is no evidence that you will accept.
Points:
You gotta be kiddin' me!
So this is made up?:
Jhn 3:4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?
Very well said, dear sister in Christ! I so agree.
To so reduce Him is to treat Him as if He were an entirely immanent existent, like any other ordinary object of the natural world — which He is not. Hence my conclusion that any such proof would be worthless, in that it can tell us nothing about God, but only about how some men would like to reason about Him. That is to say, to falsely reason about Him — by bringing Him "down" to the level of an object of ordinary human observation and experience.
If such a thing could be done, however — which it cannot — faith would be altogether unnecessary.
The Jewish mystics use the name Ayn Sof when speaking of God The Creator. The term means "no thing" and the point it makes ties directly to your insights. Namely, that any word-concept a mere mortal would use to describe God by its use restricts that person's understanding of Him to the term he used.
Or to put it another way, words that apply to the creation (time, space, math, logic, etc.) are not properties of The Creator of them.
The tendency of mortals to describe God in mortal terms - or attempt to "prove" that He is - is yet another type of idol-making.
Evidently, primitive men enjoyed making their own household idols. They could see, embrace and bow before those objects. They could take their gods with them and throw them in the fire if they were tired of them.
They were only as real as they wanted them to be.
Modern men who insist on "proof" of God are no different at heart because they also want a god they can model in their minds and play with mentally as they choose.
Ironically, their very insistence prevents them from receiving the real proof of God which we Christians have received - His indwelling.
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. - John 3:5-8
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? - I Cor 6:19
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye [are] the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. - John 15:4-5
Thank you ever so much for writing!
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