Posted on 12/10/2004 7:08:12 AM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
NEW YORK -- A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God -- more or less -- based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.
At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.
(Excerpt) Read more at nynewsday.com ...
No,,,what you are trying to say, but for some reason can't bring yourself to say,,,is that there is no proof that will convince you.
Hey, the truth is a bitch, but it will set you free. Why not just say the truth?
Actually that is untrue. There is older text than you cite.
There is no "contemporaneous documentary proof" of most of the players in the ancient world, from Homer to Socrates to Cicero, etc. Same for many kings too, although there are coins and statues in some cases ... We dont doubt they lived.
There is of course archeological evidence of Christians going all the way back to before 60AD, as well as textual evidence confirmation. The records of the acts, and various (non-gospel) church father writings also is evidence of the community.
So you have a community that was telling a consistent story all the way back to even before 40AD.
"It doesn't matter if you have faith."
Why not?
"Are you for real? LOL"
Yes. are you evading the question?
Or are you asking it like the smart-ass in my freshman philosophy class, asking the professor "How can you prove to me that I'm real?"
Maybe it's because some Christians are very poor representatives of their religion.
As an example; my child is diagnosed with a life-shortening disease, then my other child is diagnosed (a year later) with a crippling disease. I was devastated and trying to come to terms with a loving, just God and the whole *wrongness* of little kids being struck down so young in life. My Christian acquaintance stops by to see if we need anything and offers me this comfort: The reason both my children have been hit with this is because of the sins of our Fathers. Since we're *all* sinners, I, my husband or even the kids themselves must have done *something* to deserve this and once we're all convinced and repentant, then the children will either be healed "by the Stripes of Christ" or we'll be at peace carrying the cross of our sins through these diseases.
Now, I wasn't offended by all this. She's a good heart and I know that she meant well, but I will *not* convince my kids that it's somehow their fault or their parents' fault that their bodies have betrayed them. They did *nothing* wrong. My husband and I have both screwed up in our lives and we both have repented and straightened ourselves out. (And we repent every day that we continue to make new mistakes or fall back on our too human faults and work very hard to do better next time.)
I adore Christ, but Christians, on the other hand...
Christ was the Redeamer. Christ taught us that we can change and be forgiven. Christ was the sacrifice. And yet many, many Christians still believe that *everyone* needs a good whuppin'.
You have descended into a pitiful posting abyss. What a shame, you seemed to have had a small amount of promise.
Your experience with this misguided soul has led you to a false conviction about things.
A pity. Both for you, and for Christians.
You hit the nail on the head.
Thank you! I've learned that someone can be so hurt, feel so betrayed by God that they turn away. I've also learned that God understands and welcomes us back. Thank God that He's more understanding, loving and forgiving than men!
I know of nothing in the teachings of Jesus in which children are "hit" for the sins of our Fathers. Maybe you could ask her for some verses or background on this.
Instead, she should have told to you to find strength in Christ for the tough battles ahead.
EARTHQUAKES!
;-)
"You have descended into a pitiful posting abyss. What a shame, you seemed to have had a small amount of promise."
Because I gave you an answer that wasn't what you were expecting?
Your point was to say that I am a hopeless skeptic. This is not true. I am willing to change my mind, but "Because the bible tells me so" is simply not enough to do it.
I guess I have posted too much on this thread. I just enjoy debate. Pardon me if I have offended you.
I think that the Christian faith is a shining beacon for humanity, and that people should follow it's teachings on morals and ethics. However, this is not to say they "must."
It's a common misconception. There is a biblical reference to the sins of the fathers being visited on the children 'til the third generation. It doesn't mean what some people think it means.
Amen to that!
Because you didn't answer honestly.
I am willing to change my mind, but "Because the bible tells me so" is simply not enough to do it.
Oh puleeeze. Now you insult me.
You set the standard to a childish level, then claim you are open to the truth if only God himself will descend and show your worthless butt the "proof"! LOL
Ya see, it's just so much easier to say the truth. But, you cannot, so you descend.
I guess I have posted too much on this thread.
That part is true.
I just enjoy debate.
You started by saying that, so no harm done. It is also precisely the reason you should exit. You embarrassed yourself.
Pardon me if I have offended you.
Not to worry. You haven't. I am unoffendable. I'm "posting bulletproof".
I have no problem whatsoever with atheists as long as they are honest. After all, it's not their fault. They can't make themselves believe something they don't truly believe, Ya know?
If they have always been, and they have assigned duties and there is no overlap then you have just described something that is one. Your 42 God's work as one, and seeing that they do not overlap you have described what is in essence One God comprised of 42 sub gods.
So, your best guess leads to the conclusion that there can only logically be one God, not many.
Do you care to back track and chose another answer you made along the way ? (hint=logic will bring you back to one God answer if there is in fact a God. Other conclusions result in absurdities)
How do you know who your mother is ?
Mainline New Testament scholars believe that the Synoptic Gospels--Matthew, Mark and Luke--were written after the fall of Jerusalem to Rome in A.D. 70. Mark was written first, drawing on earlier written and oral traditions. Matthew and Luke drew from Mark and still other traditions. Even conservative scholars recognize an interdependency in the Synoptics. The crucial issue here is when the documents were written. A late date would give more time for legends to develop. Late dates for the Synoptics would also suggest that they weren't really written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
However, although the dates aren't firmly established, good arguments have been given for earlier dating which would strengthen the case for the historicity of the Gospels.
Craig Blomberg, a professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary, provides several arguments for early dates. For one thing, the early church fathers said that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written by the biblical characters we're familiar with. "No competing traditions assigning these books to any other authors have survived," he says, "if any ever existed."{8} For example, in the late second century, one of the church fathers said Matthew composed his gospel before Paul was martyred under Nero in the 60s A.D. Blomberg wonders why the early believers would have attributed these writings to such unlikely candidates as Matthew, Mark and Luke if they were written by others. Mark and Luke weren't apostles. And Matthew didn't have an especially good reputation. "The apocryphal Gospels," Blomberg continues, "consistently picked more well-known and exemplary figures for their fictitious authors--for example, Philip, Peter, James, Bartholomew or Mary."{9}
Another argument Blomberg presents is built upon the date of the book of Acts. Acts ends abruptly with no record of what happened to Paul. Why would Luke have left out that important information if he wrote the book a decade or more after Paul's death? And why would he make no mention of the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70? The likely explanation for the abrupt ending of Acts is that it was written as the events unfolded--in other words, while Paul was still alive (Paul died in the mid-60s). If so, then Luke's Gospel--as the first part of his two-part history--must have been written earlier. Since Luke drew from Mark, Mark must have been written earlier still.
A case can be made, then, that the Synoptic Gospels were written within about 30 years of Jesus' death. This puts them close enough to the events that the facts they report could be corrected if wrong.{10}
On the program, Prof. Dominic Crossan suggested that we are mistaken in taking the Gospels factually because the writers didn't intend us to do so. He says that the issue "is whether the people who told us the stories in the ancient world took them all literally, and now we're so smart that we know to take them symbolically, or they all intended them symbolically and we're so dumb that we've been taking them literally." Crossan takes the second option. He says, "I think we have been misinterpreting these stories because the people who write [sic] them don't seem the least bit worried about their diversity. We see the problem and then we want to insist that they're literal. I think that we have misread the Scriptures, not that they have miswritten them" (FJTC, Pt. 2).
Thus, it is thought that Matthew inflated the importance of the Pharisees in his Gospel because they were so influential later in the first century when the book was written. Mark, they say, presented Jesus as the persecuted one because Mark's community was suffering. And Luke embellished his narrative with "shipwrecks and exotic animals and exotic vegetation" (FJTC, Pt. 2) to make it more in keeping with the novelistic literature of his time.
While it's surely true that each writer chose the events and sayings of Jesus that he thought were significant and which would be meaningful to his audience, this doesn't mean the stories were made up.
Craig Blomberg offers some help here. First, he points to the opening statement in Luke's Gospel where Luke declared his intent to "write an orderly account" of the things he had "carefully investigated . . . from the beginning" (Lu. 1:1-4).{11} Luke wanted to convey the truth.
But were Luke's sources themselves concerned with accurately passing on what Jesus said and did? Some believe that, since the church thought Jesus was returning soon, they wouldn't worry about accurate reporting. But first, it isn't certain that Jesus' followers thought he would return right away. And second, the Israelites before them had kept accurate records of the things prophets said, even though they were expecting at any time the coming Day of the Lord (Joel 2:1; Obad. 15; Hab. 2:3). The words of Jesus, who was considered greater than a prophet, would have held even greater value to early believers. They had a good reason for accurately remembering and reporting.
Prof. Blomberg also says that if the Gospel writers devised the words and works of Jesus to suit the needs of the early church, one might expect that they would have addressed the controversies that arose after Jesus ascended to heaven. The writers could have put in Jesus' mouth answers to these issues. But this didn't happen. Jesus didn't answer the controversy over circumcision; he didn't say whether Christians could divorce non-Christian spouses; he didn't settle the matter of speaking in tongues. It seems that "the first Christians were interested in preserving the distinction between what happened during Jesus' life and what was debated later in the churches."
Thus, contrary to what Prof. Crossan said, we are not "dumb" to believe the Gospel writers intended to give us factual history.
Dominic Crossan gives as an example the accounts in Mark and John of the night before Jesus' death. Mark has Jesus in agony over his coming death, while John shows a more victorious Jesus standing up against the troops which came to arrest him. Crossan concludes, "You have a Jesus out of control, almost, in Mark; a Jesus totally in control in John. . . . Neither of them are historical," he says. "I don't think either of them know [sic] exactly what happened" (FJTC, Pt. 2). Prof. Crossan didn't mention the possibility that, while both writers told the truth, they only told part of the truth. The events recorded in the four Gospels can be put together to form a coherent account of what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane.{12}
Blomberg argues that the Gospel writers were capable of remembering what Jesus said and did, but they weren't concerned to record it all word for word.
On the one hand, the written word was at a premium in the ancient world, so oral transmission was the primary means of passing on knowledge. Thus, people learned to memorize a great deal of information. To illustrate, Blomberg notes that rote memorization was the method of education for Jewish boys, and rabbis were encouraged to memorize the entire Old Testament.{13}
On the other hand, as another conservative New Testament scholar, Darrell Bock, points out, the tradition for reporting history in the Greco-Roman world involved a "concern for accuracy in reporting the gist of what had been said, even if the exact words were not remembered or recorded." Ancient historians didn't take it upon themselves to simply make up speeches and put them in others' mouths.{14} They saw it as their duty to record what really happened or was said. As Craig Blomberg says, certain details could be omitted and the sequence of events could be changed "so long as the major events of the narratives and their significance were not altered" (italics his).{15}
This shouldn't be alarming for those of us who accept the Gospels as God's inspired Word. Even in our own experience we don't, for example, question the word of an attentive and trustworthy person who summarizes a speech he heard. Likewise, if I tell you that our Mind Games director asked me today to participate in an upcoming conference, I'm telling you the truth of what he said, even if I'm not quoting him verbatim. We can't avoid the fact that Jesus' words and deeds are reported differently in the Gospels. Understanding the method of ancient historians, however, assures us that we have been given the truth about Jesus. Accepting Paul's testimony that "all Scripture is inspired by God" (2 Tim. 3:16) assures us that the Gospel writers gave us the truth exactly as God wanted it presented.
We have attempted in this essay to show that the Gospel writers could have written historical truth because they wrote soon enough after the events to insure against legend; that they intended to report what really happened; and that the differences between the Gospels do not make for a valid case against their historical truthfulness. There is no reason, then, short of theological bias, to reject what is in the Gospels, and instead search for the real historical Jesus elsewhere.
While those involved in the program "From Jesus to Christ" have benefited the church by their archeological finds and new information about the world in which Jesus lived, they have erred in rejecting the clear message of Jesus in the Gospels. The Christ of faith is the Jesus of history.
Notes
© 1998 Probe Ministries International
Rick Wade graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a B.A. in Communications (radio broadcasting) in 1986. He graduated cum laude in 1990 from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with an M.A. in Christian Thought (theology/philosophy of religion) where his studies culminated in a thesis on the apologetics of Carl F. H. Henry.
What is Probe?
Probe Ministries is a non-profit ministry whose mission is to assist the church in renewing the minds of believers with a Christian worldview and to equip the church to engage the world for Christ. Probe fulfills this mission through our Mind Games conferences for youth and adults, our 3 1/2 minute daily radio program, our extensive Web site at www.probe.org, and the ProbeCenter at the University of Texas at Austin.
Further information about Probe's materials and ministry may be obtained by contacting us at:
Good for him. Not coincidentally, it's a biblical idea:
Romans 1:19-20since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
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