Posted on 05/16/2007 6:54:51 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
I thought Coytoteman said science doesn't DO philosophy? You ever seen a drag queen? Underneath the women's underwear, and the garish make up....., well, you don't have to have TACTILE EXPERIENCE to know what you know, which is that it is just a man who is confused.
So the "scientist" who makes comprehensive statements about the nature of reality, even to the extent of formulating "laws" of science. Here we are ensconced in a tiny corner of our galaxy, Which is just one in billions, and these people pompously assert that "this is the nature of matter/energy...." and "this is how matter/energy reacts under these circumstances"???????
He might claim to be doing science, but he is just a drag queen philosopher who is too confused to know it.
Without a whole gaggle of philosophical assumptions about the universe, the scientist cannot make a statement more comprehensive than "I think this just happened." (Even that statement is philosophically derived, but we will let him pass). A scientist can no more discover the nature of things than a child counting drops out of the faucet can discover the properties of water. The very BEST you can say about a scientist with no philosophical base is that he is a stastician.
Divine revelations are the most certain knowledge for me because I have known God personally for nearly a half century.
This is interesting, because my sister once had a divine revelation of a different sort of God. She was going through some rough times and as she was thinking once she said out loud, "God?" She said she suddenly had the feeling of a Presence, rather bemused, as if it were thinking, "Yeah, I'm about, now carry on." Then it left. The God she experienced is distant and rather uninvolved. He might drop by to say hello, but he's not really interested in a personal relationship and expects us to go through life on our own two feet.
My question: What makes your divine revelation superior to hers?
Well you put science in its place!
Stastician is it? You know that stastics is the only way they have to find meaning in the soft sciences.
God did not make us with a cookie cutter.
The revelations given to John were not like those given to Peter which were not like those given to Paul which were not like the revelations given to doubting Thomas.
Thomas was given a physical revelation, Paul was stopped forcefully in his tracks so to speak, Peter was to first to receive the definitive revelation that Jesus Christ is Lord. And John had a vision, and a very personal relationship with the Lord built on love.
But Jesus Christ chose each one of them. And they are all apostles. They are just different, and that's ok.
That is a good question. Aside from the historically documented personage of Jesus Christ, who claimed to BE God, and told us that the premise behind her "revelation" is false, the traditional Christian response to that is " when God reveals Himself, He is able to authenticate the revelation." Revelatory acts of God are self authenticating. Statements like that either piss off or amuse skeptics who are quick to point out the circular nature of this reasoning, but there it is. It is also a claimed maxim of Christians that the nature of being in cosmic rebellion that prejudices the intellect of sinful man. We consciously and unconsciously subvert the truth about God we CAN see, to the point that we deliberately blind ourselves to who God is and what He is like.
Precisely. There is ultimately no difference between the soft and hard sciences (BS in Chemistry here!), once the illusory claims of rationalism finally bite the dust in our culture.
by the way, thank you for not ragging me on statistician spelling.
Perhaps I was not clear. The God that was revealed to her was not the Judeo-Christian God. In order for your revelation to be true, hers would have to be false.
Mohommed received a different divine revelation. David Koresh received another. Joseph Smith received yet another. Siddh?rtha Gautama received a completely different one. There are thousands of divine revelations in history, and most of them contradict each other.
You place your divine revelation on the highest level of truth, so I’m wondering what methodology you use to determine that your divine revelation is absolute truth and everyone else’s is made up, a weird meaningless synaptic glitch, a drug-induced hallucination, etc.
How do you mean? When a Christian has a religious experience, they feel that this is real, while to the outside observer there's no way to say whether it is or not. Likewise, my sister felt her experience was real, but I have no way of judging whether it was or not.
We consciously and unconsciously subvert the truth about God we CAN see, to the point that we deliberately blind ourselves to who God is and what He is like.
If this is true, why should a Christian's divine revelation be reliable?
Physics here. I find the best debate on scientific method to be in the history department. They are also looking in every disipline for any hint of method that might be of some use in history. They are harsh on their own membership! as evidenced by the popular book of fallacies encountered in history: that mentioned just about every historian who has bothered to publish lately. Science types ought to take a lesson from that and criticize assumptions a little more quickly and readily.
When God is speaking to you, you'll know it. Nevertheless, we are commanded to test the spirits.
The first and most important test is: "Who is Jesus?" (I John 4, I Cor 12)
The second is the fruit and tree test (Matt 7.) A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. The fruits of the Spirit are (paraphrased Gal 5): love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.
The third is the Scriptural (Berean) test (Acts 17.)
But once the Spirit of Christ is alive in you, there is no power in heaven or earth that can come between God and you (except your own free will of course:) Romans 8:9 and 38-39.
When God is speaking to you, you'll know it.
Many people with revelations not from the Judeo-Christian God have been quite sure it was God speaking to them.
Nevertheless, we are commanded to test the spirits.
The tests you speak of begin with the presupposition that it is the Judeo-Christian God that is the true God. I asked how you can tell that divine revelation supposed to be from the Judeo-Christian God is more true that divine revelation supposed to come from some other God.
Have you read Jacob Boehme or William Law?
But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. - I Cor 1:24
As for the ones who have received that first revelation, they need no explanation --- and the others would not accept it anyway.
It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life. - John 6:63
So many people speaking for many different Gods say, my question is how do we tell which God is the true God? Which revelation is the true revelation? You say that your revelation is the true revelation because you've felt it so deeply, but those who have not experienced your revelation are not convinced (some of them have their own revelations which they've felt deeply). If you don't have a way to distinguish your revelation from theirs, you're essentially saying, "I believe it because it's mine!", which doesn't really help anyone else. You're basing your opinion on what absolute truth is on a subjective experience not shared by most people. It's a rather gnostic position to take.
Not for study. For reading.
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