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To: tpaine My my, taking this little thread a little too seriously now, aren't we (un)church lady? 76 Posted on 09/27/2001 22:34:52 PDT by proud2bRC

"Too seriously"? No way.

The Supplicants of Rome are, if they shrink from the fray, cordially invited to take their seats in the peanut gallery.
We IRON CALVINISTS (and here I use Roman apologist Hilaire Belloc's own phrasing to describe us) are ready to rock and roll.

The gauntlet is thrown down:

How can you make a decision without evidence or facts? If you can prove the existence of a 'god', please do so. I await the your second coming, oh proud lord. 75 Posted on 09/27/2001 22:28:21 PDT by tpaine

And the challenge is hereby met.

(the following cribbed from a prior post to Storm)...

You're right, of course, tpaine. It is about the a priori assumption of the Divine.

But this a priori assumption is not, I hasten to add, groundless. It is incontravertibly grounded in an evidentiary Truth-Claim regarding the Facticity of an Historical Event: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This grounding in historical facticity may be correct, or incorrect; but it is certainly not "blind faith". Men will either find the evidence satisfactory, or unsatisfactory; but they certainly have evidences which they may examine (excepting, of course, the Body itself...).

And this Truth-Claim enjoys a compelling virtue -- it "ties up" all the philosophical loose ends left unanswered by Pascal's Wager. The Wager alone can only negatively advise a man of the potential danger of atheism (H.L. Mencken, an avowed atheist, once said he had dreamed he was at the gates of heaven and all he could say was, "I've made a horrible mistake." -- Rev. Oren A. Peterson, Unitarian) but it doesn't provide any affirmative direction whatsoever.

Combine Pascal's Wager with the execution stake on Golgotha, however, and the matter becomes logically binary: It's either a "1" or a "0". True, or False. If the Resurrection happened, all else follows. If it didn't, then the whole of Christian religion may be summarily dismissed and other avenues investigated.

Much of the following freely cribbed from Apologetics Information Ministry...

John Calvin -- It is the height of absurdity to call ignorance tempered by humility, "faith".
Charles Hodge (Calvinist) tells us "...faith involves assent, and assent is conviction produced by evidence, it follows that faith without evidence is either irrational or impossible."
B.B. Warfield (Calvinist) writes: "We believe in Christ because it is rational to believe in Him, not though it be irrational....We are arguing that faith is, in all its exercises alike [religious or secular], a form of conviction, and is, therefore, necessarily grounded in evidence. And we are arguing that evidence accordingly has its part to play in the conversion of the soul."
J. Greshem Machen (Calvinist) notes: "What the Spirit does in the new birth is not to make a man a Christian regardless of the evidence, but on the contrary to clear away the mists from his eyes and enable him to attend to the evidence."

The Calvinist--Biblical Understanding of True Saving Faith:
Saving faith is composed of three elements, which together constitute its essence. They are necessary in the sense that they comprise the very essence or nature of true biblical saving faith. Thus, all three must be present in an individual or they do not -- can not -- possess saving faith.

Notitia: the Data, Evidence, or Knowledge
Assensus: to Intellectually Acknowledge as True the Claim, Statement, or Proposition Put before You.
Fiducia: to Appropriate what One Knows to be True, unto Themselves.

Most modern "Christian" preaching would have you believe that Saving Faith consists of jumping straight to the fiducia without ever considering the notitia and consolidating your own assensus!! Not to put too fine a point on it, that's crap. If your fiducia is unfounded on notitia and assensus, then the classic criticism of Pascal's Wager is unanswerable -- there's no grounds to believe that any one fiducia is better than any other!! And it is not what Christianity claims of itself at all. Christianity claims of itself that is is a rationally superior fiducia. It claims that there is Notitia, and that there is rational grounds for Assensus, and that these are the right and proper grounds for subsequent Fiducia -- that if its claims to notitia and assensus be Invalid, it freely acknowledges the Invalidity of its own fiducia. Saving Faith is rational, confident, and honest Faith -- not pious self-deception.

If one claims that their Faith is independent of any Reason, one might as well believe in the Easter Bunny, and I would warn many of my professing Christian brethren that such an "Easter Bunny Faith" is hardly something to be proud of. It is NOT "Faith". It is merely sanctified Ignorance. And it is not how Jesus Christ himself taught. Observe:

Matthew 12: 22 - 30 -- Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.

And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand: (Argument from Analogy)
And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? (Law of Rational Inference) (Reductio ad Absurdum)
And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges. (Argument from Analogy)
But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you. (Law of Rational Inference)
Or else how can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house. (Argument from Analogy)
He that is not with me is against me; (Law of Non-Contradiction)
and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. (Law of the Excluded Middle)

If Jesus, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, used objective evidence to validate His claims, a fortiori, how much more so for you and me!

Mark 2:1-12 -- And again he entered into Capernaum after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house. And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them. And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four. And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. When Jesus saw their faith (their fiducia to their own assensus of the notitia that they had heard of this "Jesus"), he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. But there was certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only? And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts? Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.

John 2:18-22 -- Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.

John 10:30-38 -- I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.

John 15:24-27 -- If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause. But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.

Charles Hodge (Calvinist) -- Nothing, therefore, can be more derogatory to the Bible than the assertion that its doctrines are contrary to reason. The assumption that reason and faith are incompatible; that we must become irrational in order to become believers is, however it may be intended, the language of infidelity; for faith in the irrational is of necessity itself irrational....We can believe only what we know, i.e., what we intelligently apprehend.

Professing "christians" have been doing a mortal dis-service to the Bible for centuries by preaching the Gospel as a kind of "Easter Bunny Faith" and expecting to be taken seriously.

Calvin called that the very "height of absurdity", and I agree. I have no use whatsoever for Easter Bunny Faith and I honestly fear for my "christian" brethren that perhaps neither does God.

In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God, and the Logic was God.