Cheque or Visa?
Have you ever had a time where went to pay for something with a cheque and they asked you to show them your drivers license and Visa or some other credit card?
If you didn't produce the credit card then they wouldn't accept the cheque.
If I wanted to pay for the item via credit card then I would have pulled out my Visa.
The store has shown you that your cheque is not authoritative enough for them...they want something greater...your credit card.
Your credit card has become the greatest authority in this situation.
For the Christian, the Triune God is the ultimate authority.
The unbeliever is trying to pretend to be the store manager...he is viewing God as a "cheque", a lower authority. And he wants you to prove your ulimate authority with something higher, something greater.
He wants you to pull out the "credit card"...the evidence to "authorize" your ultimate authority.
Here is the catch, when you try to authorize your ultimate authority by something else...whatever you authorize it with then becomes your ultimate authority.
What the unbeliever is really saying is I will believe God just as long as He isn't really God.
As Christians we start with God and move on from there.
God is the proof for evidence... not the other way around.
The unbeliever talks much about "reason", "evidence", "proofs", but he doesn't even begin to explain how any of these things work, in a consistent manner, with his world view.
posted by Dale Callahan at 8:02 PM
8 Comments:
You just can't let this one go, can you Dale?
Let's use the cheque as an example. Why is it accepted by the store, even with your alternate form of ID? Because the store believes that the bank will give them money in return for your signature on the piece of paper. They have faith in the bank, because they have repeated personal experiences that the bank cashes cheques. They have less faith in you because they have no experience with you, so they want an alternative method to obtain their money in the event your account is overdrawn.
In other words, their faith in the cheque is validated by their personal experience. They have observed it with their senses and used reason to come to the conclusion that the bank will put your money in their account when they present the cheque. They don't start with an assumption that there is a Bank.
God can never be proof for anything, because God cannot be proved. You need consistency and universal standards to comfort you in a complex world, so you have chosen to assume a God and assume that your ideas about God are correct. Then you ignore your senses, your rational mind, any evidence to the contrary and "start with God and move on from there". It is a closed system that protects you from reality. That's solves your personal problem, so if that's all you want, fine. You just need to realize that you can't learn, educate your children, or participate in a democracy - your decision.
You should have faith in the God who made you and has clearly revealed Himself to you, but your sin is so great that you love darkness instead.
Your darkness is so great that you sit there, looking down your nose at Christians because "they need consistency and universal standards to comfort [them] in a complex world"...and you don't need these things?
You may say you don't but you CAN'T "live" like it. You know that there are universal laws...you judge Christians like there is a law they should be living up to. You treat logic...not just that I think this way and you think that way, but that there are universal abstract laws of thought.
You use these things by faith...but yours is a blind faith because when asked to "justify" your beliefs, you won't [can't].
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to dissemble an analogy. You take my story and add your own twist...wow, what a sharp mind you have DL.
The point...which you just don't seem to grasp is both of us have "ulimate authorities" this authorities are not proven by anything else, they are "self attesting". But we use these authorities to prove or authenticate everything else.
OK. Let me concede for the sake of argument that I see reason, logic, and observable evidence as ultimate authorities for understanding the world. What is the difference between claiming these methods as authorities and claiming God as an authority?
Primarily the difference is that reason, logic and evidence are methods of understanding the world, not assumptions about its nature. Secondly, these methods do not confer any supernatural status on the conclusions one draws from using them.
God, on the other hand, is by definition beyond human perception and beyond rational knowledge. To use "God" as one's ultimate authority is really to use one's choice of religious writings and one's chosen interpretation of those writings. A Muslim who believes in a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran believes he is just as right as the fundamentalist Christian. Who can say which is correct? What universal methods can be applied to analyze that question?
I would concede that in the realm of the metaphysical or spiritual, rational inquiry is impossible. However, when outside that framework and trying to comprehend the realities of life and the world, faith is of little use. My quarrel with you is that you insist on applying spiritual, supernatural assumptions on temporal, natural questions. The shoe doesn't fit.
I am busy DL I will have to answer you later. Do have a good day.
DL said,
"OK. Let me concede for the sake of argument that I see reason, logic, and observable evidence as ultimate authorities for understanding the world. What is the difference between claiming these methods as authorities and claiming God as an authority?"
At this point it really comes down to making the rubber hit the road. How does the world of "reason and logic" join, so to speak, with this material world?
This was the problem that Plato tried to deal with. How do the world of "forms" and this lesser world join? He didn't have an answer.
God created the world...He governs the world. He is infinite and non material and yet He created a finite, material world. You and I as individual, material beings can think of and use universal concepts because it is the person of God who joins the immaterial and material worlds together.
Because God is Creator, He is also the King over all His kingdom [the whole created order], and because He is King He is Lawgiver and Judge. This is why there can be universal laws...of thought or morality. It is not just one man's opinions over anothers [which is what you are left with in the atheists worldview].
You can say that reason is your highest authority but you can't even explain how you can have a binding law of any kind in your materialistic outlook.
You have sneaky little sayings that I am not going to let you get away with. You said "God, on the other hand, is by definition beyond human perception and beyond rational knowledge."
By who's definition...yours?
The Christian view of God does NOT say that God is so transcendant that He cannot be expressed or known by human language or perception...the Islam view of Allah does say this though.
God spoke the worlds into existence. And God has revealed Himself throughout history...and He has used words. He made our minds and is sovereign over our minds so He can make sure that He gets the message across.
Funny you bring up Plato, who was such a powerful influence on early Christianity. Unfortunately the early church fathers didn't so much solve the problems with Plato's ideas as co-opt them and insert "mystery of God" in the cracks. If you are really interested in the relationship of Platonism, Neo-Platonism and Christianity, I recommend The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman. You'd gain a great deal by reading this excellent book.
God is not the ultimate authority in your system -- the authority is your concept of God based on your interpretation of the Bible. Another Christian who reads the Bible differently can disagree with you on what the ultimate authority says. A Muslim who reads the Koran and believes it to be the inspired word of God obviously will disagree with both of you. The authority is within you.
If God is sovreign over man's mind and able to use our minds at his whim to get his message across, then why hasn't He done a better job? If the answer is that men sin and take control of their minds from God and block his messages, then God isn't sovreign over man's mind.
If you can define and understand God completely with your mind and senses then God is no different from other phenomena in the world. You claim to understand God so well because you do understand your concept of God and have fashioned it to meet your needs. Congratulations.
Plato didn't have the answers!
And as much as the Church shaped her thinking according to Plato rather then the word of God I can understand why her thinking on things would be muddled.
The one of the great metaphysical questions in the history of philosophy has been the problem of the one and the many. Is true reality "oneness" or is it "many".
The doctrine of the Trinity tells us its both. God is One and Many.
Why do you read books DL?
And then why do you encourage me to read them?
When you read the book you are assuming that you are going to be able to interpret the general ideas of the author? Why do you assume this?
And then you pass this info on to me...why do you assume that I am going to be able to interpret it in the way you are.
So why do you allow for interpretation in some things but when it is God's Word all of a sudden "no one can know anything"...all of a sudden you are the skeptic.
Again you unbelieving "slip" is showing.
When I read a book written entirely by a single author, particularly one who is still alive and kicking, I can be quite sure that all the ideas in that book belong to that author. I don't try to "interpret" his work, I look at his scholarship and the conclusions he draws and decided whether they make sense. Freeman's conclusions do make sense and his command of the historical facts is impressive.
The Bible, however, is quite a different thing. Here we have 66 books written my many authors (many of which are unknown) over a period of around 1,000 years ending nearly 2,000 years ago. Then they were copied by hand for over a thousand years by persons unknown of unknowable qualifications. The assembly of these documents into a collection was made by officials in a church hierarchy whose primary motivation was to insure their authority over the book and how it was interpreted. Taking such a book at face value and particularly assuming it is internally consistent is nothing short of folly.
The subject of the origin of the Trinitarian doctrine is mostly concerned with the problems the doctrine caused for believers, not the problems it solved. It solved nothing because it is illogical. Along with the cult of Mary, the Trinity gave the early church a way to appeal to believers in the ancient Greek and Roman religions who found the concept of multiple Gods perfectly normal. Again, I recommend that book to you. You would learn a lot about the Trinity from it as well.
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