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Monday, September 20, 2010

The Limitations of Truth

I remember as a kid watching some of those exciting car chases in the movies. The good guys would be chasing the bad guys at high speed through the town. The bad guys would come up to traffic, whip onto the sidewalk, and scatter people and (always, it seemed) cafe tables as they roared through. The good guys would have to find an alternate route because driving up on sidewalks and running people over was a bad thing. And then, if the good guy didn't catch the bad guy, he'd have to slam on his brakes and come to a screeching halt inches away from the poor man in the wheelchair, the mother with the baby carriage, or the school kids crossing the street. And it always struck me back then that the bad guys always had the advantage over the good guys. You see, they had less limitations. I mean, they couldn't do things to hurt themselves, obviously, but, being bad, they had no concerns about injuring bystanders or damaging property. That wasn't their problem. They didn't care. Speed limits? What did that matter since they had already committed a felony? No, it sure looked like the bad guys had a definite advantage over the good guys.

A while back I was sitting and talking with a friend who also reads my blog. We were discussing a conversation going on in the comments. He said, "You know you're at a disadvantage, don't you?" "What do you mean?" "Well," he said, "you have to make sense ... and they don't." The "bad guys" definitely seem to have an advantage there, don't they? They're not limited by logic, by truth, by fact, certainly not by that silly old "the Bible is the Word of God" line.

So it is always the case, it seems. It is perfectly plausible that you could argue for whatever is your favorite deviance. Defy reason. Ignore (or twist) Scripture. Forget about facts. Be your own standard of measure. It's far, far easier than all these limitations. Trying to argue a point with valid logic and factual evidence and reasonable lines of thinking, especially if you're using the Bible to do it ... now that is hard work. It's far easier to avoid all that and come to the conclusion you desire.

Of course, there is one other consideration. That "far easier" way generally leads to the wrong conclusion. But, hey, that shouldn't be a problem, right? I mean, that whole pesky "truth" thing, by its nature, eliminates everything that is false. Who wants to be that narrow-minded?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is for this reason that I have slowed down in the number of posts. I'm trying to be more logical, well thought out and factual. That is hard work, but I think, in the long run, well worth it.

I'm to the point now that I like to wait a day or two before posting. Not always, but on the ones I'm trying to make my case. For that reason, my blog has dropped in readership. But again, worth it in the long run.

Anonymous said...

This might be a good place for me to make a request. You scolded me once for taking a Bible passage too literally. (I think it was the one telling believers to praise Him in all things.) Would you consider blogging on the subject of how literally you take various stories in the Bible? Did the dry bones of Ezekiel literally dance? Was the first human female made from a rib? Is the universe less than 10,000 years old? Was Lot's wife actually turned into salt?

--Lee

Stan said...

Lee,

When I take the Bible "literally", I take it "as intended". I take metaphor to be metaphor. When Jesus said, "I am the door", I don't even begin the thought of Him having hinges, door knob, etc. It's metaphor. I take hyperbole to be hyperbole. I don't require that, when Mark wrote, "The whole city was gathered together at the door", that every man, woman, child, cat, and dog were standing outside. I can recognize hyperbole when it is intended. Some passages are clearly historical narrative, and I take them as ... historical narrative. Some passages are obviously poetry, and I take them as such. You don't read the two literary types the same. Proverbs are not to be understood in the same sense as passages that are declaring doctrine because the types of writing are intended to be different.

Ezekiel describes a vision he had. I assume it 1) to be a real vision, but 2) have no reason to assume that the events described actually happened. There are lots of these types of things in prophetic passages. As for Genesis, the account is written as historical narrative and I take it as such. I believe the account to be true. You ask a question between how Eve was made and what happened to Lot's wife, however, that I can't answer because there is no biblical account that says that the universe is less than 10,000 years old. There are, indeed, those who have concluded that it is, and they may be right, but it's not a biblical issue because it's not in there. Since the standard approach of geneologies for all of the Old Testament and into the New Testament is to simply list the key points, you can't make a valid timeline from these accounts. You can trace a valid lineage (the point of the account), but you can't make a valid timeline (not the point of the account). There is, for instance, no reason to think that the famous (and sometimes tedious) "begats" meant at all "so and so and only so and so". Females were typically neglected in geneologies. People without significant points to the line were often skipped in the listings. So the claim "The universe is less than 10,000 years old" is not a claim from the Bible.

Do I actually believe that miracles happen? Yes, of course. If there is a Being who is outside of nature (the definition of "supernatural"), actually made the physical universe we see, and possesses all power, the possibility of Him intervening in that universe isn't remote or illogical. On the other hand, from the purely naturalistic perspective of the atheist, the possibility of the violation of physical laws in the universe is also a given, isn't it? Isn't that the explanation for the singularity known as "the Big Bang"? So atheists can have violations of physical laws, but theists can't?

In answer to your question, I take the accounts literally, that is, as they are written. I take metaphor for metaphor, analogy for analogy, history for history, poetry for poetry, proverb for proverb, and so on.

(And I don't think "scolded" is the right word. There appears to be a position, for reasons I don't fully understand, that says, "You cannot take the Bible in any reasonable sense like you do when you read any other form of literature." Seems like an unfair position to me.)

Anonymous said...

Thanks, as always, for taking the time to reply to me.

The only follow-up I might ask for is regarding this: “Since the standard approach of geneologies for all of the Old Testament and into the New Testament is to simply list the key points, you can't make a valid timeline from these accounts.”

My question to you is whether the Bible itself explicitly says that to the reader, or whether it is something more like a tradition in some churches to view the genealogies that way, i.e. to see them abridged versions of the literal truth.

--Lee

Stan said...

For such a statement to be true, would it be required that it be explicitly stated? (I'm picturing a notation at the bottom of the page. "Disclaimer: It is the common practice in our genealogies, to only list significant names and to skip over names at times.")

The idea comes from Jewish scholars who assure us that such was the case and from biblical scholars who point out that it was a common practice. No one bats an eye, for instance, when the claim is made that Jesus was the son of David even though the two were centuries apart. We see it again in explicit terms in the book of Hebrews (chapter 7) where the author explains that "the sons of Levi" came from "the loins of Abraham." Well, of course they didn't, in a purely literal sense. But they were direct descendants, so from the standard Hebrew thinking, the sons of Levi were the sons of Abraham.

Since the Bible does not intend to create a traceable timeline from which to determine the age of the Earth, but rather a bloodline with which to trace a heritage, I cannot imagine why it is that some people make an issue of genealogies and their time. Further, there are reasonable arguments made, both by "old Earth" theists and by "Apparent Age" theists -- that is, by people who believe that 1) there is a God and 2) the Bible is accurate -- that align scientific age-of-the-Earth measurements and the Bible. Therefore, since the Bible isn't trying to make an argument against which its detractors are arguing and since there are reasonable answers even to those detractors, I consider it a non-issue. You won't find me in a debate over the age of the Earth, pitting some perceived "the Bible teaches the universe is 10,000 years old" against the god of "modern science" (because, whether or not you admit it, faith in modern science can be as fervent as religious faith).

Anonymous said...

I was away from the Net for a few days, and just now saw your September 23 comment.

Over the weekend I bought a ‘Discover’ magazine off the shelf. It mentioned a new fossil find of a dinosaur and its clutch of un-hatched eggs. Also over the weekend I heard a Catholic fellow preach that “death entered the world because of sin.” Do you agree with me that an honest reading of the Bible requires there to have been no death or miscarriages (the failure to hatch being the reptilian equivalent of a mammal’s miscarriage) prior to the first humans?

If you should ever come to accept that a dinosaur died, and its eggs failed to hatch, back in Jurassic times, and that said era was in fact more than 100 million years ago, would you still insist that the biblical genealogies are valid enough to be counted as inerrant? Going by memory, Luke connects Jesus to Adam in something like 77 links. That works out to more than a million years, on average, between successive names in Luke’s list.

(I am not really intending to make a long, drawn-out thing of this particular page at your site, but I hope you have the time to reply to today’s comment by me.)

--Lee

Stan said...

The text regarding "death" and "Adam" is in regards to spiritual death. Some people try to tell me that "If you're going to take the book as written, you must affirm that there wasn't anything at all that died prior to Adam's sin." Nonsense. If Adam ate once prior to sinning, he killed something to do it. If a single leaf fell from a tree prior to Adam's sin, something died. The text in question isn't talking about "all deaths of all kinds", but the death with which the life of Christ is contrasted.

This is important on the next topic. The text in question is not about "How many years was it between Adam and Christ?" or any such thing. No one was trying to write about that. It wasn't the aim. Still, it can only be so. Why? Can I assume that, since you sign in as "Anonymous", you must not have a name? No, of course not. That's not the point. No one said it was. But the only possible point of genealogies and all Must be to provide a scientific statement regarding the age of the earth, right? This is precisely why I specify that I read the Bible as "literal" in the sense that "I read it as intended." Why must we make the book about God a science manual? It would be like laughing at that stupid weatherman on the news. What's wrong with him? Why does he talk about "sunrise"? Doesn't he know that the sun doesn't rise? What an idiot! Not the point. We give him the courtesy of understanding what he's saying. We don't offer the same courtesy to biblical writers. Sounds like a bias to me.

Anonymous said...

Stan writes “nonsense” in connection with a literal interpretation of the worldly paradise of the Garden prior to The Fall. Yet I was taught just such a literal interpretation in the church of my youth. They were young earth creationists. They would rebut what you say by claiming that eating a fig or cutting a leaf to use it for some purpose did not make any plant die.

I am tempted to ask that you pray that God will speak to the people in that church (which is a little-known denomination, having less than a thousand members in the Phoenix area back in my youth) in an audible way to tell them that they are taking the Eden story too literally. But I know from earlier discussions with you that you have zero expectation that God will do things like that.

That church also taught that when we die we become spirit beings, and live eternally in an immaterial state as occupants of either Heaven or Hell. On the other hand, ‘Bible Answer Man’ Hank Hanegraaff says that in the afterlife humans are completely physical beings, but with “perfected DNA,” whatever that may be. I am curious if you have thoughts on this.

I’ll try to hold my horses and not make any further posts on this page.

Thanks.

--Lee

Stan said...

I gotta say, Lee, that you have some funny views. (Funny to me, that is.) You decry the idea that the Bible might be infallible but seem to assume that Science is not. I know, I know, that's not your position. Still, if "the Bible says x" and "Science says y" about a particular topic, you assume that the task of the Christian is to align x with y, not vice versa. You just assume that y is true and if the Bible disagrees, it's wrong. Seems funny to me because you think it is crazy to assume that x is true and if Science disagrees, then it's wrong.

(By the way, there is "old earth" creationism. The "millions of years" for the age of the earth isn't a problem for that view because they put Adam at the end of "millions of years" as opposed to your suggestion that there would have to be millions of years between generations. There is also the "apparent age" view that skeptics hate that also explains why science -- lowercase "s" -- sees "millions of years" but the Bible doesn't. Not making either argument; just pointing out that they are there.)

It's funny to me that you would hold God as faulty because He doesn't speak audibly to people like you would want. "Look, if there was a God, He would conform to my understanding and operate my way." That seems funny to me.

I do need to protest your use of the phrase, "too literally". My point was, is, and continues to be that taking the Bible "literally" means taking it "as written". The text and context (the only reasonable method of understanding the Bible "literally") don't support this "Eden story" that says, "Nothing could ever have died prior to the Fall." It's not the point of the text. It doesn't fit with the context. And so it's not taking it "too literally", it's taking it not as written at all -- and that's "not literally enough".

And it's funny to me that it would appear that your entire understanding of what is Christian doctrine and belief is taken from what you hear on the radio and the like. You mention "a Catholic fellow", Hank Hanegraaff, what they taught you at that church. Have you read it for yourself? If you had you'd know that Hanegraaf is simply echoing biblical records that indicate that we will not be spirit-beings in heaven, but physical in some sense. His "perfected DNA" is fanciful, putting it, I suppose, in current vernacular, but the biblical description is "like we are now only better". We will have, according to the Bible, not "spirits" but "glorified bodies".

One other funny view which, I suppose, is extremely common. Like most people you assume that if they claim "Christian" they are "Christian". You wish God would "correct" that church you went to, as if they're certainly God's people, just misguided. I would be more concerned that they have no relationship with God and are misguided about that. Jesus Himself referenced people who believed they were doing His work but, in the final judgment, had no relationship with Him at all. Tares among wheat. Wolves among the sheep. The broad gate versus the narrow. It's something we're not supposed to talk about in modern, polite society, but I'm pretty sure that a perilously small percentage of those who call themselves "Christian" have any genuine relationship with Christ. If that is accurate, an audible voice from God correcting a view on Creation would be pretty useless, since everything else would be twisted as well.

When I say "funny views", I don't mean to be insulting. I'd like to think I mean "funny - strange", as if they're strange views, but they're not. So I don't mean to be unkind. I simply find them at odds with reality as I understand it.

Anonymous said...

I don’t want to wear out my welcome at your blog site, so I try to rein myself in and not write too many comments to you on any given topic. But it is a tribute to your thinking and your writing abilities that I come back again the next day after saying I am going to lay off for a few weeks. :-}

Stan wrote, “You decry the idea that the Bible might be infallible…”

I realize you were making a point about the Bible vs. science, but I can’t resist mentioning something I heard James MacDonald say during his ‘Walk in the Word’ broadcast on Tuesday. I think he was in Revelation chapter 1, and he said, "If it had been translated better it would indicate that the heavenly messenger was not an angel, just a message-carrier.” My grandmother insisted that the King James was an infallible translation. But I have heard other Christians claim that English translations are corrupted versions of the original-language manuscripts. I am curious where you stand on this.

Stan wrote, “Isn't that the explanation for the singularity known as "the Big Bang"? So atheists can have violations of physical laws, but theists can't?”

That reminds me that I have been meaning to explain to you why I don’t label myself as “atheist.” Unless and until science can give a convincing explanation to the question “Why is there something instead of nothing?” I can’t claim to know that the existence of the universe is compatible with there not being a deity of some sort. But the deities I have read about strike me as the inventions of fallible human beings. So I call myself a “skeptic” or an “agnostic.” (Incidentally, check into some of Lee Smolin’s writings if you are interested in highly speculative ideas about what caused the Big Bang. Smolin would probably be the first to admit that some other scientist will probably come up with some better ideas eventually.)

[This website sets a limit to the length of a comment, so I will post the remainder of my comment separately in a minute.]

Anonymous said...

[Part 2 of today’s comment by Lee.]

Stan wrote: “The ‘millions of years’ for the age of the earth isn't a problem for that view because they put Adam at the end of ‘millions of years’ as opposed to your suggestion that there would have to be millions of years between generations.”

There are all sorts of questions that I could bring up about that particular interpretation, but I will stifle myself until some other occasion arises to discuss that. And I realize you are not committing yourself to that view anyway.

Stan wrote: “It's funny to me that you would hold God as faulty because He doesn't speak audibly to people like you would want.”

One phrase that was used a lot by the ministers at the church of my upbringing was, “God wants to have a personal relationship with you.” I cannot fathom a relationship being called “personal” if the dialogue is one-way instead of two-way. Yeah, I know the sort of excuses that believers make when I bring this up, but I am not buying them. Sorry. I guess it does not bother you that He will not actually tell you with a voice in your head how many years ago the Sun was formed, or why He made the muon about 210 times as massive as the electron. But does it not bother you a bit that He also won’t speak to you on doctrinal issues that are not presented unambiguously in the Bible? Just a sampling of what I am talking about: Should females be head pastors? Infant baptism? Immersion or sprinkling? Sunday Sabbath, or Saturday Sabbath? Communion with actual wine? (The church I went to used grape juice.) And then there is the basic issue of the guidance of His servants. The Bible says nothing about Jim Bakker’s Heritage USA, so it is up to God to tell His servants to avoid sending their money to it. A prophet on KXEG Christian radio claims to have an orphanage in India, and he would like you to donate money so that he can take rice and shoes to the kids. Dr. Gary Lawrence on KPXQ Christian radio wants you to be a partner in a real estate opportunity. But God will not tell you if they are on the level, so you have to “lean upon your own understanding” (despite Proverbs warning you not to do that) to figure out, with your limited knowledge of the situation, whether to participate. If you are a sensitive person, tears should stain your pillow at nights over the thought that He knows what you ought to do and how you ought to believe, but He refuses to tell you.

You are welcome to say that your relationship with God is such that you are sure about the answers to doctrinal issues. But keep in mind that whatever side you take on those issues, there are millions of Christians who take the other side. So you would be saying to me that they don’t have a true relationship with Him, and thus they are getting it wrong. Maybe you are bold enough to come right out and say so, I don’t know.

Stan wrote, “Have you read it for yourself?”

I plead guilty to having read the Bible very little since my teen years, and I freely admit I am pretty rusty. For what it’s worth, I was one of only two kids in our Sunday School class who really took the assigned reading (Bible and the quarterly booklet) seriously. I should have mentioned that the “Catholic fellow” I quoted earlier was on Christian radio. I think his program was on KPXQ on Sunday, but I am not certain of that.

As always, fun!

--Lee

[My apologies if I have double-posted while dealing with the excessive length of my post.]

Stan said...

Lee: "My grandmother insisted that the King James was an infallible translation ... I am curious where you stand on this."

The standard claim is not that the King James translation is infallible (or any other translation). The standard claim of infallibility has always been for the original autographs. (Note the source -- infidels.org and one who patently denies infallibility. And even this skeptic from infidels.org points out, "[G]iven the abundance of manuscripts and manuscript fragments, modern textual criticism has been able to reconstruct what the original documents probably looked like.")

On your status as "agnostic" rather than "atheist", I understand that there are very few genuine atheists. Still, I consider it atheism when your approach and perspective is "no god" even if you make no such claim. (Indeed, I consider it practical atheism when theists live as if there is no God.)

Lee: "Does it not bother you a bit that He also won’t speak to you on doctrinal issues that are not presented unambiguously in the Bible?"

Me? No, not at all, for several reasons. First, I don't think they're nearly as unambiguous as people like to think. Second, I don't think that God's intent was to make some of the distinctions you are making. We call it "Christian Liberty", and the idea is that what may be wrong for one person is okay for another (e.g., an alcoholic should drink no alcohol at all, but someone who isn't should be able to have a drink from time to time). Third, it was promised. I even wrote a post about it just this month. And, finally (off the top of my head), it frankly wouldn't help. Jesus told the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man in hell said, "Send Lazarus to warn my brothers!" The reply was, "If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead." So true. In fact, ironically, when Jesus raised the real Lazarus from the dead, the response wasn't, "Well! Looks like we were wrong! He really is who He says He is!" The response was, "This man needs to die." My grandfather died an agnostic. I asked him what kept him from believing in God. His response was always, "Not enough evidence." He told me, "If He would come and visit me, I'd believe." Sadly, I told him, "He did that; they killed Him for it." (And, seriously, you think God owes it to His followers to tell them how or why He did what He did?)

No, I believe there is clear enough information available on matters of importance and vague enough information available on matters of lesser import. I think enough has been provided to make things clear and no amount of "voice from God" stuff would change a single mind. (And, I have to say, it would be a mistake on your part to assume that God does not talk to His people. I've had lots of occasions when I've asked questions and gotten responses. No, no audible voice, but clearly not some manufactured ideas of my own, either.)

Anonymous said...

Stan, thanks for the additional thoughts, and I am off to read the links.

Until we meet again some day…

--Lee