Posted on 12/28/2011 2:05:21 PM PST by NYer
Another problem is Evangelicalism’s rejection of reason in the face of the onslaught of a neo-pagan philosophy that it could not counter.
Modern materialist reasoning has left many people adrift in a sea of illogic. “Scientisticists” start with the contention that only that is “true” which can be empirically demonstrated or proved with self-contained logic ... and then they insist that spontaneous generation, evolutionary biology, theoretical physics, or (on the fringes) Anthropogenic Global Climate Change is “true,” while asking, “Don’t you believe in Science?!?”
There are many things - even crucial things, to essay a weak pun - which cannot be proved beyond argument either with human reason or through human observation. And yet, some of those things must be true, and other, contradictory, things must be false. The article’s author is right that Christianity stands on the literal accuracy of its historical facts and spiritual contentions. If those claims are not absolutely true, we might as well all play Jedi. However, he’s profoundly incorrect in implying that one can “find out” that the claims of Christianity are not true, in the way one can “find out” about gravity or water-borne disease.
Christianity is losing not just America, but the entire West. The most immediate cause is successful subversion by the movement currently known as cultural marxism. These breaches were codified for mainstream Protestants at the Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930 and for Catholics at the Vatican II Council. Subtle surrenders at these councils gradually sapped the will of the faithful to uphold their respective traditions. The newer Evangelical movement has filled some of the Christian vacuum by combining reclaimed portions of mainstream Protestantism with modern secular Zionism.
I’m all for rational proofs of the faith, but I don’t think you understand how logic works.
You wrote:
“I can prove that Jesus died for my sins.”
Okiedokie. Let’s see if you can do it.
“Jesus = 1 (1 God 1 Faith 1 Baptism 1 Lord etc)
Me = Sinner (I have a sinful nature within - trust me)”
Uh, you’re already telling me that you CAN’T PROVE SOMETHING if you’re saying “trust me” rather than actually providing any proof for your claims.
“I am a living soul because I can worship God.”
That might prove that you exist, but it doesn’t prove God exists.
“I can worship God because I love him.”
That still doesn’t show that God exists.
“Me + Jesus = Forgiven because he gave his blood for my sins”
And your irrefutable truth for this is? If you use any scriptural verses, you will have already failed. People need faith to believe in scripture for what it says about Christ. Something that takes faith cannot be proved by argument.
“The life is in the blood.”
So, you’re now contradicting yourself? Earlier you said, “I am a living soul because I can worship God.” Yet, now you have said life is in the blood. If souls exist (which you have not yet proved), then they don’t have blood because they have no physicality at all. Thus, according to your own logic, souls cannot be living. This is why logical arguments like this should be left to the professionals like St. Thomas Aquinas.
“Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.”
According to what or whom? Again, using scripture will not help you. God actually can remit sins any way He chooses because He’s God. What you are claiming is that God cannot do something that is not self-contradictory. You are limiting God.
If you want to actually learn how to do this correctly, you will have to read Summa Contra Gentiles http://www.amazon.com/Summa-Contra-Gentiles-Book-One/dp/026801678X
I was just going to leave it, because it was obvious that my point, such as it was, had been completely missed.
The first question is ridicules. It’s called faith for a reason. Although the more faith you have, or allow yourself to have, God reveals himself in a very real way.
And Poor (read nonexistent in some cases) cathecesis even in the Catholic Church
Absolutely no catechesis in the Evangilical commmunity and then wonder why their children leave the faith especially when they have no idea why or what they believe.
How about we try 2 out of three?
You are making the same argument that Lewis Mumford made more than 40 years ago. Scientists adhere unconsciously to certain dogmas, yet claim to be free of all dogma. They hope to reduce all knowledge to mathematical formulas. Rigidly they try to fit information into such formulas. Richard Feynman, one of the great physicists of the 20th centuries, noted such rigidity even in highly intelligent colleagues. He himself was the classic hands-on persons, intrigued by the puzzles he rand across, and sometimes inventing his own versions of mathematics to solve such puzzles. For him, math was a tool. For them it was the received truth. For such people, “Data,” the fictional robot, was the essential man, and the brains a kind of super computer. Except that the brain is able to solve puzzles with such incomplete data that would cause the most powerful computer to stall. Sometimes, of course, the solutions are wrong, but if codified they take on an authority that keeps us from seeing truth. But sometimes, what seems like fantasy, is a truth that logic alone could not produce.
That is why the new evangelization of the west will be coming from those Christians coming from nations that the western Christians USED to send to evangelize, from the global south.
mark for later reading
Excellent observations. Perhaps it’s a testimony to the human religious instinct that so many people conceive of “science” as a body of received dogma, requiring the assent of faith, rather than as a procedure for evaluating the accuracy of fact statements.
What else was anyone expecting when we kicked God out of the schools and put everything else ahead of Him in our list of personal priorities?
The phenomenon this author describes was written about extensively by Francis Schaeffer over 40 years ago. I highly recommend Schaeffer’s “Trilogy” for any reader. His work “How than shall we live” is probably most accessible to a general audience. Since Schaeffer deals with Christian philosophy there should be nothing objectionable to Cathohlics in most of his writings. Just as Catholic writer Peter Kreeft appeals to many Protestant readers because his works on Christian philosophy avoid doctrinal issues for the most part.
Thank you for the reading suggestion
I found this interesting in the first paragraph:
However, it is true, in divine matters the natural reason has its failings.
Modern materialist reasoning has left many people adrift in a sea of illogic. “Scientisticists” start with the contention that only that is “true” which can be empirically demonstrated or proved with self-contained logic ... and then they insist that spontaneous generation, evolutionary biology, theoretical physics, or (on the fringes) Anthropogenic Global Climate Change is “true,” while asking, “Don’t you believe in Science?!?”
>>This trend goes back to at least the 14th century and the rise of Nominalism, which undergirds all Protestant, Modernist, and Postmodernist thought.
It created a dualism between faith and reason in Western culture that has never been healed. I think the lack of this sort of dualism in Islam is why secularism has had a very difficult time breaking down Islamic societies.
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