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Author Topic:   Because The Bible Tells Me So
ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 4 of 111 (387647)
03-01-2007 6:00 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Phat
03-01-2007 4:02 PM


Phat writes:
The wisdom of the world is foolishness to God.
I consider that a worthless buzz-phrase.
How can we possibly know what is foolishness to God? The wisdom of the world is all we have.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 13 of 111 (387740)
03-02-2007 11:23 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by Phat
03-02-2007 7:34 AM


Re: Topic Synopsis
Phat writes:
Are these pearls of wisdom...uttered by Jesus Christ and by supposedly spiritually enlightened Biblical authors such as David (Psalms) Solomon (Proverbs) and Saul aka Paul (Many New Testament Books) relevant as a philosophy and as a world view in modern life?
That was my point: they are relevant only if they are relevant to us.
It is not "good philosophy" to take dictation from some external entity (which might not even exist) or to accept the "wisdom" of people who have a vested interest in our obedience. Philosophy (love of knowledge) ought to be about doing our own thinking.
That's not to say that we can't take "pearls of wisdom" as a starting point. But there's no excuse for using Bible quotes as The Answer™.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 22 of 111 (388535)
03-06-2007 11:57 AM
Reply to: Message 18 by Phat
03-06-2007 6:52 AM


Re: Innerrant or Inane?
Phat writes:
My intent within this topic was to examine scripture from a theological perspective more than from a philosophical perspective.
You also haven't made clear what the difference is between the "theological perspective" and the "philosophical perspective".
Of course, the idea of scripture interpreting scripture is labeled as circular reasoning by logicians.
Not necessarily.
What is "scripture"? The Bible™ didn't exist when Paul wrote to Timothy, so that can't be what he meant by "scripture". "Scripture" means anything that is written (and I think we can extrapolate that to things that were written after Paul's time too).
So, according to Paul, The Origin of Species is "useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness".
Limiting one's resources to (a few translations of) The Bible™ isn't "circular reasoning".
It isn't reasoning at all.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 30 of 111 (388615)
03-06-2007 5:41 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by Phat
03-06-2007 3:56 PM


Re: Topic Synopsis
Phat writes:
IMB, theology assumes God a-priori. Philosophy assumes nothing, except perhaps that humans own their beliefs based on logic.
Even if you assume God a priori, how do you know what wisdom comes "from God"? How do you distinguish wisdom that comes "from God" from wisdom that is "made up" by humans?
If you first assume God and then assume The Bible™ as the communication of God's wisdom, what do you have besides a house of cards?
Edited by Ringo, : Changed preposition.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 49 of 111 (388851)
03-08-2007 10:21 AM
Reply to: Message 48 by Phat
03-08-2007 5:57 AM


Re: Innerrant or Inane?
Interesting. When I ask you to clarify the distinction between philosophical perspective and theological perspective, you answer twice. Do two obscurites make a clarity?
Phat writes:
The philosophical perspective questions everything. No fundamental beliefs are allowed to form.
I think "fundamental" beliefs are allowed to form.
They just don't appear a priori fully formed.
Theology takes a stand. Belief is expressed and everything else is compared and contrasted with the belief.
You describe the difference between a theological approach to thinking and a more generic philosophical approach. But that doesn't address the idea of God's wisdom versus human wisdom.
Your definition of theology seems to presuppose that we "know" what to "believe" - we decide what to trust. The question is: how can we know what "God's wisdom" is? How do we decide which version of God's wisdom to believe?
"Because the Bible tells me so" is neither a logical answer nor a satisfying one.
The OP seems to suggest that there are some things in the Bible that "make sense" and that is why we believe them. God's-wisdom-is-not-our-wisdom is not one of those sensible things.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 55 of 111 (388884)
03-08-2007 2:56 PM
Reply to: Message 50 by Phat
03-08-2007 11:50 AM


Re: Innerrant or Inane?
Phat writes:
Even though many Christians embrace it, sing it, and taught it...throwing in an occasional amen for good measure, it was not practical theology when their desires conflicted with the Scripture.
As I've asked you before, how do we even know what The Scripture™ is, in terms of God's wisdom? You're arbitrarily choosing the Judeo-Christian tradition and then you're arbitrarily choosing a Protestant version of The Judeo-Christian Scripture™. The question still remains: how do you decide? How do you convince yourself that you have an inkling of a clue what God's will and wisdom is?
How do you know the real God doesn't want husbands to spread their genes around?
Where does the wisdom that "a good husband is faithful to his wife" really come from? Aren't you really deciding what is "right" first and then projecting your decision onto God?

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 58 of 111 (388888)
03-08-2007 3:37 PM
Reply to: Message 57 by New Cat's Eye
03-08-2007 3:20 PM


Re: Confused in California (and probably a little foolish).
CatholicScientist writes:
I would expect that the person did not think that the theory was false, but that it did not descibe reality in its totality.
I think you're being disingenuous. Around here, we see people saying that "ToE is foolishness" all the time - and they nearly always mean it's false.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 60 of 111 (388896)
03-08-2007 4:04 PM
Reply to: Message 59 by New Cat's Eye
03-08-2007 3:40 PM


Re: Confused in California (and probably a little foolish).
CatholicScientist writes:
I would still contend that they are using the word improperly.
Your contention is noted. However, most of us are using the English language as is, straight out of the box - not your peculiar personal dialect. In plain English, the word "foolishness" does not have positive connotations.
Somebody, I think anastasia, has already mentioned the Greek word translated as "foolishness". Here's what the almighty Strong has to say:
quote:
G3472
moria mo-ree'-ah
From G3474; silliness, that is, absurdity: - foolishness.
quote:
G3474
moros mo-ros'
Probably form the base of G3466; dull or stupid (as if shut up), that is, heedless, (morally) blockhead, (apparently) absurd: - fool (-ish, X -ishness).
I contend that "foolish" means foolish - not incomplete.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 62 of 111 (388901)
03-08-2007 4:28 PM
Reply to: Message 61 by New Cat's Eye
03-08-2007 4:13 PM


Re: Confused in California (and probably a little foolish).
Catholic Scientist writes:
Aren't we talking typing about the Bible though?
Which is why I showed that the Greek word means "foolishness" too.
I don't think it has positive connotations, I just think that it does NOT mean "false".
It means "beyond false", "false to the point of being stupid".
What about in the quote in question? Give us your interpretation.
As I said early in the thread, I think the phrase is meaningless unless we know exactly what God's wisdom is. Paul claimed he knew, but based on his writings, I'm not convinced that he did.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 64 of 111 (388908)
03-08-2007 4:53 PM
Reply to: Message 63 by New Cat's Eye
03-08-2007 4:39 PM


Re: Confused in California (and probably a little foolish).
Catholic Scientist writes:
What if we set God's wisdom as omniscience?
I think omniscience is a useless concept too, and for the same reason.
If the magnitude of the value of God's wisdom is infinite, then whatever value we are at is negligible (foolishness) compared to God's but that doesn't mean that we are wrong (false) in our wisdom.
If human wisdom is all we have, how can it be negligible? The "God's wisdom" that we are talking about is strictly hypothetical unless it becomes human wisdom.
If anything, "God's wisdom" is negligible because we don't know what it is. In the same sense, electrons are negligible unless we figure out how to use them.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 66 of 111 (388911)
03-08-2007 5:15 PM
Reply to: Message 65 by New Cat's Eye
03-08-2007 5:09 PM


Re: Confused in California (and probably a little foolish).
Catholic Scientist writes:
If human wisdom is all we have, how can it be negligible?
When compared to the magnitude of god's, presumed, wisdom.
"Presumed" wisdom is irrelevant, since it is human wisdom doing the presuming.
For all we know, God might be an idiot savant who can create wonderful universes but can't tie His own shoes.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 74 of 111 (388966)
03-09-2007 1:08 PM
Reply to: Message 73 by New Cat's Eye
03-09-2007 12:06 PM


Re: Confused in California (and probably a little foolish).
Catholic Scientist writes:
Well, if we're talking about a quote from the Bible, then we have an idea about which god we're talking about and what his qualifties can be assumed to be.
You can "pre"sume or "as"sume anything you want, but it's still a human presumption or a human assumption. It's human wisdom about what may or may not be God's wisdom.
There can not be any meaningful comparison between our wisdom and God's wisdom unless we know what God's wisdom is. And how can we know what God's wisdom is if our wisdom is so stunted?
"God's wisdom is not our wisdom" disproves itself.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 76 of 111 (389038)
03-10-2007 11:06 AM
Reply to: Message 75 by Phat
03-10-2007 10:26 AM


Re: Confused in California (and probably a little foolish).
Phat writes:
I dunno...its kinda like a talent scout knows talent. hey can just smell it.
That's a good analogy.
There is no absolute standard of what "talent" is. A (good) talent scout has an ability to recognize talent that the general public will enjoy. A bad talent scout will be distracted by his own tastes.
Similarly, a good "wisdom scout" would have an ability to recognize what the general public would perceive as wisdom. A bad wisdom scout would be confused by his own preconceived notions of what wisdom is.
So we're back to square one: talent is what we perceive as talent and wisdom is what we perceive as wisdom.
Im not sure if we are programmed to be in touch with Gods wisdom or not, though.
If we were "programmed" to be in touch with God's wisdom, wouldn't that make our wisdom closer to His instead of farther?

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 79 of 111 (389095)
03-10-2007 4:26 PM
Reply to: Message 78 by New Cat's Eye
03-10-2007 4:00 PM


Re: Confused in California (and probably a little foolish).
Catholic Scientist writes:
I can imagine god's wisdom being so great that the wisdom of the world is negligible compared to it.
Again, what you can imagine/conceive/comprehend is human wisdom. You might be imagining a realy, really, really, really big elephant, but it's still an elephant.
I don't think he was saying that all our wisdom is false. I think he's saying that ours is minuscule.
In this context, what's the difference between false and miniscule?
However miniscule, our own wisdom is all we have. For practical purposes, it's the really, really, really, really big God-wisdom that's irrelevant. The "true" wisdom is the wisdom that works.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 81 of 111 (389243)
03-12-2007 12:17 AM
Reply to: Message 80 by New Cat's Eye
03-11-2007 11:10 PM


Re: Confused in California (and probably a little foolish).
Catholic Scientist writes:
In this context, what's the difference between false and miniscule?
Because we are not wrong. We just don't know it all.
That makes no sense. If we don't know it all, how can we know we're not wrong?
To say that the quote means that we are wrong makes the quote false, IMHO.
Well, I showed that the Greek word translated "foolishness" means "silly", "absurd", "dull", "stupid". Your opinion notwithstanding, there can't be much doubt that that implies "wrong".
For practical purposes, it's the really, really, really, really big God-wisdom that's irrelevant.
To the athiest, yes. To the theist, no.
Theist or atheist makes no difference. Unless a theist knows what God knows, he is in the same boat with the atheist. He has only his own wisdom. (The atheist is just more honest about it.)

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