Where Faith Comes From in the "moderate" Christian religions

But it doesn't have to be all literally true to convince someone to become a Christian.Consider the following proposition: the Bible is a collection of documents purporting to record human interactions with God. Like any other collection of documents, such as those, for example, relating to the history of ancient Rome, in principle some may be mythical, some fraudulent, some tampered with after they were originally written, some may suffer from lapses of memory on the part of the writer, and so forth.Now, to take a parallel instance, it is not necessary to believe that the documents relating to Roman history are inspired, inerrant, flawlessly transmitted, and so forth, in order to believe that Brutus assassinated Julius Caesar; nor would it be necessary to reject this claim about Caesar if, for some reason, someone had bound together all the purported documents concerning ancient Rome into one volume: one might reject the story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf as a fairy-tale while still thinking that the extant documents were sufficient evidence for the assassination of Caesar.In the same way, the question facing someone contemplating becoming a Christian is not whether every word in the Bible is accurate, inspired, et cetera, but only whether the documents have sufficient historicity to justify the central claims of Christianity, as summarized, for example, in the so-called "Apostles' Creed". If the documents available to us are really sufficient to establish that Jesus died for your sins and rose from the dead, then the fact that Genesis is, at best, an allegory, would not negate that proposition, to which it bears no logical relationship.A non-fundamentalist Christian could therefore point out that a demand for inerrancy and divine inspiration and so forth is setting the bar for Christianity unreasonably high. No other proposition is required to have that weight of authority on its side, so why should anyone except the most tendentious of atheists suggest that it should be a prerequisite for accepting the Christian faith?In summary, it is perfectly possible to come to Christianity through the Bible without believing it to be flawless, just as it is possible to come to believe in other claims, such as that Julius Caesar was assassinated, through study of the extant documents, without believing that all documents relating to the history of ancient Rome are divinely inspired, entirely free from error, et cetera.

Well, I said that only "the most tendentious of atheists" would produce such an argument, and it seems that Bozarth is a worthy claimant of that title.And he is obviously talking hogwash. If Genesis is to be interpreted as a parable rather than literal fact, then it may abolish Adam and Eve as historical personages, but it does not abolish the notion of original sin, since, if it's a parable, then that is the spiritual meaning that it conveys.Indeed, if the book of Genesis didn't exist at all, or if we dismissed it as a fairy-tale with no sort of divine inspiration behind it even considered as allegory, we could still observe that humans in general, and we ourselves in particular, fall short of moral perfection. (And you will note in practice that when evangelists try to persuade people that they are in need of a savior, they don't start by trying to convince their audience that they are descended from Adam and Eve and then go on to prove that they must be morally imperfect on those grounds: because there is a much more direct way to reach this conclusion.)Now, so long as it is true that we are naturally in a state of sin and thereby estranged from God, then we are indeed in need of supernatural redemption to reconcile him to us, and this would be true whether or not God was literally outwitted by a talking snake.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I can define and (to that extent) imagine a perfect circle without supposing that such a thing exists in nature. A theologian would tell you that Jesus was human ...

personally I believe the spirit of scientific inquiry is built into all humans...this is why so many have some belief in scientific knowledge of some sort.Even those who dont believe in evolution, they do believe in something that caused our being, ie God doing magic....this shows that even if one doesn't believe in the results of applying the scientific method, they still yearn for knowledge, meaning and wisdom.

If one had some sort of prior reason, outside of biology, to believe that the universe as a whole was brought into being by an (omniscient) God, then as a consequence of that proposition one would have to believe that we and our evolution were part of God's plan.It is not necessary to add the proposition that he guided our evolution from a temporal point of view. When a computer programmer writes a program to produce fractals, s/he writes the program, puts in some parameters, and presses the START button: we should think the programmer very inferior if s/he had to keep pausing the program and tinkering with the variables.

A theist doesn't believe that God needs to tinker with everything. Having said "Let there be gravity", he doesn't need to intervene to make things fall.Christians are doubtless obliged to believe that God has performed some miracles, but they are not thereby obliged to deny that some things happen by secondary causes.

You believe a lot of stupid things. Your beliefs are not evidence.

No, you are telling a lie. You pretended that evolution today is not "based on the scientific method". Every time you say this, you are spewing falsehood out of your mouth, Which has now been proved by science, whatever a bunch of ancient Greeks thought.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No, but you're close.Remember that an experiment is only an observation made under artificial circumstances.You do not test a theory by experiments, necessarily, but by observations, of which experiments are merely a subset.For example, it is easy to test by observation the proposition that Saturn has rings. But how would one do an experiment to establish this fact?Hence, we test a theory against observations, of which predictions as to the results of experiments form only a subset.Apart from that one error, you have nearly understood how we know that evolution is true.I notice that we are wandering away from the topic of this thread. If you are still confused as to the scientific method, maybe we should start another thread.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Einstein and Heisenberg are actually two different people. This is why they have different names.I can make nothing of the rest of your post: what on earth are you trying to suggest? Perhaps you should indeed start a new thread.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No, you have misunderstood me.The scientific method involves testing hypotheses by comparing their predictions to relevant observations. Hence, when an experiment is relevant, the scientific method suggests that you should perform it.In some cases, however, there are no relevant experiments: consider propositions such as: "Saturn has rings" or "Elephants are bigger than mice" or "The climate of Arizona is dry" or "Porcupines do not breathe fire" or "The ancient Egyptians did not have bicycles" ... or ... well, you get the picture. There are innumerable truths which rest solely on observation, and on which no artificial set of circumstances produced by a scientist can possibly have any bearing.

While there are some relevant experiments in evolutionary biology, the establishing of historical facts can rarely if ever depend on them. If we wish to know whether, for example, pterodactyls are extinct, what can we do except observe the world and notice that we can't find any living pterodactyls? There is nothing we can do in a test tube, or a Petri dish, or, if it comes to that, a particle accelerator, that could conceivably be relevant to the question.

By comparison of predictions with observations, just like everything else.

Which supports the proposition that they are extinct.My point is that there is no conceivable experiment that would bear on this proposition, only observation. And, moreover, not one that anyone has ever made.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Whereas scientists do not share your difficulty.This is because they know about science and you don't. No, that is not what it sounds like. Observation is the opposite of imagination. Because not only can evolution be proved, but fiat creationism can be disproved. By reference to the same evidence.Your question is like asking: "If the proposition that two plus two is four is accepted so easily, why is it so objectionable to accept that two plus two equals five?"Because the two propositions are mutually exclusive, that's why. You have a false premise there. Evolution has been proven by scientific investigation.And that is why it is accepted by scientists who have tossed fiat creationism into the trash basket of failed ideas.