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[The Revolutionary]

I'd love to explain and defend myself, but I'm not trying to convince you of anything. You, however, are trying to convince me that God talks to you, but not to Joseph Smith, me, Muhammed, Kumare, Tom Cruise, or Charles Manson's invisible pet turtle. I don't think materialism has all the answers or that I have anything at all figured out—you, however, are trying to convince people that you do.

My question was not about The Bible, semantics, or philosophy—it was about you. You believe God talks to you and we don't have any way to figure out whether or not that's true.

We could talk until we die about unfalsifiable claims, but speaking of logical fallacies... that is an enormous waste of both of our time.

[jimwalton]

Well, let me put it this way: I think all epistemological conclusions are tentative. In reality, it's tough to KNOW that we KNOW what we know. The philosophers are right when they call into doubt how we can really know what we claim we know, and that there are so much different ideas about knowledge. I get that. But when we all go home at night, in real life we know that we know things, whether they're philosophically flawless or not. While it almost sounds oxymoronic, we can have certainty that we don't have to have certainty to have justifiable knowledge. We all make certain assumptions, leaps, and adopt beliefs. We all do.

Having said that, what I was trying to say to you is that atheistic naturalism, when you drive it down to its logical depths, is self-defeating, and yet people often lionize the scientific method and despise personal spiritual experience since it lacks scientific verification. And yet my epistemological position is at least consistent with my presuppositions and the evidence at hand. My point is this: the scientific approach I take towards Scripture (culture comparison, linguistic analysis, contextual corroboration, historical correspondence, and literary research) is a scientific method to bear out the true meaning, much as any biologist studying various plant species. I'm not the "meditate till my eyes roll back in my head and get a liver shiver" kind of guy. The Bible, by its own claim, is the revelation of God, and by its study vivified by my powers of reason and enlightened by the presence of the Spirit give me reliable and justifiable knowledge.

But frankly, we haven't even yet gotten to your questions about the Bible and God, and why you've turned away, obviously for some logical and most sensible reason in your mind. Can we discuss some of those?

[The Revolutionary]

Just to clear up the Bible's claims of its own authority: Paul, once, in The New Testament claims that the version of the Old Testament he had is good for instruction because it is "inspired." At no point is there an even arguably non-human decision to canonize the New Testament, though. Beside that... Gah. I'll stop. Let's not. Sorry.

A new Christian friend I've recently met online has recently persuaded me that my recent vilification of faith itself is misguided. Faith is a two-edged sword. It can help or hurt. You and others help, mostly, and The Lord's Army and Anders Brievick and Ken Ham (etc etc) hurt.

You and I are in the same boat, though... we both observe a world full of people who claim to have revelations about metaphysical truths. I've had some revelations myself—as a Christian, later as a Buddhist.... the revelations stopped, though, as soon as I learned neurophysiology. Then I finally had an explanation of how I could have deep spiritual insights no matter whose nonsense I followed. I miss the revelations and spiritual experiences, but I don't think they were divine communication. I think they were honest, sincere, maybe even helpful proof of psychology and neurology. We need a way to separate wheat from chaff. I don't know where the wheat is yet, but chaff is afraid of being tested by standards of empirical evidence.

My departure from Christianity took place over about 8 years. Before I even considered fully giving up my faith, though, I'd spent most of those years developing a pedagogical and theological approach to scripture that answered all of these questions satisfactorily, as you do for people. I had internally consistent answers that were (nearly) culturally and scientifically feasible. I think there is a way to be a reasonable, well-informed, scientific Christian. Narrow is that way, though, and few are those who find it.

This method of theology I mention also answers my next question I have for pastors and teachers, but we don't need to go there.

[jimwalton]

You're bringing up good points and interesting things to discuss. I hope you hang in there with me.

The authority of the New Testament derives from the mouth of Jesus. Jesus never wrote anything; his transmission of message was purely oral, for an oral culture. He claimed and affirmed the divine source of his words, and the gospel writers claim reliability in the translations and transcription of those words (Jesus spoke in Aramaic; the gospels are written in Greek). The same would be true for Paul. He claims, as do the OT prophets, that the message he preaches is not something he studied or was taught, but that he received by revelation from Jesus (Gal. 1.12). Jesus' teachings were already circulating orally while he was alive, and that continues as the church is founded. Their authority comes from the recognition that they were spoken by the Son of God himself. Jesus, in John 14.26 & 16.13, vested authority in the writings that were to follow. It is on that testimony that the the writings of the gospels are considered to be divine truth, and it was recognized as such from the beginning (Mk. 1.1; Lk. 1.1-4; Gal. 1.12; Jn. 20.30-31; 2 Pet. 1.16; 1 Jn. 1.1-3). And since there were mere years and not hundreds of years between the oral transmission and the written record, there was never any question about these writings and their authors. There are plenty of other places—2 Pet. 1.12-21; 3.1-2—but I don't need to mention them all. As a final point, the NT, in so many places, derives its authority from the OT.

Your observation and comment about neurophysiology is interesting. I guess my response to it is this: just because you can watch my happiness on a MRI, or explain it to me neurophysiologically, doesn't explain anything about my happiness and its emotive reality. Even though it obviously traces through various biological and neurological predictabilities, in essence that has nothing to do with my happiness, doesn't explain it away ("oh, it's not real happiness, it's just electrophysiology circuitry"), and doesn't begin to describe what happiness is. Of course, visions, revelations, and even worship are going to be chartable on brain-reading computers, but I'm not convinced that explains it away, describes that it was nothing but circuitry, or really has anything to do with the reality of spiritual encounters. I would expect spiritual encounters, intersecting our physical bodies, to register on physical evaluative scales. So Mary sees and angel and she's afraid. If you had her hooked up to an MRI, you'd see all the "fear" parts of her brain light up. But what does that say about the (assumed) reality of her vision? Nothing, really, just as lighting up the "happiness" part of my brain doesn't say anything about my delight that my wife just walked in the door and I'm madly in love.

I'd love to keep talking. There's an awful lot more here to be said, and asked.

[The Revolutionary]

Hahaha. NT derives it's authority from the OT, huh? I'm not going there with you. You are saying things I used to say, not things I need to learn.

As for neurology, of course all that is true. Again, I'm not trying to prove a negative. I'm pointing out that Mary, Muhammed, Joseph Smith, Ekhart Thole, you, and I have all had the same feeling of divine presence. The same feeling that we have more truth than mere science can offer. Shit, maybe one or all of us is on to something... but there's no way for me to know that. Jumping from there to Yahweh-alone is a pretty big leap, sir.

Your claims, however, (of both personal revelation and the authority and divine revelation of scripture) are circular, unfalsifiable, and heavily laden with the philosophic burden of proof. Each one of those is its own essay, but honestly, it's not worth it. I'm not going to change the mind of someone who talks to god. Believe god, not me. Makes sense.

[jimwalton]

It's interesting that you accuse me of circular reasoning when you don't impose the same kind of reason on other sources of belief or knowledge. For instance, what about rational intuition, memory, and perception? Can we show by rational intuition or memory that perception is actually reliable? Clearly not. Rational intuition may help you to know the truths of math or logic, but it can't tell you whether or not your perception is reliable. Nor can we show by rational intuition and perception that memory is reliable; and you can't show by perception and memory that rational intuition is reliable. When it comes right down to it, you can't even give a decent, noncircular rational argument that reason itself is even reliable. If you try to mount such an argument, you would of course be presupposing that reason is reliable. Ah, circular reasoning.

Am I accusing those sources of knowledge of being unreliable? Of course I'm not. So why insist, then, that it's irrational to accept religious belief or revelation in its written form (the Bible) because I don't have an air-tight argument for the reliability of the faculty or belief-producing process that gave rise to it? Why are the sources of religious knowledge (that I approach with rational intuition, investigation, perception, and memory) inherently any less reliable than your source of knowledge—scientific materialism (as per my post a few posts ago)? Logically, it's not. Ultimately, there isn't anything but arbitrariness in insisting that any alleged source of knowledge (truth) must justify itself at the bar of rational intuition, perception, and memory? You see, my point with you is that you think you're making perfect sense because (and I see the smirk on your face) you've "done the silly religious thing before." But your logic and reasoning can't play itself through the end, because it's always, at the end of the day, inconclusive and self-defeating. That, my friend, is what you keep shutting in some closet in your mind and you refuse to let it out because it's too great a challenge to your currently adopted world view. When I push your position to its edges, it fails. In an epistemological system where the reliability of reason is assumed (presupposed), of course reason is judged reliable. And yet, amazingly enough, you accuse me of circular reasoning.

Unfalsifiable? One of the uniquenesses of the Christian faith is its evidentiary nature. Christianity is a historical faith. It's the only religion actually grounded in history, given to observable phenomena, and relies on its provability (history, archaeology, geography) as a faith system. No other religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam) is like that. As you know, the NT claims that Jesus rose from the dead. Mystical philosophy? No, just walk to the tomb, see if it's empty, talk to people who saw him, figure it out from the evidence. It's all that way. Did the Assyrians retreat from Jerusalem? Did the Babylonians conquer it? Was Hezekiah a king? It's evidentiary.

Philosophical burden of proof? As you say, these are all great conversations. If you're enjoying the interaction (and I am), I'd be glad to plunge deeper at any point.