Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Luke

[John Opinion]

> on the basis of supernatural revelation. There is no other way to know such things.

On what basis do you claim that the Bible is a supernatural revelation? Again, what in the Bible can only have been revealed by a supernatural deity? You still need to give a specific example if you're going to convince me. What convinces you?

> You can't possible be claiming that because it's old, it's false.

I'm not, I'm claiming that because it's old, we can't know whether it's true or false without subjecting it to the process of (scientific) verification. As there are some things in it that simply can't be verified without a time machine, we have no way of knowing either way.

> Most of what we know is not based on demonstrable facts: I like apple pie, I forgive you, I felt chilly yesterday, I saw a beautiful sunset five days ago, Bill is my friend, that wasn’t fair, I'm in love with Denise, I’m afraid of heights, my favorite movie is “Gladiator,” I feel at peace with myself.

All of those things are very easy to demonstrate! I really don't know what you're getting at here. In most cases, I just have to ask you whether you like apple pie, what your favourite movie is, etc. Asking you questions, in these examples, is the scientific experimentation required.

> There are also things that exist, that are coherent, but not scientific: peace, justice, love, memory, reason, values, to name a few.

Those are all abstract concepts, and most of them "exist" in the sense of their being relations between things. Love exists in the sense that people love each other sometimes; values are things people have in relation to other things, etc. Again, very easy to demonstrate.

> Science is not the only way to test truth claims, nor is it always reliable.

Please name another more reliable, or equally reliable, method.

Your examples of truths that can be discovered without experimentation:

> OJ Simpson is guilty.

That hasn't been established as true. He was found not guilty in a court (I think, I'm not familiar with the case!) That means the jury had reasonable doubt that the allegations made against him were correct. The truth is unknown in this case.

> Hillary Clinton is a criminal.

A criminal is someone who has been found guilty of breaking the law. If this happened/happens to Hillary Clinton, then it will be true that she is a criminal. For now the statement is neither true nor false, since it's a claim about the future, not the present.

> Donald Trump is an idiot.

That's a value judgement, and the word "idiot" is too ambiguous to allow for a definitive decision in this case. If the word "idiot" were precisely defined, it would be very easy to establish that this statement is true/false - by observation.

> I am an introvert.
Very easy to establish - again, by asking you and observing your behaviour. That would be the experiment. How else would you do that?

> Beethoven's symphonies are pure genius. Picasso's paintings are filled with meaning.

Value judgements again. "Genius" and "filled with meaning" have no precise definitions. Even if I said I agreed with you, it wouldn't necessarily be the case that we were asserting exactly the same thing. So there is no fact of the matter to establish.

> Belief and knowledge together make up the totality of reality

I don't know what that means. People believe things, and people know things. If you know something, you also believe it (but not vice versa). What are you saying here?

> science cannot have ultimate authority

I'm not claiming it does. I'm claiming it's the best and most reliable method of explaining reality as we find it. Sometimes it makes mistakes. These are then corrected, and we move on based on the new theories and information. Since we cannot test most of the Bible's claims, we just don't know whether or not they're true. We don't have the means to do so.

[jimwalton]

> On what basis do you claim that the Bible is a supernatural revelation?

1. On the basis of its own testimony, which, of course, science or any academic discipline can have no comment on. We get all our biblical theology from the Bible, so it's no surprise that we get our theology of the Bible from the Bible as well. These are called first principles. Some things can only be established by presupposition and self-attestation. Unless we first assume at least something, we can't talk about anything, or reason about anything. We have to at least assume reason, for instance.

2. On the basis of fulfilled prophecy. No religious document and no human experience, is able to make the predictions that the Bible has.

3. On the basis of Jesus' resurrection, a historical event subject to verification.

4. On the basis of people's subject experiences of life-change consistent with what the Bible says.

We'll start with those.

> we can't know whether it's true or false without subjecting it to the process of (scientific) verification

Scientific verification is the right measure for some things and the wrong measure for others, as I've said. Logical positivism (empiricism) has been weighed in the balances and found wanting.

> I'm claiming it's the best and most reliable method of explaining reality as we find it.

It is the best and most reliable method of explaining some of reality as we find it, but not even close to all.

> Since we cannot test most of the Bible's claims

The Bible's claims cannot be tested by science any more than your claims that "Science is the best and most reliable method of explaining reality as we find it" can. You have just made a philosophical statement there, and it cannot be verified by empirical evidence, reproducible evidence, or by any experiment. You have used reasoning, not science, to claim that all knowledge comes by science.