A recent conversation about miracles led to me remembering a video I saw long ago, one showing William Lane Craig explain why appearances of Jesus might actually turn people away from theism and Christianity (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IBIsLTQ-GKQ). Craig argues that God is interested in establishing relationships with humans instead of just proving his existence to them--which is true according to Christianity, but there is a major irony in what he says. As one might expect, Craig does not bring it up in the video.
The irony is that to have a legitimate relationship with God 1) you must believe that he exists and 2) God must also actually exist, and in order to know that your belief is not arbitrary or false you must be capable of proving it, so the idea that miraculous appearances of Jesus in the modern world would likely be counterproductive is nonsense! Of course more direct appearances of Jesus, or some other miraculous phenomena, could serve as great contemporary evidence for Christianity.
The issue with appearances of Jesus is not that the subjective responses of some people (their rejection of the evidence) would render these miracles counterproductive, but that a physical appearance of Jesus would not actually serve as verifiable proof of God's existence. If some powerful being appeared to me in a physical form on a regular basis, how could I know that it is indeed Yahweh or Jesus, and not an alien, a time traveler, a sorcerer/sorceress, a shapeshifter, or even a malevolent, deceitful figure like Satan? There is no way that I could distinguish one entity from the others merely from these visitations.
Would such encounters serve as evidence for the existence of Jesus? Absolutely, and very strong evidence at that! Proof? Not at all. Craig does not touch on this at all in the video link (though he may have at some other part of the event), instead resorting to the argument that more miracles would likely drive people away from a relationship with God. But he sidesteps the fact that even if the ultimate goal of knowing about God should be reacting to God in the right relational manner, knowledge of God's existence and nature is still inescapably necessary to pursue that relationship legitimately to begin with.
Man's natural state is at enmity with God (Romans 8:7-8)so even if Jesus were to appear and perform miracles few would even believe him and most of the religious authorities would very likely seek to kill him - in EXACTLY the way people responded to him back then.
ReplyDeleteBut instead, I think the reason he doesn't is because God is Spirit (John 4:24) and that Spirit dwells within the believers that he chose to be predestined (Romans 8:29). And so to truly have a relationship with God is not to see an outwardly appearance but to hear his voice, his rhema, from within and to be led by it (John 10:27), and specifically for those who belong to him - those that he chose.
Notice how Jesus said that he must go so that the Comforter/Holy Spirit (paraklétos) can come to us (John 16:7).
As much as I'm often entertained by William Lane Craig, he seems to be more intellectually rather than scripturally inclined.
Just because humans can sin with every facet of their being does not mean they are incapable of rationality or doing the right thing. And a spirit could still inhabit a body of matter and appear to someone. After all, that’s exactly what my existence is: I am a consciousness/spirit in a material body.
DeleteIf the Bible is true then it will not contradict reason. Reason is self-evident, but the Bible’s veracity is not. Some alleged inner voice cannot prove anything except that you are hearing an inner voice. I am entertained by how fallacious Craig can be, not by his seeming emphasis on logic. I say seeming because not only does he use many fallacies, but he also openly admits he is a Christian because of a private, unverifiable experience. The foundation of his worldview ultimately has little to do with reason and evidence. The intellect is necessary for comprehending what the Bible says to begin with, so to pit one against the other is asinine for that reason alone.
Reason and the capability to make rationale deductions is solely based on one's own ability to perceive and to assign meaning via abstraction. The problem with this, and why we humans tend to get into so many arguments, is that our sensory perception is inherently limited and our method of assigning meaning is supported by a scaffolding of associations based upon our personal experience and profoundly colored by our conscious and unconscious feelings.
ReplyDeleteSo a judge in a courtroom, even if he is deliberately as impartial as humanely possible, will still only be able to assess a situation based upon his limited access of evidence and testimonies. And even then he will have to form a judgement based upon his accepted and adopted values that fall somewhere within the spectrum of justice and mercy.
And so logic despite it's usefulness as a potential powerful tool of cognition is only a construct, and this why in Scripture wisdom rather than knowledge or even understanding is called supreme, or the principal thing. And as believers our wisdom comes from above and because God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts, often times His ways and reasons seem utterly irrational and recklessly foolish. This is the basis of real trust and making the leap of true faith, that is, to do the absolute most seemingly asinine thing just because you believe God has told you to do it.
Consider Abraham being told that he and his elderly barren wife would have a son in their 90s and older. She even laughed - which is why he was named Isaac. And then Abraham was then commanded to murder his miracle son as a sacrifice. Notice that Abraham became the "father of faith" because he obeyed such a harrowing command, which didn't make sense until AFTER the act.
I know that William Lane Craig promotes a "reasonable faith" but the Bible isn't always so cautious with God's commands...after all if an act of faith was entirely and obviously reasonable then it wouldn't require courage at all, right? A logical coward is still a coward, one who's perhaps afraid to live with a bold spirit of powerin the face of orchestrated, or not, trials and tribulations. And the scariest thing is wondering if the voice you have within at any given moment is actually the wisdom of God leading you through the valley of the shadow of death.
My grasp of logic has absolutely nothing to do with my senses. Introspection, deductive reasoning, and comprehension of logical axioms have nothing to do with perceptions of the external world. The reason people get into so many arguments is because most people make assumptions, and very arbitrary ones, and then someone else objects to those assumptions. Perhaps the challenger makes a new one, but perhaps he or she does not. That depends on the person. The only way to have actual knowledge is to not make assumptions. It is the fact that most people assume things out of their respective unintelligence that produces so many gratuitous disputes.
DeleteLogic can’t be a construct because logic exists by NECESSITY. Logical truths can’t be any other way. What do you even mean by wisdom? There is nothing logically impossible about an old couple having a child, though some might assume so out of ignorance of reason. The only things that are impossible are contradictions and violations of logical axioms. As for faith, there is no such thing as rational faith with the definition of faith used by many laypeople and Christian apologists alike. Faith as they define it always involves trust in something that has not been fully proven.
I do not believe that Christianity is true; there is no faith in my worldview by this definition. I believe that Christianity is internally consistent, consistent with external evidences, and that some parts of it cannot be false (for instance, it acknowledges that there is an uncaused cause, that matter exists, and so on) because these are things that can be proven. None of these things mean that the entirety of Christianity is true, though. I am entirely committed to living out Christian values because of these evidences, but that is very different from believing it is true without absolute confirmation. Ultimately, the Bible instructs people to display commitment to God and not belief in the unproven, as commitment is the meaning of the word for faith in the New Testament. If I discovered even a single legitimate discrepancy between a part of Christianity and a logical fact about reality, I would at least abandon that part of Christianity.
Anyone who wants me to change my epistemological stance wants me to both deny provable facets of reality and be unwilling to walk away from Christianity if at some point the parts that could be false are refuted. I will do neither. Courage is not something that can only be displayed when believing in the unproven or operating on a lack of knowledge. Facing a truth, even if you know it with absolute certainty, might still be extraordinarily difficult and painful for some, so the idea that rationality does not require courage is asinine. There is nothing that has ever demanded more courage of me than living and reorienting beliefs around strict logic.