Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Infidel faith-healers

Faith-healers have a popular reputation for being charlatans. However, faith-healers have their secular counterparts. I'm posting some correspondence I recently had about an apostate charlatan posing as a concerned Christian over at the Grace to You blog.

1. Since Ken is an apostate, he's just playing a little game when he proposes harmonistic strategies to reconcile Gen 1-3 with modern science. Clearly he doesn't think the Bible is true. So he's not persuaded by his own arguments.

He's trying to be "helpful" to Christians the way a con-man is trying to be help a retiree out of his life-savings.

2. Playing the Warfield card means nothing to me. Warfield isn't our pope.

3. Years ago, George Marsden wrote an essay in which he pointed out that Old Princeton was caught off guard by the New Geology and Darwinism. Because they were in an apologetic tradition which had always regarded science as an ally, they were ill-prepared when science seem to turn on them. So you get different 19C reactions.

4. "With regard to the literary genre of Genesis 1-3. It fits nicely with the idea of a fable or myth. The fact that it is prose and not poetry is irrelevant. A talking animal is characteristic of fables. One can certainly understand the stories of Genesis 1-3 as teaching theology not history or science. To insist that its literal history demands that one bury his head in the sand with regard to science."

Of course, that's incoherent. He's trying to ride two horses at once: take Gen 1-3 figuratively because it's a figurative genre versus take Gen 1-3 figuratively because it would be unscientific to take it literally.

But those two objections don't go together. If it's a question of genre, then that would be a question of original intent. What's the viewpoint of the original author and his target audience?

But if it's a question of what's "scientific," then that reflects the anachronistic viewpoint of a modern reader.

"Christians in England in the 18th and 19th century claimed that it was sinful for a woman to use anesthesia during child birth because it was an attempt to circumvent the curse on women with regard to experiencing pain during childbirth."

From what I've read, that's an urban legend promoted by infidels:

http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?3490-Materialist-myths-Religious-people-opposed-anesthesia-in-childbirth

Back to Ken:

"The problem is that you current fundamentalists are in the same boat but you don't realize it. You think that the Answers in Genesis crowd and the ICR can rescue you but they are a laughingstock among real
scientists. Its obvious that they have predetermined that their interpretation of the Bible must be true in spite of science. Thus they will reject science to maintain their belief that Genesis is literal history--Kurt Wise is on record admitting this."

Compare that with this:

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."

http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20files/Lewontin_Review.htm

Back to Ken:

"Thus they will reject science to maintain their belief that Genesis is literal history--Kurt Wise is on record
admitting this."

No, that's Dawkins' polemical, garbled version of what Wise actually said.

"I guess Galileo and Copernicus were urban legends?"

Well, it's hardly incumbent on me to defend the church of Rome, but since he brings it up, to my knowledge that is something of an urban legend. Following the tradition of the Greeks, Aquinas distinguished between the natural sciences and the mathematical sciences, and he classified astronomy as a mathematical science. Mathematical sciences didn't have to be true; they only had to be consistent with the observational data. And, as I recall, Cardinal Bellarmine took the same approach when he counseled Galileo. So, on the Thomistic view, favored by Bellarmine, geocentrism wasn't the "true" theory.

5 comments:

  1. Hey Steve did you here Dr. White's comments on the Dividing Line yesterday about the length of your posts? Pretty funny stuff, all in good fun.

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  2. Steve,

    Just saw this post. You said that I was an apostate charlatan posing as a concerned Christian over at the Grace to You blog .

    I was not posing as a Christian. I invite you to read my posts there (which you should have done before you falsely accused me).

    I was pointing out their inaccuracy in saying that a person could not hold to biblical inerrancy and to evolution and an old earth. One of the greatest champions of inerrancy, B. B. Warfield, did just that.

    You call me a "con man." I was not involved in any con. I didn't claim to be a believer at all. There are people knowledgable about the Bible who are not believers.

    Regarding Kurt Wise, here are his own words: Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand (In Six Days : Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, p. 355).

    Regarding the use of anesthesia,
    According to James Tayloe Gwathmey, M.D.:

    the use of anesthetics in obstetrical cases by James Young Simpson met with a vigorous storm of protest. The hostility of the Scotch ecclesiastical authorities to the alleviation of pain in childbirth had its source in an old belief in Scotland. In 1591, for example, a lady of rank, one Eufame Macalyane, was charged with seeking the assistance of Agnes Sampson for the relief of pain at the time of the birth of her two sons, and was accordingly burned alive on the castle hill of Edinburgh; and this view, which stood for nothing kind, merciful, or humane, persisted even to the middle of the nineteenth century (Anesthesia [1918], p. 21).

    Other Christian blogs don't seem to have a problem with me commenting. They have not accused me of being a charlatan, e.g., Apologetics315.com.

    Why you and Fred insist on doing this, I don't know. Why is it the Calvinists that seem to be so quick to judge and say things about people that are not true? Why are some Christians willing to engage the other side and others retreat in fear and insecurity?

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  3. KEN PULLIAM SAID:

    “I was not posing as a Christian. I invite you to read my posts there (which you should have done before you falsely accused me).”

    I already read them. Like I say, you’re a con man.

    “I was pointing out their inaccuracy in saying that a person could not hold to biblical inerrancy and to evolution and an old earth. One of the greatest champions of inerrancy, B. B. Warfield, did just that.”

    That’s by no means all that you were doing.

    Anyway, why do you care about Warfield’s position? You reject young-earth creationism, old-earth creationism, intelligent design theory, and theistic evolution. So you simply bring up the case of Warfield as a wedge tactic.

    “You call me a ‘con man.’ I was not involved in any con.”

    Of course, I don’t expect a con man to admit that he’s conning anyone. That goes with the territory.

    “I didn't claim to be a believer at all.”

    You trade in innuendo to gain a sympathetic ear.

    “Regarding Kurt Wise, here are his own words…”

    You present a very skewed version of his overall position. For example: “I’ve never met a scientist who didn’t try to make the evidence fit his presuppositions,” Dr. Wise said. “We just don’t let ourselves exist in an unbiased state. All human beings have presuppositions, and scientists are human beings… He [Darwin] really was looking for a way to explain it without invoking God. The same holds true for Darwin’s successors today, he said. “They all believe in evolution, and try to interpret their data in light of it. Take the recent discovery of soft, elastic tissue inside the leg bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex. You suggest they subject it to a Carbon-14 test [a means of determining the age of matter that was once alive; it is only applicable over a range of thousands of years, not millions]. Obviously, they won’t. They won’t even look at the data in a way that violates their assumption that it’s millions of years old.”

    “For instance, it struck him [Gould] that the fossil record looked like Creation, and that bothered him. He was struggling with spiritual issues in the real of science.”

    “The truth is that so far neither creationism nor evolution can provide these explanations. In neither case does the theory predict anything.”

    http://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/article.php?ArticleID=114

    “Regarding the use of anesthesia, According to James Tayloe Gwathmey, M.D…”

    I see that you simply ignore the material I referenced.

    “Other Christian blogs don't seem to have a problem with me commenting. They have not accused me of being a charlatan, e.g., Apologetics315.com.”

    Some Christian blogs naively allow Dr. Kevorkian to work the night shift at the nursing home. We have stricter screening for our applicants. Sorry to disappoint you.

    “Why you and Fred insist on doing this, I don't know.”

    Maybe because you’re an enemy masquerading as a friend.

    “Why is it the Calvinists that seem to be so quick to judge and say things about people that are not true?”

    It doesn’t take any alacrity of judgment to finger a militant apostate. You’re a recruiter for your godless suicide cult. That’s what atheism is: a suicide cult.

    “Why are some Christians willing to engage the other side and others retreat in fear and insecurity?”

    Far from retreating, I’ve held my ground.

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  4. Steve,

    You are like the person that Jack Nicholson is speaking of in the famous movie clip: You can't handle the truth . Thus, you resort to ad hominem attacks. That indicates insecurity in your beliefs.

    Thats fine if you want to pretend that all is well in Jesusland because you have presupposed the Bible to be the Word of God. I wouldn't want to disturb your fantasy.

    The only reason I came back to your site is because you slandered me in a post. I guess its okay to just ignore the bible's teaching against slander.

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  5. KEN PULLIAM SAID:

    "You are like the person that Jack Nicholson is speaking of in the famous movie clip: You can't handle the truth . Thus, you resort to ad hominem attacks. That indicates insecurity in your beliefs."

    i) I notice that you don't hesitate to go ad hominem either (see below). That indicates the insecurity of your infidelity.

    ii) I don't limit myself to the "ad hominem." I also present counterarguments.

    "Thats fine if you want to pretend that all is well in Jesusland because you have presupposed the Bible to be the Word of God. I wouldn't want to disturb your fantasy."

    i) Gee, if I didn't know better I'd almost think you were resorting to an ad hominem attack.

    ii) Since I've frequently made my case for Scripture, and responded to objections, your allegation is either ignorant, false, or both.

    iii) Of course you want to disturb what you deem to be a Christian's "fantasy." That's your raison d'etre.

    You want to recruit new members for your godless suicide cult so that you don't have to die alone.

    "The only reason I came back to your site is because you slandered me in a post. I guess its okay to just ignore the bible's teaching against slander."

    i) You ignore my counterarguments.

    ii) Since you disbelieve the Bible, so what?

    If you think I should apply Biblical standards to your situation, then take note of all the "ad hominem" language which Scripture levels against false teachers and apostates.

    iii) Do you think "slander" is morally wrong? If so, why? Do you believe in moral absolutes? If so, what's your secular basis for moral realism?

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