The 2 books

Truth in Faith · #1 13th April 2003, 04:45 AM

There is the book of nature and the book of scripture. For the sake of argument, let's stick with the vast collection of writings comprising the Bible. Scripture tells us that humans, the earth we live on, animals, plant life, and the cosmos (meaning order and beauty) are God's creation. The 2 books should be perfectly consistent. Sadly, 1/2 of what is written are lies, misinformation, exaggeration, speculation, or hearsay. Once we do have the straight facts, gathered from the progress of science, those facts should match up perfectly with scripture.

To depart from the above ..
We all start with presuppositions before interpreting evidence. I presuppose that (a) I exist (b) I am sane. Those are fundamental prior to any kind observation. I can then branch out from that and either presuppose (c) the Bible is divinely-inspired and should be taken straightforwardly (d) there is no God, everything arose through naturalistic mechanisms (e) God chose to create the world through the Big Bang and evolution (f) Aliens seeded our planet etc. ... I can choose to believe any # of presuppositions. But there needs to good evidence for believing something (i.e. Why do you believe what you believe?)

What's important is there are valid reasons, legal-historical evidence etc. for believing a particular presupposition. In the case of the Bible there is, to name a few, (a) consistency of message over 1500 years despite being written over different languages and cultures (b) 100's of prophecies fulfilled (c) the message, contrary to other world religions, is the only one that answers the problem of sin (d) it answers why their is an intuitive, global sense of right and wrong (e) substantiated by archaeology to be historically accurate etc.

Some would argue that there is a 3rd book which is our personal response to scripture (e.g. does it ring true?, does it bear the mark of divine inspiration?), worship, prayer, Christian fellowship etc. Although, that kind of evidence is not considered adequate for those outside of the person experiencing it.

Empirical scientific evidence will (a) always be consistent with the Bible (b) never contradict it, if the Bible be true. Otherwise, we are presented with (a) a deceptive Creator (b) no Creator at all (c) we are interpreting scriptures incorrectly.

I don't mention that we might be interpreting the scientific evidence incorrectly because real scientific data never has to be interpreted. It is fact. Speculation, theorizing, extrapolating (some would call it story-telling) are what might be false.

At the end of the day, we have to look at the scriptures, our personal experience, nature, and the scientific evidence and judge for ourselves.

seebs · #2 13th April 2003, 05:00 AM

It seems to me that the two books are on very different topics. If I had a math book, and it had an example saying "Two freight trains are approaching each other on a length of track. One is going 80 miles an hour, and one is going 50 miles an hour. A bird flies back and forth between them.", I don't come to believe that mathematics is a lie just because birds don't do that, nor do I assert dogmatically that birds really do that.

The Bible is a book about souls and God. Nature is a book about the things God made, and how He made them. The details of how He made them are uninteresting spiritually, so the Bible glosses over it with a brief story to set the scene from a *character* perspective, and then gets into the meat of the story - the question of what it is to say that we "sin", or that "this world is good".

The scientific evidence tells us that, in fact, God created things very slowly (by our timescale; a blink of an eye on His), and used complicated mechanisms, which we are only *BEGINNING* to understand. In so doing, it fills in the details, moving God from a cartoon witch with a magic wand into a real being, whose Creation is humbling in its greatness.

Arikay · #3 13th April 2003, 05:18 AM

I basically Agree with you. Except for a few things.

(b) 100's of prophecies fulfilled

We cant lend the bible as much credit on this, because the bible makes, and then fulfills its own prophecies. There are many other books that do the same thing.

(c) the message, contrary to other world religions, is the only one that answers the problem of sin

Not true. First of all, it creates sin, so it will obviously answer it. However, if sin is ruffly translated to "bad and imperfect things in the world" then there are plenty of religions that answer why and how sin came about in the world. And what to do about it.

(e) substantiated by archaeology to be historically accurate etc.

So far I havent seem much archaeology that says its historically accurate. It got the names and places right, however, it is currently lacking evidence for many things. Like the Mass exodus by the slaves. Or the lack of evidence for a global flood.
Lack of evidence doesnt mean that its wrong, however it does mean it still only stays a hypothesis that the events did really happen.

Today at 12:45 AM Truth in Faith said this in Post #1

There is the book of nature and the book of scripture. For the sake of argument, let's stick with the vast collection of writings comprising the Bible. Scripture tells us that humans, the earth we live on, animals, plant life, and the cosmos (meaning order and beauty) are God's creation. The 2 books should be perfectly consistent. Sadly, 1/2 of what is written are lies, misinformation, exaggeration, speculation, or hearsay. Once we do have the straight facts, gathered from the progress of science, those facts should match up perfectly with scripture.

To depart from the above ..
We all start with presuppositions before interpreting evidence. I presuppose that (a) I exist (b) I am sane. Those are fundamental prior to any kind observation. I can then branch out from that and either presuppose (c) the Bible is divinely-inspired and should be taken straightforwardly (d) there is no God, everything arose through naturalistic mechanisms (e) God chose to create the world through the Big Bang and evolution (f) Aliens seeded our planet etc. ... I can choose to believe any # of presuppositions. But there needs to good evidence for believing something (i.e. Why do you believe what you believe?)

What's important is there are valid reasons, legal-historical evidence etc. for believing a particular presupposition. In the case of the Bible there is, to name a few, (a) consistency of message over 1500 years despite being written over different languages and cultures (b) 100's of prophecies fulfilled (c) the message, contrary to other world religions, is the only one that answers the problem of sin (d) it answers why their is an intuitive, global sense of right and wrong (e) substantiated by archaeology to be historically accurate etc.

Some would argue that there is a 3rd book which is our personal response to scripture (e.g. does it ring true?, does it bear the mark of divine inspiration?), worship, prayer, Christian fellowship etc. Although, that kind of evidence is not considered adequate for those outside of the person experiencing it.

Empirical scientific evidence will (a) always be consistent with the Bible (b) never contradict it, if the Bible be true. Otherwise, we are presented with (a) a deceptive Creator (b) no Creator at all (c) we are interpreting scriptures incorrectly.

I don't mention that we might be interpreting the scientific evidence incorrectly because real scientific data never has to be interpreted. It is fact. Speculation, theorizing, extrapolating (some would call it story-telling) are what might be false.

At the end of the day, we have to look at the scriptures, our personal experience, nature, and the scientific evidence and judge for ourselves.

Truth in Faith · #4 13th April 2003, 01:08 PM

Take a look at Daniel's prophecy:
http://www.alotek.com/prophecy.shtml

There's no way that could have been predicted without divine intervention. We know the time of Jesus.

Zadok001 · #5 13th April 2003, 02:07 PM

Truth in Faith:

I believe Arikay covered that when he said that prophecies both made and fufilled in the Bible are not relevant. I can write such a book as well. (Note that given a book of prophecies, I can write a new book talking about them being fufilled. This proves nothing.)

Truth in Faith · #6 13th April 2003, 02:19 PM

You miss the point. It's not 1 "person" writing 1 "book". It's a vast collection of writings from different authors, of course divinely guided and inspired.

Arikay · #7 13th April 2003, 07:26 PM

But who is it that says they are divinely guided and inspired?

Quite a few of the biblical Errancies could have possibly come from the fact that its a bunch of books all in one, and so not all the authors seemed to pay attention (or even knew about at the time) the other books. So we get dates, and ages, and what not that dont quite go together.

Another danger with multiple books is that ive seen false facts and things repeated multiple times in different books and after awhile, they are taken as truths. Only later after study do we find out that all these books were really wrong (yes, im talking about sword stuff.

).

But thats all besides the point. I do agree with what you originally said. The two books are about two different subjects. The earth book is about nature and the bible (spiritual book) is about religion and spiritual stuff. Combined they describe everything to a christian. (at least, thats my opinion.)