Rethinking the αlpha and Ωmega

In the first The Truth Project (hereafter, TTP) session, Dr. Del Tackett asked the question, “What is truth?”  Under my breath, I whispered, “An accurate understanding of reality.”  Ten minutes later, after a montage of various definitions from a rotating cast of interviewees, Dr. Tackett revealed, using Webster’s 1828 definition, what he believed to be the correct answer:  “Conforming to fact or reality.”  It was then that I knew Dr. Tackett had just painted himself into a corner.  While I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Tackett’s assessment of what Jesus’ mission was (“to testify to the truth”; cf. John 18:37) as well as the definition of truth (“conforming to fact or reality”), I found myself, time and time again, calling him out for obscuring the very thing which he attempts to defend in TTP.

One method Dr. Tackett used (consciously or unconsciously only God knows) to obscure the truth from his audience was prefacing much of what he said with the phrase “Most scholars believe …”  To be sure, Dr. Tackett made a number of points, theological or otherwise, with which I agreed.  However, more often than not, the phrase was, when compared to the much larger body of Christian theology, a demonstrably false statement.  It may be an accurate statement amongst those who share Dr. Tackett’s particular theology, which is decidedly not “most scholars,” but his all-too-casual use of the phrase only served to ruin his credibility in my eyes.  When one is executing a “truth project,” I’d venture to say that it’s best not to say things like that.

At the end of the session, I asked the small group, “Why do you believe the Bible is true?”  One individual, formally trained in theology, was taken aback by the question and laughed aloud, “Because the Bible says it’s the Word of God!”  I looked at him and said, “That proves absolutely nothing.  The Book of Mormon makes the same claim for itself.  So does the Qur’an, even more explicitly than the Bible does.”  (I almost added, “Don’t make the Bible a self-licking ice cream cone,” but I thought better of it.)

I followed up with a challenge for everyone to really reflect and think about why they believe the Bible is true.  In other words, how can it be demonstrated to be true?  Are there objective criteria by which we can measure the truthfulness of the Scriptures?  What if, in the process of using these objective criteria, we discover that the Bible contains scientific or historical error?  Should we be suspect of the entire Bible’s veracity, as most Evangelicals claim?  For the sake of argument, let’s assume there is a single, solitary historical inaccuracy in the Bible.  Does that error, then, invalidate the accuracy of the rest of Scripture?  Is the entire thing to be rejected and thrown out based on a single wrong date?  A wrong census number?  A wrong name?  My answer was, of course not.  Others in the group weren’t too keen on that answer.

When I first jotted down these observations on Facebook, one friend of mine, more thoughtful than the “because the Bible says so” individual, used a certain line of logic to prove the truth of the Bible, namely apologist Norman Geisler’s “The 12 Points That Show Christianity Is True”:

Does anyone else see what’s wrong with this list?  I have no problems with points 1 and 2.  However, I can’t help but be skeptical about the use of point 3 in this line of logic.  It’s quite presumptive, no?  Or is there some scientific proof of God’s existence of which I’m unaware?  Don’t misunderstand me:  I am a theist, and a Christian at that.  But you won’t catch me using the “fact” of God’s existence as a linchpin in any argument, especially with skeptics or atheists. 

There are other weak links within these 12 points that require one to make certain assumptions; for example, point 6 (the New Testament is historically reliable).  Unfortunately, accuracy in the recording of certain historical facts (e.g., that Herod was king during the birth of Jesus) says nothing about whether the acts of Jesus really occurred.  In fact, a document can certainly appear to be securely grounded in history, giving the illusion of historicity; just think of modern works of historical fiction that place a completely untrue account within the wrappings of a genuine place and time.  (Even the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Babylonian version of Noah’s Flood, rings “truer” in its conversations and in its descriptions of the ark’s construction than does the biblical account.)  Don’t get me wrong:  I believe that the Gospel accounts are reliable testimonies to the words and acts of Jesus Christ, but there is, in the end, no proof of Jesus’ acts that can be examined under a microscope.  Even the resurrection of Jesus, which I believe to have occurred, cannot be definitively proven.  They are, like all historical events, trusted and assumed to have occurred based on the weight of certain lines of evidence, not “proofs.”

Countering my challenge, a friend of mine on Facebook asked me, “Why do you believe the Bible is true?  [Answer the question] as if it were being asked of you by God himself.”  Honestly, I can’t answer that question because, in my case, the line of questioning is wrong.  For one thing, I don’t believe the Bible is without error.  Point in fact: the Bible possesses and declares an ancient Near Eastern conception of the physical cosmos and how it came into being.  In fact, the Bible is replete with examples of its three-tiered cosmos paradigm in both the Old and New Testaments.  Most Christians don’t even realize it.  Why?  Because their heliocentric paradigm, informed by the findings of modern science, was foisted upon them prior to a serious reading of the Scriptures.  As a result, what they read as phenomenological or poetic language was, to the ancient Hebrews, a scientific depiction of reality!

But I digress.  To me, the Gospel accounts are convincing enough that I believe them to be historically trustworthy.  In concert with my (admittedly subjective) experiences with the living Word and the Holy Spirit, I believe that the New Testament can be relied upon to accurately portray who and what Jesus is claimed to be by those who encountered him.  I don’t require an inerrant document to convince me of who Jesus is and what he did.  Reliable human testimony should be enough to convince, just as reliable human testimony is used every day in our court systems to convince juries of the truth.  Just as was done throughout the early Church, which did not possess any New Testament writings for several decades following Jesus’ ascension.

My final words to the small group were that I hoped each individual would dig deeper into the question of what the foundation of his or her faith really is.  If his faith is based on fiction or faulty reasoning, that is a serious problem.  She may have arrived at the correct destination, but only a fool would walk 24,901.55 miles to reach a goal that was, in truth, one step behind her.

As you may have noticed, this blog has been relatively quiet lately, due in no small part to my Persian Farsi language studies. With every week of the year-long program (squeezed into 18 months due to last year’s ruptured disc), the demands of the program increased and the amount of time to put down on my thoughts on “paper” dwindled. The most I had time for was posting links to online news bites and articles on my Facebook account and occasionally interacting with those that stopped by to comment.

This Tuesday, however, I graduate from the Army’s Defense Language Institute with an AA in Persian Farsi, so I’m happy to announce the imminent “return of the evolutionist”! Now, don’t expect things to heat up too quickly, as I’m in the process of preparing for a move overseas to the lovely Kingdom of Bahrain for a year-long tour, and I fully intend to engage in quality “family time” during my 30-day leave period; but once I get to my new desert home and acclimate to the time change and work schedule, things should start getting busier around here.

The New Year is looking quite promising …

As I was surfing the web during my lunch period, I came across several articles that detailed an amazing discovery. According to these articles, astronomers have discovered a previously undetected ring around Saturn, a find which, I believe, threatens the entire science of astronomy. Now, before I get into why I believe this to be so, please read these brief articles.

In the Telegraph article, Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland, College Park, believes that the discovery of Saturn’s heretofore undiscovered ring answers a mystery regarding one of Saturn’s moons, Iapetus:

The ring also may answer the riddle of another moon, Iapetus, which has a bright side and a very dark side. The ring circles in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of Saturn’s other moons go the opposite way.

Scientists think material from the outer ring moves inward and slams into Iapetus. “Astronomers have long suspected that there is a connection between Saturn’s outer moon Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus,” said Hamilton. “This new ring provides convincing evidence of that relationship.”

Professor Carl Murray, in the BBC article, agrees:

“We’ve got a ‘smoking gun’,” said Professor Carl Murray, a scientist working on the US-European Cassini probe, which is currently touring the Saturnian system. “We know now that this is where this coating at Iapetus [one of Saturn’s moons] comes from. Phoebe is the source. Something has hit Phoebe, produced lots of material that moves around the orbit of Phoebe and then gradually spirals in. We’ve solved several mysteries with this observation,” the UK researcher told BBC News.

Now, for my take on this discovery. The fact that scientists must now revise their theory regarding how many rings Saturn could actually have, what causes certain of Saturn’s moons’ features, in addition to the obvious need to rewrite “scientific” textbooks in order to accommodate the “new discovery,” proves that cosmic evolutionists’ current theories of planetary, satellite, and ring formation is ENTIRELY wrong and should be abandoned in favor of some other theory, preferably one in which an Intelligent Ringer is involved.

Trust me. I’m no fan of PZ Meyers. But his review of Answers in Genesis’ Creation Museum, located in Petersberg, Kentucky, is phenomenal (with the exception of some of his atheist ranting, of course, as well as his unsubstantiated charge of racism on the part of AiG).

Here are a few excerpts:

It’s an ongoing theme throughout the “museum” that there are these two views in opposition, and it’s often stated quite unashamedly that the conflict is between God’s word and . . . human reason. It’s also quite clear that human reason is the enemy to Ken Ham and his crew.

. . .

[Ken Ham] hurtles along heedlessly pretending that the evidence simply doesn’t exist, so he doesn’t need to argue against it, and it’s enough to back up his claims by quoting Bible verses. I suppose it works well for the gullible attendees, but for those of us looking for some ideas with which to wrestle, the impression left is one of credulous vacuity. It’s an empty “museum,” with no real ideas, no evidence, just a collection of props to illustrate an unquestioned myth. When they do make plain statements that contradict the science, they don’t bother to provide a reason to accept their view over the scientific one — reason is the enemy, you may recall. It’s enough to simply declare that this is GOD’S WORD, therefore it is true. Never mind that it is only one narrow interpretation of their god’s awesomely vague words, that many of their fellow Christians can interpret it differently, or that the evidence of nature (which, presumably, is their god’s creation) says something completely different.

. . .

The various exhibits that have gotten a fair amount of press, such as the models of Adam and Eve, the construction of the Ark, the consequences of the Fall, etc., etc., etc., just sit there. There isn’t any evidence for them, other than a few sentences in an old book, so the construction crews in Kentucky just let their imaginations run loose and built improbably scenes out of the fabric of quaint myths. But there they are, solid and visible, and that’s their sole purpose — to solidify Bible scenes in the minds of the faithful.

I believe that pure thinking will do more to educate a man than any other activity he can engage in. To afford sympathetic entertainment to abstract ideas, to let one idea beget another, and that another, till the mind teems with them; to compare one idea with others, to weigh, to consider, evaluate, approve, respect, correct, refine; to join thought with thought like an architect till a whole edifice has been created within the mind; to travel back in imagination to the beginning of the creation and then to leap swiftly forward to the end of time; to bound upward through illimitable space and downward into the nucleus of an atom; and all this without so much as moving from our chair or opening the eyes—this is to soar above all the lower creation and come near to the angels of God.

— A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), Man: The Dwelling Place of God [1966]

This morning, I received word from Gordon J. Glover, author of Beyond the Firmament: Understanding Science and the Theology of Creation, that his 16-part Science and Christian Education video series is finally complete. All 16 of Gordon’s 7- to 11-minute, high-quality videos can be found on his official YouTube channel. (As a result, any links you might have saved previously to access specific videos will no longer work.)