Archive for the ‘Inerrancy’ Category:
Oral Preaching, Written Preaching
The Bible has undoubtedly been one of the most important documents in world history. Many Christian believe it is totally true. However, you have to inquire as to the nature of this book. God did not descend from heaven and hand mankind the Bible, (although some Christians might try to sell something like that). The Bible is not one document; it is a collection of documents. The Bible has many authors, Old Testament and New Testament alike. They were written at different times (over a period of about 1500 years) and for varying reasons.
Over time, various documents were collected together, and recognized as authoritative. They were canonized. There is a lot of debate over this issue (that’s an understatement), and I think it’s an important one. I used to think canonization had to be nice and neat. In reality, it wasn’t until the 4th century that the Bible (in its current form) was all bound up together. I have often wondered why early Christians didn’t deal with the issue sooner, and I think they approached the issue differently.
Magic Eye
Disclaimer: this post is an explanation of Ether Meek’s thesis in her book Longing to Know. Most of the examples are taken from this book as well.
I have dealt with knowing in my two earlier posts about the need for certainty and the three epistemic options. Meek offers this new definition: “Knowing is the responsible human struggle to rely on clues, to focus on a coherent pattern, and submit to its reality.”
Meek argues that knowing is a three step process. First, we look at clues. Then we struggle to looks through the clues, and finally we integrate the clues. Confusing? Let’s look at an example. Think of those “magic eyes.” One is shown above. You are supposed to look at this 2D image and somehow you are able to see something in 3D. Knowing is like coming to see this 3D image. We are given a list of clues to how to see this image (http://www.magiceye.com/faq_example.htm). Then we try to do it ourselves. For the longest time I couldn’t get the stupid thing Read more »
Three Epistemic Options and Garden State
In my last post, I tried to outline how the need for certainty leads us to believe we cannot know anything at all. The bar many of us set for truth is so high nothing seems to be able to pass it. Sometimes it seems reason leads us to believe there is no reason (in the old model’s definition). So what the heck do we do with this?
We really only have three options. We can stay in the old model. We can admit that nothing can be known (what I call epistemic nihilism). Or we can scrape the old model and save knowledge.
Read more »
Certainty and Knowledge
In our culture, the need for certainty is often held up as the norm, skepticism is even praised. The default position in the Scientific Method is doubt. We seem to believe that if something is true, it will be able to stand up to any test (without even questioning the validity of the test itself).
Until a few months ago, I also embraced this view.
I thought truth was something that could be put into nice neat propositional statements and always could be proved with absolute certainty. The first time I read Descartes’ Meditations, I soaked it up like a sponge. I thought that here was how I could know, with absolute certainty, that I exist, and subsequently that God exists. I could build a firm foundation and be certain of anything that comes from this foundation. After all, this foundation was built form the idea of radical doubt. But our need for certainty is misplaced and leads to epistemic nihilism (the inablitiy to know anything, and a sense of loss in this).
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