Join Me In Wisconsin This Summer with Leif Hetland and Scott Thompson (Jesus Culture)

Scott Thompson of Jesus Culture

Leif Hetland

 

June 27 - July 3

Green Lake, Wisconsin

Click here for details.

Deeper Bible Study - The Book of Daniel

6/8/15

It’s Monday morning. I’m sitting in Tim Horton’s with a cup of coffee and reading Daniel chapter 1.

I’ve cut and pasted this chapter in Microsoft Word and created a file for my Daniel studies and meditation.

Today… now… I’m just reading ch. 1, and writing any thoughts or questions I have about it.

My method is:

1.   Read the chapter first.

2.   Read the chapter, making notes, writing insights and questions.

3.   Go to the commentary by Tremper Longman (The NIV Application Commentary).

4.   Add additional insights from the commentary (there will, I am certain, be many!).

5.   Decide which rabbit trails to follow to gain deeper understanding of the text.

The False, Nonhistorical Jesus of the Koran

Christianity has had to suffer many foolish ideas in the past ten years, things like: the Jesus-story is simply a reheating of pagan mythologies; there are other "gospels" that tell us about the real Jesus (Thomas, Judas, e.g.); and perhaps the most ignorant one all all, that Jesus never existed.

Just as false and ignorant is what the Muslim Koran says about Jesus. Note this: no reputable scholar looks to the Koran for any truth about the historical Jesus. The Koranic Jesus is just that; viz., Jesus according to one person's 7th century opinion.

William Kilpatrick has this correct when he writes:

"Raising questions about the Koran is a ticklish business, but some questions simply beg to be answered. For example, the Jesus of the Koran doesn't look anything like the Jesus of the Gospels. For that matter, he doesn't look anything like an actual human being...

The Jesus of the Koran is not very convincing. Like the Koran itself, it's likely he would never survive any serious critical/historical inquiry." (Kilpatrick, Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West, K 3812)

A Few Thoughts About the "Amputee Argument" Against the Existence of a God Who Answers Prayers

Warren Dunes State Park in Southeast Michigan

(I'm re-posting this from 2009)

I recently had someone add to my web-post on The Best Arguments Against God's Existence. The addition, for this person, was The Amputee Argument Against the Existence of God. Here are a few thoughts I have re. this argument, not necessarily in order.

1) I have clinical evidence where cancer has completely gone away (therefore it's not "in remission"). The order has been this: 1) Person A has cancer and is being treated for cancer. 2) Person A receives prayer. 3)Tests show that Person A no longer has cancer. Using abductive reasoning (inference to the best explanation), I conclude that probably God answered prayer and healed Person A. NOTE: I've been in touch with two scholars who are writing forthcoming books on divine healing, where these kind of healings following prayers will be documented. (Candy Brown, Testing Prayer: Science and Healing; Craig Keener, Miracles)

2) Of course "cancer going away" is not a "definitive" (= deductive) answer, since all such examples are only either inductively or abductively probable. The same holds for the amputee argument. While it may seem more obvious in the amputee example, it's still only a probableistic argument, and not a deductive (logically necessary) argument.

3) I do not know that there has never been a healing of an amputee. I don't think it's true that if an amputee was healed, somewhere and sometime in the world, it would thereby be "major news." Perhaps a secular press would not report it, perhaps a religious press might. (I say "might" since there are Christians who do not think God heals people.) The fact that I don't know of an amputee being healed offers no proof that no amputee somewhere in the world, sometime in the past 2000 years, received prayer and was healed. I simply don't have epistemic access to the truth value of the statement: No amputee has ever received prayer and was healed. How could a person know that? (Here the absence of evidence does not entail the evidence of absence.) Because I do have epistemic access to a number of healings in response to prayer (as I see it) I resist affirming such a claim, much as, I think, an atheist resists saying that something super-natural happened. But that, then, has to do with noetic frameworks (see below).

4) Surely it's not true that the only instances "where the hand of God could be truly verified" are like healings of amputees. Precisely because all such "verification" will only be probable and not necessary.

5) I think the amputee argument is only convincing to those who already believe there is no God. Note that if that's true, then the argument begs the question. Probably that's why someone like myself who studies, in-depth, philosophy of religion issues such as the problem of evil, remains essentially undeterred by this argument. And, this is probably why some remain unconvinced in the face of my Person A example above. And one is able to remain unconvinced precisely because it's only probably, more or less, that Person A was healed. One's noetic framework comes into play. Mine is theism, and I still find theism more coherent than atheism.

6) Which leads to my last thought: atheism (philosophical naturalism) is fraught with more conceptual problems than theism. I find atheism contains incoherencies that surpass the amputee example such as, e.g., the issues philosopher J.P. Moreland raises re. philosophical naturalism in his Consciousness and the Existence of God. Note that my noetic framework holds even in the face of putative counter-evidence, just as a philosophical naturalist's noetic framework holds in the face of putative counter-evidence. The discussion then becomes over adjudicating between noetic frameworks, which is the kind of work Moreland does in Consciousness, and Stu Goetz does, e.g., in Naturalism. For myself, and I think for others, these are the only meaningful alternatives. (I'm not open, e.g., to Hindu pantheism or Buddhist monism.)

Prayer and Discernment (PrayerLife)

For a really good book on corporate discernment in church leadership see Ruth Haley Barton, Life Together in Christ: Experiencing Transformation in Community. 

Vacationing in Cape May, and Revelation Chapter 4

I saw these earrings in a store in Cape May.

Hello Everyone:

Linda and I are on vacation this week - be back Sun. morning to preach on Revelation chapter 4. This is the second message on this incredible chapter.

I'll be filling in details so as to better understand the text.

As you read and study Rev. 4 this week seek His presence.

PJ

Quantum Indeterminacy

Linda, in Cape May, NJ

Linda and I are taking a week of vacation in Cape May, New Jersey. We do a lot of reading in places like this. This morning I pulled up and read an essay by Princeton's Hans Halvorson on quantum intederminacy - "What Does Mechanics Suggest About Our Perceptions of Reality?" It's very good for those of us who are not physicists but want to understand big ideas. (I make posts like this as much for my own reference as for others.)

Halvorson writes:

"Quantum indeterminacy is the unavoidable fact that not all quantities can simultaneously have determinate values.  For example, if an electron has a location, then it simply has no speed – it is neither at rest, nor is it moving slowly, nor is it moving quickly.  There simply is no fact of the matter about its state of motion.  Similarly, if an electron is in a definite state of motion, then it’s not in any particular place – not here, nor there, nor anywhere."

The radicalness of this is not that if you know the position of the electron then you don't know whether or not it is moving. Quantum indeterminacy holds that if and electron has a position then it is not moving. And, conversely, if and electron is moving then it has no position. Halvorson comments: "What could this possibly mean? No one is quite sure."

Halvorson (and others) reject Heisenberg's theory of subjective idealism; viz., that "the act of “looking” caused the electron to take on a definite state of motion, or a definite position." Halvorson gives other proposed solutions to the quantum indeterminacy dilemma.

Jesus Prayed (PrayerLife)

The Mount of Olives, Jerusalem

Jesus prayed.

I am a disciple of Jesus. I am a Jesus-follower.

Therefore, I pray.

Using the logic of modus ponens:

1. If I am a follower of Jesus, then I pray because Jesus prayed.
2. I am a follower of Jesus.
3. Therefore, I have a prayer life.

Did Jesus "take time" to pray? This is not the way to talk about Jesus and praying. If prayer is talking with God about what the prayee and God are doing together, then "prayer" is a lifestyle of ongoing conversation with God. This entails getting alone with God - just you and God - and conversing.

Jesus prayed out of relationship with God. Prayer is relationship with God, just as ongoing communication with my wife Linda is the relationship. Prayer is a conversation with God.

In Scripture we see that...

a.   Jesus “was often found in prayer, not merely on formal and public occasions, i.e. when attending the synagogue, but informally and in private contexts, sometimes in lonely places.” (N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 149)

b.   Jesus spent time in solitude. Jesus began his ministry by spending 40 days alone in solitude (Mt. 4:1-11).

c.    Before choosing the 12 Jesus spent the entire night alone in the desert hills (Lk. 6:12).

d.   When he heard of John the Baptist's death Jesus "withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place apart" (Mt. 14:13).

e.   After feeding the 5000 he dismissed the crowd and "went up into the hills by himself" (Mt. 14:23).

f.     After a long night of work, "in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place" (Mk. 6:31).

g.    After healing a leper, Jesus "often withdrew to the wilderness and prayed" (Lk. 5:16).

h.   Before his time on the cross he went alone to the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt. 26:36-46).

If our Lord took times of solitary prayer out of his own need to be in conversation with the Father, should we do any less?

Boredom (Merton on...)

"The modern American is kept in terror of boredom and unfulfillment because he is constantly being reminded of their imminence - in order that he may be induced to do something that will exorcise him for the next half hour. Then the terror will rise up again and he will have to buy something else, or turn another switch, or open another bottle, or swallow another pill, or stick himself with a needle in order to keep from collapsing." (Thomas Merton, Contemplation In a World of Action)

Boredom as Anomie

"Boredom" is not having nothing to do; "boredom" is finding no meaning in what you are doing.

A person works for hours at a job and the clock drips down the wall like a Salvador Dali painting. One student sits in class bored out of her skull while another student is fully engaged and time flies by.

I live in a land where there are more things to do than ever and yet many are bored out of their minds. Evidence for cultural boredom is seen in things like: the inability to be still; non-reflective capacity; the Facebook Nation and its many games; oxymoronish appeals that couple money, sex, and power; the mass marketing of diversions; the loss of true happiness (see Aristotle [eudaimonia], and J.P. Moreland); "church" as entertainment of the masses [Thou shalt not bore the people!]; and Kierkegaardian herds of wandering norm-less amoralists entertaining one another with their boredom-fueled evil.

Anomie: a personal condition resulting from a lack of norms. 

Sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote: "The state of anomie is impossible whenever interdependent organs are sufficiently in contact and sufficiently extensive. If they are close to each other, they are readily aware, in every situation, of the need which they have of one-another, and consequently they have an active and permanent feeling of mutual dependence." "Durkheim defined the term anomie as a condition where social and/or moral norms are confused, unclear, or simply not present. Durkheim felt that this lack of norms--or preaccepted limits on behavior in a society--led to deviant behavior."

Anomie = Lack of Regulation / Breakdown of Norms (Ib.)

The bored person lacks life-meaning. The meaning of "meaning" is: fitness within a context. The reason we don't get a joke is that we fail to understand the context. Where there is no context there is no joy. The bored person is out of touch.

Some "churches" have lots of stuff going on yet are boring. Why? They've lost their sense of fitness in the context of the Grand Narrative. THE MOVEMENT is not boring.