Bill Powers 2008-06-16

From Summa Bergania

Date: Mon Jun 16, 2008 2:48 pm

From: David Bergan

To: Bill Powers

Subject: On par with other ancient historians

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Hi Bill,

I wasn't consciously trying to categorize Biblical miracles into "those that can be directly disproven by modern science" and "those that cannot" but it's an interesting idea that is certainly related. Personally, I do a lot more picking and choosing. For example, Judges states that Sampson killed 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. We have to agree that science could never disprove that miracle, but I still don't believe it happened. An unarmed warrior killing 1,000 warriors in hand-to-hand combat is simply too far-fetched for me to believe. (My exact line of thinking goes like this: After Sampson killed 100 men without so much as a scratch on him, is it likely that a 101st would engage him in combat? Then think of Mr. 999... probably a 12-year-old kid who just watched 998 of the most respected warriors in his army die - and yet he decides to rush Sampson?) And there are other instances of the Bible where I think the author probably made some exaggerations or distortions. I don't think that a loving God would "harden Pharaoh's heart" and then go on to punish Pharaoh for having a hard heart. It seems more likely to me that the author got carried away in the account and that Pharaoh did all his own hardening.

Anyway, my position is not, "disbelieve the miracles that science can touch and believe the ones it cannot." My position is rather something like "I believe in an omnipotent God, capable of breaking the laws of nature where it is necessary to bring about His Will. Yet His followers and those that record His actions are prone (like all humans) to inaccuracy, exaggeration, and hyperbole. It is up to us to learn about God through every method we have available of discerning truth (science, reason, etc.)." And for the most part, I don't think that many of these issues are truly important... I could be wrong about Sampson or Pharaoh and still cling to Christ for salvation.

But this probably leads to the more important point of your response:

"While such a view may insulate Scripture from science, it does not address the principal problem: whether Scripture is reliable or not, whether the Scripture contains one drop of God's Word. If where science or human endeavor can find evidence for or against what Scripture says, it finds it to be in error, the reliability of Scripture is thrown into doubt."

I personally read Scripture much the same as other texts. On the face, we trust most things we read. When the newspaper tells us about a sermon given by Jeremiah Wright, we don't usually doubt its content. Similarly a certain book might tell us about a sermon given by a carpenter's son, and I would read it in the same light. The major difference between the two is not the manner in which I received the information, but the content. The Sermon on the Mount is the most profound thing I have ever read, and it doesn't matter to me if Matthew was taking down dictation directly from the Lord Most High or if he was merely relying on his own recollection 40-50 years after the fact. Either way, what Matthew attributes to Jesus is the most life-impacting set of words I have ever encountered - higher than anything I've read by Confucius, Buddha, Mohamed, CS Lewis, Billy Graham, Richard Dawkins, Homer, Shakespeare, Jeremiah Wright, or the rest of the world.

To what extent are the words in the Gospels Christ's own words? Hard to know for sure. I'm pretty sure that Jesus's interactions with other 1st century Jews were mostly spoken in Hebrew/Aramaic... and the Gospels are in Greek. So right there I know that even my Greek New Testament is at best a translation.

Therefore, I don't think anything of truth or meaning is lost if we consider the Bible on par with other ancient historians.

'But if the Bible is not God's Word, why should we trust it?'

If I wanted to learn about Emperor Tiberius I might start by reading The Annals by Tacitus. The Annals is not generally considered to be God's Word... so should I therefore throw it out as being wholly unreliable? Absolutely not, because even though there may be a factual error here or there, it would yet be a good place to start learning about my subject.

Similarly, when I want to learn about Jesus, I should read all of the accounts written about Him. And it doesn't take much discernment to understand why the 4 NT Gospels were preserved when you read the other Jesus stories outside the NT. The majority of them portray a vastly different person and were written a century or more after He lived. The NT Gospels, on the other hand, relate first-hand accounts of Christ's ministry... and while there might be a factual error here or there (the order of events has some minor differences between the NT Gospels) by and large, who Christ was, what He preached, and how He died is in strong agreement.

It is not (in my opinion) all that important to squabble about whether Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law before or after His encounter with the Roman soldier who demonstrated faith. (Luke says before, Matthew says after.) What is important is recognizing that Christ has the words of eternal life and we should strive to know as much about Him as possible... even through an imperfect medium. "Where else would we go?" (John 6:68)

I've often suspected that discussions about young earth creation have more to do with a person's a priori beliefs about the Bible rather than the actual scientific evidence at hand (and our discussion isn't necessarily about young earth creationism, but it's close in kind). And almost every time I suggest that the Bible might have historical inaccuracies (or that some historical parts should be understood metaphorically rather than literally), I receive an all-or-nothing type response: "If it has errors, then I should throw it in the trash!"

All throughout my schooling I can't remember a single text book that didn't have at least one typo or factual error. Should they all have gone in the trash, too? Or is it possible to learn from imperfect books?

Kind regards,

David

PS And Hume's argument against miracles is simply a bad argument. His argument states:

A) I should trust what the proportion of empirical evidence establishes. That is, if I see a chunk of lead sink in water 1,000 times, and if on the 1,001st time it manages to float, I would have to deny the account of it floating because the proportion is only 1 to 1000.

B) All purported miracles are of the the type where it happened once, and stands against the rest of the body of empirical evidence.

C) All purported miracles must be denied like the floating chunk of lead.

The problem is that this line of reasoning does not work with other real-world scenarios. Consider:

A) I am a newly hired lottery clerk, and I have seen thousands of powerball tickets, but never a winning one.

B) Someone brings me a winning powerball ticket.

C) Having never seen a winning ticket before, the proportion of empirical evidence stands against accepting this as a winning ticket. I will not give them the jackpot.

Or consider:

A) I am a 90-year-old climatologist studying global temperatures.

B) I have never seen an appreciable rise in global temperatures in all the years I have been monitoring them.

C) This year there seems to be a rise in temperature, but I must rule it out because it conflicts with all my past experience.

Essentially the flaw in the reasoning is this: Hume assumes Nature as being entirely uniform (hence why we rule out the minority accounts), and then uses that assumption to "prove" that there are no miracles. But the question "Do miracles exist?" truly is the same question as "Is Nature uniform?". [A Nature that follows its laws uniformly is one that does not allow for miracles. A Nature that allows for miracles is not strictly uniform.] So by assuming Nature is uniform, he is simultaneous assuming that miracles do not exist. Thus, his "argument" is nothing more than sleight of language to make us think that the two questions are somehow unrelated... and showing us a faux proof.

What Hume does not do (and science could never do) is somehow prove that nature is uniform.

Ironically, in his other works, Hume argued against being able to trust the kind of empiricism he is here assuming. He had stated that just because the sun had risen in each past day was no logical guarantee that it would rise again tomorrow.

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/4t.htm#fact