Is belief in the resurrection reasonable?

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Here are a few things skeptics need to explain if they wish to position themselves as motivated by reason in their rejection of Christ:

1. His life and crucifixion is a matter of historic record - Roman and Jewish. It happened.
2. The only people that could have a motive for making up his resurrection were the apostles, most of whom died rather horrible deaths rather than deny that resurrection. While I know that people will die for what they believe in, if the apostles knew that Christ was not risen, why did they die for what they knew to be a lie?
3. His resurrection was witnessed by hundreds, perhaps thousands and referred to by Paul within 3 years of the event in front of crowds of people. If it didn't happen, why don't we have record of objections to Paul's statements?
4. Jesus was a nobody who appeared on the scene for 3 years and was then killed as a criminal, just like thousands of others were killed by the Romans in the same manner. Yet within a few years of his death, a religion in his name based almost exclusively on his resurrection had spread throughout the Roman empire. What was different about this man to all those others who claimed to be the Messiah?
5. The Jewish rulers were scared witless of revolutionary movements and would do anything to head one off at the pass. The Romans took challenges to their authority about as seriously as any group of people in history. Given that there were people running all over the place saying they had seen the risen Christ, if it wasn't true, why not just torture a few into denial of the fact and kill the movement in its tracks? Pliny the Younger re-counted doing just that a hundred years or so later and was astonished to see how many Christians went to their deaths rather than deny what they also knew to be true.

Yes, a belief in the resurrection is reasonable, but I'd love to hear the reasons why it is not.

[Slopeshoulder]

Not so much. What they show is that you confuse your passion for your point of view with knowledge. You have passion, but apparently little knowledge.

You may wish to add to your store of knowledge an awareness that the best divinity schools, busy in the training of christian ministers, scholars, and leaders, all teach in first semester bible classes that prophecy predicts nothing, that all "fulfilled" prophecies are post-rationalizations and retrofits, and that the point of prophecy is rather 1) speaking truth to power, 2) calling the community back to covenant, and 3) framing the ongoing narrative and identity of the community in terms of God's acts in history within that covenant. Christians revisted and appropriated this tradition as a way of framing their own new experience and vision; this was an act of either innovation, inspiration, or theft and destruction, depending on your point of view.

The popular misconception that prophecy is a form of soothsaying and prooftexts about predictions is just that: a popular, but mistaken, notion. It is one of the first things one is disabused of if one seeks knowledge in the form of good professional education.

If you consider one word of this to be "rubbish," I invite you take it up with the divinity schools, their faculties, their peer reviewed journals, and and major associations and conferences. I'll be attending with my wife a few alumni receptions of Yale, Boston University and Boston College/Weston Jesuit divinity schools on the 20th of this month while at the 2011 American Academy of Religion conference and will ask around to see if anything has changed in the scholar-leader consensus in this regard. But I wouldn't hold your breath. You're simply indulging a folk notion, and trying to pass it off as something more. It isn't. It's just a quaint and quirky hobby, IMO like being a Trekkie, having nothing at all to do with knowledge, fact, or history.

[Flail]

If you consider one word of this to be "rubbish," I invite you take it up with the divinity schools, their faculties, their peer reviewed journals, and and major associations and conferences. I'll be attending with my wife a few alumni receptions of Yale, Boston University and Boston College/Weston Jesuit divinity schools on the 20th of this month while at the 2011 American Academy of Religion conference and will ask around to see if anything has changed in the scholar-leader consensus in this regard. But I wouldn't hold your breath. You're simply indulging a folk notion, and trying to pass it off as something more. It isn't. It's just a quaint and quirky hobby, IMO like being a Trekkie, having nothing at all to do with knowledge, fact, or history.

Please remind your friends that Bubba remains alive and well in the heartland; perhaps you could send us some help, we are your 'neighbors' after all; but remember to bring 'lawyers, guns and money'; it could get ugly.

[Mithrae]

Not so much. What they show is that you confuse your passion for your point of view with knowledge. You have passion, but apparently little knowledge.

You may wish to add to your store of knowledge an awareness that the best divinity schools, busy in the training of christian ministers, scholars, and leaders, all teach in first semester bible classes that prophecy predicts nothing, that all "fulfilled" prophecies are post-rationalizations and retrofits, and that the point of prophecy is rather 1) speaking truth to power, 2) calling the community back to covenant, and 3) framing the ongoing narrative and identity of the community in terms of God's acts in history within that covenant. Christians revisted and appropriated this tradition as a way of framing their own new experience and vision; this was an act of either innovation, inspiration, or theft and destruction, depending on your point of view.

The popular misconception that prophecy is a form of soothsaying and prooftexts about predictions is just that: a popular, but mistaken, notion. It is one of the first things one is disabused of if one seeks knowledge in the form of good professional education.

If you consider one word of this to be "rubbish," I invite you take it up with the divinity schools, their faculties, their peer reviewed journals, and and major associations and conferences. I'll be attending with my wife a few alumni receptions of Yale, Boston University and Boston College/Weston Jesuit divinity schools on the 20th of this month while at the 2011 American Academy of Religion conference and will ask around to see if anything has changed in the scholar-leader consensus in this regard. But I wouldn't hold your breath. You're simply indulging a folk notion, and trying to pass it off as something more. It isn't. It's just a quaint and quirky hobby, IMO like being a Trekkie, having nothing at all to do with knowledge, fact, or history.

Documents of 'predictive prophecy' were either written before their fulfillment or they were not. If they weren't written before their fulfillment, they were either intended to be believed as genuine predictions or they were not. If they were intended to be believed as genuine predictions, they could accurately be described as works of deception and forgery, albeit perhaps with a noble agenda. So if 'predictive prophecies' were written after their fulfillment, either A) they were works of deception and forgery, albeit perhaps with a noble agenda or B) they weren't intended to be believed as genuine pre-dictions.

There's undoubtedly some cynical bastards out there who'd question whether many divinity schools and theologians might not have some kind of interest in preferring the latter to the former. And that's cool - we all need to believe in something and make our living somehow. Setting it up as God's own truth, against which any alternative views have "nothing at all to do with knowledge, fact, or history" is a bit rich, however.


Edit: In fact while there are many intelligent, well-educated folk who maintain their Christian faith and believe in non-literal interpretations of much of the bible - some of whom may even claim that this was the intended meaning of the author - on the other hand we've got many intelligent, well-educated folk who lost their Christian faith, usually in no small part because they believed that the literal interpretations could not be true. Having done so myself, I can tell you that losing your faith often is a very painful thing. I wouldn't dream of disrespecting those who maintain their faith and whose interpretations of the bible are non-literal. But to essentially say that many/most of those who've lost their faith did so in large part because they were clinging a 'folk notion,' a "a quaint and quirky hobby" is somewhat offensive, and arrogant in the extreme.


Edit2: I might add that one only has to read Daniel 9:2 to see that the author believed Jeremiah had given genuine predictive prophecy, and Mark 13 to see that Jesus (or Peter, or Mark) believed Daniel and Isaiah had indeed written of events in the future. They thought about prophetic predictions in broadly similar ways to modern Christians, far as I can see. It's simply the possibility that the predictions were literal and wrong or fake which spawns the notion that they were intended otherwise - or in more honest circles, that they were wrong or fake but the important thing is the accompanying message to their community. Not a very sound basis for the insults in your post, in my infinitely humble opinion

[Goat]

Documents of 'predictive prophecy' were either written before their fulfillment or they were not. If they weren't written before their fulfillment, they were either intended to be believed as genuine predictions or they were not. If they were intended to be believed as genuine predictions, they could accurately be described as works of deception and forgery, albeit perhaps with a noble agenda. So if 'predictive prophecies' were written after their fulfillment, either A) they were works of deception and forgery, albeit perhaps with a noble agenda or B) they weren't intended to be believed as genuine pre-dictions.

The so called 'prophecies' that are quoted in the New Testement were often not intended to be prophecies, but instead are phrases that are mistranslated , taken out of context, or shoe horned into place. What Slopeshoulder said is 100% correct.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

Well, not so much. The simplest life we have been able to measure is macrophyllum gentalia, which I believe has around 450 genes, or thereabouts. Knockout experiements have been done on this parasite to see how many genes can be destroyed and still have parasitic life, which will be much simpler than life that can exist without a host. The number is around 250 genes. Your portrayal of life as ranging from the biologically simple to the biologically complex is rooted in entities that are so hideously complex that imaging how they came into being all by their lonesome with all the requisite genes, cell walls, DNA in place to allow any kind of life to exist is a true expression of faith.

I suppose you can posit that life can exist in some form even simpler than this on the early earth. However, you will be hard pressed to explain what that life would look like, how it came into being without help and what the chemistry could possibly be that could have functioned on the early earth to make it possible. Or you can rely on a "just so" story, which is usually what naturalists have to resort to when pressed on the question of origins. It's much easier to fill the room with philosophical smoke when talking about the Cambrian explosion, but rather harder to explain evolutionary beginnings.

OK, you got me. I have never heard of macrophyllum gentalia, and neither has Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo, and every other search engine that I tried. The World Wide Web, only the single greatest source of information in the history of humankind, seems to be completely devoid of information concerning macrophyllum gentalia. Which I find extremely odd. So what kind of a structure does it have, and where might I find information on it?

[Mithrae]

Documents of 'predictive prophecy' were either written before their fulfillment or they were not. If they weren't written before their fulfillment, they were either intended to be believed as genuine predictions or they were not. If they were intended to be believed as genuine predictions, they could accurately be described as works of deception and forgery, albeit perhaps with a noble agenda. So if 'predictive prophecies' were written after their fulfillment, either A) they were works of deception and forgery, albeit perhaps with a noble agenda or B) they weren't intended to be believed as genuine pre-dictions.

The so called 'prophecies' that are quoted in the New Testement were often not intended to be prophecies, but instead are phrases that are mistranslated , taken out of context, or shoe horned into place. What Slopeshoulder said is 100% correct.

lol We've exchanged ideas quite a lot, you and I. I'll grant that usually it's because I've chosen to debate in favour of a somewhat conservative Christian viewpoint or because you've chosen to debate against such. But surely little in Slope's post and nothing in my own post suggest that we're speaking specifically about prophecies about Jesus? Frankly I think it's remarkable that the best 'messianic prophecies' (Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9) are, to my knowledge, not mentioned at all in the earliest Christian writings. (Got I a feeling I'm wrong about Isaiah 53, or at least that there's an NT quote of late Isaiah 52 somewhere.)

Anyways my point is that, religious rivalry aside, to my mind it seems very probable that some later-canonized ancient Jewish texts were intended to be believed as predictive prophecy. Since it's commonly believed that predictive prophecy is implausible, it also seems somewhat probable that folk whose long-term income relies on teaching or writing about these works would have an incentive to advocate interpretation of these texts which does not overtly imply deception and fraud. This, of course, is not something which I have any particular problem with.

What I have a problem with, as mentioned in my two edits and the last sentence of my initial post, is putting forth one's interpretation of these ancient texts; not as a reasonable scholarly possibility; not as a faith-based interpretation of inerrant Scripture - but as an ONLY REASONABLE view against which others are merely "a quaint and quirky hobby." This is simply fundamentalism from the other end; those who disagree are wrong. And to even better make the comparison, it is quite probably a response to modern learning; fundamentalism is entrenchment in literalism and rejection of all alternatives, the above implies an entrenched rejection of any alternative to mythicism!

I'm sure Slopeshoulder will not be surprised by my response, since we've exchanged views on the matter before

[Slopeshoulder]

...but as an ONLY REASONABLE view against which others are merely "a quaint and quirky hobby." This is simply fundamentalism from the other end; those who disagree are wrong. And to even better make the comparison, it is quite probably a response to modern learning; fundamentalism is entrenchment in literalism and rejection of all alternatives, the above implies an entrenched rejection of any alternative to mythicism!

I'm sure Slopeshoulder will not be surprised by my response, since we've exchanged views on the matter before

Actually, I think is 80% of this is a false move, and 20% is a misreading (or a reacton to a mistatement on my part).

As to the 80%, I do not think there is an equivalency between the positions of fundamentalism and non-fundamentlaism; that's deadly, up there with the "theories" found in madness movements like nazism and stalinism. Non-fundamentalism is not another fundamentalism (hardcore atheism and violent anti-clericalism are). Fundamentalism is anti-rational and utterly discredited outside its own fringe intellectual ghetto, whereas the non-fundamentalism is built upon serious and honest scholarship, and by people who are themselves people of faith, ordained, tenured, published, and reviewed, in discourse with the wider intellectual community, especially the humanities and social sciences. That makes them qualitatively different. And a parallel fundamentalist society, complete with their own ghettoized schools and journals, doesn't change that. Rather, it is merely another symptom of their desperation and dishonesty. I may get a lot of things wrong, but I do so in the context participation in a mainstream and credible thought world that comprises everything that is not fundamentalism.

As the the 20%, let me clarify a bit. When I refer to myth, I do so NOT as one who would equate myth with fibs, lies, and tall tales; I abhor that reductionism. Rather I do so as one who approaches myth as poetry, as symbol, as phenomenon that "points to" and "participates in the reality of" (divine) noumenon. I'm all for lectio divina for example. While I am suspicious regarding propositional truth claims regarding what appears to be magical thinking or more likely symbolic language, I do NOT make the absolute claim that divine reality and action do not exist or are not in any way knowable/discernable/experience-able. I differ with both the jeffersonian rationalizers and the demythologizing reductionists in this way (e.g. "the bible is a bunch of stories that have wisdom to share"). Rather, I simply suggest, based on what I was taught by globally renowned scholars, that in this case predictive prophecy is a misreading and a reduction of the prophetic tradition, represents poor biblical exegesis, and is an enormous distraction, and sometimes even the foundation for true and dangerous kookiness. In other regards, I remain faithful to the idea that it all points to something real. But engaging in popular readings of prophecy as predictive, fulfilled, and therefore reliable and instructive in some way remains, IMO, closer to being a trekkie than to being a serious person.

As to how these texts were intended to be read, that's more complex, but my understanding is that a proper reading of that starts with an acknowledgment that the ancient mind did not operate in the same post-enlightenment categories of truth/real/untruth/unreal as we do. The Pilgrim's Progress was probably the last western expression of that mindset. The personal God was the breath and sustainer and presence in all; all was from God. God dwelt among them. The assumption started there. All that happened was of God. The Lord led one to streams, sent rain, delivered enemies, sent children, etc etc etc. Prophecy that spoke of God's actions inherited or reflected this "unitive" mindset. But the modern code-reading, proof-texting approach to prophecy as practiced by literalists misappropriates this and obscures the core messages of the prophectic tradition, reducuing scripture to a manual rather than a locus of spiritual experience and transformation. It is a casualty of the modern turn away from the unitive mind.
Or something like that...

On a side note, I am really rusty, so this is a good chance to flex my chops and see what I still got! I'm pretty sure there's only about 10% left. LOL.

[Mithrae]

...but as an ONLY REASONABLE view against which others are merely "a quaint and quirky hobby." This is simply fundamentalism from the other end; those who disagree are wrong. And to even better make the comparison, it is quite probably a response to modern learning; fundamentalism is entrenchment in literalism and rejection of all alternatives, the above implies an entrenched rejection of any alternative to mythicism!

I'm sure Slopeshoulder will not be surprised by my response, since we've exchanged views on the matter before

As to how these texts were intended to be read, that's more complex, but my understanding is that a proper reading of that starts with an acknowledgment that the ancient mind did not operate in the same post-enlightenment categories of truth/real/untruth/unreal as we do. The Pilgrim's Progress was probably the last western expression of that mindset. The personal God was the breath and sustainer and presence in all; all was from God. God dwelt among them. The assumption started there. All that happened was of God. The Lord led one to streams, sent rain, delivered enemies, sent children, etc etc etc. Prophecy that spoke of God's actions inherited or reflected this "unitive" mindset. But the modern code-reading, proof-texting approach to prophecy as practiced by literalists misappropriates this and obscures the core messages of the prophectic tradition, reducuing scripture to a manual rather than a locus of spiritual experience and transformation. It is a casualty of the modern turn away from the unitive mind.
Or something like that...

On a side note, I am really rusty, so this is a good chance to flex my chops and see what I still got! I'm pretty sure there's only about 10% left. LOL.

Hehe... such is life, I suppose I hope you don't mind if I reply in reverse order.

To my mind the intentions of an author are the first question to ask, since there's scarcely any point in reading unless you're trying to learn his actual meaning. A view which makes a significant distinction between the 'ancient mind' and our own has a lot of ground to cover before making much sense. I agree that in the last couple of centuries (from what I know of such things) more emphasis has been placed on propositional truth than perhaps was previously the case, particularly in professional circles. But I don't think it's anywhere near a universal mindset in our age, and I don't think the ancient mind can be considered significantly different. If memory serves in our last discussion (be damned if I can remember when it was or if you replied) I mentioned the likes of Archimedes, Aristotle and Galen as apparently having essentially the same kind of mindset as what I gather you mean by post-enlightenment minds.

Similarly, even in non-religious contexts I'd hazard a guess that the role you ascribe to God in the ancient mind has not been eliminated, but rather supplanted by 'the economy' and government, technology, society, status and possessions (though of course I may not be fully understanding you there). I suggest that in general people only marginally more view things in genuine true/false terms than was the case two millenia ago; we still focus very much on ourselves and on the stories like 'freedom,' 'democracy,' 'prosperity' and 'love' with which we surround our lives. Like God, these may or may not be good and true tales, but in general terms most folk I've known don't put any particular thought into whether these notions are 'true' or 'false' - they're just ideas to live by.

That view further enforces my guess that the emphases on the 'ancient mind' which you've learned may come not so much from careful surveying of the gamut of modern experience against ancient textual evidence, but perhaps more as a response to the critical, post-enlightenment examination of sacred texts which are often not shown in a favourable light. It's not so much that people in general have significantly lost some ability to see God (or 'the economy' or whatever) in everything and are making distinctions between real and unreal which ancients did not; it's more that scholarly circles are applying those distinctions. A response which props up the meaning of ancient texts on a basis other than crass literalism would seem all but inevitable in that light.

As the the 20%, let me clarify a bit. When I refer to myth, I do so NOT as one who would equate myth with fibs, lies, and tall tales; I abhor that reductionism. Rather I do so as one who approaches myth as poetry, as symbol, as phenomenon that "points to" and "participates in the reality of" (divine) noumenon. I'm all for lectio divina for example. While I am suspicious regarding propositional truth claims regarding what appears to be magical thinking or more likely symbolic language, I do NOT make the absolute claim that divine reality and action do not exist or are not in any way knowable/discernable/experience-able. I differ with both the jeffersonian rationalizers and the demythologizing reductionists in this way (e.g. "the bible is a bunch of stories that have wisdom to share"). Rather, I simply suggest, based on what I was taught by globally renowned scholars, that in this case predictive prophecy is a misreading and a reduction of the prophetic tradition, represents poor biblical exegesis, and is an enormous distraction, and sometimes even the foundation for true and dangerous kookiness. In other regards, I remain faithful to the idea that it all points to something real. But engaging in popular readings of prophecy as predictive, fulfilled, and therefore reliable and instructive in some way remains, IMO, closer to being a trekkie than to being a serious person.

My reading into mythology more or less ends with the quarter of book one of Robert Graves' Greek Myths I've got through so far, but certainly I agree that equating myth with falsehood or even naivete is too simplistic an approach. Regardless of whether they're literally true or false, stories like the six-day creation of Genesis, the flood of Deucalion, the incarnation of Mithras or the boy who cried wolf all have their meaning to some folk, perhaps even for everyone with the ears to hear it.

What concerns me is firstly that you often seem to ignore or deny the possibility that the makers of some such stories were themselves the very kind of kooks or trekkies you decry. John of Patmos may well have been munching mushrooms while he wrote about four beasts with six wings covered in eyes surrounding the throne of God. To say that it's genuine prophecy regarding future events might indeed be incorrect, but to say that "it all points to something real" is, in my opinion, not a position with even a smidgeon of better objective support. In that light your insults against those who believe it literally points to something real is simply throwing stones from a house of grass.

And secondly, since propositional truth claims one way or the other are sometimes shaky ground at best, most if not all of what remains is the meaning we might derive from any sacred texts, whether it be as the author's intent or as our own appropriation of their ideas. In the context of a debate forum it's only a matter of course to critique other's ideas and interpretations of course. But to simply insult others for the interpretation or meaning they derive from sacred texts - to not even afford them the respect of confronting their views, but to debase them on the level of a quirky hobby - seems akin to denying the very element of meaning which essentially grants those texts value for anyone in the first place!

Actually, I think is 80% of this is a false move, and 20% is a misreading (or a reacton to a mistatement on my part).

As to the 80%, I do not think there is an equivalency between the positions of fundamentalism and non-fundamentlaism; that's deadly, up there with the "theories" found in madness movements like nazism and stalinism. Non-fundamentalism is not another fundamentalism (hardcore atheism and violent anti-clericalism are). Fundamentalism is anti-rational and utterly discredited outside its own fringe intellectual ghetto, whereas the non-fundamentalism is built upon serious and honest scholarship, and by people who are themselves people of faith, ordained, tenured, published, and reviewed, in discourse with the wider intellectual community, especially the humanities and social sciences. That makes them qualitatively different. And a parallel fundamentalist society, complete with their own ghettoized schools and journals, doesn't change that. Rather, it is merely another symptom of their desperation and dishonesty. I may get a lot of things wrong, but I do so in the context participation in a mainstream and credible thought world that comprises everything that is not fundamentalism.

Well certainly a bit of it was the same kind of denigrating rhetoric to which I was responding But it's not as though this is the first times you and I have locked horns over the matter. I still hold the view - which was the main element in my loss of faith - that many, perhaps most biblical texts were written by their authors and read by their audiences as mostly literal works. There's obvious exceptions - probably Job, Jonah and to an extent to earlier chapters of Genesis, for example - but the likes of the Jesus miracle stories were almost certainly intended to be read with the thoughts "Ah, he rose from death so he must have been telling the truth" rather than "Ah, clearly I am a person whose nature is in need of change and, like this 'Jesus' fellow I can through faith undergo a transformation experience which will make me like unto a child of God in comparison to my current miserable self."

You claim that the ancients weren't obsessed with literal truth or falsity, but I'd further suggest that most of them weren't theologians on the level of Paul, let alone Kierkegaard.

To the extent that the views you express are reactionary to the criticism of a modernist academic mindset, and are then dismissive and indeed insulting towards alternatives and imply that the correct perspective is and can be none other than one's own, I'd say that yes, this does seem a rather fundamentalist approach. To the extent that you're happy to engage in discussion, express your views intelligently and politely, recognise limits of your knowledge and change your views, obviously there's a distinction against conservative Christian fundamentalists - and perhaps the hardcore Atheists you accuse of fundamentalism also. In the war of ideas, words are the weapons, and you use them very well - but I'm sure you recognise that they can cut both ways, especially when interpretation and meaning are the substance both of your ammunition and your target.

So to speak

[Starboard Tack]

Well, not so much. The simplest life we have been able to measure is macrophyllum gentalia, which I believe has around 450 genes, or thereabouts. Knockout experiements have been done on this parasite to see how many genes can be destroyed and still have parasitic life, which will be much simpler than life that can exist without a host. The number is around 250 genes. Your portrayal of life as ranging from the biologically simple to the biologically complex is rooted in entities that are so hideously complex that imaging how they came into being all by their lonesome with all the requisite genes, cell walls, DNA in place to allow any kind of life to exist is a true expression of faith.

I suppose you can posit that life can exist in some form even simpler than this on the early earth. However, you will be hard pressed to explain what that life would look like, how it came into being without help and what the chemistry could possibly be that could have functioned on the early earth to make it possible. Or you can rely on a "just so" story, which is usually what naturalists have to resort to when pressed on the question of origins. It's much easier to fill the room with philosophical smoke when talking about the Cambrian explosion, but rather harder to explain evolutionary beginnings.

OK, you got me. I have never heard of macrophyllum gentalia, and neither has Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo, and every other search engine that I tried. The World Wide Web, only the single greatest source of information in the history of humankind, seems to be completely devoid of information concerning macrophyllum gentalia. Which I find extremely odd. So what kind of a structure does it have, and where might I find information on it?

Well, it would help if I could spell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoplasma_genitalium

Craig Venter's team reported the results here: http://www.pnas.org/content/103/2/425

It's a good model for the absolutely simplest type of living entity since it is parasitic and depends on its host for much of its metabolism. Granted that while no one has a consensus answer on what life is in the first place, self replication and a genome are critical elements thereof. Providing a naturalistic origin of life theory requires explaining how life can self assemble if the simplest we can identify has to have around 380 genes (not the 250 I referenced from memory), attendant protein synthesis as well as a functioning cell wall to protect the whole process while allowing communication with the world outside the cell.

A natural explanation is not forthcoming since the more we learn, the more intractable the problem becomes. That doesn't stop the naturalistic faithful however from imaging a solution, even if one doesn't present itself empirically.

[Starboard Tack]

Slopeshoulder:

Fundamentalism is anti-rational and utterly discredited outside its own fringe intellectual ghetto, whereas the non-fundamentalism is built upon serious and honest scholarship, and by people who are themselves people of faith, ordained, tenured, published, and reviewed, in discourse with the wider intellectual community, especially the humanities and social sciences.

As an exercise in pretention and intellectual arrogance, I have to hand you the gold metal. In fact, the medal should be retired, along with your jersey.

So unlike fundamentalists like Gleason Archer, William Craig, Alvin Plantinga or 100% of the signatories to the Chicago statement on Biblical inerrancy, non-fundamentalists like Richard Spong or J.D. Crossan would be "serious and honest" scholars, and not idealogues?

But then, since I don't even know anyone in the "wider intellectual community", what do I know?

Reagarding prophecy, Goat provided the following challenge:

I would be more than happy to take any three of your alleged prophecies in the Jewish Scriptures, and debate you head to head about them, as long as the three prophecies are agreed to ahead of time.

To which I responded:

Amos 1:9-10, predicting how Tyre would fall, written in 750 BC or thereabouts, fulfilled. Isaiah 13:19, predicting that Babylon would fall, permanently. Fulfilled. Jeremiah 32:36-37, predicting that the Jews would be taken captive to Babylon, then returned. Fulfilled.

Now perhaps these are not true prophecies, but merely interpreted as such by ignorant folks who haven't the benefit of belonging to the wider intellectual community, but Goats response:

Crickets chirping....

has not been instructive or anything I can learn from.

Mithrae seems to take a ratonal approach to the question of biblical prophecy by noting the obvious:

Documents of 'predictive prophecy' were either written before their fulfillment or they were not.

So either the three citations above and hundreds of others like them were, or were not written before their fulfillment and that is how their prophetic accuracy could be tested. Or is this an unfair approach because I incorrectly presume that some things are true and others not, which the last time I looked was not a popular theory among the serious non-fundamental scholar, of which I admit I am not an official member?

p.s. does the wider intellectual community live someplace in particular, and if so, is it a gated community? Curious minds want to know....