That’s not what Christianity or Judaism or Islam teach.
Good for them.
Humans have evolved capacities that allow them to relate to God. How is that at all connected to scientifically derived Bible interpretations?
Meaning is whatever we say it is. I see no negotiation between God and us? A plea from Him, yes. To our passion disordered evolved minds.
Because that first claim is amenable to scientific scrutiny. I mean @Christy, really basic scrutiny.
[We all relate to God as Kierkegaard did, most of us don’t realise it. Whether He’s there or not.]
Couldn’t agree more, hence the absolute certainty of the multiverse. [To question it is to put the bicycle of theism before the fish of atheism.]
You are making a positive claim without evidence, hence your claim is dismissed. And don’t plead uniformitarianism. We’ve been over that.
No I am not. It’s the default. Because it’s simplest. To propose anything else is crazed. Didn’t you do Kolomogorov in your Summa Cum Laude ‘Math’? Again, again, evidence is unnecessary.
There are other things that are simple that are not true.
True. And? What’s that truism got to do with this axiom?
False ‘axioms’ can be invented, as just evinced.
Another case in point:
That’s not what “negotiated meaning” is.
So what? My interpretation of a given Bible passage is not amenable to scientific scrutiny.
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So what is “negotiated meaning”? Beyond whatever we agree on?
Your interpretation of a given Bible passage is not amenable to psychological scrutiny? To empirical linguistic, epistemological, anthropological even genetic, developmental, neurological scrutiny? You couldn’t be hooked up to an EEG in the process?
The speaker communicates in a relevant way to guide the hearer to the inferences he or she wants the hearer to make. The hearer infers meaning based on the shared context with the speaker and the assumption that the speaker is cooperating in the most relevant way possible. Meaning isn’t some absolute thing that is encoded and decoded. It is constructed cooperatively based on what we assume others will infer. God chose to communicate through human spokespeople in human language, so the principles of human meaning negotiation apply.
Yes, you can study the ANE context, you can study linguistics, you can study cognitive psychology, but none of those studies will tell you definitively “THIS IS THE MEANING!” They will just help you evaluate interpretations of texts as more or less plausible. None of those studies will identify God as a party in the communication. No scientific process will ever get you to some empirical meaning of a text.
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I think I already provided a list on your other post!
Freud’s argument is we created many gods to appease, the god of lightning, sun, oceans, because of fear. Sailors prayed before they sailed into the fear of the unknown but today an plane captains checks maps and weather. Freud said, we created religion to handle things we didn’t understand,then we rolled them all into one god to help us cope with life and death. Unfortunately, what Freud misunderstood in Mark 4 is you don’t create a god that creates even greater fear, when Jesus silenced the waves, the disciples grew even more fearful, as who is this person.
Christianity is a revealed religion, God acted first. So your lecturer is correct in one aspect, we do and have created religions all over the world, except for Christianity
Does Christianity, the Church, consist of demonstrably non-human and/or morally superior beings? Can you show me how the New Testament makes Christians better than they would have been without it? That’s an open question. Better than their neighbours? Muslims, Hindus, First Nations etc. That’s an open question.
[Christianity is revealed in Christ. Which is not the same thing as what’s revealed in Christians. Or rather whatever is revealed in Christianity is vastly mainly not what is revealed in Christ.]
Agreed Christy. So which human spokespeople did God communicate through apart from in and around Jesus? And how does that work?
Followers of Christ are made new in their relationship with the Heavenly Father by the indwelling Holy Spirit who brings transformation. They are forgiven, freed from a sinful nature, and are called to love and serve to express the fruit of the Spirit.
Are they better? They may have worse marriages, struggle with addictions but have a relationship with God the Father, and empowered by the Holy Spirit bringing change and conviction daily.
Not better simply renewed and saved struggling with sin until full sanctification. Of course, we are called to reflect Christ but our unredeemed bodies cause the problem as stated by the Apostle Paul, hence you will always see inconsistencies in Christians.