Pithy quotes from our current reading which give us pause to reflect

Okay. Just for the record, I made the 1000th post in this thread. Please clap.

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Yes, I did notice after I accessed the second list that DTS is apparently the official repository. And yes, I did discover later that Franky was involved in the pro-life movement in the 70s.
 

Don’t be so sure there is a Schaefer on the actual signature one. And the 22 pages indicated on the second .pdf is misleading because a number of pages have relatively few sigs on them.

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Yeah, I’m too lazy to count/compare. An email to a DTS librarian might be the quickest way to resolve any discrepancies.

It’s official! The check is in the mail. :trophy:

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Now wait, @jay313! My counter says this reply is only 760! What gives?!

:clap: :clap: :clap:

Look off to the side, Kendel. At the scroll bar underneath the wrench. It should show you what post you’ve scrolled to. Your last one was 1006, mine 1007 here.

I may have read some of those - but don’t even recognize more of them. I think I read one of Frank Gaebelien’s short books as a required reading for Philosophy of Education at our school. Can’t recall any lasting impressions from it though.

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I just confirmed that by ignoring someone, it throws off the count on the thread.

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Ahh! Mystery solved. So by comparing notes with someone who hasn’t ignored anyone, you can discover how many posts you’ve been blessed to never see!

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Give yourself a clap, I’m at a loss for words :grin:

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Fascinating!
Quantifiable!

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That’s an idea for another mystery that’s been nagging at me. I learned classical apologetics through a class my church had which used Sproul’s teaching series. One of my big takeaways was his model of how the universe can only be explained by one of four possible statements.

Fast forward a few years, after working this over while doing an undergrad in philosophy, I’m explaining to my friend about a dilemma I was experiencing, and as a graduate of DTS, he tells me word for word Sproul’s model which he got from Geisler. How did that happen? Did they collaborate on it? Nab it from the same source? Which I would like to see for myself.

I could also write Geisler’s son about it.

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He wasn’t a great theologian. I mentioned him only because he was influential as editor of CT and the popular Expositor’s Commentary series and I haven’t had reason to lose respect for him.

I couldn’t tell you who was the original source on that. Sproul (d. 2017) and “Stormin’ Norman” (d. 2019) were contemporaries and signers of the Chicago Statement. I’m not a fan of either one’s apologetics, and even less a fan of Sproul’s son. There’s also a reason behind Geisler’s nickname. I have a lot of ties to DTS going way back. He wasn’t exactly “winsome” with those who disagreed with him.

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Super interesting! How are you not a fan of their apologetics?

A couple years ago, I about fell out of my chair when I heard Geisler say in a recorded lecture series on Aquinas, "“the hard thing to prove is you are not the eternal necessary being.”

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During the '80s, I was invested in the culture war, and all I read was apologetics and “end times” junk. My spiritual growth was exactly zero in that decade. I also worked with and for two guys who were DTS grads and speakers for Probe Ministries (close ties to Discovery Institute). Back in the “New Age”/Shirley MacLaine panic of the '80s, one of them with Japanese ancestry co-wrote a book with Geisler.
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To answer your OP question, I’m not fan of classical apologetics that relies on evidence and “proofs” of Christian belief. I’ve tried them and found them wanting.

While they can disprove atheism, they can’t tell the difference between solipsism and theism.

Hence the irony of Geisler’s remark.

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I’m not sure they disprove atheism, either. I’m more of a Pascalian. There’s evidence on both sides, but certainty on neither. Choices must be made.

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Who would choose solipsism if given a choice?

The ontological and cosmological arguments basically prove there is an infinite being, but not an infinite number of things.

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Well, solipsism is off the table. haha. But in the choice between atheism and theism, I don’t think either of those arguments meet the burden of proof. If God could be reached by intellectual effort and understanding, then the smartest among us would be privileged in having a more certain knowledge of God. I don’t think that’s how it works. As Pascal pointed out,

It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason.

We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart, and it is in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to impugn them. The sceptics, who have only this for their object, labor to no purpose. We know that we do not dream, and however impossible it is for us to prove it by reason, this inability demonstrates only the weakness of our reason, but not, as they affirm, the uncertainty of all our knowledge…

This inability ought, then, to serve only to humble reason, which would judge all, but not to impugn our certainty, as if only reason were capable of instructing us. Would to God, on the contrary, that we had never need of it, and that we knew everything by instinct and intuition! But nature has refused us this boon. On the contrary, she has given us but very little knowledge of this kind; and all the rest can be acquired only by reasoning.

Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate, and justly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give them spiritual insight, without which faith is only human, and useless for salvation.

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Jay, I have a crazy request. If your book is handy, could you choose a typical page of text and actually measure the height of the printed letters. How high are the caps? How high are the lower case letters like a, e and s? Trying to decide if it’s worth it to put the paperback on my Christmas list, or should just go with the Kindle version that I can enlarge. Also is it a serif or san-serif font? Thanks!