Would seeing biology as a subset of chemistry and chemistry as a subset of physics be an example of such a framework?
I remember reading that there was a problem with Einstein’s unified field theory in that it doesn’t take into account the kinds of energy which holds an atom together. But even a complete unified field theory would be but a part of a theory of everything which I assume would also show what underpins consciousness and human relations.
that makes me laugh 
Good point. Enns observes that the story of Ham, cursing Canaanites, etc was quite ethnocentric and seems to be consistent with justifying warring against the Canaanites and others. In contrast, the writings that put Israel as having lost their kingdom, etc from poor behavior were at least in part written to explain why their throne, which was promised to be theirs for ever, was gone (during the Babylonian captivity).
I do think that the Nt is much more historically accurate than the OT, and of a different genre.
@Christopher_Michael, it is always ok to question. I like the book by Austin Fischer, “Faith in the Shadows.” His quote,
" People don’t abandon faith because they have doubts. People abandon faith because they think they’re not allowed to have doubts.“e;Too often, our honest questions about faith are met with cold confidence and easy answers. But false certitude doesn’t result in strong faith-it results in disillusionment, or worse, in a dogmatic, overweening faith unable to see itself or its object clearly”
Once someone is told to just not question–that it’s a sin to question-then one loses faith entirely that that person who told him that has a faith built on a rock.
Sadly, that can lead to the suspicion that the faith itself has no roots.
Here’s another of my favorite bloggers, on the problem of evil:
Biology is no more a subset of chemistry than chemistry is a subset of physics. On the contrary I see this as an example of emergence. Just because books are made of paper and ink doesn’t mean that you can understand the content of a book by studying paper and ink.
At first I was going to say that the biggest problem with Einstein’s unified field theory is that there is no such thing. But guess you mean the biggest problem with Kaluza-Klein theory. At the time there was no notion of the strong and weak nuclear forces so that wouldn’t explain why Kaluza-Klein theory was ignored back then. We pay more attention to Kaluza-Klein now because adding more dimensions (as well as the mathematical procedure of compactification) to unite all the forces of nature has become standard procedure (especially in string theory). And the extension of Kaluza-Klein theory to include all four forces is basically what we typically call a super-gravity theory such as the eleven dimensional super-gravity version of string theory.
Randy, I looked at that blog entry and shopped around some more. Eventually I watched more than an hour of a discussion between Randal Rauser and his atheist co-author of their book An Atheist and a Christian Walk Into A Bar. Boy you’ve got to admire them both and appreciate the quality of conversation each is able to achieve with someone not in their camp. I can see why you cite him so often. Thanks for the lead.
You’re still captive to your old way of reading the Bible. The people who taught you to read it as a history of actual events were wrong. Why is it “false testimony” for Genesis 1-11 to mimic the style of Mesopotamian mythology in order to critique Mesopotamian theology? This is a masterpiece of subversive literature because it goes far beyond a mere parody and offers a corrective. The king is not the image of God; all of humanity, both male and female, are the image of God. If you want to see a hint of God’s inspiration, I suggest you’re staring at one. In a thoroughly patriarchal culture, I would’ve expected, "Let us create men in our image …
So God created men in his own image,
in the image of God he created men;
males he created and put in charge."
On the Tower of Babel, of course it’s a critique of Mesopotamian culture. Every scribe in Israel and across the ANE learned his craft by copying Akkadian myths on clay tablets. This was the official curriculum of scribal schools. Cuneiform was the international language of diplomacy and trade in the empires of Assyria/Babylon/Ur III.
In the ANE, there was effectively only one written language. That started to change when scribes in Ugarit adapted the Phoenician script to their own language. The trend spread to Israel, where Hebrew became a written language around 1000 BC. Still, these local alphabets were used only for local purposes until Cyrus conquered Babylon and adopted an alphabetic script for the official language of his empire. The hegemony of cuneiform was broken.
It seems to me that your main problem is getting past your past, so to speak. Perhaps leave off reading about evolution and read a good book on biblical hermeneutics?
Edit: I think @Christy would enjoy my patriarchal parody of Gen. 1 in this post, but more importantly, I give her a shout because I think she could suggest a better book than I can. I’m thinking Vanhoozer?
Vanhoozer is interesting, but not an easy read at all. The only book of his I’ve ever read (parts of) is Is There Meaning in the Text? Better to just read someone who summarizes his main ideas of the Bible as divine speech act.
I’m currently reading “The Lost World of Scripture” by Walton and Sandy, and have found it enlightening as to how an oral culture transmits information, and what that means especially as the oral traditions and teachings of Jesus eventually made it to text. It is very readable and has a long discussion on what “logos” means, not that we need to discuss that again!
I agree, from what I understand of other ancient cultures, there is a certain sense where Israelite history is unique in that they as a people kept messing up and many of the leaders’ faults etc are on full display - Moses’ murder, David’s adultery etc. To what extent this ‘we all have faults’ element was anachronistic of the Old Testament being pulled together in its current form (as I understand) during the Babylonian captivity I don’t know, but I expect it plays a large part. What I mean is - all the various faults were the stepping stones that led to the final destruction and expulsion, their sin being the actual lens through which they understood what happened to them in their expulsion (while still being able to hold their identity and believe in their God).
This still leaves the huge issue of the Bible putting up people like Abraham who managed to defeat multiple armies when getting his nephew Lot back and Moses who like the great Sargon was drawn out of a basket - are those things historical truths or unfactual embellishments to ‘fit in with the way things were done back then’ (everyone else is lying and exaggerating about their national heros so we better do that too … while at the same time showing that they had faults). The real clincher for me in a way is how Israel’s enemies origin stories are depicted as I described - Moab and Ammon. How is that not actual false testimony (unless, incredibly, it is true they were started as Lot’s sons from his daughters … but how would that even be known?? This is similar say to the ancient Chinese having a very racist origin sorry for say the Japanese (hypothetically). There are other such issues with the OT of a similar, arguably racist, nature as well. It’s hard to come at God’s spirit inspiring or at least signing off on such things.
Indeed, and metaphysical understandings can be drawn from that point - outside the scientific process per se. If a unifying theory that quantifies the metaphysical is discovered like I think it will be in the coming decades, you can bet your bottom dollar a lot of beliefs etc are going to be reassessed, like when science revealed evolution or a heliocentric understanding.
Thanks. I’ve had a look … and know where to come back to if I want to try and explore further. I’d be interested in your thoughts about the 4th dimension concept as described here The 4th dimension
Better go, my 2yo son has been crawling over me, laughing and giggling as I’ve juggled rough n tumble while typing this and trying not to press “reply” early lol
Um … that comes across as a pretty arrogant statement man “you’re still captive to your old way of thinking” … okaaay then. How does that not imply you are definitely right and I am definitely wrong?. That kind of language and demeanour can really put people off. I say humbly, maybe don’t make such definitive and quite patronising like statements brother?
You’re an intelligent person and a deep thinker but that doesn’t mean other people are not too. That said, I’m aware how my throwing out the doozy “the Bible really seems to be bearing false testimony of people groups, which is hypocritical as it says not to bear false testimony” might also sound arrogant - I myself cringe even as I say it - it’s a horrible thing to say and I kinda want to be proven wrong. But I try and keep a questioning ‘just trying to work this emotional topic through’ tone, rather than a “I am definitely right here and anyone who disagrees is wrong”. I’m sure I fail in that attempt at times but that tone remains a general pursuit.
Part of my reaction there @Jay313 is that I am aware of hermeneutics - look I haven’t been trained for years in the specific study of them but I have sat in many a lecture from a great Bible teacher from the Christian group at my uni who would really emphasise and teach in detail about hermeneutics and exegesis and isogesis and such (secular uni, this was the christian group on campus which I was heavily involved with back then). That is a big part of my “past” which you assume about. While I’m no expert, I feel I have a pretty good grasp on the concepts of always trying to understand what the text was meant to say in its context, not what you read into it from yours etc.
More recently too I’ve been spending more time looking at comparative culture work and trying to understand the ANE mindset. It certainly is interesting and really does help, so I see the point you’re making it’s just how it came across. I have spent hours going through this ANE mindset over an extended period of time (maybe 2 years, on and off) reading good books like Brights A History of Israel and delving into the depths of the ANE world as pertains to Genesis, particularly via the book “Reading Genesis 1-2: An evangelical discussion” which is perhaps one of the best for setting out many of the main arguments and perspectives about understanding the Bible as literal or figurative.
It is for precisely in connection to having looked at all that and believing that I believe things like the genealogical lists in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 etc men Genesis wa attempting to tie perceived real people into what were considered real events. Abraham and Lot are described as real people. The events of Genesis 14 - the level of detail in naming the various kings of the various lands etc and then how Abraham delivered Lot, it seems Lear to me, are intended to convey an actual historical occurrence
“And he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus.”
Genesis 14:15 ESV
Lot getting drunk by his daughters plan and then conceiving by them is conveyed as I see it, as history, not some kind of ‘deeper meaning’ human experience business.
“Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.
The younger also bore a son and called his name Ben-ammi. He is the father of the Ammonites to this day.”
Genesis 19:36, 38 ESV
I guess I’d ask, do you believe Genesis 19:36-38 is conveying historical truth or does it have a deeper meaning than what the plain reading of the text would suggest?
Are you maintaining that the Bible describing certain people and nation groups in a way that was not true (and quite derogatory) is not bearing false testimony about them? Broad brush answers to this question have a bit of an “explain it away” feel to them - so could you please stick to the origin stories of the Moabites, Ammonites and, like @Randy has commented Ham with the Canaanites in any answer? Maybe there’s some real deep thing I’m missing, I don’t know. I’m open to consider it … as challenging and uncomfortable to feel as it would be - I wonder if you’re open to seeing the “don’t bear fakse testimony direction but gives false testimony contradiction I’m suggesting here?
I’m sorry, but I was just cutting to the chase. You keep coming back to that, and it seems to me the core of your problem. That’s why I said “captive.” All of us get stuck in one way of thinking, regardless of the subject. When we are shown a different way of looking at something, it takes a minute to regain our balance. I’m just as prone to this as you are. So, if I point out a log in your eye, it doesn’t mean I don’t realize the log in my own. You’re free to disregard my advice as the ramblings of a cranky old man. Wouldn’t be the first time. And while you’re at it, GET OFF MY LAWN!
You were taught one way of reading the Bible, and you’ve discovered its shortcomings. For Bart Ehrman, that led to a loss of faith. I would’ve argued with him too, but that doesn’t imply that I don’t respect his intellect or credentials. Don’t assume an insult where none exists. And … GET OFF MY LAWN!
I’m running short of time, so I’ll come back in the morning to reply with some actual substance. Stay safe!
Thanks Jay 
(best emoji to express general appreciation).
You’re right in that I am stuck right now - to use like analogy, I’m majorly bogged in the logic of trying to reconcile the Biblical picture of God with aspects of what the Bible itself and actual reality itself depict. Hence, in my last thread, my stress about God using evolution where many creatures over eons have died from starvation and or being frozen but God saying in Exodus
“If ever you take your neighbor’s cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering, and it is his cloak for his body; in what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.”
Exodus 22:26-27 ESV
I can’t reconcile that. Similarly, with apparently false testimony about nations origins in the Bible but God saying “do not provide false testimony”. Contradictions like this seem near endless and at a certain point they just take their toll and one gets cynical … and perhaps more easily frustrated, sorry.
I’ve tried spinning my wheels for a long time, but I’m way deeper in the bog. In many ways this thread about the metaphysical and even paranormal is an attempt to put a plank under the wheels and get out - while also exploring a very fascinating topic just generally. Otherwise my faith just becomes another relic on the road, the idea of which I resist.
Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts, wisdom and what you have to say. And I’ll stay off that lawn lol 
Take care
Thanks for your patience! Today got away from me, but I’ll get back tomorrow. Meantime, I haven’t lost sight of your goal in this thread. Here’s my thought:
If God is spirit, he must reach out to us; we can’t reach him. If he should reach out to humanity, at what historical point should he communicate to them? In other words, should he communicate to an ancient people in terms that were meant for today’s audience? Wouldn’t that blow right over their heads? If no one at the time understood God’s message, since it was meant for people 3,000 years later, why would they even preserve it? Put yourself in their shoes. Someone brings to you a text supposedly inspired by God, and it says God created the universe billions of years ago by a tremendous explosion (before explosives were invented), and the sun came together through gases collecting by gravity (an unknown concept), and … The only thing that would have happened to such a document is that no one would have understood it and it would’ve been set down and forgotten.
How would you do it, in God’s shoes? Here’s my reply: Give the people a message they’ll understand in their own context. Ensure that the message is couched in terms flexible enough to be understood by successive generations even when the original context is forgotten. As Wittgenstein pointed out, language games are continually invented, and many old ones get forgotten. John Walsh says essentially the same in his “lost world” series. The original language-game became forgotten, but somehow the core of the message was preserved. Christian doctrine as Walsh and Middleton and many others interpret it in light of recently learned facts about the ANE context is not fundamentally altered from the literal interpretation. I would say that is has been broadened and deepened, if anything.
Here’s an interesting post from Bart Ehrman to tide you over. The short version: If animals have no way of understanding our “superior” level of being, aren’t we in the same position vis-a-vis God?
Hello Christopher,
Based on what you have written here so far, I can tell that you can think circles around me pretty much any day of the week, when it comes to science, physics, cosmology etc etc, as can pretty much everyone I’ve read here at Biologos. That said, it’s why I love coming here. Lots to learn and consider!
I don’t have much to contribute, and do have lots to learn, but you have entered a topic that I absolutely love! The spiritual realm of our Lord, and His angels and how that “place” relates to ours.
In thinking about how the Bible informs us our the spiritual realm, I would like to consider the birth of Christ through the virgin Mary, and specifically the times when Mary and Joseph were visited by an angel of the Lord.
I believe that God intervening with Mary and Joseph is evidence of the Lord breaking through the spiritual dimension into the natural world.
My take on this is that though unseen, this spiritual realm exists very closely, right alongside ours, here with us all the time, yet as we know, it almost always remains completely invisible to us all.
I believe this realm is completely outside of our space and time, and exists without the physical and spiritual constraints of our dimension, yet I feel sure that in some way this metaphysical realm has to be linked to our physical world mathematically in the very same poetic, beautiful and perfect way that everything within our worldly realm, galaxy, universe and beyond is linked.
This breaching that happens from God’s spiritual realm into our physical world and the spirit within us, is enough evidence to convince me that there is that same kind of mathematical symmetry involved which allows the linking of the two. As a simple person, I cannot even begin to imagine how anyone alive on this earth could begin to prove that bold assumption, but I do believe it to be true.
The brilliant people here at Biologos have helped to educate me a wee bit, about the natural laws that our world, galaxy, and universe must follow.
I have a theory that the spiritual realm where our Lord and the angels exist actually does have rules and mathematical laws that are similar and linked to ours, yet are accelerated and without all of the cumbersome limitations and restrictions that we live with in this physical world and inside our physical bodies.
God speaks to us ever so softly from His spirit to our spirits, when we are open to Him. There are also rare times when He will circumvent the physical realm that we live in and pull us more fully into His realm. Even in this age!
Albeit rarely, yet perhaps not as rare as we might think?
Consider the number of people on our earth today, over 7 billion some odd.
Hypothetically, in this day and age, if a person experienced an episode such as that, like one of those amazing, shocking, and pretty much unbelievable spiritual interventions made by God into our physical world, do you think that person would be quick to tell others about it? I’m thinking that after telling a couple people, and getting the first eye roll, and perhaps even being shunned, and labelled as “losing it” by others, I almost guarantee that person would stop talking about it.
I think it is more real than we all think! The spiritual dimension is more real and present with us today than ever before, yet most of us people for obvious reasons cannot believe about it when we are told.
God bless
Thanks @Jay313, some interesting thoughts - I will reply before long. A lot to carefully consider in my answer! I’ll look at that article too.
Thanks @Mincaesar - loved reading your post 
Yes it is such a fascinating area - how the spiritual realm actually works and relates to ours. How to then understand all that in the context of evolution just adds another huge layer to it all. Much of the discussion here so far has been quite interesting in relation to physics. I personally feel that how electro-magnetic energy works - whatever that force actually is that spins the electron around the neutron, holding the two in perfect unison - seperate parts of the one whole, that force I believe must be connected to the physical and spiritual realm, somehow.
I’ve mentioned above how mathematics has conceptualised a 4th physical dimension (not time like with Einstein but a space based 4th dimension, that is one added to left right, up down to make 3D, perhaps it is some kind of in out thereby making 4D). There’s a video link above.
I imagine the interaction between electro-magnetic energy and some version of a 4th dimension is getting toward how the spiritual realm works. How I’d love to read about this from someone who has studied it in detail!
Anyhow, this was only going to be a short answer but I got carried away - I intend to come back to some of your other points too.
There are indeed so many interesting people to learn from here on BioLogos - I feel the same as you. I know the topic of this thread in many ways might feel too hard to try and unpack, like a 2000 piece puzzle but … I’m gonna try anyway lol! Hopefully if we put our heads together we can kick the can a little way down the road till things start to get really interesting and maybe something of a picture starts developing… we’ll wait and see 
An interesting question indeed. So much to say, so hard to compact it all in concisely.
Before I say anything more I want to say this. There is one scene from the entire Lord of the Rings and Hobbit anthology that has stuck with me the most. It is when Gandalf has to, quite suddenly, leave the travelling company right before they enter Mirkwood Forest. The response on the faces of the company is a bit like “yeah thanks Gandalf, that’s just great - travel with us right up to the really difficult point and then leave us without telling us why” you can almost all see them thinking. But he had other, urgent business to attend to (something about saving his other wizard friend from the necromancer, if I remember correctly). That scene really sticks with me. Sometimes it feels (for me anyway) that we humans considering God are trying to understand the character of God without, like the company travelling with Gandalf, being aware of the spiritual context that determines his actions. We don’t know God’s mind or God’s reasons - we don’t know what actual demands are placed on him and how they could possibly work. We have such limited capacity.
Like the (quite amazing) reference to Ehrman’s blog you posted, if we follow the logic in the natural world that lower life forms are largely unaware of either the existence or capacities of higher life forms, it follows the humans - being ‘lower’ life forms than virtually all spiritual entities, are not going to be able to understand them. And that’s that. Like how @gbob earlier referenced the dog who, walking one way with a leash on around a pole, mightn’t have the cognitive capacity to realise, once stuck, that if it walked back the other way it would free itself. In a similar way, maybe we simply have limitations to our cognitive capacity as humans about things spiritual.
In response to this line of thinking though, I would propose 3 ideas of how human knowledge about spiritual matters might be conceptualised:
As described above, humans are a lower life form than God and other spiritual agents and like in nature, lower life forms simply do not have the cognitive capacity to understand and comprehend higher ones. Ultimately all attempts then to understand spiritual things of a ‘higher order’ are simply beyond us
Humans created in God’s image as those who are to represent him do in fact have the ability to understand many things - both physical and spiritual as they work out their mandate of overseeing the world (thinking of you here @Marshall). Like a child who has a destiny grows up, learns and gets better at what they are destined for, we humans have been learning and growing. In only more recent times have we understood how the physical world actually works and, with time, we too can and will grow to understand the mechanics of the spiritual world
Similar to number 2 but with a specific focus on evolution and a little less spiritual - humans, having evolved, have developed many forms of pre-conditioned cognitive responses to their environment which meant that they drew connections between phenomena when those connections were false positives (mammals rear young, deep dependency on adult caregiver, schema of adult caregiver dependence, extrapolate concept to adults causing phenomena in the outside natural world [Piaget type thinking], e.g. lightening means anger, need to appease anger, no clear responses from the gods generate elaborate systems, elaborate systems act to reinforce social cohesion and various aspects of subtle social control, etc).
The reality of the spiritual in this scenario is almost too hard to even know - separating what might actually be ‘real’ about spiritual things from the vast number of constructs developed over millennia by the above means, might be considered nigh impossible.
At the moment, I am striking out with a bit of courage and standing in the “3” corner. And I feel it a bit of a responsibility of BioLogos to give a proper answer to those of us in this “3” corner (if a group says “evolution is real but so is the Christian God who lives in heaven with his angels”, I guess it helps if they help explain the in heaven with his angels bit in the context of the evolution of religion itself … which is part of evolution itself). I’ll say more about that later and also more in answer to the specific question about how and when God might best speak to humanity in another post but I wanted to say those things first.
Edit: I’m not saying I don’t believe in God and Jesus - I just don’t know how to reconcile how religion developed in evolution with it all and think there is a lot of circular reasoning I see around, even sometimes in BioLogos articles that comes off a little unpalatable - I’d love to read a BioLogos article that head on tackles ‘we evolved, religion evolved, this is still how Christianity is true’.
You might like the podcast by Justin Barrett, or one of his books
He helped develop the department of cognitive science of religion on Cambridge, and now is at Fuller Theological Seminary
Thank you @Randy, that is a good link. I had downloaded some of the Language of God podcasts and started listening to one or two episodes which were interesting. I’ve just now in my lunch break started listening to some of that one you linked in, it’s good. This is certainly the area I really want to explore at the moment - how evolution and faith intersect and what that means for Christianity specifically while alongside this - digging deeper into the cross over between physics and the spiritual or even paranormal. All this in an effort to understand how ‘it might all tie together’. Ambitious but the sheer interest of it all drives me along the path, as I’m sure it does many others.
I have been reading the book briefly referenced in the video you linked (Justin is holding it for a few seconds in one of his reflective shots) - The Believing Primate. A lot of what I have been saying about the evolution of religion has come from both that and another book I have on the go ‘The Believing Brain’ by former Christian now skeptic, Michael Shermer. Does any one here know about Michael’s work? He once interviewed the founder of BioLogos, author of the book Language of God - hearing about that was interesting.
One more thing I’ll say for now (I’m still brimming with lots more to say and ask - @gbob I still have a question for you (about how you old you consider angels to be, among some other related questions) and @Jay313, some further thoughts for you too. Would love others perhaps reading to chime in also hehe - I know you’re out there lol.
Anyway … what I want to mention is an interesting ‘experiment’ Michael Shermer let be conducted on him … about something called the God helmet
This, combined with evolutionary tendencies toward belief and, as I’ve recently read about in the Believing Primate book, the emotional states that believing a reality can itself induce, make the land on which true, objective (as much as they can be objective) experiences of the supernatural could be quantified smaller and smaller, like a shrinking island. Yet I still believe they definitely occur … and again refer to some of the bizarre and very fascinating elements brought up in that video about ghosts and aliens I linked in up thread around this. I don’t believe such things only occur due to different brain wave states in the eye of the beholder.
Better go
Welcome to the 21st century. @gbob went down your path, and by his testimony, he toyed with atheism for years before settling on his own answer. I guess the lesson there is “give it time.” Notwithstanding all your previous study, it’s possible for people to hear one perspective for so long that they assume it’s the only perspective, or to hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest. Your fixation on death and the “false testimony” angle say a lot. Others have been down that road, even though no individual journey is identical to another’s.
Many of your issues relate to a particular way you previously viewed the Old Testament. I’ve gone through my own change in that regard. Forgive me for quoting myself, but here’s my own journey through one side and out the other:
Did I let go of the faith when I let go of a perfect Bible? Absolutely not! What I discovered about inerrancy is what Luther and Calvin discovered. When I found mistakes of detail or irreconcilable differences in chronology, my ultimate response was – “Who cares?” Nothing I found cast Jesus or his teaching into doubt. Where did that leave me on inerrancy? I came to conclude that Scripture is “perfect with respect to its purpose,” which is an old formula that Christians of every stripe can agree upon – from Catholic Vatican II to Reformed John Piper to Arminian Roger Olson. All of them agree the primary purpose of Scripture is salvific, or saving. In plain language, the Bible’s purpose is not to teach history or geology or biology. The purpose of God’s revelation is to show his prodigal sons and daughters their way home. In that regard, I‘ve found it more than perfect.
Years of immersing myself in the life of Jesus brought me to understand that Christianity can’t be understood apart from him. The evangelists viewed the entirety of the Hebrew Bible – what we call the Old Testament – through the lens of Jesus. When a person becomes a Christian, we don’t hand them a Bible and say, “Start with Genesis 1 and read through to the end.” No! We say, “Begin with the gospels,” because the ultimate revelation of God is seen in Christ. The Lord didn’t provide us with a philosophy to comprehend or a list of rules to memorize. He knows who we are and how we learn. He gave us a role model to imitate, a perfect image of himself. Christianity consists of following Christ, and he isn’t found in theological formulations or metaphysical musings. He’s found in the the gospels.
Okay, I’ve failed spectacularly in this so far, but I have a ton of stuff that I promise to reply to tomorrow. That is, within an actual yom (day), not a conceptual yom (manana, or “whenever I get around to it” in Spanglish).
The sun hasn’t set yet here in NM, so it’s still a literal yom. I’ll come back to your three ideas about spiritual matters, but today I want to concentrate on two things.
First, spirit and matter are different categories. The spiritual, by definition, cannot be perceived by material means. God may reveal himself to us, in whatever terms we may understand, but we cannot pierce through our material limitations (even with better instruments) into the spiritual realm. “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man” (John 3:13). Thinking of heaven as “above” and Earth as “below” was a cliche in Jewish thought. The point accommodates the culture yet remains transcendent. We can’t reach God. Even Isaiah cried out in frustration, “Lord, that you would rend the heavens and come down!” Reveal yourself and end the struggle to make people understand!
The second point begins with a simple observation. Almost everyone recognizes that existence is more than matter alone. There is a spiritual aspect to existence. Our knowledge of this is experiential and not open to proofs or reason. If you want a philosophical justification, Wittgenstein would call it “imponderable evidence.” How does a person get a “nose” for something? How can you tell a genuine look of love from a feigned one? Only by experience.
Regarding how we would absolutely “know” anything about the spiritual, for the sake of discussion let’s grant Ehrman his point. We cannot rule out a higher being, especially based on our limited understanding of how a higher being might think or exist. It’s simply beyond our capacity. (This renders moot all discussions of exactly how God might operate within “natural” laws. We actually have no understanding of divine power, its exercise, or its limitations.)
Nevertheless, almost everyone’s experience of the world – the imponderable evidence of a billion lifetimes – leads the vast majority to believe that existence has an unseen aspect. The spirit. Reason alone can neither confirm nor deny, but it can help us toward an answer.
Either spirit, “higher being,” exists, does not exist, or we can’t know. You don’t strike me as the type to be satisfied with “I don’t know and can’t know” the rest of your life. Neither am I. Moving on. I respect those who decide the spiritual does not exist, but I also am not satisfied with “nothing but the material” as a final answer. Existence is better than non-existence, in my opinion. Speaking of death, I mean. I choose to hope in the eternal. It seems to me the only choice. (Not rendering judgment on those who choose otherwise. Just speaking for myself and my own lifetime of imponderable evidence.)
If we choose to believe in a higher existence, the choice is between various religions. I say that because I distrust any prophets who stand outside a tradition. Tradition isn’t necessarily a negative. It also serves as a sieve to strain out ideas not worth our time. On the various religions, Buddhism is my second choice, if there is such a thing. But my problem is that I find no hope in its Nirvana. If ultimate consciousness is all that exists, and if ultimate fate is to be merged into that consciousness and lose all individual personality, then I don’t see any difference between that and annihilation. It offers me no real telios or hope that differs from atheism, as far as I can tell.
That leaves the Abrahamic faiths. I read the gospels, and I fall in love with Jesus. He is the prototype. That is what life should be. And that is why I choose to be a Christian. All of my experience of the Spirit – ups and downs, not always up, up, up – has provided more than enough imponderable evidence to confirm that decision.
More to come as time permits. I have to build a fence tomorrow.
Thanks Jay. I wanted to hold off replying over Easter - a holy weekend that doesn’t deserve my current skepticism. Easter Sunday having passed, I intend to reply later this yom Lots to work through, and glad to be able to have the discussion.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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