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From: arndt@indian.dec.com.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Slicin' Baloney
Message-ID: <5682@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Wed, 1-Oct-86 03:00:00 EDT
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Posted: Wed Oct  1 03:00:00 1986
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  "Ahhh, . . . I'll have 1/2 lb. German baloney thin sliced, and 1 lb.
   of 'Faith', please."

Some net folks seem to think this is the way Christians (or any 'religious'
persons) get their faith.  Slice it off the roll at church just like you
would slice baloney off the roll at the Delli!  Somehow 'religious' questions,
the 'why' questions, are not to be dealt with by reason.  CAN'T be dealt with
by the use of reason even! 

No doubt these net folks take their cue from Davie Hume"

"If we take in our hands any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics,
for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning
quantity or number?  No.  Does it contain any experimental reasoning
concerning matter of fact and existence?  No. Commit it then to the flames:
for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
[David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, London, 1748;
modern edition by C.W.Hendel, (New York:1955) concluding lines.]

Again, remembering my posting "Rowing Through the Fog", Hume's contention that
all meaningful statements are either a relation of ideas or else about matters
of fact is itself neither of these and so falls.

Then we have some Christian writers who themselves can't bring reason in to
support faith:

Rudolf Bultmann says, "(faith). . . must not aspire to an objective basis in
dogma or in history on pain of losing its character of faith." 
[In, Faith and Understanding, vol.I p.15]

But as H.P. Owen points out, it is impossible to separate the act of faith from
the object of faith as proposed by Bultmann.  "Believing 'in' is impossible
without some measure of 'believing that'"
[Charles W. Kegley, ed., The Theology of Rudolf Bultmann, p.47.]

Pannenberg has noted the essential connection between faith and its 
rational basis.  "The essence of faith must come to harm precisely if in the
long run rational conviction about its basis fails to appear."
[Wolfhart Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology, vol.II, p.28.]

You see gang, Rich Rosen really DOES have a point that there must be REASONS
why one believes.  One could ask Rich (and Hume) why they choose their 
philosophical 'axioms' rather than some other. 

One can say, "I don't understand it all but I trust that the rest would make
sense if I could.  So based upon what I DO know now 'I believe'.  One can say
that in math or any other science or in talking about religious ideas.  Math
systems are often believed to be 'true/right' because they 'fit' or are
'beautiful'!  If that's not religious/mystical/'faith' what is?

Some see a 'mystical' approach to the 'why' questions as an alternative to
a 'reasonable' approach.  As if 'reason' were only one of a number of ways
to answers. Some believe that the 'logical' approach to 'why' questions is a
modern advancement in the evolutionary (what else?) flow of man's development.

For example:
The French scholar Levy-Bruhl contends that primitave man was 'prelogical' in
his thought and tended to the mystical and magical rather than the logical
and analytical.  Careful field observations have not supported this thesis.
Bronislaw Malinowski notes, " . . . every primative community is in possession
of a considerable store of knowledge, based upon experience and fashioned by
reason."  
[In, Magic, Science and Religion, p.26.]

No society operates without a nod to the law of cause and effect and the
principle of noncontradiction.  These ideas were not 'born' with Aristotle!
Yet one hears the idea that Eastern thought is 'mystical' and Western thought
is 'logical'.

In a careful study of modes of argument in Indian and Western philosophy
Dan Daor conludes that, "Indian philosophical reasoning is as careful and
logical as that of the West.  There are certainly differences in emphasis
and style, but not in intrinsic logicality."
[Dan Doar, "Modes of Arguments," in Scharfstein, et al, Philosophy East/
 Philosophy West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, p.28]

He goes on to note that the reductio ad absurdum type of argument is common
to Indian, Chinese, and European philosophy and that, " . . . the
Chinese intuitively used the same modes of inference used by the Greek and
Indian philosophers."  Ibid. p181.

Not only is 'faith' without reason a mental cotten candy it is a MYTHICAL mental
cotten candy!!!  It don't exist!

So here we have this guy and that guy jumpin' up and sayin', "I GOT IT!"
"FOLLOW ME!"  As someone once said on the net, "How do I know to follow Christ?"

My answer is that it is done (the decision) the exact same way one decides which
of anything else in life.  Did any other historical figure exist and what is
claimed about his life and words.  The Yuppie techie techie nurds never heard
of Historiography.  Mikki Barry is a good case in point.  She makes a big deal
about the '200 gospels', those books written by those 'other Christians' that
the Church fathers don't want you to find out about because it contradicts the
'Bible'.  She neglects to inform us that no scholarship has ever put them 
forward as worthy of serious contention with the 'Bible' as we have it.  Yes,
Parade Magazine has highlighted the 'lost' gospels, etc.  But from earliest
times they have been rejected as written by anyone living at the time of the
events described.  The early Church rejected them.  The are in a class with
Hugh J. Schonfield's, Passover Plot or a book called something like, The Cross
and the Mushroom (Jesus was part of a mushroom cult, etc.). Wagons of the Gods!

The early church (3rd C.) in the face of 'secret knowledge' of the Jewish
Oral Tradition variety, published a list of accepted authoritative sources
of their faith.  Eyewitness accounts only need apply!  Ones they KNEW to be
eyewitness accounts.  Some writings of early church fathers were left out
even though they did not contain anything contrary to the received teachings
of the disciples (remember Paul claimed to be and was received as an apostle).
For example, the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians was not included in
the 'Bible' even though he was held in high regard.

Anyway, the historical value of the Bible has improved with examination over
time.  Not as one might expect if it were myth.  The CLAIM on which Christianity
rests is HISTORICAL!!!  It actually happened!  That's what our faith rests on.
We have an inscription naming Pilate specifically.  An altar 'to gods unknown'
has been found in Greece a la Paul's visit to Athens, etc. etc.  Both Jewish
and Christian scholarship portray the accuracy of the life described in the
New Testament.  

We BELIEVE the witness of the writers of the Old and New Testaments as to both
the events and the meaning of the events they portray!!  There are logical
standards by which one judges if one believes a witness to events.  And for
various kinds of interpretations of them.

Well, gotta go.

Keep chargin'

Ken Arndt