"I had never really paid much attention to the sermon before, I was more interested in the deacon's daughter and what we might be doing between services. I listened to the sermon, and I remember complete astonishment because what they were talking about were things that were just crazy."
I don't know whether the scholars in Isaiah's time thought the Earth was round or not, Isaiah lived from approx. 739-686 BC and Eratosthenes of Cyrene did his famous "shadow in the well" experiment to quite accurately measure the circumference of the Earth sometime during his life (276-194 BC).
This means nothing in itself as the Isaiahian scholars looking out to sea as ships departed would have been given a clue to the Earth's shape, but just didn't know how to size it. I'm prepared to believe that they thought that the Earth was a globe, but like me they also may have been confused by the "above - in Heaven" and "below - in Hell" parts of the Bible.
This could explain the behaviour of Australians however :-)
I just get the impression from The Bible that the Earth is flat .. I have to go out of my way to find reasons fot it not to be.
By selection effect I mean we select to see and experience things because we are sensitive to and (or) have a desire to see them. Like Lowell seeing canals on Mars through his telescope because he believed so much that they were there, and they were always on his mind. If the second coming happens when the Sun engulfs the Earth then we are almost coincident with the time of the first coming when looking at the timeline. This means we live in a really special time. I mean, assuming that the Earth and mankind are still around in 4,000,000,000 years time people will look back at the records of our time and say "Wow those were the Jesus folk in 2005" ... or will they even remember us? I have no idea, but isn't it nice to live in the special time so close to when Our Lord chose to visit?
On the other hand, if the Earth is 10,000 years old, Jesus arrived at +8000 years post creation of the Earth, and if the second coming is say in 10,000 years time that gives a total span of History of the Earth of 20,000 years. In that case it's not that lucky that we are alive now living in this time to contemplate Jesus. That scenario does not smell of a selection effect.
The supernatural one is a good debate ... I'll define supernatural as something that cannot be explained by science. Can everything be explained in scientific and measurable terms? ... I doubt it. Science has the brick wall limits of the Uncertainty Princple and the Speed of Light. Beyond those veils anything is possible ... now whether anything exists beyonds these veils and whether or not anything influences our Universe from beyond those veils is a matter of belief. I don't think anything has been knowingly scientifically measured from these supernatural areas. I like to think that Love comes from these areas in some kind of fashion. But a brain chemist would disagree with me of course, after all ... they have no soul :)
When you wrote:
In fact, the Christian faith is mutually exclusive with all other faiths:
- Either Christianity is True and all other faiths are wrong, or
- Christianity is False and one of the other faiths is right, or
- All faiths are wrong and we haven't figured out what is True
I'll give you another option ... I think the "Truth" will turn out to be something different. I suspect that there were some big, seemingly supernatural, events in our past history .. some of these have been alluded to or even documented in The Bible. The "Truth" of the matter may be that Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jewish tradition etc etc all contain some elements of an underlying "Truth". I suspect this is true because all of those religions have things in common and a billion Christians and a billion Muslims can't be wrong.
But as you point out, in this life we'll never know the Truth so we have to choose.
Now, as Christians, let's get onto the more important aspect of how we live our lives. I remember bugging you a few years ago with the nagging feeling that I should be doing something else as a Christian, something other than "working for the man". I think that your answer at the time, perhaps in a kind effort to console me, was that "God needs plumbers too" or words to that effect.
But God doesn't need plumbers. He doesn't need anything. This is what Scott Adams (yes Dilbert's daddy!) said on the subject:
"Four billion people SAY they believe in God, but few genuinely believe. If people believed in God, they would live every minute of their lives in support of that belief. Rich people would give their wealth to the needy. Everyone would be frantic to determine which religion was the true one. No one could be comfortable in the thought that they might have picked the wrong religion and blundered into eternal damnation, or bad reincarnation, or some other unthinkable consequence. People would dedicate their lives to converting others to their religions.
A belief in God would demand 100 percent obsessive devotion, influencing every waking moment of this brief life on Earth. But your four billion so-called believers do not live their lives in that fashion, except for a few. The majority believe in the usefulness of their beliefs -- an Earthly and practical utility -- but they do not believe in the underlying reality."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "If you asked them, they'd say they believe."
"They say that they believe because pretending to believe is necessary to get the benefits of religion. They tell other people that they believe and they do believer-like things, like praying and reading holy books. But they don't do the things that a true believer would do, the things a true believer would HAVE to do.
If you believe a truck is coming toward you, you will jump out of the way. That is belief in the reality of the truck. If you tell people you fear the truck but do nothing to get out of the way, that is not belief in the truck. Likewise, it is not belief to say God exists and then continue sinning and hoarding your wealth while innocent people die of starvation. When belief does not control your most important decisions it is not belief in the underlying reality, it is belief in the usefulness of believing."
Current song: Pet Shop Boys "I want a dog"
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