Posts by clash_city

117

Polytheism - Jehovah has same status as other gods

by Sirona in

who here is polytheistic?

is jehovah just another god?

is he on a par with osiris / pan / cernunnos / whoever?.

clash_city_rockers

Funky writes:

If I was attacking the book of Mormon, I would do so based on the historical inaccuracies and other demonstrable absurdities inherent in that book. If the evidence proves the book to be false, then it cannot be true regardless of whether it fits its own arbitrary criteria or even yours.

Again you are living in (a priori) or already have certain fix presupposition in rearguards to evidence. Such as what is submersible for evidence, how evidence is to be judged (remember Christians and non-Christians both have different presuppositions as far as the interpretation of evidence goes), what is the criteria for valid evidence. This is all prolegomenon before and certain issues must be addressed before any discussion of evidences of the faith, again this is all part of the presupositionalist battle. From my (a Christian) perspective (because we all have goggles that interpreter our own perspective) a dialog between you and a Mormon would spiral down to oblivion because you guys are just having an evidentially battle that gets no where fast. I would see two lost people arguing each for a false and insufficient self refuting worldview.. What I am trying to do is undermined your worldview before it gets going. Another thing is that you have to realize that philosophically no one is neutral, this includes you Funky.

Funky writes:

It's the same technique we use to determine the truth or otherwise of any statement made by anyone. Does the evidence support the claim? I cannot understand why you make an exception when it comes to religious belief.

Funky if you sit down and think about this for a minute if you use just your criteria of "does the evidence support the claim" alone. All one would need to do is impose a reductio (same standard criteria) back on your worldview. Your position would fall by your same standard. I.e. give me the proofs for anthem. You can't all your left with really is skepticism and only that. If committed to such a position you will believe in absurd notions such as we are a product from chance. From this position you would have to prove the ontology of chance (that chance has being). This is just an example of the absurdity of atheism and the skepticism that it will lead to. My question is that if you have a standard in which to judge a worldview as false, but yet your standard to judge that worldview can be equally turned around on your worldview (to falsify your worldview) then how can you justify your knowledge of things around you in order to claim that you have a valid standard in which to judge with in the first place?

Funky writes:

Van Til's argument is perfectly reasonable and cogent, if and only if you accept his premise, namely, that he is correct. I do not accept what should be the conclusion of an argument as a premise. And in that regard Van Til is right, I do view his arguments as "the circular meanderings of a hopeless authoritarian". But being able to predict rebuttals to an argument is not the same as refuting those rebuttals.

Again all of this criticism can easily be turn around on you and your worldview. Can you come up with a transcending critique?

Funky writes:

In the real world, it doesn't matter whether you accept our premises or not. The earth still orbits the sun, oil still floats on water, Napoleon still lost the battle of Waterloo and Lima is still the capital of Peru. All the prevaricating and obfuscating in the world won't change that

Yet all of this is with in the Providence of the one and true living and holy God found in the bible. You know this too but sadly suppresses this knowledge in unrighteousness. This is what leads to the misery of skepticism that you are now in.

cheers,

jr

117

Polytheism - Jehovah has same status as other gods

by Sirona in

who here is polytheistic?

is jehovah just another god?

is he on a par with osiris / pan / cernunnos / whoever?.

clash_city_rockers

This is a little more sophistacated than any of my presentations but I'l give you a snippit of Van Til's "Why I am a Christian"

cheers,

jr

Objections Raised

By this time you are probably wondering whether I have really ever heard the objections which are raised against belief in such a God. Well, I think I have. I heard them from my teachers who sought to answer them. I also heard them from teachers who believed they could not be answered. While a student at Princeton Seminary I attended summer courses in the Chicago Divinity School. Naturally I heard the modern or liberal view of Scripture set forth fully there. And after graduation from the Seminary I spent two years at Princeton University for graduate work in philosophy. There the theories of modern philosophy were both expounded and defended by very able men. In short I was presented with as full a statement of the reasons for disbelief as I had been with the reasons for belief. I heard both sides fully from those who believed what they taught.
You have compelled me to say this by the look on your face. Your very gestures suggest that you cannot understand how any one acquainted with the facts and arguments presented by modern science and philosophy can believe in a God who really created the world, who really directs all things in the world by a plan to the ends He has in view for them. Well, I am only one of many who hold to the old faith in full view of what is said by modern science, modern philosophy, and modern Biblical criticism.
Obviously I cannot enter into a discussion of all the facts and all the reasons urged against belief in God. There are those who have made the Old Testament, as there are those who have made the New Testament, their life-long study. It is their works you must read for a detailed refutation of points of Biblical criticism. Others have specialized in physics and biology. To them I must refer you for a discussion of the many points connected with such matters as evolution. But there is something that underlies all these discussions. And it is with that something that I now wish to deal.
You may think I have exposed myself terribly. Instead of talking about God as something vague and indefinite, after the fashion of the modernist, the Barthians, and the mystic, a god so empty of content and remote from experience as to make no demands upon men, I have loaded down the idea of God with "antiquated" science and "contradictory" logic. It seems as though I have heaped insult upon injury by presenting the most objectionable sort of God I could find. It ought to be very easy for you to prick my bubble. I see you are ready to read over my head bushels of facts taken from the standard college texts on physics, biology, anthropology, and psychology, or to crush me with your sixty-ton tanks taken from Kant's famous book, The Critique of Pure Reason . But I have been under these hot showers now a good many times. Before you take the trouble to open the faucet again there is a preliminary point I want to bring up. I have already referred to it when we were discussing the matter of test or standard.
The point is this. Not believing in God, we have seen , you do not think yourself to be God's creature. And not believing in God you do not think the universe has been created by God. That is to say, you think of yourself and the world as just being there. Now if you actually are God's creature, then your present attitude is very unfair to Him. In that case it is even an insult to Him. And having insulted God, His displeasure rests upon you. God and you are not on "speaking terms." And you have very good reasons for trying to prove that He does not exist. If He does exist, He will punish you for your disregard of Him. You are therefore wearing colored glasses. And this determines everything you say about the facts and reasons for not believing in Him. You have had your picnics and hunting parties there without asking His permission. You have taken the grapes of God's vineyard without paying Him any rent and you have insulted His representatives who asked you for it.
I must make an apology to you at this point. We who believe in God have not always made this position plain. Often enough we have talked with you about facts and sound reasons as though we agreed with you on what these really are. In our arguments for the existence of God we have frequently assumed that you and we together have an area of knowledge on which we agree. But we really do not grant that you see any fact in any dimension of life truly. We really think you have colored glasses on your nose when you talk about chickens and cows, as well as when you talk about the life hereafter. We should have told you this more plainly than we did. But we were really a little ashamed of what would appear to you as a very odd or extreme position. We were so anxious not to offend you that we offended our own God. But we dare no longer present our God to you as smaller or less exacting than He really is. He wants to be presented as the All-Conditioner, as the emplacement on which even those who deny Him must stand.
Now in presenting all your facts and reasons to me, you have assumed that such a God does not exist. You have taken for granted that you need no emplacement of any sort outside of yourself. You have assumed the autonomy of your own experience. Consequently you are unable -- that is, unwilling -- to accept as a fact any fact that would challenge your self-sufficiency. And you are bound to call that contradictory which does not fit into the reach of your intellectual powers. You remember what old Procrustes did. If his visitors were too long, he cut off a few slices at each end; if they were too short, he used the curtain stretcher on them. It is that sort of thing I feel that you have done with every fact of human experience. And I am asking you to be critical of this your own most basic assumption. Will you not go into the basement of your own experience to see what has been gathering there while you were busy here and there with the surface inspection of life? You may be greatly surprised at what you find there.
To make my meaning clearer, I shall illustrate what I have said by pointing out how modern philosophers and scientists handle the facts and doctrines of Christianity.
Basic to all the facts and doctrines of Christianity and therefore involved in the belief in God, is the creation doctrine. Now modern philosophers and scientists as a whole claim that to hold such a doctrine or to believe in such a fact is to deny our own experience. They mean this not merely in the sense that no one was there to see it done, but in the more basic sense that it is logically impossible. They assert that it would break the fundamental laws of logic.
The current argument against the creation doctrine derives from Kant. It may fitly be expressed in the words of a more recent philosopher, James Ward: "If we attempt to conceive of God apart from the world, there is nothing to lead us on to creation" (Realm of Ends , p. 397). That is to say, if God is to be connected to the universe at all, he must be subject to its conditions. Here is the old creation doctrine. It says that God has caused the world to come into existence. But what do we mean by the word "cause"? In our experience, it is that which is logically correlative to the word "effect". If you have an effect you must have a cause and if you have a cause you must have an effect. If God caused the world, it must therefore have been because God couldn't help producing an effect. And so the effect may really be said to be the cause of the cause. Our experience can therefore allow for no God other than one that is dependent upon the world as much as the world is dependent upon Him.
The God of Christianity cannot meet these requirements of the autonomous man. He claims to be all-sufficient. He claims to have created the world, not from necessity but from His free will. He claims not to have changed in Himself when He created the world. His existence must therefore be said to be impossible and the creation doctrine must be said to be an absurdity.
The doctrine of providence is also said to be at variance with experience. This is but natural. One who rejects creation must logically also reject providence. If all things are controlled by God's providence, we are told, there can be nothing new and history is but a puppet dance.
You see then that I might present to you great numbers of facts to prove the existence of God. I might say that every effect needs a cause. I might point to the wonderful structure of the eye as evidence of God's purpose in nature. I might call in the story of mankind through the past to show that it has been directed and controlled by God. All these evidences would leave you unaffected. You would simply say that however else we may explain reality, we cannot bring in God. Cause and purpose, you keep repeating, are words that we human beings use with respect to things around us because they seem to act as we ourselves act, but that is as far as we can go.
And when the evidence for Christianity proper is presented to you the procedure is the same. If I point out to you that the prophecies of Scripture have been fulfilled, you will simply reply that it quite naturally appears that way to me and to others, but that in reality it is not possible for any mind to predict the future from the past. If it were, all would again be fixed and history would be without newness and freedom.
Then if I point to the many miracles, the story is once more the same. To illustrate this point I quote from the late Dr. William Adams Brown, an outstanding modernist theologian. "Take any of the miracles of the past," says Brown, "The virgin birth, the raising of Lazarus, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Suppose that you can prove that these events happened just as they are claimed to have happened. What have you accomplished? You have shown that our previous view of the limits of the possible needs to be enlarged; that our former generalizations were too narrow and need revision; that problems cluster about the origin of life and its renewal of which we had hitherto been unaware. But the one thing which you have not shown, which indeed you cannot show, is that a miracle has happened; for that is to confess that these problems are inherently insoluble, which cannot be determined until all possible tests have been made" (God at Work, New York, 1933, p. 169). You see with what confidence Brown uses this weapon of logical impossibility against the idea of a miracle. Many of the older critics of Scripture challenged the evidence for miracle at this point or at that. They made as it were a slow, piece-meal land invasion of the island of Christianity. Brown, on the other hand, settles the matter at once by a host of stukas from the sky. Any pill boxes that he cannot destroy immediately, he will mop up later. He wants to get rapid control of the whole field first. And this he does by directly applying the law of non-contradiction. Only that is possible, says Brown, in effect, which I can show to be logically related according to my laws of logic. So then if miracles want to have scientific standing, that is be recognized as genuine facts, they must sue for admittance at the port of entry to the mainland of scientific endeavor. And admission will be given as soon as they submit to the little process of generalization which deprives them of their uniqueness. Miracles must take out naturalization papers if they wish to vote in the republic of science and have any influence there.
Take now the four points I have mentioned -- creation, providence, prophecy, and miracle. Together they represent the whole of Christian theism. Together they include what is involved in the idea of God and what He has done round about and for us. Many times over and in many ways the evidence for all these has been presented. But you have an always available and effective answer at hand. It is impossible! It is impossible! You act like a postmaster who has received a great many letters addressed in foreign languages. He says he will deliver them as soon as they are addressed in the King's English by the people who sent them. Till then they must wait in the dead letter department. Basic to all the objections the average philosopher and scientist raises against the evidence for the existence of God is the assertion or the assumption that to accept such evidence would be to break the rules of logic.
I see you are yawning. Let us stop to eat supper now. For there is one more point in this connection that I must make. You have no doubt at some time in your life been to a dentist. A dentist drills a little deeper and then a little deeper and at last comes to the nerve of the matter.
Now before I drill into the nerve of the matter, I must again make apologies. The fact that so many people are placed before a full exposition of the evidence for God's existence and yet do not believe in Him has greatly discouraged us. We have therefore adopted measures of despair. Anxious to win your good will, we have again compromised our God. Noting the fact that men do not see, we have conceded that what they ought to see is hard to see. In our great concern to win men we have allowed that the evidence for God's existence is only probably compelling. And from that fatal confession we have gone one step further down to the point where we have admitted or virtually admitted that it is not really compelling at all. And so we fall back upon testimony instead of argument. After all, we say, God is not found at the end of an argument; He is found in our hearts. So we simply testify to men that once we were dead, and now we are alive, that once we were blind and that now we see, and give up all intellectual argument.
Do you suppose that our God approves of this attitude of His followers? I do not think so. The God who claims to have made all facts and to have placed His stamp upon them will not grant that there is really some excuse for those who refuse to see. Besides, such a procedure is self-defeating. If someone in your home town of Washington denied that there was any such thing as a United States Government would you take him some distance down the Potomac and testify to him that there is? So your experience and testimony of regeneration would be meaningless except for the objective truth of the objective facts that are presupposed by it. A testimony that is not an argument is not a testimony either, just as an argument that is not a testimony is not even an argument.
Waiving all this for the moment, let us see what the modern psychologist of religion, who stands on the same foundation with the philosopher, will do to our testimony. He makes a distinction between the raw datum and its cause, giving me the raw datum and keeping for himself the explanation of the cause. Professor James H. Leuba, a great psychologist of Bryn Mawr, has a procedure that is typical. He says, "The reality of any given datum -- of an immediate experience in the sense in which the term is used here, may not be impugned: When I feel cold or warm, sad or gay, discouraged or confident, I am cold, sad, discouraged, etc., and every argument which might be advanced to prove to me that I am not cold is, in the nature of the case, preposterous; an immediate experience may not be controverted; it cannot be wrong." All this seems on the surface to be very encouraging. The immigrant is hopeful of a ready and speedy admittance. However, Ellis Island must still be passed. "But if the raw data of experience are not subject to criticism, the causes ascribed to them are. If I say that my feeling of cold is due to an open window, or my state of exultation to a drug, or my renewed courage to God, my affirmation goes beyond my immediate experience; I have ascribed a cause to it, and that cause may be the right or the wrong one." (God or Man, New York, 1933, p. 243.) And thus the immigrant must wait at Ellis Island a million years. That is to say, I as a believer in God through Christ, assert that I am born again through the Holy Spirit. The Psychologist says that is a raw datum of experience and as such incontrovertible. We do not, he says, deny it. But it means nothing to us. If you want it to mean something to us you must ascribe a cause to your experience. We shall then examine the cause. Was your experience caused by opium or God? You say by God. Well, that is impossible since as philosophers we have shown that it is logically contradictory to believe in God. You may come back at any time when you have changed your mind about the cause of your regeneration. We shall be glad to have you and welcome you as a citizen of our realm, if only you take out your naturalization papers!
We seem now to have come to a pretty pass. We agreed at the outset to tell each other the whole truth. If I have offended you it has been because I dare not, even in the interest of winning you, offend my God. And if I have not offended you I have not spoken of my God. For what you have really done in your handling of the evidence for belief in God, is to set yourself up as God. You have made the reach of your intellect, the standard of what is possible or not possible. You have thereby virtually determined that you intend never to meet a fact that points to God. Facts, to be facts at all -- facts, that is, with decent scientific and philosophic standing -- must have your stamp instead of that of God upon them as their virtual creator.
Of course I realize full well that you do not pretend to create redwood trees and elephants. But you do virtually assert that redwood trees and elephants cannot be created by God. You have heard of the man who never wanted to see or be a purple cow. Well, you have virtually determined that you never will see or be a created fact. With Sir Arthur Eddington you say as it were, "What my net can't catch isn't fish."
Nor do I pretend, of course, that once you have been brought face to face with this condition, you can change your attitude. No more than the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots can you change your attitude. You have cemented your colored glasses to your face so firmly that you cannot even take them off when you sleep. Freud has not even had a glimpse of the sinfulness of sin as it controls the human heart. Only the great Physician through His blood atonement on the Cross and by the gift of His Spirit can take those colored glasses off and make you see facts as they are, facts as evidence, as inherently compelling evidence, for the existence of God.
It ought to be pretty plain now what sort of God I believe in. It is God, the All-Conditioner. It is the God who created all things, Who by His providence conditioned my youth, making me believe in Him, and who in my later life by His grace still makes me want to believe in Him. It is the God who also controlled your youth and so far has apparently not given you His grace that you might believe in Him.
You may reply to this: "Then what's the use of arguing and reasoning with me?" Well, there is a great deal of use in it. You see, if you are really a creature of God, you are always accessible to Him. When Lazarus was in the tomb he was still accessible to Christ who called him back to life. It is this on which true preachers depend. The prodigal [son] thought he had clean escaped from the father's influence. In reality the father controlled the "far country" to which the prodigal had gone. So it is in reasoning. True reasoning about God is such as stands upon God as upon the emplacement that alone gives meaning to any sort of human argument. And such reasoning, we have a right to expect, will be used of God to break down the one-horse chaise of human autonomy.
But now I see you want to go home. And I do not blame you; the last bus leaves at twelve. I should like to talk again another time. I invite you to come to dinner next Sunday. But I have pricked your bubble, so perhaps you will not come back. And yet perhaps you will. That depends upon the Father's pleasure. Deep down in your heart you know very well that what I have said about you is true. You know there is no unity in your life. You want no God who by His counsel provides for the unity you need. Such a God, you say, would allow for nothing new. So you provide your own unity. But this unity must, by your own definition, not kill that which is wholly new. Therefore it must stand over against the wholly new and never touch it at all. Thus by your logic you talk about possibles and impossibles, but all this talk is in the air. By your own standards it can never have anything to do with reality. Your logic claims to deal with eternal and changeless matters; and your facts are wholly changing things; and "never the twain shall meet." So you have made nonsense of your own experience. With the prodigal you are at the swine-trough, but it may be that, unlike the prodigal, you will refuse to return to the father's house.
On the other hand by my belief in God I do have unity in my experience. Not of course the sort of unity that you want. Not a unity that is the result of my own autonomous determination of what is possible. But a unity that is higher than mine and prior to mine. On the basis of God's counsel I can look for facts and find them without destroying them in advance. On the basis of God's counsel I can be a good physicist, a good biologist, a good psychologist, or a good philosopher. In all these fields I use my powers of logical arrangement in order to see as much order in God's universe as it may be given a creature to see. The unities, or systems that I make are true because [they are] genuine pointers toward the basic or original unity that is found in the counsel of God.
Looking about me I see both order and disorder in every dimension of life. But I look at both of them in the light of the Great Orderer Who is back of them. I need not deny either of them in the interest of optimism or in the interest of pessimism. I see the strong men of biology searching diligently through hill and dale to prove that the creation doctrine is not true with respect to the human body, only to return and admit that the missing link is missing still. I see the strong men of psychology search deep and far into the sub-consciousness, child and animal consciousness, in order to prove that the creation and providence doctrines are not true with respect to the human soul, only to return and admit that the gulf between human and animal intelligence is as great as ever. I see the strong men of logic and scientific methodology search deep into the transcendental for a validity that will not be swept away by the ever-changing tide of the wholly new, only to return and say that they can find no bridge from logic to reality, or from reality to logic. And yet I find all these, though standing on their heads, reporting much that is true. I need only to turn their reports right side up, making God instead of man the center of it all, and I have a marvelous display of the facts as God has intended me to see them.
And if my unity is comprehensive enough to include the efforts of those who reject it, it is large enough even to include that which those who have been set upright by regeneration cannot see. My unity is that of a child who walks with its father through the woods. The child is not afraid because its father knows it all and is capable of handling every situation. So I readily grant that there are some "difficulties" with respect to belief in God and His revelation in nature and Scripture that I cannot solve. In fact there is mystery in every relationship with respect to every fact that faces me, for the reason that all facts have their final explanation in God Whose thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and Whose ways are higher than my ways. And it is exactly that sort of God that I need. Without such a God, without the God of the Bible, the God of authority, the God who is self-contained and therefore incomprehensible to men, there would be no reason in anything. No human being can explain in the sense of seeing through all things, but only he who believes in God has the right to hold that there is an explanation at all.
So you see when I was young I was conditioned on every side; I could not help believing in God. Now that I am older I still cannot help believing in God. I believe in God now because unless I have Him as the All-Conditioner, life is Chaos.
I shall not convert you at the end of my argument. I think the argument is sound. I hold that belief in God is not merely as reasonable as other belief, or even a little or infinitely more probably true than other belief; I hold rather that unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else. But since I believe in such a God, a God who has conditioned you as well as me, I know that you can to your own satisfaction, by the help of the biologists, the psychologists, the logicians, and the Bible critics reduce everything I have said this afternoon and evening to the circular meanderings of a hopeless authoritarian. Well, my meanderings have, to be sure, been circular; they have made everything turn on God. So now I shall leave you with Him, and with His mercy.

The End

117

Polytheism - Jehovah has same status as other gods

by Sirona in

who here is polytheistic?

is jehovah just another god?

is he on a par with osiris / pan / cernunnos / whoever?.

clash_city_rockers

Funky asks:

Clash, are you saying that there's simply no way to get to the stage you're at without choosing it as your starting point?

good question

If you are inquiring that all arguments are eventually circular, then yes.

Great Question:

Imagine you met another presuppositionalist, but one who presupposed the existence of a different god and the veracity of a different holy book? How would you convince him of the error of his ways?

This is where ther apologetic battle begins. This gets to the heart of the world view this goes beyond the use of evidence in fact this is how one can undermine the use of evidence by determining how the evidence is interpratated. You go to the point of going beyond evidential agumantation and undermind the opositions world view.

In the particular case that you bring up, we'll call it the battle of whos got the holy book. Lets say Joe Mormon comes rolling down the street and says "I got the book of Mormon and it's the way to go" of course I'm going to counter with the same in reguards of the bible. So I cross examin Joe Mormon with can your book give (and I'll just use one particular distictive for time but I can give more if you like) an account of a Grace only salvation. The Mormon will have to say now the book of Mormon presents a maritorius works salvation. In fact all man made religious holy books i.e. the koran and others present a works salvation plan. Only the bible gives a Grace only salvation that it can be best described as "a sit on your but and do nothing to save yourself salvation." At this point you may say so what that is just a distinction and not a proof. but what it gets deeper. This very bible discribes unsaved man and his hand made phony gods as giving man a "works salvation" sceem. This is the point of contact for the Gospel of grace. which all holy books don't have this type of particular gospel. The particulars in the bible can give an account of the created order in such a way that all other man made holy books can't and this is the apologetic battle

this is just in short

cheers,

jr

117

Polytheism - Jehovah has same status as other gods

by Sirona in

who here is polytheistic?

is jehovah just another god?

is he on a par with osiris / pan / cernunnos / whoever?.

clash_city_rockers

BTW,

Happy Birthday Funky

jr

117

Polytheism - Jehovah has same status as other gods

by Sirona in

who here is polytheistic?

is jehovah just another god?

is he on a par with osiris / pan / cernunnos / whoever?.

clash_city_rockers

Funky, you simply beleive that you are looking at things nuetraly but that aint so. You can not justify your world view by the use of good reason and logic. There is so much that you take philisophacaly for granted but your athiestic world view can't account for anything. The conversation doesn't help then you inconsistantly leave your position of athiesm and defend the polythiestic or panthiestic beliefs of your friends. Now you may argue for the legitamacy for one to believe in such non-sence like poly or panthiesm, but if it is out of pragmatism then you do your personal position no credit.

just a thought,

jr

117

Polytheism - Jehovah has same status as other gods

by Sirona in

who here is polytheistic?

is jehovah just another god?

is he on a par with osiris / pan / cernunnos / whoever?.

clash_city_rockers

Abaddon who doesn't fool anybody when he claims he is the logic master writes:

It’s funny. On one hand, I can see why you would find Sirona’s more smorgasbord approach to religion almost offensive. For you, the book is god. The idea that you can merge ideas from several books or traditions is alien to you.

If you think that being ecclectic is the way to go in constructing philosophy my advise abaddon is to put the crack pipe down and sort of come down to earth. News Flash abaddon, if one constructs an ecclectic world view borrowing sources that contradict eachother then that world view is false and self-refuting. You have no evidence but the blind and inccorect asertion that Christianity started this way. You just claim it as De Facto, your going to have to do better than that.

Abaddon, you have never in the history of this board after being challenged time and time again to Refute Van Til of Bahnsen's Transendental Argument for the Exestance of God.(TAG)

Again you claim of fallicies but this is just drivel on your behafe. In formal discussion one must point out in detail what catagorical falacy that he is commiting unfortunatly you don't know of any because you have never sat in a logic class. What's new.

Again abaddon who seems in shock ans awe over Van Til's methodology writes:

No, you’re not allowed to use evidence; you’ve accepted it as truth before examining the evidence. You AGAIN make straw man arguments in accusing others of rejecting the account before examination.

If you read page 45-56 of Van Til's defence of the faith which you don't own (porn is probly the only literature you are really in to) you will see there is a propper use of evidences but not for converting the believer that is only left up to the Gospel, but evidence is collabrative in the use of demonstrating the unintellagability of athiests

abaddon writes with such thoughful consistancy (ya right):

You are a judgemental person Clash; presuppositionalism is based upon judging people… go read the Bible, especially James, and tell me how you justify going against your made-up god’s words?

If you an athiest abaddon, why should you care if anyone reads James. If this is where you apeal to for morals (and that is the right place) then your claim of athiesm goes up in smoke thanks to you and your inconsistancy.

abaddon who if he just thinks about what he say just might get it writes:

There’s no point in talking to you; evidence regarding inaccurate Bible chronology and events that there is no evidence for occurring would just be rejected.

This is why I am a presuppositionalist and not an evidentialist, if you think about it you in the way you handel evidence are a practicing presuppositionalist. You start with your circle and I start with mind. The only difference is that your circle is unintellegable and can not give an account to the created order, life, ethics, and so on and mine can because it is from the creator. This is the point of apologetics is to distroy your world view by showing it's inconsistencies and lack of intellegablilaty. And giving the Gospel of christ which is your only hope.

Finally here is a book that you can profit from since you are so clueless on this skill. This book is for your benefit so you can better yourself .

Introductory Logic - Student
Douglas Wilson and James Nance

Huggs and Kisses,

jr

117

Polytheism - Jehovah has same status as other gods

by Sirona in

who here is polytheistic?

is jehovah just another god?

is he on a par with osiris / pan / cernunnos / whoever?.

clash_city_rockers

avishai writes:

Not to mention the "goddess" the ancient hebrews worshipped. Asherah. Funny, how the jews were'nt supposed to have other gods or graven images, but there it is, right there in exedous

Maybe it's just me, but could you please help me please give me the chapter and verse in Exodus where we run into "Asherah"

I know that this goddess is found elsewhere in the OT.

Now to the Point when the Isreal rebeled against her covenant keeping God like slipping back into apostate like worshiping some silly man made goddess like Asherah is was never a good thing. This act was contrary to what God had designed by covenantal grace his people Israel to be or do.

Just a snippit from redemptive history

Judges 3:7-11

7 So the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD. They forgot the LORD their God, and served the Baals and Asherahs. [1] 8 Therefore the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and He sold them into the hand of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Mesopotamia; and the children of Israel served Cushan-Rishathaim eight years. 9 When the children of Israel cried out to the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer for the children of Israel, who delivered them: Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. 10 The Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he judged Israel. He went out to war, and the LORD delivered Cushan-Rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand; and his hand prevailed over Cushan-Rishathaim. 11 So the land had rest for forty years. Then Othniel the son of Kenaz died.

God is against man made pagan god worship even from his own people the Israelites recieved covenant penal sanctions for such actions

cheers,

jr

117

Polytheism - Jehovah has same status as other gods

by Sirona in

who here is polytheistic?

is jehovah just another god?

is he on a par with osiris / pan / cernunnos / whoever?.

clash_city_rockers

seedy3 who is about as sorry of an exigete as Fred Frans posts:

Free will it is interesting you point that out about the "like us" statement, here are a couple of others that indicate that YHWH may not have been the supreme God at the early beleifs time of the Hebrews, for instance: Deut 32:7-9 where El gives to YHWH (Ya have to look in the hebrew to see this).

It is God (Yahweh) who gives or divides his inheratence amoung his people Jacob (Isreal).

I seriouly doubt you know anything about biblical Hebrew. Even if you studied the biblical languages like Hebrew at a liberal seminary like Fuller Semenary in CA they flunk your rear end out of the classroom.

Deut 32:7-9

7 "Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of many generations.
Ask your father, and he will show you;
Your elders, and they will tell you:
8 When the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations,
When He separated the sons of Adam,
He set the boundaries of the peoples
According to the number of the children of Israel.
9 For the LORD's portion is His people;
Jacob is the place of His inheritance.

late,

jr

117

Polytheism - Jehovah has same status as other gods

by Sirona in

who here is polytheistic?

is jehovah just another god?

is he on a par with osiris / pan / cernunnos / whoever?.

clash_city_rockers

Free will, who reads his bible like a Jehovahs Witness without any regaurd of context or syntaxt to the passage (no wonder he got into JWs) writes:

clash- please explain gen3:22 "...here the man has become like one of us..."

Pay attention to the Text! this is in regaurd to knowing good and evil and not becoming gods, remember Adam and Eve did die, so much for becoming gods. Please look at the text.

Gen 3:22 NKJV

22 Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"

Free will who does not read his bible posts:

or the fact that there were other people outside of the garden of eden. at gen 4:16 and 17. "...cain went away...and took up residence in the land of fugitiveness to the east of eden...cain had intercourse with his wife ..."

Cain, Abel, Seth where all Decendence from Adam and Eve who were sent out of the garden of Eden. They where not the inhabatence outside of Eden prior to Adam and Eve relocation, but infact where put there by birth by Adam and Eve.

Homework.......

Read the entire chapter of Genesis Chapter 4

one more thing where in the bible and please give me chapter and verse that they (Adam and Eve) where sent "East of Eden" as you put it the bible just says Outside of Eden.

are you adding things like the WT. Read the bible and don't be a JW about it either.

late,

jr

21

HAS THE QUALITY OF JWS GONE DOWN?

by badboy in

jw
friends

what do u think?

clash_city_rockers

Really good thread you guys are on the money with your observation.

Most dubs are very lack luster about thier J-Dubing about

More and more of them lead very sinfully scandelious lives.

Most I feel would like to get out but don't know how.

The depression comes from and this is just my guess from the legalistic rules

and strict moralistic demands that are given with out any theological

understanding of the doctrines of Grace which in the WT there are none.

With all law and no Gospel one can feel really hopeless real fast.

just a thought.

late,

jr

clash_city_rockers

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