And to continue the majority discussion, I don’t think there is one universal Christian view on how God judges those who lived before Jesus. I think it is clear that some were saved, but it is not spelled out exactly how many or on what basis. The reason is I think, that for us, and for anyone with access to the bible it is an irrelevant (although interesting) question. We have the bible, Christianity is easily discoverable by us, so we cannot claim ignorance in any way.
Personally though I think it was probably about:
Desiring to be in relationship with God
Recognising their own evil and the need for the forgiveness of God.
These sorts of people may have been saved in a pre-Christian setting, but perhaps not. I can’t be sure.
And in this Dante reflects the traditional teaching of the time. People who lived before Christ, or in places Christianity had not yet gotten to, would be judged on their personal ‘righteousness’ (ethical behavior), with Jesus’s atonement giving them too the opportunity for Heaven.
Nicely said. It’s often missed that Ussher (Archbishop James Ussher of the [Anglican] Church of Ireland) was a scholar and historian, not a YEC freak. He was working with the best knowledge of the time, using the Bible only when historical records known at the time failed. Historical geology at that point (mid 1600s) had not yet been developed; geology was predominantly descriptive and physical in its scope. That rocks laid down in the Cambrian were orders of magnitude older than those from the Cretaceous was not yet understood; not only were radioactive decay measurements not understood but radioactivity itself was not yet known. The astronomical studies that led to cosmology were only just beginning – Galileo and Kepler’s work was less than 50 years old, and Herschel was a century in the future. Observational cosmology would not be in vogue for another 300 years. Stephen Jay Gould’s essay “A Fall in the House of Ussher” examines the archbishop’s work in the context of his time.
That chronology, unfortunately, was coopted by Bibliocentric nutballs of the YEC variety, giving Ussher an undeserved bad name.
First of all, Christianity is very diverse, and different Christians have different answers for your questions. It’s important to emphasize, as has been stated above, that young-earth creationism is not only a small minority of Christianity in the world today, it’s a tiny minority of all Christians in the history of the church.
I’ll try to answer your questions from a “mainstream” point of view, i.e. as best as I can to represent the closest thing to consensus from Christian thinkers and theologians.
Obviously there was no Christianity before Jesus Christ. In fact you could argue there was no Christianity during Jesus’ lifetime – he considered himself a Jew. It was his followers who became known as followers of Christ - Christians. So yes there were plenty of civilizations besides the Jews who lived and died before Jesus came around.
God did pass on his words and evidence of his existence before Jesus. The primary way he did it was choosing a man - Abraham - to reveal him self to and make a covenant with, and then interacting with Abraham and his descendents through many many generations (the people who came to be known as Israelites). Outside of this tribe, the Bible says that God revealed himself in other more limited ways: primarily through nature and people’s conscience.
The Bible is not clear on this, and most Christians would admit the real answer is “We don’t know.” But most common theory is that God, being Just and Merciful, would not condemn anyone for rejecting a God they did not know, and judges people based on how they respond to the revelation they have received. A prehistoric tribe who worships a creator-god who embodies goodness and love: how is that different from Yahweh? So we trust that God deals with them fairly.
This has been addressed above, but to reiterate: the Bible does not say how old the earth is. Most Christians are not literalists when it comes to Genesis and do not have trouble accepting a 5-billion year old earth or evolution of the species. This may not be true in the US, but in general – if you look at the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church or most other major denominations – they do not reject evolution or the scientific understanding of the universe. They do however believe that the hand of God was behind it, and is the ultimate Creator and Mover of the universe.
<<The 6000 year chronology is more or less accurate because of the geneology from Adam to Jesus and from Jesus to the current time. There is nothing in th Bible that claims that there was a time before time or that creation took a multitude of years. A day means a 24 hour period.>>
With respect Captain, the chronology is not complete, so how can it be considered accurate? For example the chronology from Adam to Solomon is straight forward, but there are gaps from Solomon through to the destruction of the temple. From Ezra/Nehemiah to the birth of Christ the chronology is guess work. The work of Thiele is now more widely accepted by ‘Egyptologists’.
However all of this only addresses the speculated chronology of man.
The ‘days’ of creation do not have to be 24 hour periods. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (1980, Moody Press) states “It can denote: 1. the period of light (as contrasted with the period of darkness), 2. the period of twenty-four hours, 3. a general vague “time,” 4. a point of time, 5. a year (in the plural; I Sam 27:7; Ex 13:10, etc.).”
I share your scepticism about modern dating methods, however let’s not subject the Word of God to ridicule simply to pursue a singular interpretation that is not demanded.
You just eviscerated your own argument. If “explanations don’t need explanations” then we don’t need your idea of using God to explain where the Big Bang came from, either.
Since there’s no evidence of God (beyond a lot of subjective, contradictory and thus useless claims), no evidence that gods are possible or how such a being would work if it was possible, it adds nothing since we can’t say anything meaningful about such a hypothetical god…
Nonsense, there are various theories that DO hold that there is an infinitely old universe. Such as the idea that our universe is part of a much larger eternally expanding one, or the spawn of a previous universe much like our own, or any number of others.
That doesn’t follow at all.
“God” doesn’t solve that alleged problem, it just claims that God is the Cause and that you shouldn’t think about his cause. It’s a copout not an explanation.
That’s just an attempt to steal the credit for the work of millennia of human effort and use it to buff your god’s image. “God” didn’t give us the ability to understand the world, nor did evolution for that matter; we did. We built upon the flawed intellectual tools given us by evolution to develop techniques that gave us a truer understanding or the world.
Nonsense again. Belief in God is all about the denial of the validity and usefulness of understanding, of facts and logic. That’s why it’s called faith. Belief in God is a crippling of the mind; not a necessity for understanding the world. Given the mountains of evidence for the existence and inevitability* of evolution, both of ourselves and life in general you picked an especially bad example to bolster your case; disbelief in evolution requires either severe ignorance or deliberate denial of reality. It is after all one of the solidest theories in science; you might as well deny gravity.
That’s pure nonsense. “Atheistic naturalism” does that just fine, since it is perfectly compatible with observed reality; it’s theism that by its faith based nature can never be anything other than empty, baseless nonsense.
Because the nature of life makes evolution inevitable, not because any particular path is.
<<Nonsense, there are various theories that DO hold that there is an infinitely old universe. Such as the idea that our universe is part of a much larger eternally expanding one, or the spawn of a previous universe much like our own, or any number of others.>>
1> These are not ‘theories’, at least not in the scientific sense. Theories require observable phenomena and empirical data. Other than the self evident reality of the existence of this universe, there is no such data or phenomena to support such ideas. Infact they barely rise to the level of hypotheses.
2> Such as they are, these ‘ideas’ or ‘beliefs’ only push the problem back one step. From where did the expanding or previous universe(s) derive it’s existence?
This really is just a semantic game. If you define the best explanation to be the one that doesn’t need an explanation, then you end up with some kind of cause. Fine if you want to define it like that, but why would anything have a cause? Argh. I’ve done this too often: here’s the deal: whatever, if anything, “caused” the universe, is NOT AUTOMATICALLY A GOD. It could just be some “natural law”.
Yes it would be extremely interesting if it was true. Give us some evidence that it is.
So? No mainstream scientific theories of the universe hold that it’s infinitely old. Quite the contrary.
I’ll give you this in a narrow sense (and it is an interesting argument), but it won’t get you anywhere either.
Science “works” because scientists work hard at eradicating the stuff that doesn’t work. What more explanation do you need?
I am having trouble grasping the level of confusion that would prompt such a comment.
First of all your statement that there is no evidence of God sounds a lot more like a statement of faith than of something you could actually observe. Secondly, the God hypothesis states something very meaningful in that it is saying that in addition to the natural world there is also an uncreated, eternal being that brought the natural world into existence. It is true that these statements don’t tell us much about that God, but it is flat out wrong to suggest that it says nothing meaningful.
First of all, the Borde - Guth - Vilenkin theorum expressly covers the “part of larger expanding universe” theory so no, you are wrong on that count. Even if our universe was part of a larger expanding universe that larger expanding universe must also have a finite past. Vilenkin himself says in his 2006 book “Many worlds in one”
Just wishing it doesn’t make it so. Care to give some sort of argument as to why?
The existence of God is one possible explaination of why the universe works according to laws of cause and effect. It sounds like “God is not an explaination” is another one of your statements of faith. Socondly fundamental to the nature of God is that He is uncaused. So the question “who created God?” is answered simply as “no-one”. God is not created and therefore his existence requires no explaination.
The fundamental question here is not so much about ability, but about inherent capability. Every physical thing is limited by its physical form. Humans, by sheer force of will, cannot grow gills nad breath underwater. We lack the necessary biological components to make that happen.
So the qestion here is whether or not it is in our capacity to correctly understand the world, or are we mistaken and only think that we understand the world. If God created us in some fashion, then God would have created us with the intrinsic mental capacity to understand the world correctly. If we are created by blind evolution, then we cannot be sure that we are created with that mental capacity.
I am not denying evolution. In fact I suggest that of the two of us it is you that is doing the most denying and twisting of scientific theory. The infinite universe is or the universe that comes into exsitence from nothing is, I think, the atheist equivalent of creation science. Something that is believed, not because the scientific evidence supports it, but because it must be true for the atheist worldview to work.
The argument of Plantiga is that since naturalistic evolution destroys our own abiltiy to know it therefore undermines its own epistemology and becomes incoherent.
This sort of thing is hardly new. It is a fundamental problem with the modernist view of reality. So for instance the existentiallists were reacting against essentially the same problems, although in a more atheistic way. Obviously it doesn’t show that theism is true. However it does show that these types of modernist naturalistic materialism are at best believed irrationally.
No, it’s a statement of hard, cold fact, actually. If you beg to differ, please show us the evidence.
This is desperate special pleading by Plantinga. Evolution is a fact, son. Trying to attack empiricism at an epistemological level is just wild, scrabbling sophism. Never mind that the argument is fatuous, it’s also false in the presumption that empirical method is held out as necessarily epistemologically reliable. Yes, Descartes was right, demons might be controlling our brains, yet we have no reason to believe that they are, and we have nothing to replace empiricism with.
More significantly, this lame-ass argument also applies to religious beliefs, since all religious beliefs are derived empirically. Nothing you believe about God has anything you can show to be a reliable, epistemological basis.
I agree that you cannot say, on the basis of these arguments, much of the properties of the acency repsonsible for creating the universe. What is significant here though is that it shows that something else apart from just the physical, natural world exists.
I also think that “natural law” cannot be responsible for the creation of the unverse, for three reasons
“Natural law” is itself a very loaded term. If a law existed outside of the universe to bring it into being, the natural question is then what agency does that law have? Is it possible for a law itself to have agency without being brought into action by some other agent? I don’t think it makes sense to talk of natural law as though it has an agency all of its own. If it has agency it ceases to be merely a law and starts to be something much more like a God.
“Natural Law”, as we understand it, may very well be a property of the universe itself. Therefore for natural law to create the universe requires that the universe already exists, which is absurd.
All natural laws that we observe work with pre-existing matter in pre-existing states. It is unclear how natural laws would work in situations were there is no pre-existing matter and pre-existing states. If the natural law that lead to the creation of the universe was uncreated, then it should still be in operation now, and indeed should have been in operation for eternity. This, I think, is absurd which is why I think this unlikely.
What evidence would you accept?
Perhaps we could start with the Kalam cosmological argument:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. (God does not begin to exist)
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
The cause of the universe must necessarily be outside of it and have some sort of agency.
Then we agree? My main points here are that:
The universe does have a begining.
Entirely causeless things do not happen, and therefore the universe cannot come into exsitence without cause.
Do you disagree with those points?
Science works because the world is ordered in a uniformity of cause and effect in a way that is empirically discoverable. If this were not true, then science wouldn’t work. There is no fundamental reason why the world should be ordered like this. Why it is ordered in this way really is the question. The theist would say that it is ordered by God in that way. I am not sure if there is a good explaination from an atheist point of view.
Also, this universe doesn’t have to be the only one. Are you familiar with multiverse or brane hypotheses?
Also, trying to answer the question of what "caused’ the big bang with a “a very powerful sorceror” is just begging the question since you now have to explain what caused the sorceror.
The burden of proof rests with the person making the claim that there is no evidence. I am happy with the statement that there may or may not be evidence for the existence of God. If you want to say that there definitely is no evidence then you must shoulder the burden of proof.
I don’t think you really understand the argument. It is not an arguement against empiricism. It is an argument against the combination of atheism and empiricism. I think empiricism can work quite well in a theistic context. The arguement is that we can only be confident in empiricism when we are confident that the world can be discovered empirically. Theistic worlds can have this property. Atheistic worlds may or may not, we can’t know. Therefore we can’t know if empiricism will work in these contexts.
Also, I think it entirely appropriate to challenge empiricism on these grounds. Your epistemology appears to be stuck in the 19th century. Perhaps you should read some more modern philosophy then Descartes and then get back to us. This is essentially the same questions that existentialist and post-modernist writers grapple with, even if they come to different conclusions.
Many of those who insist the world was created six thousand years ago also insist that dinosaurs and men walked the Earth together. So perhaps some of the messengers carrying God’s word were trampled or eaten by dinosaurs.
Name one. And quantum events, as discussed before, are not properly causeless.
The Borde - Guth - Vilenkin theorum works with multiverse and string theories, theories, so even if true these universes still must have a finite past.
More to the point, are you familiar with these theories?
Not if the sorceror does not come into being, but has always existed, as theists believe God does.
Before this thread becomes even more de-railed, MatthewGerlach do you have any more questions? What does he think about the explainations put forward so far?
<<Cuaseless things happena ll the time.>>
I echo the request for an example, and perhaps with the extra requirement that it evidence the coming into existence of something from nothing.
<<Also, this universe doesn’t have to be the only one. Are you familiar with multiverse or brane hypotheses?>>
Oh yes, but the multi-verse notion (which is based on pure faith and that alone) simply pushes the problem back one step. Ultimately, if physical reality had a beginning, it must have had a cause.
I’m interrupting here, because there is NO evidence that leads us to assume that there in fact IS a cause for whatever we currently call the “universe”.
I agree. I’m already sorry for using it.
Are you arguing that gravity or electricity have intent? If not, please explain why those “natural laws” are not subject to intent. If you are, please explain why there are general “natural laws” concerning these phenomena. I’m assuming you’re positing a general intent in the universe.
I’ll give you this, but as I mentioned earlier, this is more a matter of semantics. And it does not prove anything about the meta-physical.
That’s only true because we stopped using the word “law” WRT physical phenomena more than 100 years ago. We DO reliably observe and describe phenomena that DO NOT rely on pre-existing matter or state.
I’m not going to take your word for that, but I certainly can’t do more than take an interested layman’s stab at it.
And somehow you think you’re arguing FOR a creator? I don’t get it.
Apparently not (don’t insert god here). 2. Fairly likely. 3. Maybe/we don’t know shit about that.
4 (your conclusion): No that doesn’t follow at all. This argument has been refuted ages ago. You can easily see why.
Yes. And you too. Prove me wrong. Start with:
Causeless gods do not happen, and therefore gods cannot come into existence without cause.