Thursday, May 18, 2006

Platonic theology vs. Christianity

I came across this on the blog of a professor who will be teaching a course on ID. He was so ignorant and willfully stupid that he apparently does not realize where his ideas come from. It is typical to Darwinists/"evolutionists" to condemn and work against notions of any form of transcendent essence even as they rely on belief in transcendent forms of "natural law" governing the Cosmos in their own philosophy. Ironically, they come to have faith in natural law to the point that they feel comfortable sitting in judgment on the Creator based on natural laws. Therefore, in their theology God breaking natural laws is forbidden even as the fact that God wrote such "laws" is forgotten. God is the only support for the metaphor of "law" by which they are understanding Nature. I put evolutionist in quotes above because they are not even true evolutionists who apply the doctrines of evolution to all things, instead they save a metaphor of unchanging and essentially eternal laws that "govern" the Cosmos. It is scientific to understand natural laws, it is not scientific to reject all meta-scientific limitations to try to make a God out of such Law or the eternal Platonic Forms. Aquinas was right to note that if such laws exist then they are merely thoughts in the Mind of God.

The Darwinian mind seems to be that of a Christian apostate, as its reasoning usually relies on a Christian foundation and Christian theology. Yet it is usually using Christian reasoning to deny elements of Christianity. In the case of this professor one of his messages ended by arguing of the move toward ID that: "I don't want your naturalistic God." Again that seems to be Platonism where the form is taken to be purer than the matter in which it is manifest, therefore God would get dirty if He's actually done anything in history. If we derive any of our knowledge from the Bible instead of the empirical facts that point to invisible forms of "pure" mathematics, those forms of knowledge that can be metaphorically seen by insight behind the forms that we see by sight, then the gardening God has gotten dirty indeed! Ironically, we'd hardly know of invisible mathematical attributes of a logical God by which to do away with our loving Father God if He didn't love all his children enough to leave us some poetry in the Bible. It would also be quite odd for humans to condemn God for working in and with the humus given that it is what they are formed out of originally and we return to it in Death even as Life emerges from life. Yet the "creature of the earth" is an odd creature that seems quite anxious to reject its own salvation in favor of condemnation as it is human, all too human.

At any rate, it's hard to believe how stupid and ignorant an actual American university professor is with respect to the dirty little secret of the roots of his own Platonic ideas. Given that he considered the laws and the forms to be so pure that they cannot touch or impact physical reality (the unclean!) he also argued that a God who meets us on our own human terms given this little matter of the humus is a sort of "dirty God" and so on, like the "naturalistic God" that he condemns on Platonic terms.

Because of the level of ignorance another commenter noted rather sardonically that while the professor is borrowing major elements of Christianity to get from point A to point B logically he's also denying Christianity, naturally. And all the while, many Darwinians seem to feel that they are Christians. The comment:
Here is a little reminder that blind faith is never called for—and that God does not shy away from offering physical proof:

• In the book of Judges, Gideon asks for multiple physical proofs that God was God. The proofs were given. The bible does not contain a footnote that reads: “and Gideon, after serving his military purpose, was cursed for demanding proof.”

• When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God complied with the request. The bible does not contain a footnote that reads: “And Moses’ inability to rely solely on blind faith is the real reason he wasn’t allowed into the Promised Land.”

• Psalm 19 teaches that the heavens declares God’s glory. The bible does not contain a footnote that reads: “but only as a crutch for the weak-minded.”

• When Jesus forgave the sins of a lame man, he then healed the man. Instead of containing a footnote that reads: “and for those who required the latter, let them be anathema,” the bible reads that Jesus said it was so we may know the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins.

• When Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection, the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost. He showed them he was flesh and blood, and that he could even eat. The bible does not contain a footnote that reads: “and their rewards in heaven were diminished because they relied on physical proof rather than blind faith.”

• Paul writes, in the letter to the Romans, that since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. The bible doesn’t have a footnote that reads: “but pay attention to that evidence at your own peril.” Instead, Paul adds that the reason for this (scientific data) is so that men are without excuse.

• Even in the case of “doubting” Thomas, where Jesus allows Thomas to examine His wounds, and even though Jesus blesses those who believe without seeing, the bible does not contain a footnote that reads: “and Thomas was cast out for his reliance on proof.”
You have to like the anonymous commenter sometimes. The professor's answer was that he suspects the commentator adheres to a "pernicious" theology.

That's because he's being a crybaby. I wrote something sardonic about his astounding level of ignorance and stupidity as well. You might say that sardonic comments come to me, naturally!

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