Raf

If I may, I think Oldiesman is lost at my analogy, not at my worldview. So let me try to articulate my analogy in the simplest possible terms. In the analogy, a healthy body is one in which Paul's doctrine is embraced. The virus is reason. If reason gets into the healthy body, it would cause a rejection of Paul's doctrine. So we fight off the virus with a vaccine. I Corinthians 2:14 is the vaccine. It blocks reason from entering the healthy body and thus preserves Paul's doctrine. No analogy is perfect, of course. The notion that religion does not employ reason at all is demonstrably false. But in Christianity you reach a point, according to Christianity, at which reason has its limits and faith carries you on to the next leg of the journey. And if, heaven forbid, someone should come along and say "that next leg of the journey makes no sense, you don't have to argue with that person because you have a ready-made verse explaining to you why that person is wrong. It's not because the next leg of the journey DOES make sense and here's why. No, that would be reasonable. Instead, the person is wrong because he's wrong. He doesn't understand. He's a fool. A natural man. Didn't take the blue pill. Doesn't have the decoder ring. ... "There is only knowledge where all scientific laws apply." Not true. There are plenty of areas in which scientific laws do not apply. At least, not as far as I know. They don't involve supernatural explanations, but science doesn't explain them either. Why are jokes funny? Why is Anna Kendrick more attractive than the Olsen twins? Why is the Godfather a better movie than Ernest Goes to Camp? What is awe? I don't know that science has an answer to any of those questions. But we know things are funny. We know people are attractive, some more than others. We know that looking at an impressive work of art can inspire awe to rival a sunset at the Grand Canyon. None of those things qualifies as scientific knowledge. And none of those things demands the existence of a God or gods. ... I don't use "sky daddy" because I don't find it useful. Same reason you almost never hear me invoke the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Russell's Teapot. I think referring to spirit as a magic decoder ring is disrespectful enough to convey my thoughts without my having to just be rude for rudeness's sake.

No, the substitution changes the conversation completely. I don't even know where to start.

Again, I respect the way you and T-Bone have approached the subject matter. I could get pedantic and debate every line, but as I said earlier, we've made our points clear and let the reader decide.

In seriousness, you guys have a way of taking what I said and responding to something close to it, but not to my actual point. I'm trying to minimize the arguing because I know I have a tendency to get pedantic. But not one person has actually refuted the points I made. You just take what I said, distort it a little, and respond to that. From religion HAS a vaccine to religion IS a vaccine, for example. Which I never said. Now I appear to have said that you cannot employ both reason and religion. Not what I said, but lots of energy spent refuting that. Well, THIS is religious and reasonable. As if I ever said the two were mutually exclusive. I didn't. Lots of religion makes sense. When and where religion stops making sense, religion invariably declares itself right and switches from trying to make sense to faulting the opposition for its incapability. That is the explicit message of I Corinthians 2:14. It's the whole point. But what about the rest of the chapter? The rest of the chapter just builds up to it. It doesn't refute my point. It contextualizes it. But what about spiritual knowledge? There is no such thing. That's the argument. That is the subject of the debate. You can't just declare it to be true and then invent some way of accounting for the natural man's inability to understand it! But that is precisely what Paul did. Religion creates a category of knowledge inaccessible to those who do not accept the religion in the first place. That's the vaccine. It's not against all reason. It's only against the application of reason that rejects the religion.

I see plenty of effort to respond to my point in a reasonable, intelligent manner. I also see cman's posts.

In case anyone was wondering what it looks like to be fully vaccinated, there you have it. Logic and reason cannot penetrate that kind of approach.

Come on, get it right! It's spelled "phony." You are welcome

Well argued.

I don't think he was concerned about debating. I think he was concerned about his followers. He probably felt he could hold his own. But he also knew where to stop, as evidenced by the fact that instead of telling his followers "here are the facts to refute their arguments," he had to tell them "it's a spirit thing. They can't understand."

Human, if you have a puzzle for us, go ahead. Otherwise I'll get to it when I get to it. But I'm already holding up a few threads...

I'll read both posts in more depth, but my initial reaction is, I have no reply that does not merely repeat what I've already said.

Oh let's not get started with what <<<some>>> Christians say...

Messenger of the Gods: Mercury. Juno... this is tougher. I'm going to guess Jupiter, her husband, as opposed to Saturn, her father.

Ok, a lot to unpack here, but thank you for the follow-up post, T-Bone. It reduces the amount of time I need to spend replying (and this is still a long-@$$ post). Obviously you guys think you're right and I won't change your mind. And I think I'm right and I won't change my mind. Best I can do is articulate my reply in light of your responses so that others reading can see that we're listening to each other and not just talking past each other. With that in mind: Chockfull: Yes, I did use rather strong terms. But consider the terms used by the Bible's writers to describe those who reject their message. We are "without excuse." We're "lawless." We're the "darkness" to your "light." We are "ignorant" and "hard-hearted." "Blinded." We are numbered among the "cowardly, detestable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and liars." Did I get to "evil" yet? [Checks notes. Nope.] "Evil." We've been captured by the devil and doing his will. Pollutants. Defiled in mind and conscience. Like a dog eating its own vomit. So yeah, I use words like "magic decoder ring" to describe something that you need in order to decode (discern) a message. But (T-Bone says) a ring is external, whereas spirit is internal. Fine. Call it "taking the blue pill" to allow you to see the truth. We unbelievers take the red pill and enjoy living blissfully in the Matrix. I use words like gullible. Emotionally strong? I submit these terms I used are TAME by comparison to the terms used by the Bible to describe me. Which is not to say that you've used those terms. Back to T-Bone: I did not say religion IS a vaccine against reason. I thought I was clear. Religion HAS a vaccine against reason. So let's explore what I mean by that (without going into unnecessary detail). Paul goes to great lengths to differentiate between the wisdom of the world and "God's wisdom." Why distinguish? In context, we see that it's because "God's wisdom" leads to a conclusion that the wisdom of the world finds "foolish." So what IS the wisdom of the world? It's wise. It's persuasive. It's human. It's reason. It's "senses reasoning" as we would call it in TWI (hooray! they got something right!). As T-Bone said, "just my take on it; I could be wrong." Here's MY take on it: I could be wrong. Paul knows that reasonable people listened to his pitch and rejected it as foolish. He knows other Christians are going to face the same opposition he did when they try to preach the word he was teaching them. So he needs something to counter the "philosophies of men" (aka reason) his people are bound to encounter. So I develop the imperfect analogy that reason is a disease, and it's in need of a vaccine. What's the vaccine? Verses that redirect the debate from the subject matter to the participants in the discussion. "You have the spirit of God. You get it. You took the blue pill. You have the decoder ring. Not those people. They don't understand our message because they can't. It's not because the message makes no sense. It makes perfect sense... to people with the ring, people who took the right pill, people with Spirit. People with humility. You ARE humble, aren't you? You have God's wisdom, right? Not like those people." Yeah, that is the definition of ad hominem. When you say "those people lack the capacity to even understand what I'm talking about," you have changed the debate from being about ideas to being about people. That verse, that tactic, is the vaccine. It doesn't address the conclusion reached by the natural man. It addresses the natural man himself and declares him incapable of properly assessing the evidence. Religion can employ reason, and it often does. But there comes a point when reason ceases to agree with what a religion is peddling. Where it outright rejects it. "Maybe there were six denials instead of three." No. That makes no sense. They all said three. "Maybe there was more than one cursed fig tree." No, that's just excuse-making to account for the discrepancy in the accounts. "Maybe Judas didn't immediately go and kill himself." No, Paul just screwed up when he said Jesus was seen of the Twelve. Or maybe he counted Matthias. Or maybe it was so tangential to the point he was making that he just didn't care. The point is Matthew was pretty clear on the timing of Judas' death. "There were two fields of blood..." No, there was just one. I chose examples we are most likely to agree on, but the ones that are relevant to this discussion are weightier. Like the ransom. To whom was the price paid? Why is a human sacrifice necessary in the first place? Why does redemption require a brutal death? And it gets deeper. I'm not inviting a debate on those questions, primarily because we are not going to resolve them. But Paul is terrified of that debate and needs to short-circuit it before we get there. That's why he redirects it. The rejection of his message couldn't possibly be due to a flaw in the message. It has to be a flaw in the person rejecting it. "Of course he doesn't get it! What do you expect from a natural man?" And that was the SHORT version of my reply.

Episode 1 Didn't laugh once

Lorelei Lee. No idea why i temember it. never saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Now we're at the point where there are more comments than I can possibly answer efficiently. So either I get long winded and address every point, thereby making myself look obsessed with this topic, or I just let some points go unaddressed, leaving the impression that I do not have a comeback. Fortunately I have enough of a record here that I can honestly ask: Do you really think I could not write a book-length reply to these points complete with footnotes and hyperlinks? And I think you all know the answer is, yeah, he could probably do that. But on a relaxed timetable. Hope you don't mind...

Not ignoring the posts. Just making sure I don't pounce on every line of every post I disagree with. Replying soon.

Maybe the Trinity WAS his basis for rejecting the New Testament. You don't have to read a holy book to reject it. I still haven't read the Quran. So "I reject this book as God-breathed because it conflicts with doctrines I accept as God-breathed" would still fit with my overarching thesis on this thread, for what it's worth.

Fine. Marilyn Monroe

Robert Redford, William Hurt, Angela Bassett

Fascinating. I wonder if he said anything about his basis for rejecting the resurrection or the New Testament. It sounds like you didn't go there. I definitely agree the Trinity is a stumbling block to many Jews. On topic: it raises so many tangents to this thread that I doubt we'd be able to keep up. I wonder what Jews make of Christians who don't accept the Trinity. Dovthey reject the New Testament because of what it teaches? Or because of what they THINK it teaches? [Never mind the tired question of "who's right about that, anyway?"]

Originally posted in the "God's accountant, etc." thread in response to a post that cited I Corinthians 2:14. We obviously don't look at I Cor. 2:14 the same way. I see it as Paul's way of inoculating his followers against the Reason virus. Usually, if someone disagrees with you, you respond by presenting additional evidence or reframing your argument. In one fell swoop, Paul makes that unnecessary by declaring his opponents incapable of grasping his concept because they lack what I [jokingly] call the Magic Decoder Ring. "How can he possibly understand the things of the spirit? He doesn't have what it takes?" "What's that? evidence?" "No, spiritual discernment!" "What's spiritual discernment?" "It's the God-given capacity to understand what I'm saying is true." "So it's a magic decoder ring that suddenly transforms your thesis from bulls hit to enlightenment." "Well when you put it like that it sounds silly and disrespectful. It's more like, when you humble yourself, God opens the eyes of your understanding." "Ah, so it's not a magic decoder ring at all." "Exactly." "It's gullibility." ... Note how in that conversation we go from "Paul's message doesn't make sense," which focuses on the message as the subject matter, to "It's a Yahweh thing; You wouldn't understand," which focuses on the rejector of the message as the subject. I Corinthians 2:14 is an ad hominem attack on anyone who hears or reads Paul's message and concludes it's a crock.

Pretty much. That's not to say it never applies. New birth. Morality. The difference between a fertilized egg and a baby. Science can't touch those topics [well, it can touch the last one, but not in a way relevant to this discussion]. NOMA has lots of applications. Until it doesn't. Considering that NOMA was developed to put an end to the debate over evolution v creation, it's an abject failure from the start. Those subjects are overlapping. [Reasonable minds disagree].

I don't recall saying "all" faith healing is a testable claim. In fact I thought I gave a clear example of how one claim offers a really limited ability to test. There have been plenty of tests on the healing power/effectiveness of prayer. Those tests demonstrate a result, but that's not the same as "proving" anything, if memory serves. Anyway, NOMA has its benefits and its limits. But I disagree with its central premise: you can't argue that science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria without ignoring gobs of religious claims that do indeed overlap.