Listening again to the discussion at Uncommon Knowlege with Steven Meyer, Tom Holland and Douglas Murray that was the subjet of my previous post, I have a lo9t less of the feeling that they are spiritually close to the truth than I had then and more of the feeling that they are lost in the usual errors of fallenness. I'm happy that Tom Holland has discovered the abiding influence of Christianity on the west and he's quite right about that, and I like Murray's willingness to take Christianity seriously and of course I'm happy with Meyer's views becaus he is the only true Christian there.
But Holland says some very odd things such as that Christianity contains within it a tendency to atheisim. Partly he gets this from his assumption that Roman Catholicism is a genuine Christian experession which in its inception was revolutionary. Why he thinks that I don't get at all. But that's because I know Romanism to be the apostate deviation from the true Christianity of the early Church, usurpinjg its place inte world and ushiering in the Antichrist along with all the pagan religi8ous baggage of the Roman Empire and its legacy from babyolon. The Reformation was a return to the true biblical Christainity of the early Church, it was no trend toward atheisims at all. It was a recovery to of the truth from the pagan accretions and distortions of Rom. e What the atheism of today is, which does contain the hyper Christian morality against Christianity they impute to it, that is just the fallen mind reasserting its native atheism now laden with the cultural baggage of Christainity, against God. It's atheism and it's fallenness, the Christain aspect of it is pervasive and inescapable but it is nevertheless just an overlay.
Murray says a return to the original faith is not possible for many in our time and he's one of them, due to so many philosophical influences that have grown up in the ewest over the last century or so, and I'm not really sure how he finds that an impediment to faith in heimself. But then I'm on the other side of the line and to me it's just a simple matter of believing what the scripture says. If you can take it seriously at all surely you can believe it as written, as history told by trustworthy witnesses. I don't see why not, but then I'm no longer where I was before I was a believer and it didn't look easy to me then and I guess that's where a lot of people are.
It's a matter of truth. Dawkins has that right, we believe what we are convinced is true and his problem is hethinks we believe on other grounds. Mainly that we are irrational and believe what we want to believe. The way some poepole think we must beleive just because it's comforting. I suppose some do or think they belive for that reason. Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains her own believe tf that way, but for me it is because I came to understand that it is true. I don't think I could accept itj as a mere comfort. And besides, I don't think it weever was for me a comfort. I didn't necessarily like it at all at first. I likesd some aspects of it that I discovered in some writers such as a few of the Catholic mystics, but I didn't like Martin Luther at all at first. Little of it appealed to me emotionally excpet the idea that God exists, and that was a powerful influence, it made me happy beyhond happy to think God exists. I'm not even entirely wusure why it made me so happy but I do know that is what made me happy.
It was later that I finally took the gospel itself seriously the fact of the need for salvation and what God did to save us. And for that I think scripture is very clear. Jesus did rise from the dead and many saw Him alive after His death. That's all the evidence needed. It's all there, there is no reason to doubt it. Jesus even goes out of His way to make the point that we dhshouldb believe the witneses when He gives Thomas the direct evidence he needed. If we believe the resurrection there should be no difficulty in believing all the other supernatural parts of the story.
I'm not all tht inspired by the science questions that Steven Meyer finds so important in determining the reality of God. I'm interestinged in the smaller scientific observations I've listed here many times recently because I think they prove evolution to be false, and I suppose you can go from there to the reality of God easily ienough but that hasn't ben my frame of reference.
Does God Exist? A Conversation with Tom Holland, Stephen Meyer, and Douglas Murray
I'm still bvery taken with this quote by someone Roger I think he said, about climbing this dimly lit stairway which is our life and suddenly coming upon a window thgouth which we catch sight of another and brighter world, a world to which we belong although we cannot enter it... \\
I had experiences like that and so do many others, before becomeing a bwliever. It didn't make a believer of me and may not for the others either.
Later . Just ran across another interview with Tom Holland where he makes it excruciatingly clear that he think sthe Roman Church represents a revl;lutionary expression of true Christainity, and he even includes the papacy as part of this wonderful revolution. Ouch. this is so wrong it hurts.
JHe sees cycles of revolutionary cleansings of society followed by decay followed by renewal of the reformation in cleansing. this is so wrong it takes my breatha away.
Holland on the Great AwokeningLater Just
later: I didn't quite say what this so called hyperChristainity means. It's a reference to the woke trend going on now, the antishite racism, the transgender stuf etc. The idea is that these ideas make use of a sort of Chrsitian morality against Christianity, and I think that's true enough and a good obeservation. That was also the case with the moveme4nts of the sixties, gay rights and feminism for instance, later gay marraige. The moral attitude is definitily Christian, this concern about rights of minorisites, th last legitimate expression of which, if I may say so, ws the Civil Rights movement of the sixties. None of these other movements has anythign Christian about them at all . In fct it strikes me as ver odd swhen people critidize them as not being Christian in the sense that they have no concept of forgiveness. That's certainly true but that's not the place to start to criticize them for not being genuinely Christian. The point is that these are all violations of biblical moraltiy in one way or another and therefore there is nothing Christain about them whatever. Even feminism although that has genuine Christain aspects to it, is not Christain in the form it started taking in the sixties with the Marxism framework that took it over. But you can't call anything Christain that demands rights and freedoms for what the bible clls sin. Without even referencing the bible though you can point out that the idea that abortin is a right is indefensible just because no sane societ would call murder a right. They have to completely obscure the fact that it is murder in order to carry on about "reproductive rights' and all that inasanity. But you don't ned to point to the Bible to say that murder is not a right.
