36:50 - Lennox: The question to decide is 'Is there a God? And has he revealed Himself?' This 'pettiness' needs to be pushed aside. I can't get to know you as a person, unless you reveal yourself to me. The claim of Christ to be the Truth, God incarnate makes perfect sense, because if there is a God and he invented this marvellous universe with science and the rest, He has taken the initiative to reveal Himself to us at a level we can understand, because we're persons, He's a person, that at least makes sense. The very important question to us is 'Is that really true? Or is that simply myth and phantasy?' (D: Myth and phantasy.) That disturbs me, because in The God Delusion, you say that it's under scholarly dispute among historians whether Jesus actually existed. I check with the ancient historians, that is not so. Why would you write something like that? (D: This isn't a very important question whether Jesus existed. Most historians think he did.) That's certainly true, L couldn't find an ancient historian who doesn't think he did. (D: Well, there are one or two, but D doesn't really care, because it's petty. L could possibly convince him of a creative force in the universe or a physical or mathematical genius who created everything, the expanding universe, quantum theory, relativity. That is radically and fundamentally incompatible with the sort of God who cares about sin and what you do with your genitals or your private thoughts or wickednesses. A God who is grand enough to create the universe doesn't give a toss about what you're thinking or your sins or things like that.
L is wrong about the importance of whether all the details about God and Jesus are real or a myth or in-between, what matters is that the Jesus-gospel has a function that is very real at a societal level. D should be embarrassed for suggesting a 'scholarly dispute' about whether Jesus existed, though, as there is no such dispute - in his own words, that's a petty attempt. (Contemporaries can only dispute the resurrection of someone who existed.) D doesn't realise he can't boss a cosmic God around and tell him what to care about. He seems to have an emotional problem with the notion of sin - a teenage attitude.
39:41 - 40:17 Lennox: So you think that morality is not important. (D: Of course he doesn't think it's not important. He's a human being, he lives in a society of human beings, where morality is important. But we are one of billions of planets on a huge scale, and a cosmic God who bothers about this human scale is not compatible with the scientific view. It's a medieval view.)
For some reason, D seems a little hung-up on why God deals with 'sin'. He claims to think morality is important, but won't acknowledge that morality is about good and bad deeds/thoughts (a.k.a. sin). A God who cares about both the micro and the macro levels is not a medieval concept, it's thoroughly modern. Medieval people could see the stars all right, they knew the world isn't small, they just wouldn't think of telling God, 'stay out there and don't come any closer, respect our privacy', because they knew that would be childish. D should add that atheists have their various versions of rather oppressive/intrusive morality (orthorexy, veganism, environmentalism, bleeding-heart empathy, Political Correctness, Social Justice Warriorship, LGBT, BLM, revolution, etc.), they're just different than the morality recommended by God, and they're not in the same league.
Nincsenek megjegyzések:
Megjegyzés küldése