Transcript here - faith of our fathers

A Reasonable Faith
(“Christianity:
Unscientific, Corrupt
& Intolerant?”)
1st August 2010
Central Baptist Church, Dundee
Paul before Agrippa (Acts 26v25)
PAUL
v7 Shared
belief in
God
v27 “Do you
believe the
prophets?”
GENERAL
REVELATION
SPECIAL
REVELATION
v3 Jewish
custom &
tradition
SHARED
CULTURAL
VALUES
AGRIPPA
Us before our society
US
Society
GENERAL
REVELATION
SPECIAL
REVELATION
SHARED
CULTURAL
VALUES
Facing our barriers
US
UNSCIENTIFIC
CORRUPT
INTOLERANT
GENERAL
REVELATION
SPECIAL
REVELATION
SHARED
CULTURAL
VALUES
Society
A Reasonable Faith

Unscientific? - The General Revelation Chasm


Corrupt?


Diversity, Complexity, Similarity, History
Authorship, Accuracy, Accreditation
Intolerant?

- The Special Revelation Chasm
- The Cultural Chasm
Good, Bad, Excessive… & Competing Worldviews
Unscientific?



“I think that if the data is overwhelmingly in favour, in favour
of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult, some odd
group that’s not really interacting with the real world…”
“To deny the reality would be to deny the truth of God in the
world and that would be to deny truth…also our spiritual
death in witness to the world that we’re not credible, that we
are bigoted, we have a blind faith and this is what we’re
accused of…”
“I think its essential to us or we’ll end up like some small sect
somewhere that retained a certain dress or a certain
language. And they end up so marginalised, totally
marginalised, and I think that would be a great tragedy for the
church, for us to become marginalised in that way.”
(Christian Theology Professor, April 2010)
Unscientific?


“Everywhere you look in nature, you can see evidence of
natural selection at work in the adaptation of species to their
environment. Surprisingly though, natural selection may have
little role to play in one of the key steps of evolution – the
origin of new species. Instead it would appear that speciation
is merely an accident of fate…”
“But there is an irony in Darwin’s choice of title: his book did
not explore what actually triggers the formation of a new
species. Others have since grappled with the problem of how
one species becomes two, and with the benefit of genetic
insight, which Darwin lacked, you might think they would
have cracked it. Not so. Speciation still remains one of the
biggest mysteries in evolutionary biology…”
(New Scientist, 13th March 2010)
A Reasonable Faith

Unscientific? - The General Revelation Chasm


Corrupt?


Diversity, Complexity, Similarity, History
Authorship, Accuracy, Accreditation
Intolerant?

- The Special Revelation Chasm
- The Cultural Chasm
Good, Bad, Excessive… & Competing Worldviews
Corrupt?


“The fact that something is written down is persuasive to people not
used to asking questions like “Who wrote it, and when?”, “How did
they know what to write?”, “Did they, in their time, really mean what
we, in our time, understand them to be saying?” “Were they
unbiased observers, or did they have an agenda that coloured their
writing?” Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians
have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable
accounts of what happened in the history of the real world. All were
written long after the death of Jesus, and also after the epistles of
Paul, which mention almost none of the alleged facts of Jesus’ life.
All were then copied and recopied, through many different “Chinese
Whispers” generations by fallible scribes who, in any case, had
their own religious agendas.”
“The four gospels that made it into the official canon were chosen,
more or less arbitrarily, out of a larger sample of at least a dozen…”
(Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion)
Corrupt?


“Constantine commissioned and financed a new bible, which
omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and
embellished those gospels that made him godlike. The earlier
gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned…
“The modern bible was compiled and edited by men who
possessed a political agenda – to promote the divinity of the
man Jesus Christ and use his influence to solidify their own
power base…”
(Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, cont…)
Corrupt?

“My dear” Teabing declared, “until that moment in history, Jesus
was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet…a great and
powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.”


“Right”, Teabing said. “Jesus’ establishment as “the Son of God”
was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea.”


“Not the Son of God?”
“Hold on, You’re saying that Jesus’ divinity was the result of a vote?”
“A relatively close vote at that”, Teabing added…”It was all about
power”, Teabing continued. “Christ as Messiah was critical to the
functioning of Church and state. Many scholars claim that the early
Church literally stole Jesus from his original followers, hijacking his
human message, shrouding it with an impenetrable cloak of divinity,
and using it to expand their own power…”
(Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code)
Corrupt?
Date of
original
document
Date of
oldest
surviving
copy
Approx time lag Number of
between original ancient copies
and oldest copy in existence
today
Thucydides’
History of the
Peloponnesian
War
431-400 BC AD 900
1,300 years
73
Caesar’s Gallic
War
58-50 BC
AD 825
875 years
10
Tacitus’
Histories &
Annals
AD 98-108
AD 850
750 years
2
New Testament
AD 40-100
AD 300
310 years
??
Corrupt?
Date of
original
document
Date of oldest
surviving copy
Approx time lag
between original
and oldest copy
Number of
ancient copies in
existence today
Thucydides’
History of the
Peloponnesian
War
431-400 BC
AD 900
1,300 years
73
Caesar’s Gallic
War
58-50 BC
AD 825
875 years
10
Tacitus’
Histories &
Annals
AD 98-108
AD 850
750 years
2
The New
Testament
AD 40-100
AD 300
310 years
14,000 (5,000 Greek,
8,000 Latin, 1,000
other languages)
Corrupt?




“Constantine did not unify Rome under the single religion of
Christianity in AD 325. It did not become the official religion until
Emperor Theodosius at end of fourth century.”
“There were not >80 gospels that taught the original history of
Jesus as a mere mortal, so Constantine couldn’t have destroyed
them.”
“By the time of the council of Nicea in AD 325 Christians were
already in broad agreement about which books were genuine and
ought to be read as holy scripture in the churches.“
“There was never really any doubt that the books called Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John contained the true account of Jesus.”
(Greg Clarke, Is It Worth Believing? The Spiritual Challenge of the
Da Vinci Code, cont…)
Corrupt?




“Constantine did not collate, commission and finance a new bible.
He did commission the distribution of scriptures that were already
authenticated by the church.”
“The Council of Nicaea did not vote on whether or not Jesus was
divine. Jesus was already worshipped as more than a human from
the early years after his death and resurrection.
“The Council did discuss the views of a priest called Arius, who was
arguing that Jesus wasn’t fully God, just a bit like God.”
“The Council decided Arius was wrong – in a landslide of 298 – 2.”
(Greg Clarke, Is It Worth Believing? The Spiritual Challenge of the
Da Vinci Code)
A Reasonable Faith

Unscientific? - The General Revelation Chasm


Corrupt?


Diversity, Complexity, Similarity, History
Authorship, Accuracy, Accreditation
Intolerant?

- The Special Revelation Chasm
- The Cultural Chasm
Good, Bad, Excessive… & Competing Worldviews
Reaching our society
US
Society
CREDIBLE
RELIABLE
GENERAL
REVELATION
SPECIAL
REVELATION
COMPASSIONATE
SHARED
CULTURAL
VALUES