Faith as "The Emperor's New Clothes" ?

Dear friends:

Here below is my email debate with a former college friend WJ who has become an accomplished philosopher.  ( My comments to WJ's email is in purple fonts.)

WJ: I just went through the Old Testament story quickly.

Me:That is very good indeed it is quite an accomplishment. 

CHRISTIAN Faith is a priceless spiritual asset even without embracing it as ultimate concern for a believer.Agree! However, Christian faith shouldn't be just a spiritual asset ( that is only a fringe benefit ), it is the relationship with our Creator God, Jesus our Savior who died for our sins and the indwelt Holy Spirit that is most valuable and desirable. Our earthly lives will pass away sooner or later yet Trinity God guarantees an eternal life for us in Jesus our Savior. We surely should stretch our perspectives beyond the horizon of our temporal earthly life. Don't you think?

It should be "above and not below" natural science. Agree totally!There is no need to rely upon science to build up the credentials of such faith. Christian faith is the only faith that can have scientific credentials to support and sustain it. And many scientists and engineers do demand scientific credentials for faith that claims it owns the ultimate truth of universe and creation. The bottom line is if Christian faith is true then it shouldn't be contradictory to science discoveries. Of course, science may not advance enough and may revise again since it is not the final version yet.

When we read the story of Joseph being sold and brought to Egypt and with the divine help and his ability being raised to power almost next to the Pharaoh. So was Moses. 

And the story of the Exodus across the Red Sea and later on the Dead Sea near Jordan to the Promised Land, Canaan, these are all historical events in narrations! 

The journey took 40 years ?, Yes, because of Israelites' rebellions against God, God let them detour around the deserts for 40 yrs. and Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai with God with so many "miracles" happening on the way often brought about by raising his rod. Could our almighty God do miracles? You bet! But you'd rather have a man made god who couldn't do miracles? If those miracles were not real miracles but fictional virtual stories out of human imagination, then God's almighty powers should be greatly discounted and even be dwindled to nothing, right? Remember the whole nation of Israelites eye witnessed God's awesome revelation of Himself at the foothill of Mt. Sinai. when 10 commandments were announced to them. It is forever etched and remembered again and again in their national memories.

The language used there is apparently not meant to be literal Why not? Those events are historical narrations, right? or scientific. Naturally, it is not scientific language of our modern days, because the ancient audience couldn't understand the terms of our modern science and it was addressed to the ancient audience. Nonetheless, it is the language of science of say, Moses' days. And its factual narrations still hold water even today.  The story does not need the support of science and historical criticism. You may think so, but if the ARK of Noah's dimensions couldn't even let it float on the water, then Noah's ARK only can be regarded as an item in a mythology. Of course mythology never needs scientific proofs or reality checks. And all miracles in Bible are not mythologies at all. If those miracles recorded in Bible were not real miracles but mythologies, then this God would become a paper god, powerless and worthless. I can't argue with you about language per se, but WJ, you do have a tendency only to buy the sayings of those Bible smearers or liberal Bible scholars, you've always neglected authentic traditional interpretations of Jesus' disciples, Gospel writers and earliest church fathers. You may have poured out the baby with bath water, do you realize that? Some scholars like NT Wright would for sure support the historicity of OT Bible narrations. Without honest reality checking, there is the danger of "faith" becoming "The Emperor's New Clothes".(國王的新衣) or the satirical and arbitrary so called Flying Spaghetti Monster of recent years. Anything or any name could go because they are only out of human imagination. For that matter, why don't we just believe in Santa or tooth fairy??( If reality checks are not important at all.)

Without reality checking, we are opening up a kind of Pandora's box of human imagination. 天馬行空，各說各話。 Though the characters of " Gone with the Wind" and other fictional characters may reveal true human psychology and acted just like real human beings, that is because human natures are all alike, therefore it is easy for the novelists to describe vividly and for us to project or resonance with those virtual characters, like Scarlet...etc. And the main purpose of that novel or film is to describe to us an American pre-Civil War South culture that has gone with the wind. So those fictional figures do serve the purpose to portray a past American Southern culture and history.

On the contrary, we humans were not God, we don't know God's mind, we have no way to identify with God at all, let alone pretend we know who God is or what God's attributes really are. Therefore if some people made God in human images then those man made arbitrary gods or goddesses out of human imagination are for sure acting like humans, they can't be true God at all. Remember those Olympian gods and goddesses, they acted just like humans, jealous and fooling around with their lusts...etc. So if our Creator God exists, He has to reveal Himself to us! And if the God who claims He creates heavens and earth and all the creatures, then science should back Him up and we should be able to detect His fingerprints everywhere in our universe. Agree? So this answers your following question.

Why do so many preachers feel the need of using modern science to support this remarkable and priceless spiritual legacy and their faith?  Though Christian faith by itself is remarkable and priceless spiritual legacy yet if the content of this faith is contradictory or conflict with reality check then we can just categorize it as mythology and we shouldn't have faith in it at all. ( though admittedly, there are some unfortunate misinterpretations of Bible which kept the concept of flat earth as true...etc.)

Could Truth be assessed only by science and even by gifted scientists such as Einstein? It is not an "only" approach. there certainly are many ways to access Truth, including philosophical pursuits. However, if modern science starts to catch up with Bible truth, for example, heavens are stretching, then it should strongly convince us those Bible writers were inspired by our Creator God who knows advanced science of today because He is the One who put all natural laws in our universe to start with. Why Bible writers could have written things that were so ahead of their time and generations, i.e.prophecies about future, knowledge of modern advanced science...etc., all tell us about an all knowing Almighty God--our Creator God, right?

Do Chinese Christians still need to celebrate the Passover like the Jews who are no longer believers? Your sister R has explained well about this. Christians now celebrate Passover in the new deeper meaning because Passover foreshadowed Jesus as the Passover Lamb killed for our sins. So we now celebrate Passover in connection with Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection every Easter. Christians should appreciate greatly how the Jews through ages meticulously recorded and reserved their national memory of historical Passover which foreshadowed and pointed to the coming salvation in Jesus Christ. And if Passover were not a historical event, then all the celebrations of Jews and Christians about it were meaningless, don't you think? WJ, I admire your great academic achievements in Philosophy and  Confucianism...etc, yet I hope you may still have reality checks with faith issues. That actually is what we are debating back and forth, right? 

Is Koran Scientifically Accurate?

Is Koran scientifically accurate? And is it important for Muslims to know the truth? Is faith supposed to be above everything? Here below is the link to David Wood's testimony and a small section of the transcript of his interview.

http://www.apologetics315.com/2014/12/why-i-am-christian-testimony-by-david.html

(Former atheist David Wood (of Acts 17.net) shares his testimony about how he became a Christian. The video explains why he left atheism and surrendered to Jesus as Lord and Savior. Hear Apologetics 315's interview with David Wood here: Audio / Transcript.) (David Wood is an American evangelical missionary and philosophy lecturer. He is currently head of the Acts 17 Apologetics Ministry. He has degrees in philosophy and biology, and is pursuing a Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion at an academic institution in the State of New York. He has also been claimed to be a member of the Society of Christian Philosophers.)

..The most popular arguments that Muslims use are the Argument from Scientific Accuracy. So the Koran is supposedly a scientific masterpiece. It contains many scientific insights that were centuries ahead of our time and the Argument from Perfect Preservation which says the Koran has been perfectly preserved. That is a miracle. It is obviously the Word of God. 

Regarding the science, I don’t know what book they are reading. I open up the Koran and in Sura 18:86 tells us that Alexander the Great, which the Koran refers to as Zul-Qarnain. Zul-Qarnain travelled so far west, he found the name where the sun sets and found it setting in a pool of murky water.

So according to the Koran if you travel far enough west, you will actually find the place where the sun sets. The sun sets in a pool of murky water. Sura 67:5 and 37:6-10, they tell us that stars are missiles that God uses to shoot demons when they try to sneak into Heaven. The stars you see up in the sky, they are sitting there, they are missiles waiting to be thrown at demons trying to sneak into heaven and then when you see a shooting star, it is because God actually hurled one of these stars at a demon. Now that is wrong in multiple levels. Shooting stars aren’t really stars and shooting stars have nothing to do with hitting demons that try to sneak into Allah’s meeting room.

And you find over and over again in the Koran, these kinds of problems. Sura 65:12 says that there are these seven earths and according to the commentaries they are all flat. They are stacked up like pancakes except they have some space in between them. Sura 88:28 says that the earth is flat. 22:65 says that the sky is actually a solid object that Allah is holding up. If Allah weren’t holding up the sky, the sky would fall on us and over and over again in the Koran, you find these problems at every level. Those are all astronomy but you know, embryological development, Sura 80:6 for instance says that “semen is produced between the ribs and the spine.” So I don’t know what book Muslims are reading when they say it’s a scientific masterpiece. Some of these are really really absurd teachings – the idea that you could travel far enough west and find the place where the sun sets and the stars are missiles. So that’s a really really poor argument.

The other, this argument that the Koran has been perfectly preserved and therefore it is from God, well here again we find an even-if-but-in-fact situation. Even if the Koran were perfectly preserved, that wouldn’t mean that it’s from God. We have books that are older than the Koran. We have manuscripts of books that are older than the Koran. So you have entire manuscripts, let’s say manuscripts of the Bible. You have manuscripts of the Bible that are older than 1400 years and so if it’s a miracle for a book to survive 1400 years then you could prove that any book that has an old manuscript must be the word of God. So even if this were the case, even if the Koran were perfectly preserved, it wouldn’t mean it’s from God.

But then if we actually go to the Muslim sources themselves, we find all kinds of evidence that there were changes, that entire chapters came up missing, that large sections of chapters came up missing, that verses came up missing. Some of it is actually hilarious. For instance, the verse of stoning. We know Muslims stone people for adultery, but that’s not in the Koran. It was supposed to be in the Koran. It was revealed, and so we ask, “Wait a minute. In the Hadith, it says there is this verse in the Koran about stoning. What happened to it?” Well according to their own history books, Aisha, Muhammad’s wife had a copy of it, so it was written down, this verse of stoning an adulterer and a goat came in and ate the manuscript and so they didn’t have it anymore.

And you have all kinds of situations like that in Islam where everyone lost these chapters. We just didn’t recite these two large chapters and now we forgot them. So its situations where Muslims go, walk in and make an argument, let’s say on a college campus, “Hey. The Koran has been perfectly preserved. How is that possible?” And people actually convert based on some of these arguments and they are totally wrong. The slightest bit – 10 minutes of research would show that that is totally totally false...

A common objection from Muslims is the question of how God can die? How can God die? If you believe that God is eternal and something eternal can't die then how can God die?

The answer Wood gave was that Muslims believe something very similar about the Koran. The Koran - the speech of Allah - is one of God's eternal attributes. So it has no beginning. It is co-eternal with Allah. 

So according the Islamic theology, the Koran is uncreated. It has no beginning. It cannot be destroyed. So when Muslims raise the objection of God dying - Wood just picks up the Koran and asks "Does this book have a beginning?" Then what are we to make of the copyright in it? Moreover if the Koran has no beginning and cannot be destroyed what do we do with people like Pastor Terry Jones who have burned the Koran? 

~ I think that the above is really helpful.