Comment on Academic Freedom Strikes Again! by wesley kime.
@george: Greetings, pard,
To lapse back into our beloved cowpoke talk which tends to impart a more uppity tone than normal American does, Better duck, ole pard! Ah’m takin’ aim at jess one quote of yers.
Now for more civil-sounding normal American (may I lapse into it and back to cow-talk without ado?): Said post of yours was posted July 9, 2017, 3:58 Pm and recapitulated what I had said in reply to your earlier post. You said, “As you have adroitly pointed out there have many instances where those that have heard God’s voice have committed atrocities in His name, or done great things in His name.” Ah reckon you got my quote ass-backwards, no offense, pard. Ah was a-hopin’ you’d catch my drift better’n thet!
Now, re-lapsing into normal professorial speech, may I quote myself directly? In my post of June 5, 5:06 pm, I gave a long response to your earlier posting in which you said that nobody you knew had ever actually heard God talk to them. My response, a long one, 4-5, er, adroit (thanks for using that adjective!), paragraphs, included, “Yes we have [heard Him talk], through the Bible, through creation, through the Royal Law of Love, and certainly through backlit clouds and babbling brooks and whispering pines.” In your July 9 recapitulation, you had me first unloading about God apparently talking to evil people and prompting them to do evil.
That said evil people do indeed assert that God has spoken to them or otherwise commissioned the atrocities, neither I, nor anybody on this blog, nor Christ Himself, ever doubted or contested. How could we? Christ Himself, in talking directly to His disciples, warned that, “The time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.” John 16:2 NIV.
But disregarding the order of recipients, evil or righteous, who actually did or actually did not hear God speaking to them, there lies the old, familiar question, one of the several I have previously said, in too forthright cowpoke talk, is one we’ve circled around repeatedly without progress towards a resolution, to wit: how does one know whether God is or isn’t speaking to one. I’ll answer again as I have before: Well, first, cock your ear towards my beloved backlit cloud, where He is speaking as loudly as a backlit cloud can shout – but never to go kill anybody. Next, check the bible and see if what you think you hear jives with what has actually been recorded. (I know, I know; opinions will vary, but within limits, please!) Finally, and if that doesn’t work, sorry, there are no more ways. Again, scripture, again Christ talking directly to people about God the Father (in Elizabethan English rather than Western cow-talk): “The world cannot receive Him for it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him. But ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” John 14: 17. No, don’t suppose you can work with that. So take over, Paul, in the KJV dialect: “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are [only] spiritually discerned.” 1 Cor 2:14. Ah’m already saddled up, agin, fer whut I reckon you’ll come back at me with, pard.
wesley kime Also Commented
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
@george: GEORGE: “Is it as black and white as that?” As CS Lewis put it? Yes. As S. Pitman has just put it and so thoroughly and convincingly, Yes, unequivocally. Dance!
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
@george: Re. your knee-jerk swipe at C.S. Lewis’s challenge, there you go again, faithful pard, waltzing, or are you, ya varmit, shooting at our feet and gleefully commanding us to “dance!”
Well, sure, history does not and cannot deny that popes by their office have proclaimed themselves infallible despite personal deep corruption. But does it follow that the world’s “greatest teacher” could be the world’s greatest liar, as Satan, from the beginning, in heaven and in the garden, has insisted, and all too effectively for the majority of people and philosophers especially of the agnostic persuasion? And it was Christ Himself who, especially as recorded in the gospel of John, made His either-or proclamation of His divinity unavoidable, not CS Lewis, who merely was insightful enough to perceive what He was saying, and skillful enough to lay it out flat on the table and pound the table a little. Cannot you appreciate, maybe thrill to, his unadorned forthrightness? Certainly for this issue, Lewis doesn’t do the hokey pokey with you.
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
@Sean Pitman: A choice quote, one that nails it, as only CS Lewis can. Which leads to this: those who nailed Him, crucified Him, insisted He was a blasphemer to boot. My, how far we’ve come from the animated Cricket.
Recent Comments by wesley kime
Dr. Walter Veith and the anti-vaccine arguments of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche
Informative and stimulating, but proceeding into more confusion. A veteran of Moderna vaccinations, I trust, hope, they are effective, at least until otherwise. The whole business, being part of End Times, is in the hands of God, not humans expert and as degreed as they may be.
Brilliant and Beautiful, but Wrong
Brilliant, beautiful, and so right! Speaking of your presentation at LLU recently. Great to see you and your family (especially my namesake, Wes. God bless! WK
Complex Organisms are Degenerating – Rapidly
@Bob Helm: Dr. Sanford is very familiar to most of us. He was invited to speak at LLU several years ago and I and a great many were privileged to hear him.
Evolution from Space?
Hats off yet again to Sean for pursuing this topic as a scientist should, no nonsense, and in it’s proper setting — as a revival of one of the ancient ideas recently upgraded as a desperate alternative to the increasingly compelling intelligent design data. I had occasion to review panspermia a few years ago and as is my wont I found it more amusing than scientific. If you would like what was intended to be a satirical response to panspermia and other related curiosities you could check out: http://www.iessaythere.com/black-hole-humor.html
Meantime, Sean’s article is of far more cogent worth.
The Sabbath and the Covenants (Old vs. New)
As he has done on this site many times, Sean in his line-by-line-item response to C. White (not EG or EB) has, to my mind, clearly enunciated the issue and resolution.
When all the hermeneutics, quoting, and arguing and inordinately judgmental riposte are over, it comes down, as I understand it, to two things: 1) Whether the 7th day Sabbath (whether enunciated in the famous 10 commandments or otherwise) is still valid, and 2) Does the grace obtained by the vicarious sacrifice by the shedding of Christ’s blood or other divine process too deep for us to understand in this life, cover every sin automatically and without ado, altogether passively on our part, or is it only on condition that we first totally and deeply accept it? Other details always hassled forever are distractions.
I accept that I must accept it, wholly, actively, even with agony, with my whole being.
