Faith or Otherwise

I recently read a debate between two people from my old college, Biola. Peter Van Elswyk debated Micah Hoover, largely on the topic of how belief relates to reason.

I found some parts of the talk edifying, so I have included them here:

The scary thing to me is the way some people -especially philosophers- make all these distinctions. In the business world this is called "double-booking" as in the Enron case. Where the company (or the individual) has one set of priorities if someone is conducting an audit, and another set of answers in the rubber-meets-the-road economy of life.

The physicians of Christ's time could tell who was sick, but Christ could tell the sick to be healed.

The further the commands of God are separated from a man, the less of a relation his soul has with his body, and the less of a self he is.

The mind, the one with which a person completely loves God, is characterized by the quality with which it entertains possibilities. The righeous man takes bad thoughts captive whereas the unrighteous are snared by their own thinking. God does not evaluate minds by the volume of their knowledge or their raw calculative power. The man who devotes his mind to God is the man who continually searches and examines his priorities.

God does not value the wisdom the world shows off. He has hidden His good things from the wise and revealed himself to infants. He has caught the knowledgable in the snare of their clever ways. He has commanded the wise to make themselves fools. His foolishness is greater than all knowledge and all wisdom.

How sad to consider the speed with which the readers of Descartes fly by him. They wish to hurry on toward building structures, organizations, and The System ... they are exactly and in every way like that foolish man who built his house upon the sand.

The pharisees of the world work restlessly to confine the promises and commands in the Bible to a particular context so as to keep the Bible at arms' length and avoid coming into any real kind of existence.

Paul was not interested in developing an epistemological system -something which could be used, say, by astronomers who are trying to explain photon phenomenon in the viscenity of black holes. Black holes are not only millions of miles away from earth, they are also millions of miles away from having any personal significance to anyone. (If you disagree with that, you should send a wedding card to someone with only a picture of a blackhole on it and see how glad they are to receive it).

The discussion of neutral-sounding topics such as quasars, quibits, and quarks betray the fact that no man is in neutral standing before God. All have gone astray. All are deserving of judgment. All must decide how they shall plead.

The scientific approach of Sir Francis Bacon died a long time ago (if it ever really lived), and in its absence scientists peddle creedal statements disguised (to others and themselves) as objectivity. That is the fractured foundation on which most people try to build their lives.

Having evidence in itself is not bad, and neither is the Law. The question is, "When does having evidence become necessary?" Just as the Law was intended for the unrighteous, so too, evidence is only necessary once someone has ceased to believe.