>Some interesting reflections, Darren. I couldn't help thinking, however, that
>if we were to be really honest with ourselves about 'palliative care of
>congregations', we would have to admit that in reality we really are only
>applying palliative care to the whole church as it is functioning to day. This
>is largely because the God we have been proclaiming through our doctrines and
>creeds is himself currently receiving palliative care. The credibility of this
>God is and has been under attack since we started to move into a scientific
>understanding of the universe and until we start to perceive God in a way that
>makes sense of the world we live in,�I can't see much hope of a resuscitation.
�
Oh no! Don't say God is about to die again! But please, can we have a
resurrection rather than a resuscitation?
OK, people have grown weary of some anthropomorphic projection of middle-eastern
culture into the sky, but where is this new God of Alan's going to come from? To
quote Peter Harrison:
"In the second half of the eighteenth century, David Hume put forward a
persuasive case for the distinction between values and facts, insisting that we
cannot derive the former from the latter. The notion that nature retained
something of its moral authority was put to rest, though perhaps not finally, by
Hume's recognition that factual claims about states of affairs cannot provide us
with the basis for making moral judgements. Hume added insult to injury by
dealing a telling blow to the argument from design: not only is nature a moral
vacuum, but no theological conclusions of any consequence may be drawn from its
features. To these philosophical claims, Darwin was to add scientific substance
one hundred years later. The wonderful mechanisms of living creatures do not
bear testimony to a divine designer, but rather embody the end-results of
millions of years of fortuitous accidents."
- Peter Harrison.The Bible, Protestantism and the rise of Natural
Science.1998. Cambridge University Press.
- Greg
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