The Epistemological Bottleneck And God’s Respect for Human Inquiry
Posted by Anthony on January 23, 2010
One of the enduring criticisms against Christianity is that it is anti-knowledge, education, and learning. This blog has taken aim at this criticism before, most notably taking Richard Dawkins to task for his misuse of an Augustine quote ostensibly about ‘curiosity.’ I currently have an open challenge to Dawkins to repudiate his use of that quote.
In point of fact, these anti-knowledge criticisms really only began with the rise of the Fundamentalists and this in turn was spurred on by the rise of Darwinism. Even the shallowest of research will reveal that Christians have been at the forefront of investigation, scholarship, and yes, even science. (Dawkins answer to this: “But if they had lived in our day, these Christians would have been atheists.” What a chump)
The criticism has another angle, though, and it has to do with the relentless attack on the Bible as the ‘ancient writings of nomadic goat herders.’ Dan Barker would be a good example of an atheist presenting this attitude. The basic idea here is that if the Bible was really written by God, then it should be amazing in its clarity and its insight would be, divinely, penetrating, and certainly it should at all points validate whatever science has claimed to have discovered, since God, being God, would of course know these things. They would say, in short, that for a book supposedly inerrant and divinely inspired, it is a very human book.
Here is the brutal reality: the Bible’s ‘human’ nature is precisely an argument in its favor. Read the rest of the entry… »
