I’m checking my blog this morning and I see I have a response to the gullibility post I had. It was stating that some were skeptical of Piltdown man for a long time and it took much time to see it wasn’t a hoax. (300 PH.D.s missed that though along with other such things as the peppered moth account being a hoax.) There is still some skepticism supposedly on Secret Mark, and I’m skeptical of those who think it hasn’t been debunked.
Now we get to Pat Robertson though. What does it mean when he goes on the air and claims to speak for God? What about also unverifiable miracles? Now I’m not sure how those go together. Frankly, I don’t watch Pat Robertson and what I’ve heard doesn’t please me. I gave up on Christian TV a long time ago.
However, we do have criteria set in play also. The Scriptures are there as well as reason. I’ve written a number of times on being skeptical of people who claim to receive messages from God. Unfortunately, people do often think that Pat Robertson does speak for God. I never did deny that religious people can be gullible. Sadly, they too often are. I denied that it’s necessarily because they’re religious.
Christians though need to heed what this comment said. We should not be so gullible. When someone claims to speak for God, send up those red flags. The words “God told me” are dangerous words. The prophets of old were willing to die for the certainty they had that God had told them something.
The other side needs to be watchful also though. There are a number of claims that can’t be backed on the other side as well. Richard Dawkins will speak about a virus that has programmed certain ideas into humanity. Unfortunately, do we have any evidence for such a thing?
Could it also be one reason people can be so gullible today is that they don’t know how to think? Why is it that we have stopped teaching logic in public schools? (Interesting isn’t it that Christian schools do teach logic.) Instead, we have decided to teach children what to think instead of how to think.
This is why Phillip Johnson has been saying we should teach the controversy and it surprises me that the other side doesn’t like that. When someone comes to me and says they want to study all the religions to find out which is true I say, “Go ahead. Doesn’t bother me.” Why? Because if they are really seeking truth, I think they’ll come to Christ. In fact, I would hope they’d do something like this first so they can have a firm foundation when they come.
Let us let school children see some interplay. If the naturalistic crowd thinks the arguments by creationists of all varieties are so dumb and easily debunked, then let us let it be done in the public square. Let’s have it done before students so they can see the absurdity of it all.
As for miracles, that is getting into historiography. We cannot verify many events in history. We cannot verify what Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon. We can verify though the reliability of the accounts. The same is done for Scripture. It is reliable when we can test it. We will trust it where we cannot.
That is another question for another night though.
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