re the arrogance of christians in article apr geneva rutgers edu caralv caralv auto trol com carol alvin writes vbv r d eeap cwru edu virgilio dean b velasco jr writes hold it i said that all of scripture is true however discerning exactly what jesus paul and company were trying to say is not always so easy i don t believe that paul was trying to say that all women should behave that way rather he was trying to say that under the circumstances at the time the women he was speaking to would best avoid volubility and cover their heads this has to do with maintaining a proper witness toward others remember that any number of relativistic statements can be derived from absolutes for instance it is absolutely right for christians to strive for peace however this does not rule out trying to maintain world peace by resorting to violence on occasion yes my opinion i agree that there is truth in scripture there are principles to be learned from it claiming that that truth is absolute though seems to imply a literal reading of the bible if it were absolute truth constant across time culture etc then no interpretation would be necessary i strongly disagree that absolute truth would not require interpretation that s because truth may be absolute but it may not be obvious like so many things the truth is always subject to misinterpretation i strongly suspect that we are reaching an impasse here which is why i deign from commenting much further sure the bible preaches absolute truths however exactly what those truths are is sometimes a matter of confusion as i said the bible does preach absolute truths sometimes those fundamental principles are crystal clear at least to evangelicals this is where the arrogance comes in to play since these principles are crystal clear to evangelicals maybe the rest of us should just take their word for it maybe it isn t at all crystal clear to me that their fundamental principles are either fundamental or principles now hold it i never said that christians cannot be arrogant indeed as many other christians on src have stressed before this is a trap that christians must always be wary about however this does not mean that if you believe in the absolutes established by the bible you are necessarily being arrogant a christian can believe that the word of god is absolute but he or she should not expect this to be immediately evident to everyone so i think that your position is the bible is absolute truth but as we are prone to error in our interpretation we cannot reliably determine if we have figured out what that truth is did i get that right not quite you say that according to my stance we cannot reliably determine what is true that is not what i said i say that as fallible human beings we cannot discern the truth with certainty the distinction is subtle yet important when a scientist performs an experiment he can claim that his results are reliable without claiming that absolutely no mistake whatsoever could have been made in other words he can admit that he could be mistaken without sacrificing his convictions nobody can establish what absolute truth is with certainty throughout the centuries philosophers have argued about what we can know with complete certainty and what we cannot descartes made a step in the right direction when he uttered cogito ergo sum yet we have not advanced much beyond that do you believe that other people aside from you exist do you believe that the computer terminal you are using exists if so can you be absolutely certain about that are you sure it is not some grand illusion of course you have no such assurance this does not mean however that for all practical purposes you can be certain that they exist so it is with christianity the most mature christians i know have deep convictions about absolute morality yet they acknowledge that there is a non zero probability that they are wrong this does not however mean that they should or do abandon these absolutes what s the point of spending all this time claiming and defending absolute truth when we can never know what those truths are and we can never or at least shouldn t act upon them what practical difference can this make as i said we can never be absolutely certain that we are correct this does not mean that we cannot be certain enough in light of the evidence to render all doubts unreasonable virgilio dean velasco jr department of electrical eng g and applied physics cwru graduate student roboticist in training and q wannabee bullwinkle that man s intimidating a referee my boss is a not very well he doesn t look like one at all jewish carpenter
