On Hearing From An
Allegedly Perfect Communicator
JohnPaul Slater
From: JohnPaul Slater
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: PA-via_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 23:01:21 -0800
Cliff,
Before Abe Smith (remember him?) gave up and went away, his E-mail forum spread. Today I found myself corresponding with a 20-year-old fundamentalist who was trying to explain science to me from a biblical perspective. I find it amusing, since I actually am a scientist. I am trying to ease him into using the liberal scientific method in his thinking (but I'm not holding my breath).
He accused me of using a "straw-man" argument about the New Testament. I had made an assumption based on Roman Catholic theology that as a Fundamentalist he considered to be heresy. He continued at length about the many, many, people (though not his people) who make the wrong interpretations of the bible.
This brings me to what, for me, is a new thought.
God's job description includes being not only perfect but being free from the constrictions of any natural law.
How would a perfect creature communicate with us if they felt the need to?
I suppose an argument could be made that being imperfect ourselves we couldn't know what a perfect "supernatural" creature would do. But our imperfection actually gives us an advantage. That is whatever solution we came up with that of a perfect creature would be at least as good and more than likely better.
So if we had a communication that purported to be from a perfect creature and fell short of our imperfect imaginings that should be conclusive proof that it was a fraud.
For instance I would imagine a perfect creature would be able to communicate ... well perfectly. No interpretations, everyone, everywhere would understand it's message to mean exactly the same thing, the clarity of the information being in the auspice of the communicator and not that of the listener.
This is less theology than it is basic marketing.
Dr JohnPaul Slater
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