{"id":18997,"date":"2013-11-09T09:36:48","date_gmt":"2013-11-09T14:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=18997"},"modified":"2013-11-09T09:36:48","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T14:36:48","slug":"touching-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/11\/touching-earth.html","title":{"rendered":"Touching Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"http:\/\/jerichobrisance.com\/2013\/11\/03\/christian-agnosticism-touching-earth\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">A blog post by Jericho Brisance, \u201cChristian Agnosticism and Touching Earth,\u201d<\/a> was drawn to my attention. It emphasizes that it is unacceptable to use history and science in an attempt to justify the Bible without being open to the disconfirmation of the Bible through the use of those same methods. Here is a taste:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px;padding-bottom: 20px\"><span>We claim normative knowledge in the Bible. It is subject to normative evaluation, and that means that such claims are indeed verifiable\u2026 <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">and falsifiable<\/span>\u2026 by normative means, objectively and with all evidence on the table.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: right\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2013\/11\/wpid-Photo-Nov-9-2013-909-AM.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2013\/11\/wpid-Photo-Nov-9-2013-909-AM.jpg\" class=\"alignright\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px;padding-bottom: 20px\"><span>The abdicating response of Christian agnosticism simply will not do. Those that think we cannot evaluate the truth or falsehood of Christianity objectively succeed only in fulfilling their own prophecy. Its amazing what happens if you exert an unflinching effort to try.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px;padding-bottom: 20px\"><span>I find that people often really do not want to know. Serious inquiry of adversarial sources is rarely undertaken. The deck of apologetic material tends to be well stacked. We turn to the resources on our church book tables to answer. We have ready-to-hand conspiracy explanations for the really tight corners. And we invoke our skepticism toward science and history that are backed with reams of data, in order to claim high confidence in texts backed by little or none.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.3em\"><a href=\"http:\/\/jerichobrisance.com\/2013\/11\/03\/christian-agnosticism-touching-earth\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Click through<\/a> to read the rest.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A blog post by Jericho Brisance, \u201cChristian Agnosticism and Touching Earth,\u201d was drawn to my attention. It emphasizes that it is unacceptable to use history and science in an attempt to justify the Bible without being open to the disconfirmation of the Bible through the use of those same methods. Here is a taste: We [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,131,40,85],"tags":[712,1140,1846,4643,4648,4660,10886,10903],"class_list":["post-18997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-christianity-religion","category-history","category-science","tag-apologetics","tag-bible","tag-christianity-religion","tag-historians","tag-historical-criticism","tag-history","tag-science","tag-scientists"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Touching Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A blog post by Jericho Brisance, &quot;Christian Agnosticism and Touching Earth,&quot; was drawn to my attention. It emphasizes that it is unacceptable to use\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/11\/touching-earth.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Touching Earth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A blog post by Jericho Brisance, &quot;Christian Agnosticism and Touching Earth,&quot; was drawn to my attention. It emphasizes that it is unacceptable to use\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/11\/touching-earth.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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