If somebody like me, with all of the high stakes of money, career, and family, can face the facts and change my mind, so can anyone else. Our Future and our Survival on this planet depends on it.
Just a note about single-payer healthcare systems: the NHS isn’t a single-payer system, it’s a single-provider system. The difference is significant.
A single-provider system has one healthcare provider that everyone uses when they need healthcare. The single provider in the UK is the NHS. The VA is an example of a single-provider system in the U.S.
A single-payer system has one fund that people pay into that pays medical bills to a variety of healthcare providers, who may be government institutions (such as city or county hospitals), private hospitals, private healthcare personnel, etc. The payer just pays the bills, other entities provide the care, unlike a single-provider system like the NHS, where the government is in charge of everything. An example of a single-payer system in the U.S. is Medicare.
You had all that stuff, but I think God had your ear too. Nature is one of the ways that God witnesses of what he's about even while evil dominates the world. Eventually "the elements will melt with a fervent heat." I hope all Christians of good will would agree that there's no particular need to hustle blindly into that.
Thanks for clearing up what that term meant. We could also say broader story, or overarching story, or heart story. By contrast, I know (knew -- I don't visit him anymore) a fundamentalist bible teacher who said he was careful not to call the bible account a story. We know that some of the favorite devotional hymns of the faith refer to the story of Jesus. To me, if putative holy writ does not tell a story (regardless of scientific accuracy, which is a different issue) it's not worth a thing more than any other "lower story" account we could come up with. God is like thus and such, and works in thus and such a manner, and we ought to care about God for thus and such a reason, and this is an inherent "upper story" issue.
Frank, I still hold to two broad emphases of your father. I think he was right about these things though he was wrong about quite a bit:
1). A perfectly loving God. We are called to follow Him in manifesting that perfect love.
2.) The idea that there is objective reality. Reality isn't whatever we want it to be. I love this passage from C.S. Peirce (1839-1914): "A court may issue injunctions and judgments against me and I not care a snap of my finger for them. I may think them idle vapor. But when I feel the sheriff’s hand on my shoulder, I shall begin to have a sense of actuality. Actuality is something brute. There is no reason in it. I instance putting your shoulder against a door and trying to force it open against an unseen, silent, and unknown resistance. We have a two-sided consciousness of effort and resistance, which seems to me to come tolerably near to a pure sense of actuality."
Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time arguing against "upper story" ideas because he wanted to make sure people were in touch with reality.
Now of course we should know that suffering and patience is sometimes -- almost always, for that matter -- necessary to see victories of God over Satan. And in that is a deeper reality. That granted, however, and I am not quite sure what is meant by "upper story" here -- ultimate story? -- I don't see any reason to begrudge these things for good causes. This is where the high minded, but not egotistical, liberal frequently is.
"Upper story" is a concept about certain ideas being true and important while possibly being disconnected from facts. Schaeffer's apologetics was a kind of verificationism. He thought that any truth should be factual. So he interpreted Christianity as a kind of hypothesis of what is true. We should believe in the God of the Bible because it makes sense of the world. But a real "Achilles heal" of his ideas was the idea of biblical infallibility. That just does not seem to be factual. In fact it appears Bible writers were not always even trying to be factual. The easiest example to look at is Matthew's genealogy of Jesus. You might remember that he divides the generations into three groups of 14. It is easy to show that he leaves off 3 names from one of the groups so that it won't be longer than the other groups.
So I guess I would have to say that "upper story" ideas are necessary. Sometimes important truths are not necessarily verifiable by facts.
The idea of a scientific grade of scriptural infallibility may or may not be new, but it doesn't seem to be where the mainstream of any non self destructive form of religion goes because it starts to look like questions of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We forget why the angels are dancing there, if they do thus dance.
This is upsetting to many moderns, who think the only alternative is to declare scripture meaningless. But I'm not so sure that it is, anymore. At one point in the Old Testament account, God explains that his people who died wandering in the wilderness "did not know his ways." If a figuratively worded and yet still inspired scripture is one of God's ways, then we will have to deal with that on that level. Could this format be implicit in the ways of a God who wants us to give up the idea of subjecting him or his works to scientific scrutiny? If so, that would be so freeing -- as we can get the spiritual point over and over as needed without vexing ourselves over the science of the physical side of it all. But we're not going to get along well with modern fundamentalist followings.
Just a note about single-payer healthcare systems: the NHS isn’t a single-payer system, it’s a single-provider system. The difference is significant.
A single-provider system has one healthcare provider that everyone uses when they need healthcare. The single provider in the UK is the NHS. The VA is an example of a single-provider system in the U.S.
A single-payer system has one fund that people pay into that pays medical bills to a variety of healthcare providers, who may be government institutions (such as city or county hospitals), private hospitals, private healthcare personnel, etc. The payer just pays the bills, other entities provide the care, unlike a single-provider system like the NHS, where the government is in charge of everything. An example of a single-payer system in the U.S. is Medicare.
Sharing this everywhere! Great summation.
Be my guest!
You had all that stuff, but I think God had your ear too. Nature is one of the ways that God witnesses of what he's about even while evil dominates the world. Eventually "the elements will melt with a fervent heat." I hope all Christians of good will would agree that there's no particular need to hustle blindly into that.
Thanks for clearing up what that term meant. We could also say broader story, or overarching story, or heart story. By contrast, I know (knew -- I don't visit him anymore) a fundamentalist bible teacher who said he was careful not to call the bible account a story. We know that some of the favorite devotional hymns of the faith refer to the story of Jesus. To me, if putative holy writ does not tell a story (regardless of scientific accuracy, which is a different issue) it's not worth a thing more than any other "lower story" account we could come up with. God is like thus and such, and works in thus and such a manner, and we ought to care about God for thus and such a reason, and this is an inherent "upper story" issue.
Frank, I still hold to two broad emphases of your father. I think he was right about these things though he was wrong about quite a bit:
1). A perfectly loving God. We are called to follow Him in manifesting that perfect love.
2.) The idea that there is objective reality. Reality isn't whatever we want it to be. I love this passage from C.S. Peirce (1839-1914): "A court may issue injunctions and judgments against me and I not care a snap of my finger for them. I may think them idle vapor. But when I feel the sheriff’s hand on my shoulder, I shall begin to have a sense of actuality. Actuality is something brute. There is no reason in it. I instance putting your shoulder against a door and trying to force it open against an unseen, silent, and unknown resistance. We have a two-sided consciousness of effort and resistance, which seems to me to come tolerably near to a pure sense of actuality."
Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time arguing against "upper story" ideas because he wanted to make sure people were in touch with reality.
Now of course we should know that suffering and patience is sometimes -- almost always, for that matter -- necessary to see victories of God over Satan. And in that is a deeper reality. That granted, however, and I am not quite sure what is meant by "upper story" here -- ultimate story? -- I don't see any reason to begrudge these things for good causes. This is where the high minded, but not egotistical, liberal frequently is.
"Upper story" is a concept about certain ideas being true and important while possibly being disconnected from facts. Schaeffer's apologetics was a kind of verificationism. He thought that any truth should be factual. So he interpreted Christianity as a kind of hypothesis of what is true. We should believe in the God of the Bible because it makes sense of the world. But a real "Achilles heal" of his ideas was the idea of biblical infallibility. That just does not seem to be factual. In fact it appears Bible writers were not always even trying to be factual. The easiest example to look at is Matthew's genealogy of Jesus. You might remember that he divides the generations into three groups of 14. It is easy to show that he leaves off 3 names from one of the groups so that it won't be longer than the other groups.
So I guess I would have to say that "upper story" ideas are necessary. Sometimes important truths are not necessarily verifiable by facts.
The idea of a scientific grade of scriptural infallibility may or may not be new, but it doesn't seem to be where the mainstream of any non self destructive form of religion goes because it starts to look like questions of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We forget why the angels are dancing there, if they do thus dance.
This is upsetting to many moderns, who think the only alternative is to declare scripture meaningless. But I'm not so sure that it is, anymore. At one point in the Old Testament account, God explains that his people who died wandering in the wilderness "did not know his ways." If a figuratively worded and yet still inspired scripture is one of God's ways, then we will have to deal with that on that level. Could this format be implicit in the ways of a God who wants us to give up the idea of subjecting him or his works to scientific scrutiny? If so, that would be so freeing -- as we can get the spiritual point over and over as needed without vexing ourselves over the science of the physical side of it all. But we're not going to get along well with modern fundamentalist followings.
What is the context here? I don't think we should go around cheering Satan because he keeps on testing God, for example.