Thank you JRM Aslan, Philo, or the other regular posters should have pulled hime up on this by now.

We are waiting for your reply Sells.

BTW the crowd who say faith and science are outside of each others areas and so cannot comment on either, are ignoring the fact that the supernatural or Divine in the case of Christianity intrudes into the physical world -we are not talking about a Deist God- so it is open to scientific investigation.

The Alchemist please pop over to Margo's Blog http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/phil_uebergang/001242.html
it would be handy to have someone who can back me up if they start throwing Biblical passages at me.

The relationship between history and myth, I would prefer ‘Legend” has been a thorny one since natural science has confirmed the material nature of the world. As I have tried to point out, scripture is a mix of pure legend written in an historical context and interpreted history. In a prescientific culture it was easy to postulate supernatural interpretations on historical events. A similar process occurs in our day when we Australians look back to the events at Galipoli and talk about the birth of the nation. The historians will recount no such birth, they will only recount slaughter and mismanagement. Likewise if we had historical documentation of the escape from Egypt we would not see the sea parting Cecil B De Mill fashion. The historical basis of the story may be that the wheels of the Egyptian chariots got stuck in the mud but when the nation recalled the event it became more and more embellished. There are actually two accounts that have been cut and pasted into the scriptural account, one with naturalistic explanations like the sea being driven back by a strong wind and the other account that describes the sea standing in walls.

The biblical scholars I know do not believe that God intrudes into the physical world making a mess of science. However God does act in history in a similar way that the myth of national formation acts in history or the idea of communism acts in history. The statement that “God raised Jesus Christ from the dead” need not mean and indeed the scripture denies this interpretation, that he was bodily resuscitated. For example, one meaning is that he was vindicated, that he was not in fact judged on the cross but those who put him there were. Paul interprets cross and resurrection in terms of a victory over the “elemental spirits of the universe”, those powers abroad even in our day that dehumanise

Any belief that relies on the existence of nature miracles is on shaky ground. All sorts of questions arise. Firstly we must posit a world “back then” different from the one we experience in which such miracles do not happen. Secondly, what does belief in nature miracles point to? Such belief may point to an alternative understanding of the nature of the world in which natural law may be put aside, a very questionable proposition, but they do not point to the corpus of Christian teaching about the event of Jesus. They do not point to the victory over the elemental spirits of the universe, and the overcoming of the law of sin and death. To base faith on the occurrence of nature miracles just makes us superstitious, we might as well believe in alien abduction.

In John’s gospel Jesus sees that some followed because they believed in the signs that he performed and he did not trust himself to them

"Flatter me, and I may not believe you.
Criticize me, and I may not like you.
Ignore me, and I may not forgive you.
Encourage me, and I may not forget you."
- William Arthur

This quote is for er.. umm whatsisname?

Sells,
God is all powerful? God created all? IF these are right then…

God chooses the method and style of his miracles. God may OR may not intrude on the physical world (i.e. He may conform to the physics of this universe or not).

Where then in the problem with the beliefs of the Christian faith?

Sorry, I may be a cuckoo or ignorant but I don’t see the point of your argument any more.

Just Dan
My point is that the philosophical attributes of God do not apply to the God Christians worship. When you say god is all powerful what do you mean? For Christianity the power of God is hidden in weakness, God reigns from the cross the position of absolute weakness. We need to stop reading the philosophers whose god is a mere projection of human ideas and listen to scripture. This is the scandal that is the original idea of this article.