What is true, what is beautiful, and what is moral?
The great divide in Western culture today is between the absurdity of post-modernity and the transcendent truths of Biblical Christianity.
You also can view this PowerPoint presentation (including full screen mode), and download it, at www.slideshare.net/FulcrumExpress/biblical-absolutes-and-relativism.
Crossroad Junction 
“The great divide in Western culture today is between the nihilism of post-modernity and the transcendent values of Biblical Christianity.”
False dichotomy.
The rest of us understand there probably aren’t absolutes, but we can get as close as we can using logic, reason and evidence to understand things like harm and benefit.
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Absolutes don’t exist, but we nonetheless can get close to those non-existing absolutes???
And are you claiming that logic, reason and evidence are objective? The 17th Century philosopher Hobbes put a permanent spike right through the heart of that belief. Regardless, science (which I take is your schtick — and it’s a good schtick to have, for sure — based on your web site) has great value. For example, I have a degree in biology and for many years headed up a leading scientific consulting firm. But just don’t deify science!
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“but we nonetheless can get close to those non-existing absolutes??? ”
But nonetheless we can get close to something pretty firm.
“And are you claiming that logic, reason and evidence are objective?”
As close to objective as humans can come.
“But just don’t deify science!”
I don’t deify anything.
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Hey Jim… I enjoyed your slide presentation. I know how difficult it is express things clearly when it’s done in point-form like a Power Point presentation, but in some cases it’s better because there’s less verbiage … the strength of Twitter, I suppose..
If you don’t mind I wanted to comment on a couple of things you said by picking out a couple of slides.
Slide #15
It’s my experience that God, also speaks to us by His Spirit internally. One of things that has been lost over the past number of centuries is the fact that His Kingdom is within (and flesh and blood can’t enter) and we’re not taught to turn into Him internally: into a place of quiet and silence where we can hear His voice. I still believe it is Jesus Christ Himself who opens up the Scriptures and gives us understanding of God through His creation.. it’s not something I can do apart from Him. (although you do speak to that in Slide #16 )
I realize your presuppositions are “general”, but that phrase “not Biblical” bugs me ( now, now.. don’t accuse me of being ‘post modern’ because I absolutely believe in absolute truth. 🙂
Slide #24 “God has reached ‘down’ to us” is one of those “God is out there distant from us” phrases that are a part of our culture… when in reality He is the light of all men everywhere… the life Source of all men Who is IN us. All of creation .. all created lfe is upheld by the word of His Power (Jesus Christ, in whom all the fulness was pleased to dwell). God does speak to us in Scripture, but He has, in this new and better covenant, written His laws on our hearts and minds and He is IN us, the internal Teacher, so that one doesn’t have to say, “Know God”.. for we all can know Him. It has something to do with living in the Spirit.
Slide #28 By the time I reached slide 28 I was thinking of just hitting the DEL button and carrying on with my life. You wouldn’t know any different anyways, so it’s all cool. But we all are ‘who we are’ based on so many different factors, all of which you’re aware of .. things like our upbringing, our education, (you studied apologetics in seminary I think ), our peers etc.
but I gotta say, the second statement on this slide is “right” but it’s also wrong. I don’t like the term “submitting to biblical norms”. Christ isn’t Lord over my presuppositions and worldview just because I submit to “Biblical norms”.. He’s Lord because the Father “made Him both Lord and King” and when I take up my cross daily and follow Him He’s my Lord. The Bible has little to do with it. I’d like to know what all those illiterate Christians who had no access to any bible for so many centuries did? They may have submitted to ‘biblical norms’ without knowing what that even means but the Reality is that they knew an indwelling Lord…. the Jesus who lived IN them and whose laws were written on their hearts.
I so much want the religious garbage to get out of all of this. The labels and categorizing that isolate and separate brothers is all the mind trying to understand mysteries that can only be understood through Jesus.
By the way… I’ve appreciated your ‘Beyond Evangelical’ series and have enjoyed hearing the Christ who is in you. Like Viola sometimes says, ..”may your tribe increase”… although I heard that from Gene Edwards first, but he’s on a lot of ‘shit lists’ and probably shouldn’t be mentioned.
all the best, Ron
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