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So then you're saying that you can't accurately recall the key elements of (for example) the most significant event that happened to you when you were in junior high school?
How about people who were in Dallas when Kennedy got shot. If one of them told you what he saw, you'd reject his testimony?
Have you ever spoken to a survivor of the Nazi death camps? I have - should I reject his testimony because it happened over 60 years ago?
The reason you've given for that is fallacious. It's the ad hominem argument.
They are not divine...kinda hard to explain...Jesus rose from the dead. He restored what none else could do, one's relationship with God.
Musing is a good thing. May your musings continue.
Have you ever flown in a plane?
Used a lift?
Driven a car?
Swam?
Lit a fire?
I do hope you understand all of these fully before using them; any one of them can kill you if you are not careful.
Or could it be that you have one standard for most things, but have raised the bar rather higher to faith, because you do not want to believe it? It certainly looks that way.
I have no problem with evolution. I am not an expert, but I accept the findings of those who are; the Bible does not tell us to reject science.
Yes. If we had not had evidence since the Bible we would all have to be be off our rockers to still believe it. Do you honestly think we are all off our rockers?
Incontravertible, personal, first hand, day by day evidence; I for one would NOT be able to sustain faith without it.
It is like someone saying, look, gravity works; it is a force of attraction within nature; it is real; I am stuck to the ground; if I jump I fall down again. If I drop an apple, it goes to the ground; just look for yourself.
Then someone else says, I don't understand what you are saying, and until I understand gravity 100% I am going to say it is the air rejecting that which is not air; people are made up of earth, air, fire and water. Earth goes to earth, fire to fire, and water to water, so people fall to the ground, the same as water falls to the ground to find other water.
This theory is adequate, therefore, until you prove that you are right and I am wrong, I refuse to believe in gravity.
There really is nowhere to go on this, is there? Demanding 100% understanding of something when the primary limitation is our own intellect is never going to be a good path to choose.
Originally Posted by brinny
They are not divine...kinda hard to explain...Jesus rose from the dead. He restored what none else could do, one's relationship with God.
Musing is a good thing. May your musings continue.
Hi brinny,
A number of posters have said the same as you.
We're currently discussing, amongst other things, the veracity of the biblical accounts. Your belief that Jesus Was risen is based on the bible and I can't see how it's logical to trust a source like the good book which was passed on verbally for many years before it's written. Oh and the scribes were Christians so they're hardly unbiased.
I must admit to some surprise tha people are arguing about its reliability as I thought people would say that belief in the unprovable and illogical is the definition of the word "faith" but some are arguing that it's logical to believe in the story of Christ.
I promise to continue musing, as I'm enjoying the counter arguments, from Hedrick and Catherineanne in particular as they are makin me learn and think.
I like this forum.
The trouble is his philosophy amounts to "YHWH promised to do defeat evil, put things right and judge the unjust when he returned to be king. That's now happening in me and what i am doing." it's not an abstract "be nice to people".
To admire Jesus as a philosopher you basically have to invent a version of him for which there is no historical evidence.
The miracles (not magic) are inherently part and parcel of what he claimed to be doing; embodying YHWH's promisec return to Zion.
What's the evidence since the bible tha you refer to?
I think it's most likely that God is outside time. There are other approaches, but if you accept him as having created space-time, that seems to place him outside it.
But even if God is outside time, he deals with people who are within it, and thus he can have different dealings at different times. The difference between OT and NT is handled differently by different Christians. But I think most of us believe in some form of progressive revelation. For whatever reason, God pretty clearly doesn't act just by brute force. He is trying to help us understand him. And that process occurs over time. Christians vary in how they treat this. Because I don't think the Bible is inerrant, I think parts of it reflect a partial understanding of God. In my view, God was trying to bring Israel to understand him, but at early stages they saw him as a tribal war god, even though he wasn't. Hence the call to come out of pagan culture turned into killing all the pagans.
But if you look at the message of the Prophets, you'll find most of Jesus' message already present in the OT. The prophets said that what God cared about was not that you follow specific laws in how you worship him (although they certainly didn't accept idols or multiple gods), but how we treat each other. They saw Israel as a light to the Gentiles, not people sent to kill them. They demanded justice and support for the weakest members of society. Their priorities are very close to Jesus'. That message was present from during the period of the kings, which is really as far back as an accurate historical record goes.
"Love your neighbor as yourself" is from Lev 19:18, which is the heart of the old law code in the OT. However in the OT most of Israel saw this kind of thing as applying to other Israelites, not to outsiders. But there were prophets giving a wider view.
I'm not sure what you mean by fire and brimstone. If you're talking about threats of hell in the afterlife, the OT by and large doesn't contain such threats. In the OT, God is understood as taking his vengeance in history. So there isn't fire and brimstone, but when Israel is conquered, the Prophets see that as an act of judgement by God. I've run out of time (have to go to work), so I'm going to think about that for later today.
if their there they can explain it. if not they cant.
Ok, let me spell out why I see Jesus as a philosopher as opposed to god:
The teachings of Jesus seem, to me at least, to be variations and adaptations of various Greek philosophers e.g. Plato and Epicurus. The love thy fellow man and do unto others ideals were central to these Greek philosophers.
Hellenic Jews could then have transported those ideas to the middle east and th rest is history.
I think Jesus built on this work and the religious connotations were added so as to compete with the various other religions, particularly mithaism (which has striking similarities to Christianity by the way).
Ultimately Christianity won through simply because Constantine was converted.
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