If there is no God, there is no morality either. Only a transcendent, personal being like God can serve as the ontological foundation for transcendent moral truths and moral duties. Cultural norms and mores may still exist without God, but not moral truths. Without God to provide the ontological grounding for objective moral values, what we refer to as “morality” is nothing more than expressions of our subjective preferences or human pragmatism. To say “murder is wrong” is no different than saying “chocolate ice-cream is gross” or “you shouldn’t drive on the left side of the road.” Moral obligations fall by the wayside, for in the name of what ought anybody submit to cultural preferences or pragmatic mores?
To believe morals exist but God does not is like believing books exist but authors do not. There wouldn’t be any books in the absence of authors, and there wouldn’t be any moral truths in the absence of a transcendent, personal, holy God to ground those moral truths in reality. Put another way, to believe moral truths exist in the absence of a transcendent source like God is like believing books exist in the absence of authors. And to believe that we are obligated to behave in certain ways in the absence of a moral law maker and judge is tantamount to thinking one is obligated to obey the laws in a nation without legislators.
Only the existence of God can make sense of the existence of morality. If you want to deny the existence of God, then you must also deny the existence of moral truths. Relativism is all you are left with. And if that’s where you want to go, so be it, but please don’t complain about the problem of evil, rail on Christians about the Crusades, or claim we are wrong in our moral positions. The emperor has no clothes.
See also:
- Can morality be grounded outside of God?
- The typical atheist’s response to the moral argument for God’s existence
- I can be good without God
- Since you would be good even if God didn’t exist, then God isn’t necessary for morality
- Would you be good if God didn’t exist?
- Morality and the Epistemology-Ontology Distinction
*Invariably someone will respond to my argument by saying you don’t have to believe in God to know what is right or to live morally. I agree, but this is a red herring. My argument is not that one must believe in God in order to know and practice morality (an issue of moral epistemology). Rather, my argument is that if God does not exist, there are no moral truths to know in the first place, and there is no behavior that can be described as objectively moral (an issue of moral ontology). Belief in God is not necessary for moral knowledge/behavior, but the existence of God is. If God did not exist, there would be no moral truths for the atheist to know and practice. To argue that since one can be moral without belief in God, God is not necessary to explain morality is like arguing that since one can read books without believing in the existence of authors, authors are not necessary to explain the existence of books. It’s a confusion of moral epistemology with moral ontology. In the same way there would be no books to read if authors did not exist, there would be no moral truths to know/practice if God did not exist.
Thinking to Believe 
October 1, 2014 at 8:33 am
So how would one explain away the the leat religious countries have the lowest crime rates and are least likely to have wars. When it comes to killing no religion on earth can co,pare to the body count of Christians. To me beliefs are meaningless it is what a person does in deed that really counts. I am between Agnostic and Atheist. A comfortable place to be as I have no god to take offencebforbwrongs I do. But I pay for any wrongs. No god orerson cannforgove me. All I can do is to forgive myself
F by working it off doing some good.
LikeLiked by 1 person
October 1, 2014 at 9:22 am
Comparison of crime rates is not determinative of what is being discussed here. Many non-“Christian” countries may have lower crimes rates–but sacrifice fundamental freedoms to despotic police states to keep these rates down. Also, it is doubtless not Christians who commit the preponderance of crime in those countries with the alleged higher rates anyway! Moral sense is somewhat indistinctly written upon all men’s consciences, whether they be Christian or not. If this were not so the world would be a virtual hell on earth right now. Without God, morality and laws based thereon, would be confused and resemble a shattered mirror…reflecting an indeterminate number of social contracts and sub-contracts which mankind would have to choose from, either willingly or by coercion.
LikeLiked by 1 person
October 1, 2014 at 9:42 am
“If there is no God, there is no morality either.”
Sorry, Jason. We have morality simply because of thinking, feeling, and loving human beings. Humanity, as a whole, loves their kids, their friends, their companions, as they love themselves.
We learn to love and respect others as we each grow, and this is reciprocated back to most humans and animals around us.
First off, I have sufficient proof of the majority of human being’s individual love and respect for his, or herself as a ‘base’, and then carrying this out to other individuals around them.
You have absolutely no proof of this coming from any other source, other than Humanity.
Your mistake is putting the “cart before the horse” by installing a face on what has come about very naturally, as “natural” is the only viable explanation to our reality.
IOW, there is absolutely zero proof of a loving, caring, PERSONAL “God.”
Taken further, just about any thinking human can look around and see the degree of pain and suffering on our planet.
A thorough investigation, one leaving all bias out of the equation, can make an extremely powerful case for no God, or laughably, an “Impersonal God,” one that couldn’t care less about the misfortunes of it’s charges, but zero evidence of a Personal God.
Therefore I propose what most scientists propose. That morality is an evolution-based, societal ‘norm’ which can also be observed in the animal kingdom as well, of which Mankind is also a part of.
There is some scientific work that has shown that this is so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality
This article talks about the evolution of morality from a social need.
http://www.wiringthebrain.com/2011/06/where-do-morals-come-from.html
“To believe morals exist but God does not is like believing books exist but authors do not.”
I will counter your thought with this:
To believe that anything at all exists because of an unproved and at the same time unprovable theory based only in legend and enhanced only by human emotion and zero evidence, but with mountains of evidence against it’s likely-hood, obtained through both deductive and inductive reasoning, is like believing that books aren’t written by men, but by ghosts.
LikeLike
October 1, 2014 at 1:24 pm
Professor Gringo, you are making the very mistake I warned about in my post. You are essentially saying, “If people who don’t believe in authors can read books better than people who do believe in authors, then you don’t need authors.” We’re not talking about moral knowledge or moral behavior. The argument is not that belief in God is necessary to know morality or act morally. The argument is that if there is no God, there can be no such thing as morality for atheists to know and do in the same way that if there were no authors, there would be no books for people to read (even those who deny the existence of authors). I am talking about the ontological foundation for moral realism, not moral epistemology or personal goodness. The question is how we account for the existence of moral truths, not how we come to know them or how well we live by them.
Jason
LikeLike
October 2, 2014 at 9:02 am
Jason:
Now that your workload has lessened you can go back to making stuff up again.
Your argument reminds me of the poem “Only God can make a tree”; therefore a tree proves that God exists. You can make claims about anything to try and prove God which magicians have done since before Moses who made a magic trick by turning the staff into a snake as “God commanded Moses to tell Aaron to do when Pharoah asked for a miracle to prove the God of Moses. Before long however Pharoah’s court magicians made miracles too by turning their staffs into snakes. Wow. Some miracle. And through whom did Moses speak to God; why, through the prophets as set up by the council of wise men to hear pleadings and to give advice in all matters while claiming the words came from God like an infallible Pope of Old. And if anyone refuse to believe the edicts and decrees about this you were one dead infidel as infidels are still dead in some theocratic countries today. Just turn on the International News to confirm that.
Religion, trying to prove the existence of the supernatural in the face of god myths, miracles, magic and morals is like shearing a pig – lots of squeals but little wool.
The evidence for the Biblical God is the evidence provided in the Old Testament scriptures. Moses’ mission began through magic tricks of the Elders and Moses began calling the magic tricks “miracles” to prove God to Pharaoh. This story is clearly outlined in Exodus 7:8-11.
LikeLike
October 2, 2014 at 3:37 pm
Sonofman…
Tell us; just what is it that you do believe? What is your worldview? Is it one in which the universe is eternal, that everything that is came from all that is not, and that all life came from a runaway chemistry accident, and finally that you and all ‘life’ came from non-life by mistake, error, and fluke? Further…if your morality comes from society (social norms to find a way to work together for self-survival…thereby slow, undirected Darwinian methods of evolution) then which society is it that is the right one? How is it (for example) that we ‘know’ that Hitler sterilizing Germany from the plague of Jewish (race) infection…impacting the pure arian white folks…was wrong? Some religions (Mormons) say that having multiple wives is OK…is it (I believe as I believe you do…that what is proper is one wife one man…especially if you want to raise a family)? That does not prove ‘love’ of course…but then what does…another society norm? Sonofman…are there absolute truths to moral issues…? If you say there are not absolute truths to moral issues then is that an absolute truth? If you answer “yes” to that then you are caught in a circular referencing argument that is self-defeating. And you can not dismiss it just because you do not like the fact of it. We have to follow truth (reasonable and logical and tested philosophical proofs) EVEN if we do not like where it takes us (and I strongly suggest that we will NOT like what we find ourselves in because we ALL do not ‘work’ right…as you said “just check the evening news”.
None of us asked to be here in this life…we were all born without our consent (some I’ve talked to would just as well not been bothered to be born! it is a MESS…and we are often the problem!!). But we seem to come into life with a ‘slate’ not blank; but impregnated with a fairness code…and a perfection code and a no-time code…and a spiritual (abstract) life of in-borne intelligence. As if information is linked and points back to our Intelligent source…as if this intelligence is a mathematical force carrier…a factor of cosmic necessity. It is as if what we all are; is not physical but spiritual knowledge (crammed inside a carbon based cocoon). If all life is just physical then there is much we are not account of especially when science states that we can only test 4% of what is in the physical world (the other 96% is dark matter and dark energy) Further, matter is 99.99% empty space even the electrons in the outer orbital of ALL atoms is considered to be a massless particle….So what is it that we know of (materialistic) reality when science only knows 0.01% of 4%. Frankly, we might as well ask what is the simplest explanation for what it is we experience…an the “inference to the best explanation” (Occam’s razor) is that matter and concrete reality…comes from that which is NOT material but rather spiritual (for lack of a better word…I know that word bothers you). And on top of that we must keep seeking truth…that is not against reason (a Christian base requirement…not for salvation but for relating and maturing). And that same book…the Bible…touts gaining wisdom and learning, and knowledge and actually ASKING God for that (deliberately…if anyone cares to believe that helps).
Seeking education in a worldly environment is NOT all there is to gaining education. What person (when young) wants to learn the multiplication tables??!!! Do I have to answer this?!!!! Education and learning is what our brains are for…and we are to feed it properly just as we are to take good air into our lungs and good food into our stomachs (that is reasonable: Isaiah 1:18). Our education system is biased to getting us into the society to fit in with the tax based process (which is not wrong) but that is not the only reason for our OVER evolved brain. Once out-of-school we should have been motivated to continue learning because that is how and why we are the creature we are…instead it is Jerry Springer and pornography, alcohol…work work work and being involved with more and more material collections. We spend half our life collecting stuff and the last half trying to figure who gets what stuff; When it is the abstract things that really have value and meaning to life. We seek the unknown because we know our true home is not being cooped up in these Erathsuits for 80 some-odd years. And if Christianity is a crutch and security blanket then why does is remove any fear of death? No Christian I’ve meet is afraid of death…just concerned about the longevity of getting to that point of graduation from life. Aaaah, the guillotine is pretty quick (sorry sick humor)…I’ve got enough pills to dispatch ten elephants So I no longer intend to suffer some long term pain trip than those who chose to jump the world trade center (I know they had no choice? aaah wrong…and that’s not suicide…and not foul of religion). Anyway… I don’t know how you get from one day to the next and why it is that anyone finds interest in any discussion of endeavor other than that of understanding origins and life and who they are morally. But then again I’m just some dumb Christian right; sonofman? .
LikeLike
October 3, 2014 at 12:16 am
get1949:
I wouldn’t say you were a dumb Christian, just a limited believer.
It would be easier to tell you what I do not believe rather than what I do believe since belief is only valid in leading one into knowledge because only knowledge can set you free, belief never can.
My take is simple: the Universe has always existed and always will exist, like a garden with various forms birthing, blooming, becoming and begoing.
We think we know that stars and pieces of the Universe are born and eventually burn out or otherwise disintegrate and disappear and heavenly bodies are born and reborn again. So it seems from where we sit that the cycle of life we are caught up in, is merely a reflection of the greater universe: being born, glowing for a period of time and diminishing over and over again. Where or how or why we fit into the birth cycle scheme of things we have yet to learn but we are befuddled with belief imaginings since the days of ancient ancestors answering questions about the same things by inventing a multitude of Godly creations.
I do not believe a Big Bang started everything from nothing, that is as incredible as Big Creationism Some scientists assume that when they look back into time and measure debris or so called after effects, or residual signs of past radiation or whatever it is they detect in the nothing space in between, they attribute the measurement to something which they call the big bang. But what they detect from where I sit is a constant cosmic nutrient and not Big Bang residual.
Think of it this way: stars are constantly blowing up and disintegrating which means that we cannot perceive them anymore but we can detect trace amounts of their disintegration as it becomes part of the dark matter Universe.(The radioactivity heat that scientists list as evidence of the Big Bang Theory.) We do see and record supernovas that happened years ago but which we are only seeing now but I imagine the millions and billions of stars that have nova-ed in long past observable form before humans could detect and record them? They would be gone and we would know nothing about there existence except if their existence formed part of that mysterious detectable “stuff” they hypothesize comes from what the Theory called the Big Bang. Perhaps the residual “stuff” is merely accumulated residuals from billions of tiny bangs from billions of supernovas that have been exploding for what we might conveniently call Infinity?
I mean if we cannot perceive the billions of stars that have blown out of observable celestial bodies before human lives were sparkles of star dust, how could we know? They burned out of existence long before life existed on planet earth; certainly, long before humans were capable of detecting the radiation of their residue. Goodness the telescope is a recent invention.
In the early 17th century, craftsmen and scientists introduced a new tool for studying the heavens. The telescope, one of the central instruments of the Scientific Revolution, soon became the astronomer’s most essential tool. Now the astronomer could see countless stars and other faint objects never before visible. Suddenly the universe was no longer limited to what the naked eye could see. As telescopes improved, astronomers continued to push back the boundaries of the known universe, peering ever deeper into the surrounding sea of stars known as the Milky Way.
“By taking our sense of sight far beyond the realm of our forebears’ imagination, these wonderful instruments, the telescopes, open the way to a deeper and more perfect understanding of nature.” —René Descartes, 1637
For example, let’s say there were stars: 20 trillion, quadrillion, zillion stars billions of years ago years ago but whose life span has come and gone and because it happened so long ago how could we know about it? We could not; unless, the residual of their previous life still circulates within the universe like nutrients waiting for the time of new regeneration.
They came, they lived, they died and we would not be, nor could we be, aware of them. When a star novas and disappears, unless we witness the event, or at least measure it’s distance by the time the light of the nova reaches earth we could not know they existed at all:
EXCERPT:
Most Distant Supernovae Found
Anne Minard
for National Geographic News
July 8, 2009
By blending pictures of the deep universe, astronomers have found the faint light from two supernovae that are now the most distant stellar explosions known.
The supernovae happened so far away that their light takes billions of years to reach Earth.
Being able to see such faraway objects could therefore open a new window onto the lives and deaths of the first stars formed nearly 13 billion years ago.
“The ones that we’ve detected happened about 11 billion years ago, so you’re getting close already,” said lead author Jeff Cooke, an astronomer at the University of California, Irvine.
Due to the expansion of the universe, the record-setting supernovae are currently 18 billion light-years from Earth.
Since the Big Bang Theory has been arrived at by going backward in time, how can the observable be observed when the observable is no longer observable because they have exploded into the Big Everything as protons, neutrons, electrons, photons and neutrinos.
If the last flicker of a supernova took place, say 2000 years ago who would have observed it? Save a shepherd perhaps who was tending his flock? Who may have caught the glimmer of a distant light. But after it was gone, how would we have known unless it was recorded or passed on through word of mouth in stories or fictitious imaginations.
By the way: The closest and last supernova, observed from Earth was visible with the naked eye in October 1604; it exploded a mere 20,000 light-years away, in our own Galaxy which is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter or just slighty smaller than the Absolute Certainty of a religious believer’s ego.
All the stars that have exploded and disintegrated before we began observing and recording; if we cannot observe their smoldering remnants of glowing outer shells why would we assume they never existed trillions of years ago? The corollary of course, on the other hand, is why would we not assume that they did exist? And now gone except for their residue which we attribute to a Big Bang from Nothing? I cannot imagine that and I do not believe it is true.
LikeLike
October 8, 2014 at 9:18 am
Leo, how’s it going !
You said :
“…..because only knowledge can set you free, belief never can.
My take is simple: the Universe has always existed and always will exist,…”
Is not your statement above that the universe has always existed a statement of belief ? You have no absolute knowledge of this so it must be that is what you concluded must be true or at least what you believe to be true.
This is what I believe :
I believe God created the universe at a point in time, say time = zero. Although I say that from a biased position of faith, science has also taught me that it is mathematically impossible for time to ever be at negative infinity which is what you believe to be true. In other words, if the universe is infinite in the past, we would never get to today. This is obviously not the case.
Therefore based on mathematical and scientific principles, your belief that the universe always existed is false. Mathematics teaches us that the universe began at a point in time (time zero). This makes the belief that the universe was created scientifically viable. Therefore my belief that God created the universe is also viable since I haven’t met anybody yet that can create universes….have you ?
Cheers !
Naz
LikeLike
October 8, 2014 at 11:56 am
Hi Naz:
Glad to have you back in the folds of my logic once again. Your idea that the infinity garden could never bear fruit is ludicrous to put it mildly. Imagine the garden of of forever bearing fruit in due season as the seasons come and go, as the stars come and go, as the galaxies come and go and merge and the black holes gulping up the entrophic argument like a 7-11 Big Gulp and the simplistic unfolds before your very mind’s eye.
You see the Universe Garden is Forever and we along with everything else as part of the living cycle, conceive, birth, bloom, wilt, return to the nutrients from whence we developed and came forth and then must await the next light year of life when we birth again onward and upward.
Of course we do not have complete knowledge but we do have enough knowledge to support the Eternal Garden and set our minds free from the supernatural since the expose of Hubble and next generation telescopes and probes reveal to us the immense expanse of the Garden and yet while we cannot see the full length and breadth we see enough of it to leave behind the gods of ancient myths and relax in the knowledge that allows the mind to see beyond the magic tricks of men that turns staffs into snakes and fires burning the bush without consuming it just like the lighter fluid on my hands when I was in youthful experience when the ignition of the lighter fluid burned without consuming my hand because the evaporation of the mixture corresponded to the fast flaming fluid and then it was gone, vanishing without a trace of residue or burn …it was magic…indeed as the ancients would say to Pharoah it was a miracle. How wondrous my God would have appeared to Pharoah in those days of belief when knowledge was slim to none.
Mathematics teaches us that the concept of “0” does not exist and merely simulates a transcendent point representing a change like the year zero to bridge the 1 BC to 1 CE but the negative year never happened in the same way that the negative zero does not exist in the temperature thermometer above freezing and below freezing. And absolute zero seems impossible to prove. Why? because Zero itself does not exist. Just like your concept that zero does exist(GOD); and then, “POOF”, Creation. How can it be the case in your belief system but not in my system?; simply put, zero does not exist in either what I believe to be credible or what you believe to be incredible.
If I take comfort in my belief with a piece of knowledge and you take comfort in your belief without a piece of knowledge we must both be equal in the comfort we glean and I believe that we are. However from where I sit, I believe you are missing out on a lot of lovely insights as we learn and yearn for the same end.
Cheers!
LikeLike
October 8, 2014 at 12:21 pm
SonOfMan. Where is your basic scientific cosmology knowledge? And I quote you: “the Universe has always existed and always will exist”
That is what was called the Steady State Universe and it has been completely falsified via the COBE, WMAP, PLANK Satellites; the CMBR heat signature, Einstein’s Relativity, and the formation of the first three (periodic table) light elements (mostly Hydrogen). Even Einstein did not want to have the universe begin (singularity) and so he fudge factored his calculation with what has been called the “cosmological constant”, it was Fred Hoyle (who began the Steady State idea) but they were both forced to make a change of knowledge when George Lemaitre (a Belgium catholic priest) who was a cosmologist and MIT Grad got Einstein to see it a different way. Hoyle tried to ridicule Lemaitre say to him during a broadcast in England…”You mean your idea of a cosmic egg is like a….Big Bang”? That is the first time the big bang term was spoken and it has not gone away since. Put Einstein and Lemaitre into a google search (search for just images) and you’ll find them both together discussing this beginning universe issue.
LikeLike
October 8, 2014 at 3:26 pm
We Theists have to be careful here. Who’s God and who interprets for God. Hasn’t Theist interpretation of morality changed over the centuries especially with Our Lords statements in The NT?
LikeLike
October 8, 2014 at 9:33 pm
get1949:
You know, Paul Vander Voort is correct by his statement in Post 11: “Who’s God and who interprets for God.” And I say this in light of the following notes regarding your claim: “The Steady State Universe has been completely falsified via the COBE, WMAP, PLANK Satellites; the CMBR heat signature, Einstein’s Relativity, and the formation of the first three (periodic table) light elements (mostly Hydrogen).
“The characteristics of the radiation detected (found accidentally I hasten to add) by Penzias and Wilson fit exactly the radiation predicted by Robert H. Dicke and his colleagues at Princeton University.”……….”Robert Dicke, P. J. E. Peebles, P. G. Roll and D. T. Wilkinson interpreted this radiation as a signature of the Big Bang.
“To avoid potential conflict, they decided to publish their results jointly…….” Dicke and his associates outlined the importance of cosmic background radiation as substantiation of the Big Bang Theory.”
Notice how the phrase “fit exactly the radiation predicted by Robert H. Dicke and his colleagues at Princeton University.” …..and the term….. “interpreted” is used subsequent to the “prediction”.
LikeLike
October 9, 2014 at 3:33 am
Sonofman…
So what’s your point (you could write another book about the ‘singularity’ event–many have)? Many discoveries in science are accidents…the bottom line is a conclusion to your comment that the universe is eternal. Entropy alone dictates that energy is running down; is diluting (seeking its own level across the universe). The only reason there is any life (basically) is because of the differences in energy potentials…across the closed universe. If it is NOT a closed system then here is where other dimensions (to include ‘Heaven’ and or Hell) must be allowed to be hypnotized–as they would/could make for the ‘definition’ of another dimension (hence the earthsuit thought).
I did not want to go too far from your basic statement that you said the universe is eternal…if it is eternal then some condition of being ‘outside of time, energy and matter’ and that time therefore began (unless it is just a figment of our imagination) could be entertained. I’m just pointing out however that your statement is NOT part of the science that you seem to postulate most of the time. Science HAS determined that the universe began.
If you refute this then you have to provide evidence.
What I believe (you said) is not allowed as belief is not scientific…you too then have to play by the same rules. Now please return a statement to this board on whether you choose a beginning to the universe or not and if not provide evidence to refute current cosmology and the big bang ‘standard’ model. Then we can all move on!! if you are not going to clear this out then all you’re doing here is filibustering the board and too rambling without reasonable thought and perhaps, good reasonable and imaginative ideas.
LikeLike
October 9, 2014 at 7:21 am
Thank you get1949, this was my whole point also.
Leo (aka son of man), your eternal universe is based strictly on belief and not knowledge since as get1949 has said, science has already proved that the universe had a beginning. This is knowledge and fact. The kind of knowledge that I thought you were seeking, but you seem to prefer the “the garden of of forever bearing fruit….” etc…
This is the ultimate irony that you would postulate something strictly on your belief with no proof while you have been accusing believers to the nth degree for months on this blog about our beliefs about God and our supposedly lack of “proof”.
C’mon Leo, it’s time to play by the rules, or you can continue to ramble like a mad man and once again be ignored…..you’ve been called on this, show your hand LTG.
Naz
LikeLike
October 9, 2014 at 10:51 am
get1949 and Naz the Bandwagon Frontiersman:
By whose rules shall we play Naz? Here’s what Jesus said about rules? Lk 7: “To what then shall I liken the men of this generation, and what are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, saying:
‘We played the flute for you,
And you did not dance;
We mourned to you,
And you did not weep.’
33 For John came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ 34 The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’
My expertise is the bible however I do have enough common sense to sense other matters; in particular, that the Big Bang Theory has not been proven as get2949 claims and that events other than a Big Everything out of a Big Nothing; AKA, Creation, can be postulated. I don’t jump on Bandwagons of anti-heliocentricism going through town in a moment of common insanity. I am more like Galileo of Galilee, outside the boxed circle. Religionists are content to agree with the Big Bang Theory when the Big Bang(Something out of Nothing) seems to bolster their belief about God scratching his head wondering how to relieve his boredom and then gets this weird idea and presto, the God Finger gestures and creates BANG “everything out of nothing”. Of course when it comes to the Big Bang supporting Evolution then that’s an other matter and it should be banned in favor of religion’s creationist school. Right?
If the Big Bang Theory was proven by Science it would not still be called a Theory would it? Or would it be a hypothesis still (I believe get1949 would agree that it could be hypothesized in the understanding but not “hypnotized” in the understanding)
While some seem to understand how the universe we see came to be, it’s possible that the Big Bang was not the first inflationary period the universe experienced. Some scientists believe we live in a cosmos that goes through regular cycles of inflation and deflation, and that we just happen to be living in one of these phases. A Breathing Universe is not outside the realm of my belief. And while we have not lived for light years, yet, how could we know if we were in the inspire or expire moment? Assuming the breathing universe theory is true, of course. Both male and female bed bugs must feed at least every 14 days in order to reproduce.
Cicada: They emerge from the ground after 17 years, their worm-like bodies creating hundreds of peanut-sized holes near the base of your tree. As they begin to climb, their dark brown skin starts to shed. Two beady red eyes appear.
By the time they reach a steady branch their transparent wings have stretched, opened and closed. Within an hour their white bodies will turn black.
Soon the males will start to sing.
The life cycle of the periodical cicada is the stuff of horror movies: millions of large flying insects that crawl out of the ground after 17 years to mate loudly, lay eggs and die.
There are 12 broods, or groups, of the 17-year cicadas, says Dan Mozgai, operator of CicadaMania.com. There are also three 13-year broods. Every year between April and June one or two cicada broods emerge in a different region of the United States.
After they emerge, the adult cicadas mate and the females dig holes in tree branches to lay their eggs. The eggs hatch six to eight weeks later and the tiny cicadas fall to the ground, where they’ll burrow into the ground to feed off the tree root’s sap for the next 13 to 17 years.
Could the Universe have similar patterns: inflating, faster and faster but held together like gravity’s rubber band, eventually slowing, stopping, reversing, deflating, again faster and faster, slowing, stopping, reversing, every X light years? Heat age to Ice Age to Heat age to Ice Age…the cycles of the Ages seem embedded in the Crust; could we extrapolate, interpret that, to imagine the breathing scenario? Atheists are free to imagine those things, Absolute Certaintists not so much.
On the other hand while the speed of light seems to have limitations and some astronomers see the Big Bang Theory as evidence of the universe’s beginnings, they’ve also been seeking out proof of its rapid inflation. Theory says that in the first second after the universe was born, our cosmos ballooned faster than the speed of light. That, by the way, and here’s the kicker, does not violate Albert Einstein’s speed of light limit since he said that light is the maximum anything can travel within the universe. That did not apply to the inflation of the universe itself. WOW and OMG MAN, we can come up with all kinds of clever ways of interpreting whatever we want which is why I became an expert on the Bible:
So I would know what the bible said. Knowing what the bible said would make sense in my world of common sense understanding and interpretation and now I have understanding about the simplest of the so called miracles of the bible, the simple wisdom of Jesus and the 666 so called code, microchip, etc., yada yada, why prayer is useless, never answered by an external, supernatural, yet PERSONAL Power and a whole bunch of other idioms, expressions, sayings and meanings of the day that existed in another dimension of time but lost to the Doctors of Theology today and yesterday as they grope about in darkness explaining their expertise about the unknowable.
Yes, I do have beliefs but the supernatural Gods of men is not one of them and in that light I pursue common sense and I admit that Absolute Certainty is not my guiding light. I remain open for ideas such as you all put forth, forcefully to show that you know what you are talking about as we all seem to do.
How is Entropy calculated in light of Black Holes sucking it up?; how is the cosmic heat signature not affected by Novas and Supernovae, do they not give off radiation and heat that contributes to the “Signature”?; Has anyone calculated the number of novas that have occurred since the year.infinity?; Uranium gives off radiation is that part of the cosmic signature? Is radiation subject to gravitational forces and lodged within the bodies of matter or does radiation simply disperse into the cosmos?.
Researchers think most of the cosmos is made up of matter and energy that cannot be “sensed” with conventional instruments, leading to the names “dark matter” and “dark energy”. Only 5 percent of the universe is made up of matter such as planets, stars and galaxies. If the “dark” stuff cannot be sensed is that proof of its existence?
And, if this, then that: So THEN if God cannot be sensed is THAT the proof for God’s existence? There are lots of clever questions and clever answers and I am able to say with confidence that I do not have all in either group, just enough to keep me sane in a world made mad with religious insanity. And the Bible proves that to me. Ghandi made a very clever observation:
“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread”. Mohandas Gandhi
LikeLike
October 9, 2014 at 2:30 pm
I think we should spend our time watching the Big Bang Theory on TV rather than arguing about it…..
As for bread, there is something to say about what bread you choose to eat….
“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
What does your bible expertise say about Jesus giving His flesh for the life of the world ? What does that mean Leo ?
Cheers !
Naz
LikeLike
October 9, 2014 at 7:00 pm
Naz:
Jesus spoke metaphorically, in parables, giving examples of normal life easily understood as common life practices: eating, drinking, traveling, employer/employee, wages; the Bread that I present to the world so that the world can eat and drink and live is myself, this flesh-and-blood self as an example of the only entity we have to demonstrate the truth of man’s reality.”
We may be profoundly thankful with this magnificent piece of engineering that we have been provided called body but it’s not you; you’re on the inside. And if you want to communicate your real self to the outside you simply use the body to that end, you may or may not wish to communicate, what’s happening on the inside: the physical, visible body that has been given to us so that we can give a physical, visible expression of an invisible self.
The body, the physical self, the only thing we have to dedicate to the world is an example of how to live and love that we can use to demonstrate to others through the only physical, visible representation that we have to offer, our flesh, our body, our very self so they too may know and understand the essence of humanity of the invisible you living on the inside.
LikeLike
October 11, 2014 at 8:45 am
To self righteous religionists among us:
I often wonder why your sensibilities feel threatened, smudged and smeared by the sensible study of skeptics.
LikeLike
October 12, 2014 at 6:38 am
Naz:
In August 1971, Terry Sorrells came home to southern Indiana from the Vietnam War and asked his dad if he wanted to go squirrel hunting. The season had just started, and it was a pastime they’d shared before he left for the war. So they took their shotguns, walked to the back of their farm, and parked themselves under a tree.
They saw a squirrel on the tree’s trunk, but it scampered around to the other side after it heard them approach. Sorrells’ dad asked him if he knew why the squirrel had run away. “Well, Pop, we scared him,” Sorrells recalled telling him. “He looked at me and he said, ‘I’ll tell you why he did. He wants to live just as much as we do.’ ”
That moment ended Sorrells’ hunting career. “We both got up, cracked open our shotguns and took the shells out, and we walked back home.”
As far as wanting to live goes there’s no difference between the Believer and the Atheist; the Self Righteous and the Homosexual; the Saint and the Sinner. Oh you’ll try to make a difference but there is none; we are all squirrels scampering out of harm’s way as best we can, each in his our own wisdom. “But wisdom is proved right by all her children.”
All who follow wisdom prove that wisdom is right. And the Sanctity of Life es revealed.
LikeLike
October 12, 2014 at 7:05 am
Do not look for external truth; the truth lives within you,
All who follow wisdom prove the wisdom right,
Revealing messages of the truth: the Sanctity of Life.
Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they’re not listening still.
Perhaps they never will…
LikeLike
October 12, 2014 at 8:22 am
A present day warning against “Belief” in Authority as truth, instead of using Truth, as Authority. Ads are now beginning to appear soliciting “urgent donations” to help stop the spread of the Ebola Virus; the Fund Raising Bandwagons are loading now using the religious model of innate fear that is the integral heart of Belief Systems! The Authorities have layed the foundation by hiding the truth about contracting the ebola virus.
PLEASE DO NOT PANIC BUT:
Here is a fact that CDC is not telling you; while it is true that infection is spread by direct contact with an infected victim’s body fluids, remember that body fluids are also an integral part of breath vapor which is why colds and flu viruses are airborne…breath vapors are particularly potent in coughs and sneezes as the droplets of body fluid vapor are compacted with viruses that float out into the air and circulate and when some breath vapors are breathed in by another person…POW! You become infected. This is why we are encouraged to cough and sneeze into our sleeves, wear a mask or use a handkerchief? To absorb the body fluid vapors and minimize the contaminant becoming airborne as much as possible.
Body fluids are not just vomit, urine, feces, blood, and internal lymph fluids but also consist of tears, sweat, saliva and “breath vapors”. (There are approximately 6 to 10 liters of lymph fluid in the body, compared to 3.5 to 5 liters of blood.)
When the Authority says you cannot contract the Ebola Virus by walking by an infected person is just not true: breathe in contaminiated breath vapors, if the victim sneezes for example and you can become infected. Belief vanishes and knowledge rules the day. Now you can proceed and progress empowered.
LikeLike
October 12, 2014 at 8:29 am
That morality and God are somehow entwined like a double helix chromosome and that morality cannot exist otherwise is merely a self serving premise to argue the religious view that the supernatural exists outside Hollywood.
LikeLike
October 14, 2014 at 7:15 am
“As far as wanting to live goes there’s no difference between the Believer and the Atheist; the Self Righteous and the Homosexual; the Saint and the Sinner. Oh you’ll try to make a difference but there is none; we are all squirrels scampering out of harm’s way as best we can, each in his our own wisdom. “But wisdom is proved right by all her children.” ”
I never denied that everyone wants to live or that they should be denied the right to live. Jesus gave Himself for the life of the whole world and we are equal here. No one is favored, no one has special clerical privileges or exemptions. Life is available for the whole world.
It all comes down to whether a person is “in” Christ or not. If you are not in Christ, then you remain “in” Adam and remain a sinner. If you are in Christ, you are completely forgiven, declared righteous and a Saint and eternally secure by no works of your own but only by what Jesus did.
If you find yourself as a squirrel scampering around, then I would say that you haven’t yet found the wisdom that’s in Christ. The squirrel is a perfect picture of anxiety for the one who has not found wisdom.
The Sanctity of Life is not the ultimate purpose or the ultimate cause as your propose. The Glory of God and the exaltation of the Son of Man Jesus Christ is the ultimate purpose. We have been invited to be humble partakers in this awesome truth…or we can continue to scurry and gather acorns….
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
(Mat 11:28)
Naz
LikeLike
October 14, 2014 at 12:17 pm
Naz:
Your problem is that you use repetitive hackneyed expressions that permeate the supernatural world of religion and therefore cannot form your own ideas. What you say about the glory of God and “exaltation’ of Jesus as the ultimate purpose; and, “in Christ” or “in Adam as a sinner” are rhetorical nonsense for the last 2000 years…..Before that last 2000 years the rhetorical nonsense was for other similar messengers(the magicians), prophets and gods—thousands of Gods. Don’t you see the folly of following the path of regurgitators?
You don’t have a mind to think with and a heart to love with; you’ve been hijacked and cannot follow your own discretion but repeat and perpetuate age-old hoaxes without discretionary insight. The squirrel scurries for self preservation. Whether or not you know or understand Jesus’ messages, the fact remains that you cannot trust your life to anyone but yourself and very few close friends and loved ones.
No priest or preacher can do a darn thing about any of it, so they urge you to “pray” and “believe” that their follies are worth following in their invincibility; that the prophecies were real; that miracles are a reality; but, all they give you is caca del toro, rhetorical rubbish for you to pass on unto perpetuity like the minions, pawns and proselytes you are which is the only foundation clergy relies upon to maintain their financial security, pseudo position of reverence and power of the Mother Church.
You talk about the exalted Son Jesus but Jesus said don’t trust the clergy, they are vipers, poisonous snakes, out to swallow widows’ properties. Deceitful hiders of the key of knowledge, not going into grace themselves and preventing those who have a sincere desire to accept that all there is of Good is available to the one who is available to all there is of Good.
OMG When the church wants more income what do they do? They preach about the “Grace of Giving” or ” more “Blessed to Give” or some cliche way of insinuating that your support of the church is what God wants for you. And of course it will all come back to you tenfold, a hundredfold if only, if only you “believe”. Yeah the catch-all word that sums up their control of you, your money, your reverence, your piety, your entire worth that they use to stifle the human spirit. And when the Church needs financing to build a bigger and better and brighter Mega Church what do they use as collateral? Why they use the congregation as chattel and the congregation’s tithing as security. If it’s large enough and you can prove the books, man you can build a new and even more profitable Church WOW!
Now the Catholic Church at its Synod is saying that they need to welcome the qualities and gifts that Homosexuals can offer. WHAT THE FORK WILL THE KNIVES OF THE SELF RIGHTEOUS DO NOW?
“This is a stunning change in the way the Catholic church speaks of gay people,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit author. “The Synod is clearly listening to the complex, real-life experiences of Catholics around the world, and seeking to address them with mercy, as Jesus did.”
The bishops repeated that gay marriage was off the table. But it acknowledged that gay partnerships had merit. (Now there’s a conundrum if ever there was one)
“Without denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions, it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners,” they said.
Conservative groups rejected the report as a “betrayal” and even heresy.
“What will Catholics parents now have to tell their children about contraception, cohabiting with partners or living homosexual lifestyles?” asked Maria Madise, co-ordinator of the Voice of the Family, which counts pro-life and conservative groups as members.
“Will those parents now have to tell their children that the Vatican teaches that there are positive and constructive aspects to these mortal sins? This approach destroys grace in souls.”
It took the Church 200 years to accept Galileo back into their folds but the Church is a big ship that needs miles and miles of turning space to turn around……..you are not doing religion a favor by prolonging the agony of its deceit; get off your 2000 year old horse and get with reality. Jesus? Sure Jesus is the wonderful model……… But the supernatural God…..uh uh! Not so much.
Religious Dogma has been giving a false message ever since the year dot as it struggled to appear righteous but failed miserably; it’s still failing miserably and it’s losing the fight on every front. I can’t tell you enough to read Matthew 23 and Jesus’ indictment of the religious scholars so you can learn what Jesus is actually speaking to, but you keep repeating the same nonsensical verbage that he condemned 2000 years; so Naz, if there is anyone who NEEDS Christ; it is you Naz, It is you!
Cheers………in love.
All chastisment is grievous to be borne.
Hebrews 12:11
Now all chastisement, in the time of it, is not accounted a matter of joy, but of grief: yet, afterwards, it yieldeth the fruits of peace and righteousness to them who are exercised by it.
LikeLike
October 15, 2014 at 2:34 pm
I understand you speak this way because you do not believe in the same Jesus that I do. I don’t fault you for that since you can only produce the fruit of what you believe.
I don’t use certain terms to regurgitate dogma or tow some party line. Being “in Christ” is at the center of our faith and has profound meaning.
I don’t know why or how you get my belief in Jesus Christ mixed up with the “clergy”, religious dogma, Catholic theology etc…..
I appreciate that you’re trying to save me from my delusion, that is honorable, but I don’t believe in a Jesus that is dead as you do. I don’t believe in Jesus so I can have a good moral compass or so I can be a “good” person. My performance and my behavior have nothing to do with the faith that I hold dear to my heart.
I wish I had the words to explain to you the awesome hope we have in the gospel that frees us from all religion and behavioral modification programs. I wish I could explain to you the everlasting Grace of God that picks you up when you fail and gives you hope beyond the grave. But I can’t, because your Jesus is dead. You have a half-gospel that can’t give life. The Spirit gives life, the spirit of Christ in you produces life and how can that be if Christ is still dead?
Being “in Christ” is being alive and acquiring a new identity that God gives you. An identity where we are declared justified and blameless based solely on the blood of Christ. An identity that motivates us to produce good fruit even though we stumble and often fail. But we have a Father that will not put us up for adoption.
Yes indeed, I need CHRIST as you said, every moment of every day. I don’t have to scurry or trust my human effort, and even death itself has no power over me. I think this is a pretty good deal.
I’ll take my chances with the Supernatural Jesus any day over humanism and self-effort that leads to futility and despair.
Naz
LikeLike
October 15, 2014 at 7:23 pm
Naz:
I clearly try to get you out of the fog; I mist.
It is a sad commentary to have to tell the world that their Jesus is dead because of the constant talk about his dying for sins, glorifying his blood-shed for us and death like it’s a “happy” event: “he died for your sins” is a bunch of religious rubbish; he was crucified because of the sins of the society he lived in and by the religious insanity he preached against that scorned him for blasphemy. And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A man is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house.
Jesus never claimed to be God but alluded to being the “Son of God” as written in Psalms 82. When asked if he was the Son of God, he said: “It is you who say it”. And they did: Jesus was labeled as the Son of God by the masses and hence he was popularly portrayed as something he himself never claimed. Luke 22, 69-71
Then said they all, “Art thou then the Son of God?” And he said unto them, “Ye say that I am”.
And they said, “What need we any further witness? for we ourselves have heard of his own mouth.”
Jesus’ pat answer to the Pharisees when questioned about who he was, Are you the Son of God? Jesus replied succinctly: It is you who say it. “Thou sayest it”. That was not an affirmation but acknowledgment and admission that he knew what they were all saying and the Pharisees were merely mimicking the religiously brainwashed villagers. In today’s street language there are instances of name calling especially by children when they call you a stupid, for example, or an idiot and the counter to that is: “That’s what you say” or “That’s what you think” without adding “what you say or think is not true”; no matter how many times you say a falsehood, it will never be true.
There are some things I know because I don’t operate with a belief spirit other than in the understanding that Jesus meant when he said ASK and it will be given you; SEEK and you shall find; KNOCK and the door will be open.
Now when you ASK, SEEK and KNOCK what do you suppose Jesus meant by that? That you find belief or faith, grace of god or religious awakening? No, none of those things; what Jesus meant was that ASK, SEEK, and KNOCK for KNOWLEDGE because only knowledge will set you free, belief never can, for never and never.
Jesus’ legacy is one of attitude and disposition, graceful and genuine in compassion and kindness, always ready to forgive those willing to receive it; a man so full of common sense and sound judgment to have the recognition of the Father within, not the supernatural gods created by charlatans, magicians, Popoffs and snake oil salesmen selling miracle water in ketchup packages.
No, Jesus was a real man who never performed a miracle but was tagged with supernatural powers because of his common sense ideas to tackle any problem. Jesus gave the presence of his peace by his life, not through his death; the clergy has it all backward by claiming Jesus gave the world life by his shed blood, through his death, uh uh. Couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Revisionist historians include fundamental errors: that Jesus claimed he was God but that’s not true. Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man but not his exclusively, as he noted that Abraham looked down the corridors of history and saw the days of the Son of Man as joyous because Abraham understood the concept of the Son of Man championing the cause of justice for the downtrodden, not because Jesus himself existed before Abraham but the concept of the Son of Man(the wish and hope for a Superman) existed in the human spirit which the clergy rebuked Jesus and tried to shame him for saying that before Abraham was, the Son of Man Concept existed; “Before Abraham was, I am”
Jesus also referred only to the self witness, within, that was the God he called his Father, not the supernatural gods created by men in every generation before him. The supernatural gods are dead and were born dead so by associating Jesus with the dead supernatural gods of men, Jesus is dead in you. Oh you don’t think he is because you can’t understand it over the blood and gore innocent people are forced to suffer to appease the power hungry and ego thirsty and the belief in the supernatural which is as close to zero as Absolute Zero. Show me a supernatural Geiger Counter and click up some supernaturalfragilisticradiatingclickerismexpialidocious.
Jesus gave life to the world through his life not his death but religious supernaturalism caters to the reptilian ritualism in the lower brain of humans and as long as you have clergy devoted to living off of the avails of prostituting falsehoods, myths and miracles for the financial security they solicit, from those willing to give it to them, that is the falsehood of religious teachings; if you didn’t repeat worn out phrases by every preacher going, I could accept you have nothing in common with religion but you do because of those repetitious phrases we hear thousands of times over and over and over with every preacher preaching. All cut from the same cloth.
I’ll keep trying to take you out of the fog of dead culture and into the reality of the life culture that the life of Jesus taught us, not his death, HIS LIFE.
LikeLike
October 16, 2014 at 7:36 am
gey1949: Post 10 (“Where is your basic scientific cosmology knowledge?”)
You may be interested to read about this “Theory-Busting News” regarding basic physics guidelines “blown away” by a new, first discovery!
Impossibly bright dead star: X-ray source in the Cigar Galaxy is the first ultraluminous pulsar ever detected
Date:
October 8, 2014
Source:
California Institute of Technology
Summary:
Astronomers working with NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) have found a pulsating dead star beaming with the energy of about 10 million suns. The object, previously thought to be a black hole because it is so powerful, is in fact a pulsar — the incredibly dense rotating
remains of a star.
“That was a big surprise,” Harrison(Astronomers working with NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), led by Caltech’s Fiona Harrison, have found a pulsating dead star beaming with the energy of about 10 million suns) says. “For decades everybody has thought these ultraluminous X-ray sources had to be black holes. But black holes don’t have a way to create this pulsing.”
With the pulsar and its location within M82 identified, there are still many questions left to answer. It is many times higher than the Eddington limit, a basic physics guideline that sets an upper limit on the brightness that an object of a given mass should be able to achieve.
“This is the most extreme violation of that limit that we’ve ever seen,” says Walton.(Dom Walton, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech who works with NuSTAR data, says that with its extreme energy, this pulsar takes the top prize in the weirdness category.) “We have known that things can go above that by a small amount, but this blows that limit away.”
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141008133407.htm
LikeLike
October 16, 2014 at 8:49 am
Leo, as I said, we believe in a different Jesus.
The “LIFE” you speak of is temporal. You have no solution or means to eternal life in your theology. The Life that Jesus gives is for the here and now and for eternity, and that could not be possible without the resurrection from the dead. Yes, we must live in the here and now but what about after death? You have no solution to this, but the resurrected Jesus provides the solution which you will not believe and accept, even though it’s plain for all to see in the scriptures.
As for the “Before Abraham was, I am” scripture, it must be read it context to understand the profound things that Jesus is saying here.
John 8:53 Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?”
Jesus was trying to show the Jews that He was greater than Abraham, and the Jews would not accept this. The Jews were not rebuking Jesus because of a concept he was teaching them, rather they were rebuking Him based on His identity and who He was making Himself out to be. They understood that He was making Himself greater than Abraham and the prophets, and this they rejected.
We remember what Jesus said to His own disciples, “Who do you say the Son of Man is”, and then Peter replied. “You are the Christ, the Son of God”.
This is all about identity. When you get Jesus’ identity wrong, everything after that crumbles.
John 8:56 Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”
Notice how Jesus said that Abraham rejoiced that he “would” see “His” day. Although Abraham did not physically see the Messiah, he saw by faith the promises of God in the future and understood that the Messiah would come and give himself for the world having had his own personal experience when God told him to sacrifice his one and only son Issac. The experience with Issac was a kind of foreshadowing of what was to come with Jesus. Remember, that the Jews clearly understood the concept of blood sacrifice for sins. So Abraham did “see” through the eyes of faith the coming of the Messiah although he did not live to meet Him personally on earth.
John 8:57 So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”
The Jews contort Jesus’ words here and are ask Jesus how He could have seen Abraham. Jesus did not say that He saw Abraham, rather that Abraham saw Him. Again, the Jews thought process here is that Abraham was greater than Jesus and regarded Jesus as a mere man only, hence the words, “You are not yet fifty years old”. Also, the Jews thinking is temporal here as they don’t understand how Jesus could have been with Abraham since Abraham lived so long ago. This was nonsensical to them and Jesus is way over their heads because He is spiritual and they are carnal in their thinking.
The Jews here have the same belief about Jesus as you do. The ones you call the clergy and charletons and snake oil salesmen belief Jesus to be a mere man just as you believe….how ironic indeed !
John 8:58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
In response to their comment about His age, Jesus then reveals His true identity by stating that He existed before Abraham ever existed. He puts an exclamation mark on this by prefacing this statement with “Truly, truly”. This is a profound statement and is key to understanding the identity of Jesus. Was Jesus talking about the concept of a Superman that was to come? The next verse shows that this is not the case.
John 8:59 So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.
The Jews in their rage, try to stone Him, why? If Jesus was talking philosophy, they would have laughed and ignored Him. But the Jews understood full well what Jesus was talking about here. Jesus was talking about who He was and that He existed before Abraham, making Himself not only greater than Abraham but making Himself divine. The Jews understood this and were enraged which in their minds was a blasphemous statement.
We have seen this same response by the Jews in other passages :
John 5:18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
John 10:33 The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”
So in conclusion, what are we talking about here…………
As I said, this is all about which Jesus you believe in.
The passages above show that the Jews (charletons, religionists, snake oil salesmen, magicians etc…) believed that Jesus was just a man and denied any divinity in Him.
On the other hand, the disciples of Jesus, then and now, believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God and is Divine and their are loads of scriptures to back this up.
It appears that you belong to the first camp with the snake oil salesmen. The group you so vehemently oppose and constantly bash on this blog.
Cheers !
Naz
LikeLike
October 16, 2014 at 1:39 pm
Naz:
You interpret scriptures through a supernatural lens; it is a false lens like rose colored glasses. That is why you are religious because that is the same way that believers view things like miracles, things that never happened or things that happened that are easily explainable. It is more contentment for the believer to think that the poof poof bread and fishes out of thin air is miraculous than to accept that the cache was preplanned and the baskets filled accordingly that seemed to the masses to be miraculous. More content in believing the staff became a snake miraculously than a mere magic trick; more contentment is seen from the walls of water scene parting in the sea with a swat of a staff for showmanship than the crossing over the sand dunes exposed by the simplicity of tidal timing;
You talk about the supernaturalist Jews…..instead of supernaturalist religionists. Between your beliefs and the Pharisees beliefs, is there any difference in your supernaturalism and theirs? The Pharisees were also like believers today and believed in the resurrection of the dead just like you. There’s no such thing. My wife and I attended a funeral service for a co-worker. She commented that when one is placed in that casket, one cannot not get out from there; there is no escape from that.
Did you know that the word divine was coined by man? Religion itself derives from a person?
Your context of scripture is skewed with the supernatural, of ghosts and goblins and boogie men, satan, demons and devils. Jesus never lived in that world of unreality. Jesus never believed in the supernatural and there is not one scripture that says he did but there is scripture where he debunked the supernatural that enraged the supernatural congregation when he pointed out the fallacy of prophets and the false reverence attributed to the wannabee mediators of the invented god ghosts.
Besides, in all these matters there is a huge chasm set between us so that no one can go from us to you even if he wanted to, nor can anyone cross over from you to us.
The Sabbath meant nothing more to Jesus than an ordinary day and the Pharisees were enraged because Jesus did not care what the Clergy told people to do and observe.
LikeLike
October 16, 2014 at 1:57 pm
Regardless of how you define my beliefs, we believe in a different Jesus which you did not address.
I still maintain that your view of Jesus is exactly as that as the Pharisees. They just as yourself believe He was a mere man do not believe in His resurrection from the dead.
I don’t expect you to change your beliefs…all I want is for you to admit that your Jesus cannot get you out of the casket that you will eventually inhabit.
So what is it ??
Can your Jesus save you from mortal death ? If so, how ? If not, why do you waste your time on this blog….drink and be merry for tomorrow you will perish forever….
Naz
LikeLike
October 16, 2014 at 2:36 pm
As you craft your next rebuttal, consider this….
I have nothing to lose believing in a supernatural Jesus.
You have everything to lose by not believing in a supernatural Jesus.
The choice is yours…..
Cheers ….
Naz
LikeLike
October 16, 2014 at 2:51 pm
Naz:
Face it; Jesus was an ordinary man with extraordinary common sense; an intellectual giant who did not resurrect from the dead because he survived the resurrection and escaped through the built in tunnel that Joseph of Arimathea hewed over the two preceding years preparing the tomb. After escape from the tomb, resurrected from the “dead” as you put it he appeared bodily to his disciples and ate food with them to prove he was not the ghost you believe him to be. He was muscle, blood, skin and bones.
You do have something to lose by believing in a supernatural Jesus, your sanity; AKA, common sense. It never happened. The day will come when death itself will be abolished, not after you die, BEFORE you die. That’s why the dream is that the last thing to be conquered: death. But that will be conqured by medical intervention and gentic manipulation, not counting lifestyle or natural catastrophe. whne that Happens I do not know but I hope the stardust we retun to will again reform in as many years or klight years it will take. so cremation is out for me!
If death was based on your belief or my belief we would both be wrong, just as wrong as the believers in Pharoah’s day that saw the gold and ornmanet and all manner of “stuff”. I have no idea if I reach that state nor do you because the “dead know nothing” Eccl.
Cheers
Leo
LikeLike
October 18, 2014 at 7:33 am
Whoever gets their morality from a book may as well get their personality from a microchip.
No God is ever born; all Gods are created.
Jesus was born.
Matt 1:16 “…..of whom was born Jesus……”
Matt 1:18: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows:….”
Matt 2:1: “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea….”
John 18:37: “Jesus answered, “…..For this cause I was born,….”
Rom 1:3: “who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,…”
Lk 1:35: ““The Holy Spirit (of love) will come upon you, and…………. that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.”
The essence of character, the compulsion of conscience, the guide of brain power memory along with the ability of reason, logic and discretion form a commonality among men, the wisest being able to understand the concept of “Good” WITHIN, wherein resides the personal “Father”.
This Knowledge-based concept of the god-head within, is the entity(the Father) Jesus referred to that resides in the…..”Kingdom of God”, and of which he said: “nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”
Jesus was NOT part of the belief-based system of supernaturalism, oh you try to make him out to be but that is belief nonsense drawing a mighty hero into religious dogma for consistency in stupidism, that takes the internal essence “within” and projects it to supernatural external Gods, all of which are mere caricature substitutes of the belief creatures designed to replace the knowledge-based “Good” (God) within. Caricature avatars, created by wannabee charlatan clergy through magic and deceit, form the foundation for the world’s mental illness of one Chaotic Crisis after another (Note the “ISIS” in crisis), the real anti-Christ.
All religions create their own Gods, not just the Abrahamic religions:
Hinduism, often referred to as the world’s oldest religion, is mono-theistic, in that the millions of their created gods and goddesses are perceived as being avatars of the one supreme God Brahman.
This is similar to the Trinity doctrine Christians believe, only more diverse.
Yet even the Legend of Brahman notes the “within” aspect of “Good”:
“The Brahma God, the God of all Gods, decided to remove the God-head from man. He was very much puzzled as to what to do with it. He wanted to hide it where man himself would be un-able to find it. Rather than assume this great responsibility, the Brahma God decided to call a meeting of all the other Gods to help him decide where to hide man’s God-head.
The God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God of Abraham, God of Truth, God of Spirit, God of Soul, God of Love, God of Principle, God of Peace, God of Wisdom, and all the other Gods met in a great conclave to make this decision.
The Brahma God asked for suggestions. One God suggested that the God-head be removed from man and placed on the highest mountain peak. The Brahma God said: “No, do not hide it there. Man will climb the mountains and he will scan its highest peaks and find it.”
Another God suggested that the God-head be buried down deep in the ground. The Brahma God said: “No, do not hide it in the ground. Man will dig in the ground searching for gold, silver and other precious metals, and there he will find it.”
Another God suggested that they sink it in the deepest part of the ocean. The Brahma God said: “No, do not hide it in the bottom of the ocean. Man will dive and search out the bottom of the seas and there he will find it.”
Finally, the God of Wisdom said: “Then, let us hide the Godhead down in Man himself.” “Yes,” the Brahma God said, “we will hide it there, because Man will never think to look for it within himself.”
So the God-head has been hidden in Man ever since. It is still there. Most men are constantly digging, climbing, searching, looking for it everywhere but the right place. They are trying to find it from without.
Turn within, and there you will find your Godhead. The moment you find it you will come to a conscious realization of this great creative force with-in you. That great force, that untapped power, that dynamic something, that unconquerable soul within you is yearning for expression. It is asking for recognition. It is begging for an opportunity to lift you up and aid you to greater achievements. This great creative force within you is an imprisoned giant which when unleashed can carry you on to a success undreamed of.
Jesus knew this and always referred to the Godhead as the “Father”…”within you”. Learn this simple lesson and you will learn the simplicity of Jesus, Jesus the Real Man. Not man like you and I are but man as he is God created man to be. All there is of Good is available to the man who is available to all there is of Good.
LikeLike
October 19, 2014 at 4:01 pm
IF THE MOTHER CHURCH OF CHRISTIANITY HAS MORALS SLIM TO NONE, HOW MUCH LESS HER CHILDREN?
Having recently consulted with the Almighty Truth Fairy, Jesus Christ is not impressed with the lack of moral authority shown by the Catholic Church for its lack of compassion toward Gays and Divorcees. As a matter of fact the Bishops and Cardinals are not much different today than they were in Jesus’ day when they were called Scribes and Pharisees and quite willing to stone the woman for adultery, the atheist for Blasphemy and the Gay for birthright of his sexual identity. The die hard clergy will die in their sins!
I am in sorrow for Pope Francis, a man more worthy than the scourging he is forced to endure; to be tormented by the trials of leading a herd of dogmatic bulls indoctrinated by thousands of years of being on the wrong side of history, life and humanity; who cleanse the outside of the cup and dish daily, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence; who outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside full of hypocrisy and lawlessness; the ones who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to her; they make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments, wield staffs seven feet tall, robes that mop the dust from the ground and hats three feet tall; all to be seen by men; loving the best places at feasts, the best seats in the Halls of Piety; greetings in the motorcade route, and to be called by men, ‘Father, ‘Father; you shut up the kingdom against men and hide the key of knowledge; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in; devouring widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers to justify; you preach the compassion of the Foundation you claim to follow, towards the downtrodden; then, forbid the lowly and the downtrodden to enter the house of worship in your presence.
You’re hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, ‘If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that’s nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that’s serious.’ What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: ‘If you shake hands on a promise, that’s nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that’s serious’? What ridiculous hairsplitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. Good is present, watching and holding you to account regardless.
I know and understand how you made Jesus feel when he walked the earth; how he suffered for his sanity when he walked among you; his legacy is one of attitude and disposition (Christ-like), graceful and genuine in compassion and kindness, always ready to forgive those willing to receive it; a man full of common sense and sound judgment. Jesus’ crucifixion did nothing for your sins and forgiveness of sins of the world; what the crucifixion did was prove that everything he preached against religion by his message for 3 years was true: that the world of religion hated him because he testified of it that its works were evil, was true; and, that the powers in high places are deceivers, vipers, scammers; not to be trusted to do what is right but to do what is convenient for their own strength, stinginess, support, security, superiority and salutation.
LikeLike
October 20, 2014 at 8:24 am
Back to the topic…..sort of…
In my opinion, God is not necessary for morality in the sense that one does not need to believe in God to have good morals although I agree with the premise that ontologically speaking morality makes no sense without God.
I don’t know how fruitful it is to argue for the existence of God on the basis of morality so as to not confuse the unbeliever that the message of Christ is about morality. Humanity has already eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We all know what right and wrong is. The message of Christ is not meant to be a behavioral modification program although many have unwittingly taught it this way.
If you see a dead person on the side of the road, he doesn’t need an attitude or behavior adjustment, he needs those electrical paddles that can get his heart beating again. He needs life !
The message of Christ is about life that God wants to give to us, it is not about correcting your morality. After a person receives the life of Christ, his behavior and morality may change as a result of receiving a new life in Christ. It is the declaration of being totally and completely forgiven and declared 100% righteous that will motivate a person to good works. This is what the grace of God does when a person receives Christ. Western Christianity has taught that we must continue to strive to be righteous to attain a good standing with God or we will be cut off from God…this kind of teaching will lead people into a morality based/works based religious mindset that results in a greater bondage than they were in when they were unbelievers. This is what happened to the Galatians. They returned to the bondage of the Mosaic Law after receiving the knowledge of Christ.
What humanity needs is to eat of the tree of life that will free them from the morality based religion that has permeated western society for generations.
Naz
LikeLike
October 20, 2014 at 8:57 am
Jason:
A mincer of words.
You said: “To believe morals exist but God does not is like believing books exist but authors do not.”
That’s like saying Morals are like Books and God is like Man but how can you compare God and Man and link morals to a book? It’s comparing concepts to concrete
You said: “Moral obligations fall by the wayside, for in the name of what ought anybody submit to cultural preferences or pragmatic mores?”
How about in the name of harmony, peace, love, humanity? Do not atheists have morals? Did not Jesus have morals? Yet Jesus was an atheist in that he did not believe in the supernatural entity that religionists believed in then or that believers believe in now.
You said: “And to believe that we are obligated to behave in certain ways in the absence of a moral law maker and judge is tantamount to thinking one is obligated to obey the laws in a nation without legislators.”
This is completely contrary to Romans 2:13-15 that supports and endorses Atheists’ humanity: “(for not the hearers of the law are just, but the doers of the law will be justified; 14 for when Atheists, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, 15 who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them)”
NIV puts it this way: “14 Those who aren’t Jews do not have the law. Sometimes they just naturally do what the law requires. They are a law for themselves. This is true even though they don’t have the law. 15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts. The way their minds judge them gives witness to that fact. Sometimes their thoughts find them guilty. At other times their thoughts find them not guilty.”
Only Jews and not non-Jews it seems have the law which of course was written by Jews, for Jews but it was acknowledged that ordinary people also have a common sense of right/wrong; yes/no; guilt/innocence. The Father within teaches all human sons and daughters that, as they squirm, crawl, toddle, walk and run into adult life.
It is difficult to conceptualize that there is one truth which is objectively moral. Would an objective moral truth be one which is agreed to be moral by every single human being?
Morals are the rules that govern which actions are right and which are wrong. A moral can be for all of society or an individual’s beliefs. Sometimes a moral can be gleaned from a story or experience.
Jesus taught morals through stories and parables; so did Aesop.
Naturally believers want to claim that values come from their personal caricature concepts for credibility of God, Allah, Vishnu, Bramah, Zeus etc. in the same way that they want to claim every good and great person to appear to be part of “their peculiar belief system”.
“Ontological grounding”? What does that even mean? Ontology is basically the study of what things are. So, when someone says something has no “ontological grounding”, they’re just saying that something has no basis in reality, but saying so in a way as to try to sound sophisticated. In the context of online debate, though, it is merely parroting talking points that use academia to imply knowledge.
Take a blade of grass: tall and slender, green and pregnant with chlorophyll, tapered pointedly in its skyward reach, whitish at its base octopussing into the soil, its root fingers searching for food nutrients and water; may be cylinderical in shape but more commonly is flat and thin referred to as a blade, sturdy but flexible in swaying bends with the ebb and flow of winds, breezes and gusts, collecting drops of moisture from its invisible playfellow that airs and ruffles with jostles of joy; it glares, gleams, glistens and glows, gitters, glimmers, glosses and glints as sparkling splinters of light radiate brilliant hues of diamond dews dispensing every morn’.
The Blade of Grass has “ontological grounding” based on my descriptive observations but this has nothing to do with the God concept; oh, you try to make it so but nada, niet, uh uh and no.
Be of good cheer; thank Goodness I’m here.
LikeLike
October 20, 2014 at 9:16 am
Why Naz:
I am very impressed by your post 35. It like you just received a huge dose of Grace and that it wonderful reading for me.
“This is what the grace of (Good) does when a person receives Christ.”
This is so very true in my own case when I read the missal in Church at 12 years of age when I read and understood and gleaned the truth from the messages of Jesus that even though we may be called blotches by society; yet, we are worthy of forgiveness and compassion and new life from the Jesus words of truth and love that energizes a person with a new life with the Grace of Good.
This was particularly relevant to me at that early age because it was a time of total rejection and punishment by society for contravening the laws of truancy and loitering among other things that brought me to the point I was at, at that time in my life suffering the lonelinest in the reform school for incorrigibles.
Oh sure I have fallen prey to the cares, riches and pleasures of the world many times since but I have still that inner Grace of Good from Jesus guiding me, yearning to set me free from my own follies and slowly my missteps diminish and I most welcome your last post with a new respect for your values.
Thank you.
Cheers.
LikeLike
October 20, 2014 at 10:54 am
Leo, I’m glad the words of Jesus have been an inner light for you to diminish your missteps but the life of Christ can bring you so much more than just reforming your behavior.
It is a testament to Jesus that His life and words can be an inspiration even to those like yourself who do not believe in God.
Let me tell you that God (not Good) will give you a new identity and free you from the missteps and the memory of them. This is not religious theology, this is the new birth in Christ Jesus. He said, I will remember your sins (missteps) and lawless deeds no more. More than that, you will become a son of the Father and will inherit eternal life (get you out the coffin).
It appears that the influence of Christ has led you to become a better man. While this is good, it sounds like another behavior improvement program which ultimately will fail.
There is no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).
God still sees you as that 12 year old boy, incorrigible as he is, and He wants to give you life. Jesus came for the blotches of society not for the so-called righteous. The Pharisees and religionists have no part in the Kingdom of God.
Don’t miss out and short change yourself…..
Naz
LikeLike
October 20, 2014 at 2:19 pm
Naz:
Your continued preoccupation with Zeus that does not exist except in the Casino Slot Machines shows you can’t distinguish between the difference between a real man of virtue and the fantasy cartoon caricature of Apollo. Just just for instance; that Horus did exist, do you think he would be as strong a creator as Brahma? Is Yaweh on a par with Allah do you suppose?
Of the thousands of Gods invented which do you favor the most? Were all the invented, before Abraham put all the creations together into the One Lump God, all true or all false?
As long as you insist on equating Jesus with God you are wrestling still with fiction, fantasy and imagination and fact of Jesus’ humanity. Jesus did not accept the Pharisaical fantasy God; he was too smart to be counted among the mentally ill of society; that’s why they hated him, sought him for arrest, torment, torture and crucifixion. Do you sincerely believe that the Scribes and Pharisees could be so wrong about Jesus but right about the supernatural God of the imagination? Could be right about the resurrection of dead bodies? Were they right in imposing the Sabbath rules? Did that make them right?
You cannot waver between the man Jesus who walked the earth and brought compassion, forgiveness into the mindset to the ludicrous imaginings of Gods who would suspend his own laws of Physics to perform cartoonish presto, hocus pocus, miraculous ideas that are as impossible as God creating himself. There is not enough sense in nonsense to be taken seriously. As long as you keep trying to meld fantasy and fact you will always be torn between sanity and insanity and come across as sane in one instance and batty in the next sentence.
Accept Jesus for who he was and accept his life for what his messages taught and rid yourself of the supernatural demons that show you to be a madman of fantasy still watching childish cartoons on Saturday morning.
If you speak to me about Jesus I’ll listen to your sanity but as soon as you enter the conversation with imaginations of your stoneage ancestors and talk about Godas though it was real, your credibility leaves faster than the speed of light. Whoooooosssshhhhh!
You cannot accept Jesus and hold on to demonic supernaturalism of past: ““No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve Jesus and God.”
LikeLike
October 21, 2014 at 6:58 am
Leo, I would accept your claim that Jesus did not believe any God if there was even one scripture that would back that up, but there isn’t. You base your denial of God by replacing the word “God” with “Good”. Do you think this is intellectually honest ?
Who was Jesus praying to ? Himself ?
What about the thief on the cross beside Jesus? What paradise is Jesus talking about? Or was he also not really killed and healed afterwards….really?
There are too many scriptures to list so I won’t bother, but your idea is nonsensical and will not stand up in any serious academic exegesis of the scriptures. As far as Jesus goes, nobody denied His humanity, rather they denied He was the Son of God, as you do. So your position is nothing new only that you want to keep Jesus and throw away who He really is, the one and only Son of God. You think you can do this, but you can’t, no matter how much you want to believe it, you can’t.
“…….You cannot serve Jesus and God.”” Where does it say this?
Again, you take scriptures and change words, you can’t do that. You are making yourself a laughing stalk and nobody will take your position seriously.
If you denied Jesus and the whole bible as fantasy I could understand that. But your position shows me that you are torn and tormented with Jesus Christ and the truth that you try to deny. I know there is something deeper here that you are wrestling with…you need to surrender and stop fighting the truth that can make you free.
Naz
LikeLike
October 21, 2014 at 9:53 pm
You have everything to lose by not believing in a supernatural Jesus.
The choice is yours…..
Cheers ….
Naz
Paschal’s Wager! A guaranteed way of existing, instead of living. Naz………I would rather spend my time living a life based on Reason and Logic than to stagnate in emotionally-charged dogma based only on a book full of Bronze-Age stories taught to me by others caught up in the same stagnant trap.
As an exercise, I challenge you to submit your best and most positive “supernatural” biblical story to a test against reality….without any personal or religious attachment or bias, just to examine in yourself how it stands up to reality. Are you even able to do this without attachment to an outcome?
Remember this……Just because someone a long time ago wrote some stories down and someone else a few hundred years later assembled them along with some other stories into book form doesn’t mean that they can stand up to rigid scrutiny.
LikeLike
October 22, 2014 at 10:05 am
beingreal,
It takes a lot more faith and religious belief to not believe in God. At least we have an explanation. The Atheist has no explanation whatsoever other than speculations about comic string theories and evolutionary dogma. They still don’t know what happened and how, just a bunch of theories and speculations.
Both the Christian and Atheist have a belief system and both use reason and logic to defend and/or explain their position. My reason and logic tells me that something cannot come from nothing and the universe cannot begin to exist by itself, as such, I maintain God is a reasonable and logical explanation. You can choose to reject this, but it is still a reasonable and logical cause. So don’t think believers just blindly through out reason and logic, that is not the case.
‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’
Sherlock Holmes Quote
Naz
LikeLike
October 22, 2014 at 3:39 pm
“It takes a lot more faith and religious belief to not believe in God.”
Really, Naz?? Did you know that in your sentence above instead of the word “God” you could instead insert the word “Superstition,” or “Magic” in it’s place?
If I’m reading you right, you have more “faith” in your emotions and what you hear from other stagnating folks like yourself than your own good Common Sense.
And you know that emotions are entirely fickle. The next time you feel like you’re lucky, drive to Las Vegas with all of your money, go up to the roulette wheel that feels the luckiest, think of the number on it that feels the luckiest, and drop all of your money on that number.
“The Atheist has no explanation whatsoever other than speculations about comic string theories and evolutionary dogma.”
“Comic string theories” and “evolutionary dogma” you’re calling the prevailing scientific theories, yet they have the backing of most every one of the Theoretical Physicists through the scientific structure known as “Peer-Review.”
At the very least, these two theories have observations, Deductive and Inductive Reasoning promoting their rigid structure of proof.
And the Christian Bible??? What supports it’s premises?? Belief promoted and promised by human emotions??
“Both the Christian and Atheist have a belief system and both use reason and logic to defend and/or explain their position.”
Yeah….Kind of….The difference between us is the Christian spends his Reasoning-time rationalizing his religious beliefs to himself and his Christian friends, trying to retain them and make them stronger against the onslaught of fact, while the Atheist spends his Reasoning-time expanding and investigating his experiences of reality through provable scientific structure.
Religion says “All dogma surrounding our beliefs can stay, if we feel good about them” while Atheism states “All beliefs must pass the most severest of tests, and also be repeatable, meaning they must pass scientific peer-review.
If any item fails to pass any test, regardless of how attached we are to it, it is revoked, replacing it with that which works better.”
If any religious belief fails to meet any test, it is kept, especially if it’s important to the emotional needs of the followers.
“My reason and logic tells me that something cannot come from nothing and the universe cannot begin to exist by itself, as such, I maintain God is a reasonable and logical explanation.”
My Reason and Logic tell me that something cannot come from nothing, yet everything has come from vacuum fluctuations. Matter and energy are only different forms of the same thing…….energy. Every solid thing you see is made up of mostly empty space.
Because you believe in a God doesn’t mean that there isn’t some-THING that you should call “God.”
Facts surrounding experiences of reality state that this “God” I speak of (if you want to call the Forces and Laws responsible for everything in our universe this name) are indeed IMPERSONAL in nature.
Your “Personal God” spoken of in your bible loses out to the truth brought forward by facts surrounding the matter of everything being here.
‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’
Sherlock Holmes Quote
What seems impossible to some is possible to those who contribute their entire lives to it’s study and decipherment……..We humans only think we have the truth when instead all we have is what we allow inside our brains.
That which trumps our personal truth, even if coming from authentic and reliable sources is unbelievable to us simply because what we now have and retain is understandable and most of all, comfortable to us. And believe me……human beings are all about comfort and stability in their lives.
For fifty-five years I was a reverent Christian believer, until through some encouragement from a teacher I decided decided to take a big risk, testing and evaluating my religious beliefs, pitting them against scientific axioms. For the last fifteen years I’ve been a solid Atheist, never more certain of living an authentic life, in my life!
The truth is always and only personal in scope. This is why the testing and structure of science is far ahead of dogma, emotions, and belief.
LikeLike
October 22, 2014 at 3:48 pm
Naz:
Jesus was indeed, in a sense, praying to himself, because the Father within is something we are born with that includes besides the brain and memory, the sympathetic nervous system (abbreviated as SN), one of two main divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the other being the parasympathetic nervous system (PN). The autonomic nervous system functions to regulate the body’s unconscious actions. The sympathetic nervous system’s primary process is to stimulate the body’s fight-or-flight response. It is, however, constantly active at a basic level to maintain homeostasis.( 1. the tendency of a system, especially the physiological system of higher animals, to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function.
2. Psychology. a state of psychological equilibrium obtained when tension or a drive has been reduced or eliminated.
3. Entomology. the ability of members of a colony of social insects to behave cooperatively to produce a desired result, as when bees coordinate the fanning of their wings to cool the hive. The sympathetic nervous system is described as being complementary to the parasympathetic nervous system which stimulates the body to “rest-and-digest”.)
“What about the thief on the cross beside Jesus? What paradise is Jesus talking about?”
This is a religious story for Church believers.
“Or was he also not really killed and healed afterwards.”
This is the most logical account after the crucifixion since his secret disciple Joseph of Arimathea had hewn out the tomb for two years before the crucifixion which both he and Nicodemus, the other secret disciple, knew was the inevitable probability due to the rage of the other members of the Sanhedrin which they themselves were members of and warned Jesus to expect this likely scenario to attempt to kill him for testifying against them and their religious world for the evil deceit and hypocrisy they pummelled the congregation with about the supernatural to keep them in thrall. We’re not talking about something new here Naz, what you espouse has been espoused since the year dot millions of years ago.
“…….You cannot serve Jesus and God.”” Where does it say this?
Mammon is not just money and materialism, it is also referred to as an idols and those who preach about God practice idolatry to the effigy of the imagination all the while, willing to throw common sense out the window to the wind.
You do not, nor could you ever, “know” the God you claim exists; how much less then, do you know Jesus who came to tell you it was all a bunch of hypocritical hoaxes perpetuated by a group of power hungry, money crazed religious charlatans feeding their insatiable appetite of financial security off the uneducated backs of the masses by deliberately misleading them since childhood about the boogie man Demon waiting for them in Hell if they do not do the bidding of the clergy; and, the loving benefactor, God who was waiting in Heaven to reward the obedient for tithing and following the pretense of rituals. In some cases your loving God will even reward you with 72 virgins to satisfy your sexual passions but you don’t have to be married in Heaven just while you are on earth. WOW! Who could turn down such rewards of Milk and Honey? flowing rewards that you cannot even imagine the extent of the great gifts that await you and all you have to do is die after following the clergy like puppies and kittens and ducklings all the days of your life. Whew!
Get with the Jesus program Naz and please top comparing Jesus to the worshipping-demanding idol imaginings from stoneagism before the wheel was invented. It is all contained in stories called Mythology. Greek and Roman Mythology; these are course you can take in University, previous thelogies of mankind. What are Greek and Roman myths? How can we interpret them? Why are they still so powerful? How much history do they contain? How do they differ from legends and fairy tales? Who told them and why? Did the Trojan War really happen? What might lie behind the tales of Odysseus and the Cyclops, Prometheus, Perseus and Medusa, or the myth of Atlantis? Are the myths damaged history, allegories, or reflections of the inner workings of our minds? By going back to the original texts (in translation), and the analysis of ancient works of art, these courses will explore some of these fascinating tales from the past and evaluate various ways in which scholars have tried to make sense of them from antiquity to the present day.
Today you can go to Seminaries and Madrassas and take courses in Theology, Mythology’s twin and come out with a Degree in the Unknowable. Degrees in the unknowable, so lolable. First rule of thumb in Theology School: Never answer a direct question with a direct answer, skirt around every question using the Mythical, Mythological Mysteries of Mankind’s Maginative Mind and the recorded Books that outline perpetuate them, called Holy Books.
LikeLike
October 23, 2014 at 6:26 am
“For fifty-five years I was a reverent Christian believer, until through some encouragement from a teacher I decided decided to take a big risk, testing and evaluating my religious beliefs, pitting them against scientific axioms. For the last fifteen years I’ve been a solid Atheist, never more certain of living an authentic life, in my life!”
beingreal,
I’m not going to get into the science vs. religion debate here…this is way overdone and fruitless.
Your statement above is the one that really caught my attention….this is typical of what happens in the realm of religion which it appears you were caught up with for a very long time. Christ is supposed to give you “authentic life” instead unfortunately people are fed a message that is palatable in the beginning but then degenerates into a works based, performance based routine which sucks the life out of you and leaves you not “good enough” for God and falling short of this high calling. The “believer” then gets so disgruntled, unhappy and unsettled that the only solution eventually is to scrap the whole thing and come up with another “theology”. I can totally understand this as there was a time when I was heading down this road….but then I got a revelation.
When I realized that I was totally and completely forgiven and this forgiveness and acceptance with God was not based on my performance or behavior, I was set free to live right. When I realized that God declared my perfectly righteous and holy at the moment I believed with my heart then I realized that sin did not fit with me any longer. I realized that I feel bad when I sin because sin no longer fits with who I am in Christ. I realized that I am not a dirty worm and need to grovel to God and ask Him for forgiveness every time I make a mistake since His forgiveness was once and for all and complete. I realized that God is not mad at me and turns in his barber shop swivel chair every time I do something wrong and then turns back to face me every time I do something right. The message preached today makes God an angry God and impossible to live with. We forget that all of His wrath against sin was taken out on His Son Jesus Christ for our benefit. We have a once and for all offering for sin on our behalf and for our benefit. We are not to be strapped down with new rules and rituals which bring us again under Law. Our life is in Him and we should be led by the Spirit.
For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,
“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,”
then he adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
(Hebrews 10:14:18)
Naz
LikeLike
October 23, 2014 at 10:23 am
Naz:
“We forget that all of His….” (God’s) “…. wrath against sin was taken out on His Son Jesus Christ for our benefit.” Robbing Peter to pay Paul?
This is so bizarre and ludicrous it is difficult for sane people to understand how deluded people still are that cause them to make such insane statements about their perfect God endowed with all the emotions and attributes of the creature!
I mean this is the kind of nonsense we get when mixed up people try to mix supernatural imaginings with human realities. Humans practicing the Debit/ Credit God thing execute each other by psychotic whim and they blame the wrath of their God because of this thing they call sin which is nothing more than what the self-righteous decide you do that they are offended by because it transgresses their perfect little make-believe world of righteousness.
In the ancient days, if you dug a pit and your neighbor’s donkey falls in the pit you had to repay your neighbor with another donkey; well, the world doesn’t operate with donkeys anymore; but the religious still operate with the “ass of the past.” And if you can’t see that you’re not really looking.
LikeLike
October 23, 2014 at 10:36 am
1Jn 1:8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
1Jn 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1Jn 1:10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
Is Jesus’ word in you or are you a liar ?
Naz
LikeLike
October 24, 2014 at 8:52 am
(“Christ is supposed to give you “authentic life” instead unfortunately people are fed a message that is palatable in the beginning but then degenerates into a works based, performance based routine which sucks the life out of you and leaves you not “good enough” for God and falling short of this high calling.)
Your observation is good and appropriate for the Christian message, and lifestyle. It served me well, and I was quite happy while I was under it’s theory of reward and service to the idea of a “Master” of everything being a personal, human-like Being.
Through my work and association with a personal growth group for a number of years I learned from my close connection with a great teacher that I and most of Humanity was “asleep.” This is when I learned to, and started to do my own “Inner Work.”
And a portion of this “Metanoia” made me responsible to forgive myself, instead of allowing myself to believe that some “God” figure would forgive me for my trespasses.
Merriam-Webster dictionary states that “Authentic” is “real or genuine : not copied or false: true and accurate.” After a considerable time and good, hard work, this inner change in my thinking is more real than any belief in a Personal God could’ve ever been to me.
(“.but then I got a revelation.
When I realized that I was totally and completely forgiven and this forgiveness and acceptance with God was not based on my performance or behavior, I was set free to live right.”)
Correct. This is the Christian message of atonement…..or in it’s original form “AT-ONE-MENT. Where one is “at one” with his sins along with a Personal God.
I’ve since learned to carry atonement to it’s primary meaning, inner forgiveness of myself and others. “Right living” is not only the property of Religion.
It is every human being’s assignment in life. I no longer accept the premise of “I’m a sinner, I’ll always be a sinner, but “God” will always forgive me my sins.”
My point is generally, that now I do my own work…..the Inner Work that humans have always been allotted to perform by their very existence, but have mostly failed to do, abdicating this work instead to an unknown, unseen, unbelievable Entity called “God.”
(When I realized that God declared my perfectly righteous and holy at the moment I believed with my heart then I realized that sin did not fit with me any longer. I realized that I feel bad when I sin because sin no longer fits with who I am in Christ.)
Please do not be offended when I state that to me, you are in the “inner infancy” period of your inner life, Naz.
This belief is ok, but it is only an unsubstantiated belief. It is also a ‘thrust-block’ towards your fulfillment, but as I see you in your present position, you are taking baby steps and stagnating in a dogmatic belief system.
I see this in you as it was for me….a hindrance to the fulfillment of your obligations not only to yourself, but towards those humans around you who would benefit from the example that you would set.
I was here similarly, just as you are. But after my work, (ten years of it!) I had the advantage of great overview of where I was, where I’m at now, and where I was headed.
I worked then, and now for greater expansion in my life. This was extremely confrontational and uncomfortable for me, in the beginning. But we all know that human beings run towards comfort and security…..its a natural reaction to pain and resistance, of any type.
After what I learned and am still learning, I now know that its every person’s real work to wake themselves up…to fulfill and enrich their lives by growing up on their inside, by finally learning to do their own Inner Work.
Good Work to you, Naz!!
LikeLike
October 24, 2014 at 10:07 am
Naz:
First of all these are not the words of Jesus which is part of the misinformation you readily regurgitate because you don’t know Jesus. I am always amazed at how Christians are so quck to say Jesus said everything others are quoted as saying in the bible.
However, having said that, can you give me one example of 1Jn 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins….” one example where you have experienced such a time when ‘he was faithful and just to forgive us our sins’ Just one example from when you confessed your sin and was instantly forgiven by someone in real life? Just one example will show me if you really understand what you are quoting by your own example.
Jesus did however say this to those who would cast aspersions as you have done on more than one occasion “Is Jesus’ word in you or are you a liar ?”:
Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt. They kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said, “The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone.”
By asking someone if he is a liar says more about questioner than it does about those, he questions since you can’t fathom the words of Jesus or the words of John, nor are they interchangable. As Proverbs says: “Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death is the man who deceives his neighbor….”
Here is another metaphorical scripture which your aspersions remind me of: Rev 12:7- “7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, AND PREVAILED NOT; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
And the great dragon was cast out, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world(by religious nonsense): And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of Good, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our Good day and night. And they overcame him by the word of their testimony; Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”
You are overcome by the word of testimony; it has defeated you.
Listen to “beingreal” and smell the nasturtiums instead of casting them.
LikeLike
October 24, 2014 at 4:10 pm
I see this conversation has drifted into the tangential since I’ve been on vacation. To get back to the original subject, has anyone ever considered asking one of the 350 million Buddhists on the planet if they think God is required for morality?
LikeLike
October 25, 2014 at 6:57 am
Bob Mason:
Good point. Makes one wonder why Christians think they’re the only ones on the planet worthy of what they call salvation to the exclusion the rest of humanity. But then Religion and Tobacco are equally addictive and should be banned to all children as child abuse, before they reach the age of maturity.
LikeLike
October 25, 2014 at 8:41 am
Jesuspeake Idiom: How to cope with Life:
The Pessimist complains about the wind;
The Believer prays for it to change;
The Atheist adjusts the sails.
LikeLike
October 26, 2014 at 7:24 am
Is it a lack of morals when people lie; well, yes and no, sometimes but not always. It’s never cut and dry or black and white because with all the righteousness around one has to look at context and discretion, motives and reality. It depends most of the time on the ones interpreting the lie. Did those who hid Jews to protect them from slaughter lie? Was it right? To the Nazis it was wrong, so wrong that if you were found out you could face death. But to the saved it was righteous and to anyone valuing the sanctity of life it was righteous.
Jesus spoke metaphorically as well as in parables, very often to the disciples, using stories, analogies and possible examples of human behavior but that didn’t mean he lied because he made up stories. There is only one time recorded in the Bible where Jesus did obviously lie: when he told his brothers that he was not going to the Feast of the Tabernacles but then after his brothers left without him, Jesus went to the Feast disguised and in secret. Why? Because he did not trust his loud-mouth brothers not to reveal his whereabouts to the Jews were out searching for to kill him. John 7.
Now don’t get me wrong here, please, but Jesus, the real Jesus, lied and deceived his enemies to escape the clutches of religious fanatics who wanted to manhandle him, arrest him, beat, bash and thrash him, assault, whip, scourge, browbeat, mock, punch, scratch, kick, lash, stab and nail his hands and feet to a tree. There is nothing wrong with Jesus lying and deceiving the religious pricks he had to hide from, pass around them, disguise from, leave by the back door, jump in the boat, pack up for the desert, to avoid their religious insanity; if Jesus returned he would have to do the same thing today if he was in a Muslim country or in the midst of Christian and Judaist fundamentalists; the ones among you whose dogmatic doctrine is called Absolute Certainty.
If the Son of Man returned today most of you wouldn’t recognize him anyway, even if you tripped over me.
LikeLike
October 27, 2014 at 1:09 pm
beingreal, thanks for your response and peak into your journey and where it has taken you. I too am on a journey although it looks like our paths may be diverging from each other…..
I would like to take some points from your last post and comment.
“Your observation is good and appropriate for the Christian message, and lifestyle. It served me well, and I was quite happy while I was under it’s theory of reward and service to the idea of a “Master” of everything being a personal, human-like Being.
Through my work and association with a personal growth group for a number of years I learned from my close connection with a great teacher that I and most of Humanity was “asleep.” This is when I learned to, and started to do my own “Inner Work.” ”
The Christian message is not about “reward and service”. Again, this is what mainstream churches degenerate the message into once they depart from the liberty of the gospel. They do this because they can’t “believe” that God would lavish such grace on humanity, so to “protect” the message, churches unwittingly break down into a works based, service based type of message which eventually bogs down the believer. Instead of preaching the liberty of Christ and allowing the believer to find his way and live in this liberty, they do the opposite and shackle him with more rules, regulations and requirements.
“And a portion of this “Metanoia” made me responsible to forgive myself, instead of allowing myself to believe that some “God” figure would forgive me for my trespasses.
Merriam-Webster dictionary states that “Authentic” is “real or genuine : not copied or false: true and accurate.” After a considerable time and good, hard work, this inner change in my thinking is more real than any belief in a Personal God could’ve ever been to me.”
Forgiving yourself is healthy and is consistent with what I believe also. However, our premise for this forgiveness is completely different obviously. My forgiveness of myself and others is based on the finished work of Christ. Yours is based on a change of mind to erase God from the equation and make yourself in essence the god of your forgiveness. While you equate this with authenticity, it is still another belief system that makes you the forgiver of your sins. To believe in God for the forgiveness of my sins also brought me to an inner change in my thinking. So in this regard it appears we have come to the same place although by different means….or have we really ?
“I’ve since learned to carry atonement to it’s primary meaning, inner forgiveness of myself and others. “Right living” is not only the property of Religion.”
Religion can produce nothing but self-righteousness. Technically the righteousness you are aspiring to is the same as religious righteousness. Don’t take offense in this statement. All I am saying is that your belief system is based on your own works. The religious person’s belief system is based on his own works also. In effect, you have unwittingly created another religion for yourself. Man is hopelessly religious, this is a fact. Even when we throw God out with the bath water, Man has no choice but to degrade back to some form of self works to attain righteousness in his own mind. So when one attempts to break free from the shackles of religion, he shortly after finds himself shackled again to religion of another name.
“It is every human being’s assignment in life. I no longer accept the premise of “I’m a sinner, I’ll always be a sinner, but “God” will always forgive me my sins.””
I don’t accept I’m a sinner either. However, my acceptance of this is based on the once and for all work of Christ. God does not need to continually forgive me of my sins daily. He did this once and for all, past, present and future. This is another fallacy of the Christian message where we use God like a bar of soap and ask Him to forgive us every time we make a mistake. When a person is a child of God, he does not have to continually beg and plead God for forgiveness or offer up some sort of apology in hopes that God might forgive him if the prayer is good enough or eloquent enough. That is rubbish…
“My point is generally, that now I do my own work…..the Inner Work that humans have always been allotted to perform by their very existence, but have mostly failed to do, abdicating this work instead to an unknown, unseen, unbelievable Entity called “God.”
Please do not be offended when I state that to me, you are in the “inner infancy” period of your inner life, Naz.”
This belief is ok, but it is only an unsubstantiated belief. It is also a ‘thrust-block’ towards your fulfillment, but as I see you in your present position, you are taking baby steps and stagnating in a dogmatic belief system.”
As I mentioned before, you’ve traded Christ for a belief system of your own works which you call your “inner work”. The scripture says that those who are in Christ have “rested” from their own works (Hebrews). While the God that I believe in is unknown, unseen and unbelievable to you, the same can be said of how you attain your own forgiveness apart from an external source. Both are belief systems that can be argued for and against. While I may be dogmatic about Christ, you are dogmatic about self. I have to ask, how do you regulate your right living ? By what standards or methods do you determine growth in your inner work ? At what point do you achieve inner perfection, or is there such a thing in your doctrine ? Is your life conduct reviewed by your teacher and are there any prescribed methods he gives you to help you improve your behavior ? How do you judge “right living” ?
I think works are important and that we affect the people in our lives in a positive way through acts of kindness and unselfish love. While this is true, the means of attaining this does not justify the ends. While those that do not believe in God think they have “figured out” how to achieve right living without God, therefore the notion of God is not necessary, they have totally missed the point.
The message of Christ is not about us and our good works. We are simply the benefactors of an awesome gift that God wants to give humanity. This gift will first declare us perfectly righteous apart from any of our own meritorious based works. Next it will inspire us to live rightly through the Spirit of Christ who will work out in our lives what He has done in our inner being. Lastly, it gives us hope beyond the grave that we will follow Jesus in His resurrection one day.
While I know you can’t believe the above paragraph, it highlights the main point of difference between our belief systems : Christ-based vs. Self-based.
Scripturelly, Paul broke it down into being “in Adam” or “in Christ”. It appears you have traded Christ for Adam. This is the anti-gospel which can also be called “Anit-Christ”.
Please take no offense to my comments. This is just a candid critique of what I can see although I’m surely not the best to even articulate what I believe.
Cheers !
Naz
LikeLike
October 28, 2014 at 6:57 am
Leo, sorry I misspoke in my last post to you.
What I meant to say is, are you calling Jesus a liar ?
Because you say you don’t believe in sin, you are the poster child for 1John and are calling Jesus a liar because His testimony is that all humanity has sinned. This is bible 101 and indisputable. If you find any perfect folks that have never sinned let me know, I would love to meet your family 🙂
Even if you disregard my above statement about sin, you must admit that the Jesus the apostles are talking about is quite different than the one you claim to know. So how do you reconcile this ? Do you throw out 1John ? He’s the same one that wrote the gospel of John which you often quote. Do you throw out that too ? I can’t fathom the intellectual gymnastics you must do every time you come across verses that you can’t explain with your doctrine. Before you tell me that John was part of the “clergy” hold your horses kemo sabe, John and the other apostles were in constant conflict with the “clergy” aka Pharisees and Jews, that did not believe in Christ.
Apparently your Gnostic forefathers were active early on causing trouble and spreading false doctrine just as you do. This letter by John was partly addressing that issue. At least now you know your not alone and can trace your ancestors to 1 John. We found Great Grandpa Leo !! 🙂
Cheers !
Naz
LikeLike
October 28, 2014 at 9:43 am
Naz:
“Leo, sorry I misspoke in my last post to you.”
Is that a confession of sin/transgression?
Can I forgive you?
Can you receive forgiveness from me?
Actually I can trace my ancestry back to Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
LikeLike
October 28, 2014 at 9:53 am
Naz:
1. What you call “know” is what you “believe”. You misquote me as much as you misquote Jesus. Where and when did I say I do not believe in sin?
2. And if Jesus said “let him who is without sin cast the first stone” does that mean that Jesus also was counting himself among the sinners because he did not cast a stone?
3. Did Jesus sin? We know he lied but did Jesus transgress by lying?
4. Is lying a sin? Was Jesus’ lie a sin?
5. You failed to answer my challenge question: “….can you give me one example of 1Jn 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins….” one example where you have experienced such a time when ‘he was faithful and just to forgive us our sins’ Just one example from when you confessed your sin and was instantly forgiven by someone in real life?” Or do you think that real people cannot forgive “transgressions”
6. Now I could use the catch-all, Christian biblical definition of sin that “sin is the transgression of the law” but of course “sin” is too sweeping a term ans “sin” is not the transgression of the law because transgression of the law is “transgression” not sin. There are times when transgression of the law is acceptable and excusable, but sin….oh sin is not permissable under any circumstances. This is what the niggler says really Really?
7. “…If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, “he” is faithful and just to forgive us our sins…..”. If we say we have not sinned, we make “him” a liar, and “his” word is not in us.
8. Who is the “he” and who is the “him” and who is the “his”; you will say Jesus but if q cannot extraploate this statement to ordinary people in ordinary life than we miss the popint of it and perhaps that is why you failed to comment on my challenge.
9. “Happy (Blessed) is the one who does not condemn himself for what he does” (allows).
10. Can you see the wide sweeping accusation on sin (transgression) in this statement when other people convict you of sin because they are offended by what you do in their own eyes?
11. Does the Government itself sin when it convicts someone for murder by imposing the death sentence on the one who contravenes the law: Thou shalt not kill?
12. Did your God sin when he is alleged to have said in
Ezekiel 5
A Jealous God, Not to Be Trifled With
5 1-2 “Now, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a straight razor, shaving your head and your beard. Then, using a set of balancing scales, divide the hair into thirds. When the days of the siege are over, take one-third of the hair and burn it inside the city. Take another third, chop it into bits with the sword and sprinkle it around the city. The final third you’ll throw to the wind. Then I’ll go after them with a sword.
3-4 “Retrieve a few of the hairs and slip them into your pocket. Take some of them and throw them into the fire—burn them up. From them, fire will spread to the whole family of Israel.
5-6 “This is what God, the Master, says: This means Jerusalem. I set her at the center of the world, all the nations ranged around her. But she rebelled against my laws and ordinances, rebelled far worse than the nations ranged around her—sheer wickedness!—refused my guidance, ignored my directions.
7 “Therefore this is what God, the Master, says: You’ve been more headstrong and willful than any of the nations around you, refusing my guidance, ignoring my directions. You’ve sunk to the gutter level of those around you.
8-10 “Therefore this is what God, the Master, says: I’m setting myself against you—yes, against you, Jerusalem. I’m going to punish you in full sight of the nations. Because of your disgusting no-god idols, I’m going to do something to you that I’ve never done before and will never do again: turn families into cannibals—parents eating children, children eating parents! Punishment indeed. And whoever’s left over I’ll throw to the winds.
11-12 “Therefore, as sure as I am the living God—Decree of God, the Master—because you’ve polluted my Sanctuary with your obscenities and disgusting no-god idols, I’m pulling out. Not an ounce of pity will I show you. A third of your people will die of either disease or hunger inside the city, a third will be killed outside the city, and a third will be thrown to the winds and chased by killers.
13 “Only then will I calm down and let my anger cool. Then you’ll know that I was serious about this all along, that I’m a jealous God and not to be trifled with.
14-15 “When I get done with you, you’ll be a pile of rubble. Nations who walk by will make coarse jokes. When I finish my angry punishment and searing rebukes, you’ll be reduced to an object of ridicule and mockery, turned into a horror story circulating among the surrounding nations. I, God, have spoken.
16-17 “When I shoot my lethal famine arrows at you, I’ll shoot to kill. Then I’ll step up the famine and cut off food supplies. Famine and more famine—and then I’ll send in the wild animals to finish off your children. Epidemic disease, unrestrained murder, death—and I will have sent it! I, God, have spoken.”
Is you God without sin Naz?
LikeLike
October 28, 2014 at 12:45 pm
Leo,
1. My belief is not blind but is based on reasonable faith. Although you don’t agree, that is not the point and doesn’t concern me. I have to live my life the best that I can and this makes the most sense for me. My belief in God and faith in Jesus has done me well. OK, sorry, I misquoted you again. Yes you do believe in sin, good for you.
2. No, He could have cast the stone. He was showing that mercy triumphs over judgement.
3. Jesus did not sin. He delayed going to the feast. Read the original Greek, he did not “yet” go to the feast. You make much about nothing.
4. Lying is a sin.
5. We should confess our sins one to another so as to foster peace. This passage is about those that deny that they have sinned and that God will forgive them if they confess their sins to Him. It’s not a passage for believers, but for unbelievers and Gnostics like yourself.
As for your challenge question, I know God has forgiven me because I take Him at His Word.
6. Sin is the transgression of the law. God’s law. Those under the law are accountable to keep the whole law and are under condemnation. Those in Christ are free from the law and sin has no power (authority) over them.
7./8. He, Him and His is God.
9. Clear conscience.
10. We should do things that make a weaker person stumble. The interests of others should always be primary, even if it restricts us in some way. The is not about a “sweeping accusation of sin”, it’s about the weaker brother.
11. The death penalty is judgment not murder. God has ordained governments to carry out justice in the land (Romans 13). Thou shall not kill reads “Thou shall not murder” in the original Hebrew. There is a big difference.
12. God does not sin. He carries out judgment.
Naz
LikeLike
October 28, 2014 at 2:22 pm
1. Belief and Faith are the same and they remain blind without knowledge; yours is no exception.
2. Jesus was human and all humans are sinners according to others who make the laws that if you transgress like Jesus by breaking the Sabbath when he and his disciples picked corn when they were hungry.
3. I do not say that Jesus sinned but it is clear that he lied to his brothers and if you can’t accept that you are practicing only dogma not using common sense and imagine trying to rely on the original scripture to justify your lack of common sense. When Jesus said to his mother at the wedding. And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”
Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not “yet” come.”; and,
“Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.”
In all three instances he was talking about Gethsemane when he would be ready to allow himself to be arrested.
But you think, erroneously, he was talking about not going to the Feast “yet” but was going up llater is completely misinterpretation which is tyipcal dogma interpretation, interpreted for you, by others..
4. Lying is not sin; bearing false witness aginst someone is a sin and a transgression because that type of lie is designed to bring harm, injury or death to another person; that is sin!
5. You can’t give me an example because you are stuck in the dogma that only God forgives sins; that’s just what the {harisees thought too and the reason why they called Jesus blasphemous because Jesus had the “audacity” to forgive sins because humans have that ability not your supernatural Godhead. Mark 2: 6 Some religion scholars sitting there started whispering among themselves, “He can’t talk that way! That’s blasphemy! God and only God can forgive sins.” Jesus knew right away what they were thinking, and said, “Why are you so skeptical? Which is simpler: to say to the paraplegic, ‘I forgive your sins,’ or say, ‘Get up, take your stretcher, and start walking’? Well, just so it’s clear that I’m the Son of Man and authorized to do either, or both……”
6. The law is for transgressors (most everybody) not those who walk in grace and do what is right without the law. Only Man makes the laws you talk about. Now if you think you can fly and jump of a skyscraper without a parachure gravity will crush you when you hit; you might liken that to a deist law but that is not supernatural either.
7/8 He, Him and His, is ordinary man. the son of man, other people; they can forgive you and they can also answer prayer. That’s why you can’t give an example, you don’t know it.
9. clear conscience is correct and that’s why atheism is supported and endorsed in Romans 2: 13 (For not the hearers of the law are just before the Father, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Atheists, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
10. “We should do things that make a weaker person stumble.” I will give you the benefit of the doubt here in that you made a typo and what you meant was: ‘We should (NOT) do things that make a weaker person stumble.” But the meaning here is not just about eatiing certain foods and has a much wider application.
11 /12. Using the word “judgment” to justify murder is merely the semantic way of trying to make what is wrong, right. It doesn’t work here, it never worked when they tried to kill Jesus when the judgment of the government was condemned Jesus and it didn’t work when Ezekiel described the death of war.
Naz, you are wrong on so many levels. in my next post I’ll open your mind to what the “Nature of Faith” is.
LikeLike
October 28, 2014 at 2:27 pm
To all Theosophical Ruminators: A Revelation about:
The Nature of Faith:
Hebrew 11, 6: Without Faith it is impossible to please the Him, the Father within; the Good Concept.
Remember, the supernatural idea of men, is “God”; but, to Jesus the “Father” within us all, was clearly claimed in Luke 17: 20-21, “the Kingdom is within you”. THAT is where the Father resides, lives, abides, the Kingdom that is his abode. THAT Father, scientifically called in today’s age: memory, learning and a great big bundle of experiences and righteousness, as we learn; this is not something we are endowed with like some Buddhist monk in Tibet from birth or baptized into, or born a son like a Kim Jong Un in North Korea. Being Human, learning to crawl, walk, run, remember, live with and practice. It is the human experience the experience that Jesus constantly communicated in his messages.
“……….Your supreme criterion that makes you man from the Father’s point of view is that you please Him but without faith it’s impossible to please him. So faith isn’t optional, faith isn’t a matter of taste, faith isn’t up for grabs. Faith is a disposition, the mind that was in Christ Jesus, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who let the Father do it. And in that He, the Father, created you in such a way that only His presence imparts to you the moral capacity to implement His purpose in making you man, to reveal His likeness. He, in you, teaching your mind; He, in you, controlling your emotions; He, in you, directing your will; He, in you, governing your behavior. Because you Let Him. Without faith that lets the Father be the Father in the man, you cannot please him.
That is the Father inside all of us that Jesus constantly referred to. Not the Supernatural Gods of men nor the hocus pocus magic of ghosts and goblins, but the Father that is our innermost self witness, the conscience of men who by practice have their senses trained up in the discernment of good and evil
That’s why it’s absolutely imperative that you understand the nature of faith. And very few Christians understand the nature of faith. Because we’re constantly being brainwashed into the idea that the more you are in the rat race, the more you rush around doing things for God the more you’re demonstrating your faith in God; diametrically opposed to the truth. The more you try to do for God the more you’re demonstrating, not your faith in God, but your faith in yourself.
Faith is a disposition that invokes the activity of a second party; it brings somebody, something, into action on your behalf. You’re exercising faith at this moment in the seat that supports your weight.
What’s your faith doing for that seat? Nothing! Except let it be a bench, on your behalf. It isn’t your faith that supporting your weight, it’s the chair. I believe in chairs; I’m very orthodox about chairs. I could preach for twenty minutes right now about a chair and everything I’d say would be true but I’m not exercising faith in one single chair in this building because you cannot exercise faith standing up, you can only exercise faith sitting down. And the moment I sit in a chair I immediately rest upon it my weight and let it get into action to demonstrate that it is strong enough to support that weight. So you don’t congratulate my faith you congratulate the chair.
If you want your appendix out you choose a surgeon you can trust. And you go to the hospital on the appointed occasion; how do you demonstrate your faith in the surgeon? Who gets on the job? Who takes the tools? Do you carve him up or does he carve you up? When you put your faith in the surgeon, he gets into action.
When I get on board a plane and fly, my faith does nothing for the pilot, nothing for the airline, nothing for ground crew, nothing for radar; my faith simply lets all the resources of that airline, including the pilot, be mobilized on my behalf to get me from Newark, New Jersey, To London, England. My faith lets somebody else get into action.
That’s why, never congratulate a man on his faith, that’s sheer stupidity. Faith never made a man great. Faith is simply that disposition that allows the Father to be as big as the Father is, in a man, that’s all. Congratulate Him. The one who’s BE-ing.
Faith is like the clutch on a gear shift continental sports car. You could put your foot on the gas, rev the engine until every last window in the district is vibrating with the noise and the whole city lost in a cloud of dust. But if you don’t let the clutch out where will you be when you take your foot off the gas and the dust has settled? Exactly where you started! Because all the clutch does is relate the engine and the power under the hood to the wheels on the road. But the clutch doesn’t drive the car. Can you imagine a kid with his friend, open sports car, zooming down the road, nobody looking, 30, 50, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110 miles an hour, wind streaming through his hair and he turns to his friend and says man….man..he says, what a clutch! Well you’d say don’t be so stupid. You’d say Man…what an engine!. All the clutch is doing is letting the engine be an engine.
And all that faith does in terms of your relationship to Jesus Christ is to allow him to move redemptively into your experience and reconcile you to the Father. If you don’t put your trust in Christ, he’s still the redeemer but you won’t know it.
That doesn’t prove you’re smart. That just exposes your ignorance.
Faith.
And of course the more confident you are in the object of your faith the more unconscious you are of the faith you are exercising in that object. That’s why you didn’t examine the chair before you sat in it. You’ve become confident and therefore you’re unconscious. And if you’re worried about your faith there’s one cure: get acquainted. Faith brings you to knowledge so you can know Jesus. And in knowing Jesus you’ll know the Father. It comes by giving knowledge time enough, to talk to you long enough, until at last you know enough and that’s the only cure for ignorance…knowledge in understanding the human experience without superstition, supernatural and magic……”
That is the simplicity of Faith that you didn’t know about:
LikeLike
October 29, 2014 at 10:21 am
Leo, thank you for your dissertation on faith. There are many points within your post that I agree with but you haven’t revealed to me anything new.
Once again, you have only taken parts of scripture (added your version of the “father within”) and failed to read the verses before and after.
“Hebrew 11, 6: Without Faith it is impossible to please the Him, the Father within; the Good Concept. ”
Why don’t you read verses 1-6 as they are written ….
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
For by it the people of old received their commendation.
By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.
And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
I agree that faith is a disposition and that our scrambling to produce works is not really faith. Yes, faith is a disposition where you trust someone else as you mentioned. But apart from that we are far apart….
“THAT Father, scientifically called in today’s age: memory, learning and a great big bundle of experiences and righteousness, as we learn”
The Father within is your memory and experiences ? You have replaced God with your own human consciousness. This is an age old heresy of how god is in everybody and that we are all a part of “god”, the cosmic consciousness. The Father is not within everybody, the Father is within those that are in Christ. Those that believe and put their faith in the Son of God Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and the resurrection to eternal life.
1Jn_4:15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
1Jn_5:5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
1Jn_5:10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.
1Jn_5:12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
1Jn_5:13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.
1Jn_5:20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
So in a sense you do believe in a god, unfortunately the “father within”, that you describe is your own human consciousness. It is impossible to reconcile this view with the scriptures.
“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God”
God, not your human consciousness spoke the universe into existence. This sounds pretty supernatural to me. I believe it by faith. I wasn’t there but I believe it.
“By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him…”
Who “took” Enoch” that he should not see the grave ? This is not a natural phenomenon but a supernatural one. Who did Enoch please ? Himself, the “father within”…no, he pleased God.
“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists”
Faith is not negotiable when it comes to God, we are not even in the ballpark without faith, even as you said yourself. With this faith we “must” believe that He (God not Good) exists. Beings exists, not concepts. This passage and the rest of the bible is talking about a person, a being. You cannot reconcile the scriptures any other way. In fact, this passage directly addressed those that say God does not exist by stating that to draw near to God we must first believe He exists. So the onus is on us to believe not for God to perform some act first, although I’m not saying He never did or ever will. Many of the miracles we read about in the scriptures are so that people would believe in an all powerful God.
Anyway you slice it, you too believe in an unseen something which you call the “father within” that requires faith. So actually in this respect you are not far from the truth. You seem to have a measure of respect for Jesus which is a good start. The only real issue I see is for you to come to a revelation of Jesus Christ and Who He really is. You must dismiss the idea of the supernatural as magic and superstition. The economy of God resides in the unseen as even Paul said, we only see through a mirror dimly but then face to face. This speaks of our incomplete knowledge that one day will come to completion. I would expect God to know a few things I don’t…..otherwise He can’t be called God.
Cheers !
Naz
LikeLike
October 29, 2014 at 12:04 pm
Leo, one more thing about Faith…..
It’s the object of your faith that makes the difference not faith itself. Everyone exercises a measure of faith in normal human existence. This is not the faith I am talking about. I am talking about faith in a real, live person, Jesus Christ.
Naz
LikeLike
October 30, 2014 at 10:04 am
Your argument is with Jesus not me. Jesus said that the Kingdom is within you so for you to say he was wrong and the supernatural God is somewhere outside, something external to man is a fallacy and an argument against Jesus. You can hop all over the bible and find the supernatural and magic miracles but if you can’t communicate what Jesus says about the matter then you do him lip service only and your heart is with church dogma and supernatural caca del toro.
All the Faith aspects you went on about Enoch taken up to heaven bodily and his body disappeared etc is speaking about a supernatural God that is pushed down the throats of the gullible by church dogma, things that never happened things that only the imagination conjured up. Cain killing Abel over Abel’s offering is mere conjecture…who was there to record such events? Nobody!
I laugh at your calamity all the way to the Kingdom that you foolishly believe is somewhere outside the human experience. You miss the Jesus message so completely I am awed because I “got it” when I was 12 years old, and you, now an old status quo Christian soldier, still “don’t get it.” You have no self-imagination but adhere to the imagination of stoneage religionists who did not understand the weather cycle and had to invent the “Rain God” to explain it. OMG . What’s up with that?
As for Faith, ” ……..being the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” is one of the most ludicrous statements in religious philosophy: all it is really saying is that if you HOPE for it, BELIEVE it, WISH for it, in religious speake means that a HOPE, WISH, BELIEF, is evidence for the existence of your GENIE and you can’t get more magical in Disneyland than that! On the face of even an elementary school child not already indoctrinated into the fantasy world of religon would tell you that this Santa Claus/Tooth Fairy claim is worse than merely useless and flying horses don’t exist and will not take you to heaven.
If you already know everything I tell you that you accept and reject everything I say you don’t agree with and if you can’t learn anything more than that I pity you for your obstinacy and Jesus is not smiling on you because you are lodged in the myth, magic, miracle and asleep-rut of the Clergy who condemned Jesus for saying to them the same things that I am saying to you.
Arguing with me is like arguing with Jesus; face it, that’s just the way it is. I quote Jesus and you bounce all over the Bible(everywhere but Jesus) to find scripture dispute Jesus’ word. I suggest that you speak to yourself in the mirror and nod at yourself for everything you already know because you cannot learn anything more than you already know since what you know is everything there is to know and with your “faith” you will be sure that is all the evidence you will ever need. lol
Have a nice supernatural crash landing in Eternity Naz because your plane has lost an important engine.
LikeLike
October 30, 2014 at 10:41 am
“Have a nice supernatural crash landing in Eternity Naz because your plane has lost an important engine.”
I’m doing just fine, my engines are still running, better than ever actually. You seem a little ticked Leo….
Sorry that I frustrate you because I reject your doctrine. I don’t reject everything I here from others, rather the opposite. I have learned a lot from people like Jason on this blog and others that have had greater spiritual insight than myself.
As for this blog, it’s supposed to be about intellectual philosophical discussion. But this is what I’m reading…
“Arguing with me is like arguing with Jesus; face it, that’s just the way it is.”
“Actually I can trace my ancestry back to Jesus and Mary Magdalene.”
Talk about “caca del toro” !
Even more than that, you keep committing the “cardinal sin” of accepting and rejecting scriptures as authentic at your own whim, as you did again in your previous post.
“Cain killing Abel over Abel’s offering is mere conjecture…who was there to record such events? Nobody!”
You can’t have a biblical conversation and keep doing this, it voids everything. I think this conversation is done.
Touché El Toro……… 🙂
Naz
LikeLike
October 30, 2014 at 11:00 am
What’s the difference between The Accusation and The Rebuttal? Any difference?
Post 55 – Naz:
“At least now you know your not alone and can trace your ancestors to 1 John.”
Post 56 – SonofMan:
“Actually I can trace my ancestry back to Jesus and Mary Magdalene.”
LikeLike
October 30, 2014 at 1:04 pm
I can trace my ancestry back to the first homo sapiens who roamed the plains of east central Africa about 190,000 years ago, but I fail to see how any of the past 15 posts address the question of the requirement of God for morality. What am I missing?
LikeLike
October 30, 2014 at 2:16 pm
Bob:
I get your point and sorry for the back and forth with Naz but I cannot answer your question.
I don’t think God is a requirement for morality or for anything except, making money, mass control, madrassas, mega churches and mental illness.
Maybe Naz can offer some thoughts from the Ancient Magicians why God is a requirement for morality.
LikeLike
October 31, 2014 at 2:06 am
SonofMan, no apologies necessary. Just trying to keep things on track.
LikeLike
November 4, 2014 at 4:30 pm
The views of modern society regarding religion, and specifically Christianity, are in a state of great flux. Beliefs that were once sacrosanct are now being called into question. Is the day soon coming when the majority of people in society will view “the Holy Bible” as immoral and evil?
Imagine if your grade schooler brings home a few books from the school library with these titles:
1. Giving the Death Sentence to People who eat Forbidden Fruit
2. Drowning Millions of Children for the Crimes of their Parents
3. How to Murder First Born Children in their Beds
4. The Genocidal Annihilation of Evil Foreign Peoples is Justifiable
You would be horrified that your local school would allow such books in a library for children, wouldn’t you? But yet fundamentalist Christians would love to have the Holy Bible in the same library and would not bat an eye at the bloody, barbaric violence and twisted justifications for that violence and immoral behavior contained therein.
“Oh but that was in another Era of time. It is a mystery why it was necessary for God to do these shocking acts, but we must simply accept by faith that God had good, moral reasons for his actions in the Old Testament.”
Ok…so we will sweep all that barbaric behavior under the rug because Jesus has changed everything. All that bloody violence is no longer necessary because Jesus has ushered in the Era of Grace. We now are to love our neighbor as ourselves…not slaughter him in righteous anger.
But there is one little problem: Slavery.
I don’t see how putting shackles around the neck, ankles, and wrists of your neighbor and calling him your property is in any way, shape, or form “loving your neighbor as yourself”. And I also don’t see why a loving, just, Jesus would not have condemned this evil institution, which he did not, nor why the Apostle Paul would condone it, which he very much did.
Any book that condones slavery is evil and should not be in any school library…nor on your child’s nightstand.
LikeLike
November 4, 2014 at 6:36 pm
Idon T. Buyit:
Okay I get it. But I think that not everything Jesus condemned or was against got into the bible. Obviously anything that contradicted church dogma was not allowed into the bible. Almost certainly Jesus condemned the hatred against people who questioned religion and religious values especially about those who did not believe in the supernatural gods of the clergy; and most especially, Jesus did not condone the religious community that hated the atheist community, of which jesus was the first out of the atheist closet to confront the religious world he testified against because their works were evil. John 7:1 After these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for He did not want to walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him.
On the other hand, slavery was a way of life that took the place of jails; in fact, rather than jails people who broke the law were reprimanded by enslavement because there were no jails.
PLease tell me if I am wrong about that.
LikeLike
November 4, 2014 at 7:15 pm
The sad thing, friend, is that you are looking for reasons to excuse the Bible’s support of this evil institution. If the Bible is simply a book of history, written by the Church, then the fact that slavery is not condemned is at least understandable, but still not excusable.
If Jesus is a loving, compassionate, all-powerful God, he could have said something against this evil practice. Only the abuse of children is more evil than slavery. Jesus said nothing.
The God of the OT said that it was perfectly moral to have slaves, just don’t knock their teeth or their eye out. If you believe in the Trinity then this was Jesus making these slave rules.
It is inexcusable, friend. Are you really sure that a just God would act this way, or is it possible that your Holy Book was not written by a God, but by Iron Age ignoramuses.
LikeLike
November 4, 2014 at 7:30 pm
Sam Harris is very compelling.
LikeLike
November 5, 2014 at 6:38 am
1. Giving the Death Sentence to People who eat Forbidden Fruit
2. Drowning Millions of Children for the Crimes of their Parents
3. How to Murder First Born Children in their Beds
4. The Genocidal Annihilation of Evil Foreign Peoples is Justifiable
Mr. Buyit, these examples above that you propose as titles for books is a gross manipulation of the events written in the bible. You quickly make blanket statements without any reference to the historical events and the context in which these events took place.
Using your logic, I suppose it was immoral for the Allies to defeat Hitler in the WW II. We should have just “turned the other cheek” and allow the Nazis to rule the world.
If someone broke into your house and tried to kill your wife and children, what would you do ? Would you defend your family ? How far would you go to save the lives of your family ? Would you kill if you had to ? Is that murder ?
Think about it………
Naz
LikeLike
November 5, 2014 at 11:22 am
Dear Naz,
Let’s look at these four “book titles in reverse order:
1. The Genocidal Annihilation of Evil Foreign Peoples is Justifiable
I did not say that all wars are immoral. I believe the war to defeat Hitler and the Nazis was very moral. However, in our war against the Nazis we did not set out to wipe the German people off of the face of the earth; every man, woman, teenager, elderly man and woman, children, and infants. No crime of the German people merited complete genocide of the German nation. Severely punished, yes. Annihilation, no. If the Allies had gone through the German cities with orders to slice to pieces everyone, including little babies in their mother’s arms, until not one German was left, that would have been as immoral as the barbaric crimes of the Nazis.
The genocide of the Midianites and the Amelekites cannot be justified under “that is what happens in war”. Targeting children for slaughter is NEVER moral.
2. How to Murder First Born Children in their Beds
What did the little Egyptian children do to merit their murder in the middle of the night in their beds? Even if their parents were guilty of horrific crimes, moral people do not kill children for the crimes of their parents.
What makes this crime against humanity even worse is that the Hebrew/Christian god forced this situation. Multiple times the Egyptian pharaoh relented and was willing to let the Hebrews go, but the Hebrew God hardened his heart. There is absolutely no moral excuse for this barbaric act of infanticide.
3. Drowning Millions of Children for the Crimes of their Parents
Once again, moral people do not drown children for the crimes of their parents. What is worse, the Christian God knew that the adults he created would “sin” and create them anyway, allowing them to produce little children, knowing all along he was going to drown all of them.
This is not the act of a loving, just God. This is the action of a sick, immoral psychopath. Moral people do not kill children for the crimes of their parents.
4. Giving the Death Sentence to People who eat Forbidden Fruit
Now the big one. All the suffering endured by mankind, including little children, for millennia, is due to one horrific, unimaginable crime: eating forbidden fruit. How ridiculous.
Would any moral person inflict starvation, thirst, disease, physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, and murder of little children just because their parents ate some stolen FRUIT???
The whole story is preposterous. If any other religion had come up with this tall tale we would laugh at it. But no, educated, thinking, 21st century Americans believe this silly story to be the inerrant Truth. It isn’t true, Naz. There is zero evidence that it is true. It is a fable invented by scientifically ignorant, superstitious, Iron Age, middle-eastern goat-herders. It is not true, and it is NOT moral.
LikeLike
November 5, 2014 at 11:29 am
Idon T. Buyit
The Trinity is man’s attempt at reconciling the natural man with the supernatural, the created caricatures.
I would go a step further back fromthe Iron age and call it from the stone age since most of the Iron age compilation was recorded or passed down word of mouth to the following generations.
Jesus was not part of any caricature God creation but religious men following Jesus sought to bring him into their suernatural folds.
I think that we must remember that the scriptures were edited, revised, embellished and in some cases fabricated to slant toward the Church Dogma.
When Jesus went to the synagogue and read from the Boook of Isaiah:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
I submit that this would most certainly include the “captives” of slavery; to “set at liberty” the “oppressed”.(slavery)
Do you really think Jesus was talking about everyone else except slaves? I don’t think so.
Furthermore in the days of the early (OT) bible accounts, anyone could be put to death for denying or speaking blasphemy against any of the first four Commandments because they were religious decrees; the other six notwithstanding; however, when the bible details death to homosexuals, don’t suffer a witch to live, adulterers to be stoned; also religious decrees, these are completely wrong and are against everything we believe about human dignity and human rights.
It is worth noting that the only mention by Jesus about any of the Leviticus sins is the adulteress who was being prepared for stoning death and quite frankly it is stunning that this story was even allowed into the New Testament but one must stretch the imagination to say that by ommission of direct commentary, Jesus condoned slavery. As far as I know the only thing Jesus ever wrote was something in the dust as he was being badgered to speak about the stoning of the adulteress; for all anyone knows Jesus could have written. “Slavery is a crime against humanity”.
In John 21:25 “There are so many other things Jesus did. If they were all written down, each of them, one by one, I can’t imagine a world big enough to hold such a library of books.”
It seems to me there is enough room in John’s scripture to give the benefit of the doubt to Jesus, as a person, as a human being, as one who began his ministry lambasting religion and all the clergy for the deceit and poison they demonstrated to the masses by their behavior but certainly not as most religions have done, sucking Jesus into their idea of the supernatural God that the ancients created when they sacrificed children to the gods before they knew about the rain cycle!
Prove your obedience to God and kill your child! How smart is that? But the bible recounts it/
LikeLike
November 5, 2014 at 12:00 pm
The passage in Isaiah refers to the nation of Israel who were held as captives in Babylon. This passage has nothing to do with anyone else except one small group of people thinking only of THEIR misery and plight. There is nothing in this passage that extends Yahweh’s promises of blessing to the pagan Gentiles.
I find it amazing that the author or authors of the Bible spend so much time and ink worrying about what a good Jew/Christian does with his penis…and very little attention to what he does to his slave.
“Just don’t break your slave’s teeth or put out his or her eye.”
If the Bible had just recently been written, we would think that it had been written by some barbarian in the back country of some primitive country. We would ban it from our children’s libraries and nightstands.
LikeLike
November 6, 2014 at 8:26 am
Gary, I can tell you feel very strongly about this. I totally understand where you’re coming from. This is a normal reaction to those that don’t know the Lord.
You are passing judgement on a God that you don’t even believe exists, or at least you don’t believe that any good and just God could do such things, therefore the scriptural account is false? Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not sure where you stand on the historicity and truth of the scriptures and your belief in God or gods ?
For the sake of argument, I will assume that you believe that God exists and He actually did these things that are written in the bible.
Instead of trying to “defend” God and offer explanations or rationalizations for His actions, I want to point you to a passage in the book of Job that I think goes deeper into this question of suffering and the morality of God.
Job 42:1-6
Then Job answered the LORD and said:
“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.’
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
As you probably know, Job suffered horribly and you can say He was inflicted this suffering by God. At the end of his trial, Job admitted that he did not understand and lacked complete knowledge of God. His final attitude was one of humility and he finally was able to comprehend how great God was and how puny he was in the grand scheme of things.
With that said, I think your comments regarding God’s morality is measuring Him by human standards and placing human restrictions on what He can or should not do. You fail to realize that you do not have complete understanding of God and His purposes. Because of that you quickly jump to conclusions and make your judgments on God’s morality.
God as God is sovereign and He will do what He wants. But at the same time, we know that He is just and we are not. While there are many examples of God’s judgment in the scriptures, you failed to mention all the examples of God’s mercy and compassion on those that did not deserve it. So before we pass judgement we need to realize that we are passing judgment on the Creator of the Universe. This is not a position we should be taking as mere mortals. Simply put, “we are out of our league”. This is not a cop out, but something we need to consider when we engage ourselves in an intellectual argument. For example, I’m not a rocket scientist, so I think I should think twice before I criticize and pass judgments on NASA and their failures in the space program.
I have found that those that are critical of God’s morality based on the judgments He has meted out, have already rejected Him anyway and this is just a way in which they arrogantly and pompously justify themselves and their own beliefs as we saw in the Sam Harris video, which by the way was a total mockery and disrespect to the God of the Universe. I don’t think that anybody who believes God exists could talk this way honestly. It is because of Sam Harris’ unbelief that he speaks this way about God and treats the whole thing like a big charade.
I’m sure this response will be unsatisfactory to you, but I will not engage in a futile argument about God’s judgments because I don’t need to defend Him for His actions. He is God and no purpose of Him will be thwarted by you or I.
Again, I don’t know if you are a disciple of Sam Harris or where exactly you stand in your beliefs, but I thought it through and even though I could have given arguments for God’s morality in His judgments, I decided to take a different approach and try to look at this from a larger perspective. You can see a lot more of the city when you stand on the hill than you can when you’re in the middle of traffic on main street.
Cheers !
Naz
LikeLike
November 6, 2014 at 10:53 am
Gary:
the passage from Isaiah that Jesus quoted was quoted IN Jesus DAY FOR Jesus time, not for Babylon. Quotes that make a point are not bygone memories that have no applicable value for current times; I quote the same scripture for the tiimes that are at hand regarding my own person mission and that quote is just as valid now as 2000 years ago because peope are still blind, held in thrall by the tyranny of religion, still held captive by the nonsene supernatural.
regarding the penis comment: Sam Harris put it this way: “God that our neighbors believe in is essentially an invisible person, is a creator deity, who created the universe to have a relationship with one species of primate. Lucky us. And he’s got galaxy upon galaxy to attend to but he’s especially concerned with what we do, and he’s especially concerned with what we do when naked.”
LikeLike
November 6, 2014 at 11:07 am
The cosmos is unfolding as it will and we humans are smaller than the fruit flies that pester us and we have no control of the cosmos nor do we have control should the sun nova but we can easily acknowledge these cosmic events without thinking that we are held in special staus because the cosmos is personl for us and loves us more that the fruit flies in the banana peel or the virus frozen in caribou dung in the arctic. If it makes one feel better to describe the Cosmos as a personal Deity with whom we have report through prayer that is only answered with the same bias as it was prayed; by the bias of the beholder; however, in the days of the sun about to nova, where will puny humans be? out in the universe looking for another home of safety? from the wrath of the Cosmos or the wrath of a personal Cosmos because of the sins of the world?
Think outside the BOOK BOX, outside the ancient imagination who knew nothing of the cosmos and were more amazed with a burning bush than ht ebillions of galaxies they were living amonst suspeded in space by forces that only current humanity can understand without comprehensin of where it is unfolding or how why….etc…..live ith love for your fellow humans and try to afford them heavenly things as best you can instead of fabricating another name for the Cosmos and call it you personal God….How smart is that? Of course you have nothing more than your own ego to overcome but that is so difficult to shed.
LikeLike
November 6, 2014 at 12:14 pm
Leo, it’s a sad commentary to think we are no more relevant than “fruit flies in a banana peel” ….
This is total despair and hopelessness. I don’t know how you can go on, I know that I would have a hard time knowing that I’m just waiting to be snuffed out one day like a bug on the windshield of my car. How do you do it?
Nobody is fabricating anything, there is a personal God and He loves us, that’s all I can tell you….
“And now abides faith, hope and love….and the greatest of these is love.”
Naz
LikeLike
November 6, 2014 at 12:54 pm
Hi Naz,
I really appreciate the tone of our discussion. Too often skeptics and Christians just yell at each other instead of listening.
Here is my story: I grew up fundamentalist Baptist. I repented of all my sins and accepted Jesus Christ into my heart to be my Lord and Savior at age nine…and again in my early teens…just to be sure. In my early 20’s my family moved to Southern California where we attended a non-denominational, evangelical mega-church (which taught Baptist doctrine) for several years. In my mid to late 20’s I stopped going to church because I didn’t “feel” God inside me and he didn’t seem to listen when I prayed.
I remained unchurched until I was married in my forties. I started attending liberal churches. When we had children, I started looking again at more conservative/fundamentalist churches, something closer to what I had believed as a child and teenager. We joined a conservative, orthodox Lutheran church. I became very involved in the church. I was happy and content in my orthodox Christian belief system. I read the Bible and prayed regularly.
One day I was surfing the internet and came across an atheist’s website. He was a former fundamentalist Baptist/evangelical pastor! I was shocked! I started to engage him in conversation, and also tried to bring him back to the Faith, to belief in Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and Savior. However, this man pointed out to me some very big assumptions in my Christian belief system which I had never thought of, such as:
1. Just because there is evidence for a Creator does not mean that the Creator is the Christian God, Yahweh.
2. Our current Bibles contain thousands of scribe alterations, most of them inconsequential, but a couple of them are shocking. Why did God allow scribes copying the original Scriptures to change, delete, add, or alter his inerrant, holy, Word?
3. How do we know that the books in the New Testament are the Word of God? Is there a verse that tells us? Did Jesus give us a list? Did Paul?
4. Do we really have any verifiable eyewitness testimony for the Resurrection or is it all hearsay and legend.
At first I fought him tooth and nail. I fought him for four months. At the very end I had to admit that there are no verifiable eyewitness accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus in the Bible or anywhere else. All we have are four anonymous first century texts full of discrepancies and contradictions. The only thing I had left to attach my faith to was the testimony of the Apostle Paul: why would a devout Jewish rabbi convert to the religion he so hated unless he really saw a resurrected dead man?
But after studying the five Bible passages that discuss Paul’s conversion, I had to admit that Paul never says he saw a resurrected body. All Paul says is that he saw a light…and that this event occurred in a “heavenly vision”. Vision are not reality.
And as for the improbability that a Jewish rabbi would convert to a hated religion, there is Muslim cleric in Israel today who not too many years ago was an ardent Zionist Jewish settler and rabbi, intent on ridding the Muslims from Jewish land. Strange conversions occur. They do not prove that the new religion is true and inerrant.
I was broken hearted, but I saw my Christian Faith was nothing more than an ancient superstition that had been modified in the first century by Jesus, a good man, but a dead man. There is zero evidence that this first century Jew is alive and the Ruler of the Universe.
LikeLike
November 6, 2014 at 2:19 pm
Wow !!
Gary, I’m almost in tears …. 😦
I need some time before I can respond….take care
Naz
LikeLike
November 7, 2014 at 1:40 pm
Gary, thanks for sharing your story, I say this respectfully, but you’ve been led astray by a master deception that has taken many including myself (almost). I believe there are 2 main reasons why this happens to believers:
1) The gospel is not authentically presented or understood. What begins with a message of grace degenerates into a works based, performance based, religion-based en-devour that sucks the life out of the believer.
2) The believer is not educated or informed in any sort of apologetics that would help him defend what he believes. Usually this is lack of knowledge in areas of textual criticism and the historicity of the scriptures.
I noted your points below and will comment on them in a later post. I think I have some information and comments that may help you revisit these assumptions, I hope.
1. Just because there is evidence for a Creator does not mean that the Creator is the Christian God, Yahweh.
2. Our current Bibles contain thousands of scribe alterations, most of them inconsequential, but a couple of them are shocking. Why did God allow scribes copying the original Scriptures to change, delete, add, or alter his inerrant, holy, Word?
3. How do we know that the books in the New Testament are the Word of God? Is there a verse that tells us? Did Jesus give us a list? Did Paul?
4. Do we really have any verifiable eyewitness testimony for the Resurrection or is it all hearsay and legend.
Naz
LikeLike
November 8, 2014 at 7:40 pm
Naz,
Do you believe that the common man can sit down with the New Testament and understand what God is saying to mankind or does the common man need a trained theologian or pastor to really understand it?
LikeLike
November 8, 2014 at 9:33 pm
Gary:
Interesting question about if common man can sit down and understand the New Testament. I grew up in a small Catholic Parish of about 200 families in our village; everyone in the community was catholic. In our house we had a pulpit standing upright in the living room with a huge Bible on top, opened. The thickness of the Bible was about 4 or 5 inches, the cover was about 12 inches high by 9 inches wide and it lay opened about half way, as though it was ready for reading; the spread was about a foot and a half wide. A huge, prominent looking character of righteousness. But the oddest thing is that nobody ever read it and it was only there as a piece of show furniture, regularly dusted. When I enquired about the reason I was told that common man could not understand the Bible because it was too mysterious and the lay man was discouraged from reading anything from it unless you were following along with a Priest’s reading.
The priests, we were told, were the only people able to read the Bible with understanding and that’s why they sermonize it in church every Sunday. The Priests were able to understand it because they all had to go to college and get a degree and take special theology courses in the seminary which gave them the mastery of the mysteries that God was speaking and communicated it to the commoners. And that was just the fact and the way of life that nobody questioned; certainly not children and all the adults agreed with the preists no matter what the sermon was about, it was always right.
Life and God was not complicated by wrong interpretations and so the preaching of religous superstition remained the same way when I grew up as it was two thousand years ago when Jesus grew up, as it was when Moses grew up and all through the days of Scribes and Pharisees that has spilled over when generation after generation grew up.
Today all religions still preach the supernatural, the religious superstition of myth, magic and miracles with the same fervent nonsense sincerity they preached when Jesus railed against the clergy for deceiving the masses with ritualisms of sabbath observance, resting on the seventh day as God did after the creation, tithing, religious holidays, prayers and chants etc., etc.
And of course anyone who challenged the status quo was ostracized, put on trial, made an example of and worse, excommunicated, sentenced on pain of death if they did not recant their blasphemy and heresy; some of the more well known blasphemers: Jesus, Luther, Galileo, Henry the VIII and less well known, myself and a few other commentators here on Jason’s WordPress Blog and one of the fastest growing forces of common sense in the world today, Atheism to the chagrine of the religous world whio will fight anout it every inch of the way as the change to the New Heaven and New Earth takes place before their very eyes but cannot see it:
Mat 13:13: Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
Mark 4:11-12: He told them, “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom—you know how it works. But to those who can’t see it yet, everything comes in stories, creating readiness, nudging them toward receptive insight. These are people—
Whose eyes are open but don’t see a thing,
Whose ears are open but don’t understand a word,
Who avoid making an about-face and getting forgiven.”
They continue on their repetitious journey about superstition and supernatural just as the Scribes and Pharisees. Every fanatical street preacher says the same thing as the preacher in the Mega churches, the blind following the blind without exception they all lack perception.
LikeLike
November 9, 2014 at 3:31 am
I don’t know. I do believe that God is the basis for morality, however, there is such a thing as respect; as well as law and order. Dignity is one of those things that is encoded into ones DNA, or at least the feelings of shame and depravity that enter in when it is lost. This being said, I feel that to some degree one could have a moral code and not believe in God. It may fall short of any divine spiritual revelation, and it may be rudimentary, at best. But while God is basis for life, I think it may be fair to presume that at least in some ways, life is the basis for morality…
LikeLike
November 9, 2014 at 7:50 am
Yoga Pants
Is lululemon pants the same as yoga pants?
What’s wrong with the Cosmos being the Cosmos by any other name? Why does it need to be a personal God thing? Is not the “brain” a small Cosmos with neurons, like little cosmic novae, firing all the time it is active? Father Cosmos in the human brain and in all brains including, parasites, bacteria and viruses. Parasites must have a brain if they can crawl from the sheep dung onto the ants and climb inside the ant, go to the ant’s brain where the fluke parasite cause the ants to climb up the grass blades especially in the early morning dew when the sheep are grazing; the sheep ingest the parasites through the ants ingested by clinging to the blades of grass in their unusual, bizarre behavior and the reproduction cycle takes place inside the sheep’s stomach until the next generation parasites excrete through the intestines when the new generation parasites wait for the ants to crawl by so the parasites can jump at the ant chance to continue the cycle again and again.
It seems to me that takes brains, tiny cosmos firing inside the tiny creatures operating the fluke parasitic cycle of life. Is the Father Cosmos in the parasite brain really any different than the Father Cosmos in the human brain? Is it just that humans want to personalize the Cosmos with names like Zeus, God, Allah, Jehovah, Yaweh, Apollo, Thor so they all can claim superiority like mind parasites out to divide humanity into national cults and sections with their own version of warlike parasites vying with each other for constant dominance?
LikeLike
November 9, 2014 at 8:10 am
Naz:
Morality with or without God is a mere matter of perception, like the term Divine itself: After conception (fertilization) we call human destruction an “Abortion”; for chickens we call it an “Omelette”. And I find it hard to argue with that point of view.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 5:57 am
Leo, your omellete analogy clearly answers the question of whether God is necessary for morality.
Naz
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 7:07 am
Naz:
Eggactly
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 5:34 pm
Buddhism falsifies the claim that God is required for morality, as does the Ethic of Reciprocity, which predates the authors of the texts of the Abrahamic religions by about 2000 years.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 5:50 pm
Bob:
Buddhism is the only religion that does not have a God so where you got the “…claim that God is required for morality..”, I can only guess.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 5:52 pm
Bob:
Or did I just misread what you said…Maybe I did…..not that the claim is God of Buddhism but that faslifying the claim is Buddhism.
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 3:26 am
Sonofman: Buddhism teaches a code of conduct based on moral standards just as rigorous as those of the Abrahamic religions, while at the same time denying the existence of a creator, personal God. Thus, the claim that God is required for morality is false for the Buddhist and thus false in general.
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 6:11 am
“Do you believe that the common man can sit down with the New Testament and understand what God is saying to mankind or does the common man need a trained theologian or pastor to really understand it?”
Gary, yes I believe the “common man” can understand what God is saying to mankind. I believe when one begins to put faith in God and sees from the eyes of faith, understanding will come. That said, there are those, not necessarily pastors or theologians, that do have greater understanding and insight which can help us to gain a better understanding. Unfortunately there are also those that will lead people astray. This is why it’s critical to have a solid grasp of the basics so we don’t get led astray by human error. I think we make things too complicated sometimes which has led people to think the bible is difficult to understand and that they need someone to teach them. The scripture says that the “Spirit will lead us into all truth…”. This is not some mystical statement but I think it rightly describes how a believer continues to gain understanding and wisdom throughout his lifetime.
I think in a lifetime we will go through many stages of understanding. In my own experience, I’ve been through 3 paradigm changes of understanding. Starting from Catholicism to Pentecostalism and to now to what I simply call, Jesus. I think once you eliminate the “isms” you’ll be on track. Any over dependency on the “ministry” or any person is bordering on cult like behavior.
Naz
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 6:26 am
Bob, I agree that belief in God is not required to behave with good morals. I think the thrust of this post was more of an ontological question rather than a practical one.
The argument is that without God, there is no ontological grounding for morality. in other words, without a Divine Lawgiver there is no basis for right and wrong.
My only comment on this is that morality should not be the focus for upholding the necessity or existence of God. At best, our judgments are biased and limited when judging morals. We can’t see the heart. The message of the gospel is about a heart change not a behavior change. This is the difference between the message of “Christ in us” and religion.
While I would agree that ontologically morality doesn’t make sense without God, for Christians to argue that God is required for “good behavior” is fruitless since we cannot judge behavior absolutely anyways, and more importantly, making behavior the focus of the gospel message is misleading and does a great disservice to the true message of Christ.
Naz
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 9:58 am
Leo, correct me if I’m wrong, but by your “eggactly” statement you are saying that it is morally acceptable to treat unborn human babies as eggs at the supermarket.
So abortion is the same as making omelettes ?
Naz
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 10:20 am
NAZ:
Ontological is one of those words people use to obfuscate meaning or confuse the reader or to appear intellectual or educated because the word itself has no particular definition, only as a general meaning that describes an entire branch of philosophy. So saying the thrust of a post is an ontological question, what question is that?
Without some philosophy courses in Ontology the term “ontological” in a sentence without explanation to the common man, is meaningless.
Examples of ontological questions include:
What is existence, i.e. what does it mean for a being to be?
Is existence a property?
Is existence a genus or general class that is simply divided up by specific differences?
Which entities, if any, are fundamental?
Are all entities objects?
How do the properties of an object relate to the object itself?
What features are the essential, as opposed to merely accidental attributes of a given object?
How many levels of existence or ontological levels are there? And what constitutes a “level”?
What is a physical object?
Can one give an account of what it means to say that a physical object exists?
Can one give an account of what it means to say that a non-physical entity exists?
What constitutes the identity of an object?
When does an object go out of existence, as opposed to merely changing?
Do beings exist other than in the modes of objectivity and subjectivity, i.e. is the subject/object split of modern philosophy inevitable?
And then you say that ontological question is not practical question. While it is true that “behaving” good and “being” good are not mutually exclusive necessarily but necessarily discerned to determine “truely” good as opposed to “behaviorly”good such as Jesus meant by “behavior” and “being”when in his indictment against the clergy said, Matt 23:
25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
AND
“While I would agree that ontologically morality doesn’t make sense without God….”
WELL WHY WOULDN’T IT MAKE SENSE? It makes sense to millions of buddhists and others, and to me so why not to you. I understand Jesus without the supernatural while you do not so do we follow the same Jesus, I’m afraid not.
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 11:04 am
Gary, a response to your 5 points that “convinced” you to reject Jesus Christ:
1. Just because there is evidence for a Creator does not mean that the Creator is the Christian God, Yahweh.
Naz: OK, that’s fine, I agree with that statement. You can’t stop at creation, you must go further. If you believe in a Creator then at least you have faith in the supernatural. The bible is abundant with scriptures about the Creator and His awesome power to create. Certainly Yahweh is not ruled out as God given the scriptural account. So this point is mere speculation based on the fact there are other religions with other gods. It is no secret that humanity has been inventing gods since the beginning, the scriptures themselves testify to this historical fact, so what ? I don’t see how this point carries any weight to deter you from the God of the bible.
2. Our current Bibles contain thousands of scribe alterations, most of them inconsequential, but a couple of them are shocking. Why did God allow scribes copying the original Scriptures to change, delete, add, or alter his inerrant, holy, Word?
Naz: As you stated, most of the textual variants are “inconsequential”. I would like to know which ones you think are “shocking”. I don’t know why God allowed variants in the text. Obviously they are there and if God is smart enough to create the universe, surely He would make sure the content of the written word was preserved so we could have the truth. The question I think you have is in this concept of “inerrancy”. Who said there wouldn’t be errors in the copying process, God inspired the original writers as they were moved by the Spirit. The bible is a very human book, it should not be looked at some mystical holy grail like in the Indian Jones movies. The book is not the focus, the person of God is the focus. We’re not supposed to worship a book. As for the book itself, it is an extraordinary work of antiquity in that there is more manuscript evidence for the scriptures than for any other historical work. If you reject the scriptures as accurate, then you must also reject every other historical work as well. Here is a link that better explains what I’m trying to say.
http://www.str.org/articles/is-the-new-testament-text-reliable
I don’t see how the textual variants deter from the main message, do you? “Christ died and rose again, according to the scriptures …..”
3. How do we know that the books in the New Testament are the Word of God? Is there a verse that tells us? Did Jesus give us a list? Did Paul?
Naz: The writings that we know as the New Testament is a compilation of books and letters that circulated in 1st century Palestine. Most of the text is written my eye-witnesses and those close to the events surrounding Christ. By the time the “canon of scripture” was decided, the books that comprise the New Testament was already in wide circulation. So it was quite easy to determine which books were included and which were not. For example, there are some books in the Catholic Apocrypha that clearly don’t belong as part of the scriptures due their suspect authorship and other good reasons.
See http://carm.org/why-apocrypha-not-in-bible
Aside from that, Peter affirmed that Paul’s writings were inspired scripture in 2Peter 3:15-16.
2Pe 3:15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him,
2Pe 3:16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.
Your question is fairly general here regarding the New Testament. Is there anything specific that troubles you concerning the New Testament ? Like I said, it is a work of antiquity that cannot be ignored.
4. Do we really have any verifiable eyewitness testimony for the Resurrection or is it all hearsay and legend.
Naz: There are some good books about the evidence for the resurrection of Christ.
The Case for the resurrection of Jesus (by Gary Habermas)
The Case for the resurrection (by Lee Strobel)
The legend theory can be disproven due to the closeness of the writings to the actual events. For example, the earliest writings are within 20 or 30 years (don’t quote me on this) or closer from the crucifixion of Jesus. This is too soon for the accounts of Christ to become a legend. As a comparison the closest writings we have of Alexander the Great is in 1st century BC. Alexander died in 323 BC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_Alexander_the_Great
Gary, I don’t know how much you looked into these things back when you switched to Atheism. I think there is more information available today as there was when you were in your 20’s. I hope you take time re-visit some of these questions you have.
Actually, I had some of the same questions when I started out my faith journey. Intellectually, I was sufficiently satisfied with the evidence and rationalizations that I have read to convince me that the scriptures and my faith in Christ is on solid ground.
There is one more element here that I didn’t mention that I think is common when one does this “switch”, that is, Emotion. From your previous posts, I detected a hint of resentment or anger in how you could not “feel” God. I don’t know to what extent emotion had in your “conversion” but in many cases it is quite common that people make rash decisions out of a troubled emotional state of mind.
Best regards,
Naz
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 11:27 am
Leo, relax………
When I use the word “ontological”, I’m saying that there is no objective “basis” outside humanity for morality without God.
Therefore with no God-compass, you can make up your own morality…..such as :
“Abortion is morally equal to making omelettes”
How foolish……..
Naz
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 11:49 am
Naz:
I answered your comment as “eggactly” because in your previous statement your made a comment: “Leo, your omellete analogy clearly answers the question of whether God is necessary for morality.”
So not knowing what you were really saying and not being able to understand what you were actually saying I could not answer anything other than to agree with whatever you were trying to say in your comment.
Of course because you were so nebulous in your comment, I gave you an answer just as nebulous while trying to agree with whatever you meant by what you said without understanding what you were trying to say because of your obfuscation which is so typical of many of your comments.
So in your following answer, Post 97, to my comment, you infer what you want and try to put your inference in my mouth..Sorry Naz but you have to stand on your own two feet and make statements you actually mean without trying to sound intellectually educated in that other subject, Theology, the expertise study in the unknowable.
Say what you mean and mean what you say; in that way everyone will understand what you want to say without trying to say what you infer others are trying to say.
Give me Christ Clear Comments(CCC) In other words, don’t give me opinions, give me revelations as I give you so you cannot possible fail to understand what I mean.
At the risk of repeating myself:
IF my comment about the analogy of abortion and omelette lead you to say my “…..omellete analogy clearly answers the question of whether God is necessary for morality.” What did you mean by that? Did it answer the question as you said “…..it clearly answers the question….”? and if so why now go into another tangent of question suggesting something you did not mean? And if you did not mean it then why did you say it without an explanation? All I said was “eggactly” a play on words meaning I agree with whatever you said although I had no idea what you were saying because you used obfuscation.
CCC please.
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 11:51 am
Naz, chill…..:
There is no objective basis inside humanity for morality with God.
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 11:54 am
Naz:
God is a supernatural caricature concept which even Jesus did not accept and only acknowledged as a futile religious concept like the healing and famines that plagued Israel of which none were supernaturally induced or supernaturally ended. For which he incurred the wrath of the congregation who tried to lead him to the brow of the hill to throw him over for the blasphmer he was in their eyes!
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 11:58 am
Naz:
With all due respect you wilol never understand the bibke of anything about Jesus by reading scripture with a supernatural slant. Impossible and you will remain in the darkened state of belief only, never ascending to the point that Jesus said the truth (of knowledge) will set you free, not belief and not true justified belief that philosophical conundrum that eludes any proper answer outside superstitious nonsense. That’s just the reality of life as Jesus tried over and over again to reveal in his messages. And for which you still don’t “get it”.
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 12:24 pm
Leo, in post 97 I asked you to “correct me if I’m wrong”…..
I was trying to ascertain what you meant by the omelet statement.
You still did not answer my question :
Is Abortion morally equal to making omelets ? Yes or No ?
Naz
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 12:31 pm
Saying that ,
“God is a supernatural caricature concept which even Jesus did not accept ..”
will laugh you out of any institution that does any serious academic study of the scriptures or antiquity itself.
Nobody in the civilized world or on this thread, believer or Atheist, thinks that Jesus did believe in God.
Naz
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 12:32 pm
Correction …..post 106
…that Jesus did NOT believe in God.
Naz
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 4:14 pm
Naz:
Does anyone here or in any Institution think that Jesus gave one hoot about what the Institutions thought? They all thought exactly the same thing as they do today, and they wanted to kill Jesus because he went against all the Institutions that preached the supernatural was something to believe in; IT WAS NOT AND IS NOT, as Jesus pointed out so often; the supernatural means NOTHING, a big fat nothing. Where is your mind that you can’t see that? You are still stuck in the Institutions of man’s approval. Unfortunately for you, you are not there yet.
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 4:29 pm
Naz:
If you wanted to know what I meant by the abortion/omelette analogy and could not figure it out yourself, you could have asked me; instead you inferred according to your myopicism; if you can’t understand anything I say then simply ask me instead of trying to put your ideas of inferrence into comments I never said. You see I am an expert in the Bible and I can give you any number of scriptures that support anything I communicate about the Bible; it’s why I interpret the Bible perfectly, like Jesus.
Look Naz,
I know you don’t want to accept it but Jesus never accepted or even talked about your supernatural God; he talked always about the Father within man. Open your mind without the supernatural slant and you’ll understand what he is saying about humanity; otherwise you’ll never understand the real Jesus, as much as you say to f0llow him and his message. You just can’t know his message through supernatural eyes. It is impossible because you are in a dimension that did not exist two thousand years ago and still does not exist and furthermore will never exist.
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 8:52 pm
Someone recently asked me what evidence I would require to believe in the Christian story again. I responded with this:
The Alleged Event:
The Sunday after Jesus crucifixion, Mary Magdalene, Mary Smith, and Salome Jones, arrive at Jesus tomb to experience a great earthquake and to find the stone rolled away and two angels sitting on the stone. Several Roman soldiers are lying on the ground in front of the tomb unconscious. The angels tell the women that Jesus has risen and that they will see him shortly.
In the city of Jerusalem, dead people are shaken out of their graves by the earthquake, and walk the streets of the city, visiting family and friends, creating terror, wonder, and pandemonium.
As the women are leaving the Garden, they see Jesus standing by the entrance. They take hold of his feet and worship him. He tells them to tell the Eleven that he will meet them shortly in the Upper Room, which he does in the mid-afternoon. He eats broiled fish with them, allows them to touch his wounds, and they discuss the events of the preceding days.
Late in the afternoon, Jesus leads them through the streets of Jerusalem, creating quite a stir as everyone in the city saw him executed just a few days earlier. He leads the disciples out to Bethany with a huge crowd following behind them, where he gives them last minute instructions about spreading the Good News to the entire world, and then levitates off the ground and disappears into the clouds in front of hundreds/thousands.
Evidence for this event:
1. Four eyewitnesses to this event each write a book, completely independent of the other three, which give identical or near identical details of the above event and the three years of Jesus ministry. The four eyewitnesses, identify themselves somewhere in their books, and state their relationship to Jesus. The author of Matthew, for instance, states that he is Matthew, sometimes called Levi, who was once a tax-collector in the city of ______ where Jesus first saw him and called him to be his disciple.
2. Roman and Jewish non-Christian sources record the great earthquake that was so strong it shook the dead out of their graves, most probably also causing severe damage to the city and loss of life. The fantastic story of the dead walking the streets of Jerusalem is spread throughout the Roman empire and recorded in multiple writings of the time. Jewish sources mention the tearing of the Temple veil that coincided with the earthquake.
3. Roman and Jewish non-Christian sources record the sighting of Jesus by hundreds (five hundred?) walking through Jerusalem with his eleven disciples (who had been in hiding) to walk the road to Bethany, where numerous Christian and non-Christian eyewitnesses state that Jesus levitated into the sky.
4. The Roman guards guarding the Tomb are executed for failing to guard the body. This event is recorded by Christian and/or non-Christian sources.
5. Several years later, Saul of Tarsus is traveling to Damascus when Jesus appears to him. Saul/Paul recounts in one of his letters exactly how Jesus’s body looked along with what Jesus said. Paul also notes in this letter than he compared the “Jesus” that he saw on the Damascus Road with the Jesus that Peter and James knew well; the description of Jesus’ height, weight, body type, hair color, eye color, and voice match exactly with that of the Jesus that Peter and James knew.
6. Numerous or at least several written testimonies from the earliest Christians beginning in at least the 70’s AD, continuing on into the subsequent century, testifying as to the authorship of the Gospels, with statements made by these Christians of first hand conversations with the authors of the Gospels and of conversations with other apostles confirming the authorship of the Gospels and the accuracy of the stories within the Gospels.
But, we don’t have this kind of evidence, do we? This is the evidence we do have for this alleged, incredible, Supernatural event:
1. Four anonymous books written decades after the event that contain major discrepancies, such as the number angels, the position of the stone, the appearance or lack of appearance of Jesus to the women in the Garden, the location of meeting the Eleven, the number of days spent with the Eleven, and the location of the Ascension.
2. Zero records from Roman, Jewish, or other non-Christian sources of these events, including the massive earthquake that shakes dead people out of their graves.
3. Saul of Tarsus says that he only saw a light in a “vision”.
4. The first reference to the alleged writers of the Gospels does not appear until the second century. It is hearsay: Papias in 130 AD writes that the “presbyter” John told Papias that John Mark, the associate of Peter, wrote a gospel of Peter’s teachings. Papias does not identify this gospel. It could be the gospel which we today call the Gospel according to Mark, or it could have been a “gospel” that has been lost or one of the non-canonical gospels we do have but for whom the authorship has been assigned by the Church to someone else. We do not know. Fifty years later in 180 AD Ireneaus assigns the four gospels we have today to two of the Apostles and to John Mark and Luke, the assistant of Paul. On what basis did Ireneaus make this decision? Does he tell us?
5. Do we have writings from the 30’s and 40’s AD which tell us what the earliest Christians believed? No. Our first writings are not until the mid 50’s with Paul. What does Paul tell us about the life of Jesus and the Resurrection? Answer: almost nothing. By the time the anonymous authors of the Gospels wrote their stories, the oral story could have dramatically changed. If the Church is right and all but John were martyred, when were they martyred? Maybe all but John were dead, and John was supposedly in eastern Asia Minor, far from Jerusalem. So if the story changed, who would point that out? Oral stories can change and be embellished within days, let alone years. Yet, Christians ask us to believe that dead men walk out of their graves and levitate into outer space based on this very, very poor evidence.
Dear Reader: If Christians want to believe this story by faith, go right ahead. But don’t tell us that you have good evidence for it because you don’t. There is as much evidence for the belief that a teapot circles the moon as there is that a first century dead man in Palestine walked out of his tomb to have a broiled fish sandwich with his fishing buddies.
This story is an ancient superstition. There is no evidence or reason to believe otherwise.
Ask yourself this question: If the above “evidence” was given to you to support the belief that Jupiter is the resurrected Lord God of the Universe, would this be enough evidence for you to believe it and dedicate your entire life to following Jupiter’s holy book?
LikeLike
November 11, 2014 at 9:09 pm
God’s will is revealed in the holy scripture. The sacred book formulates the will of God and specifies what is to be given to the clergy. Clergy become parasites.
“… All things of life are so ordered that the clergy is everywhere indispensable; at all the natural events of life, at birth, marriage, sickness, death. Not to speak of ‘sacrifice’ (meal–times)… .”
Natural values become utterly valueless. The Clergy sanctifies and bestows all value. Disobedience of God (the clergy) is ‘sin.’ Subjection to God (the clergy) is redemption. Clergy use ‘sin’ to gain and hold power.
LikeLike
November 12, 2014 at 8:00 am
Gary, I’m surprised nobody wrote about how good the fish sandwiches were ?
🙂
Naz
LikeLike
November 12, 2014 at 10:33 am
“You see I am an expert in the Bible and I can give you any number of scriptures that support anything I communicate about the Bible; it’s why I interpret the Bible perfectly, like Jesus.
Look Naz,
I know you don’t want to accept it but Jesus never accepted or even talked about your supernatural God; he talked always about the Father within man. ”
############################################################
Leo, what about these scriptures? Did the clergy put these ones in just to fool me?
Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. (Matt 18:19)
And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. (Matt 23:9)
Matt 5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Matt 5:45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
Matt 6:1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
Matt 6:9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Matt 7:11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Matt 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Matt 10:32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven,
Matt 10:33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.
Matt 12:50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Matt 16:17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
Matt 18:10 “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”
You still didn’t answer my question on the omelet analogy,
Is Abortion morally equal to making omelets from chicken eggs ? Yes or No ?
Naz
LikeLike
November 12, 2014 at 10:43 am
So, Naz, I guess that means you have no evidence to refute my assertion that there is no evidence for the Christian supernatural claims?
Do you believe all the passages you just quoted above by blind faith alone? How is that any different from the Muslim or Hindu who believes his religion’s ancient supernatural tales by blind faith alone?
LikeLike
November 12, 2014 at 11:44 am
Naz:
It is reputed that Joseph of Arimathea, sponsor of Jesus’ retreats in the desert outback, provided the best fish sandwiches from his Fish Factory and Oven-Fresh Bread Bakeries in town. Eat at Joe’s gained great admiration from his many clients by serving his franchised Pub & Restaurant operations everywhere in town.
The “Miracle is in the Taste”, his Logo read!
LikeLike
November 12, 2014 at 1:12 pm
Naz:
“……Leo, what about these scriptures? Did the clergy put these ones in just to fool me?…..”
The scriptures you provided are perfectly logical unless you look through supernatural eyes; then, you will have problems understanding almost everything in the Bible especially about Jesus. You see Naz, you think you know how to read the bible but you don’t because you’re stuck in the supernatural rat race. Jesus admits and all the scriptures you quoted confirm that the Father lives in his Kingdom (heaven) but where is his Kingdom; AKA, heaven? And oh yes if you follow through in the Lord’s Prayer Our Father who art in heaven…….it comes to your duty as a follower of Jesus message, “thy will be done ON EARTH as it is in heaven….”Why Naz, Jesus answered where the Kingdom is, very succinctly in Luke 17: 20 – 21:
“20 Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; 21 nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”
“Is Abortion morally equal to making omelets from chicken eggs ? Yes or No?” This is a question that only the questioner can answer for oneself because morality, too, is “within you” and there are varying degrees of morality among humans depending on your upbringing, religious influence, secular reality, human rights, environment and culture.
Morality is clearly individual and one man’s morality is not necessarily another man’s morality.
For example the Bible gives a perfect example of this difference when the morality “within” the Canaanite woman was different than the morality within Jesus because the Canaanite woman rebuked Jesus and in his humiliation conceded that his morality was inferior from the Canaanite woman. Of course you will try to twist the scripture around because you can’t understand Jesus as a person— as a human being—a microcosm of the whole human race possessing within himself the whole potential range of emotions, urges, fears, anxieties, appetites, physical and emotional needs, instinctual drives and reactions common to all. cultural influence notwithstanding.
24-26 From there Jesus set out for the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house there where he didn’t think he would be found, but he couldn’t escape notice. He was barely inside when a woman who had a disturbed daughter heard where he was. She came and knelt at his feet, begging for help. The woman was Greek, Syro-Phoenician by birth.(Jews were forbidden to mingle with Atheists and Jesus called her a dog) She asked him to cure her daughter.
27 He said, “Stand in line and take your turn. The children get fed first. If there’s any left over, the dogs get it.”
28 She said, “Of course, Master. But don’t dogs under the table get scraps dropped by the children and the Master’s table?”
29-30 Jesus was impressed. “You’re right! On your way! Your daughter is no longer disturbed.
Jesus actually could be construed as unkind, then Jesus would be guilty of violating one of the primary characteristics of love, since love “suffers long and is kind” (1 Corinthians 13:4).
I don’t condemn Jesus for being influenced by Jewish custom; I admire him for seeing that the woman’s morality was correct and Jesus’ was not; nevertheless, Jesus quickly corrected his abrupt unkindness; and admits the woman was right; this shows the Jesus learning curve and the wonderful humanity that can develop when the Father spirit “within” takes over and the Father’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. This was a win, win for everyone.
Now Naz, just imagine you were a Chicken at the Chicken Conference in your super-natural fantasy imagination and as Guest Speaker had to compare human abortion and the breakfast omellet analogy on moral grounds.
“…….you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together……as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, the day will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man and will not until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ”
Does a Mother Hen have love for her children like a Mother Human or does she just have some thing called instinct?
Is it moral to cut off human heads like humans cut off chicken heads? ISIS believes so.
Does not the supernatural God of the bible justify killing millions by calling it God’s judgment?
A very slippery slope does religious insanity construct in the name of Absolute Certainty. You live on that slope I’m afraid.
LikeLike
November 12, 2014 at 4:15 pm
Ah, pity those poor Buddhists, living their lives these past 2500 years by the 5, 8 or 10 precepts, believing that a belief in God inhibits their ability to achieve spiritual fulfillment, apparently completely unaware that it was Naz’ One True God that was responsible for the ontological basis of their moral code. They must be delusional. Or, maybe, Naz can only see through the prism of his own belief system.
LikeLike
November 13, 2014 at 11:23 pm
Naz: The Simplicity.
The son and the FAther; IT’s LIKE, WE CAN’T GO ANYWHERE WIThOUT EACH OTHER.
If you can’t understand the concept you’re at a disadvantage.
LikeLike
November 14, 2014 at 7:42 am
Gary, thanks for your detailed reply. My fish sandwich remark was just for some comedic relief. I tend to do that from time to time to take a pause.
Your assertion that I have no “evidence” is correct. I have no new evidence that we both don’t already have. The evidence we have is from antiquity, we have the new testament writings and some other non-biblical writings that describe the life of Jesus, his death, resurrection and the Christian movement in 1st century Palestine. Although the evidence you would have liked to have is not there, that is inconsequential to the argument. We can’t write history or assume there should be something more written about this event or that event. It is what it is and everyone has the same material available to them. The absence of the evidence you would like to see is irrelevant to the truthfulness of the historical accounts.
The question is then, is the data we have from history enough to say that it is reasonable to say that Jesus died and rose again. I think based on the historical writings of the new testament and other external sources, there is enough evidence for me to believe this to be true. I will try to explain why I think this is the case.
SOURCES
I’m not going to regard the new testament as inspired or inerrant in this discussion but simply view them as historical documents we have from antiquity. There are also other sources outside the bible that mention Jesus and the events of his death etc….
In your comment about the lack of evidence, I think you are setting the bar to high for the the new testament when no other source in ancient history could ever measure up to your idealistic expectations. All it does is serve to produce a psychological effect that makes the NT appear to fall short by comparison.
The idea here is that I will try to compile a short list of basic facts that even skeptical historians have agreed on. I’m not a historian so I don’t do this for a living. I assume you are not a historian either unless you say otherwise. So that said, I lend at least some credibility to their examinations and thoughts since they study history for a living and know how to deem something credible or rubbish based on the historical record.
As for the so called discrepancies in the gospels, I will not try to argue on these points but will only say that there are reasonable exclamations for one writer to include or not include certain details of an event. Different people will notice or highlight different details when recording an event, this is normal. These scriptures are just snapshots anyway, they are not meant to be an exhaustive play by play of every breathing moment. Again, you set the bar too high for such ancient history, this is not fair in my opinion.
BASIC FACTS
1) Jesus died by crucifixion
2) The disciples believed they saw a risen Christ
3) The conversion of Paul and James (brother of Jesus)
4) The empty tomb
These are the 4 basic facts that most historians agree on. Fact #4 has about 75% agreement and is not as strong as the other 3 facts, but it’s still 3 out of 4. The idea is that if even skeptics can agree on these 4 historical facts, then it is reasonable that the resurrection actually happened based on these 4 basic facts. Instead of trying to explain each fact, read the link below to get a detailed explanation of these 4 points.
Again, I’m not a historian and don’t have the skill set (or the time) to evaluate all of the literature from antiquity to arrive at conclusions or provide “evidence”. This is why I defer to others and their many years of study and hard work. This is not a cop out, I’m already all in with Jesus. There is nothing you or anybody else can say that would make me change my beliefs. I don’t’ believe in the resurrection because some historian has provided “evidence” that I accepted to be true. I make decisions with my mind and my heart. If I solely relay on intellectualism then I will not doubt fail because I am fallible just like everybody else.
I know you will raise many objections and have alternative explanations of what happened. With regards to the authorship and dates of the new testament writings, regardless of the dates we know that they are very close to the actual time of the events compared to other ancient writings. Again, your expectations are too high for antiquity, so high, that based on your reasoning, you would practically have to reject all ancient historical writings as being written too many years after the actual event.
Lastly, because you are not satisfied with what we have from antiquity, you assume the actual story was different and that the facts were changed. I don’t know how you can be comfortable with this view as it basically says that there was a conspiracy to make up the resurrection of Jesus. Also it assumes that the actual events were never recorded by anyone and we will never know what happened. This is a very dubious position to take and I don’t see how you can be comfortable with it.
There is an easier way to solve this dilemma. Why don’t you take off your Atheist hat one day and just humbly pray, even for a moment of time, and ask God to reveal the truth to you.
Best regards,
Naz
LikeLike
November 14, 2014 at 2:42 pm
Gary, here is a 1 hour video by Gar Habermas on the resurrection.
Naz
LikeLike
November 14, 2014 at 4:55 pm
BASIC FACTS:
1) Jesus survived the crucifixion
2) The disciples saw a revived Jesus healing from the trauma of beating.
3) The conversion of Paul? Paul pleaded that his resume identified him as a Pharisee well grounded and brought up when he was arrested after his so called “conversion” and hismRoman citizenry protected him from false accusation; furthermore Paul brought CHRSITIANS IN CHAINS AND WAS AMONG THOSE WHO VOTED TO MURDER THEM.
4) The empty tomb proved Jesus’ escape from the tomb
LikeLike
November 14, 2014 at 5:38 pm
Gary Habermas:
At 6:25 is the “whatershed” downfall moment of the Habermas lecture because at that point he offers the false premise, as all supernatural clergy preachers must do who speak of the resurrection of a dead Jesus”: ….the Jesus who was dead just a short time before……”
When one bases a lecture on the unknowable premise, “…..Jesus was dead…..”, everything else in the lecture fails! especially the conclusion……… A false premise cannot in any way, shape or form arrive at a true conclusion.
Was Habermas there when the body was taken from the cross? When Jesus was placed in the tomb? When Jesus was missing from the tomb? And if Jesus resurrected bodily could he walk through the tomb walls to the other side? Could anyone have touched him if resurrected spiritually?
Granted, there are near dead people, it happens everyday in hospitals when hearts stop beating, but nobody who is pronounced dead ever escapes the grave without help, not Jesus and not Lazarus and “….not the bodies of many godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead…..”, the dead that were shaken by the earthquake and appeared to many. It is too bizarre to be reasonable except to someone enwrapped by a fascinating tale in the mental illness of religious insanity by fictional authors who preach similarly, that Messengers rode to heaven on a flying horse.
This is not a belief, this is an insanity, way too insane for anoybody so speaking to have any crediblility in anything said after.
LikeLike
November 14, 2014 at 7:00 pm
Leo, you have no historical proof to back your version of the story. Frankly your out of your league with people like Gary Habermas.
Naz
LikeLike
November 14, 2014 at 8:31 pm
Naz:
I have as much historical proof as you or Habermas, the Bible itself. In addition I have what both of you are missing, and I am missing what both of you have: common sense and supernaturalism, resp.
1. You have no explanation how Jesus left the tomb.
2. You have no explanation how the stone that sealed the entrance rolled
away by itself.
3. You have no expanation why Jesus invited the disciples to touch and feel
his body that he was indeed flesh, bone and muscle.
4. No explanation why Jesus said he was not a ghost, not a spirit.
You use your imagination to accept profound impossibilities and cannot imagine the simplicity that was in Jesus.
And the reason you do not have any explanation is because you do not want an explanation; you loathe an explanation because it will stunt your fantasy belief and open your mind to rethink the way you perceive when you read the Bible.
I agree absolutely with your candid comment that I am not in the same league with people like Gary Habermas and feel equally blessed to be in league with Jesus whose common sense has guided me into understanding scriptures despite the haze of misinformation and disinformation of religion’s paranormal hollywood theatrics that has had most of the world stupified for the last ten thousand centuries supporting of the clergy’s financial security.
But surely you might say people need religion to answer certain questions, questions like, How best can we stifle the human spirit? How much can we squeeze from the poor and gullible? and how many palaces can we live in at once? without blushing. These questions religion answers very well indeed. But unfortunately there are other questions to which it doesn’t have answers so it makes them up.
LikeLike
November 15, 2014 at 7:43 am
Leo, you outright reject anything but a naturalistic explanation of the historical record of the event surrounding Jesus’ death and resurrection. However to keep this view, you must deny what the scriptures plainly say and conjure up a story to fit your facts. There is no historical evidence that Jesus survived the cross. All you have is a made up story involving Joseph of Arimithea. You fail to realize that the penalty for a botched crucifixion was death. The Romans were very careful to make sure that whoever was sentenced to execution was killed. That aside, you don’t have a shred of historical evidence to support your theory. All you have is speculation.
Habermas is not my Messiah, but I appeal to people like him because they are experts in the field of analyzing the historical record. What Habermas has done is taken the most basic facts of what we know from history and has drawn the most reasonable conclusion from those facts regardless of where they lead. In the case of the events of the life of Jesus, the majority of historians, believers or not, first concede that Jesus actually died. Secondly they concede that the disciples actually believed that they saw Him alive after His death. All Habermas is affirming is that the evidence from the historical record fits the belief that Jesus died and was physically raised from the dead.
To hold to your position you must deny the historical record as false and propose some kind of conspiracy to make Jesus survive the cross. This is very shaky ground to stand on just because you don’t allow God to enter the picture and so you can justify yourself as having common sense. Common sense says that you don’t deny historical facts that have been written very close to the events they describe.
You relentlessly continue to blame “religion” and the “clergy” for making stuff up to fill in the gaps. I agree, how many false gospels do we have? the DaVinci code etc…You put more credence in these very late writings than you do to the most earliest and historical writings we have in antiquity. Habermas made a very convincing argument about the closeness of the writings to the actual events. Certainly if Jesus never actually died there would have been some historical proof or testimonies about that written close to the time of the events. But we don’t see anything about this in the historical record. What we see are the apostles boldly preaching the resurrection of Christ and spreading the message beyond Jerusalem…and we are still talking about it today 2000 years later !
As for imagination, I don’t have to imagine anything I believe. It’s all written down in black and white. There are no made up stories, hallucinations, conjectures, conspiracies, secret knowledge, hidden motives, backdoor escapes etc…this is factual history.
“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain” (2 Peter 1:16-18)
Naz
LikeLike
November 16, 2014 at 10:15 am
Naz:
You talk a good story about historical evidence but there is not one shred of historical evidence to support anything about your story surrounding the crucifixion and the healing of Jesus bodily that allowed the Disciples to see him after his healing…….. except THE BIBLE there is not one shred of HISTORICAL evidence. What you have is HYSTERICAL evidence based only on the Bible. there’s no hard, historical evidence that the Jesus of the gospels even existed. I mean, what records we do have, were written by people who were born long, after he died; so, they were just really passing on what they heard and of course the same is true of the gospels themselves.
Curious isn’t it that nobody who was actually writing anything down at the time appears to have known anything at all about Jesus, despite the fantastic miracles he was performing, the multitudes he was preaching to, and of course his momentous and spectacular public demise. And don’t forget this is a guy whose birth was marked by a celestial event, who was born by a miracle, to a virgin, in the year 6 BC.
Two miracles for the price of one, talk about hit the ground running and then it was one miracle after another, fed the multitudes, healed the sick, walked on water, raised the dead, He was nailed to a plank and He came back to life again. How can nobody have heard of him? He should have been the talk of the desert. He should have been as famous as Elvis.
And yet, all we’ve got is hearsay: second and third hand accounts which have been doctored and edited and translated, through, ahead, backwards so many times that the truth no longer bears any resemblance to itself if it ever did.
NATURALISTIC?
I am prepared to accept that Jesus was a living person who walked this earth preached many common sense messages and performed common sense events that were lauded as miracles by the masses of little or no education; HOWEVER, I reject outright anything written in the scriptures hinting of the supernatural, absolutely; none of it is true.
SUPERNATURAL SELLS NATURALLY:
Hollywood has reproduced movies by the reams that portray the nonsense od religious supernatural events. The Ten Commandments is a 1923 American silent epic film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille. It is the first in DeMille’s biblical trilogy, followed by The King of Kings (1927) and The Sign of the Cross (1932). The Ten Commandments was reproduced in a fantastic technicolor movie in 1956; other similar movies in the same supernatural vein is King Kong, Godzilla and the Exorcist; the Twilight Zone and Our Lady of Fatima. Face it you must, the Supernatural sells and is a Gold Mine for movie makers, Evangelists and Churches around the world. The better percentage of people are duped by religious insanity inspired by the Holy Books of fiction and possible facts intertwined.
DENYING SCRIPTURES?
I do not deny what scriptures say because I interpret scriptures perfectly. As I have enumerated lots of time on this blog the Curse of Ham(Canaan) perfectly understandable in the context of incest but ridiculous because Ham saw his father naked from the Christian view because of myopisim and not understanding scripture, the same with the Mosaic magic tricks, the Exodus lead day and night, 24/7 by a pillar of cloud and pillar of light resp., right into the New Testament scriptures that Jesus provided purely by natural means, hailed as miracles: the water & wine, feeding the multitudes, healing simply by cleaning and wrapping in banadages(handkerchief) simply because Jesus had to protect his benefactors (of the wine, of the fish & bread of the upper chamber, last supper) from Sanhedrin wrath whose priorty ambition was to capture and kill Jesus the Balsphemer, the Atheist, the destroyer of their religon and exposing their deceitful tactics about God and the supernatural nonsense just like I am doing now; if Jesus’ benefactors were found out; namely, Joseph of Aramethea and Nicodemus who were among the top rulers of the Jews and very wealthy members of the Sanhedrin, their lives would have been in great peril too!
It was Joseph who himself hewed out the Tomb for Jesus burial for two years in advance of the inevitable consequence when the religious cops would surround Jesus, arrest him, handcuff him, jail him and try him in the Religious court; (they did not arrest, handcuff and jail Paul in the same religious courts, he was tried by Roman Law but not Jesus: see Acts and Paul’s tribulations when he relied on his Pharisee membership to clear himself). Yet it was Joseph who had a private audience with Pilate for the body of Jesus to be taken down from the cross for proper burial(powerful influence); it was Joseph and Nicodemus who were the first responders for burial (healing) preparations.
Stop reading the Bible like a child reading Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, Little Red Riding Hood or the Wolf and the Pee Little Thrigs. Put away those childish things and open your adult eyes for Goodness sakes and be the adult you are suppose to be as a role model for the children at the very least instead of perpetuating generational nonsense and ludicrous miracles that never happen. Religious people are so full of redneck baloney it’s lolable if it wasn’t so abusive to children under the age of maturity. Religious beliefs should be banned from K through 12 for everyone and everybody, everywhere on earth. The see how fast religious insanity disappears from civilization as an unbelievable example of stoneage man without knowledge.
All you need to do is get rid of your Cecile B Demille’s supernatural mindset and smell the natural sweet odor of natural flowers, and cut out the wicked imaginings that your supernatural flowers produce sweet natural fragrances they never can and never will, for never and never. The supernatural is a mind meme parasite from Religion through the Clergy, Hollywood and the Churches to make money from indoctrinated brains.
There’s no polite way to say this but you are duped with things that are impossible and just because the bible says Lk1:37 “For with God nothing will be impossible., forget it; it is not true!
“……we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain”. These were the men who saw three on the mountain and said one was Moses and One was Elijah that’s what they said but it could very well have been a private meeting Jesus had with Joseph and Nicodemus which promted Jesus to tell his desciples “Tell no one about the vision and went on to say it was not Elijah and was speaking about Elijah already coming in the person of John The Baptist. Voices were also heard at other times with one account: “Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.”.
You glean with a supernatural filter; I glean with a natural filter. My glean is common sense; your glean common nonsense.
LikeLike
November 16, 2014 at 11:09 am
NAZ:
“Certainly if Jesus never actually died there would have been some historical proof or testimonies about that written close to the time of the events.”
BUT NAZ: We have the “historical” (Biblical) record that Jesus did not die but was healed and was alive…….there are six (6) accounts of being alive, not dead…..alive….
1. The Women Worship the Risen Lord
Matt 28: 9 And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, “Rejoice!” So they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me.”
2. John 20:14 Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”
She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to Him, “Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher).
17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father;
18 Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken these things to her.
3. The Apostles Commissioned
John 20: 19 Then, the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled,[c] for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.
21 So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” 22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Seeing and Believing
24 Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”
26 And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!” 27 Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”
28 And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Parenthesis ( I am the blessed of whom Jesus spoke; I believe in Jesus and yet I have not seen him bodily but I see him in spirit and I see him in truth)
4. Luke 24:30 Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight.
32 And they said to one another, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?” 33 So they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, 34 saying, “The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” 35 And they told about the things that had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of bread.
5. 36 Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, “Peace to you.” 37 But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit. 38 And He said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”
40 When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. 41 But while they still did not believe for joy, and marveled, He said to them, “Have you any food here?” 42 So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb. 43 And He took it and ate in their presence.
Do spirits eat? Naz.
6. Mark 16:9 Now when He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons. 10 She went and told those who had been with Him, as they mourned and wept. 11 And when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe. VERY IMPORTANT(‘…..when they heard that HE WAS ALIVE…..’ “Alive”!
7. Mark 16:12 After that, He appeared in another form to two of them as they walked and went into the country.
(curious “.. appeared in another form…..” My goodness Naz what could that mean? and even Mary thought he was the Gardener. Was Jesus changing supernaturally like a chameleon? Surely…..
LikeLike
November 17, 2014 at 7:52 am
Naz:
You say you are not with religion but I remind you: if you say the same things as the religious ducks, you prach like a duck, use the same cliches as a duck, use the same “lame duck” arguments, you walk like a duck and talk like a duck and act like a duck, you must be what? a white swan? I don’t think so. You must be a duck.
LikeLike
November 17, 2014 at 8:54 am
I thought I was a goat ?
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Naz
LikeLike
November 17, 2014 at 9:16 am
Naz:
Religion has always claimed every advance made, despite their many attempts to prevent progress at every opportunity, especially if the inventor or innovator was a member of the community church or had some close association with the church. For the most part they were close to church activities because the whole world was a theocracy in those ancient days and very few people stood outside the belief system at the risk of being ostracized, put on trial for heresy; or worse, put to death for blasphemy if one went against church decrees and did not follow the letter of church law.
Everybody in the community was expected to give credit to the church or the church’s Messenger(priests as God’s reps) or the church’s supernatural God.
Such an outsider was Jesus; indeed, so far outside the religious circle that the religionists began a concerted effort to arrest him at the opening bell when he read from the Book of Isaiah and spoke of certain issues that discredited the Church and their supernatural expectations after which the whole congregation became enraged with him and tried to lead him to the brow of the hill to throw him over the cliff!
And from that moment of his ministry and for the next three years after his self-styled staged intro, Jesus dodged and darted throughout the countryside, into the desert, into the boat, escaping the accusers who wanted to arrest him, flog him, whip him, beat him, throw him over cliffs, scourge him and eventually crucify him for going against the church and the Almighty Clergy.
The Church invented their ritualistic nonsense and took credit for every advance they approved of or not BUT scientific?; are you kidding? the Church has no science in their dogma; otherwise, it wouldn’t be dogma,
They put Galileo on trial for heresy because Galileo expressed his agreement with the Copernican theory that the earth went around the sun and not the sun around earth as the Church claimed was contrary to bible teaching that the “earth was “immovable”.
Jesus was an outsider when it came to church, bible , supernatural, clergy and biblical interpretation.
Unfortunately Naz, Jesus disagrees with everything you profess because you are like one of the congregation who could not stand to hear Jesus debunking the supernatural claims after they had led their wasted lives proclaiming. They did everything to trip him up; they were so furious with him. They paid people money to catch him, to betray him; they proclaimed laws that whoever knew of his whereabouts were obligated by Church Decree, on pain of death, to turn him in. WANTED: Dead or Alive. And why the disciples dispersed after the Garden of Gethsemane lest any should be associated which Jesus made it starklt relevant when he said: “Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, Peter–this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny three times that you even know me.”
Everything I tell you is biblical. Believe with knowledge.
LikeLike
November 17, 2014 at 10:01 am
BAAAAAAAAAAAA !!!!!!!
Naz
LikeLike
November 29, 2014 at 11:46 am
OMG NAZ:
You sure are trying hard to win a proselyte but of course your understanding is slim to none; for example, you call Gary’s reality check with Atheism a “conversion” but Naz “conversion” is for a person who switches from one religious insanity to another religious insanity, like you did. Switching to a reality check is what Religious to Atheism is; in other words, from insanity to sanity which is exactly what Jesus did, that’s why the religious world hated him and crucified him for coming out of the Atheist Closet testifying that religion and your words and works thereof are evil.
That’s what Gary did. Now Gary is sane and you are still; well, insane.
Jesus rose from the dead? How can anybody be so bereft of reason to believe this cinderfella story of made-up nonsense. All the appearances of Jesus after escaping the tomb proves that he escaped death and was alive. The Clergfy twist the scriptures to match and conform to their dogma as they have always twist everything in the scriptureto suit their supernaturalisticexpialidocious dogma all the time, in every generation and they still win over the weak in every generation who content themself with the security of Santa belief instead of seeking, knocking and asking for revelation of knowledge as Jesus commanded they do, so they can be set free from the tyranny of not knowing, the realm of religion………….. Bleeeeeeeet……….:) 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
LikeLike
December 1, 2014 at 6:37 am
Leo, you unwittingly conceded a very important fact about Jesus………that He was seen alive after His death. Many unbelievers deny this point and claim the disciples only saw visions, hallucinations etc…
I may be insane but I’m not stupid……..nobody can survive a crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. Again, you are in the minority here and the historical evidence that Jesus died is solid. Secondly, the disciples of Jesus believe they saw a risen Christ that triumphed over death, not somebody that just got out of medical rehab. There is no way the Christian movement could have had such a profound effect unless what the disciples saw was real, a Jesus risen from the dead. Surely the church would have been squashed when people discovered that Jesus was just rehabilitated after being close to death. What is even more ridiculous is that you have a lot of faith in 1st century medicine that someone could have actually survived and recovered from a crucifixion when all they had was basically stone knives and bearskins ! Women were barely able to survive child bearing in these times. Do you really believe that they had the medical wherewithal to heal someone from a crucifixion ?
There is nothing written about your conspiracy theory explanations in antiquity. The only conspiracy was the one that the disciples stole the body which is what was falsely reported, and where was it written..in the new testament ! There is nothing to hide here and everything we have written down about these events is plain for all to see.
Is it miraculous ? Yes of course it is, we are talking about God here. And the facts back it up :
1) Jesus died by crucifixion
2) The tomb was empty
3) Jesus was seen alive by His disciples and several hundred others
Whether of not you believe this happened is the most important decision you will ever make in your entire life. It can be the start of something wonderful and beautiful or it can lead to your ultimate destruction. I hope you choose wisely.
1Co 1:18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
Naz
LikeLike
December 1, 2014 at 10:57 am
Naz:
There is very little I do unwittingly.
There is no evidence that Jesus died, none at all. Pilate himself was surprised that he had died so soon that he asked the centurion if it was true or not and the centurion said he was dead;(well; if Judas betrayal was bought with silver why not the centurion’s white lie or perhaps he also assumed like you and billions of others who also believe that magic tricks are miracles and that Jesus pulled loaves and fish out of thin air?) the only examiners after the cross was who? Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, his SECRET disciples. All four gospel accounts record that Joseph of Arimathea requested Jesus’ body from Pilate, but only John’s account reveals that Jesus was prepared for burial in the traditional manner prior to being placed in the tomb by whom Nic & Joe:
“Afterwards Joseph of Arimathea, who had been a secret disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jewish leaders, boldly asked Pilate for permission to take Jesus’ body down; and Pilate told him to go ahead. So he came and took it away. Nicodemus, the man who had come to Jesus at night, came too, bringing a hundred pounds of embalming ointment made from myrrh and aloes. Together they wrapped Jesus’ body in a long linen cloth saturated with the spices, as is the Jewish custom of burial. The place of crucifixion was near a grove of trees, where there was a new tomb, never used before. And so, because of the need for haste before the Sabbath, and because the tomb was close at hand, they laid him there”
Very convenient.
And how do you think Jesus knew that Judas was conspiring against him for money? Well you might say he could read minds but that’s not the answer of course. Both Joseph and Nicodemus were members of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of the Jews and of course because they were secretly advising Jesus of what the talk around the meeting table revealed: Remember the story; John 13:21 “When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.
22 Then the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom he spake.
23 Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.
24 Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that he should ask who it should be of whom he spake.
25 He then lying on Jesus’ breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it?
26 Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.
27 And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.
28 Now no man at the table knew for what intent he spake this unto him.
29 For some of them thought, because Judas had the bag, that Jesus had said unto him, Buy those things that we have need of against the feast; or, that he should give something to the poor.
30 He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night.”
To your three points this is what I give you:
1) Jesus appeared to be dead after the crucifixion
2) The tomb was empty (the escape tunnel Joseph had hewn along with the tomb he had hewn)
3) Jesus was seen alive by His disciples and several hundred others (It was Paul was it not who claimed that more than 500 saw him, I don’t buy that; Paul is a serious exaggerater) All of the Gospels recount appearances to small numbers less than the highest number reported of eleven)
You failed to mention Lazarus so-called rise from the dead and you failed to address Matt 27:51-53 At that moment, the Temple curtain was ripped in two, top to bottom. There was an earthquake, and rocks were split in pieces. What’s more, tombs were opened up, and many bodies of believers asleep in their graves were raised. (After Jesus’ resurrection, they left the tombs, entered the holy city, and appeared to many.) Why did the dead in the graves wait until Jesus started making appearances before they started to appear too, to many?
What’s up with all those dead people rising from the graves? Do you buy that Naz? You know, it’s okay to admit some things are fabricated and other things embellished without spoiling your life or losing your mind; or worse, losing your soul, who could stand to bear it? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with rejecting the absurd. Accepting Jesus does not require that you accept Church dogma anymore than Jesus accepted that the Sabbath was so Holy that one couldn’t eat or work or save your ass if it fell in a hole but the religious authorities demanded it! If you were living in those days you may have had a job enforcing the strict Sabbath nonsense with your little whip of rope knots. Jesus told them where to go, if you recall, and that further infuriated the religiously insane.
You don’t need to go there Naz just let the spirit guide you and not the cliches of the Ancients who were so full of Copernican baloney and caca del toro it’s laughable to the awakening man who is civilizing himself out of the bondage of religion which was just what Jesus’ mission was all about when he cursed religion and the clergy for their hoaxes and deceitful rites and ways. Read it agaijn for the first time in Matt 23; AKA, the “Woe to You Indictment”.
LikeLike
December 1, 2014 at 11:31 am
THE CAPSULE: Take a Pill.
Jesus did exist and he was a Jew by birth ethnically but an Atheist against religion by choice. This is why the Jewish religous community hated him: he interpreted scripture perfectly, told them where to shove their deception, did not accept the supernatural God they all raved about, he did not care about the Sabbath as a Holy day any more holy than any other day; every day above ground was great. Jesus called them out for all their lies and stupidity and religius insanity and they followed him for the next 3 years waiting and plotting to arrest him so they could kill him and finally the plot was laid as one of his disciples betrayed Jesus for money BUT he eluded them one last time by escaping their wrath and escaping through the secret tunnel in the tomb that another disciple, Joseph of Arimathea had hewn out for this momentous occasion, the day they crucified THE MAN.
LikeLike
March 9, 2015 at 3:37 pm
[…] No God, no morality […]
LikeLike
April 3, 2015 at 2:16 pm
[…] the existence of God as the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values elsewhere (here, here, and here), I will limit my thoughts to why moral Platonism fails as an adequate moral […]
LikeLike
September 18, 2021 at 3:22 pm
Reblogged this on Freethinkers Notes.
LikeLike