Posted on 12/04/2013 3:17:41 PM PST by servo1969
A sixty-seven year old proud atheist friend of mine recently interjected the sweeping statement “all religion is irrational” into one of our conversations. I replied, not with a direct rebuttal but, instead, with the unexpected question, “who is Jesus Christ?” He replied, “I don’t know.” If I were to ask some of you why I pulled that question out of left field you might also reply with a bewildered “I don’t know.” So keep reading. Please.
If you have never really pondered the question “who is Jesus Christ?” then you simply cannot consider yourself to be a committed intellectual – at least not yet. Let me say that in a different way: if you have never given serious thought to the true identity of the most important individual ever to walk the face of the earth then you are either a) suffering from severe intellectual hernia, or b) possessed of an intellect impaired by a fear of knowing the true answer to the question.
Let me begin by defending the assertion that Jesus Christ was the most important individual ever to walk the face of the earth. 1) We divide time using the date of Jesus’ birth. 2) More books have been written about Jesus than anyone else in recorded history. Case closed. Now we can move on to the issue of fear and intellectual curiosity.
The options we are given for understanding the identity of Jesus are so limited that no one who is truly intelligent can be behaving rationally if he just avoids the question altogether. Take, for example, my friend who has lived 2/3 of a century on this planet without so much as attempting to work through the options. I don’t want you to be one of those irrational people so let’s get to work.
When addressing the question of Jesus’ identity, there are only four available options. Anyone who has ever read C.S. Lewis or Josh McDowell knows that Jesus was either: 1) A legend, 2) a lunatic, 3) a liar, or 4) the Lord.
The idea that Jesus was merely a legend, as opposed to someone who actually lived, is simply not an option we can take seriously (at least not for long). Independent historical accounts, by that I mean accounts written by non-Christians, are enough to put this option to rest. Jesus is cited by 42 sources within 150 years of his life, and nine of those sources are non-Christian. By contrast, the Roman Emperor Tiberius is only mentioned by 10 sources. If you believe Tiberius existed, how can you not believe in a man who is cited by four times as many people and has had an immeasurably greater impact on history? You can believe that if you wish. But then you risk forfeiting any claim to be considered rational.
Nor is it rational to consider Jesus to have been a lunatic. Perhaps you could maintain that belief if you’ve never read the Bible. But how can a person claim to be educated if he’s never read the Bible?
World Magazine editor Marvin Olasky once entertained the notion that Jesus was a mere lunatic. But, then, in the early 1970s, as an atheist and a communist graduate student, he examined the words of Jesus for the first time. He was traveling to Russia on a ship and wanted to brush up on his Russian. But all he had with him to read (that just happened to be written in Russian) was a copy of the New Testament. And so he read. And he was transformed.
Marvin recognized immediately that the words of Jesus represent a profound level of moral understanding that rises above anything else that has ever been written. Read for yourself the words of Jesus. Then read the words of Charles Manson. Try to convince me that they are one in the same – merely two lunatics who mistakenly thought they were the Messiah. You have a right to that opinion. But you don’t have a right to be considered rational if you cannot detect a glaring difference between the teachings of Christ and Manson.
So, now only two options remain. And this is where the real trouble begins. If we call Jesus a liar (who falsely claimed to be God) then we cannot also call him a great moral teacher. One cannot be both. But many look at the final option of calling him Lord and panic. To go there means to accept belief in the supernatural. And surely that couldn’t be rational. Or could it?
Science has taught us a lot since the Bible was written. For one thing, we know that the universe had a beginning. It is expanding, it is finite, and it was not always here. Put simply, Carl Sagan was wrong. In fact, he was dead wrong. The cosmos is not all that is or was or that ever will be. It had a beginning. It is irrational to dismiss the obvious implications of this: that the universe was caused by a supernatural force existing outside of space and time.
People have to let go of the idea that the natural world is all there is because that is not where the science leads us. It instead leads us away from the philosophical commitment to only considering naturalistic explanations for the things we observe in the physical universe. This also leads us to one very important question: if a supernatural force was great enough to create the universe could the force or being not also reenter creation? And another related question: is the force or being responsible for creating life not also able to conquer death?
Arguably, the resurrection is a pretty small accomplishment in comparison with the creation of the universe. But that doesn’t mean it happened. The evidence must be judged on its own merits. I recommend that serious intellectuals start here.
Of course, you could just keep avoiding the question while judging others to be irrational. But there’s no avoiding the plank in your own eye.
Non-religion is based on faith as well, because in order to not be based on faith, one would have to be immortal, omnipresent, and omnipotent, to know everything there was for all time and eternity everywhere.
Since no human can do that, some things, indeed MOST things, must be taken on faith.
God provided a way for anyone, anywhere, any time, to avoid having to pay the penalty for any wrongdoing that he committed. <> It's a gift. All free for the taking by anyone just for the asking. What more could a person want? That God force it down his throat against his will?
And just who's fault is it if man does not avail himself of that option?
And the rules by which it expands can change as scales change, just as quantum mechanics is different from macro mechanics, making any ‘proof’ that posits similar rules at differnt scales rather irrelevant.
So now the laws of physics CAN change?
And creationists are regularly castigated for even alluding to or suggesting that....
What's your proof?
If Jesus “wrote His own rules” we have a serious problem. The rules had been set before the beginning of the world and the Old Testament outlined it all. Jesus followed the prophecy to the letter.
The laws of physics definitely do change!
I can prove from data that I have collected and stored with high precision GPS receivers over the last 24 years that the velocity of light used to compute the GPS ephemeris has changed several times during that period. Light is slowing down.
An analogy might be found in the destructive eternally(?) crushing black hole as it effects matter. Might Hell, the place of the damned, be something like a black hole for spirits? The Scriptures give some very interesting clues, like the rich man in torment seeing Abraham being comforted. It would not be so comforting to Abraham if he could see the rich man in torment ... if you were inside a black hole event horizon, you could see photons coming in but someone outside of the event Horizon could not see inside the black hole because no photons would be escaping.
I'm SURE he does.
There's no excuse for an adult to treat someone else with that kind of disrespect.
Sorry, the laws have not changed, it is our comprehension of their particulars which must change.
>> “Jesus did not come to create any religion, much less a new one.” <<
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Absolutely correct!
“The Way,” as his apostles called it, was the same worship that had been in operation since Adam sinned, with one clear difference: He provided the perfect, once and for all, Blood Sacrifice with his own blood, as he presided as Cohen HaGadol. When he pronounced the traditional words: “It is finished” on the cross, the price was paid for all.
You can be as sorry as you wish, but key ‘constants’ have been found not to be constant, and no rate of change has been established; it appears to be itself a variable.
By what criteria does God fail?
Who establishes it? Who sits on judgment of it?
And who makes the determination that miracles occurred in the past, that they will occur in the future but they aren't occurring now?
Do you have evidence that they aren't occurring now? Do you have evidence they happened in the past? What caused them to cease? What will cause them to restart?
And yet, the God deniers claim it doesn’t.
I was pointing out the irony.
When addressing the question of Jesus’ identity, there are only four available options. Anyone who has ever read C.S. Lewis or Josh McDowell knows that Jesus was either: 1) A legend, 2) a lunatic, 3) a liar, or 4) the Lord.
***When CS Lewis wrote the trilemma, most people understood that by saying Jesus was Lord, they were saying “Jesus is God”. That is not the case today. The word “lord” has almost completely lost its meaning in american society today.
Jesus was put to death for claiming equality with God. His friends said it, indifferent sources said it, even His enemies said it. There was no contemporary source which contradicted this claim to deity.
And, yes, I need to insert here that just because He made the claim it doesn’t prove that He was God. People who are confronted with the claim to deity seem to have to go through this step as they process the information, even though it is incredibly obvious.
Either He was God, or He wasn’t.
The speed of light is not a law of physics, it is a constant (or treated as one). It doesn’t actually contradict the laws of physics to have a changing speed of light. As long as there is a set speed as an upper boundary at any particular time, the laws work fine. Some of your results may change plugging in a different constant into the formulas, but the formulas will still work fine.
>> “And yet, the God deniers claim it doesn’t.” <<
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Most of them haven’t the slightest idea what they’re talking about. The ones that do are not talking.
>> “ It doesn’t actually contradict the laws of physics to have a changing speed of light.” <<
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Thanks for the humor Mr. science groupie!
It contradicts the nonsense that the ‘naturalist’ reality deniers live by. That is the point.
I once had a Sunday School teacher display is erudition by stating that the NT Greek word for Spirit was “Pneuma”.
Of course I immediately asked if he drove to church on spirit filled (aka pneumatic) tires.
He didn’t think that was helpful.
So do you have a different value for Pi this week?
I do apologize.
I was inaccurate.
I should have said the hypothesis of G-d fails.
The value used by Solomon (3-5/12) works well enough for most!
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