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.
A sane society calls these people hitmen, and trying to solicit the services of one is a criminal offense.
Baloney, because here in NYS even if every non-obama vote were cast for Romney, he STILL wouldn't have come close to defeating obama.
In the local elections, our vote counts. In the senate and presidential elections, those votes are throwaway votes.
NYC carries the state.
Silent Spring by Rachael Carson sold a lot, but it didn’t have good science.
Her “The Sea Around Us” was much better, but didn’t sell well. She sold out to make money.
I wouldn’t cite SS as an example of good decision making. Because of its DDT bans, a million people a year die of malaria.
DDT at normally doesn’t hurt birds, it helps them, ridding them of bird lice.
No, weakened egg shells wasn’t from DDT.
Who created the Devil?
What kind of monsters would do that?
Stupid ones!
That is right NYS was a lost cause. CA is a lost cause too.
Ohio, Florida and a couple of other states were needed.
Thank you so very much for sharing your insights, dear OneVike!
Oh, I’m all for punishing murderers and rapists. But if I were to set a murderer on fire for punishment, after a few minutes I would put him out. Being engulf in fire is pretty serious pain, even for just a few minutes. Or, I would be content to let him burn until he dies.
I would never think to require him to burn and burn and burn forever and ever, without mercy. Would you?
Indeed, dear sister in Christ!
If science was perfect wouldn’t we already know all the answers?
If science was perfect wouldn’t we already know all the answers?
Depends on what you mean by ‘perfect’.
Science is hard work. For a lazy guy like me, that means it isn’t perfect.
Second, it has limits. It is not possible to predict future states from past states for the Navier Stokes differential equations. That is why predictions of global warming are bunk.
Those two aspects put perfection forever beyond humanity’s reach. Nice strawman though.
Gosh, am I supposed to live in front of my monitor with FRee Republic up? Or am I allowed to have a life outside of my pc?
What part of my statement in defense of the reliability and authenticity of the Scriptures or the authors did you disagree with that I should be responding to?
By the way, give me more than 45 seconds to respond before calling me dishonest as you did before.
As I said, I have a life that is actually not connected to the internet.
If you read the Scriptures, as you should have if you wish to debate the accuracy of them, then you would have known that the very Mother of Jesus was alive and personally knew the Apostles. After all, on the cross Jesus told John to take care of her.
I am sure that if he did not already know, she would have told him where she gave birth to Jesus at. Plus she may have shared the whole experience of giving birth in a smelly dirty cold manger. It is not something one would ever forget.
Oh I know, now you will claim, “See you admit that Jesus was born of a woman, and that makes him a mere mortal like us.”
However, He was born of the woman’s seed not of a man’s. However, If you truly had read the scriptures as you claim, you would might have known that in Genesis it speaks of which I elude to.... Right?
Please tell me where in the scriptures it tells us not to expect miracles today?
I know the Scriptures very, very good, and yet I seem to have totally missed that one.
How so?
I think we all would say we are decent folks. We have to ask by what standard are we decent? Who draws the line between what is good and decent and what is lacking?
You seem to have had a very liberal Bible instructor, because the “Q” you reference is but the figment of a liberal leftists mind.
Claiming you learned something about the Scriptures from a College instructor at the place you mention is like Obama claiming he went to a divinity school and thus knows more about the Scriptures than me.
After all Obama supposedly attended Harvard, and Harvard was the first nondenominational divinity school in America.
It never ceases to amaze me when a college student claims to know more about the Christian faith then even Billy Graham because a liberal college professor told them something no Christian Bible Scholar has ever thought of in the whole 2000 years of Christian history.
Remember, these are the same professors who think capitalism is the reason we have high taxes and that mankind is responsible for global warming and Reagan’s trickle down economic policy is what has destroyed this country.
Yet you want to take their word for something that they said about a religion they despise, or have such a liberal bent that they think Jesus would have condoned homosexuality and gay marriage.
So tell me, you really are an undercover spy from the DU, right?
I mean come on, go ahead and disagree with the interpretation of the message all you wish, but to use arguments that only a liberal leftists would claim are true only makes you look like those environmentalist wackos who build tree houses in redwood trees named Luna.
Teaching a popular liberal notion doesn't make it true, and somehow leading you to believe this is true: To me the paradox of Jesus is that noone recognizes that the prophecies were available for forgers to create a pretend Jesus, long after his putative life, and then pretend that their ability to reference various prophecies was somehow evidence of the reality of their scam.
makes both you and the college incredibly suspect of total ignorance.
Q is a movie character, or a hypothesis as intelligent as global warming. Now, I notice you dodged the best evidence against "Q" in your last post, anyone else notice that? Well here it is, read it, and I await your explanation how any person can read this and believe that the hypothesis of "Q" is correct: Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
Like I said, it's like believing global warming is real, or that socialism works. Congrats on your sad intellectual confusion.
It seemed to me that Tainan was responding to you as if you directed Post #105 at him/her. it looked to me like #105 was directed to donmeaker, with Tainan included since he/she was part of the discussion. Was I incorrect?
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