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.
You seem to know a whole lot more about who wrote what than the authors of the notes in my study Bibles - maybe you should write one?
If that text book is all you have, and there is no other evidence, then it makes sense to be skeptical.
Like “Howard Zinn’s Peoples History” skeptical.
People are always ready to write their today motives into historical persons, or legendary persons.
The difference between history and legend is the history has facts, evidence, and reason to back it up. Legend has a story, but the facts are either impossible to find or impossible to believe.
I read the American Standard Bible, with the imprimater of the Catholic Church.
It has pretty good commentary in it. What do you use?
Ha, you are wrong again! I doubt and am skeptical of most everything - esp. my own work, but if you think faith is the absence of doubt then you have stopped way short in your analysis of it all.
You ever heard of Shannon’s Theory of Information? Prolly not, since it totally trumps evolution. The msm has done a damn good job of promoting evolution though since the saturation rate is nearly 100% of the US populace. Who doesn’t know something, anything about evolution.
So what about the theory of information ~ just something that gives meaning to sounds, symbols, icons, etc? You and I could not converse on FR without it obviously, but let’s go all the way back to language origins - did it too evolve out of nothing? Not if your willing to study all the research and analysis.
Let’s go even further back now, how about DNA? Does this symbolic intelligence not declare to the very depths of your soul that a very much higher intelligence had to create it for all living things to thrive and survive? To be always pared and mated to like kinds? Evolution is a lie, the evidence screams much more loudly for devolution, or the curse of sin whereby death and destruction entered this once perfect world.
Bottom line though I challenge you to actually read the Bible a little each day or even one special day a week and see if the words don’t strike at the core of your inner being.
Merry Christmas!!!
Of course the universe doesn’t need to be eternally expanding.
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.
Shannon’s theory of information doesn’t trump evolution, it supports it.
Information is created as animal species compete. Barriers to competive information lead to different evolution rates and results in different places.
Absent that, you need a combination of special creation and special delivery to explain why particular species are in some places but not others.
That aspect, the investigation of speciation in time and space was what Darwin did with most of his experiments.
Oh, the poster is even more ignorant than that. The letters from Paul are known to have been sent by Paul. Surprise! And in those letters Paul writes of his direct meetings with the Apostles on at least three occasions. Again, surprise! And Paul testifies as to meeting Jesus while on the road traveling to Damascus to persecute ‘fallen Jews’ who were believers in Jesus having seen Him and witnessed his miracles. It takes an obstinant heretic to deny that the Bible has eyewitness accounts. Some will make any twist of mental faculties to cling to belief that what they reject has any credulity.
No, DNA doesn’t scream ‘higher intelligence’. Rather it seems to me to be an evolutionary advantage over RNA in one environment that permited other evolutionary advantages in other environments.
Why DNA? It didn’t have to be DNA from RNA It could have been Per Oxy Ribo Nucleac Acid (PORNA) and then all our browsers would give us bad hits for things we technical folks didn’t want to look at. Luck!
Sigh! Obviously just another one who quotes but doesn’t read. It also says [paraphrased] God’s laws are written on our hearts and we will be judged by what we do know, not by what we don’t.
And it is surprisingly straightforward to read, but no one can ever mine all the depths and breadths of the Holy Bible.
So you think man is simply a more advance ape then? Rather than one created in the likeness of Our Creator. Mankind uniqueness does not simply jump off the page from where they claim we came?
Furthermore, all of the grand claims of evolution are a lot like Obama promises. Surprising that you don’t have the time to actually read any of the problems with evolution.
Certainly the bible has eyewitness accounts. It is just that we don’t have them.
We have copies of copies of copies with no originals.
And what do these copies have in them. Well we get a dream from Joseph, father of Jesus. We get stars that show very interesting behavior not at all in line with what Newton would accept. We get miracles such as walking on water, and multipling of the loaves and fishes. We get odd medical practices such as washing ones eyes to cure blindness.
In short, we get myths that combine word games (sons of thunder) with the fantastic.
Man’s unique 43 chromosomes seems to look a lot like a 44 chromosome ape that had a failed telomere, that stuck two chromosomes together. We even have the same scars from long ago retrovirus infections in our genes as in the chimpanzee genes.
An adult human has many features of an immature Chimp.The same parts are there, just used a bit differently. Primates all need to eat Vitamin C, whereas nearly all other animals sythesize it from other foods.
Did G-d create man? I think that is unanswerable, as untestable, but it is very hard to deny that if so, he used our chimpanzee relatives as a prototype.
Or we can, and then someone comes up with another interpretation to make up for the parts that don’t make sense.
Actually they both had to be created together - DNA and rNA - at the same time by an intelligent being. Let’s not forget evolution has no answer for abiogenesis - the same as you really have no answer for the beginnings of the Earth and Universe. Just mere conjecture that leads you in circles. Hurtling turtles all the way down...
I guess you are math challenged too. There is not enough time even in the conjectured billions of years for evolution to rewrite the DNA differences between man and ape let alone the difference between all the other created kinds.
No, they don’t have to be created together.
A cell will do just fine with only RNA. Some cells do that. They do have a higher mutation rate, and that can be an advantage, or a disadvantage based on the environment.
No, math I am pretty good at.
before you talk about differences not being possible in units of time, you have to talk about rates. Since your post was short on that, you don’t know what you are talking about.
And by the way, differnt mutations can occur in different individuals, and the successful ones can glom together, shortening the time to evolve by a factor of the number of individuals.
Mathematicians as a whole have the highest rate of rejection of evolutionary fairy tales. A majority in fact - much higher than anyone can say for self-named christians with beliefs all over the map.
Also I noticed how you didn’t touch on abiogenesis - something you’ve not studied I’d guess since you think you have an answer for everything - namely hot air!
Nobody said it was easy. In fact, just about everybody says it is incredibly hard.
No, I just want to go eat supper. I will help you with your high school biology another time.
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