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.
Really! “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption…. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do…. For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from an certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom..” Aldous Huxley, “Confession of a Professed Atheist,” Report: Perspective on the News, vol. 3 (June 1966), p. 19. From an article by Helming, “An Interview with God.”
Free will is for humans. Other living things have less flexibility in modes of interaction. Only humans seem to be able to trigger ‘that is a sin!’ in humans. Humans can be pretty ruthless, poisoning weeds, killing varmits, industrializing cattle slaughter, and herding our fellow man into gas chambers. We classify some of those behaviors as ‘sin’ when we wish to reduce their frequency in the population.
Tell that to Dr. William Provine, who was the leading spokesman for Darwinists until his death. here is what he had to say.
“Of course, it is still possible to believe in both modern evolutionary biology and a purposive force, even the Judaeo-Christian God. One can suppose that God started the whole universe or works through the laws of nature (or both). There is no contradiction between this or similar views of God and natural selection. But this view of God is also worthless…. [Such a God] has nothing to do with human morals, answers no prayers, gives no life everlasting, in fact does nothing whatsoever that is detectable. In other words, religion is compatible with modern evolutionary biology (and, indeed, all of modern science) if the religion is effectively indistinguishable from atheism. “My observation is that the great majority of modern evolutionary biologists now are atheists or something very close to that. Yet prominent atheistic or agnostic scientists publicly deny that there is any conflict between science and religion. Rather than simple intellectual dishonesty, this position is pragmatic. In the United States, elected members of Congress all proclaim to be religious. Many scientists believe that funding for science might suffer if the atheistic implications of modern science were widely understood.”
William B. Provine, review of Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution, by Edward J. Larson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, 224 pp.), Academe, vol. 73 (January/February 1987), pp. 51-52 Provine was Professor of History of Biology, Cornell University Certainly dogs can love, yet I don’t think we would assert that dogs are capable of sin. Accept that, and you have a counter example that showes CS Lewis was wrong, that potential for sin is necessary for love.
Dogs have instincts, but they do not make a "conscious decision" to love.
I would use the same criteria for Jesus that I would for Bigfoot.
I don’t think Bigfoot exists either. Lots of testimony, and descriptions, some eye witness testimony. Rather less in in the way of physical evidence.
Who would win, I wonder in an evidence showdown? Bigfoot or Jesus?
I submit that many dogs are conscious, and make conscious decisions. Not perhaps bull-dogs (when you come home they are happy because they have a new friend) but Brittany Spaniels who I have seen retrieve boomerangs, while solving differential equations of motion as they pursue them.
Here is a good start on determining history through archaology.
Name them. Gather their testimony. I will wait.
Nobody questioned their testimony.
Who would win, I wonder in an evidence showdown? Bigfoot or Jesus?
***An honest assessment of the basic history would generate a very definitive answer. But you aren’t honest about history, you’re irrational. So, regardless of who would win, you will lose.
C'mon, that's a rather easy question to answer.
Has anybody yet written a book about the life and times of Bigfoot?
In His book, Jesus is described in detail, his words are recorded, his actions reported.
And, historically, we know that numerous people and places listed in His book did, in fact, exist -- precisely as they were described. The history and geography are accurate.
Is there any undeniable physical evidence of His existence? Depends on what you make of certain relics -- such as the Shroud of Turin.
You may insist on regarding the Bible as "circumstantial evidence", but it is compelling circumstantial evidence, nonetheless.
I thought the Shroud of Turn was debunked when its Carbon-14 date of manufacture was put at about 1200CE, a classic time for pious frauds.
I suppose you can pin your hopes on the Veil of Veronica (putatively a cloth on which Jesus wiped his face and left a magical image).
Well, excuse me. I don't follow the "pious fraud" trade all that closely.
Nonetheless, I note you selected this one tangential observation for comment while avoiding the enormous body of evidence represented by the Holy Bible.
You asked what I took to be an honest question: Who would win, I wonder in an evidence showdown? Bigfoot or Jesus?
I offered an answer. Evidently, you don't like it.
Which is OK by me; I'm not looking for an ecclesiastical argument.
I thought the Shroud of Turn was debunked when its Carbon-14 date of manufacture was put medieval time, a classic time for pious frauds.
However the presence of the Turin Shroud in Lirey, France, is only undoubtedly attested in 1390 when Bishop Pierre d’Arcis wrote a memorandum to Antipope Clement VII, stating that the shroud was a forgery and that the artist had confessed.
I suppose you can pin your hopes on the Veil of Veronica (putatively a cloth on which Jesus wiped his face and left a magical image).Veronica is from the Latin Verrus and the word “Icon”.
I thought I had previously discussed the bible elsewhere in this thread, or at least recently.
Matthew and Luke seem to be unreliable (ie pious frauds) as they needed to use Mark as a reference, and then added stuff to it. John is a theological document, offering attestation to things to which the author had no chance to witness. I find the apostles letters interesting as a record of contemporary teaching, but not so much as a record of Jesus.
Which leaves us with Mark, written after the principles were safely dead, about the time of the fall of Jerusalem, as an attempt to separate Christianity from the Jews who were, you may recall, on the outs for rebellion. The Jews were forced to evacuate Jerusalem.
Writing it at that time makes its prophecy of things which take place before its writing a low risk effort.
OT prophecies I find unconvincing as people would go through the list of prophecies and then tailor their story (even if not modeling the actual events) to fulfill the putative prophecy.
“He doesn’t call! He doesn’t write!”
Jesus has already answered your joke. Proof is subjective, and evidence is objective. Neither I nor anyone else can convince another person of the veracity of the four Gospels, when that person has set his mind in concrete, and refuses to examine and accept solid evidence.
Simon Greenleaf, one of the principal founders of Harvard wrote the rules for what is acceptable evidence on which United States law is based.
Greenleaf's Treatise on the Law of Evidence, published in three volumes between 1842 and 1853, forms the basis for his study of the Gospels. Greenleaf came to the conclusion that the witnesses were reliable, and the resurrection of Jesus occurred. See his The Testimony of the Evangelists, Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice.
It is not so much that no one questioned their testimony, but that the questioning of their testimony (which is alluded to, not given) is not recorded by the religious authors, or their followers.
Hence the argument of the early church that you had to have faith, or be damned. They didn’t have enough evidence to convince skeptical inquiry, and so condemned any who would not accept it on faith.
I take it he doesn’t call, write, or send you emails either.
Neither I nor anyone else can convince another person of the veracity of the four Gospels, when that person has set his mind in concrete, and refuses to examine and accept solid evidence.
***Yup. Even Wikipedia treats the subject more fairly than what’s being postulated here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_Historicity_of_Jesus
In 1543 John Calvin, in his Treatise on Relics, wrote of the shroud, which was then at Nice (it was moved to Turin in 1578), “How is it possible that those sacred historians, who carefully related all the miracles that took place at Christ’s death, should have omitted to mention one so remarkable as the likeness of the body of our Lord remaining on its wrapping sheet?” In an interpretation of the Gospel of John[20:6–7] Calvin concluded that strips of linen were used to cover the body (excluding the head) and a separate cloth to cover the head.[36] He then stated that “either St. John is a liar,” or else anyone who promotes such a shroud is “convicted of falsehood and deceit”
So per Calvin, since John and the Shroud disagree, you can assert that one of them is false, or both of them are false, but not that both are true.
I have been told that I shouldn’t trust Wikipedia, by committed Christians. So is it now a good source?
It is so hard to keep up with which lie I am to believe.
You are wrong! Over forty years ago I was a Christ hater. I threw items at Christians and spat on them. One of those believers later became a pastor, and wrote a sermon titled, "The Meanest Man I Ever Met." I spent several years as a member in the Green Berets during the Sixties, and so that should give you an idea of my state at that time. However, the believer's conduct in the face of being persecuted convinced me to examine the evidence. Jesus sent me emails, but I didn't recognize them earlier.
I never thought the evidence for the shroud rose to the level of proof.
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