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.
So was Jesus born in the reign of Herod the Great?
Or was it during the Census?
Pick one lie and stick to it!
1886? Been paying attention to the data GarySpFc posted? Apparently not. Ramsay was after 1886.
I know of Brown’s liberal theology which is not surprising coming from the same Roman tradition. Did you read the discerts from the others? Or another wiki source?
Yes on Herod and Yes on a census.
Then argue with Josephus, not me.
Calvin was never elected pope or a spokesman for all Protestants.
If Jesus appeared to Paul, then it’s impossible that Paul didn’t meet him.
Science also uses statistical verification.
The number of prophesies fulfilled by Jesus provides statistical verification that these fulfilled prophesies did not occur by chance nor could they have been staged or self-fulfilled.
Hawking says the law of gravity created itself.
Goes to show, as John Lennox has pointed out, that a logically incoherent comment is logically incoherent even when written by a brilliant scientist.
“Why would its rules be be “Jam yesterday and Jam tomorrow but never Jam today”
Your ability to ask this question doesn’t address the ontological question—whether or not this supernatural force exists.
Your question only tells us you don’t like the particular arrangement of historical events.
"The blithe 'reconstruction' not only of Q, not only of its different stages of composition, but even of complete communities whose beliefs are accurately reflected in these different stages, betokens a naive willingness to believe in anything as long as it is nothing like Mark (let alone Paul)." N. T. Wright.
Quite frankly I agree with N.T. Wright.
Assertions that people rise from the dead.)
And you have something better to offer?
No amount of correct testimony (Pontius Pilate was governor) mixed in with falsehood is sufficient to give the testimony of ancient documents, only admitted under the exception to hearsay rules that is given to ancient documents, credence.
Thank goodness the experts don't share your OPINION.
If the ancient documents are a mixture of falsehood and fact, the fact that the documents are ancient makes it difficult to determine which is which. So after the gospels show the marks of forgery and the inability of the author to restrict his testimony to fact, the whole document can be safety relegated to the category of pious fraud- and rejected from being admitted as evidence.
"If" is a conditional word, and clearly exhibits a lack of certainty. Imagine, someone questioning the existence of two of the greatest minds the world has ever seen. I'm referring to Luke and Paul.
Matthew and Luke might have gotten some information from Mark and a document labeled Q, but that is extreme speculation on your part, since you discount all Biblical scholarship.
To deny the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Christ, you must provide a more plausible explanation for each of the following:
Why the tomb was empty.
Why the followers of Jesus were despondent and depressed right after his death and then within days had regained their faith and during the years that followed were willing to suffer poverty, persecution, torture and death for their faith.
Why the enemy of Christianity, Saul of Tarsus, converted.
Why the skeptic James converted.
Why the reports state Jesus first appeared to women, who in those days weren’t considered credible enough to testify in court. Myth or invention do not explain this.
Remember—the resurrection explains all of these. To deny it with any credibility, you must provide more plausible explanations. It has never been done—neither by scientist, philosopher, skeptic nor charlatan.
If you accept metaphysical naturalism you must also accept that the self doesn’t exist.
You must also accept under metaphysical naturalism that intentionality doesn’t exist.
Based on your belief in naturalism I’d say you should consider whether from now on you’ll be making any comments at all.
If you understand human nature, then you realize a church cannot get off to a start like Christianity and grow like it did, based on force.
Think of the concept known as mainstream consensus, regarding any given event or cluster of events, among historical experts.
If you understand that such a thing exists—guess what the consensus is on the events surrounding the resurrection of Jesus?
“And which one of the apostles was there, a member of the Sanhedrin? Who was the eye witness?”
Atheism must render its adherents somewhat stupid, judging from that question.
The witness to the events before the Sanhedrin is mentioned right in the text itself- someone who knew the apostles well and who had ample opportunity to relay the events to them in intimate detail. That witness of course was Christ himself after his resurrection.
Apparently your bias calls for an eclipse. All I know is the sun was darkened. We do have the following testimony, but it's not Scripture.
Thallus. Thallus wrote around A.D. 52. None of his works are extant, though a few fragmented citations are preserved by other writers. One such writer is Julius Africanus in about 221, who quotes Thallus in a discussion of the darkness which followed the crucifixion of Christ:
On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun. [Extant Writings, 18 in the Ante-Nicene Fathers]
Africanus identifies the darkness which Thallus explained as a solar eclipse with the darkness at the crucifixion described in Luke 23:44–45.
Oh good, so your evidence for magical testimony, indicating that the account of a resurrection is true is also magical.
Pelly! I never you were a Mormon! They know it is true because it was written on the golden plates, which are in the keeping of Moroni! No problem with that, right?
Now if only I could get some magical testimony for next week’s lottery numbers!
You mean the mainstream consensus that certifies global warming, despite the proven impossible of predicting non-trivial future states from past states for a Navier Stokes equation system (temperature and density changes with fluid flow) described by nonlinear, chaotic system with sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
You mean that mainstream consensus?
Usually it is at DU where people tell you to let others do the thinking for you. Is this really FR?
Jesus appeared to women because of the resurrection?
Can you spell non sequitur?
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