Ellis14

Those verses refer to Jesus as a child though. Up until the age of 30 he was a normal man, although he knew the responsibility upon him. At 30 he got baptised at which point a dove descended from heaven and announced that he was God's son, at which point presumably his pre-human heavenly life was revealed to him. Then he retreated to the mountains for 3 days and 3 nights to consider such.

He only became the Christ, the Messiah, from 30 years of age. At which point he presumably did know everything, except of course the day or the hour of The End, since Jesus said that only God knew that.

Doctor X

Eh . . . you do realize you conflate stories and make mistakes?

In the first extant Synoptic Gospel we have--Mk--as well as Lk, and Mt--no dove speaks to Junior--a voice proclaims it.

You do describe on theological position--that Junior was not a god until the pronouncement of his status. This was/is a controversial opinion. I do not think it is sustained by the Synoptics--certainly Jn would disagree. Mt and Lk argue for "special" prior to the time. With Mk it is impossible to tell since he begins his story with the baptism. However, the comporary and previous conceptions of "sons of gods" suggest that his status would not be understood or portrayed by Mk as a "new thing" with the baptism.

--J.D.

Ellis14

I don't believe the stories anyway, but I can read them for what they say.

That's because the gospels contradict each other.

I didn't say and I don't think Jesus was ever God. The bible says he was God's son.

His position as God's son didn't begin with his baptism. I didn't say anything like that. I said that his position as Messiah, the Christ, the Reedemer etc, began when he was baptised and annointed. Up until then he was God's son, obviously, but not the Christ.

Doctor X

Ellis10:

Ah!

To clarify, I cautioned against a statement such as:

"Those verses" seem to me to refer to Luke 2:52. As noted, Lk does not have a dove but "a voice came from heaven,". . .

Basically, perchance I nitpick but it is not "a dove descended from heaven."

Mk 1:10b-11a and the Spirit descended upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, . . .

Mt 3:16a-17a and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven saying. . . .

Lk 3:22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, . . .

'tis a metaphor or simile.

As for the rest, fair enough. I noted that some have taken that argument about divinity--and, as you note now--"Messiahood." That issue is probably a nitpick hijack.

--J.D.

Sven

Sven[corrected the spelling]- ?My premise is an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God, as accepted by almost all Cristians?

[snipped the rest, gives nothing more substantial]
So, what you are saying essentially is: Christians define "ombibenevolence" to be compatibel with Hell and unnecessary suffering. But this doesn't help your case that God is omnibenevolent regardless of the existence of Hell and unnecessary suffering - this only shows that Christians can redefine words so that their original meaning is completely lost. If you weren not talking about God, you won't call anyone who behaves like the God of the Bible "benevolent" - less than ever "omnibenevolent". But when talking about God, normal standards suddenly don't have to be applied any more...

Sven- ?You haven't understood the argument at all. You're right: Dead people don't have free will. Thus God has taken away free will from them by killing them. Thus there should no problem at all to take a little bit free will away to influence people to get better.
And you ignored my second point, that these people certainly had a will to live.?

If you reread what I posted, I nowhere said "force" - I was talking about "influencing"/"a little bit". Given enough time, a tiny small influence - far from "forcing" - would have made these people better. As an aside, God's laws where only given to the people far later (Mose) - thus they didn't even have an idea which way God wanted them to behave.
Let's look at an analogy: A kid behaves bad. What would a typical benevolent father do? Trying to influence the kid so that it gets better eventually - or kill the kid?

Sven- ?Didn't these people have the will to live??
We obviously have different definitions of "free will". You seem to think that it is restricted to the choice to "follow God or not". Even if this is the case, as I pointed out above, the rule to follow only Yahwe was not given to the Israelites before Mose. So God did expect them to follow a rule which they didn't know? Hmm, is "perfect" consistent with "silly"?

Sven- ?I see that you haven't answered (6). Is this because of time or do you concede that this indeed a problem??
If there is no problem, I await your explanation why to torment innocent animals is consistent with omnibenevolence. Is this another redefinition of the word?

Sven

This wasn't the point of my post. As you conceded, your belief is also far from logical-thus approving my post. According to you, both
"belief" in God and (macro)evolution is illogical - thus there is no reason to prefer the first to the second! By conceding that your belief in God is illogical, you destroyed your "argument" that you can not believe in macroevolution/OOL because you find it illogical! So please stop using this argument - and become an agnostic.


As has been pointed out many times before, common sense is of no use in science. Evidence is the only thing which counts.


These people have only shown that they don't know what they are talking about - and you also again. I say it for about the fifth time, perhaps it will finally sink in: To calculate the chances of abiogenesis, we need to know exactly how life originated. Looking at their works, Hoyle and Demski obviously had no clue about this. Thus their calculations can be summarized by four words: garbage in, garbage out.


You keep claiming this. Could you please finally explain why this violates logic?


So we go again: What, exactly, is a "kind"?

And please explain how creation is consistent with the order of the fossils.


Have you ever heard of the "RNA-world" hypothesis? How much have you actually read about OOL? Creationist sites or publications of people who know what they are talking about?


Even if you were right - so what? As has been repeatedly pointed out to you, the theory of evolution is totally agnostic about how life started. If God making the first cell/the first replicator/etc. is totally compatible with the theory of evolution. But you won't consider this alternative, even though only evolution is able to explain the fossil record and the """""creation theory""""" (or even ID) fails totally here.

No it isn't. See above. You totally missed the point of my post.

Harry Bosch

What a great response! Yes, it's a vast conspiracy! Its sad really, the level of delusion that is required to believe the "old Jewish myths".

dado

Rashi wrote as early as 1000 years ago that the moment of creation was a kicking off point for the process of evolution and that the six-day story was not meant in a "6x24" sense. since Rashi wrote this several centuries before Darwin's incredible book, it would be quite incorrect to dismiss it as apologia. the Shulchan Aruch - 500 years after Rashi but still 300 years before Darwin - specifies the Brachot said for a deformed human be also said for an ape. no less a sage than Ramban taught contradiction cannot lie between scientific fact and Torah: if it appears there is a contradiction, we are obligated to revisit our assumptions. ALL our assumptions.

so don't be blaming Jews for (some) christians taking texts completely out of context.

Doctor X

That Rashi is late, late . . . LATE . . . commentary that has no relevance to the intent of the authors should not dissuade us apparently. . . .

I rather prefer the late commentary on Genesis--Hypostasis of the Archons--that recognizes the repeated creation and concludes that YHWH is an evil and blind demiurge . . . that is what the J/E and P writers meant . . . yeah . . . that is it. . . .

--J.D.

dado

have to say, it's been a while since i've come across somebody so intent on understanding absolutely nothing, lol.

*click*