Bible Humper

Hello Helen!

Even if the deity couldn't simply ignore such a thing because it would make him different enough from humanity that it would ruin his Plan, this is by no means the only option!

Jesus fed the multitudes with a tiny amount of food, so what was the problem? It would have been simple feat for him to cause the food in his stomach to continually multiply in the same manner so that whatever food his followers might allot to him could feed the starving instead.

I read the article that had the name you gave the link, and it certainly looked promising at first....

...but failed to address our problem in any way, alas. I'll check the other articles a bit later, was there one that you remember addressing this?

Thanks Helen.

HelenM

Yes, but that might also make him too different from other humans. There's a verse in the Bible that says Jesus was tested/tempted (same word in Greek) in every way as other humans are. How could that be possible, if he never got hungry?

Why don't you read the passage about the temptations of Jesus (Matthew 4, I think) - one of them was that he was hungry and the devil suggested he make stones into bread to eat but he refused.

So that implies he'd also refuse some auto-reproducing food substance in his stomach, I would say...

I think maybe the first link confused you. I don't think the author believes Jesus exercised all the attributes of deity while on earth. I think the author believes that Jesus really was in human form which has certain implications. It means he needed to eat and sleep etc. He must have had to learn to walk and talk like any other human child...

Maybe your problem is you find this whole concept of the Incarnation fundamentally contradictory. Maybe you can't see how a person could be both God and man and that make sense. In which case no links I can provide will help...

To be honest, I haven't looked at them much. I simply checked to see if the site seemed to be espousing mainstream Bible-believing Christianity and it did so I gave you the link.

I was kinda counting on you to study it carefully and point out the highlights to me since I don't really have time to go through it all...

take care
Helen

Bible Humper

Was Jesus emanciated? Children around the world have swollen stomachs because his "Plan" didn't include granting them enough to eat this year, so it is undeniably a part of the human experience.

Was he tempted by alcoholism, drug addiction, and paedophilia as well? I mean that seriously, if he had to suffer all of the temptations which afflict humanity, these are surely included!

How about power? Was Jesus tempted to nurture more reverence in his followers than was warranted? Was he perhaps tempted to increase the number of his followers by any means, which includes staging miracles?

This passage doesn't seem to be anything more than a figurative concept, meaning that he suffered all the woes of man in his sacrifice for our sins. Otherwise, why didn't Jesus suffer thirst, exhaustion, chronic migraines, nymphomania, paedophilia, etc?

I also have the usual objection to the idea that the eternal omnimax deity could accomplish anything by experiencing human woe for a short period.

Be that as it may, whether or not Jesus had to eat, sleep, drink, and breathe is a question that is addressed by Matthew 4, even though it's "solution" is riddled with problems itself, so I'll let this point slide and concede the point because I'd rather that we address the more important points regarding the deity's failure to utilize his potential towards ends he allegedly desired.


I know that. Jesus didn't exercise all of the attributes of deity, but he had to nonetheless retain all the attributes of deity while on earth!

This is why the article strengthens my argument, Jesus was in no way diminished by his flesh and blood incarnation! The idea that he was limited has blasphemous implications, according to the author, so Jesus certainly had the option of flight, among other things!

Assuming we believe that he is the incarnation of a real deity, of course.

Well, ok. I don't see why the deity needed to go through the motions when he could have crafted memories indistinguishable from actual experiences, but no biggy.

It also seems hard to argue that he was "like any other human child" when he was a miracle child who didn't cry, among other things.

Actually, I can imagine the concept of a deity using an avatar and this is the whole problem! The fact that I can imagine it is what made the problems with the Jesus story so obvious.

The only thing I had to do was to restrict my imagination to the "rules" set by Jesus, since it would be too easy for a christian to just say "we can't understand the deity" if I ask about why he didn't do something truly worthy of godhood, such as free us from the tyranny of our bodies, for example, allowing us to dance and laugh among the stars in bliss with the entirety of the human race until at last the time comes when the trumpet sounds and he calls us to his side!

No! We won't question why the deity would reject these things, there are more than enough glaring holes in the accounts of what he did do!


Hehe, I hear ya!

I doubt you'll be able to find anything that addresses this directly, I looked for the apologetic answer when I thought of this and when I realised that the theologians had nothing to say about it my response was "ah ha!".

The entire religion rests upon the assumption that Jesus was the deity incarnate, it seemed clear to me that there could only be one reason why the question of the messiah's actions compared to his abilities was never addressed! Guess what that reason was!

HelenM

Bible Humper,

Thanks for your response. I don't have time to say any more than that for now...

take care
Helen

agapeo

Hello Agapeo! Hello BH!
Well, I’m not surprised! But I didn’t offer it as an excuse. It was an opinion based on the verse I cited.
Well, one must remember “to whom” the Bible was written to. It wasn't written to convince those who don’t believe but to inform those that do. So this objection falls flat on its face before it ever leaves the ground. Can’t get the idea of flying off my mind in composing responses.
That’s an assumption on your part. I suppose if you were authoring the books you could dictate what should be written but since you didn’t . . .
No it doesn’t but if you read 2 Peter 1:1-2 you might understand why.
Interesting opinion. Don’t think it would hold up because what is recorded is sufficient to make it possible for Christians of all ages to believe.
Another interesting opinion. Where are you getting this stuff?
Oh my! What egos that all had. Egads!
Ok, I will. Since you suggested it so strongly.
You cited a couple of “Christian” examples. Can you cite some non-Christian examples where someone raised some one else from the dead? Like in magic! I’m just curious since you didn’t mention any sources.
I think I’m doing the best I can in indulging you here. Are you complaining?
So . . . you weren’t shocked. I’m confused. I thought you said you were shocked.

I don’t find it strange at all. There’s much that I can learn here. I don’t have to agree with everything posted in order to do that. For instance: I find it of great value to learn and understand the position of those who post here. Plus there is a vast amount of information contained in the Library for me peruse. So what’s so strange about that?
That’s your choice. I wouldn’t suggest in the slightest what you should do. But it bewilders me why you might be so concerned about what beliefs others might have that differ with your own. I mean – As long as they aren’t getting in your face with it, where’s the beef? Deal with them that do. Gosh darn it! Just when I said I wouldn’t make any suggestion to you, I do. Just ignore my suggestion.
I don’t know why other Christians visit this Board. I haven’t asked them.
I can handle anything you dish out. May not like it. But I can handle it.

[ October 24, 2002: Message edited by: agapeo ]</p>

Hobbs

woodchuck, are you still following this thread? If so, perhaps you can answer some questions for me. Why do so many Christians want to deny me (or want God to deny me) what, according to the story, Thomas was granted before he would believe? And why do you think that if we were given the kind of evidence the story claims he got (remember, he didn't believe the stories he heard from others either) that we still wouldn't believe? How, given convincing evidence, could we not believe? Reject God and refuse to follow him, perhaps, but at least we would have to believe. How can I even have the opportunity to reject God if he won't even convince me that he is there to reject in the first place?

Bible Humper

Hello Agapeo!

Well, I'm tempted to just accept the idea that the bible is only convincing to those who already believe as a sufficient concession that I can proclaim victory, but I want the deity's head!

I can't help but notice that anyone who finds this line of reasoning compelling should believe in thousands of strange things.

How can you say that the evidence for a global Illuminati is insufficient when we can easily imagine that the crucial details which would make the theory plausible have been covered up!

Reptoids would surely eat anyone who was disseminating any smoking gun evidence of their presence here on earth imitating humans.

Alchemists are the quiet elite who have the power to manipulate the stock market for their own purposes by transmuting one commodity into another on a grand scale.

Matt. 21:25 is useless, any crackpot idea can be defended by saying that all the crucial details "weren't recorded" or "were covered up" or whatever. The idea needs to survive scrutiny before accepting a verse which is just wrapping up by saying that there was more which isn't written.

It isn't a matter of personal preference, this religion claims that the founder was the deity. Details that make this clear would have been trumpeted, not "left out" or "considered trivial".

The miracles of Jesus have little rhyme or reason, this could be expected from a mythology which grew out of tall tales told about a dark age cult guru, but an omnimax deity is a different kettle of fish!


1:1 Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:

1:2 Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,

I don't get it....

Come on, even if we assume that Jesus was Yahweh Incarnate the problem is the same, if not worse!

There were surely tons of tales about Jesus after a century of being a revered figure whose memory was being passed around verbally by credulous Middle Eastern peasantry.

In fact, the committee who was tasked with deciding what they were all going to believe left out many things which could have been included, and perhaps added a detail or two "for the greater good". A good example is the passage attributed to Jesus where he says that priests should be paid, my catholic friend is convinced that Jesus said no such thing, and would have said the opposite if he said anything at all!

Let's be frank, even if Jesus was Yahweh incarnate this would still have happened. Look at the existence of every religion in the world except yours, it seems that mankind has a remarkable ability to convince himself of untrue supernatural beings and happenings.

So now, after a century of the Jesus stories being passed around the desert, by word of mouth, it is decided that the tales should be written for prosterity. Even assuming Jesus was the incarnate Yahweh, you still need to excise embellishment, confused bards attributing stories of other heroes to this new one, people "remembering" details after the fact, opportunists who make claims for their own benefit, etc.

You already know about the "telephone game", when someone tells somebody something and they pass it on to someone who in turn passes it on to another.... The story is much different by the end!

LOL! Think about it! People are well known to fill the blanks in their memories, this is undeniable fact.

Think about a faithful christian fisherman of the day hearing about the story of Jesus calming the sea, he is going to try his hardest to recall that day and whether or not he noticed anything about the sea which corroborates the story, even though he was very far from the alleged incident.

Chances are, he is going to convince himself that he "remembers" that it looked like a storm might be brewing that day which didn't.

The myths of Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Dionysus, Tammuz and others. This doesn't even include the more necromantic variants such as the ones told about Hecate's priest's animation of the dead, for example.

The most important one, if you are going to look deeper into this, is the legend of Mithras. There are a shocking amount of "coincidentally" identical stories shared by the older Mithras and the new deity who was becoming popular in the Roman empire, where Mithraism was usually a soldier's preferred faith, Jesus.

Now, I can't prove that the Jesus stories were "borrowed" from Mithras, but I find it very interesting that this religion was extremely popular with the Roman military, who were very influential. If a new religion was springing up in my empire and quickly becoming the majority faith, and it's followers were agitating violently for the removal of every trace of "profane" religions, I would want to appease them.

Here's the problem, my military is fiercely protective of their own mystery deity. The ideal solution would be to have the new religion incorporate the older myths into their newer movement so that the followers of the old faiths could switch to the new with much less fuss.

Anyway, I digress...

No, I was kidding man!

What is strange is that you would participate in a "miscellaneous religious discussions" forum on this atheist site if you feel that we should live and let live.

What sorts of religious topics did you expect atheists to discuss if not the absurdity of religious belief!?


Good! And vice versa.

woodchuck

Hobbs, nice to meet yah.... I'll attempt answering:
My whole life, even as an atheist teenager I would sometimes pray “if there is a God listening, just show yourself and I’ll believe.” Of course, what I meant was physically- I wanted a visitation, like you are saying- I wanted to see Him. I never got it- not in the sense we are speaking. So you must be wondering why I believe so strongly in Him now? All I can say is that I did meet Him, but it was in a way that was not physical, was not empirical, and I have no scientific evidence of it. Now I’m left with the option of denying that I have truly met Christ, because according to science I had a strange chemical delusion or something- or accepting that the new life that is alive inside me and is changing me day by day is Christ, and that maybe the Creator of our empirical earth is not bound to the laws of science, and in fact science is only a method used by man to learn more about ourselves and our universe, it is not supposed to limit us in our search for the truth. What science believes today is not what it believed yesterday, so why fully rely on science for facts, when science is merely learning what the facts are itself?

I know that’s not really what you asked, sorry bout the tangent. Here’s the thing. I can only answer this from personal experience, and in my opinion that’s the best way to answer. God created us as very personal beings. The physical side of life is a tiny fragment of what life really is- most of life, at least from an individual standpoint- is thinking, remembering, loving, emotions, etc…… I believe that the reason we are like this is because our Creator is like this. I believe that this is the level He would most like to meet us at. Does that make sense? I know it makes sense to me, but I wonder if it only makes sense because I have experienced it.

God wants a relationship, and he wants you to choose Him. I know you’ve heard that a gazillion times, but that’s because it’s true. He wants to meet you inside you and be closer to you than anything. If He was to come to us all in a physical form and stand in front of us and say, see, I’m God, now worship me and love me, I think that getting into a personal love relationship with Him would be extremely difficult, because now we are stuck in an experience of God who is more like a man, a king or a ruler, not a friend, not a spirit in you.

What I’m trying to say is that life is physical and spiritual, and God prefers to come to us spiritually because that is closer to our heart- if you reject metaphysics and say that all is physical, if you choose to allow only naturalist philosophy to be the truth, then you’ve already put the biggest part of being human on the bottom shelf, or even rejected it completely.

I don’t claim that, I have no idea how you would respond. But I don’t think that everyone who saw Christ physically would believe. Remember- He did get crucified, whether it’s because people didn’t believe, or because in their hearts they did believe and wanted to destroy him I don’t really know. But even when God spoke from heaven and said that Jesus was His son, their was a group of people who made the excuse “it thundered.” I wonder if these people were making the same claims- that if they just heard God speak from heaven they would believe, but when He did they said it must have just been thunder.

Would you honestly give your life over to Christ if you got the Thomas experience? That’s your call, I cant answer it for you. But in our age of naturalism I don’t know if miracles would win much favor- I think people would just go looking for a satisfying natural explanation if they had already decided to stick to that mindset. Much like people do today with the theory of origin and design.

We can look at this world and take it either way. We can say it was created by intelligent design, or natural forces. God still gives the option to not believe, but I think that if you look unbiased at this universe, you would have to at least begin to see evidence that it is not just a big evolving glob of molecules, but that there’s more to it. Those who accept Christ and live in Him get to experience an abundant relationship with their Creator, but all people experience a relationship with Him to some extent. Even if you don’t give him credit. He’s still keeping you alive, He’s still keeping evil from fully dominating our world, He’s still fighting on your behalf- and of course you can deny this, but to rule it out as impossible is not God hiding, it’s YOU hiding.
I don’t think God wants a creation that believes in Him- He wants a creation that loves Him. He wants a Creation that wants Him to be Lord.

I do not expect my answers here to be anything new to you, but I did want to try and answer you anyway. All I know is that I had reality before I met Christ and it was all I thought that life was- but when I met Christ, I found that in Him is a reality much more real than the reality apart from Him. Not that it’s a fully separate reality- it’s a completed reality. I don’t expect you to agree, I never would have. But all I can say is that this has been my experience, and what I thought was all there was, was not all there was- and now I’m stuck with that factor in my life, and I don’t mind. Sure, the church is a mess, I’m part of a religion that has a nasty past and a reputation for hypocrisy. But Christ is the only reason I am a part- and He is just as disgusted by these things as I, if not more. The fact is that the entire world has a nasty past, and all humans have a reputation for hypocrisy, the Christians are people plain and simple.

Anyway, I see God as preferring to come to us not in a way that leaves us feeling dominated and overwhelmed until He has to. I know this is not how it goes in the Thomas example- but Jesus himself says that it is the ones who believe without getting Thomas’s special treatment who would be getting the real blessings. And I’ve learned why- because God can be closer to you if you meet Him the way he intended, in Spirit. The way to God can not be formulated, an it can not be mapped out- Kind of like love. You can not give someone a set of instruction to find a lover, only suggestions. And my suggestion is to keep honestly seeking, and honestly removing things from your life that are perhaps keeping you from seeing. God allows us the free will to hide from Him, He also allows us the free will to cover him up. Could He make you believe? Yes. But He wants it to be something you seek out and desire because you are not satisfied with life apart from Him. And if you are satisfied with life apart from Him, I am afraid it will be very hard to find Him.

I know I’m going to get reamed from all of you naturalists and atheists for this “religious sentimental” post, but this is my answer… so ream away. Thanks for asking those questions Hobbs, it has been good for me to think about the answers to them.

-Eef

ohwilleke

The majority scriptural answer to the original post, I believe (contrary to the explaination given by HelenM), is that Jesus could fly and chose not to.

In the story of the temptation of Jesus during his 40 day trial before Satan, Satan asked Jesus to fly, and he specifically refused the temptation despite having the ability to do so. See Luke 4:1-4:12.

Similarly, the scriptural point is not that Jesus was forcibily killed by main force by the Romans, but that he in effect consented to it. Jesus did not argue against his execution with Pontius Pilot that he was not guilty, (Luke 23:1-23:25) and indeed forgave him for ordering the execution, despite the fact that Pontius Pilot essentially told Jesus, "You aren't guilty of anything, tell me why I shouldn't execute you?", with the implicit idea that just about any defense offered would have been used to prevent the execution. Before that scene in the Gospels, at the Last Supper, Jesus informs his disciplies in a poetic way, that he know that he will be executed, and that he knows exactly how his betrayal will happen, and he does nothing about it. (Luke 22).

Refusing to fly when he is crucified is simply one more piece of the consistent picture. Jesus is passively allowing himself to be killed despite knowing that it will happen and having the ability to prevent it.

Theologically, this death wish is explained by a desire to conquer hell and sacrifice himself for the sins of humanity. (See e.g. the Apostles Creed).

I don't believe the Bible, of course, on these points, but that is the explanation of what is going on in the Gospel story.

[ October 28, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]</p>

Bible Humper

Actually, my argument was that Jesus should have used flight for locomotive purposes, especially for the sake of healing people. I have no intention of disputing the crucifiction account.

The story of Jesus doesn't even resemble a believable account of an avatar on Earth, I chose to question why he didn't fly because it was something relatively simple and was well within the limits of what power he is already written to have demonstrated.

I could still ask why he didn't just heal the world if he was willing to heal a couple people, or imprint the memory of his existence and sacrifice into our memory instead of relying on a book written a century later to convince us of it(and dire consequences for not being convinced), but healing the world wouldn't necessarily result in him getting the credit, and Xians would probably say that the second somehow violates free will whereas an allegedly inspired bible does not.

I felt it was best to use something well within the limits, something for which there was no excuse for him not doing unless his miracle stories were just an ad hoc collection of old wive's tales told about a century old cult guru written for prosterity.

The miracles of Jesus have no rhyme or reason, they weren't necessary feats for the sake of the coming crucifiction, nor were they done for the good of man. Frivolous use of the deity's power to walk on water, turn water to wine, and curse fig trees stand in contrast to his failure to use his power for good.

It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that that this character written about in the bible was not the avatar of a real omnimax deity, but faith is blind, so they say.

[ October 28, 2002: Message edited by: Bible Humper ]</p>