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cinch
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Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Jul 2002
time: 22:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Yeah, and the Romans are just going to let the disciples close to Christ so that they can pull him off the cross. They poked his side with a spear and watched the blood and water run from the wound. |
This is if you take the "Christ's Crucifixion" theatrics as the gospel (zing!) truth. It was not beyond a Roman footsoldier to feel compassion for Christ, or perhaps even be a closeted follower of him.
I don't think it's completely crazy-wacko-insane to consider the possibility that Yehoshua ben Yosef could have been rescued from the cross.
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by Jon Miller
the point is that the wages of sin is death, the natural outcome of sin is death |
I reject the notion of Original Sin. First of all, as I pointed out before, it seems highly unlikely that the big G is less enlightened than us, and we surely do not blame people for the crimes their ancestors commit. Secondly, again, as I pointed out before, how would anybody not figure out Adam and Eve had to eat from that tree? It was bound to happen. Supposedly YHWH is omniscient, surely he would have known beforehand.
quote:
Originally posted by Jon Miller
rather he died, and when he died (before even, when he took up the cup in the garden) he took our sin, our sentence, and was the one who did it instead of us |
Again this makes absolutely no sense at all. First of all, we don't sentence people for crimes they didn't commit. Secondly, YHWH could just easily cleared us of our "sins."
On a deeper theologial level, if we assume that YHWH is both omniscient and omnipotent, surely he could have chosen, among infinite possibities, the one world that we humans did not, do not, and will not commit any "sins."
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
If you look at Moslem doctrine, they reject what I have posted that Jesus died on the cross, but rather that he survived, and the disciples rescued him. This has absolutely no basis, because the Roman soldiers, if they crucified someone, would make sure that they killed the person before letting him off the cross. |
There are several problems with Jesus's "crucifixion."
The big one is -- there is no mention of "cross" in the original text, or so claimed a former theologian. The original word in Greek means "a stake," not "a cross."
Furthermore, even the gospels mentioned that the Romans had no interest in killing of Jesus, only the Jews did. IIRC, only one of the synoptic gospels mentioned the Roman soldiers stabbed the body after it was removed from the "cross."
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Urban Ranger
There are several problems with Jesus's "crucifixion."
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Yeah, timing for one.
When was Jesus crucified?
He was crucified at the third hour.
Mk.15:25
"And it was the third hour, and they crucified him."
He was crucified sometime after the sixth hour.
Jn.19:14-16
"And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified."
from the Sceptics'/Skeptics' Annotated Bible.
Yes, I can just see someone like Eric Idle in 'The Life of Brian', going:
'King of the Jews crucifixion at the third hour....sorry, can't fit you in, we've got a double booking with a stoning and a beheading. Three hours later suit you?
Lovely. Oh, and it's b.y.o. cross. Ciao!'
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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:33
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Well, personally I like this quote:
"Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?" - Sister Miriam Godwinson, "But for the Grace of God"
Despite the fact that it's from SMAC, it brings up an interesting point: if God is omnipotent, he essentially defines reality. Now let's see what this would mean if, say, I had this power (just to remove religious dogma from this):
First, I could easily get rid of the suffering of every human being ever to live. I see how that would be a good thing. Well, wouldn't I be doing a good thing to make sure no baby had ever been stillborn or aborted, and instead lived happy, blissful lives? Seems so. You know what, how about I give all of those potential people, who could have been conceived but weren't? I'll stick them in too. Actually, I'll start adding even MORE people, and giving them good lives too. Even better! I think to make the maximum possible goodness, I'll create an INFINITE number of people, all with happy lives. And I'll give them free will, sure, but I'll create each and every one of them with enough "conscience" so that they never actually decide to "sin". Yay!
Bo-ring. What's the point?
Now, obviously, if I created a world like we had now, I'd be "evil". I mean, how can anyone but I be responsible for plagues and natural disasters - I created the world such that they would occur. Have I not "sinned" more than anyone, caused more pain and suffering than every human combined? All as some petty spite for them eating an apple from a tree? If the police did something like that, I'm sure most people here would definately call it abuse. It's like selling drugs on the street in order to catch drug users.
Obviously, our sense of "morals" could not in the least apply to an omnipotent being, because the ultimate result of that is utter pointlessness. Frankly, I'd rather live in a world with conflict than one without. It would be frighteningly dull without it. Just like when you play Risk - the objective is to conquer the world, but you don't keep playing afterwards, do you?
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cinch
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Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Jul 2002
time: 22:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
If you make that argument, then you need to find a credible way to explain the following phenomenons.
1. Why did the Christian church grow? Why would all the people follow a religion of a man who was simply out of his mind? WIthout the resurrection, there is no reason to believe that christ is the Son of God.
2. Why would the disciples want to rescue Christ from the cross? If they believed that he was the promised Messiah, they would expect God to intervene on his behalf. If they intervened, then Christ would not be the Messiah, but simply a man.
3. How do you explain Paul, and the acceptance of Paul by the Christians? |
1. It had an appealing message: forgiveness and all that. It could be taken in by both the peasants, looking for hope in the form of salvation and Heaven; and also the ruling classes who could use it to passify the population and justify wars (like most religions). As for the resurrection: I'm just saying it might not have happened, not that nobody believed it did. They were misled.
2. We don't know that they knew he was going to come back to life. Heck, according to The Bible, Thomas didn't even believe Christ came back to life until he touched his wounds! Who knows how much they knew/believed?
They devoted their lives to this man; I'm willing to believe that they would do all they could to save him. "If they intervened, then Christ would not be the Messiah, but simply a man." That's not necessarily true. You can believe someone to have supernatural powers, and still want to help them when they're in trouble.
OR maybe the apostles wanted to let him die, but Nicodaemus and Joey of Arimathea went up and took him down, for they knew less of his 'plans'. Plenty o' options here.
3. Paul was an able, slick trickster who co-opted Christ's message for his own needs. That's all one really needs to know about him.
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shawnmmcc
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UR, I find myself in the odd position of being on neither side. There is a large mixture of issues mixed up in the pot here, let me try to answer a couple that I struggled with many years ago, and still have not yet fully come to terms yet.
First of all, for the people saying how can God let bad things happen, that ones easy and has been dealt with by theologians and philosphers many time before. Free will. It's not free wil if man does not have the choice to commit evil. Simple enough.
Deism versus Theism is much thornier. Deism explains a lot, I personally called it "the whole ball of wax" theory before I read about and learned the agreed on terminology. The whole ball of wax, as in God created the world, and then gave it to mankind and said, it's yours to do with what you please (maybe he said "it's yours to f*** up," but I don't believe in a malevolent deity).
The problem with Deism is that, and rightly so, many Christians consider it heretical based on portions of the Bible, and argue for a Theistic God, one who intervenes. I personally have some emotional issues with that, those of you who have caught some of my posts in recent months would know that a sister of mine had a pretty horrific accident. Talking Theism is nice, but the whole Job idea wears just a little bit thin. Or as one poster earlier noted, how about HIV. Deistically it makes sense. Theistically, there have been all kinds of arguments, the most common one is that we cannot understand God's plan. To which I wonder what the children in the burn unit of Shriners in Boston think about that (I use that as an example for just plain lousy luck, versus actions due to the evil of other humans - see free will above).
Papal infallibility is a relatively new phenomena, dating from the 1800's. I'd have to get my books out, I haven't looked over it in twenty years. It's frankly rather silly, and nobody but the Catholics subscribe to it, so that also gets red herring status, it's a confusor for everybody who's Christian but not Catholic. There's also a name for the heresy that challenges Paul's inclusion in the new testament, I cannot remember the name.
Lastly, and those of you who have read this can skip to the next post, there is a confusion here between morals and ethics. Morals, based on sacred texts, are neither provable nor universal. The are germane to those who believe in those sacred texts. They overlap with each other, and with ethics, because there are certain PRINCIPLES necessary for a society to function. Even basic ones, like murder, become much more complicated that we think of today. Look at the tradition at Weregild, or blood money.
Ethics attempts to be universal, be creating a self-consistant system based on precepts that themselves are self-consistant. You could argue for the ethics of a social darwinist, but you will find the vast majority who would argue for that would say "That's different" when the bigger dog eats them. Self-consistant systems of ethics are typically based on the golden rule or some variation on it, though there can be very genuine arguments over the primacy of the individual versus the primacy of society. That's why Asian democracies are very different that those in the west.
Ethics would say Gays have the right to be married, because granting someone the ability to take away that right, based on their religious beliefs, means that they will have the right to impose their religious beliefs on any unbeliever. Please note that is different than requiring any certified OB-GYN residential program to include training in abotions, that is the same in the opposite direction. The problem is that ethics are much harder than morals, because you have to work both backwards and fowards, examing not just behaviors but the precepts for self-consistancy. It also requires a brutal level of self-honesty to work. Morality is much simpler, just do what the sacred texts say.
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23-01-2004 05:42
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