Posted on 06/23/2008 3:05:46 PM PDT by betty boop
But Jesus is a RESURRECTED Saviour who sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven, interceding for us. He not only died but He came back to life and is coming again. There IS a difference. He was a REAL person, not a false god. He actually lived, had a body, a soul.
Prove it
People like Josephus, a historian at the time of Jesus, has recorded things about his life. You may not be willing to hear anything we have to say about Jesus, his humanity or his divinity. It has been proven that He lived through the people who wrote about Him in the Bible. But if you don’t believe in Jesus, you may not believe in the Bible either, so what’s one to do with you, Soliton?
No you didn’t. I was speaking of how besieged cities, as a “common practice,” were treated if they offered more than token resistance against their invaders. If your response was to any other part of my msg, then it would have made even less sense. I then asked whose culture still enthusiastically embraces the indiscriminate slaughter of children and noncombatant men and women and who does not. You couldn’t bring yourself to answer. Would have gagged on the reply, I imagine. So you had to shift the ground to avoid conceding an unpleasant truth you couldn’t face.
I could have replied much more harshly. Considering your response, I could have inquired if you were suggesting that our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are engaging in the same sort of indiscriminate slaughter as are the Islamic savages who infest the area. That’s the accusation Socialist/Marxists hurl at our armed forces. Do you agree? It seems that you do.
I could have then gone on to ask if you were also suggesting that Christians are unreservedly a bunch of murdering racists and bigots, who revel in the indiscriminate slaughter of Middle East innocents by our troops (Middle East. Get it? Dark skinned people. Those racist American Christians). Guess you do make that connection.
Oh, how you love to scramble your terms. First, it was the Quakers. They actually did something to relieve the suffering of the slaves (and maybe the Unitarians a little). But, not those filthy racist Fundies, whom Quakers can’t relate to. Then it became just simply ‘Christians’ who did everything in their power to oppress the former slaves. Guess that lumps all the Christians together as racist, bloody-minded killers of innocent women and children. Except the Quakers (and maybe the Unitarians)? Possibly you subscribe to the notion that Quakers, being much too nice, aren’t really Christians. Nor the Unitarians either? They are Deists, so a little credit can be thrown their way?
What was the original proposition again? That Muslims are just as likely to be right as the Jews and Christians. You immediately focused on Christians and their many transgressions (apparently even dismissing the Jews from your thoughts – such single mindedness is admirable). Guess JS1138 has registered his answer: It’s the Moslems who are right. It’s those awful Christians who fly very big planes into very tall buildings at very high speeds. It’s Christians who delight in the slaughter of millions of innocents (an especially delightful circumstance if the victims are dark skinned).
Oh yes, and it was Charles Darwin along with a small band of determined atheistic evolutionists who freed the slaves.
For the mind stuck in rejecting God, there is no evidence or witness testimony that could rise to the level of proof. The game is fixed/rigged in the mind of the determined doubter. Eyewitness testimony that doesn’t fit the predetermined goal is dismissed out of hand. It is strange in deed to witness such determined blindness, but it is becoming more and more prominent. And for the record, if anyone wishes to understand just how compelling is the eyewitness testimony to the resurrected Jesus, the books by Gary Habermas are an excellent starting point. Following Gary’s marvelous work one can seek out the writings of William Lane Craig to get a solid ‘proof apologetics’ reading.
As usual, you seriously outgun me when it comes to discussions like this. But I think it's important not to extend my comments beyond the narrow scope in which I was making them, which was in the context of some saying that "now" doesn't really exist. (Poorly paraphrased.)
To begin with, there are some significant similarities in the sense of control systems and human cognition. After all, humans are 'machines' when it comes to accomplishing physical activities -- and we're subject to many of the same sorts of 'control' problems that our inventions have to overcome. I did not intend to imply that that encompasses all of human cognition ... but it is at least part of what we are.
That said, I wasn't really intending to extend my analogy very far at all -- it was really no more than an observation of the similarity in the problem being solved; i.e., how to bridge the gap between sensing and processing; and how to think about the "time constant" of the human system, and the environment in which it's acting.
If one focuses solely on the difference between "then," "now," and "later," I think one must accept that there really are epistemological difficulties with the "now." There's a finite-duration gap between sensing and understanding that (I think) cannot be bridged. And again, that's a problem also faced by control systems.
I probably failed to clearly place this activity within the bigger picture, however, which is where "human perception/cognition" more properly resides.
Specifically, humans don't exist merely within a cyclic control loop; we also understand ourselves to be operating within a continuum that includes both past and future. Even if the aforementioned lag between sensing and processing imposes a short period of uncertainty about "now," our awareness of context allows us to operate as if that lag did not exist. And despite the lag between "actual" and "perceived" now, I think there's no serious doubt that an objective "now" actually exists.
Our lives are made much easier by the fact that the world around us typically operates with a much longer time constant. Sporting events tend to push us to and beyond that cognitive limit, of course, as do things like warfare.
I wonder, r9etb — what is your view, your opinion, of this matter? How do we "square" the historical data with science?
To broaden things beyond the original narrow scope, I think it's just a plain fact that (aside from autonomic responses) humans don't actually spend all that of our mental efforts dealing with the "now." And, beyond that, we don't even spend all that much time "on the time line." This thread is a great example: the subject matter has very little indeed to do with the day-to-day issues that define my life. My thoughts -- and those of most folks, probably -- tend to range very far from our moment-to-moment activities, a lot of the time. And I think that stands as evidence that we humans have a (very limited) ability to take a "God's-eye view" of reality. And that is the proper context in which to address the slippery question of "now."
And to answer your question, I think it's only at this level that we can "'square' the historical data with science." From that perspective, science is really just one of several (many?) different ways of viewing and assessing reality -- and one, moreover, that is pretty much useless unless it's applied in conjunction with those other means of perception.
This is made clear by your discussions of Bohr and Einstein's views -- they're not talking about "evidence" per se, nor the interpretation of it; rather, they're talking about the overarching reality within which that activity takes place. And yet there's no serious doubt that both gentlemen were engaged in "science" when they were wrangling at a philosophical level with the issues raised by quantum mechanics. At that level, the "science" and "philosophy" (and also religion) are essentially inseparable -- to attempt to separate them into separate and exclusive forms of cognition is not just unnecessary, it's positively harmful to our attempts to come to grips with "reality." And thus we must conclude that our FRiend Coyoteman's comment about science vs. religion vs. philosophy -- while ideologically appealing to some -- are not really all that compelling after all.
You’re exactly right. It’s like pouring money down a big hole. Josh McDowell’s books are also very good. He started out as a non-believer/skeptic and ended up believing in his own research. I pray Soliton will do the same. Thanks for your reply.
Josephus was born after Jesus died
I would say that Christian nations are not a full century removed from this kind of behavior. More to the point, I would argue that nominally Christian nations have become less savage as they have become more secular. Our own nation provides numerous examples. I mentioned slavery, but there is also the forced relocation of the Cherokees, to cite just two examples.
What a spurious comment. Do you give yourself little stars for ‘gotchas’ you perpetrate at FR? ... And BTW, little solitary wave, there were still living in Josephus’s day probably hundreds of eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus. Are you aware of the Historical events by which Josephus became a Roman certifierd Historian since he was previously an ascetic Jew?
Read your Bible again
Are you aware of the Historical events by which Josephus became a Roman certifierd Historian since he was previously an ascetic Jew?
I am unaware of any certification process for becoming a RCS (Roman Certified Historian). I am looking at my copy of Josephus The Jewish War as I type. He was born a Jew and died a Jew as best I can tell.
In my view, this testimony stands in sharp contrast to the observation of the physical world, that the lag between physical sensory perception and cognition cannot be physically closed. IOW, the observation itself points to the physical being just a subset of "all that there is."
Thank you for your outstanding essay-posts, dearest sister in Christ!
I think I could make the case that many Freepers wouldn't consider Unitarians and Quakers to be Christians. Stick around on the religion threads and hardly anyone qualifies.
He still wrote about Jesus, even a description of him. Your mind is just closed to anything about Him. I pray for you that you will investigate with an open mind, for yourself. Blessings. mary
Radio(television) waves are "LIGHT".. as fully as infra red, micro waves and sunlight.. Radio waves carry music, talk, news, and other kinds of data(FM) <- like garage door opener signals.. Light can hold much "information"..
Light transduced by the human brain decrypts all vision.. The images are there whether the eye sees them or not.. Images of what is or seems to be..
The ghost in the machine may not be a ghost at all but some form of "light".. spectors of a spirit.. Light is NOT matter(photons).. yet is real.. There is only a little jump in logic to seeing matter become spirit.. Is matter / light in essence or can light become matter?..
What spirit/Spirit is no one knows.. as fully as few or no one knows what "light" is.. Some it is a "wave".. a field of something.. Spirit may be as real as any matter.. maybe more real than matter.. Light may be the source of what matter "IS".. and matter is just light stored as water is storage for hydrogen and oxygen.. and crude oil is storage for a range of other chemicals..
Beautifully said, r9etb! Perhaps needless to say, I so agree. (I couldn't resist adding the bolds. )
And granted, "there are some significant similarities in the sense of control systems and human cognition," as you describe. But you aren't willing to push the analogy too far, for you recognize there are significant differences as well....
For as you wrote:
...humans don't exist merely within a cyclic control loop; we also understand ourselves to be operating within a continuum that includes both past and future. Even if the aforementioned lag between sensing and processing imposes a short period of uncertainty about "now," our awareness of context allows us to operate as if that lag did not exist. And despite the lag between "actual" and "perceived" now, I think there's no serious doubt that an objective "now" actually exists.If humans indeed lived "merely" within a cyclic control loop, then there would be no human freedom and, with no freedom, no human creativity. For purpose-built controllers "merely" execute their programs (as written for them by human beings). Controllers have no "freedom" to do anything else. I gather researchers in artificial intelligence are aware of this constraint and are trying to figure out how to get around it. Probably they have a way to go here, assuming what they seek is even possible at all.
I thought this was so insightful:
My thoughts -- and those of most folks, probably -- tend to range very far from our moment-to-moment activities, a lot of the time. And I think that stands as evidence that we humans have a (very limited) ability to take a "God's-eye view" of reality. And that is the proper context in which to address the slippery question of "now."Yes; but very limited. For the "God's eye view" is from eternity, while our view is bound by our spatiotemporal position and "the arrow of [linear] time." To imagine what such a view might be like, it would be to see all past, present, and future, of all that there is, ever was, or ever will be, all "at once," in what we humans would call an "instant" of time. We cannot even begin to imagine what such a view would be like!
Anyhoot, it seems the "God's eye view" would be of an eternal Present, an eternal Now. Since my faith teaches that man is made in the "image" (or likeness, reflection) of God, on that basis we may believe that man possesses something like the capacity to experience this Eternal Now, albeit in some far "weaker" fashion. And though I here drag the "squishy matter" (scientifically speaking) of the soul back into the discussion, If the human mind can experience anything like an Eternal Now, the soul would likely be the "sensorium" of it....
So here I'm mixing up science and religion! But I think this is permissible, provided we clearly understand in which "baileywick" we are working/thinking at the time, and properly disclose such details to the reader. Which I have just done. :^)
For it seems we are agreed, r9etb, that science, philosophy, and religion ought not to be separated, regarded as "hostile" to one another — not if we want to gain the biggest, most comprehensive view of Reality that can be obtained by the human mind.
I find your essay/posts so delightful to read and think about, r9etb. Thank you so very much for your wonderful contributions to this thread!
Every time the claim is made that there is "no evidence" for a global flood some 4350 years ago, I am compelled to reply "not so fast" and submit the following article:
At some time around 2300 BC, give or take a century or two, a large number of the major civilisations of the world collapsed, simultaneously it seems. The Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age civilisation in Israel, Anatolia and Greece, as well as the Indus Valley civilisation in India, the Hilmand civilisation in Afghanistan and the Hongshan Culture in China - the first urban civilisations in the world - all fell into ruin at more or less the same time. Why? …
Some decades ago, the hunt for clues passed largely into the hands of natural scientists. Concentrating on the earlier set of Bronze Age collapses, researchers began to find a range of evidence that suggested that natural causes rather than human actions, may have been initially responsible. There began to be talk of climate change, volcanic activity, and earthquakes - and some of this material has now found its way into standard historical accounts of the period. Agreement, however, there has never been. Some researchers favoured one type of natural cause, others favoured another, and the problem remained that no single explanation appeared to account for all the evidence….
The hunt for natural causes for these human disasters began when the Frenchman Claude Schaeffer, one of the leading archaeologists of his time, published his book ‘Stratigraphie Comparee et Chronologie L’Asie Occidentale’ in 1948. Schaeffer analysed and compared the destruction layers of more than 40 archaeological sites in the Near and Middle East, from Troy to Tepe Hissar on the Caspian Sea and from the Levant to Mesopotamia. He was the first scholar to detect that all had been totally destroyed several times in the Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age, apparently simultaneously.
Since the damage was far too excessive and did not show signs of military or human involvement, he argued that repeated earthquakes might have been responsible for these events. At the time he published, Schaeffer was not taken seriously by the world of archaeology. Since then, however, natural scientists have found widespread and unambiguous evidence for abrupt climate change, sudden sea level changes, catastrophic inundations, widespread seismic activity and evidence for massive volcanic activity at several periods since the last Ice Age, but particularly at around 2200BC, give or take 200 years.
Areas such as the Sahara, or around the Dead Sea, were once farmed but became deserts. Tree rings show disastrous growth conditions at c 2350BC, while sediment cores from lakes and rivers in Europe and Africa show a catastrophic drop in water levels at this time. In Mesopotamia, vast areas of land appear to have been devastated, inundated, or totally burned... Yet what was the cause of these earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, fire-blasts and climate changes? By the late 1970s, British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier of Oxford University had begun to investigate cometary impact as the ultimate cause. Then in 1980, the Nobel prizewinning physicist Luis Alvarez and his colleagues published their famous paper in ‘Science’ that argued that a cosmic impact had led to the extinction of the dinosaurs..
He showed that large amounts of the element iridium present in geological layers dating from about 65 million BC had a cosmic origin. Alvarez’s paper had immense influence and stimulated further research by such British astronomers as Clube and Napier, Prof Mark Bailey of the Armagh Observatory, Duncan Steel of Spaceguard Australia, and Britain’s best known astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle. All now support the theory of cometary impact and loosely form what is now known as the British School of Coherent Catastrophism.
These scholars envisage trains of cometary debris which repeatedly encounter the Earth. We know that tiny particles of cosmic material penetrate the atmosphere every day, but their impact is insignificant.
Occasionally, however, cosmic debris measuring between one and several hundred metres in diametre strike the Earth and these can have catastrophic effects on our ecological system, through multimegaton explosions of fireballs which destroy natural and cultural features on the surface of the Earth by means of tidal-wave floods (if the debris lands in the sea), fire blasts and seismic damage…
The extent to which past cometary impacts were responsible for civilisation collapse, cultural change, even the development of religion, must remain a hypothesis. But in view of the astronomical, geological and archaeological evidence, this ‘giant comet’ hypothesis should no longer be dismissed by archaeologists out of hand.
Evidence shows catastrophic climate change around 2350 BC in the civilized world mentioned in the Bible, i.e. "areas such as the Sahara, or around the Dead Sea, were once farmed but became deserts. Tree rings show disastrous growth conditions at c 2350BC, while sediment cores from lakes and rivers in Europe and Africa show a catastrophic drop in water levels at this time. In Mesopotamia, vast areas of land appear to have been devastated, inundated, or totally burned."
The evidence of natural disaster around the world at the same time, to the scientists quoted in this article, suggests comets were the probable cause.
Science of course excludes the supernatural on principle, but we Christians would say such a catastrophe was the will of God whether He used comets or something else to effect His will.
Personally, my musing is that the Noah Flood was worldwide and targeted to destroy utterly (except for Noah et al) all life in which existed the neshama, the breath of life. (Genesis 2 and 6) To the archeologist, that might interpret to "civilizations."
To God be the glory!
“I think there’s no serious doubt that an objective “now” actually exists”
Ein and Stein prove this incorrect. Here is a cool little modeling tool that lets you play with time dilation based on speed and distance traveled. You will see that Ein and Stein age very differently. How can they be said to have an objective “now” shared between them?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/hotsciencetwin/
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