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Post by James Hannam on May 12, 2009 20:07:00 GMT
The serious answer is that Jesus did not know what modern scholarship has discovered about the OT because he was a man. He was also God, but he only knew what the Father choose to tell him. Jesus is explicit about this when he says only the Father knows when the end will come.
I don't have a problem with Jesus, clearly without the full gamut of God's powers, also having to do without the full extent of God's knowledge. To be man is not to have all the answers. If Jesus had been omniscient he would not have been truly human because truly a human cannot be omniscient.
Best wishes
James
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Post by jamierobertson on May 12, 2009 20:11:59 GMT
knowingthomas, If Jesus was God, why would he believe the OT was true? Well, it could be that it is true, and we're missing the boat I'm quite happy to accept the historical validity of pretty much everything post-Abraham, and quite possibly all the stuff beforehand too (within the limits of, say, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy). Alternatively, if there are pasts of the OT which are mainly spiritual or metaphorical (like Genesis 1), then Jesus was perfectly entitled to deal with it at face value. Somehow I doubt the Sermon On The Mount would have had quite the same impact if our saviour had to digress from morality for several hours saying "No, that's because of neutrinos.... NEUTRINOS, people... oh gosh, er... right, let's go back to the beginning. Quarks? No. Atoms? Atoms anyone? Uhh boy, this is gonna take a while..." I suspect others in the boards might offer a different perspective, though, so keep your mind open and God close by.
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Post by Al Moritz on May 12, 2009 20:19:41 GMT
Following up on my previous post. This article www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.htmlis an example of bad cosmological philosophy disguised as good science. In fact, it is not just bad philosophy but also bad science: there are no valid theoretical, and even less experimental links, whatsoever, between quantum fluctuations and the birth of our macroscopic universe. Pure conjecture without valid scientific underpinning is not science, but science fiction. Also, they make an incredible blunder in defining nothing: "It is remarkable that the universe consists of essentially nothing, but (fortunately for us) in positive and negative parts." Yes, the sum of +5 and -5 is 0, but nobody in their right mind would argue that 0 can produce +5 and -5. Furthermore, their claim "In other words, the total energy of the universe is zero!" is highly questionable. If the kinetic energy of the Big Bang were not greater than gravitational energy, our universe would neither have expanded nor not collapsed onto itself by now -- but in fact, its expansion now accelerates due to 'dark energy'. This is another energy factor that argues against "zero energy". Actually, dark energy comprises about 74 % of the total matter-energy of the universe: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Energy
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Post by knowingthomas on May 12, 2009 23:23:57 GMT
It's essentially this series that has me weary of the cosmological arguments. I honestly am not sure if any of it is worthwhile, but it seems to be well received and I haven't seen any refutations (the 8 or so part series). www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FAADE45BCE523A6FHe comments on the fine tuning principle too. Speaking of the fine tuning another commenter notes: Didn't Jesus predict that the temple was going to be destroyed? And that Peter would deny him multiple times in relation to roosters crowing? If so many aspects of Christianity come from Judaism (may be even the Trinity), why would God change all his attributes just for the Judeans? Why would God AND Jesus deceive the Jews in thinking that their traditions were valid in the face of history. If Jesus was with God until 4 BC or so, shouldn't he have seen what had happened before and so would know the existence of Moses and company?
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Post by unkleE on May 13, 2009 0:39:56 GMT
The problem I see with this is the canard "God of the Gaps", which applies to the fine tuning principle too. Yes, no theory yet can solve this problem of a universe coming out of nothing, but what's to say one can be found in the future? On the topic of not using science to prove God: I must confess I am a bit of a sceptic about the "God of the gaps argument". Lack of scientific certainty doesn't stop atheists drawing conclusions that God doesn't exist. There are many things in life where we make decisions now even though we know there'll be more information later. The classic hypothetical is being in a burning building and having to decide which course of action to take - there's no point in waiting to find a map! My work (before I retired) was in environmental management, specifically of rivers and catchments. Australia has low rainfall and runoff by world standards, poorish soils, and generally rather fragile environments. Two centuries of European settlement have seriously compromised most of our rivers & catchments with massive amounts of water taken from rivers for irrigation, large scale land clearing leading to significant erosion & sedimentation of river channels, loss of habitat, pollution from agricultural chemicals, etc, etc. Many species have already disappeared, and many others are under threat, locally, or country-wide. Scientists tend to want to measure a little bit more to understand the processes better, but managers tend to argue we have to make the best decisions we can now, and correct later, because waiting for certainty may be too late for many species and many rivers. (And governments, of course, tend to do nothing!) I am 63, I am not going to die wondering, still waiting for science to tell me the answers to questions it probably cannot answer anyway (like Al has said). I made my decision based on the best information I had, and if some of it later turns out to be mistaken, I'll modify (if I am still alive by then). But experience suggests that new scientific understandings don't resolve the philosophical/theological issues, just push them further back or up a level - e.g. the multiverse doesn't resolve the apparent design problem, but magnifies it. Having said that, it would be foolish to build too much on minor gaps, and I agree with all that Al has said about science and pseudo science. It is no coincidence, I believe, that many modern scientific atheists scorn philosophy. Good philosophy shows many of their pseudo scientific arguments don't stand up - including their implicit trust in science/empiricism as the only source of valid knowledge, a view which is self contradictory, as philosophers have known for more than half a century. Pretty close to the same thing. don't you think? Certainly atheists treat it as such. There are really only two main games in town - atheism/naturalism and monotheism. I'm not aware of that debate. I think the moral argument is perhaps the least persuasive if the debate is formal, because the opponent of the moral argument simply has to deny there are objective moral values, and talk about evolutionary ethics. But I personally think it is one of the most persuasive arguments to anyone who is not trying to win an argument but rather find out the honest truth. I don't see how we can prove there are objective ethics, but the fact is that most of us live like we believe in them. CS Lewis in Mere Christianity pointed out how easily we say things like "it's not fair", how quickly we make judgments about pedophilia and genocide. Bertrand Russell, after serving on the Nuremberg war crimes trials, admitted that his evolutionary ethics didn't stand up well when faced with what he instinctively knew was real evil. And even atheists fall into ideas of true good and evil when they condemn religion for the evil done in its name, and condemn "biblegod" for genocide. So if we move out of debate mode, it seems obvious to me that our whole culture and ethics and law, our whole being as humans, depends on something more than evolutionary ethics. That's not a proof, but it does mean that anyone who doesn't believe in objective ethics either has to come to rather monstrous conclusions (e.g. Peter Singer, Michel Onfray) or live in a manner inconsistent with, and hence illogical to, their scientific beliefs (e.g. Richard Dawkins and most atheists) - so who's delusional??? That's a very convincing argument to me. This is a pretty important question for a christian. It is one that has concerned me for some time, and one I have asked God about many times. James & Jamie have already given two quite different answers to this question, and I think the truth must lie somewhere within those answers. Here's my thoughts. 1. Who says Jesus "believed" the OT in the way we would mean that today? (a) People of his day often (I'm told) wrote or said things that appear literal to us but were understood at the time as teaching a less literal truth. (b) I suggest a little exercise (which I have done). Go through every OT quote or reference in the gospels, and check out the original. You'll find that the NT writers had a slightly looser understanding of "truth" to what we have today. Often they quote in the exact way we would, but equally often they "play" with the original text in some way - changing the meaning, or taking it out of context, or just changing the words. An example is John 10:34 where no-one, Jew, Christian or atheist, would think Jesus was speaking literally. (c) People today might quote Tolkien (for example) without stating that they know it's not historical - e.g. 'as Aragorn son of Arathorn said: "........"'. I don't know if they did that then, but maybe. So we don't (unless we are NT scholars, and probably not even then) know exactly how literally in our sense Jesus believed in the OT. 2. As James said, it wouldn't have made much sense if Jesus had not built his teaching to the Jews on shared culture. And as a human, his brain was finite so couldn't (presumably) have been omniscient. I think modern empiricist people put too much weight on understanding everything. I like to understand things too, but from God's viewpoint, entering into some forgiveness relationship with him is more important than abstract understanding. So getting every fact "right" by modern understandings may not have been high on his agenda. 3. The Bible contains progressive revelation. Even if one believes it is inerrant, there is still growth in the revelation. And if one understands it more as a historical document, then there may be error and correction as well. My view is in the middle - it is more than just a historical document, but God conformed his revelation to the culture of the day and the capacity of its recipients to understand. Whatever view one holds, Jesus was a reformer, and came to reform not just Jewish religious observance, but also people's very understanding of God. He didn't simply accept what was written, but challenged understandings of it. And he taught that, above all else, God was a God of love, forgiveness, acceptance and inclusion (including social outcasts, women, non Jews, etc), so anything in the OT which appears to contradict that must be doubtful for a christian. So that is how I as a christian try to understand the matters you've raised. I'm not entirely happy with those answers, but can see light in the tunnel. In the end, there are two main "problems" for me - the evil in the world and parts of the OT. But if I chose not to believe, there would be many more problems - as exploited by the moral, cosmological & teleological arguments, by the arguments from reason, freewill and experience, and the facts presented by the life of Jesus. I choose the lesser of the problems, but with a lot of sympathy for those who choose differently. I'm sorry to give such a long response, but I think these are critically important questions, and ones I have long pondered myself. Whether my answers therefore have any merit is questionable, but I hope they give you fruitful food for thought. Thanks and best wishes.
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Post by unkleE on May 13, 2009 0:46:13 GMT
The problem for natural fine-tuning via the multiverse is that my understanding is that Weinberg and others are predicting there may be 10^500 universes or domains. But if Penrose is correct, the number of possible universes in the phase space is 10^10^123, a number which is so many times more (10^120) my head aches even to think about it. 10^500 universes is still nowhere near enough! Of course if Penrose is wrong, then that's a different question.
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Post by unkleE on May 13, 2009 6:30:36 GMT
Just after I posted, my attention was drawn to this long but excellent paper on God of the Gaps, and why is there something rather than nothing. It's well worth a read.
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Post by humphreyclarke on May 13, 2009 10:24:57 GMT
The biggest issue about Jesus is the problem that he accepts the validity of the OT as historical. There's numerous problems with this given the state of Old Testament study... If Jesus was God, why would he believe the OT was true? Well, if we take this approach then we are going to run into a whole host of problems. Lets take this example from the New Testament: For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here. So here we have Jesus referring to a man being swallowed by a whale and surviving for three days and three nights. Now it doesn't take a genius to realise that this statement is in conflict with modern biology. What the hell is the son of man playing at?. I think here there is something important to note about the human condition and that is that grand spiritual truths are usually communicated through the language of myth, legend, poetry and allegory. These are methods that actually capture people's imagination. This is something lost on the modern audience because so many of our cognitive disciplines have been assimilated to science. This sounds a bit like postmodern gibberish so here is an example. The deceleration of independence reads: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness'Now this is a derivative of John Locke's exposition of equality which reads: '‘The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our's.’Now neither of these are theoretical statements. Both of these derive from the mixing of Greek Philosophy with Judeo-Christian Monotheism. The foundation for the principle of equality comes as a consequence of the Genesis creation myth, the same 'myth' that is derided by modern 'rationalists'. One could perhaps express the notion that all human beings are equal in scientific or utilitarian terms, but it would sound contrived and long winded. Therefore when Locke communicates one of the most important suppositions in his philosophy he does it in a language everyone can relate to, the popular beliefs of the time. Hence the fact that Jesus makes reference to the Old Testament in his teaching isn't of great concern since his audience wouldn't have understood it any other way. If I was planting a messenger in Roman Palestine there are probably two approaches I could take: 1) Send down a guy to give lectures on evolution and quantum mechanics. Then present stone tablets to the authorities inscribed with the writings of J. S Mill and John Rawls. This would undoubtedly be a complete failure. 2) Work within the existing belief systems to harness the power of the human imagination and create a moment within Judaism that would turn a disgraced political criminal who preached love and forgiveness into God, and turn the ancient world upside down. Some might say this approach has been successful. Hitchens would doubtless disagree.
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Post by Al Moritz on May 13, 2009 11:48:42 GMT
Humphrey wrote: Hence the fact that Jesus makes reference to the Old Testament in his teaching isn't of great concern since his audience wouldn't have understood it any other way. (My emphasis, Al Moritz)
"If I was planting a messenger in Roman Palestine there are probably two approaches I could take:
1) Send down a guy to give lectures on evolution and quantum mechanics. Then present stone tablets to the authorities with the writings of J. S Mill and John Rawls. This would undoubtedly be a complete failure.
2) Work within the existing belief systems to harness the power of the human imagination and create a moment within Judaism that would turn a disgraced political criminal who preached love and forgiveness into God, and turn the ancient world upside down. Some might say this approach has been successful. Hitchens would doubtless disagree.*** Thanks, Humphrey. I wanted to post along similar lines, but fortunately you took the work off my hands
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Post by knowingthomas on May 14, 2009 3:07:07 GMT
Just after I posted, my attention was drawn to this long but excellent paper on God of the Gaps, and why is there something rather than nothing. It's well worth a read. With "something rather than nothing", I'm a bit hesitant to using it.Here's his video on the fine tuning: Among otherthings "the fine tuning principle is built on the bias that the universe is made specifically for us, given the adaptability of life and assumes that the universe could have come out any other way" And on on morality: And from earlier, his series on the cosmological: Humphery: How would we know Jesus taught with that frame of mind, though? Now, as a theistic evolutionist, I'm willing to see pre-Abraham as allegorical, but when Jesus is in person talking with Moses and Elijah, I don't see how this works. Essentially, I'm afraid that I hold an argument that has been refuted effectively, and over the past couple months, I've had to re-evaluate over and over again.
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Post by unkleE on May 14, 2009 8:25:57 GMT
I'm not sure why you should be hesitant to use this argument. Let's actually analyse the argument presented in the YouTube video - here's my best summary (mostly quotes from the video): 1. There are two possibilities - something exists or nothing exists. 2. But existence requires that the thing existing is something. 3. Why does existence exist and non-existence not exist? 4. "It seems obvious" that the existence of nothing is self contradictory. 5. A state of non-existence is simply no state at all. 6. A state of non-existence is therefore not a possibility. 7. The existence of something is possible and the existence of nothing is impossible. 8. Therefore the existence of something is the only one of the two optiopns possible. 9. Therefore the existence of something is necessary. 10. (Conclusion) Existence exists by definition and non-existence doesn't exist by definition. Now it is written out like that, it is hard to take it seriously, but I will try. Does it seem convincing to you? - Some of it is very garbled and even nonsensical - e.g. what does it mean to say "existence exists" (in #3 & 10)?
- I don't see any rigour in it - he hasn't defined terms (which allows him to get away with contradictions and confusions) and I don't think he has demonstrated how any of the propositions follow from the premise or from earlier propositions. e.g. on what basis does he say that "the existence of nothing is self contradictory", except that "it seems obvious"? He has reached his desired conclusion right there in #4, without offering any argument, and all the rest is just window dressing, smoke and mirrors.
- I think the most obvious critique is his statement that non-existence is the existence of a thing, in this case the thing being "nothing". He builds everything on that illogical statement that nothing is a thing.
I guess it's no accident that he includes a female distraction, because if you pay attention, the argument doesn't work at all or eve make sense. I think the paper I referenced is "a little" more expert and rigorous than a short YouTube video, I think it establishes that the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" is a valid question, and that the atheist/naturalist argument against it is very questionable. I have more to say on other matters in your post, but that's enough for one post. I hope that helps a little.
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Post by unkleE on May 14, 2009 8:50:17 GMT
knowingthomas - I didn't follow the fine-tuning video right through to the end, but you say "Here's his video on the fine tuning", so I'm assuming this means it's by the same guy. If so, then on the basis of these two videos, you can reasonably conclude he is talking from ignorance.
Try these key statements from the fine-tuning video:
"No-one can possibly say if any other [values of] physical constants are possible."
Well, actually, they can, and do (though obviously not with certainty). As we have quoted here before, Roger Penrose list a whole "phase space" of possible values, 10^10^123 of them. All of the cosmologists I have read indicate that there is no reason as far as we know, for the constants to line up just as they are, unless the universe was specially designed, or there is some fundamental physical law that makes them as they are (and Rees, Susskind et al say there are increasingly reasons for believing this isn't true), or we are part of a multiverse. So no-one can say for certain that the constants couldn't have been different, but the experts certainly believe they could have been if the universe appeared by chance.
[The fine-tuning argument is based on the assumption that] "life could only have formed under the physical constants we have in our universe. .... If the laws of physics actually would have been different, life could have still formed and adapted to its environment."
Again, I think this is a misunderstanding. One fundamental of life being able to develop is that the universe exists for a reasonable time, and many values in Penrose's phase space don't allow that. In many more, the only matter would be hydrogen or helium, or both, making it pretty close to impossible for complex life, or any life, to form. In many other possible universes, matter doesn't coalesce and the universe is a very rarefied "soup", in which a science fiction writer might imagine some form of primitive life might form, but hardly anything complex. This is why the experts are so impressed by the fine-tuning.
I really recommend you read Martin Rees "Just Six Numbers" and/or Stephen Barr's "Modern Physics and Ancient Faith" - if you do so I feel confident you will understand why a few minutes of a glib, poorly researched video is unlikely to be able to deal adequately with the issues involved.
Here ends rave (2), more to come (is that a promise or a threat?). Best wishes.
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Post by humphreyclarke on May 14, 2009 9:28:17 GMT
Humphery: How would we know Jesus taught with that frame of mind, though? Well we know that most of his teaching came through parables; fictitious stories that carry multiple layers of meaning. So it would hardly be unprecedented. It would be odd if he didn’t also make use of the sacred myths of the Jews in this manner. For example he refers to the story of Jonah as if it were literally true. Again, I’m not an expert on this area but my understanding is that from the beginning there were diverse hermeneutical traditions surrounding the book of Jonah (and many other books in the bible). For many at the time with was a kind of a humorous, allegorical tale in the style of the book of Job which communicates ‘truths’ about man’s relationship to God. That doesn’t seem to matter for purposes of referring to it as long as the point gets made. Of course another possibility is that he doesn’t have any divine knowledge beyond the great moral and spiritual message he has to deliver. Another possibility is that he didn’t say any of those things prefiguring his resurrection with reference to the Old Testament and that these were added later by his followers in order to add more layers to the story. Ancient writers would have had no reservations about inventing speeches for historical figures, provided that it captured something important about them. If you don’t buy any of that, a lot of progressive theologians argue that he wasn’t God incarnate at all and that Jesus was a man chosen by God to be a unique Son of God, an obedient servant even unto death. John Hick would be an example of someone who argued strongly for this, although not without controversy. The Christian tradition is nothing if not diverse and it has been radically reinventing itself from the very beginning. Now, as a theistic evolutionist, I'm willing to see pre-Abraham as allegorical, but when Jesus is in person talking with Moses and Elijah, I don't see how this works. With the transfiguration and the appearance of Elijah and Moses I think you have to look at other passages in the New Testament. There you get a kernel of historical truth which is overlain with metaphors and symbolic meaning. So, a very traditional view of the transfiguration is that the story is based on a genuine historical event. Well, I can immediately see a problem with this. How can the disciples possibly have realised what Elijah and Moses looked like in a time when the Jews did not believe in depicting the human figure?. That to me is a far greater problem than the dubious historicity. As a result the presence of Moses and Elijah is seen by Biblical scholars as a pointer to the importance of the story, rather than something the Gospel writers expected us to take literally. So Elijah and Moses are there to represent how Jesus fulfils the law and the prophets. This fits well with the literary analysis because in all three of its Gospel versions it has the literary genre of an ‘epiphany’ ’rather than of a ‘theophany’ or ‘vision’. In an epiphany you have a sudden manifestation of the divine which is accompanied by a series of literary motifs which communicate the divine message. So, if you and I experienced a vision we would be concerned with noting down what happened in minute scientific detail. Ancient Hebrews writing in the genre of epiphany would have sought out symbols and points of reference to communicate what they experienced.
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Post by Al Moritz on May 14, 2009 18:31:48 GMT
[The fine-tuning argument is based on the assumption that] "life could only have formed under the physical constants we have in our universe. .... If the laws of physics actually would have been different, life could have still formed and adapted to its environment."Again, I think this is a misunderstanding. One fundamental of life being able to develop is that the universe exists for a reasonable time, and many values in Penrose's phase space don't allow that. In many more, the only matter would be hydrogen or helium, or both, making it pretty close to impossible for complex life, or any life, to form. In many other possible universes, matter doesn't coalesce and the universe is a very rarefied "soup", in which a science fiction writer might imagine some form of primitive life might form, but hardly anything complex. This is why the experts are so impressed by the fine-tuning. I agree with these points. Also, on p. 2 of this thread I have extensively refuted the idea that other life forms might be likely. I suggest, Knowingthomas, that you read this post again. If the laws of physics actually would have been different, life could have still formed and adapted to its environmentThat is the typical thoughtless atheist fallacy. Evolution explains everything, and can take place and will bring about "adaptation to the environment" under any and all circumstances. This is nonsense. If there is no chemistry, which will be the case with almost any random natural laws (see e.g. above -- with hydrogen and helium alone no chemistry is possible), no evolution can take place at all. Any evolution is only possible under very special natural laws, e.g. the ones of the universe that we live in; thus evolution does not supplant design, rather the facts point to the concept that it is design. I fully agree with these recommendations.
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Post by Al Moritz on May 14, 2009 19:44:53 GMT
I just looked at the fine-tuning video. It cites Stenger. Any atheist who cites Stenger hasn't done his homework. The arguments are useless. As has been pointed out repeatedly here:
1) Stenger's opinions are fringe opinions outside mainstream science. 2) Prominent cosmologists (Stenger is not one of them), including atheists and agnostics, all know how serious the fine-tuning argument is.
The video is right about gravity though. The guy who allegedly said that changing gravity a bit would make life impossible must have confused gravity with the cosmological constant -- that constant really is fine-tuned to such a incredible degree.
On the other hand, bringing up extremophiles (living at high temperatures and pressures) shows that the author of the video has no clue about the issue of adaptation of life. Again, where there is no chemistry, no evolution is possible at all. Extremophiles have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that.
Again, please read the recommended books which will give proper information, unlike this silly video.
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