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Member since: January 31, 2008
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"When a pickpocket meets a holy man, all he sees are pockets," someone once said.
Along those same lines, Someone else once said, "No one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again."
That that's your understanding of the Bible and its message says far more about you than it does about the Bible...
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How is that? Well, I guess you COULD read just about ANYTHING and project the worst possible meaning onto it, if your only motive in reading it is to validate your prejudices. But to do so would be, well... silly, to put it mildly.
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Well, that's quite a bit to respond to, rcl27, and I'm not sure the comment section for an article on a somewhat unrelated subject (at least, not directly related) is the appropriate forum to address all of that, so I'll limit my response to the most crucial among the points you made. If you want to discuss the rest of it further, you can find my e-mail address in my 2nd comment.
How do I know that God raised Jesus from the dead? Well, for starters, it is a matter of undisputable historical fact that the message "Jesus Christ has risen from the dead" was unanimously proclaimed by the people who originally followed Him. If they hadn't gone throughout the Roman Empire proclaiming this, it's highly unlikely that Tulsa would have so many (or any) churches dotting the land, nor so much fuss about Bibles and prayers to Jesus in schools and City Council meetings. That's where it all started: Jesus was crucified for claiming to be the Messiah, then His followers emerged weeks later claiming He'd risen from the dead and devoted the rest of their lives to building communities and teaching people how to understand and live by that Claim and all of its ramifications.
Of course, that explanation by itself probably just has you rolling your eyes and wondering why I would take the trouble to point out something so obvious, because the fact that they went around claiming this probably hasn't sent you to your knees in prayer and repentance. But, answer me this-- when dozens of people who knew Him went around claiming this, and were corroborated by hundreds more who also knew Him, were they all lying about it? Did they make it all up? If so, how did they pull it all off without being exposed, and what was the payoff? What would they have hoped to gain by it?
Or, were they somehow mistaken about it? If so, what could have happened to have so many people so thoroughly deluded?
If we eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth. If they weren't lying and if they weren't mistaken, then they must have been telling the truth. These three are the only options on the table.
So, which do you think it is, and why?
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DeborahD, what do you think the purpose of that passage in Judges? What was the message of the passage, do you think?
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Duckphub, what you're really ridiculing are the limits of ancient astronomy, not Christian belief. It was actually Aristotle-- a pre-Christian Greek who likely never heard of the Book of the Genesis-- who came up with the idea of concentric heavenly spheres with the earth at the center; and then it was Ptolemy who later refined it. Centuries later, politicians who used a Romanized version of "Christianity" as an instrument of social control decided that the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic model would be the official "Church"(the Roman state dressed in its new clerical robes) cosmological model. When the biblical writers mentioned "stars" in the context to which you have referred, though, they were employing them as METAPHORS for spiritual realities, not as attempts to explain astronomical phenomena. I know that the use of metaphor is subtle, so I'm not surprised that you missed it, but if you can take a few minutes' break from congratulating yourself on your supposed intellectual superiority over all us backward Christians, you might go back and take another read, and I'm confident you'll see that.
rcl27, your suggested equation of the God of Abraham and Moses to the gods of Greek and Roman mythology is just as ignorant as Duckphup's rant. The biblical understanding of the Deity actually laid the philosophical groundwork for modern science. The trend among most early civilizations was to anthropomorphize natural phenomena and to assign them personalities, names, identities, and to make up stories about their exploits, which persisted from generation to generation and went from being folklore, to legend, to tradition, and eventually took on the stature of religion. So, if a storm blew in on a previously bright, sunny day, it wasn't just a localized turn in the broader meteorological workings of the earth, but Zeus and Apollo (or Indra and Mithras) engaged in combat, and Zeus gaining the upper hand. On the other hand, the biblical writers (whether it was revealed to them or came by their own insight is beyond the scope of the present discussion) realized that, rather than being controlled by the gods (individual and independent, personified forces of nature), the natural universe is comprised of innumerable interdependent, interworking forces which are all a part of a single, uniform fabric of cause-and-effect. That there is One Mind ultimately at work to provide the order of the universe was the fundamental, driving principle behind Isaac Newton's pursuit to know God better through the study of physical reality, thereby creating "science" as we know it today.
In short, I know for certain that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and that fact informs everything else I believe (much of which actually puts me at odds with other Christians, incidentally, as you can see from my earlier comment). As much as you like to ridicule people like me and rest of my brothers and sisters, though, it's a safe bet that we have far, far better reasons for believing as we do than you do for what you believe. I realize that most Christians are typically not sufficiently informed on these reasons to competently or confidently make that case, and that's why I haven't shaken your dust from my feet in protest against you yet. I suspect and hope that your rejection and ridicule of Christianity are based in ignorance-- because we, Christ's followers, have not fulfilled our responsibility to competently bear witness and to give intelligent, evidence-based reasons to trust in Him. If you're interested in knowing those reasons, feel free to contact me at LizardKing1976@hotmail.com (actually, the invitation is open to anyone). If not, feel free to go on ridiculing us. Some of us even deserve it. But, if you do, your ignorance is no longer innocent, but willful, and willful ignorance is dishonest and cowardly.
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