Jesus Lives!

[Jayhawker Soule]

And your post in return just has SO MUCH worthwhile content. Give it up, man. No one cares about your ignore list or what makes you yawn.

You obviously care enough to make you respond.

 

[blü 2]

logic and reason

What are the odds that any man living from the day of these prophecies down to the present time? To get this answer, we divide our 10 to the 28th power by the total number of people who have lived since the time of these prophecies. At the time this book was published we come up wit 88 billion people or 8.8 X 10 to the tenth power. To simplify it let’s round it off to 10 to the 11th power. The odds of any one man who lived from the the the prophecies were made until the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 10 to the seventeenth power.


The Odds of Eight Messianic Prophecies Coming True - Berean Publishers

The late great Martin Gardner made a remark to the effect that statistical evidence of paranormal powers is overwhelming statistical evidence of fraud.

Which is another way of saying that extraordinary claims are not to believed in the absence of extraordinarily good demonstration (an idea that goes back at least to Hume).

So logic and reason. Which is more likely?

a. That the Tanakh is full of prophecies of Jesus in particular which the gospels show have all come true?

or

b. That the author of Mark, perhaps influenced by the Jewish midrash tradition, wrote the first purported biography of Jesus by selecting passages from the Tanakh that appealed to him as usable as messianic prophecies and then moving Jesus through them so that they were "fulfilled"?

I'm not ruling out an historical Jesus and a few stories and sayings, but I'm referring to the bulk of Mark; and Mark underlies Matthew and Luke, and less closely, John. I've already pointed out that this same method led to the author of Matthew requiring Mary to have been a virgin because the LXX in translating Isaiah 7:14 had rendered Hebrew 'almah, young woman, as parthenos, virgin; and that he absurdly sat Jesus across a foal and a donkey to ride into Jerusalem "to fulfill prophecy" (Matthew 21:2-5); and that he invented the unhistoric 'Taxation Census' story to get Jesus to be born in Bethlehem to fulfill Micah 5:2, and he invented the unhistoric 'Massacre of the Innocents' story to get Jesus into Egypt to fulfill Hosea 11.1 ─ and on, and on.

So I respectfully submit that no serious question of supernatural foreknowledge arises anywhere.

 

[randix]

Jesus is the man, the myth, the legend! God set him apart from all the rest for a reason.

Well, at least the myth and the legend.
--

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

You obviously care enough to make you respond.

I'm letting you know that I don't care. There is a difference.

For example, what if someone I know is downplaying, or passively-aggressively demeaning someone else's opinions by stating or implying that their opinions are trash, without actually providing ANYTHING substantial to back themselves up? If I go to that person and say that I don't really like what they are doing, and that NO ONE SHOULD CARE about that person's opinion if they aren't going to actually engage the conversation in any meaningful way whatsoever, is that me ACTUALLY CARING about their opinion because I took the time to seek them out and tell them I didn't care? Is it really?

You think your reply to me was some big "gotcha." Think again.

 

[Kenny]

The late great Martin Gardner made a remark to the effect that statistical evidence of paranormal powers is overwhelming statistical evidence of fraud.

Which is another way of saying that extraordinary claims are not to believed in the absence of extraordinarily good demonstration (an idea that goes back at least to Hume).

So logic and reason. Which is more likely?

a. That the Tanakh is full of prophecies of Jesus in particular which the gospels show have all come true?

or

b. That the author of Mark, perhaps influenced by the Jewish midrash tradition, wrote the first purported biography of Jesus by selecting passages from the Tanakh that appealed to him as usable as messianic prophecies and then moving Jesus through them so that they were "fulfilled"?

I'm not ruling out an historical Jesus and a few stories and sayings, but I'm referring to the bulk of Mark; and Mark underlies Matthew and Luke, and less closely, John. I've already pointed out that this same method led to the author of Matthew requiring Mary to have been a virgin because the LXX in translating Isaiah 7:14 had rendered Hebrew 'almah, young woman, as parthenos, virgin; and that he absurdly sat Jesus across a foal and a donkey to ride into Jerusalem "to fulfill prophecy" (Matthew 21:2-5); and that he invented the unhistoric 'Taxation Census' story to get Jesus to be born in Bethlehem to fulfill Micah 5:2, and he invented the unhistoric 'Massacre of the Innocents' story to get Jesus into Egypt to fulfill Hosea 11.1 ─ and on, and on.

So I respectfully submit that no serious question of supernatural foreknowledge arises anywhere.

again... your mind is made up no matter what logical proposition is given.
I rest my case

 

[Valjean]

Valjean said: ↑
It's not my burden, as I said.
Are you contending that cannibalism does leave an anatomical or physiological trace on the brain?

you made the claim - your burden - as I said

I quoted your claim,.. did you read what you posted?

This is my post. # 34. Copied and pasted:

Cannibalism is rare, and it's a behavior, not an inborn drive or orientation.
Cannibalism is learned. Cannibalism cannot be seen on a brain MRI.

#34 Valjean, Tuesday at 7:51 PM

Where do I claim a behavior can be seen on a brain scan?

 

[blü 2]

again... your mind is made up no matter what logical proposition is given.
I rest my case

You didn't answer my question, and I invite you to do so.

Which of those alternatives, using reason and logic, is more probable? More credible?

 

[halbhh]

Yes, quantum randomness is handled statistically.
But to the extent that they're thereby uncaused in classical terms, that only makes them a mix of determinism and randomness. Nowhere in there is the idea of free will as human decisions derived independently of the physics of the human.
Offhand I can't think of any examples earlier than the 17th century (eg Hobbes, Descartes) where the human is considered a machine in the modern sense (though the Greeks, hence the classical world, had tales of ichor-powered human-made 'men' and of metamorphoses.)
Noted. First, that approach (as I said) is used by con-men all over the world, as God should well know. Second, it goes to the question of how we define 'truth'. I favor the 'correspondence' view ─ that truth is a quality of statements, and that a statement is true to the extent that it corresponds with / accurately reflects objective reality.

About the very last idea, you are raising the issue of trust -- whether to trust someone. Well, for most people, they do want to find someone they can trust and love, of course, and we all tend to take small steps in that direction, learning from experience. So it is with many or most of us. That some are trustworthy and some are not is only how things are. About truth proving out, that's exactly my own way of knowing what is true. Whatever explains or works better than every other competing idea. Since the existence of God cannot be calculated this way, I never suggest to someone like myself they attempt to reason out whether God exists. I suggest they experiment. But to me, I was simply looking for good ideas about how to live life, and anyone can do that, without any faith at all. You read what Christ said, and you pick out a thing or two, and you try them out in your day to day life, and find out how they work, compared to your other ways of living.

 

[blü 2]

About the very last idea, you are raising the issue of trust -- whether to trust someone. Well, for most people, they do want to find someone they can trust and love, of course, and we all tend to take small steps in that direction, learning from experience. So it is with many or most of us. That some are trustworthy and some are not is only how things are. About truth proving out, that's exactly my own way of knowing what is true. Whatever explains or works better than every other competing idea. Since the existence of God cannot be calculated this way, I never suggest to someone like myself they attempt to reason out whether God exists. I suggest they experiment. But to me, I was simply looking for good ideas about how to live life, and anyone can do that, without any faith at all. You read what Christ said, and you pick out a thing or two, and you try them out in your day to day life, and find out how they work, compared to your other ways of living.

We don't seem to be too far apart. In my view, if you try to live your life treating other people with decency, respect and inclusion, it doesn't really matter whether you're religious or not.