Would Jesus Have known what Modern Science knows?

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

A person that dies and supernaturally bocomes alive three days later, for example, cannot be scientifically explained.

Supposedly dying of something vague and resurrection makes perfect sense. Ask yourself why John the Baptist couldn’t be.

 

[Colt]

Romans killed him because he rioted at the temple. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The Romans killed him becuse the Jews weren't allowed to. They didn't care about money changers in the Temple. The Jews had Pilate by the short hairs becuse of previous missteps on his part in dealing with their concerns about the imagery on Roman shields carried into Jerusalem by soldiers. Pilate sacrificed Jesus to his fear of the Jews.

 

[Colt]

Well the scripture says to kill false prophets.

They killed true ones as well.

 

[rational experiences]

The Romans killed him becuse the Jews weren't allowed to. They didn't care about money changers in the Temple. The Jews had Pilate by the short hairs becuse of previous missteps on his part in dealing with their concerns about the imagery on Roman shields carried into Jerusalem by soldiers. Pilate sacrificed Jesus to his fear of the Jews.

The human used memory by everyone. Recordings says Egyptians were once the national family. Of the land of their father.

No separated tribes first.

They used their own family to build science technology buildings.

Not Jews then. Egyptian slavery.

Separation was rich man and family slaves.

So as Egyptians hadn't killed of man's human life totally. Humans owned the name of remembrance. Story see your brother and what he thinks we deserve story.

Nor had the Romans believed in science after. As God O earth as owner stopped them.

As tribe the Jews didn't agree after with science technology. Hated Herod's Pilate betrayal of their wisdom.

Nor did Rome believe in science after.

After Moses sacrifice.
After Jesus sacrifice. Yet title the sacrifice totalled effect was Moses and Jesus. As if they hadn't owned a humans right to live exist.

So when men theory earth the volcano mountain owned Christ beginnings.

Instead they build a pyramid mountain. Claiming I'm copying. Facure pressure sealed by huge sheets of granite. Capped it by capstone once crystal then golded.

To own pressure cooling by water pumped to do a virtual melt inside the pyramid body. Seeing heavens gases came from that position.

As it wasn't a volcano naturally it blew up.

Pretty basic what's wrong with you human brother question.

As God earth O body had a huge reactive mass and owned why volcanoes arise said humans with basic common sense.

 

[rational experiences]

In the past Jeru where circuit turned temple caused life's sacrifice wasn't the Jewish human fault. Yet it was as their science priests agreed with the technology.

Why blame is science first not human personally yet humans believed in science so it is human fault.

 

[rational experiences]

When humans think they're doing evil codes for AI status you are wrong.

 

[Windwalker]

I was really pointing to discovering with DNA which could show an original Adam and Eve. This it seems has been done but the dating of Eve and Adam are at different times. Maybe that is wrong.

Oh, that different than just dismissing evolution on the whole. The dating of the DNA differences is already recognized as a range of possible dates anywhere from 100,000 to 580,000. While I'm no expert in this, I think they are looking at a bottleneck for the male and female lines, which don't match within a narrow date range. While it's possible that they might later on revise that to say within 100 years of each other (which would be a remarkable difference from 100,000 years), even so, that isn't saying that is ground zero for the species, where there is no connection to genetic ancestors before this "Adam and Eve". There were homosapiens before them, and of course all the other predecessors to homosapiens.

This wouldn't mean evolution isn't still not true, nor would it mean the Bible was speaking with scientific accuracy, or that it affirms it's reliable as a predictor of scientific discoveries yet to be had. Hardly. It is far easier and more reasonable to say in creating an origin story, it's logic to create an original mother and father for the human races. That's just drawing from imagery of everyday life to illustrate a point. It just coincidentally, kind of fits that bottleneck in the genepool.

Much more remarkable would be to find there is no connection of humans genetically to any other animal species on this planet altogether! Now that would be something! That would be more in line with a literal read of the Genesis creation story. But that's not going to be something that science later on will discover that completely destroys genetic modeling. That's just hoping against hope for those who want science to be wrong on this.

But of course if God did create the bodies of A@E through evolution and make them into humans using just one of those bodies, that would go against evolution to the extent that the scientific theory of evolution does not allow for divine intervention at any point, and everything has to have happened through natural processes.

Ah, but here's the thing. When we think of "human" what do we mean? That's really a philosophical, or metaphorical thing, not a scientific thing. There is the animal species called homo sapiens, which is a scientific designation, but things like "personhood" and "humanness" are qualities that we refer to a certain "nature", not a biological reference really. For instance, if I ask you to "point to yourself", do you imagine you are just your physical biological skin sack, or do you think of yourself in terms of your unique personality, values, tastes, likes and dislikes, friends, etc? Small children only identify themselves with their bodies only, but not most adults. (This is a developmental stage thing).

Now, understanding that a start, theologically or philosophically speaking, was there a point when the animal species homo sapiens became cognitively self-aware enough to differentiate itself from the world and recognizes it own existential condition? Yes! I very much believe that to be true. And that is when we become more than just another animal species, but we became human beings. Creatures who were now self aware and could recognize "I" and their own mortality. That is what distinguishes us from the other animals as just another species. We are more than animals, we are "human", we are "persons". That's much more than just biology.

That is what is captured quite well in the Adam and Eve story and the Fall in the garden. It's that "And they saw they were naked" moment. It was the price of the waking up from their slumber in the ecosystem, grazing about like any other animal. Now they were self-aware, and knew they would die! It's brilliant, frankly. It perfectly captures that existential angst of what it means emotionally and psychologically, and spiritually, to be a human being. The whole story intuitively captures that "moment" of awareness of their own mortality, having eaten of the forbidden fruit of that type knowledge, and the price of suffering that comes with it. So it's all very true, just symbolically captured.

That "awakening" in real history and time was more likely a gradual process over time, when early man began looking inwardly and questioning their own existence. Was there a single moment one lone afternoon? Perhaps, but I see it as much more a growing awareness and then some moment of crisis. That story captures that experience we often have even within our own lifetimes as individuals, that of innocence lost from childhood, to the question of "who am I, and why I am here? Why do I exist?". This is a process that usually hits, if it hits at all in someone's life, around adolescence. At least that was my experience out in the woods around age 13. The story captures for us what it means to be a human. It centers on the spiritual question of being in the universe, our relationship to it, and its relationship to us.

And that's what the story is about, our humanness. Not our biology scientifically. That's what I mean by cheapening it by making it a scientific question of speciation. It utterly misses the point of the story. It's not a zoology. It's a story about being a human, not about a biological homo sapien species.

When it comes to science telling us things that go against my faith I listen and see how far my faith can take me in believing those things. So I end up believing evolution, to an extent, while recognising God's intervention along the way somehow.

When science tells me that it knows how life and consciousness has developed naturally I react and look for flaws in the science. Not that I am a scientist but I have found that many time it is just a matter of looking at the presumptions in science to find errors.

I'm hearing something that I think might help with some understanding here as to where you may be coming from as a little different than I am. I share with you a resistance to someone taking science and concluding, "science say this, therefore God doesn't exist" attitude or approach. But that is not doing science. That's doing philosophy or religion.

There is a distinction to be made between using a reductionist and naturalistic methodology for the sake of pure scientific inquiry, and a reductionistic, materialistic, physicalist philosophy or worldview. Reductionism can be a tool of science. But just a screwdriver is a tool and can be set aside to pick of a wrench for another task, so too can we not make reductionism a god of our beliefs.

When it comes to history (using naturalistic methodology) telling me that the story of Moses and Joshua did not happen I look for answers and find them in alternative views of the same archaeological and historical evidence.
When historians, using naturalistic methodology, tell me that Jesus did not exist and the gospels were written by people who did not know Jesus and the story of Jesus was compiled from bits and pieces from other god stories in the ancient world, I reject it.
Etc etc.

This was the point I wanted to really focus on clarifying here. I think what you are trying to say here is a critique of the tools of modernity in general, not just the natural sciences. You mean to be saying a modernist approach to things like literary criticism, doing history and archaeology, comparative religious analysis, and the like? One could summarize those plainly as "demythologizing" areas of study, removing things like supernaturalism from the equation in trying to gain a purely rational perspective of the area of study. Is this what you are trying to convey?

I would just call those the rationalistic, critical analytic perspective, rather than a naturalistic methodology. And this is a genuine complaint about modernity in general, frankly. Which is that it "guts" the meaning out of reality for us. It strips away the fantastical, the transcendent, the magical qualities and it analyzes the crap out of something down to its component level. "Where's the magic left anymore??", is the complaint.

And this influx of modernity into religion, gave birth to new theologies, and left traditional religion reeling in its wake. And that then gave birth to Fundamentalism in reaction against that. "Enough with these fancy theologies from out East! Give me that old time religion! God said it, I believe it, that settles it for me!". That's the actual history of fundamentalism in America and what gave rise to it as such.

So the point of that, is that people find it hard to move from a rational deconstruction of the text, to finding the meaning in the stories, if they can see how they were constructed naturally. So the reasoning goes, "if it's not God that did it, and it's just man, then it's not really true and it doesn't have the same meaning anymore". Make sense?

If you are a Christian then you no doubt would draw a line also, even if it might be in a different place.

Where would I draw a line? I would say that line is where philosophical materialism crosses over into science and begins making pronouncements about the the Big Questions that science is no suited to answer. While the science may be rock solid, that does not therefore mean there is no Mystery beyond just what the senses can behold, which includes the eye of reason.

There is more the Universe than just physics. But when it comes to physics, science gets to make the most accurate judgements, beyond religious pronouncements to the contrary. In a debate about physics, science wins and religion loses. Religion should have no dog in that fight.

Whether the stories are literally true or not, the same deep meanings can be derived from them.

Yes indeed. That is what I am arguing for. But for many, they are unable to separate the meaning of the symbol from the symbol itself. The story is the symbol. And therefore to them, if the story is not literally factually true, the mean collapses right along with it. It is a later stage in Faith development where one is able to recognize the meaning of the symbol, transcends the symbol itself and may be expressed in any number of other different symbols.

James Fowler identified this as beginning to appear in Stage 4 Faith, the Individuative Reflective stage. In Stage 2 Faith, the Mythic-Literal stage, if the symbol is not factually true, "concrete literal" in other words, then the meaning collapses. this is why you have so many Christian fundamentalists at that stage become Atheists, who now replace the symbols of faith with the symbols of reason and science.

continued... (sorry for the length of this. )

 

[Windwalker]

But for me a true story actually does tell us about God instead of telling us about what men have thought about God.

Well, yes, true in the sense that it speaks truth that transcends the symbol itself. The symbol is not he point. How it speaks to the heart, to the soul, to the spirit, is where the truth is found, not in the literalness of the symbol. But as far as looking at something like scripture as man's thoughts about God, truth is found in this as well. Why? Because we are all human, and that same Truth lives within each of us, just waiting to find a way up and out through the cracks in the concrete of our minds.

That Truth is found in children, and "unless you become as little children you shall not see the kingdom of God". That is quite literally true. When we aren't separated from Life by the concerns of the mind, or "the flesh", then we are able to reconnect with that Source. All this is very much that Truth that individuals have both intuited and realized in their lives, and scripture is really their story, which is all our story.

Of course speaking with sceptics on a forum like this, one does not get past the historicity of the stories. It seems to be the historicity that is attacked by sceptics and is seen as important by them, and I agree

Yes! Exactly my point I just made about mythic-literal faith that Fowler researched. They too are the flipside of the same coin. If it's not literally true, than it's literally false and has no meaning! Both are unable to "decouple" the meaning from the symbol and liberate it somehow.

That type of faith is all good and fine, if you do not have access to a higher understanding of the world than magic mythic supernaturalism. In a Modern context, such faith is ill-equipped to deal with knowledge beyond that otherwise appropriate context. It's basically trying to use a system of the past in conflict with a system of a current age. But the meaning is able to bridge all those systems, as these are timeless truths. They just need to be recontextualized some in order to be held without internal conflict. Waging war against science to preserve beliefs, is not the way through at all, nor is throwing out the baby of spiritual truth in order to embrace reason either.

There is a lot here to unpack, and hopefully some of it begins to make some sense. I've spent a considerable amount of time and resources looking at and considering these things.

. But the sceptics want the naturalistic methodology applied to the stories,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, making them all just what man has made up about God and what God has done.
I see it as a good thing that there are those in science and history who look at the facts from a different angle and actually affirm the historicity of the Bible.

I recognize the history contexts of the Bible, but more from a rational, modernist, and postmodernist perspective. Where I go a step beyond just mere deconstruction, is in reconstructing a new framework which allows for the truth and light from modernity and postmodernity to illuminate understanding of the texts, but which allows the meaning to be held without doing violence to those truths.

The Washington story does not really tell us anything about George Washington however if it is made up.

But it does. When I was a child, everyone knew that story as an example of honesty and telling the truth to our parents. It doesn't matter if it was made up historically. The truth of being honest is true, and the story was a vehicle for that truth. The problem with literalism is that if the story is not factually true, then there is no damned vehicle for truth anymore. They kill the truth just as much as an atheist can.

But of course it is dry history if only read that way, and there are different ways to read the Bible and hopefully the dry history way is not the only way we read it.

Exactly. I can read it as the imagination of the world for those who lived back then as the backdrop, the stage, for the truth of the story. The stage doesn't need to be an accurate representation of the word in terms of 100% realism, in order to the play performed on it to communicate truth and meaning, does it? Is it the props that's the point, or the acting?

For me there is no conflict when I realise that not all science or history is accurate, just interpretations which others disagree with, even if the others might be fewer in number and even seen as biased because of their faith perspective. (but a naturalistic pov is not seen as a bias strangely enough).

Well that's true. Everything is a perspective ultimately, but that doesn't mean we get to just divorce ourselves from the reality which is the frameworks we need to navigate in order to communicate truth and meaning. We have to have some cohesive, functional structure to translate the world with.

But to me the best attitude is to recognize that ultimately those are props on the stage as the backdrop for the actors to tell a story of meaning and truth. That allows our beliefs about a thing to relax enough in order for the meaning to get through. But if we are hung up, "that tree on the stage is historically inaccurate for the time period of this story", then the story goes sailing right over our heads and we're left worried about the window dressing instead. All of which are things we do to avoid looking at God, IMHO.

I just think that capitulation to the naturalistic pov about the Bible can lead to problems in faith, and it has for many people, because that pov has in the past been taught in seminaries and Bible colleges in many places.

Let's not call it a captitualition, as that is an adversarial relationship. Rather, call it an acknowledgement of it. (And by naturalistic, I believe you mean modernist and postmodernist perspectives). I do not thing fault finding is the way forward. I think acknowledgment and consideration is, and then learning how to let those inform one's faith.

That is the path to growth, rather than stagnation in a static echo-chamber which requires isolating oneself from the world. Fundamentalism is not a healthy form of religion, in my experience as a former fundamentalist myself.

The sceptic pov of the historicity of the Bible was popular and imo it is a good thing that people of faith have been able to debunk some of the sceptical povs that have been used.

If you're speaking of "skeptics" like those "debunkers" like a Richard Dawkins and other anti-theists like him, then they can be just as irrational as the types of believers that they attack are. But I'm not talking about debunkers and skeptics. I'm talking about serious critiques from a modernist and postmodernist understanding. That's legitimate criticism, not "I hate religion" atheistic religiousness.

If you take the "both are right" angle too far then you might end up with a faith in tatters because you can't say "no" to science.

I don't see that. I see faith deepening and growing by allowing more and more truth to enter into it. Again, I make a distinction between faith and beliefs. Beliefs are our ideas about something. Faith is an deep intuitive knowing, that allows beliefs to become flexible. The weaker the faith, the more we turn to beliefs. The "True Believer" is typically the weakest in faith, because their beliefs are the only thing they have, and by god!, if you challenge that belief, that's attacking everything they try to find comfort in.

Faith allows for Truth to change our beliefs. Faith produces fruit. Beliefs produce religions. "By their fruits you shall know them", not by their beliefs.

Anyway, kind of long, but I have a lot of passion about this as I've spent decades sorting this out somewhat. Thanks for the discussion. I appreciate it.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

The Romans killed him becuse the Jews weren't allowed to. They didn't care about money changers in the Temple. The Jews had Pilate by the short hairs becuse of previous missteps on his part in dealing with their concerns about the imagery on Roman shields carried into Jerusalem by soldiers. Pilate sacrificed Jesus to his fear of the Jews.

The Bible takes great pains to invent Jewish involvement which is completely unnecessary. Pilate was so cruel that the cruel Romans banished him. Jesus could have sneezed and Pilate would have killed him.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

They killed true ones as well.

Prophets that were wrong were false even if their sycophants wrote the story. The

 

[Colt]

The Bible takes great pains to invent Jewish involvement which is completely unnecessary. Pilate was so cruel that the cruel Romans banished him. Jesus could have sneezed and Pilate would have killed him.

The Jews had a history of abusing prophets and messengers. The story was retold by those who’s witnessed it.

 

[Madmogwai]

This question is mainly to Christians, but those of other faiths may share their thoughts to this. This question came up in another thread where I expressed my view while Jesus may be considered the Son of God to Christians, his knowledge of things that modern science knows would have been lacking for him, being a human being living 2000 years ago before modern science.

This caused great concern for one person of faith to consider that Jesus' knowledge of the natural world could possibly be limited to the understanding of those of his day. They seemed to believe Jesus would have had supernatural knowledge about all things, including whether or not evolution was valid scientifically. If this were true, then would Jesus have also known the earth orbits the sun, and the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system? Would Jesus have understood quantum mechanics? And so forth.

As a Christian, do you feel that Jesus, because he was a flesh and blood human being, that his knowledge of all things would have been limited as the rest of his fellows of his day? This isn't talking about spiritual insights, but technical information, such as how life evolved on this earth, such that he could be called upon as disagreeing with modern science because he spoke of the creation story instead, proving he proof he knew about evolution, but rejected it by referencing Genesis instead of talking about evolution.

As a Christian do you feel that saying Jesus' knowledge was limited to the knowledge of his day, is denegarating to him? If so, explain? Are you comfortable as a Christian to recognize that Jesus was a human being who didn't know everything magically or supernaturally?

Looking at the Bible it seems he never even knew about science of the times.

 

[Windwalker]

Looking at the Bible it seems he never even knew about science of the times.

Probably not. But there really wasn't anything he was saying that had any bearing on knowing science anyway. Parables aren't dependent upon scientific and historical accuracy.

 

[Madmogwai]

Probably not. But there really wasn't anything he was saying that had any bearing on knowing science anyway. Parables aren't dependent upon scientific and historical accuracy.

Well apparently it’s Gods word.

 

[Windwalker]

Well apparently it’s Gods word.

And what does that mean? A book of science? "God" can't speak (or be understood) through parables?

 

[Madmogwai]

And what does that mean? A book of science? "God" can't speak (or be understood) through parables?

Does or does it not claim the Bible is the word of God given to Man.

 

[Windwalker]

Does or does it not claim the Bible is the word of God given to Man.

Actually, no it doesn't. It does not specify the books which later councils choose to be called the Bible as "the word of God". The only thing it says is that scripture is inspired by God. But even that itself, what does "inspired by God", mean exactly? Scientifically accurate? Isn't that someone's idea of what "inspired" means? I don't believe there is anything in scripture that supports that notion. It never claims that itself.

A work of art may be considered inspired by God too, but does that mean only art that is 100% scientifically accurate? Or does inspired have absolutely nothing to do with scientific and historical accuracy? I think the problem is people don't know what inspired actually means. I think they get confused between something speaking truth, and factual in details, as if those are where the meaning is supposedly found anyway.

Is the story of the Good Samaritan factually and historically true? Was there an actual historical person Jesus is referring to? No? Does that mean the story has no truth to it? According to literalists, it shouldn't. "If the Good Samaritan didn't actually exist, than the story is complete BS!" Yes, that is the way literalists think, both believers and atheists. Believers need to be factually true to believe it, and atheists don't believe it because its not factually true. Exact same mode of thinking, flipsides of the same coin.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

The Jews had a history of abusing prophets and messengers. The story was retold by those who’s witnessed it.

Name some.

 

[Colt]

Name some.

“Now Pashhur the priest, the son of Immer, who was chief officer in the house of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. Then Pashhur beat Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the upper Benjamin Gate of the house of the LORD.” (Jeremiah 20:1-2, ESV).

 

[Five Solas]

How many of his followers witnessed him creating the universe?

This is a very interesting one and I have given this much study and thought over the years. There is no short answer and one needs quite far reaching biblical knowledge to begin to understand this.

As basic principle (presupposition) I believe God created all that exists.
How? That I do not know basically because of what you ask - there were no human witnesses of the entire process.

I am not an American style creationist who think the answer is very simple.

I'll try to be as brief as possible.

Firstly, some historical events had been witnessed over many centuries. So a vast amount of biblical content is (based on) eye witness accounts - not all. Based on what had been witnessed we (and the biblical authors) can come to conclusions. The main conclusion is that God is reliable - He can be trusted and He will always keep His promises. The Christian faith (saving faith) is based on that reliability and knowledge. That is reasonable faith based on knowledge of God.

There are two theological names for this:

• History of salvation and
• God's own self-revelation.

Secondly, some information had been given to humanity directly by God. God mostly used prophets to bring that information. There is a false idea that biblical prophets only predicted the future. Prophets were preachers and messengers that dealt with the past, present (mostly) and the future. God told them what to say. Their biggest task was to convince God's people to do God's will so they could be an example for all other nations. Information about the future and past were mostly quite vague and hard to understand but it became clear(er) when it came true. (In retrospect)

The information we have - the biblical creation accounts - were brought to us by a prophet, i.e. Moses. It is in my view similar in nature to prophesies about the future which were not crystal clear. So, God, by means of Moses, gave us some idea of how He created but it is very vague information. We cannot draw too many (scientific) conclusions from it apart from one big one - God did it.

The creation accounts are absolutely foundational to Christianity. To be clear - anyone who claims to be a Christian but deny that God created the universe is a liar - full stop.