Logikos wrote:Nick wrote:It's always mildly disconcerting that when asked a question, Xians suddenly depart from English as she is spoke.
"Jesus is Lord"?
Does that actually mean anything?
My apologies, Nick, I slipped into using Christianese. At the very least, the claim that Jesus is Lord is the claim that Jesus is YHWH (the God of Judeo-Christianity) incarnate and thus has authority over all. It also carries with it the reverse connotation that nothing or noone else has such authority (and in the context that "Jesus is Lord" was first proclaimed, it carries with it the very clear message that Caesar
isn't Lord).
Something ain't right here...Yahweh and Jesus are the same? I thought Jesus was supposed to be son of god.
Logikos wrote:Nick wrote:"Messiah" is a little more self evident, at least in meaning. But what evidence do you have? Perhaps more importantly, (because I doubt you are about to produce any reasonable evidence) why is it even reasonabl[e] to think that such a thing is worth looking for? The whole proposition is ridiculous, surely?
As for the resurrection, why is the resurrection of Jesus (which, if you look at your bible was, in fact quite a common occurrence at the time) so much more likely than the reappearance of Elvis, Lord Lucan or Shergar?
All of these questions are related. The reason I believe that Jesus is Lord and Messiah is the Resurrection - Christianity stands or falls on the historicity of this event. And the reason I take the claim that the Resurrection actually happened seriously is because of the historical witness to that event.
Nick wrote:While we are at it, what about the Assumption. Just where did Jesus go? Where is he now? My head hurts.
I presume that you mean the Ascension. The Ascension is the transition between Jesus having a physical existence within time and space and having a non-physical existence "outside" of time and space. And that makes my head hurt too.
Nick's point about resurrections being common those days was not known to me...so if they were common then how would it make jesus different from the rest of the resurrected people? Also, since the belief is based on historicity of the event, who are the eye witnesses of this event?
FWIW, I am not criticizing religion or being negative about it...I believe in god too and I know that I do not have any physical evidence for it so I leave it at that. At the end of the day all of us
believe existence to be what we believe it to be...none of us is more right or wrong. None of us can prove that we are truly independent living things just as none of us can prove that there is someone or something that decides what, why, how, when we do things.
Coming back to wisdom...do you believe that wisdom and knowledge are different...wisdom is what is beyond knowledge? If so, then how can a book or writing contain wisdom...it would just be knowledge right? Wisdom would require some action or comprehension or mental processing from your part of what is written in the book, no? At best a book can tell you "what is"...what you do with that is different. And here's another question...does the bible say all men and women are equal? If yes, then why are only christians going to heaven? Another perspective...does the bible tell you how to live a "proper" life? If yes, then why are so many people who live life as prescribed by the bible not successful?...by successful I don't mean just material success, consider happiness, comfort, good relationships with people, etc.