RE: How Christians and there god sound to me.
November 10, 2012 at 11:33 am
(This post was last modified: November 10, 2012 at 11:33 am by Cyberman.)
(November 9, 2012 at 7:00 pm)Reasonable_Jeff Wrote: You seem to be saying that you would not have deduced that there are multiple "persons" within God from a plain reading of the Hebrew scripture.
I agree with you, one wouldn't have come to that conclusion which makes the conversion of sincere, passionate Jews into belief in Jesus and the Holy Spirit as God a phenomenal testimony to the truth of it...something like that wouldn't have been just thought up.
Quite clearly it was "just thought up", but let's take another example. We also have another story, presumably far more ancient than anything than JC is alleged to have done, which happened ina galaxy far, far away. We are told that an ancient and mystic order with demonstrable powers held an uneasy balance between good and evil. At varying points in the narrative, an immense superweapon was constructed with the ability to annihilate whole planets. I won't spoil the ending, but doesn't that story seem too fantastic and improbable to have been just thought up?
(November 9, 2012 at 7:00 pm)Reasonable_Jeff Wrote: The best explanation for the origin for the disciples belief is that they really did witness a resurrection of Jesus which forced them to alter their view of God.
No, that's not the best explanation at all, depending of course on the working definition of 'best' which you don't give. The 'best', as in 'simplest, most plausible' and - dare I say it - 'reasonable' explanation is the same one that you are going to apply to my example above.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'