Atheism, Theism, Science & Philosophy

[Aractus]

Ok Love, I'm not going through this entire thread, but I gather that most of questions are from atheists. This is what concerns me about your perception of Christianity:

I think I had an extremely simplistic view of Christianity when I was an atheist. I thought what most atheists think, such as refuting the idea that Christ died for our sins and denying the historicity of the resurrection. After studying the history of Christian theology, I now know that these core ideas, in popular denominations such as Catholicism, are simply theological interpretations of the significance of the life and death of Jesus. I do not believe that his crucifixion signifies a redemptive sacrifice for our sins; this is a ridiculous concept to me. I am also a skeptic concerning the historicity of the resurrection. However, I firmly believe that Jesus' consciousness was divine and that his life was vastly more important than his death; just consider how profound an impact his life has had on civilisation as a whole. I also believe that The Bible is not particularly important.

Tell me - why should I, an Anglican, not think of you as a heretic?

Why don't we work our way through the obvious then.

If Christ's crucifixion doesn't represent a redemptive sacrifice - then what was its purpose, and furthermore, what is its significance to a Christian?

The resurrection of Christ is recorded in all four Gospels, in Acts, and Paul also talks about it. The risen Christ also meets people and talks to people, including Paul. This would be impossible if Jesus truly died at the cross and was not resurrected. You are therefore lead to the conclusion that the Bible is not accurate, at least inasmuch as the details of Christ's death is concerned. This isn't a unique sceptical viewpoint, in fact many have it. What is interesting though is that there is a clear lack of evidence for: a. a forgery, or b. a different version of the story. This can be attributed to the fact that of the more than 5,000 manuscript copies of the NT in Greek, there is little doubt over what the original texts said, and the little doubt that there is does in no way concern anything fundamental to the faith including the resurrection of Jesus. In other words, it wasn't added, nothing was subtracted, and the text that we have while it may not be 100.00% identical to the original papyrus versions it is very, very close.

You dismiss the Bible almost as if there is clear evidence of either intentional tampering or as if those who wrote it were unconcerned with getting the details right and more concerned with pushing their own agendas. If this was the case then it's difficult to accept that 27 separate Greek books in addition to 49 Hebrew books were accepted as canon. And don't think for a moment that the OT canon was any different to what the Palestinian Jews used in the first century - because it isn't. To claim otherwise is an absurdity since there is no evidence to back up the position, and all the evidence that we have points to the Jewish scriptures being the same 49 books (22 scrolls) that we have today.

---

These are all very good points. I am presently of the opinion that human beings are ultimately limited in terms of being able to comprehend extremely counter intuitive ideas. For example, even quantum physicists / theoretical physicists have trouble coming to terms with concepts such as "wave/particle duality" or even Everett's "many worlds interpretation" of quantum theory. As Dawkins has quoted Richard Feynman on a number of occasions: "if you think you understand quantum theory, you don't understand quantum theory". Although this will be seen as a "cowardly cop out" by some members, I truly believe that there are some things that are completely beyond our comprehension; call it intellectual humility. I think God is one of those areas that is completely beyond our grasp. Just like the idea that nothing existed before the emergence of time; it is beyond our intellectual grasp. What I sense, however, is that the "panentheistic transcendent consciousness" is the source of life, morality and love et cetera.

Physics is an invention of humanity, as is mathematics. Anything invented by humans can be understood by humans, and quantum mechanics is no different. It is almost embarrassingly easy to understand, the difficulty it has is in the fact that it (GASP) represents an invented model of the substructure of the universe, so obviously you cannot actually explain everything in the universe by it. The notion that "if you think you understand quantum theory, you don't understand quantum theory" is nonsense, QM is far, far, far, far easier to understand than General Relativity - because for the most part QM mimics what we see at the scale of classic mechanics, for the most part it follows the standard Newtonian model. There is nothing special, nothing "beyond comprehension" about a mathematical model invented by humans, nothing whatsoever.

As for the universe itself, that's a-whole-nother matter.