(February 2, 2015 at 11:00 am)IATIA Wrote: The way the story goes is that Jesus intentionally set the chain of events in motion to ultimately lead to the crucifixion. Judas was required.Yeah, and that's one of the things that stumped me. Judas leaves the supper and brings Jesus' enemies to where he is, so that they can grab him. Jesus himself undermines the need for this, when he points out that they could have arrested him at any time because he wasn't hiding. And there is nothing in the story that indicates that Jesus was skulking around town to avoid the pharisees at night, either. So they could have easily located him on their own. Jesus claims that it had to happen that way to fulfill prophecy, so it was all planned.
Since it was planned, was Judas just some irredeemable sinner who god knew would fall to temptation, providing the necessary piece to the prophetic puzzle? It seems that having a front row seat to the glory of god didn't move him at all! Or was he a sincere follower who was turned in order to ensure that the prophecy occurred as intended? It strikes me as a sloppy plot device, where the hero is undermined by a trusted person from his inner circle in order to create suspense.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
