Nature's Laws

[TheRealJoeFish]

As paraphrased on Wikipedia, a fellow by the name of John JF Sawyer says, of that passage of Isaiah:

"Isaiah seems always to have had a prominent place in Jewish Bible use, and it is probable that Jesus himself was deeply influenced by Isaiah, and that he took it as his destiny to fulfill Isaiah ("a man of suffering, and familiar with pain... he bore the sin of many"). Thus many of the Isaiah passages that are familiar to Christians gained their popularity not directly from Isaiah but from the use of them by Jesus and the early Christian authors..."

And even that's assuming a lot that hasn't been shown...

[Freedom4me]

An organism reproducing, or blood clotting, are natural processes. We can look at them and come up with a "purpose", in other words a description of what the process "achieves". But it's really no more than describing it. We're assigning a kind of narrative, and it's easy to get carried away and think that narrative is somehow inherent to the process itself. To put it bluntly, shit happens. As humans, we look for patterns. If stuff didn't work that way, it would work another way.

Yes, if humans couldn't see, it is certainly possible that we would navigate through some other means, such as eccho-location like bats and various other animals.  But either way, "nature" shows itself to be extremely purposeful.  

And yes, if a society decides certain people have no rights, then under that society, those people have no rights. That doesn't mean it's a fair decision, or that other people would agree with it. You can say what rights they should have, but if they aren't ever being respected, they're nothing but wishful thinking.

Why does it have to be a matter of agreement?  How should a person (or a civilization) go about deciding what is "fair"?

[SteelCurtain]

Alright, lets hear them. What prophecies convinced you?

---

Here is perhaps my favorite passage from Isaiah 53.


Who has believed our message

    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
4 Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression[a] and judgment he was taken away.
    Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
    for the transgression of my people he was punished.[b]
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
    and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
    nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the Lord makes[c] his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
    he will see the light of life[d] and be satisfied[e];
by his knowledge[f] my righteous servant will justify many,
    and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,[g]
    and he will divide the spoils with the strong,[h]
because he poured out his life unto death,
    and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors.

---

[FatAndFaithless]

Side note: Make sure you put your responses outside of the quote tags when you reply to a post, Freedom. Kinda hard to read your posts at a glance when the formatting is a bit off.

[robvalue]

Nature shows itself to be purposeful? In what way? What purpose?

There is no alternative to society deciding rights, I'm afraid. Not any I've heard of, anyway. Any civilised country is always trying to improve them. Do you have another idea? I can just announce I have the "right to have sex with anyone I see" but that makes no actual difference if society does not agree. Rights only mean something when granted and respected by others, otherwise they are just abstracts.

Why does it have to be a matter of agreement? Because if no one agrees I have the right to do something, then I'm going to probably get punished for doing so. If everyone decided their own rights and expected everyone else to respect them, that would be insane.

[FatAndFaithless]

The fact that humans and societies can get it wrong doesn't mean you can insert a god to get some comfortable object absolute laws.

[Freedom4me]

As paraphrased on Wikipedia, a fellow by the name of John JF Sawyer says, of that passage of Isaiah:

"Isaiah seems always to have had a prominent place in Jewish Bible use, and it is probable that Jesus himself was deeply influenced by Isaiah, and that he took it as his destiny to fulfill Isaiah ("a man of suffering, and familiar with pain... he bore the sin of many"). Thus many of the Isaiah passages that are familiar to Christians gained their popularity not directly from Isaiah but from the use of them by Jesus and the early Christian authors..."

And even that's assuming a lot that hasn't been shown...

But Jesus was tortured to death by way of crucifixion--a Roman form of torture and execution.  I don't think that Jesus (if He were not God in the flesh) could have known that crucifixion would be the method that the Jewish leaders would be using to kill Him.

[robvalue]

Jesus could read the OT and just act in ways he thought fulfilled prophecies. Or else most of his life is fictional, which is more likely, and the writers wanted him to appear to fulfil prophecies. You see, the gospels are just claims about what happened. We have next to no way to verify any of it beside mundane details. You're assuming everything in the gospels actually happened.

[Freedom4me]

Side note: Make sure you put your responses outside of the quote tags when you reply to a post, Freedom.  Kinda hard to read your posts at a glance when the formatting is a bit off.

Sorry.  I must admit that I don't have any experience doing this.  I'm still trying to figure it out.

[TheRealJoeFish]

As paraphrased on Wikipedia, a fellow by the name of John JF Sawyer says, of that passage of Isaiah:

"Isaiah seems always to have had a prominent place in Jewish Bible use, and it is probable that Jesus himself was deeply influenced by Isaiah, and that he took it as his destiny to fulfill Isaiah ("a man of suffering, and familiar with pain... he bore the sin of many"). Thus many of the Isaiah passages that are familiar to Christians gained their popularity not directly from Isaiah but from the use of them by Jesus and the early Christian authors..."

And even that's assuming a lot that hasn't been shown...

But Jesus was tortured to death by way of crucifixion--a Roman form of torture and execution.  I don't think that Jesus (if He were not God in the flesh) could have known that crucifixion would be the method that the Jewish leaders would be using to kill Him.

Nonsense. It was the common way of executing slaves and those of low status. The Romans did everything by the book, as it were, with JC.

The Isaiah passage also mentions nothing about crucifixion, does it?