Most People Insist That Two Separate Being Can Never Be One

[Anomalocaris]

This village has too many idiots.

Fortunately, this village has some fantastic non-idiot persons, like you are. Naturally, it has to be very proud of having you.

Oh sorry, I forgot you see me just an idiot, so what I wrote on the first line has to be lunatic, at least to you 

A lunatic is one whose mental faculties have been deranged.

You don’t seem to have mental faculties to derange. 

So you can never be a lunatic.

The word is actually halfwit.    A conceited halfwit, but very much still a halfwit.

[Anomalocaris]

……A real human is whoever can trust that his given human intelligence has no limit…..

You, even more so than most, ought not to trust any such thing, even if you do.       So you are not a real human, even if you delusionally think yourself to be.

[Vicki Q]

This insistence arose mainly when people discuss Jesus’ saying: “I and 'the' Father are one”. (A side note: Jesus didn't say I and 'my' Father are one).  

<snip>

Anyway, I also can’t call myself Christian because I knew Jesus based on my logical reasoning only, not by having faith in him. I guess it is well known that a formal Christian is supposed to believe in Jesus (The Savior) based solely on faith, as Pagans do towards their Idols. I am just an independent student of Jesus.

There has been a lot of debate about John 10:30 with the stock antitrinitarian interpretation being that Jesus was referring to one in purpose, as in “the Home Secretary and Prime Minister are as one on this issue”.

Given what John says elsewhere, and that happened next was an attempted stoning for blasphemy*, this seems unlikely to be all that John meant.

When the Early Church had picked themselves up after the post-Easter events, they started to ask questions about Jesus, but not in the way that the discussion is usually put.

They did not ask what God is, and then try to fit Jesus into that. They asked who God is, and realised that Jesus was that.

God is the One who said He would “swallow up death”, inaugurate His Kingdom, and redeem His people. These things Jesus did. Jobs that God had said He would do were done by Jesus. Therefore it became necessary to see Jesus as part of the identity of Israel's God.

They had arrived at a point where Christians like John cannot speak of Israel's God without thinking of Jesus, or of Jesus without thinking of the One God.




(*BTW this is not at all what John has in mind)

[Vicki Q]

I guess it is well known that a formal Christian is supposed to believe in Jesus (The Savior) based solely on faith, as Pagans do towards their Idols. 

Apologies for the double post, but I've just seen this.

I do not agree with that at all. For the first Christians such as Peter and John, it was 100% evidence based. For many, many Christians since then, their 'faith' is evidence based. One can never be sure, but a worldview that sees Jesus as God-as-human makes more sense to us of the evidence than the alternatives.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I guess it is well known that a formal Christian is supposed to believe in Jesus (The Savior) based solely on faith, as Pagans do towards their Idols. 

Apologies for the double post, but I've just seen this.

I do not agree with that at all. For the first Christians such as Peter and John, it was 100% evidence based. For many, many Christians since then, their 'faith' is evidence based. One can never be sure, but a worldview that sees Jesus as God-as-human makes more sense to us of the evidence than the alternatives.

What evidence, exactly?

Boru

[no one]

Nothing about Abraham and his god make any sense. It is all stories fabricated by delusional, scientifically illiterate, goat fucking, desert dwellers who did not have a clue to how the natural sciences around them operated. They invented explanations to quell their fears. They were also abundantly arrogant.


god, any god, from any religion, is 100% pure grade A absurd drivel.


There is definitely a defect in the reasoning skills of anyone who accepts this garbage.

[Fake Messiah]

I do not agree with that at all. For the first Christians such as Peter and John, it was 100% evidence based.

And how do we know this? From the book that was written by some anonymous people that lived many decades later than the supposed story and who couldn't get their stories to match.

[GUBU]

I guess it is well known that a formal Christian is supposed to believe in Jesus (The Savior) based solely on faith, as Pagans do towards their Idols. 

Apologies for the double post, but I've just seen this.

I do not agree with that at all. For the first Christians such as Peter and John, it was 100% evidence based. For many, many Christians since then, their 'faith' is evidence based. One can never be sure, but a worldview that sees Jesus as God-as-human makes more sense to us of the evidence than the alternatives.

Christianity was never evidence based. The firs accounts started appearing, at best, 40 years after Yeshua's alleged death and contained references to events that couldn't have happened and others we know didn't happen from other sources. The accounts' history and geography both got badly mangled.

Even if there were a Peter or a John, we can't know what they thought because we have no evidence for them.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Apologies for the double post, but I've just seen this.

I do not agree with that at all. For the first Christians such as Peter and John, it was 100% evidence based. For many, many Christians since then, their 'faith' is evidence based. One can never be sure, but a worldview that sees Jesus as God-as-human makes more sense to us of the evidence than the alternatives.

Christianity was never evidence based.  The firs accounts started appearing, at best, 40 years after Yeshua's alleged death and contained references to events that couldn't have happened and others we know didn't happen from other sources.  The accounts' history and geography both got badly mangled.

Even if there were a Peter or a John, we can't know what they thought because we have no evidence for them.

It never ceases to impress me how many religionists fail to realize that ‘faith’ and ‘evidence’ are mutually exclusive.

Boru

[Vicki Q]

It's pretty much universally agreed that Paul was writing in the mid 50s, so some of the dating here is...daring. Anyone who thinks that 25 years after the event is an issue should watch an episode of Rhod Gilbert's Growing Pains (example).

What evidence, exactly?
Boru

Thank you for asking.
Everyone has their own life, and so it's going to vary from person to person. People have had experiences that give more than enough evidence for them. My point to KerimF was that faith can be based on evidence (often in part), so he doesn't need evidence-free faith. The disciples certainly had enough first hand knowledge to make evidence-free faith impossible.

For me, it would be a mixture of personal evidence, experiences of those close to me, and the yet-to-be-solved question of how Christianity got going with the set of beliefs it did.

The return of God to Israel was supposed to be this great event, announcing the start of the Kingdom of God, the end of death, and forgiveness for God's people. Why did a group of Jews suddenly think that the death of their leader was all that? Why did they commit the rest of their now inevitably shorter and nastier lives to telling people about it?