equivalency between divinity of Jesus and the Bible

[© tweed]

seems an old point, but it seems everywhere I look it's there: we are special because I make Jesus the Lord of my life and because I hold the Bible to be the final revelation of God.  these are two very separate things!  the Bible was finalized, what, 300 years after the death of Christ?  sure, you can hold the eternal Christ to hold dominion over absolutely everything, but at that point, are you not retreating to a Hegelian rationality-of-history, rationality-of-everything, so why pick one thing over the other?

[afleitch]

To an extent. Hegel’s understanding of god was entirely influenced by the pre-supposition made by the early Christian church on the figure of Jesus, (which as you hint took time, argument, ‘committee work’ and a great deal of suppression to iron out) which he took verbatim as ‘right’ and on which he then based his theophilosophical understanding. Because he views Jesus (as Christians have been told to understand him) as being ‘true’ in that he fulfilled Jewish prophecy as his followers understood Jewish prophecy to be, then Jesus must be the fulfilment of that prophecy (making that prophecy, by extension, true) Though I defer to Schopenhauer and Russell here.

It doesn’t really matter what people think of Jesus, even if you think of him so highly that he is divine and try to think of him as something ‘above’ or transcending Christian biblical dogma (as seems to the fashion in some circles) The only reason he can be considered divine is by the standards of the Jewish people of which he was a part because it is claimed he fulfilled their prophecy of what was expected of the messiah. You therefore cannot divorce the claims of Jesus’ followers that he is the ‘divine-messiah’ from the prerequisites required of him to fulfil the prophecies. These are found in the Old Testament. As those prerequisites relate to the messiah of the Jewish people whose god was Yahweh whom Jesus is supposed to be a part of, then all Christian belief rests upon the assertion that the god of the Jews is ‘The God’. So people are asked to believe in Jesus as their saviour first and foremost, despite that fact that this is intrinsically linked with accepting the, for want of a better word, the Old Testament iteration of Yahweh as The God.

Surely therefore, what Yahweh told people, what he inspired them to write; his ‘revelation’ would suggest that he was The God. You should be able to ascertain that he was The God from the very beginning of the written word. However the Old Testament (let’s excuse the NT here for a second, though it too is subject to the same level of scrutiny) makes claims that are demonstratably false. It also makes claims that are inferior to other competing claims, or borrows heavily from them. This should indicate that it cannot have been written by or inspired by The God as surely something that is divinely written or inspired would be broadly correct or at least would not contain things which are not true. I am not of course talking about spiritual or supernatural claims which require a different form of enquiry, but from specific testable or observable claims. Unless of course The God chose to be purposely misleading or mischievous in which case if he was, then it means that nothing written down in the Old Testament can be trusted including claims of a messiah. Therefore the claims of Jesus’ followers cannot be considered trustworthy as they may be an attempt by The God to mislead.

Let’s give an example. If you believe in need for The God and want to know which of the competing gods that man has presented to us is The God, if you picked up Genesis, should you be satisfied with this explanation of his creation? Would you be satisfied to such an extent that you believe it to be the best allegory, even if you do not accept the literal truth? If it’s so out of whack (with this god creating plants before the sun, and flowering plants before insects and so forth) then why trust it as divinely inspired even if it is meant to be strictly allegorical? It would be fair perhaps to assume that other candidates for deification may be more ‘true’. One should then proceed to investigate these competing claims.

Let’s take one example; the traditional Hindu cycle of the universe claims that the universe is actually a ‘multiverse’ with no origin and remains in flux. The universe expands until it disappears in a haze. This ties in neatly with the tentative theory that there are multiple universes (and radiation patterns, currently being mapped gives weight to this) and that the ‘Big Bang’ was the beginning of ours, but not necessarily the beginning of others. Much of the Hindu cycle is personified; giving will, emotions and physical forms to the ‘actors’ in this universe but much of the essentials are there. Each ‘exhalation’ creates a universe (again the Big Bang theory) and that each universe lives for ‘100 Brahma years’ (some 311 trillion years) and then is annihilated. However there are an infinite number of ‘brahmas’. Even the age of this planet, 1 ‘day of Brahma’ is estimated at 4.32 billion years (it is actually 4.54) That was only understood in within our lifetimes. So when we look at the Hindu creation story, not only does it trump Genesis, in it’s distilled form it trumps scientific understanding up until a few decades ago.

Christian apologists who hold to the creation story being even just a myth will tell us ‘well we don’t know what a day equals’ trying to give it some form of credence but Hindu mythology actually takes a stab at what the timescales are and it deals with the vast and the infinite. Does it mean that Hinduism is divinely inspired, or has access to a higher knowledge? No. Is the Hindu creation myth more compatible with scientific consensus than the Christian creation myth? Yes. It estimates an age of ‘everything’ (even though strictly speaking it’s age can never be determined) at 311 trillion years, which is far higher than our own estimate, bearing in mind that our own estimate is for our universe alone (and not any multiverse) as that is all we can see and measure. The description of the multiverse in the Rig Veda as being ‘so unlimitedly large, they move about like atoms in you’ even hints at the tenative understanding of atomic theory.

So to the casual observer looking for revelation from The God; you have a better contender. You have in fact the best contender you’re probably going to find amongst all of the ancient creation myths. So having read both accounts, both of which are claimed to be ‘revealed’ understandings of the machinations of the creation of the earth and the universe, why assume Yahweh, whom we find has revealed the lesser account of the two, is the supreme being?

The story of the flood is a second example. Of course to the open minded Christian, one boat is not going to be able to sustain two of each kind of animal given the millions of species we have, combined with millions of vegetation types plus all their food for forty days. There isn’t enough water in all it states to flood the earth, nor does the system of atmospheric pressure or the hydrological cycle allow for such a cataclysmic event to occur. And of course the whole boat had one 18 square inch window for ventilation which would generally cause asphyxiation (a very specific point in the story, like the size of the boat intended to add truth to the story, but instead detracts heavily from it.)

But what of the general gist of the story? Flood myths permeate human cultural history. In early agrarian societies which gave birth to the Semetic and Mesepotamian cultures, these stories seem to be linked to the flooding of the Euphrates. Indeed the Christian flood story is the Sumerian flood myth; the epic of Ziusudra who heard from divine counsel that humanity was to be destroyed and who then constructed a large vessel on which to escape. It’s also the Epic of Gilgamesh, of which Genesis 6-9 closely fits, where by the god Enki (or Ea) instructs the building of the boat. Enki is the water god; the god of mischief, intelligence and creation. Indeed it is Enki who fashions man from clay. It is Enki who confuses people so that they no longer speak the same language. Most of Genesis is a regurgitation of Mesapotamian mythology.

So we now have a creation story bettered by the Hindus, and a creation story and flood myth, similar to the Christian myths but pre-existing it and attributed to another god; Enki. We are only one book into the bible and already we have one ‘revelation’ that does it better and another that does it ‘before.’ So should you again assume that the Christian god who has revealed the lesser account and cannibalised an earlier account (including the instructions directly given to the protagonist), is the supreme being; is The God?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Interesting, but trying to judge Genesis 1-11 by its scientific merit largely misses the point.  Also your denigration of Genesis 1 for having plants be created before the sun on insects misses the that the cycle of light during the day and darkness during the night was already in existence; it just was that the light wasn't concentrated into discrete light sources in the form of the sun, moon, and stars.

No matter what order the story put the relative creation of things, it would still fall short of the scientific version of an evolving web of life.  But the purpose of Genesis 1 was to not point out the web of life, but that God created the trinity of Sky, Water, and Earth (or Gas, Liquid, Solid) and gave them order. A secondary purpose was to set out a theological basis for the seven day week, tho I think that most likely had an astrological origin from the seven "planets" of astrology.  Still, a day set aside for rest and reflection is a positive good no matter its origin.

Indeed, the God of Genesis 1 is very much concerned with order.  The concept of a web of life is quite chaotic and only in the last few decades have we have begun to recognize how order can develop from chaos.  Trying to try order and chaos together as two aspects of the same is not something that would have been easily accepted three millennia ago.

Still, your criticism of Genesis 1-11 is not wholly without merit.  In a real sense the Bible begins with the tale of Abram and what precedes it has the appearance of something added on later to establish a cosmology as was found in neighboring religious traditions even tho it was not originally of major importance to the Hebrew religions.

[afleitch]

Interesting, but trying to judge Genesis 1-11 by its scientific merit largely misses the point.  ..

Still, your criticism of Genesis 1-11 is not wholly without merit.  In a real sense the Bible begins with the tale of Abram and what precedes it has the appearance of something added on later to establish a cosmology as was found in neighboring religious traditions even tho it was not originally of major importance to the Hebrew religions.

My critique had nothing really to do with science; I was very specific on that. I was stating that if there was 'The God', then as Christian claims of Jesus' divinity are strongly linked to Yahweh once you start walking through the Old Testament you start running into issues which should make you question whether the book could have been inspired by The God at all.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Interesting, but trying to judge Genesis 1-11 by its scientific merit largely misses the point.  ..

Still, your criticism of Genesis 1-11 is not wholly without merit.  In a real sense the Bible begins with the tale of Abram and what precedes it has the appearance of something added on later to establish a cosmology as was found in neighboring religious traditions even tho it was not originally of major importance to the Hebrew religions.

My critique had nothing really to do with science; I was very specific on that. I was stating that if there was 'The God', then as Christian claims of Jesus' divinity are strongly linked to Yahweh once you start walking through the Old Testament you start running into issues which should make you question whether the book could have been inspired by The God at all.

Your premise seems based on the admittedly common assumption that the message of Christ (as opposed to that of the structured church that arose from that message) was an exclusionist one.  I come at Christianity from a Universalist perspective.  I see Jesus' message as having been that the one true path to salvation was based on his teachings, not that he was the only one who could teach them.  Indeed, he quite explicitly rejects the idea that there is some checklist of things that once done without any consideration of why they should be done, you are assured of salvation and need not do more.

I see the Divine as providing guidance to mankind, not absolute rules that would eliminate free will.  It's quite clear that for whatever reason, God values free will and rarely intervenes to directly impose it.  I see the Hebrew testament as inspired by God, yet shaped by men who would impose their own will upon others as that of God. Yet as Jesus himself taught, do not judge prophets solely by the wonders they do but also the purposes for which they do them.

Much of the problem of the Abrahamic religions, as with other religions, has been people asserting that their own will is that of God.  Yet if one looks, one can find the divine message shining through the gaps in the wickerwork that those who seek to impose their own sense of order upon the Divine have woven around it. I choose to work with the wickerwork known as The Bible because it is the one I am most familiar with.  I'll admit, I want more order in religion than I find, and I do worry about what wicker I might be weaving in my search for it.  Yet I am only human and I can but do my best.

[afleitch]

I’ve tried to make myself as clear as possible and I may help if you read the first part of my original post.

If you accept Jesus even from a universalist position (which I will come to in a minute) on what basis is he considered the messiah-salvator-divine etc of anything? Whose ‘conditions’ does he meet? Jesus is not Kalki, Li Hong, Maitreya, Saoshyant or John Frum. He meets (in part, we have to say because Jews consider he doesn’t meet the criteria) the conditions of the Jewish messiah as promised to them. He is intrinsically linked with Yahweh. Jesus may be for the ‘whole world’ and not just the saviour of the Jews, but he is tethered to his father. You can’t dissociate them. For example I couldn’t say Achilles was a demi-god and then deny the relevance or deity of his mother, the god Thetis. He can’t be considered a demi-god without his mother being considered a god. With that in mind, surely the Old Testament which reveals the conditions of the coming the messiah and which encapsulates the covenant Yahweh has with his people would if inspired by The God, be ‘better’ than it is.

Even if it was never meant to be better than the scientific and historical truth and was intended to be largely allegorical (though it’s curious as to why it should not have been telling the Jewish people about the reality of creation and their history) surely it should be a better myth than other competing myths if it’s inspired by The God? Especially given that these other competing myths, many of which are linked to the worship of other gods (because to those worshippers, those gods gave that message to them) were not inspired by The God.

Why are some of these other myths more accurate descriptions of the truth or predate the stories of the Old Testament from which the OT then borrows? It would suggest, would it not that knowledge not inspired by The God or inspired by other claimed gods, seems to be better than that which apparently was inspired by The God in the OT. Given that was the case then, and is certainly the case with scientific advancement now, then at no point in it’s existence has the Old Testament ever elucidated the best, greatest, most profound and most accurate understanding of the world even through the eyes of humanity at the time it was written. And yet we are told the OT was inspired by The God.

So if The God has inspired people to write inaccurate accounts or at the very least, the ‘lesser’ material then either The God wants people to remain ignorant or he is deliberately misleading them. If he is misleading them (which if he is The God he could easily do) then you cannot trust the messianic claims. At the very least, other deities deserve a look in if you’re searching for the truth!

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Andrew, as I pointed out before, for neither the Jewish religion nor the Christian religion descended from it is cosmology a central principle of the faith. If you seek a faith based primarily on its cosmology then go elsewhere.

You seem to be falling into the same trap that some theists fall into, insisting that God and religion must have certain attributes.  The difference between you and those theists is that they force them into their vision of what they think must be while in your case when not finding them to have them you insist there must be no God. (I am recalling correctly that you are atheist, aren't I?)

So if The God has inspired people to write inaccurate accounts or at the very least, the ‘lesser’ material then either The God wants people to remain ignorant or he is deliberately misleading them.

Well, they say ignorance is bliss. More seriously, if there were a perfectly accurate account that mankind could trust without faith, would not that interfere with the operation of free will?  Yet it is readily evident that God (assuming he exists) has chosen to allow man to have free will.  Without free will there would be no evil in the world, nor for that matter would there be good, since the ability to choose one's actions is a prerequisite for the existence of good and evil.  The existence of free will argues against there being a perfectly revealed religion.

[afleitch]

Andrew, as I pointed out before, for neither the Jewish religion nor the Christian religion descended from it is cosmology a central principle of the faith. If you seek a faith based primarily on its cosmology then go elsewhere.

That's not what I was arguing. I happened to take Genesis (and more than just the cosmology of it) as it's the first book of the bible. If I take the second book, then we have some demographic, racial, and historical issues to.

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I am not arguing an atheist position. Quite the contrary if you read the reasoning that I applied.

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Is it evident that there is free will? That there is good and evil and by some discernible standard?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I am not arguing an atheist position. Quite the contrary if you read the reasoning that I applied.

Your reasoning boils down to an assertion that the Hebrew testament is flawed therefore YHWH cannot be God. Hence the Greek testament which asserts that Jesus is the Son of YHWH is flawed and Jesus cannot be Divine.  It's an argument that could be made by either an atheist or a theist who thought another religion was superior.

Is it evident that there is free will? That there is good and evil and by some discernible standard?

Yes it is evident, or at least I have been predestined to believe free will exists.  The Golden and Silver Rules are both discernible standards of good and thus by contrast that of evil. The primary difference between the two is that the Silver Rule does not implicitly consider failure to do good as being evil.  Certainly the Silver Rule is easier to live by than the Golden Rule. Of course, the conundrum of those rules is what to do when an action is desirable to some who would be affected by it, yet also undesirable to some others who are affected by the same action.  In many respects Star Trek III was a far more religious movie than Star Trek V in that it confronted the issue of whether the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few when it comes to deciding what is good and evil.

[afleitch]

What is good and evil (or more accurately good and not good) is entirely relative. Luckily for us that relativity is tempered like a snake in a tunnel by the conditions of our existence which has came to be though evolution determining what is advantageous to us to our survival. Our survival is based on the base intake of food, water, shelter and sex and the addition that we are a social animal and must sustain interpersonal relationships. As has been discussed countless times before on here, it just so happens that base ‘morals’ are standard throughout swathes of the animal kingdom (those most closely related to us) in which animals including apes like ourselves, are not hard wired with a pathological desire to kill the next member of our species that we meet. It’s not particularly helpful to our collective survival to do so. It’s suicidal. On the other hand for those animals who are killed after mating or whose off spring burst from them while they are still alive killing them in the process, killing members of the same species is evidently advantageous to their survival. We cannot argue therefore that even on this planet there is a collective moral ‘good’ other than the need to survive and even that is subordinate to sustaining offspring. Even as we have advanced as humans socially and technologically, the decisions we are faced with may be more complex or numerous but aren’t necessarily presenting us with choices that aren’t intrinsically linked with those which are base (Shall I hunt a deer or rabbit or shall I have a McDonalds or Burger King)

Living by the Golden (and Silver) rule is therefore rather easy. It’s inherent in all of us. No major ancient world religion or philosophy misses this particular rule suggesting that it is broadly universal and is not something that one must struggle to adhere to consciously unless one is sociopathic and even then a sociopath is not consciously in control of his or desire to be destructive. Therefore our free will is constrained by our circumstances; we are only as free as we need to be. As humans, we know nothing of an ethical system outside that in which we operate and which gives us choices based on our base needs.