Don't you love Jesus?

[Jessterw]

JW:

You said something back on page 2 or 3 that I have to take MINOR exception to. Jesus (Joshua, Immanuel, whatever) did NOT "change the rules". The rules are still the same. "I have come not to abolish but to fulfill the law". Many Christians choose to believe that the "fulfillment" of the law means that it's over and done with, but Jesus never said that. In fact, he was a tirelessly faithful Jew, and expected all of his followers to be as well. All of the major events of the first four books of the New Testament are centered around Jewish celebrations and high holy days.

Ah sorry, should have been more specific. The rules changed in regard to the view of Jesus as the messiah and some of the consequences thereof, as it relates to what would evolve into Christianity. I didn't mean the rules as they specifically relate to the law.

I'm fully aware of the history of the Old and New Testaments, but you'd be correct in assuming most Christians do not. The problem is, I don't feel the need to expound on my knowledge in this area unless it is needed, whereas with you, it is an incessant need. Not a knock, just your character. I've simply been arguing on the side of generalized Christianity and not of my own beliefs. And that, is the end of my comments here. It has well and truly become something other than a reasonable debate or discussion.

[Dilitante1]

eeesh people......




(no offence to the people of the Special Olympics)

[Jammrock]

JW:

You said something back on page 2 or 3 that I have to take MINOR exception to. Jesus (Joshua, Immanuel, whatever) did NOT "change the rules". The rules are still the same. "I have come not to abolish but to fulfill the law". Many Christians choose to believe that the "fulfillment" of the law means that it's over and done with, but Jesus never said that. In fact, he was a tirelessly faithful Jew, and expected all of his followers to be as well. All of the major events of the first four books of the New Testament are centered around Jewish celebrations and high holy days.

The Christian belief behind this goes back to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The first time he came down from the mountain he saw the golden calf worshipping going on (BBQ is good and all, but I don't see why people would worship it) and smashed the tablets he was carrying. He went back up and came back with the Law of Moses, which was a more strict "letter of the law" set of rules. When Christ "fulfilled" the law, he simply fulfilled the law of blood sacrifice within the Law of Moses, which became the atonement for the sins of the world.

...at this point you may insert the grace vs. works arguement...

Some do say that he brought to pass the "higher law" that Moses originally came down with, but cast down after seeing the golden calf debacle. Christians call this the "love of the law," or "law of love." Which is pretty much the law of Moses at a different level and without the blood sacrifice. Or that's what it originally was, from what I understand. Whe Peter took over the helm things changed ... I leave it up to the individual to debate it from there ...

Of course now we COULD devolve into one of my new favorite "let's make the Christians uncomfortable" areas - Jesus' sex life. Because at the ripe old age of 33, nobody would take an unmarried rabbi seriously back then. This whole "chastity" thing is a middle-ages Church invention.

If you think about it ... who was the first person Jesus visited after being resurreted (according to the New Testement)? His mom? Nope. His apostles and disciples? Nope. His right hand man, Peter? Nope. He showed up to Mary Magdalene first. hmmmmm....

Jammrock

[Jammrock]

eeesh people......

(no offence to the people of the Special Olympics)

I actually found this to be the most civil religious discussion on MURC ... ever. People are, mostly, just dicussing various beliefs and knowledge rather than ragging on each other ... for the most part.

[Dr Mordrid]

Not that Christmas has anything to do with Jesus's actual birth, which even the Bible shows would have been no later in the year than October, and likely much earlier.

Best estimate by researchers is that He was born in March, but the celebration of Christmas in Rome at that time was an invitation to be thrown into the arena with the lions.

Out of self defense the celebration of Christmas was timed to coincide with the solistice and the pagan celebration of Saturnalia. Jews did something similar during Septembers Festival of Trumpets, the modern Rosh Hashanah.

This tradition of Dec. 25th started with the codificatin of the solistice on that date by Emperor Aurelian in 274 AD. This date was codified as Christmas by Pope Julius I in 320 AD then confirmed by Constantine in 325 AD.

In eastern parts of the Roman Empire Saturnalia started later, hence the eastern Church's celebration of Christmas on Jan. 6.

Dr. Mordrid

[Nowhere]

...

At any rate, ALL rhetoric aside, I have to say that my personal stance on things - not that anyone ESPECIALLY cares - leans heavily towards Judaeism these days. After careful reflection I am confronted with the following series of logical steps:

1. It is highly unlikely that the universe simply "happened" all by itself. All possible theories hinge on there being something there already. Big Bang? Well the universe was all there, just in a tiny little dot. The idea that maybe there are big bangs and big crunches in an endless cycle... how did the cycle begin? Other theories of the origins of the universe are laughable. The "solid state hydrogen" theory is particularly crazy.

2. Given that the universe did not just "happen", one must logically accept a prime motivator. I choose to refer to this prime motivator as "God".

3. Here is the article of faith. The faith comes not from believing in God - which is a somewhat logical process as described above - but from believing that God WANTS TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH US.

Given that I have chosen to believe, on faith, that God wants to interact with humanity... the task is to figure out HOW he wants to interact with us, and HOW we should interact with him. Right now I am most comfortable and/or happiest with the Judaeic system.

1. Hmmm...why not? Nevermind quantum fluctuations of vacuum or that the cycle never had the beginning, but...I could probably say...nah, that at the end.

2. Problem is, it's not a given.

3. (and what I promised) Look at it this way...you could insult God by thinking that such negligible beeings, not even close with their concept of "conciousness" to the state in which God exists, deserve interaction. Or one could say...why God would care about such insignificant universe?

Anyway, not precizely stating my beliefs, just want to argue a bit

[Umfriend]

Gurm, we sortof discussed this a while back and as then I contest your presumption of "logic" in this matter.
1. First of all, "highly unlikely" is a very strong statement. If you can assign probabilities to this occuring, you understand a lot more about the universe then any other man. The idea that it was all there in a tiny dot BTW is simply not, uhm, accurate (not to say "true").
2. I find it illogical to reject the notion of a universe just happening and just accept a god just being. Where did he come from? How long has he done what before he created the universe (or this universe).
3. As said, it's not a logical process IMO. Logic is NOT saying "I do not understand this, hence there must be god".

[Gurm]

Umf and Nowhere:

When I say "highly improbable"... well, there I share some of the spirit of the "Intelligent Design" folks. I find it extraordinarily unlikely that we would be in an endless cycle of compression and expansion with no beginning and no end. Everything begins, at least given our current understanding of the nature of things. The vacuum fluctuation theory is just laughable. Spontaneous generation of atoms from nothing? Again... pretty silly. Unless there's SOMETHING out there that we don't know about (string theory, anyone?) but in that case again we're just guessing and conjecturing.

Perhaps it is a "quaint" notion, but mankind in general seems hardwired to believe in a creator.

Further, the answer to those questions gets into one of the other concepts which I have come to accept - and Judaeism incorporates it. That concept is that God is unknowable. Not because he's "hiding", or "testing our faith" or anything, but because we simply lack an appropriate frame of reference to view Him (Her/It/Etc.) properly. In Kaballah we learn of the "Sefirot" (yes, quite intentionally used by Squaresoft in Final Fantasy 7) of God, which are to say His aspects which can be appreciated and discussed... but that what/where/who/how He is can never be understood.

You might as well conjecture. If God exists, he does so at least in part OUTSIDE our universe. Right there the concept becomes so difficult that it's nearly impossible to really wrap our heads around it. Is God a big guy, on a throne in the clouds? Certainly not - that's something that Christianity borrowed from the Greek/Roman system. Is God a nebulous cloud of probabilities? We just don't know.

Perhaps it IS presumptuous to think that God gives a flip about insignificant little us. That's the admitted piece of faith. If He doesn't care, it certainly didn't hurt to contemplate the prospect - since if he doesn't care, he wouldn't care if we were presumptuous.

[Nowhere]

But I see logical contradiction in there - if Judaism accepts that God is unknowable, why does it assumes that God exists? I'm seriously curious how they get out of this dillema.

BTW, one could also say that God does care, but in a "mean" to our understanding way.
I'll give an analogy...
If I envision God, I see him relative to us as we are relative to bacteria or, for example, ants at most.
So what happens when an ant is placed on your finger and starts to wander? It certainly has no concept of your true existence, it sees you merely as part of the world, or can feel a weird bond together with "concept" of ant queen if you'll trick it and use feromones. But what happens when you use your other finger to kill the ant? Well, simply some part of the world fell on it and killed it, it happens and it's quite normal.
So...what if, for example, deseases (which we think we understand quite good, and even have good evidence of it) are similar...beeing that is above does something insignificant to it, ending another beeing to which it attaches no value at all.

I'm not saying that's the way it is. But "unkowability" concept definatelly doesn't rule this out.

edit: I think I'm not sure to what I just replied, defintelly nead more sleap...too bad I have something to do and posting on MURC is one of few things during which I won't fall asleep while physically resting.
edit2: I think I know now, it's not that bad. Definatelly could be worse.

[Umfriend]

Gurm, with all do respect, I do not see "logic" in your reasoning. What you are saying is that as you have no alternative you will believe or accept (as a possiblilty), you believe in God. That's not logic. It;'s not accepting that you do not know (yet).

Moreover, there are some errors in what you present as fact. Finally, again, where does God come from and if he was always there or does not need a starting point, how is he more logical than a universe without him?

[Nowhere]

...
but in that case again we're just guessing and conjecturing.

Perhaps it is a "quaint" notion, but mankind in general seems hardwired to believe in a creator.

...

The thing is I don't see how the first thing fundamentally differs from the concept of God...

And yes, mankind seems that way...but I guess it's a function of large enough self counciousness and counciesness of the world around us too hope for much more, but at the same time too little of it to have courage of seriously considering the possibility that we're alone and all is in the end meanigless.

[Nowhere]

The Christian belief behind this goes back to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The first time he came down from the mountain he saw the golden calf worshipping going on (BBQ is good and all, but I don't see why people would worship it) and smashed the tablets he was carrying. He went back up and came back with the Law of Moses, which was a more strict "letter of the law" set of rules. When Christ "fulfilled" the law, he simply fulfilled the law of blood sacrifice within the Law of Moses, which became the atonement for the sins of the world.

...at this point you may insert the grace vs. works arguement...

Some do say that he brought to pass the "higher law" that Moses originally came down with, but cast down after seeing the golden calf debacle. Christians call this the "love of the law," or "law of love." Which is pretty much the law of Moses at a different level and without the blood sacrifice. Or that's what it originally was, from what I understand. Whe Peter took over the helm things changed ... I leave it up to the individual to debate it from there ...


If you think about it ... who was the first person Jesus visited after being resurreted (according to the New Testement)? His mom? Nope. His apostles and disciples? Nope. His right hand man, Peter? Nope. He showed up to Mary Magdalene first. hmmmmm....

Jammrock

That's some interesting views, definatelly alien to me (I guess RCC never was willing to admit roots of Jesus in Judaism so much). Coudl you direct me at some more analyses of the thing?

[Gurm]

I guess the idea is that something EXTRA-universal must exist, in order for our universe to have come into being.

Could that something be a random mishmash of jumbled strings in n-space? Maybe. Or it could be God. Could there be a billion billion infinite possible universes, and ours was just the one that worked and everything turned out to be ordered "just so" such that the laws of physics as we know and love them worked out properly? Maybe. Or perhaps there is order and logical design.

Here's the issue - observation tells us that things do not randomly become MORE ordered. Entropy demands that things fall to a lower energy state, not a higher one. The entirety of the universe ending up all logical and ordered... randomly? By mere happenstance? Not only is it unlikely, it has all the forces of physics working against it!

One of my big problems with the concept of evolution is that according to the basic criteria we are NOT the pinnacle of the evolutionary mountain. Why should we have evolved at all? There are plenty of creatures out there that live longer than we do, that are more "evolutionarily successful".

I guess my question is this:

WHY, when the laws of entropy demand that everything fall apart... do things instead come together?

Don't get me wrong - I'm not an "Intelligent Design" advocate. I'm saying that unlikelihood is added onto by improbability, and compounded by the laws of the universe... and despite all of that, things tend to become MORE ORDERLY, almost as if that were the way it were... uh... intended.

[Jammrock]

... God is unknowable. Not because he's "hiding", or "testing our faith" or anything, but because we simply lack an appropriate frame of reference to view Him (Her/It/Etc.) properly...

here, here.

Coudl you direct me at some more analyses of the thing?

I'll look for some for you. I'll try and find some from multiple perspectives so as to not be ... overly biased by my own beliefs.

I assume you are talking about Christ fulfilling the Law of Moses, right?

Jammrock

[Nowhere]

Yes Jammrock, exactly.

@Gurm: but it becomes less ordered when looking at whole picture...

And as for evolution...that might be so if you'll look only at genes. However it seems that mems somehow start superseeding them in our case.