Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If Jesus would come to earth and prove to the world that the first married couple was two men named Adam and Steve, and it did not start with Adam and Eve.
With that said, evidence of a Christian God is NOT enough to make a person a Christian. One must blindly believe without any evidence. Asking a person "What evidence WOULD it take to convince you of Jesus" is anti-Christian.
If Jesus would come to earth and prove to the world that the first married couple was two men named Adam and Steve, and it did not start with Adam and Eve.
Technically speaking Eve is Steve since she was 'cloned' from Adam's rib and since Adam was never delivered by a female he would have no Y chromosome which means that Eve would have none either.
So the only way for Eve to not be Steve is if Adam is a hermaphrodite which doesn’t really make him a true man either.
I'm back, at least temporarily. I went up to the area around Grand Lake, in Oklahoma, to assess damage from Sunday's tornado and we got that job finished. The chainsaw crews are still there working the jobs we assessed.
Now, I expect to get the call today or tomorrow to deploy to Joplin with another chainsaw crew, but we'll see.
Thanks to everyone who prayed for our safety. We got through Tuesday night just fine, but others didn't, especially around Piedmont, OK, which pretty much no longer exists.
Quote:
I am sincerely happy for you that you have experienced that transformation in your life through your beliefs ... that's a precious thing worth holding onto. But non-Christians experience those kinds of transformations as well. They grow up, they get wiser, they learn from their mistakes and make better decisions, they find the inner strength to overcome whatever needs to be overcome, they learn to look past their own selfishness to the needs of others; they love.
Of course non-believers can do that. It SHOULD be part of growing up!
Quote:
As far as I'm concerned, the only thing we can do anything about is the here and now. If what we "believe in" isn't making a difference in how we live our lives and treat ourselves and others, then something is wrong with what we believe. And I fail to see how a belief system that is not effective and worthwhile for a person in the here and now could make a postive difference in how that one experiences the supposed "hereafter". How would you explain that?
From a Christian perspective, that's easy to explain: Our focus isn't on the here and now, but on eternity. We're already members of the Kingdom of God, we just haven't gone home yet. We're like sojourners in a foreign land, we're living here but longing to be there and, though we're still influenced by our human nature (and therefore far from perfect), our citizenship is in that perfect eternal life. If we're living in accordance with the commandments of Christ, everything we do should be done to glorify Him and to show others the way home. Of course, there's still a conflict in our lives between our new Spirit and our old flesh and that's why we often don't appear much different outwardly.
The point is that our purpose in life is not defined by our actions here, but in our trust in Christ.
The Bible says that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and that word fear, in the Hebrew, means exactly that: Trembling in dread. In another place, it correctly says that it's an awful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. We all will fall into His hands when we die, and if we don't fear what He can do to us when we stand before His face, we'll never fully understand why faith in Christ is so important. In other words, we won't have the wisdom necessary to prepare for that coming confrontation with our Creator.
Of course, for those who don't believe in God or His word or in eternal life, it's all a big bunch of nothing and a major bother to even hear about it. But, that doesn't make it untrue.
Quote:
If there is a god to answer to and it has set up some sort of arbitrary test that has to be passed (a test of blind faith in something that is not any more effective than any other belief system in impacting the way people live and love), then it's not a god I would trust anyway.
There is no arbitrary test, just a requirement that we trust in Christ, that we allow HIS punishment to pay for OUR sins. And, it's not based upon blind faith. It's to be based upon the evidence of His existance, His atoning death on the cross and His resurrection.
Quote:
But I do trust, that IF there is a god worth being called God that is concerned with the affairs of humankind, it's not petty, it's not capricious, it's not looking for reasons to destroy. It's not playing some silly little game of "believe this or else".
God is not petty, nor is He capricious. Like us whom He created, He can do nothing outside His nature and His nature is to love, not destroy. But, He's also a God of justice and justice will be had for believers and non-believers alike. His justice may not sit well with our vision of justice, but we're not God and we don't get to make the rules. And, in spite of what some Christian's will tell you, He's not sitting up there playing a great, cosmic game of "Gotcha!" He's grieving for those who reject Christ.
Quote:
This is why I say that the one thing that I think would "convince me of Jesus", is if there was a significant difference in the lives of those who believed in him (on the whole) in contrast to the lives of those who do not. Does that make sense to you?
Yes, that makes sense and I'm sorry that I can't point out the difference because much of that difference is internal. Yes, that internal difference should result in some sort of outwardly visible manifestation, but it sometimes doesn't, at least to the degree you seem to be searching for. The difference is there, but we don't always let it show as we should.
Quote:
I will be keeping you and the people in the path of the storms in my thoughts. (We have relatives in the danger zone.)
With that said, evidence of a Christian God is NOT enough to make a person a Christian. One must blindly believe without any evidence. Asking a person "What evidence WOULD it take to convince you of Jesus" is anti-Christian.
That may be the dictionary definition of faith, but it's not the definitions found in the Bible.
In the Old Testament, where the word translated as "faith" is only found twice, it means to trust in that which is trustworthy. In context, that means God.
In the New Testament, it's the Greek word "pistis," which means to be convinced of the truth of something and the root word is "peitho," which is defined as being persuaded by the evidence.
In other words, true, Biblical, saving faith is not blind. It comes from an assessment of the truth of God's existance, that the Bible is His given word and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. No, the evidence is not 100% and it was never intended to be. But, there is enough evidence there that we will all be without excuse on judgment day. Like jury in a trial, we are expected to examine the evidence presented and make a decision based upon the preponderance of that evidence.
Sadly, not even many Christian's understand that because they've never attempted to read the scriptures in the languages in which God had it written. Instead, they read it only in English and apply modern-day English definitions to what were originally Hebrew/Chaldean/Greek/Aramaic words.
When I say that there isn't anything I can think of that would convince me Jesus was divine, please know that I'm not being facetious or closed-minded, that this conclusion is the result of years of thought and study.
What follows is just my take on this issue, and I'm only dropping so many of the "I thinks" and the "I believes" because it gets tedious writing that over and over again. So here's a blanket statement that anything I assert that is not verifiable is just my opinion and open to change. As for why it's so long, it's because of your statement to the effect that "people just believe what they want to believe" on either side of the issue without having invested much thought into it.
I can't speak for others, but I can honestly assert that this is not true for me, as I'll attempt to outline now.
First, if I believed what I wanted to believe, I'd believe that there is a heaven where everyone who is basically good goes after death and is eternally happy and where we all get to see each other again, and everyone who lived truly evil lives (and I mean really evil, not just flawed), simply ceases to exist, perhaps after answering in some way for his/her crimes.
Unfortunately, this is not even remotely what I believe. There is nothing valid to suggest such a scenario, so I don't subscribe to it, nice as I think it would be.
Now, as for your original question:
The question of Jesus's divinity is one that I find particularly disturbing. Christianity was never supposed to be about whether or not Jesus was divine (something that was "decided" by men more than 300 years after he was born), or about what a person believes in the absence of concrete evidence, or about being rewarded versus punished in an afterlife.
Jesus was a man. Whether or not he was the product of a "virgin" birth is irrelevant to me, but that IS scientifically possible with no divine intervention required. Mary and Joseph could have been doing "alternative" things to preserve her virginity, and a little carelessness combined with the fact that the hymen is not an effective barrier for preventing conception, and you have yourself a "virgin" pregnancy. It's statistically improbable but not impossible, no God required.
If there is any grain of truth to the virgin birth story at all (which is a big if), then I will concede that, given the lack of understanding about certain biological processes at that time, Mary and Joseph might have sincerely believed her pregnancy was the product of divine intervention if she truly had never had intercourse, but there is a plausible scientific explanation for that scenario that doesn't require God's intervention.
Since God created humankind in the first place, the notion that he would even need to "impregnate" a woman to bring Jesus forth is preposterous to me. The notion that the woman would have to be virginal is just a testament to the unhealthy attitudes toward sex that have persisted in certain cultures throughout time. It's nonsensical to me that God would disdain a biological process he, himself, created.
Jesus was a man with a special message, born of the same processes we all are, and he was not the only such person in history. Some people have a special gift for music, some a special gift for mathematics, some a special gift for the written word and so on. He happened to have a special philosophical and spiritual message. There's nothing magical about it.
As for Jesus dying for our sins, I don't interpret this the same way the modern Christian does. The notion that God would need the blood sacrifice of anyone, especially his "son" who is also "himself", to save us from himself, is preposterous. It makes no sense.
Jesus died for our sins in only one sense. The message he was bringing was one that was not going to be well-received by those in power in his particular culture at that particular time, and it's highly probable that he knew sharing it would result in his (horrific) death. Yet he shared it anyway. He cared more for being an inspiration to others to treat their fellow man with compassion, charity, and love than he did for his own well-being, knowing what it would cost him because of our species' capacity for evil, and THAT's how he died for our sins. This whole "a blood-sacrifice was NECESSARY" thing screams of certain kinds of ancient paganism (not the modern kind) and defies reason.
As for any "proof" contained in the Bible, it carries little to no credibility to me. The only aspects of it that are of any value are those that detail Jesus's message, and even those are suspect because of the centuries of repeated translating and deliberate tampering by mankind -- not to mention that the Bible was written by people in the first place. The Old Testament is of no value to me whatsoever -- if it was a valid representation of the word of God, there would have been no need for Jesus to spread a "new" message that got him killed. The New Testament was written by people other than Jesus after he had died, so that diminishes its credibility as a "rulebook" for me, even without all that followed with the Council of Nicea and the Council of Constantinople and the ascendancy of the Roman Catholic Church and so on.
If not for historical references found in the Talmud and in the writings of Tacitus, Josephus, Mara bar Sarapion, Pliny the Younger, and Suetonius, I would question whether any such person as Jesus existed at all.
What bothers me most is that the focus on Mary's virginity, Jesus's "divinity", his alleged performance of miracles, his supposed resurrection, and/or whether or not Jesus died for our sins in a "supernatural" sense has diverted us from the core, essential aspect of Christianity: the message.
If Jesus was divine, then much of his message is diminished. He served as an inspiration as to what ideals we, as humans, could aspire to in our conduct toward one another and ourselves. This inspiration only works if he was, in fact, a human being, like the rest of us. If he was the son of God or God himself, then we're automatically set up to fail in living up to those ideals. How could a mere human ever hope to live up to his standards? What I mean is that, when we fall short of living up to the example he set (which most of us do to varying degrees at least once in our lives), it becomes easy to say, "Well, sure Jesus did it and I didn't, but he was God (or the son of God) and I'm just a lowly person. He could walk on water and rise from the dead, too, and I can't do that, either. So, of course, I'm not measuring up to what he taught."
It's too easy an out for a Christian to use to engage in decidely UN-Christian behavior. If the message he brought is an unattainable standard for people, one he only met because he was divine, then what was the point of sharing it with us at all?
And the heaven and hell question disturbs me greatly, and I rejected such concepts long ago. The idea of being good and doing good works only to avoid punishment or gain reward is appalling to me, and, again, it runs contrary to the message. We should do what's right BECAUSE it's right and what's best for us as a whole, not because we stand to personally gain something from it. Such a mercenary motivation is inconsistent with the message as I understand it.
For years I "qualified" my Christianity because I did not accept these tenets of it, nor did I think they were even remotely relevant to what Christianity was supposed to be. But I've come to accept that, regardless of what was intended, it's what Christianity has become.
When I say I believe in God, that just means that I believe in an intelligent source for the universe and the life within it. That's it. I don't believe in an "old man in the sky", or an interventionist being (meaning one who breaks the laws of physics or violates free will), and I have no real impression of what God is "physically" like at all because on what would I base such an idea? Nor do I particularly care. None of that is important to me.
The evil in this world doesn't turn me against God, nor do I praise God for the good in it. As long as we all have free will, what we do with it is on us. Some of us use it for good, some of us for evil, and some of us for both, depending upon who we are, where we are psychologically or spiritually, and what circumstances we find ourselves in. The good is to our credit, and the evil is to our shame, and it's all completely on us, both as individuals and as a species, to take responsibility for it and to do what we can to improve things. My love for God gives me an appreciation of the opportunity to experience life and to act freely, for good or for ill, that has been give us all. But that freedom comes with inherent responsibility and the potential for suffering as well as joy, and I accept this.
Whatever you believe, the one thing most of us can agree on is that we are creatures with the capacity for logic, for reason, for intelligent exploration of this world -- whether we choose to use those gifts or not. I do not believe we are so empowered with those tools and the free will to exercise them just so we can surrender them because some ancient collection of writings says we should. The "but the Bible is the inspired word of God" argument means nothing to me because that provenance has not been proved, nor can it be proved. There is not one iota of evidence to suggest that is so.
I could claim that this post is the inspired word of God, and you couldn't disprove it, but that wouldn't make it so. If someone made that claim today, we'd think they were either lying or schizophrenic, but because someone claimed it hundreds of years ago, it must be true? Nonsense. Even if some or all of those who made such a claim truly believed it (which is debatable), mental illness is not a new phenomenon. Only our increased understanding of it is.
So, in short, there is no proof you could offer me that Jesus was divine because that supposition runs contrary to reason, and I have too much respect for that gift to squander it. There isn't any argument you could present me that would convince me that the various claims of divinity and miracles and resurrection are even important because I have too much respect for the message to allow for such a distraction from it.
Or for such a diminishment in the value of the price paid to share it. Jesus's life and legacy would mean less if he was divine. If he was divine, then so what if he suffered and died? If he was God, it would mean he was not subject to our doubts and fears and frailties, making his sacrifice no real sacrifice at all. It doesn't take faith to believe if you're divine and already know for absolute certainty that which the rest of us cannot know with any certainty at all.
But a man? A man who WAS subject to all the same doubts and fears and frailties as the rest of us and was still willing to do as he did -- THAT'S inspiring. That demonstrates that it's possible for any of us to eventually live up to that standard of conduct -- something that wouldn't be true of his example if he was divine, since the rest of us decidedly are not.
One doesn't need to believe that Jesus was divine, performed miracles, or rose from the dead to believe there is merit in a message that teaches us to love our fellow human beings, treat both others and ourselves with respect, and try sincerely to do good and combat evil in this world purely for the merit of doing so. And one doesn't need to believe in modern Christian dogma to have respect for a man who risked -- and ultimately lost -- his life to share that message.
What evidence WOULD it take to convince you of Jesus?
Until Jesus comes to live inside you, you will not be convinced. Unless you have been regenerated, unless you have received the Holy Spirit, nothing will convince you. Nothing.
Until Jesus comes to live inside you, you will not be convinced. Unless you have been regenerated, unless you have received the Holy Spirit, nothing will convince you. Nothing.
If people won't be convinced until Jesus comes to live inside them, but Jesus can't come to live inside them until they are convinced, then we have a conundrum.
Until Jesus comes to live inside you, you will not be convinced. Unless you have been regenerated, unless you have received the Holy Spirit, nothing will convince you. Nothing.
The sounds frightening....Have you seen the movie Alien?
What evidence WOULD it take to convince you of Jesus?
You asked a question, implying that you have some of that elusive evidence. I don't doubt that everyone is on pins and needles, waiting for you to tell us what it is...because to the rest of civilization at large, there isn't any evidence save for assertions and quotations from books of the New Testament that were anything but objective. Dismissing us as "non-believers" is certainly your prerogative, although it doesn't help your case any.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Technically speaking Eve is Steve since she was 'cloned' from Adam's rib and since Adam was never delivered by a female he would have no Y chromosome which means that Eve would have none either.
To the OP:
