Are religions manmade and natural or supernaturally based?

PaulK writes:As you know we've been over this and the case against the resurrection is stronger. Despite your dishonest attempts to attack the evidence.

Frank Morrison writes: This study is in some ways so unusual and provocative that the writer thinks it desirable to state here very briefly how the book came to take its present form.In one sense it could have taken no other, for it is essentially a confession, the inner story of a man who originally set out to write one kind of book and found himself compelled by the sheer force of circumstances to write another.It is not that the facts themselves altered, for they are recorded imperishably in the monuments and in the pages of human history. But the interpretation to be put upon the facts underwent a change. Somehow the perspective shifted --not suddenly, as in a flash of insight or inspiration, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, by the very stubbornness of the facts themselves.The book as it was originally planned was left high and dry, like those Thames barges when the great river goes out to meet the incoming sea. The writer discovered one day that not only could he no longer write the book as he had once conceived it, but that he would not if he could.To tell the story of that change, and to give the reasons for it, is the main purpose of the following pages.

PaulK writes:Rather than arguing with an entire book - and I note that you don't quote any arguments from it - I'll point out that it is events AFTER Jesus' death that are important to the resurrection. Looking at the wrong evidence is hardly a good way to reach a conclusion.

PaulK writes: To add further, on having looked at the text it seems to have very little value. Morrison uncritically accepts the Gospeks as reliable. It does not, for instance occur to him that the Gospel accounts of Jesus trial would be heavily biased and naturally would insist on Jesus' innocence - the more so if they were relying on Christian sources.Now maybe somewhere Morrison comes up with a good answer to a point I have raised. But digging through such unpromising material to find points to refute is hardly worth my time. If kbertsche wishes to claim such arguments are there it is his responsibility to produce them.

PaulK writes: Imagine a lawyer appealing a court decision.Imagine that he submits a document which he identifies as minutes of the trialSuppose that this document is written by partisans of the accused, who were not present for the trial.That's the sort of lawyer Morrison was. At least according to you.Unless you admit that he was writing as an apologist, not a lawyer, a believer who unquestioningly accepted the Gospels as accurate - even when dealing with matters that none of the authors witnessed - you are not honestly presenting Morrison's work.

Frank Morrison writes: When, as a very young man, I first began seriously to study the life of Christ, I did so with a very definite feeling that, if I may so put it, His history rested on very insecure foundations.If you will carry your mind back in imagination to the late nineties you will find in the prevailing intellectual attitude of that period the key to much of my thought. It is true that the absurd cult that denied even the historical existence of Jesus had ceased to carry weight. But the work of the higher critics -- particularly the German critics -- had succeeded in spreading a prevalent impression among students that the particular form in which the narrative of His life and death had come down to us was unreliable, and that one of the four records was nothing other than a brilliant apologetic written many years, and perhaps many decades, after the first generation had passed away....It was about this time -- more for the sake of my own peace of mind than for publication -- that I conceived the idea of writing a short monograph on what seemed to me to be the supremely important and critical phase in the life of Christ -- the last seven days -- though later I came to see that the days immediately succeeding the Crucifixion were quite as crucial. The title I chose was "Jesus, the Last Phase," a conscious reminiscence of a famous historical study by Lord Rosebery....It seemed to me that if I could come at the truth why this man died a cruel death at the hands of the Roman power, how He Himself regarded the matter, and especially how He behaved under the test, I should be very near to the true solution of the problem.Such, briefly, was the purpose of the book I had planned. I wanted to take this last phase of the life of Jesus, with all its quick and pulsating drama, its sharp, clear-cut background of antiquity, and its tremendous psychological and human interest -- to strip it of its overgrowth of primitive beliefs and dogmatic suppositions, and to see this supremely great Person as He really was.I need not stay to describe here how, fully ten years later, opportunity came to study the life of Christ as I had long wanted to study it, to investigate the origins of its literature, to some of the evidence at first hand, and to form my own judgment on the problem it presents. I will only say that it effected a revolution in my thought. Things emerged from old-world story that previously I should have thought impossible Slowly but very definitely the conviction grew the drama of those unforgettable weeks of human history stranger and deeper than it seemed. It was the strangeness of many notable things in the story that first arrested and held my interest. It was only later that the irresistible logic of their meaning came into view.I want to try, in the remaining chapters of this book, to explain why that other venture never came to port, what were hidden rocks on which it foundered, and how I landed to me, an unexpected shore.

ICANT writes: There can be no gravity in non existence.From nothing comes nothing. No existence = no universe.
Maybe you know of an experiment where spontaneous creation took place. If you do I would like to read about it.The universe exists because it exists. The question is how did the universe begin to exist. Hawking has presented 0 evidence to support his assertions.Even in these quotes he is still stating the universe had a beginning to exist. He is just trying to get the job done without an outside supernatural power.

PaulK writes: Of course it is far from clear that there ever was such a tomb. The earliest report we have is more than twenty years after the event, and tells us that the witnesses did not pass in the story - at least at that time. The story itself is somewhat unlikely, and really, a missing body is very poor evidence of a resurrection anyway.The empty tomb story is not important evidence.

Pressie writes: Nope. Scientific laws are descriptive. Not prescriptive.

Pressie writes: For some reason creationists never can spot the difference.

Omni writes: i haven't read the book, just the quote and kbertche's comment.
Is mischaracterizing this:"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing."as"Stephen Hawking claims that the law of gravity can create a universe from nothing"worthy of consideration?No. I wouldn't consider doing it. It's dishonest.

NoNukes writes: I don't read the statements as necessarily saying gravity created the universe. I read them as saying that gravity was required for creating the universe. Sorta like saying clay is required for creating a sculpture.As I understand what has been discussed here, gravity plays the role of providing negative energy so that the sum total of the energy of the universe might be zero. It could still be the case that the cause of the quantum fluctuation that created the universe has a natural cause separate completely separate and unrelated to gravity.Short summary: gravity is an enabler but the cause might be nothing, or some other natural phenomena, or even possibly God did it without having to violate conservation of energy.

ICANT writes: Sorry you don't feel like discussing dark matter so I will see what I can do.Dark matter is the name given to a unknown, unobserved, thus non existent substance that has been proposed to explain the existence of an observed phenomenon. The calculations regarding the universe just don't add up without something(that is called dark matter). Thus a little something is required to prop up the standard theory again.The supernatural power that is required to provide all the energy and mass that constitutes the universe since it had to have a beginning to exist, as it could not have existed eternally in the past, fits nicely as a power that could cause the universe to consist. Col. 1:7.God Bless,

ICANT writes: I haven't found anyone yet that can tell me what gravity is. They can give me examples of the effects of what is called gravity.

NoNukes writes:Simply changing form does not require that energy become unavailable. Yes it is true that some processes do have that result, and it is believed that for all known process, total entropy must remain constant. The problem is that a perfectly acceptable mode of operation is for the amount of usable energy in the universe to remain constant over any given period of time. For example, the energy locked up in matter might well be eternal until it is unlocked in a nuclear process.

ICANT writes: If I understand what you are saying it is that the amount of useable energy will decrease as entropy takes it course during duration. At a point in the future all of the useable energy will be turned into un-useable energy at which time the universe will be dead.Which is the reason that the universe requires a beginning to exist as it could not be infinite as the universe would already have reached the point of death.

ICANT writes: I do not understand how if energy was supplied to continue doing work that the problem would not be solved. The pile of un-useable energy would just get larger.

ICANT writes: I guess that is the reason the Bible says that our present universe's elements will dissolve with fervent heat. 2 Peter 3:12Then those elements (or other elements) will be taken and a new Heaven and earth will be created.

ICANT writes: Thanks for answering my question, "How can the energy remain constant? "Useable energy + un-useable energy = total energy of the universe.
Useable energy will always decrease and un-useable energy will allways increase. Thus the total energy will remain the same until all the useable energy in the universe becomes un-useable energy.zero useable energy = 100% un-useable energy = dead universeHas my understand cleared up?

NoNukes writes: Really?Let me pose a question. How was the old steady state (pre Big Bang) model supposed to have worked? Under that model, the universe was supposed to have been without any beginning and to possibly be infinitely old. Why was that model supported by people like Einstein only to be dropped based on evidence such as the cosmic background radiation remnant from the big bang.I think the infinite time equals no usable energy logic ignores some scientific possibilities including the idea that some infinities are actually larger than others.