The Historical Jesus: Did He Create the Universe?

I think that ICANT ignored the revisionist arguments and took the basic narrative on faith rather than any sort of human evidential arguments. Without a supernatural faith, there are many self-help and boosted esteem groups that are far more effective.My point is that the whole crux of the belief, for me, hinges on Jesus being in communion with a Higher creative power.

What “revisionist arguments” are you talking about? I certainly didn’t reference any.

I suppose that I am generalizing. You and I don't always agree on beliefs, but IIRC you used to be more of a physical materialist. Or am I wrong again? I CANT is a conservative Pastor. He has a small but tight-knit flock. I doubt that they are involved in politics much but are likely conservatives. What I meant by revisionist beliefs is the idea that the Gospel of John, for example, was written by "redactors" or at least edited as such. jar and Theodoric attacked Biblical origins more than you do. Too few believers question the Bible and how they initially received it, though one may argue that Jesus is the living Word and that once someone has an initial salvation experience, seen by some as an Epiphany or awakening, the living Word (Holy Spirit, Comforter) goes in to them. There is no objective proof for such an argument, though anyone familiar with charismatics sees examples of this occasionally.Keep in mind that if my original premise concerning God as Creator of all seen and unseen, Jesus as the foreknown human character of God sent to reverse the curse caused by the actualization of potentialized evil brought on by the fallen event of the chief archangel Lucifer turned snake (likely metaphorically) we would expect to see at least 80-90% fake manifestations of the Holy Spirit by lesser spirits, demons, etc etc.Yes, I know that I appear crazy! But at least im not running away from the idea that the Universe was created through Jesus.My argument is, admittedly anthropomorphic for starters. It is impossible to prove objectively, and full of flaws.Comments?

Your replies seem to have no relationship to what I’m saying.Let’s try again. What “revisionist arguments” are you talking about given that I never mentioned any - simply pointing out the limits of what historical methods can show.I see that your edits have answered the point, but the answer has nothing to do with what I saiid (and I don’t think that the “revisionist” label deserves to be applied in cases where the original ideas had so little basis in evidence.)

OK. Good people and Bad people. Nature or nurture?Despite the craziness of it all, is there even a snowball's chance in hell that humans are involved in some sort of spiritual war?
Of course IIRC you read the Bible, found it without substance, and developed relationships with more rational and stable people. I've always liked our conversations, even when you were drinking.

To be fair, I think that what I was doing was answering the way that I CANT might have thought.(an impossible task, as I have never met the man) To be honest, im not even sure that I can define revisionist arguments, but I think that some people are word for word literalists, and the other side are revisionists or mythicists or critical thinkers with no axe to grind. Perhaps I am generalizing.

I think in this context revisionism would be better applied to doctrinal changes since I don’t think that the authorship of John was based on anything much more than tradition. From a historical point of view the authorship was not well established.But again this has nothing to do with my main point which is that history cannot show that `Jesus was anything more than a man, so there is no basis for the idea that the historical Jesus - as opposed to the Jesus of Faith - did or even could have - created the universe.

Irrelevant and seems kind of presumptuous of you to make ICANT'arguments for him.

I started working on this response before ICANT wimped out but then got busy with other stuff. I'm posting now because even though he probably will not read it, I will have finished my thoughts. Interesting, I always thought astrophysicists started using the designation "dark energy" when referring to the observation that the expansion of the Universe seems to be speeding up, apparently refuting the prediction that the expansion is slowing down. They see an affect, but have not discovered what causes it, in other words, "they are in the dark about the cause," so the called it dark energy. They could have called it Chuck but Dark Energy sounds a lot cooler.I haven't heard about any connection between Dark Energy and Dark Matter other than both have "dark" in their names, because we do not know what causes the affects that astronomers have observed. Dark matter is a doubly good name because we can see its affects on gravity, but whatever causes it is does not emit any electromagnetic radiation (light), so we don't know what it is AND it's dark.Wow, so "Obedient Universal Magical Construction Energy!" Wouldn't that be a hoot if IT turned out to be Dark Energy? I have no idea what you did OR thought 15 years ago or what took of at lightspeed.Hmmmm, I don't get that part, why does Jesus even need to use tools like energy?

ICANT:

---

He would only have to think it there. Remember He is all powerful.

---

I don't follow your reasoning here at all. I don't think science has actually proved that and how is eternity an obvious consequence? How can you know this? Wow, we're pretty lucky then, we could have all ended up as Moorlocks! Yeah, there are millions or probably billions of different possible conditions of our solar system that would have kept life like we have here on Earth from ever arising and evolving. We call the idea that conditions allow life on this planet The Anthropic Principal. Nope, I didn't ask how old the Universe is. And the paper that recently proposed a 28 billion year age was rejected for lack of supporting evidence, so no help there. Well, that may be because there is no possible way to answer that question because you have no way of know how long it took or if that question has any meaning in relation the beginning of the Universe. I have noticed that you have a bunch of different meanings for the term "existence," sometimes you use it as a place, sometimes as a time period, sometimes a a state of being, and sometimes as an action. You seem to have existed in a very confused state of existence during your whole existing in existence.

Not to get too philosophical in a "magic" thread, but RC Sprouls basic philosophical argument resonates with me. Basically he argues that in order for something to exist something always had to exist. If at any time there was nothing, logic dictates that there would now be nothing.Existence precedes essence.~John Paul SarteComments?

He likely does not mind. I know better than to try and speak for you because you will respond with a personal note and/or tell me to crawl back under my rock.In my defense, I would assert that my "rock" is the Rock of Ages".Can you comment on my philosophical point above?

If Elenore Roosevelt had wings...

That's not an argument. It's a bare assertion stated twice.Must be true.

quote:

---

Not to get too philosophical in a "magic" thread, but RC Sprouls basic philosophical argument resonates with me. Basically he argues that in order for something to exist something always had to exist. If at any time there was nothing, logic dictates that there would now be nothing

---

I hope you’re misquoting the argument because logic dictates nothing of the sort (logic doesn’t dictate much of anything). And, of course it is a long long way from “something always existed” to “God exists”.
(For a start, is “always” a finite quantity as Christian apologist William Lane Craig argues?)

quote:

---

Existence precedes essence.~John Paul Sarte

---

The only people I’ve ever seen arguing otherwise were people trying to define God into existence. Which convinced me that Sartre was right on that one. Any idea that lets you define things into existence is pretty clearly wrong.