“Moses assembled the entire Israelite community and said to them, ‘These are the things that the Lord has commanded you to do: For six days work is to be done, but on the seventh day you are to have a holy day, a Sabbath of complete rest to the Lord. Anyone who does work on it must be executed. Do not light a fire in any of your homes on the Sabbath day.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
If you listen to certain preachers long enough, you’ll start to hear the same points raised over and over again. There are a handful of ideas I have talked about with my own congregation in a certain way so many times that when I start talking about them, some of the folks in the room can finish my sentence for me. Everybody has something about which they are especially passionate. This passion will show itself through their words and actions. It will become the theme of their life. Everything they do, it seems, is filtered through the lens of whatever it is. Hopefully the passion is a good one, but whether it is or not, it is going to be definitional for them because that’s the nature of passion. As we get started on the home stretch of Exodus today, we are reminded yet again about one of God’s passions. Let’s talk yet again about the Sabbath.
I’ve honestly lost count, but I think this is the fourth or fifth time God has given the people a command about the Sabbath. It wouldn’t be the last. The Sabbath would continue to feature prominently in Israel’s relationship with God. He would call them to it yet many more times. When they stopped observing it, He would call them back to it. When the people of Judah went into exile to Babylon, the length of their timeout (70 years) was set by the number of Sabbath years they had missed over their 490 year history (namely, all of them). This was something that was a big deal to God. He wanted it to be a definitional practice for the people of Israel.
As a result, when Moses comes back down the mountain yet again, bringing God’s words of the covenant back to the people to give them a reset and a chance to take a real run at entering into it with Him, the very first thing Moses talked about with the people was the importance of the Sabbath. They were to take one day off after six days of work in a seven-day pattern. As we have talked about before, this was a reflection of God’s pattern set in creation. This doesn’t mean creation only took six literal 24-hour days. We are not limited in our understanding to that kind of a time frame at all. The pattern is what matters, not the specific length of each part. The people were to reflect God’s patterns with their own.
He goes on to reemphasize the fact that this is to be a day of “complete rest to the Lord.” Nobody was supposed to do any kind of work. All of the things they would normally do in a normal day to provide for themselves were to be set aside on that day. They were to give all of their attention to God. This statement of the Sabbath command goes even further than that. If someone did do work on the Sabbath, they were to be executed. I would imagine that got their attention. They weren’t even to light a fire in their homes on the Sabbath. This rest God was inviting (and, yes, commanding) them into was to be total and complete.
The assignment of the death penalty to violations of the Sabbath (something we do have one example later in the text that Moses led the people in enforcing) is pretty hard for us to stomach today. It feeds into the narrative that God assigned capricious and harsh penalties to random things just to hold the people under His control. This narrative is, of course, false. It is often upheld by people who don’t believe God exists in the first place. Where that’s the case, using a complaint about God’s apparent character as an argument in favor of His non-existence is illogical.
Where the person maintaining or buying into such a narrative does believe God exists, the question becomes what kind of a God does she believe He is. Is He possessed of all the “omnis” assigned to Him in the Scriptures (all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, all-wise, all-good, and etc.), or does His character fall somewhat short of that. If He falls somewhat short of it, then why do you suppose the Scriptures describe Him in those terms. If He doesn’t, then if He is really omnibeneficent and omnisapient, then doesn’t it seem reasonable to believe that He had a good reason for assigning such a penalty as this to Sabbath violations? If so, then there’s really no problem here. if not, then we go back to the question of just what kind of God do you think He is and where do you get your justification for that thinking?
Although it is rarer today for a host of reasons that we are not going to get into today, many human cultures have traditionally assigned capital punishment to the crime of murder. Why have they done this? Because of a broad recognition that human life is exceedingly valuable, and that unjustly taking it from another person is among the worst crimes a person can commit. The intent is to send the signal that murder is a very big deal. Not unjustly taking the lives of innocent people is important. Really important. Existentially important. Well, what God was trying to instill in the hearts and minds of the people of Israel here was that the Sabbath was important. Really important. Existentially important.
Okay, but why? Why was this such a big deal? What made this so important? In a word: Trust. God kept coming back to the Sabbath with the people because He wanted them to trust in Him. As we have talked about before, the Sabbath was fundamentally about inviting the people into a relationship with Him that was rooted in their trust in Him. God understood that this was a sufficiently important facet of what He was planning to do in and through them that He just kept drawing their attention to it over and over again. The trust itself wasn’t the final goal. The relationship was. The trust was the vehicle to the relationship. The Sabbath was the on-ramp to the trust.
Everything about the people’s relationship with God was going to be determined by the amount of trust they were willing to put in Him. The more they trusted in Him, the more willing they were going to be to do what He commanded. The more willing they were to doing what He commanded, the more they were going to gain the benefits of His character and presence because the things He commanded all came out of His character. (That doesn’t mean, by the way, that the connection between His commands and His character is always going to be obvious and easy to understand for us. Sometimes making sense out of what we see requires quite a lot of careful thought and contextual deciphering.) The more willing they were to receive the benefits of His character and presence, the more the world around them was going to come to a correct understanding of who He was. The more this happened, the more interested the world around them was going to be in entering in a relationship with Him as well, and this was always the point to everything He did in and with Israel.
Relationship was the lock. Trust was the key. The Sabbath was the mold to make the key.
This same kind of thing is still true today. The same basic principle applies to any relationship. All relationships are built on trust. The more trust we invest in a particular relationship, the stronger that relationship is going to be.
In an even bigger picture, God understood that He was building to a day when He was going to open the doors to a permanent and eternal relationship with Him for all people everywhere. But the only way we were going to be willing to enter through those doors was to place our trust in Him. So, He started building a context in which a request of trust like that was going to make sense. This context started with the Sabbath. So He just kept emphasizing its importance to the people over and over and over again. He put firm and hard guardrails around it to encourage them to stay on the path He was blazing for them. They were going to have to choose whether or not to stay on the path, but He was going to give them all the reason and opportunity He could for that decision to make more sense than any other decision they might make in another direction.
In Christ today, we are not called to keep the Sabbath like Israel was. All of these and other related commands were part of the old covenant. That covenant has been fulfilled and replaced by the new covenant in Christ. This new covenant doesn’t have but a single command: love one another as I have loved you. The Sabbath God still calls us into in Christ is not merely a day off every seventh day. He invites us into His eternal rest. This is a rest marked not merely by not working, but by investing in the kinds of fulfilling, kingdom-advancing work He created us to do in the first place. He invites us to trust Him more completely and to cease from our labors of striving and worrying and buying into the lie that everything depends on us and our own effort. He invites us into the large and spacious world in which He is sovereign and we can work to His glory and our joy. He invites us into fulfillment and contentment. All of this and more comes when we trust in Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath. I hope you will.
The Nexus 
If the sabbath is now defunct why did the character Jesus of Nazareth apparently say “Not one jot or tittle etc etc”?
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Because He fulfilled the whole thing because we couldn’t, and then made a new covenant that replaced the old one once it was fulfilled.
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Aah.. So we are back to the invented supernatural crap again.
🤦
He was Jewish. Born raised lived and died a Torah observant Jew. Period
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Good morning, Pastor Waits.
I am finding Craig Blomberg’s book “The Historical Reliability of the Gospels” very interesting, in particular, this quote:
John [the author of the Gospel of John] claims that Jesus promised that the Spirit would teach his disciples ‘all things’, help them to remember what he had said to them (John 14:26) and ‘guide’ them ‘into all truth’ (John 16:13). This suggests that the Gospel writers believed they could acquire accurate historical information even apart from human sources.
–Craig Blomberg, evangelical NT scholar in The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, Second Edition, p. 73
If this is what evangelical Christians believe, skeptics should not bother debating them regarding the historical accuracy of the Gospels. Evangelicals have made their belief system bullet proof. If the omniscient Creator of the universe was the Evangelists’ source for historical data, then it all must be true, regardless of how contradictory it may appear to mere mortals.
This is why I believe skeptics should give up debating historical evidence with evangelicals and cut to the chase: Do you have any good evidence that the spirit (ghost) of the resurrected Jesus dwells within you, as your holy book claims? I don’t think you do. This is why even NT scholars like Michael Licona get nervous when asked this question in front of a non-Christian audience. They know that the only evidence evangelicals have is a warm, comforting perception of an inner presence, wish fulfillments which occur no better than chance, and perceived miracles which could be no more than very rare but natural coincidences.
And stating that Jesus’ (disputed) fulfilled prophecies prove that all his promises are true and therefore his promised presence within believers can be trusted as fact is a circular argument. Believers believe Jesus fulfilled disputed prophecies because they can feel his presence within them and they believe they perceive his presence within them because they believe he fulfilled all his prophecies.
Your belief system is a pleasant delusion, Pastor Waits. Come out of the darkness of ancient superstitions and into the light of Reason and science.
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The chase we really need to cut to is whether or not you believe in the existence of a supernatural God. If you do, most of the rest of the questions will work themselves out fairly easily. If you don’t, you won’t. Ultimately, God’s existence, while supported by evidentiary arguments, is going to be answered philosophically and cannot be absolutely proven in either direction.
More specifically to your point, if you don’t believe this supernatural God exists and if you hold a position of methodological naturalism, there is not any amount of evidence that will convince that someone has had an encounter with the Spirit of God.
If you have adopted a naturalistic worldview framework (as you admittedly have), evidence for the supernatural can’t exist because the supernatural doesn’t exist. Therefore the supernatural doesn’t exist. In other words, your position is just as circular as you argue that mine is.
I am persuaded that the philosophical case for the existence of a supernatural God is vastly superior to the argument against that position.
As an example, you chided me the other day on your own blog for believing in a six-day, young earth creation. I don’t hold that position at all, for one, but for two naturalism cannot explain the existence of the world and life within that world. The only two explanatory mechanism naturalism has are chance and necessity which, given the available data, are rather pathetic as far as explanations go. The existence of a pre-existent mind is a far superior explanation for how things are the way they are. It is a far superior explanation unless your worldview commitments have a priori (and artificially) limited you to only naturalistic explanations. The philosophical conclusion regarding this pre-existent mind is only a small hop from the supernatural God of the Bible.
There’s nothing deluded about the position I hold at all. Your adopted worldview framework simply doesn’t allow you to see otherwise.
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“There’s nothing deluded about the position I hold at all. Your adopted worldview framework simply doesn’t allow you to see otherwise.”
A claim made throughout human history no doubt by every religious individual who ever insisted on a supernatural creator deity.
How does one discern between deities /religions to determine the real creator deity as opposed to the delusion?
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Are you prepared to set aside your evangelistically anti-religious bias in order to have a meaningful engagement on that question? Because, honestly, I have yet to see any evidence that you’ll be able to clear that necessary hurdle to a productive and worthwhile conversation.
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Sure… What have you got. And please, try to keep it sensible.
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Well, that answers my question. No, you’re going to just have to wonder on this one.
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What!! You are upset because I asked you to keep it sensible? Seriously, what the heck is the matter with you, Jonathan?
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Oh no, you mistake me. I’m not in the least bit upset. Not even close. But you have such a sneering disdain for religion that you just can’t even quite seem to get past, I’ve learned that I have to be more judicious about the conversations I get into with you. Jumping into a conversation that I know in advance is going to result in nothing more than our running around in tight rhetorical circles isn’t worth either of our time. Your comments like encouraging me to “keep it sensible” are your tells for when you don’t actually care what I’m going to say, you’re just looking to mock me for being dumb. Why bother getting into a conversation whose end I’ve already experienced with you multiple times? Plus, as you said, you’ve got a client coming, so I’m giving you more time to get ready. You’re welcome. Besides, I’m working on today’s post right now so I don’t have to take time later in my day to do that. That’s all from me for now. Enjoy your weekend.
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I am ever hopeful that you will present an unbiased, rigorous, evidence-based reply that will not simply sink to you dismissing my skepticism ( and that of every other non Christian person, be they atheist or otherwise) with the usual sanctimonious hand-waving condescension.
Maybe one day you will surprise me?
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As I am ever hopeful that you will one day get past your dripping disdain for religion such that we can have a real conversation about truth and life that doesn’t devolve into the usual sanctimonious hand-waving and condescension. Perhaps we will both be surprised one day.
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The problem is you expect me to accept the premise that your god, Yahweh is real, while you dismiss similar claims from other religious people over their claims.
Therefore it is pertinent for me to be allowed to ask, and for you to have the integrity to answer honestly and without any hint of disdain, how will get over your skepticism for other religious claims?
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Let me grab a fresh coffee. I have 30 minutes before a client arrives.
Away you go….
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Your question is exactly where the rubber meets the road on the question of the origin of the universe, Ark. Christians love to talk about all the evidence for the existence of an intelligent creator. That discussion can go on for days and weeks! But ask a Christian to provide evidence that his god, Jesus the resurrected Christ/Yahweh/the Trinity, created the universe. The conversation then shortens very dramatically.
Christian apologists know that the only evidence they have for their belief that a first century Jewish peasant is the creator of our complex universe is this:
-the alleged resurrection of Jesus.
-Jesus’ alleged fulfillment of ancient Jewish prophecies.
-the really silly argument that evidence indicates that our creator is a “personal being” and since Jesus was very personable, Jesus must be the creator.
These arguments are very easy to refute:
I encourage all skeptics to avoid long discussions about evidence for a Creator. Christians don’t really care about the existence of a generic creator. They want you to believe that their first century carpenter god planned and constructed the entire universe!
What madness.
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“If you have adopted a naturalistic worldview framework (as you admittedly have), evidence for the supernatural can’t exist because the supernatural doesn’t exist. Therefore the supernatural doesn’t exist. In other words, your position is just as circular as you argue that mine is.”
Let’s substitute a couple of words in your statement and hopefully help you see that your views of my position are not based on good logic.
If you have adopted a worldview that does not allow for the existence of Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, and unicorns, evidence for these creatures can’t exist because these creatures do not exist. Therefore Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, and unicorns do not exist. In other words, your position is just as circular as you argue that mine is.
My non-belief in the existence of Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, and unicorns is not due to a bias against these creatures. It is due to a lack of good evidence for the existence of these creatures. And there IS evidence per proponents, but it is poor evidence. Doctored photos and uncorroborated eyewitness testimony may be evidence but it is not good evidence. My decision not to believe these odd claims is not based on bias but based on a lack of good evidence.
Ditto for the existence of a resurrected first century corpse who you claim is alive today and ruler of the Cosmos. There is no good evidence for this claim other than disputed two thousand year old testimony, disputed prophecies, and the subjective perception that his ghost (spirit) lives inside the bodies of the believers of this claim. My non-belief in Jesus the resurrected Christ, Ruler of Heaven and Earth, is not due to my bias against this being, it is due to lack of good evidence and my use of good critical thinking skills.
As to the existence of a supernatural creator of our universe, I am completely open to this possibility as the world’s experts have not reached a consensus on the origin of our universe. So I sit on the sidelines, withholding judgment, until the experts reach a consensus. That is the rational thing to do. You, on the other hand, have chosen to believe that a first century Jewish peasant is the supernatural creator of our universe. I find that to be a highly illogical decision, based more on emotion than facts. To prove that, how old were you when you first believed that Jesus of Nazareth is the creator of our universe? I will bet you were less than 10 years old. Your decision to believe this claim was made due to an emotional experience or the indoctrination of your parents not a thorough review of the evidence. Yes, you have studied the evidence for this claim since, but since you already believed in your heart that it is true, your interpretation of the evidence is going to be heavily biased.
The real question is not if the universe was created by a supernatural being but does the supernatural operate in our universe TODAY. And for that question, you have no good evidence other than you subjective feelings and perceptions.
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You are once again substituting an evidentiary argument for a philosophical one. It is worldview bias that keeps pushing you to do that.
My age when I made a decision to follow Jesus (8) is entirely irrelevant to the question of its logic or reasonableness. You’ll have to find far stronger grounds than that to make your point.
The claim to be sitting on the sidelines until a decision by the experts is rendered is bad on many different levels.
Which experts could reach such a consensus? Which fields would be relevant to it such a decision? Especially considering that is primarily a philosophical question, not a scientific one.
Furthermore, while you claim to be open to the possibility, none of the positions you stake out are consistent with such openness so far as I have yet seen them. You once referred to yourself as an antisupernatualist but now you say you are open to the supernatural. Be consistent.
Your profession of rationality in your refusal to register an opinion here is somewhat dishonest. The only known sources for the kind of information the experts are actively coming to understand is necessary for life to exist is a mind. Non-rational (i.e., non living) sources have never produced complex and specified information. To plead ignorance here strikes me as more of a worldview driven cop out because the actual evidence doesn’t fit with your predetermined conclusions on the questions.
What’s more, philosophically speaking, naturalism is still limited to chance and necessity as far as explanatory mechanisms go. And those are both still philosophically pathetic options when you examine the actual data. You have to rely on unscientific and entirely faith based theories like the multiverse to provide some kind of an explanation.
And, finally, for your insistence that the “real” question is whether the supernatural operates today, that is, once again, a necessary non-empirical question. It’s supernatural. That is by definition not natural. Natural means of detection aren’t going to do any good trying to detect something supernatural. If a supernatural being created the universe, there aren’t any good scientific reasons to believe it isn’t still operating today. All such counterarguments are philosophical and worldview based. The best evidence for such a thing would be exactly all those subjective reports from people who believe to have experienced it. And there are a mountain of those. Does that mean all of them are correct? I don’t think so, but it is worldview criteria that we use to sort one from the other, not scientific ones. Because they are supernatural and therefore definitionally non-scientific.
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“You are once again substituting an evidentiary argument for a philosophical one. It is worldview bias that keeps pushing you to do that. My age when I made a decision to follow Jesus (8) is entirely irrelevant to the question of its logic or reasonableness. You’ll have to find far stronger grounds than that to make your point.”
Why have you chosen a philosophical worldview over an evidentiary (science based) world view? When did you make this monumental decision? Answer: Prior to age 10. I don’t care how you cut it, Pastor, a ten year old does not have sufficient maturity or knowledge to make such a decision.
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Science-based worldviews are still rooted in philosophy. Philosophy always comes first. The decision to elevate a certain kind of evidence (not to mention expert opinion) to such a prominent position in determining which positions you are willing to accept and receive is itself a philosophical one. And your doubts about my maturity and mental capacity as an eight-year-old are noted.
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My goodness, no. I am not accusing you of having the mental capacity of an eight year old, Pastor Waits. Not at all. I am merely pointing out that you chose your worldview before you were even ten years old. Your choice of worldview could not possibly have been due to a careful and rational evaluation of which worldview is more likely to give you correct information over the entire span of your lifetime. You chose your worldview either due to an emotional “decision for Christ” or you simply accepted the worldview of your parents.
Can we agree that humans are better off choosing the worldview that has the best track record of being correct?
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I didn’t say you were. Read that again more carefully.
Everyone’s worldview is formed by the time they’re about 10. What you seem unwilling to countenance is that after having made a profession of faith, I spent years examining the decision without any pressure from my parents or other people around me, in a secular schooling environment, friends with mostly non-believers at school, and came to the conclusion after all of that that Christianity was still the far more reasonable position.
As to your last question, yes, I agree heartily with you. That’s why I’m a follower of Jesus.
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Can you give evidence that Jesus has been correct about the nature and workings of the universe more often than modern science? Of course you can’t. You can’t even provide good evidence that Jesus is still alive!
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What statements do you have in mind from Jesus about the nature and workings of the universe? What kind of evidence would you actually consider as proof of Jesus’ being alive?
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Your obfuscation says it all, Pastor.
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Those were both simple questions. I’m not obfuscating. I’m asking you to clarify your questions. You very clearly indicated a belief that modern science has been more correct about the nature and workings of the universe than Jesus. I simply asked which statements from Jesus about the nature and working of the universe you find to be in error relative to what modern science has declared to be right and true.
You also averred that I cannot provide “good” evidence that Jesus is alive. I want you to be more specific. The historical claim of the New Testament authors is that Jesus rose from the dead and then departed from earth in bodily form. He is now alive and present supernaturally through the Holy Spirit. What would you consider to be “good evidence” sufficient to prove the truthfulness of this historical but supernatural claim?
Instead of complaining about my response in a way that is intended to suggest my motives or even character are somehow deficient, why not just answer the simple questions?
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“The claim to be sitting on the sidelines until a decision by the experts is rendered is bad on many different levels. Which experts could reach such a consensus? Which fields would be relevant to it such a decision? Especially considering that is primarily a philosophical question, not a scientific one.”
Who says that the origin of the universe is a philosophical/theological question? You? Christian theologians?? Scientists can and have studied evidence for the origin of the universe, just as they have studied the evidence for the properties of our solar system. While theologians were still claiming that the earth is the center of the universe, because that is what they believed their holy book decreed, scientists determined otherwise by examining evidence, not philosophical theories. Once again, why do you prefer a philosophical (theological) worldview and not a evidentiary world view? Based on what criteria? Which worldview has a better track record of accuracy? Science wins hands down!
“Furthermore, while you claim to be open to the possibility, none of the positions you stake out are consistent with such openness so far as I have yet seen them. You once referred to yourself as an antisupernatualist but now you say you are open to the supernatural. Be consistent.”
I am just as open to resurrected corpses as I am to unicorns. I’ll believe it when I see it. I do not actively campaign against all supernatural beliefs. I spend no time at all fighting against belief in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Why? Because these supernatural beliefs are harmless. But supernatural beliefs, such as yours, which are fear-based are a different story. I campaign to rid the world of ALL fear based superstitions.
Your profession of rationality in your refusal to register an opinion here is somewhat dishonest. The only known sources for the kind of information the experts are actively coming to understand is necessary for life to exist is a mind. Non-rational (i.e., non living) sources have never produced complex and specified information. To plead ignorance here strikes me as more of a worldview driven cop out because the actual evidence doesn’t fit with your predetermined conclusions on the questions.
Says a non-expert. What professional degrees do you hold? I am an educated physician, yet I do not hold up my personal opinions as the ultimate truth. You do. I trust expert consensus opinion on all issues because it is the best methodology known to humanity for the discovery of universal truths. You trust your own, non-expert, opinions and judgements regarding very complex issues. The educated class in western cultures sees your attitude (and that of most fundamentalists of all religions and cultures) as arrogant and foolish.
And, finally, for your insistence that the “real” question is whether the supernatural operates today, that is, once again, a necessary non-empirical question. It’s supernatural. That is by definition not natural. Natural means of detection aren’t going to do any good trying to detect something supernatural. If a supernatural being created the universe, there aren’t any good scientific reasons to believe it isn’t still operating today. All such counterarguments are philosophical and worldview based. The best evidence for such a thing would be exactly all those subjective reports from people who believe to have experienced it. And there are a mountain of those. Does that mean all of them are correct? I don’t think so, but it is worldview criteria that we use to sort one from the other, not scientific ones. Because they are supernatural and therefore definitionally non-scientific.
Then why do evangelical denominations instruct their Bible colleges and seminaries to institute courses and even degrees in apologetics to argue with skeptics over historical evidence? You can’t have it both ways, Pastor! It is either supernatural and non-evidentiary: you believe it by blind faith or it is evidentiary and you are obligated to provide the same quality of evidence as would be required for any other historical claim.
Evangelicals want their cake and eat it too.
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Your readers should think about this: On almost every historical claim related to the alleged resurrection, you appeal to the minority scholarly position time after time after time, and then when I request evidence for the presence of a spirit (ghost) living somewhere inside your body you cry foul, alleging that I am attempting to force my evidentiary worldview upon you.
Just admit it, Pastor Waits: You are not consistent. You will use any and every excuse to hold onto to your cherished superstition.
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I admit defeat, Pastor. You win. You have constructed a bullet-proof worldview that can never be defeated.
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So, you make an allegation about theistic belief and specifically what Jesus did or didn’t declare about the nature and working of the universe, I ask you a couple of clarification questions about it, and now you walk away? And to think you accused me of obfuscation and being unreasonable. Why not just answer the questions?
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Do you believe that Jesus is the Creator Deity that is responsible for the universe and all its works?
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Yep. Paul’s Christological hymn at the beginning of Colossians lays it out beautifully.
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Okay. Do you regard this as an evidentiary belief or doctrinal?
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Some of both. Although, because I am not committed to methodological naturalism as you are, I do not consider the evidence in the same terms you so. So, mine isn’t a position you’ll likely be willing to accept.
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That would seem consistent with your faith based beliefs.
That said, what evidence is there to consider?
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We’ve talked about that multiple times before. I’m away now at a conference. If you want a review of past conversations, have at it.
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Just give me just one example. Saves me scrolling endlessly.
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It starts with the evidence that a Creator makes the most sense of creation as we see it and goes forward from there. But again, we’ve been down this road before and didn’t agree then. I’m not honestly expecting a different outcome this time, so I’m not interested in pursuing the path with you very far this time.
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I can accept the idea of a creator, that is deism.
I don’t necessarily agree with it but I can accept the belief of those that do.
We are discussing the character Jesus of Nazareth being this creator deity and it is this where, to me, the evidence is completely lacking.
This is why I asked if this belief was evidentiary or doctrinal.
You said both. I say fair enough.
I am asking for an example of this evidence ( that the character Jesus of Nazareth is the Creator)
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Did you answer my question? What would you say to a potential convert if he asked you how he can know that Jesus is alive today and has the power to grant him eternal life?
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I answered that long ago, and you are changing the subject rather than answer the questions I’ve put to you. I’m intrigued that you have spent this much time rhetorically squirming around rather than just answering them.
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Here is what I asked you originally and your original answer as recorded on your blog October 18:
Sorry, I don’t think you are being completely honest here, Pastor. Wouldn’t you also tell the potential convert that he should pray to Jesus with an open heart? Wouldn’t you promise him that if he comes to Jesus with a truly open heart, Jesus will reveal the truth to him? Of course you would. Remember: Your belief system is based on the metaphysical.
Problem is, this is exactly what every religion (i.e. Mormons and Muslims) says. “Just pray to our god, X, with an open heart, seeking truth no matter what it is, and X will reveal himself to you!”
Would you explain to this potential convert that even though you personally fully trust the historical accuracy of the New Testament that a significant percentage of Bible scholars do not believe that the first five book, the Gospels and Acts, were written by eyewitnesses but persons living one or even two generations removed from the events they describe?
I would! If anyone comes to my blog asking my advice regarding the claims of Christianity or any other -ism I tell them: “Read experts from both sides before changing your worldview! Be informed! Base your beliefs on evidence.
Do you ever do that, Pastor?
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So then, more changing the subject to avoid answering the questions I asked? Is there a reason you seem to be running from them instead of just answering them? I’m really struggling to figure this one out. I gave you a clear and straightforward answer to your question from long ago. You didn’t like my answer and soon thereafter bid me good day and went away for a while. Why you came back for more is beyond me, but here you are. Now, I have asked you a fairly simple question in response to a challenge you gave me, and you have yet to answer it. Why is that exactly?
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Patience, my friend. 🙂
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Now, to answer your questions:
“What statements do you have in mind from Jesus about the nature and workings of the universe? What kind of evidence would you actually consider as proof of Jesus’ being alive?”
I assume you are a Trinitarian. Trinitarian evangelical Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth was/is Yahweh, the God of the OT and the Creator of the universe. They also believe that Jesus, as God, inspired every word of the 66 books of the (Protestant) Bible.
The Jewish people and then the Christian church believed at one point in history that their inerrant God had declared in his Holy Scriptures that:
-the universe was created in six days, just as described in Genesis 1 and 2.
-the universe is approximately 6,000 to 10,000 years old.
-a firmament exists above the earth.
-the earth rests on pillars.
-the entire world was flooded, even the tallest mountain (Everest).
-languages developed due to humans attempt to climb up to God.
-the sun can be stopped in its rotation around the earth.
-God uses weather to bless (rain) or punish people/entire nations (the destruction of the army of Egypt)
-illnesses (i.e. seizures), at least at times, are caused by evil spirits (demons).
Now, I realize that you are going to say that these beliefs were not necessarily the correct interpretation of God’s (Jesus) Word, but as an omnipotent being, Jesus could have corrected these errors. He did not. He allowed humanity to believe these false beliefs for thousands of years until scientists finally figured out these mysteries on our own.
What kind of evidence would you actually consider as proof of Jesus’ being alive?”
Answer: An unmistakable, laws-of-physics defying miracle for each and every human being. As he is omniscient and omnipotent, Jesus would know which miracle would achieve that purpose for each person.
A miracle: the same evidence all his original disciples demanded to believe!
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With the possible exception of the last item on your list, none of those are statements from Jesus about the nature or workings of the universe. Try again. What statements did Jesus specifically make that modern science has refuted?
On your second response, what would you consider to be an “unmistakable, laws-of-physics defying miracle”? Why that? Why would God need to prove Himself that way for you when so many others believe in Him without the need for such hand-holding as that?
Assuming that He is omniscient and omnipotent (not to mention ominsapient), wouldn’t it seem reasonable to expect that He would know whether or not a miracle would actually engender faith for each person and limit His miraculous, faith-provoking interventions to only those people for whom such efforts would actually make a difference? After all, Jesus had skeptics (in His claims) come and ask for a sign (meaning a miraculous sign) and He basically told them to shove off. If He resounded that way to them, why would He responded any differently to your demands now?
Given that, as Paul said, God’s existence and basic nature can be easily discerned through a simple observation of the world around us, and that the vast majority of people who have believed in Him have been willing to accept Him on that basis, what would be the need for such a miracle as you demand?
And furthermore, how would such an act serve as proof that Jesus is alive? You could easily explain something like that happening without any reference to Jesus at all.
I feel kind of like you are still either avoiding the question or else settling on a cop out because you don’t have a very good answer.
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“With the possible exception of the last item on your list, none of those are statements from Jesus about the nature or workings of the universe. Try again. What statements did Jesus specifically make that modern science has refuted?”
Excuse me?? Are you saying that Jesus is not the God of the Old Testament? Are you saying that Jesus is not the omniscient author of the Old Testament? Give me a break, Pastor Waits. I grew up evangelical. According to Trinitarian teaching and according to the Statements of Faith of every major evangelical denomination on the planet, Jesus is the God of both the Old and New Testaments. Jesus is the ultimate source and author of the Old and New Testaments. So, if that is true, Jesus said the heavens and earth were created in six days. Jesus said that the entire earth was covered by a worldwide flood. Jesus said the earth rests on pillars. Jesus said that the sun stood still from its path around the earth when Joshua asked God (Jesus) to give him more time on the battle field.
Science has proven these claims false. Jesus made mistakes!
So please don’t get cute and pretend that Jesus is only responsible for what he said during his 33 years on earth! If Jesus is who Trinitarian Christians say he is, JESUS is responsible for all the wacky, scientifically incorrect claims made in the Old Testament and his wacky claim in the New Testament that demons are responsible for some diseases.
“On your second response, what would you consider to be an “unmistakable, laws-of-physics defying miracle”? Why that? Why would God need to prove Himself that way for you when so many others believe in Him without the need for such hand-holding as that?”
Allegedly, your god is omniscient and omnipotent. Therefore, he would know exactly what he would need to do to convince me and every other non-believer on the planet that he is alive and that he has the powers Christianity claims he does. Jesus knows! He knows this yet he insists that I believe in him based on disputed fulfillments of ancient Middle Eastern prophecies and 2,000 year old disputed eyewitness testimony of a handful of uncorroborated dead person sightings?? Either your God delights in playing games or your belief system is irrational and silly.
All Jesus would need to do for me to believe he is still alive is appear to me in the flesh as he allegedly did for Peter, James, and John; allow me to touch his arm (I don’t need to put my finger in his wounds as did Thomas); and then levitate my coffee table five feet off the floor for five minutes, allowing me to wave my arms over and under the coffee table to make sure there are no see-through cables or wires. He’s omnipotent. That should be a piece of cake.
But he won’t do it, will he? He won’t do it because “God (Jesus) does not like to be tested.” Sorry, but that is the excuse of every child who has invented an imaginary friend when asked for evidence that his invisible friend exists.
“Why would God need to prove Himself that way for you when so many others believe in Him without the need for such hand-holding as that?”
Because whoever or whatever my creator is, he/she/they/it gave me a BRAIN. And my brain tells me that Christianity’s evidence that a first century Jewish peasant is alive and well and creator of the cosmos is ridiculous and stupid. I don’t need hand-holding, Pastor, I need good EVIDENCE! I am not a lemming. I’m not going to jump off a cliff just because everyone else does.
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What I find the most interesting here is that you seem to be operating from the standpoint of a very literalist understanding of the Scriptures, and then rejecting that with vigor. It seems like you are more interested in making a thorough rejection of the version of Christianity you experienced as a child than anything else. As I’m pretty sure I said before, if I had been raised with the version of Christianity with which you were raised, I would probably have rejected it too. But I wasn’t. I was raised with a version that wasn’t burdened with the awkward saddle of literalism.
With the exception of the sun’s standing still in Joshua (which was a miraculous event for which there’s not necessarily going to be any evidence that could be uncovered today and, as such, if there exists a supernatural, miracle-working God isn’t a problem to accept at all whatever you believe about modern science), the claims of the Old Testament don’t force any of those conclusions on readers unless you are operating from the standpoint that everything the Scriptures say is literally true. The trouble with literalism is that the various authors of the Scriptures use figurative language all the time. Jesus certainly did. If you interpret figurative language literally, you’re never going to understand it properly.
It’s like you are fixated on either a childish or else a hyper-fundamentalist approach to the Scriptures, and are (rightly) rejecting that. Allow me to welcome you back to a more grown up understanding of the Scriptures that is able to properly interact in a nuanced, thoughtful way with figurative and otherwise poetic language.
So, no, Jesus didn’t make any of those claims for sure (again, with the possible exception of the sun’s standing still which I’ve already noted). You choose to interpret them that way which makes rejecting them easier for you. And even with the issue of a demonic origin for some physical maladies, that’s only an issue if you reject the existence of a supernatural world which, once again, isn’t going to be detectable by strictly empirical means such that rejecting such a claim only makes sense if you are operating from an a priori worldview position of methodological naturalism. That’s a philosophical choice you make, not an evidentiary one.
On to part two again…
If God is omniscient and omnipotent, then you’re right, He would know exactly what He would need to do to convince you to believe in Him. And perhaps He understands that there isn’t anything He can do to convince you. You’ve chosen to reject Him and to adopt a worldview that doesn’t allow for His existence except perhaps within a tiny box of your own creation. Well, He’s the God who made the universe. He’s not going to come down and crawl in your little box just to make you happy. You can take HIm on His own terms (which are pretty clearly laid out in the Scriptures) or not at all.
Certainly He could force you to believe in Him, but then your choice to follow Him wouldn’t be free and thus it wouldn’t be meaningful. He’s given you the ability to make meaningful and consequential (i.e., free) choices, and He’s not going back on that. If you choose to take that freedom and reject the abundance of evidence that has been sufficient to convince countless millions of people to believe in Him, insisting because of the worldview commitments you have made that none of it counts as evidence, then, honestly, that’s on you, not Him. God asks for faith. If you don’t want to give it, that’s a choice you can make, but that’s not His fault, especially when so very many others have chosen to give it.
Furthermore, if He’s really what the Christian worldview holds Him to be, then why should He have to bend to your demands to get you to believe in Him? As the apostle Paul wrote to the Roman church, “For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse.”
If you don’t believe in God, that’s because you don’t want to believe in God. If I were in your shoes, and if I had lived through the experiences you have had, I’d probably feel the same, so I can’t blame you for it. But that’s still a choice you have made. And when you make a choice like that, evidence isn’t what will ultimately convince you of anything. Love will. Relationships will. And if you’ve chosen to insulate yourselves from the relationships that could sway you in that direction in whatever form they happen to take, there’s not much to be done. I certainly won’t be able to convince you of anything. You’ll always be able to explain away what you have seen. You would explain Jesus’ appearing in front of you in the flesh away as someone dressing up in a costume (after all, no one knows what Jesus looked like), and any clever magician could levitate a coffee table. What a childish demand to make. And, if God does so much that you can’t explain it away any longer, you will have lost the ability to choose to believe in Him freely which, again, He doesn’t want.
In the end, you insist you’re not a lemming (and thus tacitly insulting every person who has ever professed faith in Jesus), but you’ve jumped off the skeptical cliff just like so many others have done. You make the same arguments they have and insist on the same worldview demands they do. Historically, a whole lot more people have jumped off that particular cliff than the Christian one. It would seem that you’ve simply changed which crowd of lemmings you are following.
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“So, no, Jesus didn’t make any of those claims for sure (again, with the possible exception of the sun’s standing still which I’ve already noted). You choose to interpret them that way which makes rejecting them easier for you.”
I anticipated this response and that is why I said in my previous comment if Jesus did not mean these things literally why did he allow his followers to understand them literally for thousands of years?? Christians have a long track record of reinterpreting their holy book after science proves the current interpretation false.
“He’s the God who made the universe. He’s not going to come down and crawl in your little box just to make you happy. You can take HIm on His own terms (which are pretty clearly laid out in the Scriptures) or not at all.”
He performed all kinds of tricks for the people of his day to believe in him but demands that I believe disputed 2,000 year old testimony of people seeing a walking, talking broiled fish-eating corpse. Pathetic. The more likely scenario is that the stories of Jesus’ miracles are theological embellishments = fiction. He couldn’t do laws-of-physics defying miracles then and he certainly can’t do them now. Because he’s dead!
There is no ghost living inside you, Pastor. It is only you talking to yourself. Your worldview is a pleasant delusion. You use philosophy to prop up the dying social respectability of your ancient superstitions. Jesus and his “holy word” can’t convince people themselves. They need apologists like yourself with clever philosophical arguments to remain believable and relevant. It isn’t going to work. Christianity is dying in the educated West. It is dying because public university educated people no longer believe in ghosts (spirits), devils, and other invisible boogeymen.
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They have done that because none of those places were written to be precise descriptions of how, but rather statements of that. God consistently communicated with people where they were, but in ways that would be understandable by later generations. Even much later generations. If believers of the past understood creation to have been a literal six-day affair, that didn’t at all take away from the larger point that God was the one responsible for it at all. If later scientific understandings of creation (which were ultimately made thanks to the presence and proliferation of the Christian worldview) revealed earth to be much older than that six-day timeline allowed, that still doesn’t take away from the larger theological point. The original recipients were capable of understanding the simple point, but the purpose of the text allowed for an updated understanding.
The vast majority of people who came to believe in Jesus in the earliest centuries of the church did not come to such a conclusion on the basis of various “tricks,” as you call them. They believed on the testimony of those who had experienced the resurrected Jesus or—even more commonly—because they experienced the results of this belief lived out through the lives of those who held it. That you demand tricks before you believe isn’t something to be proud of. It is indicative of a deeply immature understanding of faith. I really am sorry that your experience growing up was with such a narrow and small-minded version of Christianity and that such an experience has resulted in your having such hard feelings toward the real thing. I would have likely rejected that version as well. As it stands, you erect a very good straw man of genuine, Biblical Christianity. Allow me to join you in beating it to death while inviting you into an experience of the real thing.
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Strip off all the philosophical smoke and mirrors from your worldview and what do you have: A universe governed by good ghosts and bad ghosts. In your world a demon could be hiding under every rock. A demon could be the cause of your child’s seizures or mental illness. A demon or the Devil himself just might be hiding under your bed, little Christian children! In your worldview, the Boogeyman is real!!!
Come out, come out, of the darkness of your superstitions, Pastor Waits! Abandon your sophisticated-sounding but patently absurd philosophical defenses for this ancient tall tale. The Resurrection Story is no more true than any other ghost tale!
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Like I said: a very good straw man. Keep beating on that thing. It deserves to die.
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Sadly, shaming people with superstitious beliefs is probably the only method that will work to end the plague of superstitions among humans. Evidence is of no value in their metaphysical worldview.
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You realize how weak that makes your position look, right? If the only way you can convince someone to change their mind is to belittle and shame them until they abandon their position, you really don’t have a strong positive case to make. And to then justify your failure by blaming the other side for being inconvincible, suggests all over again that you just don’t have a very good case to make. If it were just a handful of instances, that would be one thing. When it’s vast swaths of people, though, the common factor isn’t them…it’s you.
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We will have to agree to disagree, Pastor. Time will tell which of us is correct.
Take care.
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We will indeed, and, yes, it indisputably will that. You too.
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