Re: RE: God is not a cat in Schroedinger's box!

Ed Babinski wrote:

"First you must say how you know that Jesus of Nazareth was "God's
son?" You rely on your holy book to tell you that, just as Muslims rely on
their holy book to tell them things. But can either side prove their case
OUTSIDE of quoting verses from their respective holy books?"

The "holy book" is an important witness, but so is history. The contrast between the origin of Islam and the origin of Christianity is great. In the case of Islam, a man later known for his military campaigns got messages in trances. Islam owed much of its success right from the start to military prowess. In the case of Christianity, a miracle worker of exemplary personal behavior was minimally involved with propagating his message outside his own community, but he so profoundly affected his unexceptional companions that they set his message well on the road to peaceful world domination despite a hostile environment.

The New Testament and the peaceful historical impact of Jesus' message are likely to constitute as much objective proof of a religion's validity as we're ever going to get. The NT after all, in contrast to the Qur'an, contains largely compatible records of events from multiple witnesses. As objective proofs go, it's still not terribly compelling. Nevertheless, as Howard Van Till was arguing earlier, it is possible to come up with objective criteria for evaluating religions. Just don't expect them ever to be definitive. The power of religion resides not in objective but in subjective proofs.

Religions originating since NT times have acknowledged Jesus' virtue (e.g., Islam and LDS), and even modern Buddhists and Hindus are often forced to take a stand on Jesus. (A Hindu priest on Bali once told me that the Hindu trinity was theologically equivalent to the Christian Trinity, and all the other Hindu deities only represented different aspects of the one God.)

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: ed babinski<mailto:ed.babinski@furman.edu>
  To: Glenn Morton<mailto:glennmorton@entouch.net>
  Cc: Howard J. Van Till<mailto:hvantill@sbcglobal.net> ; asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 12:57 AM
  Subject: Re: RE: God is not a cat in Schroedinger's box!

  "Glenn Morton" <glennmorton@entouch.net<mailto:glennmorton@entouch.net>> writes:
>(Christianity: This is my beloved son in whom I am
>well pleased. Islam: Surah 4:171 "believe therefore in Allah and His
>apostles, and say not, Three. Desist, it is better for you; Allah is only
>one God; far be It from His glory that He should have a son, whatever is
>in
>the heavens and whatever is in the earth is His, and Allah is sufficient
>for
>a Protector. "
>
>These are mutually exclusive statements. Please tell us how you determine
>the truth of one of these statements via observational data.

  ED: First you must say how you know that Jesus of Nazareth was "God's
  son?" You rely on your holy book to tell you that, just as Muslims rely on
  their holy book to tell them things. But can either side prove their case
  OUTSIDE of quoting verses from their respective holy books?
>
>
Received on Mon Oct 18 04:46:10 2004