...And Then Jesus Removed the Thorn from the Dinosaur's Paw.

Another reply - cum - topic for discussion!

The relevant posting I've replied is found here. My comment's waiting for moderation - and I think I'm more moderate than I have been in recent days.

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Hi Mike!

I have two simple questions, stemming from your material above, from one of your particular points:

m[ike]: when sin-without-jesus-leads-to-eternity-in-flames is the doctrine, none of the other doctrines - none of the “good parts of the gospel” - really matter anymore, do they?

ben: Who wouldn’t want a religion that requires no sacrifice and requires little more of its adherents than positive thinking?

Alrighty - for one thing, who determines the good parts of the God-Spell? Oops, I mean, Gospel.

Second of all, Christianity/the Bible is not entirely clear about what constitutes Sacrifice, and what kind of sacrifices are required. It seemed to me that the "Good News" of the Gospel was a free gift (I'm sure that's what I heard Billy preaching on the night I saw him in Philly), a priori from my temporal point of view, and that there was a "Once and for all" involved - until I discovered the same writer telling me that I had to "die" to this world to live with Jesus. Hm! Turns out the libertarians who cry "TANSTAAFL" have a more consistent truth than the Bible, from a certain point of view!!

Paul is one very peculiar, Non Divine and recognized "human authority" who was no more of a christian than you are, but one that every one of you turn to for "truth", sooner or later, recorded in a book. He is NOT Jesus, and never physically met Jesus, but who spent a good portion of his career trying to say, "This makes no difference, this is the same Gospel God gave unto me, himself!"

So then, how about I take another tack with you - I'll posit that recognizing "non-consistency" or "contradiction" does not equal "two aspects of the same truth" and I'll cite a biblical source for my observation: Jesus.

But first, let's put up some other biblical sources for context, since you'd provided them:
m[ike]: who says religion has to be this way? it was the pharisees that had put such a religious burden upon the people that jesus himself railed against. jesus said, “take my yoke upon you because my burden is *light*.”

ben: [D]on’t confuse “simple” for “easy”. Jesus said, “the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7) Jesus says true religion requires sacrifice. (Matthew 16:24)

Matthew 12 - The Elephant In The Room
Jesus said, in Matthew 12: (context, verses 1 - 7)
6-"But I say to you that something greater than the temple is here.
7-"But if you had known what this means, 'I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT A SACRIFICE,' you would not have condemned the innocent."

Here, Jesus is talking to Pharisees, who've condemned his disciples for picking and eating grain on the Sabbath. I don't see any reference to "true religion" at all, only "Compassion, instead of a necessary sacrifice to atone for something". And HOW does Compassion relate to "True Religion"? :P

But, in a strange and serendipitous arrangement, we have MORE in this chapter to look at.

Verses 24 - 29, Matthew 12:
24-But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, "This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons."
25-And knowing their thoughts Jesus said to them, "Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand.
26-"If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand?
27-"If I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? For this reason they will be your judges.
28-"But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
29-"Or how can anyone enter the strong man's house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house."

What's Jesus Saying to YOU here? I think he's trying to say that "a house cannot be divided against itself and stand", a "universal truth" from the horse's mouth, that doesn't even have an associated Old Testament scriptural basis. I think he's saying that division and schism leads to destruction.

But Wait! There's More
That's right! For, after Jesus puts the stinky ol' Pharisees in their place, he switches gears on us, and starts talking Damnation!

The Unpardonable Sin
30-"He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters."

Cosmic balance? Yin, and Yang? Nope... Good Righteous, and Evil; True, and False; Dichotomous States, Aspects only of opposing Values.

31-"Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.
32-"Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come."

And there's the Big Rub, of all of them. Here, we're given a Dire Warning, not to dare question that which has been revealed directly By The Spirit Of God... or face eternal punishment. And who, Praytell, Mr. Jesus, says when "the Spirit of God is Talking"? Will it be a Self Evident Thing (Actual Physical Miracles Happening In Front Of Your Eyes, like Jesus supposedly Did, but we don't see anymore), or will it be largely a matter of opinion, or will it be delivered from "On High" and revealed pretty much out of the blue, a "sign" without a "sign"?

A song occurs to me - "Trust and obey - for there's NO other way." If you sing that to yourself enough times.......

Words Reveal Character
33-"Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit.
34-"You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart."

Jesus wasn't a psychologist - but yet he shows remarkable skill in describing human nature, from his relatively high horse. I think he illustrates, well, that people reveal the desires of their heart when they speak to something - how else could he "have known" about the Pharisees? see verse 25 again!

And yet - we have more than "a heart", as humans... I mean to say, we don't use "the heart" to figure out our tax returns, for example, and that same rationality we use to figure out mathematics we can apply to a written document, or a speech we have to deliver. No heart required, sometimes - although a little "heart" generally makes things more enjoyable to read!

Jesus didn't need to use his heart, OR the spirit of god to know what the Pharisees were up to, simply from what they were saying about him.

35-"The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil.
36-"But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.
37-"For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."

Yin, and yang? I don't know, but I find it awful funny that now I can go to hell for what I didn't do, per se; only what I did or didn't say will make a difference now, which is a damn sight different than doing anything!

But Let's Not Take Matthew Alone!
Heck no! It's not like Matthew's alone in finding cosmic significance in this exchange! Let's see what Mark adds to it!

Mark 3:
22-The scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, "He is possessed by Beelzebul," and "He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons."
23-And He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan?
24-"If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
25-"If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
26-"If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished!
27-"But no one can enter the strong man's house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house.
28-"Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter;
29-but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"--
30-because they were saying, "He has an unclean spirit."

Oh No! Mark actually gives a reason for why being eternally damned is required!! You can only be damned in eternity when you are *really* speaking against the True Spirit of God, since then you'd be calling an undeniably 'clean' spirit 'unclean' - and for that, you should roast in hell, according to Jesus. Forget all about all the truly terrible things you've done in life - they don't matter, all sins have been forgiven, but JUST CALL GOD'S SPIRIT UNCLEAN, and poof! He'll make sure his house stays United.

So! If you'd like a Yin and Yang, would you please explain to me: if I'm supposed to be joyful of being "free" of the wages of Sin, a Free Gift of the Gospel, why ought I to feel ANY fear of Hell? Could it be that my "freedom" is an elaborate hoax, like "You're free to wander the halls, but don't go into that particular room"? Could it be that *we're strong men* who've been Bound, for a reason?

Why Wishing For A God Doesn't Work...

Here's a comment that I've posted to another blog. Read the full text of this dude's post here.

I'm also going to preface this, here, by saying that there's no excuse for willful ignorance. Stupidity, we make allowances for all the time.

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Bill Gnade wrote:
"FOR FUN: THE SPEED OF LIGHT AND YOUR EXISTENCE

Let me note this: If the speed of light is finite, and yet it is the fastest thing in the universe, then it follows that there is no present; there is no present tense. Every perception MUST be delayed; we only know the past. From object to eyeball, from fingertip to glass, there is a delay. Hence, we only know a present by inference; but such an inference is rooted in faith."

Let's check those premises. If:
A) Speed of light is finite.
Resolved as Yes: It's been measured by experiment, repeatedly, and we generally use the rough estimation of 3x10^8 m/s as it's speed. Strangely enough, you're asking that we proceed from this independent, observable fact.

AND B) Light is the fastest thing in the universe.
Oh my... loose words. Light's the fastest thing we have observed in the universe, and it's Einstein who lately predicted that nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

What Follows:
C) The delay incurred by the passage of light from "Event A" happening and "Observer B" observing it means we can never know what is true "Now" and instead, must infer things by "Faith"...

Let's take this properly - by it's conclusion "Never know what is true 'Now'" and after first addressing the appended Straw Man.

Particularly, you've used the word "Faith" in the middle of a perfectly rational thought experiment, dragging it from the realm of logic, and into the land of pseudo-science. You're literally trying to prove that rational thought (science, atheism, etc) has no basis for asserting any reality, especially uncomfortable realities that deny you a comfortable rut, but we'll leave that for just a little later.

The inconvenient truth for you is this: thanking Einstein, who agrees with (A) and who also postulated (B), I'd like to take the rest of his theory into account. For starters, he believed in an objective, real universe that was observable from various (ie. Relative inertial) frames of reference; and it was strange observations about the speed of light that made it necessary for him to create the concept of a malleable "spacetime", in order to preserve the most fundamental aspect: the Speed Of Light Remains Constant Regardless Of The Observer's Frame of Reference. A piddling matter, you gripe? Think again!

Prior to that, we had Newton asserting Time would eventually run out, you see- but Einstein changed that with the concept of "spacetime", and his theory accurately predicts things like time dilation, a necessary understanding for our current state of the art when it comes to GPS satellites, among other things.

All of this, incidentally, has little or no bearing on the Observer in Einsteinian thought experiments, other than noting that regardless of how fast he is travelling, he'll continue to observe light at the speed he's used to observing it; which is to say, his perception of "reality" within his frame of reference will continue to be "causal, objective reality".

Hold on!! That means, according to Einstein, we know a "present/Now" by DIRECT OBSERVATION OF IT, and then, we use a scientific method to logically infer the reality of the observed, by Induction (Cause + Effect => Rule), and Deduction (Rule + Cause => Effect); and Abduction (Rule + Effect => Cause) is the realm of Faith and theory, in which we can assert a truth (a Cause) we EXPECT to find, based on rules we know, and observed phenomena. Abductive reasoning is choosing a hypothesis (A) that would, if true, best explain the relevant evidence (B), and allowing it's Causes to stand in the place of the unobserved Cause we're seeking. Science makes use of theoretical concerns like this by experimentation , in order to move from Abduction to Deduction, and then to Induction.

This very pattern of growth, from bare hypothesis to near-inductive rule is exhibited particularly well by the concept of evolution, as it happens: once, it was a bare theory that made predictions about what we could expect to find; as recently evidenced in the US Supreme Court, it's since become something foundational to our understanding of the spectrum of human existence, with *direct observational data* supporting it time and time again.

How fitting your choice of battleground, since we're talking about cosmically old light on fantastic timescales, and the "actual reality" of what the light represents now is conveniently distant from our frame of reference: it is so removed, in fact, that many people will never ever consider to reflect that the stars shining in the night sky represent a snapshot of a particular time and place that was VERY real, and very far away. It doesn't matter to our day to day lives, so we easily abstract it, or forget about it, rather than even attempting to bend our minds around concepts for which we have no convenient image, or any curious desire to understand. Now that we have a good image for something so distant as to have next to no bearing on us, a reliable comparison for how to regard god, let's proceed.

The problem with Adbuction is that we are prevented, sometimes, from Direct Observation of the Cause - which you must admit, would be awfully nice in this case. **We only have Faith when we cannot (or will not) observe something** (and if you don't believe me, check how Paul defined it...) and that means, Abduction clearly the weakest of the types of Inference to an objective realist, because it potentially shrouds the "Unknowable" Causes behind pseudo- or out-of-context premises. I believe it's intellectually dishonest (at best; at worst, someone will shame you) when one doesn't check one's premises. To Wit:

I'm writing this "Now"; I'm writing in the present tense; not every perception is delayed, for sometimes I can act with certain knowledge that things will proceed as they always have, and anticipate outcomes with certainty. This differs from Prayer, say, which only works a percentage of the time, despite god being so good, smart, omnipotent and omnipresent, and all that jazz. It strongly resembles magic, when viewed from certain external frames of reference.

I'd also like to add: free will is a bitch; get over it, Calvinists.
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"Let me go with this further. If the speed of light is finite, then know that when you look at the stars in the night sky over Wisconsin none of those stars exists. Only their light "exists." Every single one of them may be gone. We CANNOT know they are there."

Well, Make Your Mind Up! Which is it? "None of the stars exist" or, "they MAY exist, or MAY NOT exist, any longer"... but we can most assuredly know that they WERE there (the light they threw an arbitrary length of time ago is undeniably here, observable and measurable, now) unless you subscribe to a Prankster God who arbitrarily sets up contradictions, mysteries, and celestial circle jerks for the benefit of keeping atheists and philsophers annoyed: the kind of god, say, who puts dinosaur bones with apparent ages in the millions of years in worlds that are only 7,000 years old.
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"Now, go with me even further. All your life light has been bouncing off of you, traveling about the earth. Imagine for a moment that the light from your skin travels out from the earth and into space. Assuming that you are only about 40-years-old, then you are, in a very real sense, 40-light-years old, too. What does this mean? It means at least this: to the overwhelming majority of the universe, YOU DO NOT EXIST! Anyone 100 light years away CANNOT know you exist. But, and here's the rub -- YOU DO EXIST!"

That's enough of that. You didn't know I existed until I wrote you back, so just "like the vast majority of the universe" I, actor and observer, wasn't CONCEIVED of by YOU. My being is independent, corporeal, active, and capable of rational thought, which means that in comparison to god I'm up on four counts. Why don't you check YOUR premises? god is any or all four of those things? With the strength and courage of your convictions, check *your* premises by asking, "What have I directly observed?" rather than being afraid of "What if there's no god?"

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"What does this say about our sense of knowledge? What does this say about our demands for proofs for the existence of God? For if you exist and yet the universe cannot and does not know it, then perhaps God exists and you cannot know it -- or do not know it -- yet!"

And perhaps, that's got no basis in reality! Unless you propose a means of exhibiting god's existence, you've got yourself into a bit of a pickle here. You're just asking to be left alone.

"They who have put out
the peoples eyes
reproach them
of their blindness"
-John Milton, 1642.