McBell
Unbound
Only to you and your choir.
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Your best argument that god exists
- Thread starter Skwim
- Start date
Well, moral is superfluous if you subscribe to the divine command theory. Otherwise the tag "moral" makes sense only if you have a concept of morality which is somewhat external and God happens to satisfy that requirement.
But the main question is: what makes you think that the principle of sufficient reason leads to a necessary explanation that has the faculty of choosing? It is nowhere to be seen in the definition.
Yes, we disagree, and that is major hurdle for objective morality. But we do not disagree, in general, that a triangle has three sides and that Obama is president of the USA.
Why is that?
Ciao
- viole
Koldo
Outstanding Member
Well, the spear was quite handy, considering that cruxifictions lastet much longer than that.
i am sorry 1Robin, but that is not impressive at all. That is induistinguishable from a guy that says: I have to get a very painful surgery and go on a coma for three days. But no worry, I will be back soon.
Ciao
- viole
1robin
Christian/Baptist
1. Morality - For my claim to hold true only requires that out of all the trillions of thing we think are objective right or wrong one is true. For your counter claim to be true requires that human intuition is wrong every single time, our laws are based on preference, and morality is just a word describing nothing more meaningful an evolutionary byproduct than flight. I think mine the superior position by an astronomical probability.
2. I should have used intelligent or mind in conjunction with being.
First argued by al-Juwayni in his Irshad and retold by Averroës. The principle of determination states that any being or effect requires a particularizer, a being who decides the course of an action between two likely choices (Wolfson 434-7). The universe may have been larger or smaller than it is, many billions of years older or younger, or it may have even failed to exist; any of these possibilities are admissible in that they are logically possible. With respect to the universe's existence, Averroës states that "the admissible is created and it has a creator, namely, an agent, who out of two admissibilities turns it into one rather than the other" (qtd. in Wolfson 437-8).Only a sentient being can make the choice to create the universe at the moment that it was created; the Creator could have created the universe an hour earlier or waited several days before doing so. As in Craig's argument, al-Ghazali uses the argument from particularization in his Tahafut to state that the creation of the universe at that particular moment in time was the result of the determined will of the Creator (Wolfson 439).
Eternity and Time in William Lane Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument
That is because both of those have concrete objective proof available to us all. Morality is an abstract. BTW I prefer tyrant in chief to president in this case. You have merely pointed out differing degrees of deniability or certainty. Not what is factual or non-factual.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
This feels like cheating but since these legendary scholars are far more qualified to answer you I will simply quote them. The quote concerns only some of the characteristics but does so in ways that may give you the template for how the additional characteristics may be derived.
Eternity and Time in William Lane Craig's
Kalam Cosmological Argument
James Still *
The clocks were functioning, thus someone must have set them in motion, even if their winding had been designed to last a long time. -Umberto Eco
William Lane Craig advances an argument for the existence of God in The Kalam Cosmological Argument (London: Macmillan, 1979). In his book, Craig argues that since the universe began to exist, the efficient cause of the universe's existence must have been God. His modern version of the kalam cosmological argument-first formulated by the Mutakallimun, the Muslim scholastics of the ninth century-rests on empirical arguments as well as a priori considerations that an actual infinite is impossible.1 Since an actual infinite is impossible, Craig argues, the universe must therefore be finite in time. In other words, the universe must have begun to exist.
Unfortunately, Craig's admirable effort to prove the finititude of the universe leaves him in the position of the runner at Marathon. While he has expended all of his energy to bring the news of the universe's beginning to us, he has little strength left to argue convincingly for its cause. Craig concludes that the historical kalam arguments for the temporality of the universe "demonstrate that the world had a beginning at a point of time. Having demonstrated the temporality of the world, the theologian may then ask why it exists" (1979, 9-10). Thus, the modern version of the kalam cosmological argument is (1) everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence; (2) the universe began to exist; therefore (3) the universe has a cause of its existence (1979, 63).
Many commentators have insisted that these premises are unsound. Perhaps the most rigorous criticism has come from Quentin Smith (1988, 1994) who argues from quantum mechanical considerations that the universe could begin to exist without an efficient cause. Smith (1987) also argues that the kalam argument does not preclude the possibility of an infinite past. Craig (1991) reiterates that an actual infinite by successive addition is impossible and so the past cannot be infinite either. I shall argue that Craig's conclusion is problematic and requires additional argumentation before the kalam argument successfully demonstrates that God is the efficient cause of the universe.
In reaching the conclusion to God as the universe's cause, Craig relies upon the Muslim principle of determination, first argued by al-Juwayni in his Irshad and retold by Averroës. The principle of determination states that any being or effect requires a particularizer, a being who decides the course of an action between two likely choices (Wolfson 434-7). The universe may have been larger or smaller than it is, many billions of years older or younger, or it may have even failed to exist; any of these possibilities are admissible in that they are logically possible. With respect to the universe's existence, Averroës states that "the admissible is created and it has a creator, namely, an agent, who out of two admissibilities turns it into one rather than the other" (qtd. in Wolfson 437-8). Only a sentient being can make the choice to create the universe at the moment that it was created; the Creator could have created the universe an hour earlier or waited several days before doing so. As in Craig's argument, al-Ghazali uses the argument from particularization in his Tahafut to state that the creation of the universe at that particular moment in time was the result of the determined will of the Creator (Wolfson 439).
I shall now present Craig's argument for God's existence after which I will carefully scrutinize the notions of time and eternity that Craig employs in it. Craig argues that the conclusion to his kalam argument suggests two possibilities: either the conditions that produced the universe are present from eternity (in which case the universe is also eternal) or the conditions produced their effect in time, in which case the universe had a beginning in time (1979, 150). If the universe's cause was mechanical (naturalistic) then either the universe has existed from eternity or it could not have existed at all. This is because any effect must immediately follow a mechanical cause (1979, 150-1). The wind that causes a leaf to detach from its branch cannot determine its own course of action. As soon as the set of necessary conditions within nature is present, the wind must blow. Similarly, if a mechanical set of conditions had produced the cause of the universe's existence, then the universe must have immediately begun to exist. A mechanical cause is unintelligent and cannot distinguish one particular moment in time from another. Therefore, a first mechanical cause could not have produced the universe in time.
A personal Creator, however, may choose to produce an effect at any time the Creator wishes, just as I may choose to eat an apple now or wait until later to do so. Since the universe began to exist-rather than existing from eternity-it is reasonable to conclude that the cause of the universe was a sentient being who willed from eternity to create a temporal universe. Since an actual infinite is impossible, the universe began to exist and could not have come into existence through a mechanical cause. The fact that the universe began to exist requires a particularizer who ex nihilo created the universe. Thus, Craig concludes that "if the universe began to exist, and if the universe is caused, then the cause of the universe must be a personal being who freely chooses to create the world" (1979, 151).
To say that the particularizer could have created the universe earlier, assumes that it makes sense for there to have been a time before the universe. Craig's argument then seems to presuppose an absolute view of time since the particularizer's choice to will the universe into existence "now or later" is otherwise meaningless in a state of affairs in which the universe and space-time do not yet exist. On a relational view of time, however, there can be no "earlier" in which events precede the universe.2 If the relational view is correct, time exists only in relation to other bodies in motion. If time is absolute, then we are justified in pondering why the Particularizer chose at that one moment preceding the universe to create it at that time. However, if time is relational, then there can be no time prior to the universe and hence no grounds for concluding that a determination was made in time. Clearly, this problem is aggravated in the kalam argument by an unclear notion of the concept of eternity. Does Craig understand eternity to mean relational atemporality outside of creation, or does he instead view eternity as an infinite duration of time? I would like to turn to this question briefly before discussing the kalam argument's conclusion.
Craig can mean one of two things in the notion of eternity. Eternity is either a finite causal chain of events within infinite, absolute time, or eternity is a timeless state of affairs that denotes the absence of existence since there are no bodies in motion. Let us consider the possibility that eternity is an infinity of time first. If eternity is infinite duration or "infinite time" per a realist view of time, then we are faced with the difficulty of explaining what events, if any, occurred during the quantity of time preceding the existence of the universe. To put this in a theistic context as Augustine wondered, what was God doing before God created the universe? (Confessions, XI, 13-14). This same bout of horror vacui led the Mutakallimun to argue that the creation of the universe was the result of a choice made freely by its Creator. Richard Sorabji calls this the problem of "Why not sooner?" and with respect to absolute time in Muslim philosophy,
Ghazali's discussion is particularly interesting. He reproduces . . . the Augustinian solution that there was no sooner. Against the 'Why not sooner?' argument, Ghazali repeats Philoponus' strategy of responding with the counter-problems about infinity (237).
Craig also points out that al-Kindi felt that time was finite because an actual infinite is impossible and time is a quantitative thing that must be finite in measure (1979, 25). Saadia also felt that the concept of infinite time is reduced to absurdity because of the problem of regressing an actual infinite (Craig, 1979, 39). Hayyat and Saadia argue, in the spirit of Zeno before them, that beginningless time is impossible since an infinite distance cannot be traversed and an infinite succession of events would never be able to arrive at the present (Wolfson 415-420). If time is finite then, what do we call that state of affairs that precedes time? Al-Ghazali argued that we are deceived if we believe that there existed a "time" before time (1979, 47). In his Confessions, Augustine calls the timeless void outside of creation "true eternity" (XI, 9) and Aziz Ahmad, in his study of the Mutakallimun, refers to the timeless void as "contact with eternity" (25). Ahmad admits that Muslim thought with respect to time is in conflict with Newtonian absolutism, and so he defines time in the Aristotelian sense of motion among entities. Thus, in Muslim thought time is not absolute, but rather "it is the succession of entities which gives rises [sic] to the notion of time [and] coming and going are acts which mark division in an otherwise static eternity."3 It would seem then that, in the historical context of the kalam argument and its prohibition of an actual infinity, eternity must be understood as a timeless state of affairs rather than a beginningless duration of absolute time. If this is so, then it is reasonable to conclude that the kalam argument allows eternity to mean a changeless, timeless void apart from the existence of the universe.
Craig seems to agree with the relational view of eternity. However, when he discusses the problem of an actual infinite, he slips into an absolute view of time to use the principle of determination in the kalam argument's conclusion.4 He argues that the universe began to exist because of thermodynamic considerations and the impossibility of an actual infinite. However, if eternity is a timeless void, then the universe is eternal in the sense that there were no moments in which the space-time continuum did not exist. Yet in order to effectively employ the argument for a particularizer who decides a course of action at a given moment, Craig finds it is necessary to revert to an absolutist view of time. (It is either that or he must beg the question for absolute time under the implicit assumption that a Creator exists prior to the universe.) This equivocation is seen most clearly in Craig's conclusion where he asks "why did the universe begin to exist when it did instead of existing from eternity?" (1979, 150). Similarly, in his discussion of big bang cosmology, Craig asks, "if the big bang occurred in a super dense pellet existing from eternity, then why did the big bang occur only 15 billion years ago? Why did the pellet of matter wait for all eternity to explode?" (1979, 117). Craig's concern is anticipated by Averroës who also wondered how the Creator could choose between two admissible and equally likely outcomes. However, Craig wrongly presupposes an ontological view of time that conflates timeless eternity with temporal infinity-an infinity that is supposed to be a priori impossible in the kalam argument. In other words, if the super dense pellet exists "from eternity" how can it "wait for all eternity" before producing its explosion? In a relational view of time, the universe's existence from the first moment is its existence from eternity; thus, Craig's questions only make sense from a realist view of time. Yet, we have already seen that Craig relies upon a relational view of time in his argument to prove that the universe cannot be infinite in time. The kalam argument becomes entangled in this conflated notion of eternity when it argues that God was a particularizer who freely chose to create the universe in time.
Cannot the universe begin to exist in time and its cause be infinite in the sense that the Creator is everlasting? Let us suppose for a moment that time is ontologically real. If this is so, then necessarily the Creator must also exist in time. However, if the Creator produced the universe in time then there is no reason to think that it was the first cause or that God is that cause. We might apply the principle of sufficient reason to ask whether God is a first cause or one of many possible intermediate causes in time. Grünbaum (1989) points out that
if literally everything-including the universe as a whole-has a cause to which it owes either its state-of-being or even its very existence, it becomes imperative to ask for the cause of God's state-of-being or even existence. Why should He be an uncaused cause? (383; his emphasis).
Craig (1992) feels that Grünbaum's argument is "flimsy" because "according to the kalam [argument] everything that begins to exist has a cause. Since God is eternal, He requires no cause" (236; Craig's emphasis). If time is absolute-and the universe began to exist while God exists from infinity-then Craig's reply seems quite cogent. But if eternity is timelessness, then his reply is insufficient because it excludes anything outside of space-time as requiring a sufficient reason for its existence. If God's atemporal existence requires no cause then we must also admit that an atemporal quantum singularity does not require a cause either. This is to say that, in a relational view of time, if there is no time t prior to the existence of the universe at t = 0, then any efficient cause (such as an initial big bang singularity) must be an eternal, uncaused cause. In other words, we would have no means of determining whether the efficient cause of the universe was naturalistic or supernaturalistic. One could press the principle of sufficient reason to argue that, despite its timeless nature, an initial singularity is still a positive fact that requires a reason and, therefore, must be an intermediate cause rather than the first cause. If an initial singularity did produce the universe and was itself efficiently caused by God, then God might be that elusive first cause. However, there is no way of knowing this short of arbitrarily saying so, or as many have pointed out, stopping Schopenhauer's hired cab at God's doorstep and dismissing it promptly thereafter. Unless God's role as first cause is begged, it seems incumbent upon us to ask who or what efficiently caused God. In a relational view of time, a predicate other than "eternal" must be our criterion of correctness for determining a first cause, since an initial singularity and the Creator are otherwise synonymous in this regard.
Craig (1992) argues that the efficient cause of the universe must be God because only God can produce a temporal effect from an eternal cause (235). However, if Craig understands eternity to be timelessness, this argument loses much of its force because we have seen that an initial singularity can also produce a temporal effect from an eternal cause. Since Craig presupposes that God necessarily exists prior to the universe, his argument generates an equivocation between eternity as an infinite duration of time and eternity as relational timelessness. Yet, this maneuver is unwarranted. Craig realizes that there is a problem with speaking about events in this manner, and so reduces the problem of an eternal universe to the notion of a permanent universe:
The universe has 'always' existed in the sense that there is no past moment of physical time at which it did not exist; but it has not 'always' existed in the strong sense of being permanent, since it had a beginning of its existence, and therefore it is sensible to ask for its cause (1992, 239).
This is a curious argument. It is argued from the kalam argument's second premise that the universe must have begun to exist, because from a priori considerations the existence of an actual infinite (and an actual infinite by successive addition) are impossible. Yet, if the universe must have begun to exist because it is not possible for a thing such as the universe to exist infinitely, then it follows that God is a being who also cannot exist infinitely. Since a priori the existence of an actual infinite implies an absurdity, God's existence must also be thought of as finite for the same reason. Clearly, the use of "permanence" in this argument is lacking because under his criterion of the impossibility of an actual infinite, everything (to include God) must owe its existence to something else.5
The problem is solved if we realize that the question of what comes before the universe is meaningless. If time is a necessary component of the universe and is nonexistent in an initial singularity of infinite density and curvature, we cannot meaningfully inquire into events that exist outside of that singularity. Grünbaum (1989) warns that asking "What caused the big bang to occur at t = 0?" commits the fallacy of presupposing that there is a "before" to speak of (389). With respect to the universe, we should not say that after the initial singularity at t = 0 space-time exists, since the use of after begs the question of a time before the universe at which it did not exist (Grünbaum 390-1). It is our grammar in the verb "to cause" that is the real culprit here. When considering causation, we think that there must be a prior action acting upon the object taking the verb. Even if there can be no temporal events outside of the universe, we want to say that the universe must have a prior cause to its existence. Our depth grammar with respect to the notions of "God" and "eternity" has produced intractable problems because we are unsure of what these utterances really mean. In the absence of clarity, we stumble around with these words and attempt to use them in a way that lacks sense or purpose.
In conclusion, I find that the kalam argument is a very convincing proof for the notion that the universe began to exist. I must admit to sharing Craig's existential concern that something should exist rather than nothing. But further than this I cannot go. There are limits to human reason and the desire to push beyond those limits will produce only confusion. The kalam argument's conclusion that a particularizer acted as the universe's cause centers around two equivocal notions of eternity. When Craig argues that the universe's cause must have been God because a temporal effect arose from an eternal cause, he does so on the assumption that the particularizer chose freely to create the universe within time. However, the universe and God are both eternal in the weak sense that no temporal moments precede either being. To say that the universe fails the test in a strong sense is really saying that the universe is a positive fact that requires a sufficient reason for its existence. However, that the principle of sufficient reason can be employed against everything that exists, including God, should make us suspicious of the usefulness of this principle in the argument. Simply put, the kalam argument carries too heavy of a burden in its task to show God as the first cause. It must assume that time is real and infinite in order to generate the puzzle of why the Creator chose to create it "now" rather than "later." Yet, it must also fall back upon a relational view of time in order to conclude that the universe is finite.
Endnotes
* I want to thank Professor Wes Morriston, University of Colorado at Boulder, for our conversations on time and causality; his insight into God's timeless existence prior to temporal creation have helped me tremendously in understanding the problems of eternity in the kalam argument.
1 In Arabic scholastic useage, kalam referred to specific theological or apologetical discourse involving proofs for the existence of God, God's justice and mercy, or doctrinal interpretations from the Qur'an. Muslim thinkers working in the kalam tradition, modified Aristotle's argument from his twelfth book of the Metaphysics, to argue that time is both quantitative and finite. Since time is finite, all of Creation must be finite and an eternal Creator must have willed the universe into existence.
2 Since Newton's Principia, time is usually spoken of as either absolute (real) or relational. Plato and Newton held an absolute view of time. On this view, time is a substratum that provides a "stage" for the actors to strut across. All states of affairs occur within the substratum of time and even if nothing else existed, time would still exist. On the other hand, Leibniz and Einstein held a relational view of time. On this view, the metric of time is ontologically nothing without states of affairs, which relate to each other in space. In short, time does not exist unless there are bodies in motion.
3Ahmad, 1974, p. 34; Craig agrees that al-Ghazali does not dispute the Aristotelian definition of time as the measure of bodies in motion, i.e., change (1979, p. 47).
4 Craig concludes that he considers the relationship of God and time to be that God exists "timelessly without creation and temporally subsequent to creation" (1986, p. 171). However, this is not to say that Craig has not advanced support for some kind of absolutism. In contrast to an Augustinian "absolute timelessness," Craig states that there exists an ontological time experienced only by God called "true temporality" ("God and Real Time," Religious Studies 26 [1990]: 335-347). God's true temporality may help to explain why Craig presupposes that God, as the particularizer, had to make a choice to create the universe when he did rather than earlier or later.
5 This is why Kant felt that the cosmological argument eventually reduces to the ontological argument. At some point, the proponent must stop asking for causes of causes and resort to a concept of God as something than which nothing greater can be conceived. This is the only way to stop the chain of causation from running backward ad infinitum.
Eternity and Time in William Lane Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument
At that particular moment in time? This is typical evidence of how medieval (and Muslim) philosophy can lead to nonsense, when taken seriously.
What does it mean one day later, if days, and time, started with the Universe, allegedely?
Do you guys elect tyrants democratically (twice)?
Ciao
- viole
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Koldo
Outstanding Member
That is a very long quote to support a very small point. I grant that ( given the vagueness of the concept in the first place ) the biblical god could feasibly be the creator god. To be more specific, I grant that this power could be within such a god's grasp. On that aspect he matches. But I am much more interested on the other aspects. For example, some narratives on the bible, like on Genesis, do not match what we know about the world. To call it a perfect match is way too much of a stretch.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
Indistinguishable - "that is right out"
1. Jesus was beaten until the bones were visible, spat on, cursed, rejected by every friend he had.
2. Your guy was probably surrounded by many loved ones and given any medicines to stop pain and anxiety needed.
3. Jesus felt every ounce of pain of his torture.
4. You guy was not conscious of the surgical operation at all.
5. Jesus refused even the wine/gall that was a very mild anesthetic held up to him on a stick and sponge.
6. Your guy had his choice of juice.
7. Jesus only had two choices to hang from the nails in his arms and suffocate or to stand on the nail through his heal. Most alternated between the two.
8. Your guy was in a hospital bed after his painless surgery and apparently in a blissful coma for 3 days. With every comfort possible provided.
9. Jesus was thorn in a cave and sealed shut.
His pain was only going to get worse for the next 3 days.
I have had facial reconstructive surgery twice (I guess I was that ugly). I would rather have 100 more than to spend 2 hours on the cross.
Jesus' ordeal just got worse after death. The bible says he went to hell for 3 days. It depends which version of view of hell you subscribe to. But in any description you are infinitely separated from God and all God comes with, love, contentment, joy, etc......... It is worse than hanging out with those death eaters from Harry Potter. This was the primary sacrifice. And it occurred to a man who voluntary surrendered all these after having enjoyed them from eternity past.
Also remember this. There is no necessity that Jesus physically suffer the worst possible pain wee can imagine. Just that he suffered something horrific and sufficient.
I will conclude with a coroners report of crucifixion. One of the least graphic ones.
The JAMA study led McKeating to the classic text in the field, A Doctor at Calvary, an exhaustive account written by French Catholic surgeon Pierre Barbet. Barbet completed his book in 1949 after decades of research.
McKeating praises both studies for their scholarship and their unflinching care.
"Anyone who studies the matter has to start with these sources," he said. "But keep in mind that it is a start. As we advance in medicine, we are able to learn still more about our Lord's passion."
How did crucifixion usually happen? Applying their medical knowledge to the historical data, doctors such as McKeating, Barbet and the JAMA team have attempted to reconstruct the events.
Maximum pain
The ancient Romans had a special genius for torture. It helped them keep order in a vast empire. The public spectacle of extreme suffering repeated with some regularity served as a deterrent to would-be rebels and insurgents.
Crucifixion was the utmost refinement of the Roman art of torture. The Jewish historian Josephus called it "the most wretched of deaths." It was designed to cause the most pain in the most parts of the body over the longest period of time.
Crucifixion was humiliating, too, so it was usually reserved for slaves, lower-class criminals or those whose crimes were especially heinous. The stripped man was exposed, naked, to a boorish crowd that delighted in such spectacles. They cast stones at him, spat at him, jeered at him.
The end began when executioners extended the condemned man's arms and bound them to a wooden beam. Sometimes, they would also drive nails through the man's wrists at the highly sensitive median nerve. The executioner relied on the element of surprise for the first hammer blow. The victim was unlikely ever to have experienced such pain before. It was "the most unbearable pain that a man can experience," Barbet concluded.
Nailing the second arm, however, could pose a problem, because the nervous system would instinctively recoil from any repetition of that pain. The executioner would need to struggle against an arm rigidly resistant to his efforts. All of this wrangling, involuntary on the part of the victim, would intensify the pain in the arm already nailed.
The beam then was attached to a pole. Every shift of the beam renewed the pain in the median nerve. But all of that was just a prelude to the real torture of crucifixion.
The victim found himself suspended above the ground, his body slumped forward, his knees bent and his feet positioned as if he were standing on tiptoe. That position made it almost impossible for him to draw a breath.
"Crucifixion stretches the chest cavity open," McKeating explained, "and the weight of the body pulls down on the diaphragm so the lungs are kept open. It requires great effort to breathe in and even greater effort to exhale which is normally a fairly passive process."
The victim could not breathe inward or outward without lifting his body up by the nails in his wrists and pushing up on the nail in his feet. With every breath, then, he felt the coarse metal tearing at his nerves.
Gradually, his limbs cramped and weakened. As he was less able to lift himself up, he began, slowly, to suffocate.
A victim of crucifixion alternated between the panicked sense of asphyxiation and the searing pain of the nails in his flesh. Relief from one inevitably brought about the other.
In a strong man, this could go on for many hours, even days. If the Romans wanted to accelerate the process, they would break the victim's legs so he could no longer push himself upward to take a breath.
Even before the cross
"Jesus was probably a strong man," McKeating said. "He was relatively young, He worked hard, and He tended to travel by foot. But by the time He reached Calvary, He had undergone many hours of preliminary tortures that alone might have killed him."
In the Garden of Gethsemane, "His sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground" (Lk 22:44). The JAMA article, following Barbet, attributes this to a phenomenon called hematidrosis or hemohidrosis hemorrhaging into the sweat glands. This is a rare condition that occurs in people at the extremes of human emotion. It leaves the skin very tender and highly sensitive to pain.
Jesus would have keenly felt every blow as His captors "mocked him and beat him" (Lk 22:63). The beatings continued through long hours in which He was also forced to walk from one interrogation to another before the Sanhedrin, before Pilate, before Herod and again before Pilate. The JAMA research concludes that He walked two-and-a-half miles during that sleepless night.
Pilate ordered Jesus to be flogged, and Roman flogging alone could kill a man. A typical whip of cords was studded with metal, sharp animal bones or shards of pottery. It was designed to bruise and tear the skin. Often, a man was whipped by two torturers, one on each side, while he was bound to a post or pillar. It was here that Jesus probably suffered His greatest blood loss.
His back, torn open by the Romans, then had to bear the rough wood of the crossbeam, which probably weighed 75 to 125 pounds. He had to carry the burden along an uneven roadway from Pilate's praetorium to the hill of Calvary, a third of a mile. Surely, He fell often.
"Some people say that Jesus' suffering was somehow easier because he was God," McKeating said. "But that's not so. Many theologians believe He suffered in a greater way because He had perfect knowledge of what was happening. Also, His senses would have been more acute and more sensitive to pain because they were not at all dulled, as ours are, by sin and self-indulgence."
Cause of death
What killed Jesus?
"I think it's multifactorial," McKeating said. "I think the proximate cause of death was probably suffocation asphyxia. But I think the end came relatively swiftly just three long hours because our Lord was probably in shock before He was actually crucified.
"After the exposure, the emotional duress, the severe beating and then the scourging, He was probably in Class 3 shock, out of a possible 4."
A great physiologist once described shock as the rude unhinging of the cellular machinery of our bodies.
"The technical definition," said McKeating, "is that it's inadequate perfusion of blood to the tissues of our body.
Our bodies normally have five liters of blood. McKeating said that "in a typical Roman scourging, a man would have lost a liter and a half."
Shock would have weakened Him and left Him anxious and confused, hastening the end.
The Gospels suggest other factors, McKeating said. "After Jesus died, the soldier's lance thrust brought forth blood and water (Jn 19:34). Where did the water come from? Probably pericardial effusion. Fluid would have built up from internal injuries, pulmonary contusions, bruises, beatings, and it would have filled His chest cavity or the sac around His heart. Every time the heart would beat, then, it couldn't expand the way it needed to, and it couldn't fill up. Eventually, it would stop."
Forensic scientists say that the better we know what killed someone, the more likely we are to find out who killed him.
Who killed Jesus? After a decade-and-a-half of study, McKeating doesn't hesitate to respond.
"I did," he said. "My sins did."
What Killed Jesus
The word excruciating derived from crucifixion.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
Sorry about the length but I thought you should see how the scholars conclude things like this. Using the same methods you arrive at every characteristic that the biblical God has. He is the only one that matches them all. Allah gets close but not quite.
Another way to look at this is to eliminate what could not have cause the universe. Nothing in the universe could have pre-existed the universe to have created it's self. Secular cosmology points to a time when nothing natural existed. 14 or so billions years ago a universe (time, space, and matter) came into existence. And so there was no time, space, and matter to create any time, space, or matter. IOW the universe does not have a natural cause. That only leaves 3 things. Nothing, an abstract concept like numbers, or a being exactly like the biblical God.
1. Nothing cannot do anything. It has no causal power what so ever. There is a famous saying "out of nothing, nothing comes". Nothing literally means NO - thing.
2. Abstract concepts do not stand in causal relationships with anything. 2 + 2 never created 4 of anything.
3. This only leaves God. You can exclude most of histories God's because most are derivative. Nature created them not the other way around, some are non personal and so cared not to create anything, etc...... you can eliminate almost all of them one by one. This would leave but a few possibilities left, the biblical God being the best candidate.
As for Genesis your counter claims are against an interpretation not against scripture. God packed billions of years into a few paragraphs because we (not the universe) is it's subject. Long before anyone thought the universe was old and that evolution existed theologians read Genesis in ways that allow for both. For example no Hebrew calendar considers the days before Adam as 24 days. Maimonides and the Cabalists allowed for evolution and a very old universe simply reading Genesis as is.
To avoid quoting a whole chapter again I suggest you look into "The Science of God" by the physicist Gerald Schroeder concerning the convergence of science and the bible. It is more complex than you may realize.
BTW even if the bible had never been written you would wind up needing a God just like it describes to account for reality anyway. If fact philosophers created their own generic theoretical God and it is an exact match for the biblical God.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
Everyone who has to describe before the beginning of the universe has trouble with terminology. I am not going to speak for that person but out tie is space time. Two related things. I would refer to before the universe existed as God-time. Time discussions are very hard to have because language is too clumsy to accurately convey an exact claim. However as long as we are not unreasonable we can allow a little rationality to grant obvious meanings even if the language is clumsy. Craig actually wrote a very large paper on this exact problem and spelled out in great detail how he relates to statements about time before the big bang. I have never read it all but would recommend it. It is mainly our own fault. We have used the word time to describe space time so long that they have become synonymous.
We have elected them far more than twice. We elect what is better called a soft tyrant, quite often. Soft tyranny is even more evil than hard tyranny in that it is subtle and not overt. Usually a pure tyrant (like Caligula) eventually goes so wrong someone kills them, soft tyrants slowly eat away at things and slightly change laws until a decade or two later your living in a whole other nation and did not notice it happen. Obama is a genius but he is a genius that does not like what this nation has traditionally stood for and has accumulated power as fast as possible in order to make us into another nation all together. Our government was designed specifically to make it hard to change. It is the best system ever designed but it has the same lethal flaw all systems do. It includes humanity.
You know what the best form of government is? A good dictatorship.
You know what the worst for of government is? A bad dictatorship.
For every good one you get you maybe get 5 - 10 bad ones because they depend on humanity.
Our democracy was designed to go bad as slow as possible.
Shad
Veteran Member
Looks like you didn't read what your copy and paste. The article points out the flaws of KSA and the conclusion paragraph is a nail in the coffin of the argument. It is arguing against the KCA.
kepha31
Active Member
Wrong. The empty tomb is factually historical. By adjusting the rules of historical evidence, you can make anything "not historical". Your first step is to discredit the Bible and the easiest way to do that is remove it from the society that produced it. You silence both in one swoop. You make the claim that Jesus performed no miracles and did not rise from the dead (without any proof), therefore is not God because God does not exist. You call it scholarship, I call it an agenda.
You ignore "inference to the best explanation", a common method of determining a historical event. But you don't like the application of this method on the empty tomb because it violates your agenda, and you tell me I know nothing of what is or is not historical.
The resurrection proclamation "could not have been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact for all concerned." This is common sense, a fact you ignore.
Then we have the Jews making up a story that the disciples stole the body. From what? A factually non historical tomb? Where is the logic in that? Why would Jews, hostile to Christians, admit to an empty tomb? If a source admits a fact that is decidedly not in its favor, is the fact not genuine?
By "we" you mean a minority of "scholars" who picked up where the myth theory left off in the 1900's, and are not well received by their peers as you would have us believe.
Wrong, and so what.
What lies behind all this criticism is a scenario like this: Long ago, sometime between Jesus (whoever he really was) and the rise of the "organized Church," some unknown editors just cooked up a story about Jesus, attributed it to, say, John, and sent it off to random communities of gullible people. These people naturally believed without question both that the book was from John and that John was telling the truth, so they started a Church based on this book. They never bothered to check up on any of this, because they were 2,000 years more gullible than we Brights. Nor did anybody from the community where John lived ever say, "Hey! John didn’t write that!" Nor did John himself ever protest that he’d written or said nothing of the kind. Fortunately, Brights are smarter, so these elementary questions occur to them.
In fact, however, the community, not the book, comes first. The book is the testimony, not merely of one man, but of the whole Church. The book was believed because the man was believed. And the man was believed, in part, because he was not one man (like Mohammed or Joseph Smith) claiming a vision and promising earthly pleasures and power, but because he is one of 500 people who bear witness by a life of martyrdom to public events that took place within the living memory of all Israel (1 Cor. 15:6). That’s the meaning of the endorsement at the end of the Gospel from the Johannine community: "It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true" (John 21:24). It means "You guys in the neighboring diocese down the road know John and what he has suffered for the Gospel and you know us. We will vouch for the accuracy of this document."
read more here: http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/did-john-write-his-gospel
Decades? How many, exactly? One of the rules of historical documentary evidence is that a manuscript that was written or copied 50 years after the actual event or after the original autograph is most likely to be more accurate than a copy made 500 years late.
The oldest extant manuscript we have of Plato was a copy made 900 years after Plato's death. In actuality we cannot possible know for sure if those writings are actually Plato's.
But with the New Testament writings we have extant copies only a few decades from the original autographs. This is POWERFUL evidence that the Bible we have today is indeed the accurate writings of the Apostles.
In similar manner, we have extant copies of the thinking and teachings of the Church Fathers that we can compare to prove that the Oral Tradition we teach today had its foundations and beginnings in the early Church.
If a person is to believe that the Platonic Dialogues are actually written by Plato, then one should have no problems believing that the Oral Tradition of the Church is intact for the evidence for the Church is nearly absolute, the evidence for Plato is essentially speculative.
Caesar never called himself "I Am". "son of god" was an honorary title given to various Roman dignitaries by the Imperial government, and in Ceasars case, posthumously. The wording appears the same, the context and usage for Christians was nothing like the Romans. And you well know the Jews considered it blasphemy. This is the third time you brought up this false equation of a term, and it's dishonest.
Funny how the latter flourished under constant resistance.
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Koldo
Outstanding Member
What distinction do you make between the bible god and the quran god ?
It is entirely possible to have this universe without a god. But that's not what I am talking about. I am much more interested on you referring specifically to one god. For the sake of this topic, let's say I agree with the existence of a creator god. What would convince me that it is the biblical god ?
Hold on. If you are going to go with the idea that a non-literal interpretation of Genesis is valid then it will be left to you to determine how to interpret it. Which means you will be able to bend and twist it according to your liking and needs. I see no reason to accept that unless you can convince me your interpretation is the most accurate.
Are you asking me to read a book from an orthodox jew ? Are you sure about that ?
How about something smaller from someone who agrees with you about who is the creator god ?
I am not sure what you mean by this. Are you talking about philosophers that were heavily influenced by a monotheist religion ? Or perhaps about philosophers that ended up influencing monotheist religions ?
Shad
Veteran Member
A horrible book made by someone well outside his field of expertise as evident by his claim that modern humans started 5,759 years ago, anything before this is human-like pg 142. Never mind we have found humans before this period. We will just call them human-like but create a nonsensical explanation that these were not really humans based on the bible rather than anything scientific.
Nonsense as the God of Judaism was limited. The Platonic model of God was developed before Christianity thus this model influences Christianity rather than the other way around. Look up the relation between Neoplatonism and Christianity to see how it influenced Christianity rather than the Bible producing a similar model in a vacuum.
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1robin
Christian/Baptist
I did notice that a counter argument was contained in what I quoted. I left it for three reasons.
1. I did not want to be accused of cherry picking the stuff that agreed with me and excluding the counter point.
2. I did not read any counter claim which I saw that was persuasive so I felt it no threat to my argument.
3. To provide all around knowledge of how these things are weighed.
What last paragraph?
The last in the body is this:
I see agreement but the suggestion that this person could not grant the last step with the same certainty as Craig had. No nails here.
The last in the endnotes is this:
This is actually a reason to believe Craig and is merely a commentary on Kant's opinion. An infinite regression of causation is as absurd as something from nothing.
Where is this nail in the coffin?
Shad
Veteran Member
It was misleading as you cited it as an argument for your position while the only position in common was what would now be known as the Big Bang Theory. Beyond that it did not agree at all.
From the full article itself.
This is just evidence you didn't read what you posted, your source quote-mined or left out the complete article. It also shows Craig must use a leap of faith rather than his own argument to reach his presuppositional conclusion. Stills actually shows how and why Craig makes this leap.
Eternity and Time in William Lane Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument
Which is why the argument fails as it invokes infinite regression only in order to arrive at the presupposition of choice. Yet a cause is identified by a spatial and temporal location. No space means not location, no time means there can not be an act as an act is restrict to time. Hence why having a god before the beginning of time and acting, which is within time, to create is nonsensical. If time is a property of the universe then there can not be a "before" nor an act within this "before" One can simple cut out god as an unnecessary assumption thus avoiding the issues with time Craig fails to resolve as he uses olddated Aristotle and Newtonian causation rather than modern ideas.
Quoted and linked above
It seems like either you did not read what you linked or did not understand it.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
Too many to list. You would have to narrow down the context. My dismissal of Allah may or may not have anything to do with creation it's self.
I did not get to faith in this way but for the purposes of this argument I would rule out derivative God's. For example every Roman God I can think of is part of nature and is not primary to it. IOW 99% of all God concepts can be easily eliminated. Lets say that left only 100 candidates. I would then use other methods. There would be a thousand test like for example starting with the textual integrity of the literature about that God. The consistency within the narrative, knowledge recorded before man had learned of it, etc.........I can't give you the thousands of reasons I exclude other God's. The best I can do is give you an argument that requires a God who's description matches mine. At the very least that instantly rules out 99% of competitors. I will give you at least one additional piece of evidence. Hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of rational people claim to have been born again using the bible as a road map. No other religion has even a meaningful fraction of that many people who claim to have experienced God. Most other religions do not even offer that ion their doctrine. I am trying not to get to far afield from the main argument here.
No (at least I have never heard of them) biblical scholar thinks the bible is 100% literal. I was not giving you my interpretation. I was giving you the interpretations of thousands of theologians who made them long before they had any scientific need to. It is not my opinion, Jewish calendars do not count the pre-Adam days as days. Your merely arguing against the Catholic interpretation that was forced on much of the world.
I hope your objecting to the length on the book not his being Jewish. You can search for just his texts on Genesis. However lets see if we can agree on something. Do you believe the BBT and the BGVT both posit an absolute beginning of the universe?
Vilenkin’s verdict: “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.” | Uncommon Descent
No. Philosophers had to invent a generic God so as to discuss what his existence would mean. It is basically an intuitive God that can be discussed in a non faith based way. Actually there have been more than one. One Christopher Hitchens refers to as kind of deistic deity, but the one that has dominated is best described as the greatest conceivable being. If you look into modal being you should find a description of him. I would do it for you but I am so frustrated with my slow PC and the act I can't remember the name of that God Hitchens refers to I will leave it here.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Nah. That's the best argument for a Whopper with cheese.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
Summarize the main points.
Considering how Christianity is a vastly common religion on western countries it is no wonder that a lot of people would find solace on it. Not to mention how well know it is for proselytism.
Add to that the social and psychological structure offered by the churches and christian communities and it is easy to see how this came to be. That requires no supernatural explanation.
And what I had in mind were not other gods when I said what I did. Let me clarify this point: This is not a deathmatch between gods. The true creator god could be part of no religion at all.
I know there are interpretations other than the good old literal one. But like I have said, unless you can show me that yours is the most correct, I have no reason to accept it.
I am also objecting to him being jewish, considering the subject we are talking about.
Since he is an orthodox jew, he clearly doesn't believe in the same creator god as you do.
And yes, in my opinion, the BBT does posit an absolute beginning of the universe.
Greatest conceivable being ?
The one that Anselm talked about ?
In other words, the christian god he believed in.... ?