>[...]
>
> >RW>There are two other possibilities:
> >>1. Jesus was aware of the prophecies and matched his actions to the
> >>prophecies.
>
> >SJ>This may in fact be true of some prophecies. The New Testament indicates
> >that Jesus grew up like a normal child and that he only gradually became
> >aware of who He was. A legitimate part of this becoming aware of who He
> >was and what was to do, may have been His reading of what the Old Testament
> >prophecies said the Messiah would do.
> >
> >But as Geisler points out above there were some prophecies (like Mic 5:2 and
> >Dan 9:24-27) that were outside the power of Jesus or His followers to
> >fulfill, unless Jesus was who He said He was.
>
> >PR>Or unless the Gospel authors fashioned the story to fit the prophecy.
>
>See previous post on this. It is easy for amateur critics like Paul to
>blithely
>say this, because they never have to work through the details and
>implications of their `the Gospel authors were frauds' theory. My
>understanding is that few (if any) of even the radical critical theologians
>have maintained this. It is just too psychologically absurd that a group of
>Jews would author some of the highest ethical teaching the world has ever
>seen, and then be prepared to die for those teachings, when all along they
>were just frauds who made the whole thing up.
Chris
Whereas, if they are *not* Jews, such a thing *would* be plausible? Hmmm.
Since such stories are to be found in a number of religions predating
Christ and occurring in other parts of the world. The people who make these
things up are either just telling innocent "stories" that get spread and
become "truth" by doing so, and then get written down as some sort of
"gospel." They are not, generally, fraud in the literal and deliberate
sense, they are not deliberate chicanery. They are just fiction that has
come to be believed by the gullible, such as yourself, and then passed on
to *others* as the absolute truth, and built into some sort of religion.
Further, the authors of the "final," written versions may very well think
that the *literal* truth of what they are writing is of no significance
whatever in comparison to what they take as the absolutely transcendent
spiritual truth that it promotes.
Finally, I understand that, until many decades after the time of Jesus'
alleged existence, even *Christianity* itself did not regard the stories as
literal journalistic truth.
>But I am not going to repeat myself and I will start to wind down this
>thread. I plan to do an FAQ of this prophecy to show how it: 1) establishes
>the reality of the supernatural (and hence shows that materialism and
>naturalism are false philosophies); and 2) how it verifies the truth of
>Christianity. Part of this FAQ will examine naturalistic objections like
>Paul's `fraud theory' and show how they are inadequate.
Chris
Even if the journalistic facts are *absolutely* true as claimed, they don't
even remotely begin to show the reality of supernaturalism. Your wishful
thinking won't get you past the fact that there is not a single aspect of
the journalistic aspects of the story that can possibly distinguish
supernaturalism from naturalism. For *any* such collection of observable
facts, we can make an infinite number of naturalistic explanations that
will be better than *any* supernaturalistic one. This is not only implied
by the Principle of Naturalistic Sufficiency, it's obvious in its own right.
Since it is not even *logically* possible to prove supernaturalism, you are
*hardly* going to be able to prove the truth of your *particular*
special-interest brand of it that you call Christianity, but I look forward
to the illogic of your attempts.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Dec 07 2000 - 21:45:51 EST