OK… This can be an interesting conversation if people want to accept on forehand that I shall never ever change my mind about this. Even if I wasn’t Muslim, I never would believe one single word of it.
I’ll give you my first two reasons (other to come)
God is God = the uncreated, transcendent, eternal Creator of all
No human is/can be God or God wouldn’t be God.(see above)
Atheists are of course also more then welcome in this debate.
If you only look at the idea “uncreated transcendent eternal creator of all” as a concept then that excludes in my opinion already any human or or any lifeform whatsoever.
A thread in which the OP states he has already made up and closed his mind on the subject and can never be persuaded otherwise. I’m struggling for a word to describe that situation, but it somehow escapes me…
But I’ll bite anyway. Since God is also omnipotent, He can clearly “do anything”. “Anything” would, in my book, include creating a human who was part of Him, making that human also God.
I personally don’t believe in God. But if I did, I’d have no trouble believing that He could infuse his essence into a human being if He so chose. As to whether that actually happend in the case of Jesus Christ, well that might be another matter.
Sorry?
Since when is it “closed minded” to say that you wont chance your view on something that is for you an impossibility?
Stating next why it is an impossibility for you… And inviting others to bring in and defend their view.
Is opening a topic here equal with readiness to change your mind or what are you saying?
I think you are saying that I must be ready to accept the views of others and forget mine or else I can’t make a thread here, no?
How can a created human at the same time be uncreated transcendent and eternal, which is what the concept “God” as described in the OP is all about?
Salaam. A
Sorry Aldebaran, this forum is called “Great Debates” for a reason. If you start a discussion saying that it is utterly impossible to change your mind… where is the debate.
I was raised as Roman Catholic (and perhaps I am still one), surely you have to concede that a God capable of creating the universe and everything that is inside is powerfull enough (read omnipotent) to be born of a virgin.
Can you accept that God can do things that humans cannot understand? If so, then that pertty much wraps things up. God did it, and you just aren’t capable of understanding it.
What is the point of such a statement anyway? Why not keep your self-assurance to yourself and just ask the question without the grandiose assertion of What Will And Will Not Ever Happen. You’re not omniscient, so such a declaration is possibly foolhardy.
The best defense of the theory that Jesus is God is that the Bible says it is so; of course this only carries some weight if you have already accepted the authority of Biblical writings, but (and this is the important point) some people have accepted the authority of the Bible and so, for them, there is ample reason to believe it.
Now if you’re asking what would be the best evidence for the divinity of Jesus to a non-Christian, I think it would be fair to say that there is no such evidence - why should there be?
Christianity (for the most part) holds that Jesus is ‘God made flesh’ - that the fully divine person of Jesus pre-existed his humanity, but chose to be made humble and be born into a human form - that the spiritual entity of God eternally exisitng as the person of Jesus fully inhabited a human body for a time.
Defense? it’s called faith. Do you believe that Allah is the only god and Mahoma is it’s prophet? Prove it… you can’t or at least it is impossible without entering in the realm of beliefs, a realm in which a rational discussion can never take place because we are lacking those lovely little things called FACTS.
Except that Christian tradition holds that Christ existed alongside God the Father before anything else, and that it wasn’t until 1 A.D. that the Son became incarnated in human form. The Gospel of John kicks off with this:
The “Word” or “logos” is, of course, considered to be Christ, who reveals God the Father to humanity. John’s Gospel later explains that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (1:14) in reference to Mary’s pregnancy.
In short: Christ always existed as God, and so wasn’t “created” but merely entered the physical world in the Incarnation.
OK, I don’t personally believe in a God, but from a theoretical standpoint I don’t have any difficulty imagining a God powerful enough to create a representation of Himself in human form. The human form doesn’t replace God, it’s an extension or manifestation of God.
In addition to the logical warning signs noted by other in the OP, I have to question your intent, given the fact that you, as a self-proclaimed scholar in comparative religious studies, should already know the answer to the question you posed:
(bolding mine to alleviate possible confusion caused by the fact the the quote in question apparently states that he both is, and * is not* knowledgable on the subject)
Atheist weighing in.
I don’t believe in God but I do believe that a man named Jesus Christ did exist.
At the time of his alleged birth and execution the Jewish people were agitating for home rule from the Romans and I think that Jesus was just a man who the people chose to follow as a leader of their cause, maybe he had great oratory powers, I don’t know.
As for the cross being a symbol of Christianity I think you have to remember that crucifixion was the recognised method of execution in those days and I further believe that the Romans had had enough of Jesus’s agitation and decided to make an example of him.
Thanks Aldebaran. They needed an unanswerable question, for humility. Atheist here. The concept of god is impossible, since no such a thing could possibly exist. It is outside the laws of physics, the first principle of which is that all things exist and have force, things that don’t exist are irrelevant to the study of physics. If you cannot believe whole-heartedly in the impossibility of god, then you cannot logically believe in anything. As far as Jesus is concerned, that’s just another superstition promulgated by people in big cults or people afraid of their own mortality, for some inexplicable reason.