If this is the best you can come up with, then I guess that there aren’t any verses in the Old Testament that say the Messiah was to martyred. Even if you somehow, during maybe a mind-numbing fever, interpret that mess to say that some future leader was to be martyred, you can’t avoid the fact that said leader was to come from the House of David, which meant that Jesus didn’t qualify!
Now, Zechariah might work with somebody who already believes and is looking for support, no matter how vague and tenuous that “support” might be, but to me it just looks like a bunch of hooey.
How does following a prescribed course of events entail any choice? It’s like actors in a film. The choices are merely illusionary.
Your choices are set in stone. In other words, you don’t have a choice.
This has no parallel to the issue at hand. This is not about whether you know what will happen to somebody else. This is about whether the presence of an omniscient being excludes freewill.
Suppose I get my hands on the scripts of a film. I will know how every character reacts and chooses in that film. If A is supposed to shoot B in scene 24, lo, that’s what is going to happen.
Same with real life. Just consider an omniscient being has a script about how and when everything is going to happen from the beginning to the end.
Thanks for your kind response.Scoffguard’s on. Your Bible is very different than mine. I’ll do a little more reading.Where did it say the martyred leader was to come from the house of David? Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father was from the house of David, but I don’t know that he was mentioned until the new testament; so the martyred leader was from the house of David. Not sure what that proves or disproves. I don’t think the fact that the New Testament was written after the fact means it’s not valid. If so, you’re going to have to throw all the history books out and keep Sylvia Brown’s(is that the ridiculous pschyic that’s writing all those books?). I’m not reading the Bible for validation or support. I think it is a beautiful, horrifying, contradictory, confusing book. Don’t think anyone could just read it and a lightbulb would go on. Don’t know how to pull things into this text, so I’ll just quote what jumped out at me Zec.9:9. “Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion, shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem! See your king shall come to you; a just savior is he,Meek and riding on an ass.” Zec.10:6(partial)“the house of Joseph I will save”. Chapter 11’s too long to quote, but God became the “shepherd of the flock to be slaughtered”, got rid of 3 leaders. Broke the staff called “Favor” which broke his original deal with us. If they liked the new covenant, pay for it. Gave him 30 pieces of silver(hmmm) foreshadowing? Then talk about woe to a foolish sheperd. Chapter 12:10 is pretty similar in both versions, just referring to the piercing. No real proof there or anywhere in a book, just fascinating co-incidences, prophecies or whatever you want to call them. Oh yah, hooey. Did you know hooey is Hebrew for “soul who doesn’t believe yet, but wil get it someday”. Okay, kidding, sort of. No body proved anything to me with facts. I just felt it. It’s a good thing too, because I’d have a hard time proving my great-grandfather’s great-grandfather existed, much less 80 generations ago. IWLN
Urban Ranger, We were given free will. That in itself is a double edged sword. God may see all if he chooses. At least that’s what we were led to believe. God is not the only power involved here. When the struggle for Job went on, God actually stepped in and reminded Job of his power. Satan is referred to as roaming and patrolling the earth. I think when we chose sin and it’s consequences, God didn’t wash his hands of us, but did leave us to shape our own fate. There is so much we don’t know and alot that has been told to us that isn’t necessarily all factual. An assumption of having no control over your life is a stretch. It would be a pretty mean God who makes us accountable for actions we have no control over. I just can’t buy it. Who said we were following a prescribed order of events? " A" might not shoot “B”. He might stumble on the way in and break his trigger finger. If the director of this film(our life) is all knowing, all powerful and he wants us to have free will. Who’s going to stop him, anyway. I’m not sure where the idea that everything is “scripted” came from anyway. Just because he knows all(if he wants to), doesn’t mean he controlls all. I have to believe the world would be a kinder, gentler place if that were so. That’s not to say he doesn’t meddle at times. No one can dispute that good and evil exists. They can only argue about where it’s coming from. When my children grew up and started their own lives, I was at times relieved because I didn’t have to know everything they were doing. Even if I know something will work out in the end, I don’t want to watch everytime they suffer or cry. It hurts. I guess I think as God’s children, it’s not all that different for him. IWLN
If there is a being that truly knows all, if this is possible, then everything is predetermined. If you are capable of knowing everything, past, present, and future, that means that free will is merely an illusion, because you know how everything will turn out. Even if God said “Oh, alright, free will switch… On…” and it was so, he’d still know the results of our actions, being all-seeing and all.
What about “God’s plan”? According to a lot of Christians, God has a plan beyond our comprehension, and is doing all this stuff to reach some sort of goal. Bullshit, I say, God could do whatever he wanted, and get to the end result of that plan immediately. If, like some Christians said, the process is what God wants, then God’s a pretty evil motherfucker - God’s process seems to involve a lot of suffering. And the whole apocalypse thing, allegedly coming around near the end of the “plan?” Pretty nasty.
Exactly my feeling.
I think we should really be asking what would Judas do?
The logical thing would be to save Him (if He were truly innocent … more in a moment). After all, if he’s released at this Passover, he can certainly orchestrate his martyrdom at another time. He’s a young man. Plenty of time to get yourself killed.
Now, was he truly innocent? The Bible often admonishes us to obey the rule of law, render unto Caesar, etc. So if Jesus was, indeed, creating a disturbance of the peace in Jerusalem (which he seemed to be), then Pilate was justified in punishing him to keep order, wasn’t he?
Now, the severity of the punishment may have been absurd … but the rule of law is the rule of law.
Jesus did do some pretty weird crap. Killing an entire town’s pigs, for example.
IWLN:
Perhaps you can be more specific. I see nothing in those chapters that says anything about a martyred Messiah. Do have a specific passage in mind?
I can assure that martyrdom was never a pre-Christian expectation for the Messiah and nothing in Hebrew scripture has ever been read that way in Judaism.
The Annointed one was supposed to be a king in the lineage of David who would restore the kingdom of Israel (and because we are talking about a royal lineage here, stepsons don’t count. Even if Joseph was a descendant of David, Jesus was not and therefore could not have been a legitimate candidate for the throne of Israel. He was not of the House of David).
The Jewish Messiah is a human king not a divine redeemer.
It’s not just a matter of God knowing everything you will ever do that precludes your having free will. It’s the fact that he knew everything you would ever do * when he created you * that’s most damning.
We live in a deterministic universe. Everything that happens has a cause ( many causes, in fact). Every cause has a cause. If God in omniscient, and the creator of everything, then he was not just aware of every cause, he started them in motion, knowing the results.
If you can act in a manner contrary to what God planned when he created the universe, knowing it would lead to you, knowing all of your decisions from the moment he said “let there be light”, then God is not all knowing. If you cannot act in a manner contrary to what God planned when he created the universse, knowing it would lead to you, and knowing all of your desicions from the start, then you do not have free will. There is nothing ‘free’ about following the path laid out for you, in ignorance that you are following a path.
You can’t have free will and an omniscient creator God at the same time, they are contradictory concepts.
Willass, Cute site. There are several versions of what Judas did. One version in Luke talks about Satan entering him. Luke also wrote Acts and it seems there are discrepancies, even in his own two writings. There are multiple versions of the story. The one I was familiar with was Judas betrayed Jesus, went back and tried to talk the people out of punishing him, didn’t work. He took money and tried to give it to the chief priests, the refused it, he threw it into the temple. Hung himself. Money was used to buy a potter’s field. The bible is full of poetic license, man’s interpretations and story stealing. Men were no different then, than they are now. A straight list of facts isn’t very exciting. It still has it’s uses and information. Just remember when 20 people witness a crime or even an event; there are ususally 20 different descriptions of those events. Churches/“religion” doesn’t like to admit to these imperfections. God didn’t write the Bible, although I’m sure he had input. Where does it say Judas came back to life and died again. I just found two different versions of his death, but not the other. I’m cursed with morbid curiousity. Jesus rose from the dead and didn’t have to die again, so my vote is still for him. I have always thought Judas got an awfully tough deal. IWLN
IWLN, what say you about the whole free will thing?
Gadfly, Survivors coming on right now and free will says I must watch. I know who’s going to win, so I guess they have no choices to make. Okay, kidding. I’ll be back shortly.(Wasn’t kidding about part of it). IWLN
Gadfly, Okay I’m going to address the “pig killing” incident first. I haven’t went back and referenced this issue. The way I remember it though, there were a couple of guys having a real problem with demonic possession. Now don’t get me wrong, I do like bacon; but even though sometimes I like animals better than some people, I think humans get first dibs on cures. Plus we can always cure the pigs later. So Jesus commanded the demons to leave the men and enter the pigs. The whole process seemed to make the pigs a little mad and off into the water they went. Free will, or the devil made them do it? I’ll be back with the whole free will thing in a minute. IWLN
On to the free will thing, again. My computer has crashed 5 or 6 times half-way through some really impressive points(okay, maybe it was only me that was impressed). My computer never crashes. The last time it crashed, I had just typed, oh kind of sarcastically “Free Will, Smill, God make it go away”. And poof it was gone. I didn’t mean it literally, but that God, he’s such a kidder. I probably didn’t have that much to add anyway. I just don’t understand why God knowing what’s going to happen makes it a given that we can’t change anything. I want to briefly go back to the psychic. If there was one who could truly see my entire future, but didn’t say anything to me; would that take away my choices. They might know my choices ahead of time, but I would still be making them. Arguing that if God can see everything, that means everything is predetermined doesn’t make sense to me. Nobody seems to give any credit to the evil forces that also seem to drive things. The bad guy was present when Adam made his first choice and it seemed to me God was a little surprised to come back and find them in fig leaves, but who knows. On to the “Plan beyond our comprehension”, or as I refer to it “The smug, self-righteous Christian, who doesn’t have a clue how to anwer the question and doesn’t want to say so”. I guess I think “THE PLAN” , you know the big one involves all the worlds, not just ours. Is it beyond our comprehension. I don’t know, but it would probably change our whole thought process and alot of other things here. And I still don’t think God’s just sitting there alone. He may be chairman of the board, but he’s sharing the office complex.
cont’ Okay, I hit the wrong button, didn’t mean to send. You know this process that we’re going through and I get it that you think the word process is a dirty word isn’t about a goal or at least that’s not the way I would put it. I believe it’s to learn and the journey here is such a short one, I don’t know what the problem is. Some of us go to school close to a third of our lives to learn how to do something. 70 or 80 years in relation to forever seems pretty measley(sp?). Putting everything in our brain that we ever need to know, now that seems like programming. I don’t like the suffering part much, but have learned alot through that process. So is motherfucker one word or two? Oops, off the point. I don’t want to be programmed, I want to experience and learn and grow. If I had come into this world with everything I wanted, needed and knew everything, what would there be? And about that whole apocalypse thing. It does sound pretty awful, but does(to me) validate my point that good and evil exist and are in competition. And seem to be pointed straight at us sometimes. Can you imagine how hard it was for the author of Revelations to understand what those visions meant or more to the point, how to put them into words. Let’s assume you believe it for a minute. So it’s 2000 years ago and you’re getting visions that show the earth 2037 years later. Eyes gleaming like fire-could be sunglasses, voice like the roar of rushing water-microphones. The sharp two edged sword that came out of his mouth-tongue ring. Okay I was being a little flip, probably a little blasphemous(sp?). But if you read it closely you can come up with things that sound like they might have been helicopters, maybe tanks. It also talks about war breaking out in heaven and Satan was driven to earth.I’m convinced there was a significant amount of poetic license applied to this book of the Bible too. But the whole good vs. evil is what it’s about. It’s also supposed to encourage us to stand strong. IWLN
Diogenes, It seems so clear to me. Although I’m not sure what the importance is of a prediction of the martyred messiah. There’s first the prediction of “your king and savior showing up”, which doesn’t suggest martyrdom. I think the 30 pieces of silver and the breaking of the original covenant by God does. The other was the house of David and Jerusalem shall look on him whom they have thrust through and shall mourn for him and that has to do with piercing his side during the crucifixtion. As for the annointed one being a king in the lineage of David, I never heard of anyplace that referred to him as a stepson(I think Mary would have been stoned). Joseph married her to protect her and gave Jesus his families lineage. Now you either believe that the virgin birth was hooey, which means Jesus really was from the house of David or you believe Mary was not a nice girl. From what I’ve read from some of the books not included in the Bible(the ones King James dumped), it sounded like Mary was very protected. Still, as I’ve said before, the Bible doesn’t prove anything. You can pick it apart and put meaning into things that other people don’t see. I learned facts and maybe some fiction from the Bible but I didn’t read the Bible and think, well that convinced me, I’m a believer. Believing in God happened to me a long time ago. I kept feeling this kind of tug, maybe it was a nudge and one day I just knew with complete certainty. My parents believe in God but it was never shoved down our throats. My dad was actually baptised after I was. I went to a lot of different churches trying to find one that fit. I have always been a little blunt though and I think there were a few churches that heaved a sigh of relief when I continued my search. I have a problem being told how I should believe when I already know what I believe. I was looking for a church that didn’t condemn other religions, sexual preferences, etc., and that didn’t cause instant narcolepsy. Doesn’t exist.IWLN
Have you tried the Unitarians?
Thanks Gyrate. I now go to the Catholic Church, simply because when I married my husband, it was important to him. Decided where I go, isn’t as important as what’s in my heart/mind. I would like to discuss a couple of issues with the Pope, but my husband’s not in favor of it.
IWLN
We don’t give evil any credit because God made that too. He made EVERYTHING.
You have two options: You can have an all powerful, all knowing God, who knew everything that would ever happen, at the moment of creation, and thus must have intended it ( else why create it?).
You can have a God who doesn’t know everything, or is not all powerful…or didn’t create the world, so you are capable of acting in a manner other than he intended.
Look at it this way. If God knew at the moment of creation that you would wear a red sweater on July 31, 1998, he created you to wear a red sweater on July 31, 1998. If you wear a green sweater that day, his knowledge of what you would do was imperfect, thus he is not all knowing. He would have been wrong when he created the universe, because something that he ‘knew’, and therefore intended, did not come to pass.
If you are not able to wear anything but a red sweater that day, you do not have free will about your choise of sweaters. You do not know that you were destined to wear a red sweater from the moment of creation, so you retain the illusion of free will, but actual free will implies that it is possible for you to do other than what God knew you would do when he made you.
Comparisons to psychics or your future self traveling in time do not work, because their knowledge is imperfect. God’s knowledge supposed to be perfect.
God being all knowing also means that he knew from the moment of creation exactly what Lucifer would do. He intended it. He knew that evil would be created. He went ahead anyway and didn’t alter his creation to prevent it. He also knew from the start who would be damned and who would not be. And he created the damned anyway.
The creation aspect of the whole thing is vital to why you cannot have free will with an all knowing God. He knew when he made you, everything that you would do. Do do otherwise means God is not all knowing. To be unable to do otherwise negates free will. God can’t just “give you free will”, because the concept logically contradicts what God is supposed to be.