Jesus' Divinity

  • Thread starter Thread starter LiveforChrist
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
L

LiveforChrist

Guest
Hey Everyone,

I just have a question… How do we as Catholics make a case that Jesus was in fact divine?

Thanks and God Bless,
LiveForChrist :signofcross:
 
40.png
Thought_Officer:
I’ve heard the argument numerous times that Jesus was either a liar, lunatic, or the son of God. I tend to think that those aren’t the only options though. You can be heavily misinformed, or delusional, without being a lunatic. It poses a false trilemma, if you will.

I’m interested in knowing how Catholics distinguish Jesus from the other alleged Messiah’s performing miracles and resurrecting themselves during that time (and prior).
Click to expand...
Who for example?

Chuck
 
40.png
Thought_Officer:
I’m interested in knowing how Catholics distinguish Jesus from the other alleged Messiah’s performing miracles and resurrecting themselves during that time (and prior).
Click to expand...
YES! I’ve been wondering this myself! :confused:
 
clmowry said:
I missed the one with a ressurection and the evidence for such.

Chuck
Click to expand...
So did everyone else.

Maybe the young chap who gave us the epic, riveting “documentary” “Zeitgeist” could help out. 😃
 
40.png
Thought_Officer:
My point is that Jesus is competing for divinity with other claimants: that’s an agreeable enough assertion to make, isn’t it? That others have claimed as Jesus has…
Click to expand...
Nope. I haven’t seen anything to support the assertions of any other claiments.

Chuck
 
I thought one argument was the conviction and widespread testimony of his resurrection. The fact that the apostles spread out and under persecution (and eventual martyred death) sought to preach about Jesus, particularly strengthened in their resolve after seeing him resurrected, would be absolutely insane if these miracles/resurrection did not actually happen.

Of course one could argue the validity of the Gospels, but that’s a separate discussion and debate. Concerning Jesus’ divinity, there are many more arguments, but I can’t think of them immediately. I know there’s books dedicated to the subject, and theologians and positions in the Church hierarchy whose lives are dedicated to the subject as well.
 
40.png
Thought_Officer:
Naturally.

The very presence of other claiments poses a difficulty for Jesus’ assertions, since it is at least clear that saying or being thought of as divine (especially by superstitious, iron-age, desert-dwellers) tends to hold zero congruence with reality. “Oh, that’s only in most cases! We make an exception for Jesus–” as did all the others for their local Messiah.
Click to expand...
I know it is not a thorough argument, but for me, it is simple: “By their fruits you shall know them”. I know where Jesus’ fruits are. I see His church. I see His priests. I see His teachings have lasted for 2000 years and have 1.5 billion followers.

Now, where exactly are the churches of those other messiah’s? I know they must be around here somewhere…:hmmm:
 
Jesus’ resurrection cannot get off the ground when we use Bayes’ theorem, especially if we use Laplace’s law of succession to discern P(R|h), in which case we’d ask how frequently our hypothesis is true in other cases, and that’d be our prior probability. So, if every 1 out of 10 corpses resurrects, our prior for R would be 1/10. Obviously, there are billions of corpses, and we wouldn’t say any of them have resurrected. So, the prior is…astronomically low.

The only possible way the resurrection could probably have happened is if the evidence we have is strong enough to overcome that initial improbability. But, as you might be intuitively grasping, only evidence near absolutely certain could accomplish such a feat.
 
Perplexity said:
Jesus’ resurrection cannot get off the ground when we use Bayes’ theorem, especially if we use Laplace’s law of succession to discern P(R|h), in which case we’d ask how frequently our hypothesis is true in other cases, and that’d be our prior probability. So, if every 1 out of 10 corpses resurrects, our prior for R would be 1/10. Obviously, there are billions of corpses, and we wouldn’t say any of them have resurrected. So, the prior is…astronomically low.

The only possible way the resurrection could probably have happened is if the evidence we have is strong enough to overcome that initial improbability. But, as you might be intuitively grasping, only evidence near absolutely certain could accomplish such a feat.
Click to expand...
Oh no, not Perplexity!!! -jumps ship-

Ah, in all honesty, I wish I knew enough to defend against this, but alas, I leave it to the others to have at.
 
40.png
Thought_Officer:
Naturally.

The very presence of other claiments poses a difficulty for Jesus’ assertions, since it is at least clear that saying or being thought of as divine (especially by superstitious, iron-age, desert-dwellers) tends to hold zero congruence with reality. “Oh, that’s only in most cases! We make an exception for Jesus–” as did all the others for their local Messiah.
Click to expand...
That’s just silly.

I claim that I am the force that causes the Earth to be attracted to the Sun. I think that really brings gravity into question.

Chuck
 
Perplexity said:
Jesus’ resurrection cannot get off the ground when we use Bayes’ theorem, especially if we use Laplace’s law of succession to discern P(R|h), in which case we’d ask how frequently our hypothesis is true in other cases, and that’d be our prior probability. So, if every 1 out of 10 corpses resurrects, our prior for R would be 1/10. Obviously, there are billions of corpses, and we wouldn’t say any of them have resurrected. So, the prior is…astronomically low.

The only possible way the resurrection could probably have happened is if the evidence we have is strong enough to overcome that initial improbability. But, as you might be intuitively grasping, only evidence near absolutely certain could accomplish such a feat.
Click to expand...
So you’ve set the burden of proof so high it can’t be met. I don’t believe you,ve proven the necessity for everyone to do so.

Chuck
 
40.png
Thought_Officer:
I’m not sure whose position this statement is supportive of, mine or yours 😉 It might be argued that other biggest-religion-in-the-world’s have had their season and perished–that this is the fate of all Religions
Click to expand...
Tell you what, let’s give it another 2,000 years or so and then if Christ has not yet come back we can continue the discussion.

I’ll even buy the first round. 😃
 
40.png
Thought_Officer:
If we set the threshold lower, then we shall have to make that exception for all claims, even very stupid ones. I should say that that is not something any of us are prepared to do, Catholic or otherwise!
Click to expand...
If we set the threshold no lower than “absolute proof” how would you ever believe anything about any subject?

Chuck
 
40.png
Thought_Officer:
I’m not sure where you’re trying to go with this.
Click to expand...
Someone else claiming to be the messiah or claiming to have been resurrected no more calls into question Christ’s resurrection than my claiming to be the cause for the attraction between objects invalidates the theory of gravity.

Chuck
 
40.png
Thought_Officer:
I’m not fussy, any kind of proof of resurrection would be fine.

I’m saying we cast serious doubt on other claims of people being the messiah (which we must necessarily do so in order to confirm Jesus as the real McCoy), yet that option isn’t available to us in some sense, because there are countless claims of messiahship, and it’s not a practice anybody takes seriously–disconfirming gods so that they can justify belief in their own.

Belief in Jesus’ resurrection is therefore a faith-based enterprise, not one that’s going to be supported by evidence. Catholics and non-Catholics alike understand faith to be a flimsy concept though since there are, literally, an infinite number of appeals to faith, and so you don’t often hear people saying: “I just believe, okay?”

In keeping with the thread theme, Jesus’ divinity must surely also be a purely faith-based assertion.
Click to expand...
If you think there is no evidence for Christ’s ressurection, or divinity, then I would suggest that you are being more “fussy” than you care to admit.

There is more testimony to this truth than perhaps any other theological proposition on the planet.

Chuck
 
40.png
Thought_Officer:
Well, I’m not advocating for their being better evidence of miracles or resurrections performed by *other *messiah’s either.

As I have asserted (and has been asserted elsewhere in this thread), the testimonial evidence you want to proffer only has value if ressurections are possible to begin with, which, after observing the goings-on of the innumerable dead, seems not to be the case.

If I suggest a historical figure that was cut into 100 equal pieces and miraculously reassembled himself, you wouldn’t say “let’s see the testimonials!” You would already know, by reason, or by the mores of our time, that such a thing isn’t possible. So it is with resurrection.
Click to expand...
If I follow your logic I have to say that this universe was never came into existence because we do not have any evidence of other universes like this one coming into existence and we cannot gather that evidence either. I guess that I do not exists.
 
40.png
Thought_Officer:
Well, I’m not advocating for their being better evidence of miracles or resurrections performed by *other *messiah’s either.

As I have asserted (and has been asserted elsewhere in this thread), the testimonial evidence you want to proffer only has value if ressurections are possible to begin with, which, after observing the goings-on of the innumerable dead, seems not to be the case.

If I suggest a historical figure that was cut into 100 equal pieces and miraculously reassembled himself, you wouldn’t say “let’s see the testimonials!” You would already know, by reason, or by the mores of our time, that such a thing isn’t possible. So it is with resurrection.
Click to expand...
So you accept or reject the evidence based on the verdict you’ve already rendered.

Again, why bother to discuss it all?

Chuck
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top