There is only one path up the mountain, only one G-d

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warpspeedpetey

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there seems to be in modern society, some tendency to believe in an absolute parity of faiths, as though there are equal arguments on all sides and it is really just a matter of personal choice as to which faith you follow. that somehow strikes me as ludicrous, to wit, only one G-d is possible, all others are, by definition, false

i wonder if the best argument in favor of Christianity, goes something like this.

the Old Testament predicts the advent of a Messiah who would fulfill certain conditions, the New Testament fulfills that prophecy of a Messiah, specifically as Christ fulfilled those prophecies.

seems like insurmountable evidence to me. No other faith makes such a claim. any good arguments against such an idea?
 
there seems to be in modern society, some tendency to believe in an absolute parity of faiths, as though there are equal arguments on all sides and it is really just a matter of personal choice as to which faith you follow. that somehow strikes me as ludicrous, to wit, only one G-d is possible, all others are, by definition, false
Why? Other faiths have more than one God - what is so impossible about multiple gods? There are many different humans, many different living organisms, many different angels so why not many different gods? Whence the logical impossibility of more than one god?
i wonder if the best argument in favor of Christianity, goes something like this.
the Old Testament predicts the advent of a Messiah who would fulfill certain conditions, the New Testament fulfills that prophecy of a Messiah, specifically as Christ fulfilled those prophecies.
Erm, how do I put this gently. Jesus did not fulfil all of the prophecies, just some of them. For example, He did not rebuild the Temple (Ezekiel 37:26 - 27), He did not gather all the Jews back into Israel (Isaiah 11:12) and He did not usher in an era of peace (Micah 4:3). All of those things are prophesied of the messiah but Jesus did not do any of them. That is why Christians believe in a second coming, so that Jesus can catch up on all those things that He didn’t do the first time round. Thus far Jesus is at best a partial messiah, not the complete messiah. Only after the second coming can we be sure that He will fulfill all of the required prophecies.

Fulfilling some, but not all, of the prophecies does not qualify one as the messiah. I fulfil at least one of them - I am male - but that does not make me the messiah, with my own second coming to pick up on all the ones I missed the first time round.
seems like insurmountable evidence to me. No other faith makes such a claim. any good arguments against such an idea?
Yes. Jainism claims that the coming of the Tirthankara Mahavira was foretold by the previous Tirthankara, Parshva, about 250 years or so before his birth. Both Parshva (800 BCE) and Mahavira (550 BCE) are historical figures. Your claim for uniqueness is false. There is also the Buddhist claim of the future birth of the next Buddha, Maitreya. Do you count that as a similar claim?

You ought to study your claims in more depth before making them.

rossum
 
there seems to be in modern society, some tendency to believe in an absolute parity of faiths, as though there are equal arguments on all sides and it is really just a matter of personal choice as to which faith you follow. that somehow strikes me as ludicrous, to wit, only one G-d is possible, all others are, by definition, false

i wonder if the best argument in favor of Christianity, goes something like this.

the Old Testament predicts the advent of a Messiah who would fulfill certain conditions, the New Testament fulfills that prophecy of a Messiah, specifically as Christ fulfilled those prophecies.

seems like insurmountable evidence to me. No other faith makes such a claim. any good arguments against such an idea?
If Jesus proved anything it was that he did not need to prove any Jewish prophecy in order to be the son of God. He just was. Just like every human.
 
Why? Other faiths have more than one God - what is so impossible about multiple gods? There are many different humans, many different living organisms, many different angels so why not many different gods? Whence the logical impossibility of more than one god?
all things in the universe consist of one substance, no matter how deep you go, all the normally observable things that you mention are made up of that substance.

no two paint companies have the exact same formula, the inference being that if there were more than one Creator we should see more than one substance, but we dont. we know of nothing created from a substance with no relation to the substance of other objects.
Erm, how do I put this gently. Jesus did not fulfil all of the prophecies, just some of them. For example, He did not rebuild the Temple (Ezekiel 37:26 - 27), He did not gather all the Jews back into Israel (Isaiah 11:12) and He did not usher in an era of peace (Micah 4:3). All of those things are prophesied of the messiah but Jesus did not do any of them. That is why Christians believe in a second coming, so that Jesus can catch up on all those things that He didn’t do the first time round. Thus far Jesus is at best a partial messiah, not the complete messiah. Only after the second coming can we be sure that He will fulfill all of the required prophecies.
as He told the pharisees in reference to that, "tear down this temple, and in 3 days i will rebuild it, a reference to the Resurrection, the temple was indeed rebuilt in 3 days.

as to waiting to see all of them fulfilled, that will be too late for the purposes of salvation
Fulfilling some, but not all, of the prophecies does not qualify one as the messiah. I fulfil at least one of them - I am male - but that does not make me the messiah, with my own second coming to pick up on all the ones I missed the first time round.
lets stick to unique qualities, after all 48% of humanity fits that one.

how many were born in the town of David, Bethlehem?
how many are of the line of David?
how many were Hebrew?
how many entered Jerusalem on an donkey?

the lists go on and on. yet only one fit all of them, and that was Christ.
Yes. Jainism claims that the coming of the Tirthankara Mahavira was foretold by the previous Tirthankara, Parshva, about 250 years or so before his birth. Both Parshva (800 BCE) and Mahavira (550 BCE) are historical figures. Your claim for uniqueness is false.
tirthankaras arent Messiahs, they are humans who have reached ‘enlightenment’ that is a much different thing
There is also the Buddhist claim of the future birth of the next Buddha, Maitreya. Do you count that as a similar claim?
buddhas are also humans, not deities, as with the jainist tirthankaras they are humans who are said to reach enlightenment, where there is a system by which it is decided when the next enlightened teacher is to be born that is hardly the same as prophecy, much less dozens of converging prophecies, made by more than one individual, over the course of centuries.

i would say that the argument for uniqueness holds
You ought to study your claims in more depth before making them.
:rolleyes:
 
all things in the universe consist of one substance, no matter how deep you go, all the normally observable things that you mention are made up of that substance.
If we look at the universe we see that there are different elements. No two elements are the same, therefore by your argument each different element was created by a different god: God of Hydrogen, God of Helium, God of Lithium etc. Your argument here fails.

If you want to take it to a deeper level then we can go for: God of Electrons, God of Protons, God of Photons etc. There are different substances at different levels of analysis.
as to waiting to see all of them fulfilled, that will be too late for the purposes of salvation
Until all of the prophecies are fulfilled, He can only be a partial messiah. Only when all the prophecies are fulfilled can He be considered a complete messiah.
yet only one fit all of them, and that was Christ.
False, as I have pointed out. He has not yet fulfilled all of them, just some. You are right that He fulfilled more than me.
tirthankaras arent Messiahs, they are humans who have reached ‘enlightenment’ that is a much different thing
What are you saying is unique about the Old Testament prophecies of the messiah? That they have only been partly fulfilled by Jesus, as opposed to the Jain prophecies of the twenty-fourth Tirthankara which have been completely fulfilled. Christianity is not the only religion which has fulfilled prophecies.
i would say that the argument for uniqueness holds
All religions are unique, that does not make all religions correct. You cannot use uniqueness alone to tell if a religion is correct or not. Besides, specifically on the messiah there is a second religion which also has prophecies of a messiah so that particular claim of Christianity is not in fact unique.

rossum
 
Could you tell me what that substance is?
sure

its a reference to the things from which objects are made. you may say molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, quantum wave functions, or if you are really old school a ‘monad’. it doesnt matter what level of structure you wish to use, all objects in the universe can be described in terms of that structure.
 
sure

its a reference to the things from which objects are made. you may say molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, quantum wave functions, or if you are really old school a ‘monad’. it doesnt matter what level of structure you wish to use, all objects in the universe can be described in terms of that structure.
Well, that is certainly a novel definition of a substance. Maybe it would be safe to say that you take a quantum view of the universe?
 
If we look at the universe we see that there are different elements. No two elements are the same, therefore by your argument each different element was created by a different god: God of Hydrogen, God of Helium, God of Lithium etc. Your argument here fails.

If you want to take it to a deeper level then we can go for: God of Electrons, God of Protons, God of Photons etc. There are different substances at different levels of analysis.
matter is just a function of energy, that would seem to be the bottom layer of which i am aware.

will you now claim infinite gods for each point on the continuum of energy frequencies?

in this there can only be one or the other then, either there are an infinite number of gods each responsible for an infinitely small point of energy on that continuum. or there is only one G-d responsible for the whole of the substance from which things are made.

these infinitely small gods would in effect add up to one G-d, i think my original idea is best. at least for now
Until all of the prophecies are fulfilled, He can only be a partial messiah. Only when all the prophecies are fulfilled can He be considered a complete messiah.
can one be partially pregnant? can one be partially dead?
being the Messiah, in the same manner is an either-or proposition.
False, as I have pointed out. He has not yet fulfilled all of them, just some. You are right that He fulfilled more than me.
like finger prints, a certain number of uniquely identifiable points between two sets of prints can show identity, the more points you match, the more likely the likely the match, if you were to add enough data points, you would approach the certainty of DNA identification.

in a similar way one can be sure of Christ, very many prophecies concerning Him have been fulfilled.

some of which exclude any others from being the foretold Messiah. so we can eliminate even the slight mathematical uncertainty.
What are you saying is unique about the Old Testament prophecies of the messiah? That they have only been partly fulfilled by Jesus, as opposed to the Jain prophecies of the twenty-fourth Tirthankara which have been completely fulfilled. Christianity is not the only religion which has fulfilled prophecies.
dont you mean they were postdicted? or predicted many cycles after the fact?

on the wiki it says only the last two have been in recorded history, and one of those started the present system of monks, nuns, and laypeople.

they are hardly prophecised, more like expected, in the way that i expect a paycheck next week, not meeting convergent predictions rather more like an occurence on the calender
All religions are unique, that does not make all religions correct. You cannot use uniqueness alone to tell if a religion is correct or not
.

the uniquness of the convergent prophecies, predictions spanning several millenia, made by different people, in different times, places, and cultures. then having these prophecies converge and be met at their apex in Christ.

that is where the strength of the argument is at
Besides, specifically on the messiah there is a second religion which also has prophecies of a messiah so that particular claim of Christianity is not in fact unique.
you want me to ask what that religion is, ok ill bite, what religion is it?
 
Well, that is certainly a novel definition of a substance. Maybe it would be safe to say that you take a quantum view of the universe?
hardly, i dont care for the particular system but rather that it is equally applied to everything. if you want to talk MOQ you could start another thread.
 
matter is just a function of energy, that would seem to be the bottom layer of which i am aware.
God of the Photon, God of the Up Quark, God of the Down Quark, God of the Charm Quark … You are also forgetting God of Space (you might allow a Trinity of them 🙂 ), God of Time, God of the Fifth Dimenstion (and as many more as the current theory requires). Space, time and any other dimensions are not energy. The universe is more complex than you seem to be allowing for.
can one be partially pregnant? can one be partially dead?
being the Messiah, in the same manner is an either-or proposition.
If you put it that way then Jesus is not the messiah because He failed to fulfill all of the prophecies. Have all the Jews been gathered back into Israel yet?
you want me to ask what that religion is, ok ill bite, what religion is it?
Think. What non-Christian religion is also expecting the messiah? Not a difficult question.

rossum
 
God of the Photon, God of the Up Quark, God of the Down Quark, God of the Charm Quark … You are also forgetting God of Space (you might allow a Trinity of them 🙂 ), God of Time, God of the Fifth Dimenstion (and as many more as the current theory requires). Space, time and any other dimensions are not energy. The universe is more complex than you seem to be allowing for.
no i understand the theories of concerning qauntum mechanics, various species of sub atomic particles etc. and the underlying ideas such as wave mechanic, i never said i had no hard science education at all.
If you put it that way then Jesus is not the messiah because He failed to fulfill all of the prophecies. Have all the Jews been gathered back into Israel yet?
one is not any less pregnant at the fifth month than at the seventh. a corpse is no more dead at one year than it is at a thousand years

some prophecies are time dependent. some are not.
Think. What non-Christian religion is also expecting the messiah? Not a difficult question.
i wonder if you mean Judaism? if so you should know that we believe along with many Messianic Jews the the Messiah has come. further with the destruction of the records housed in the Temple in 70 a.d. no could prove the lineage of David, an absolute must for the messianic prophecies.

and yet one can consider Judeo-Christian history to be different points on the continuum of salvation. after all as a matter of numbers there are hundreds of times the number who accept Christ as the Messiah, compared to those still waiting. not that those numbers prove anything but rather it is much more likely to be a believer in Christ than not.
 
some prophecies are time dependent. some are not.
Quite, and some of those time dependent prophecies have not yet been fulfilled. Until they are it is reasonable to be sceptical of claims about who is and who is not the messiah.
i wonder if you mean Judaism?
Yes. The prophecies of the messiah are not unique to Christianity.

rossum
 
all things in the universe consist of one substance, no matter how deep you go, all the normally observable things that you mention are made up of that substance.
So is it your argument that God is incapable of creating a universe with more than one “substance”? Or, perhaps He is capable of it, and you just happen to be privileged enough to know that he chose not to?

Or perhaps there *were *multiple deities who were clever enough to put their supernatural heads together and agree on a common building block - human architects do it, so why shouldn’t Gods?

Or perhaps there is more than one substance - why do some bosons have mass and others none? Why do some have charge and others none? Why do some fermions have a colour charge and others not?

Alec
evolutionpages.com
 
So is it your argument that God is incapable of creating a universe with more than one “substance”?
no thats not my argument, he could have arranged it any way He wanted.
Or, perhaps He is capable of it, and you just happen to be privileged enough to know that he chose not to?
it would seem that he didn’t, the basis of all these particles is energy. seems like one substance to me,
Or perhaps there *were *multiple deities who were clever enough to put their supernatural heads together and agree on a common building block - human architects do it, so why shouldn’t Gods?
Or perhaps there is more than one substance - why do some bosons have mass and others none? Why do some have charge and others none? Why do some fermions have a colour charge and others not?
i think that this is best answered in post #9
 
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