How frustrating! So difficult to fix it when responded to wrong person!
It does not follow that the resurrected body is made from the matter of the physical/natural body and that resurrection means bodies must rise from graves like zombies or vampires. The gospels do not say anything about what happened to the body of Jesus in the tomb. And in 1 Cor 15 Paul explains that the physical/natural body is made of the dust of the earth and that the spiritual body is made of the stuff of heaven. He says flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. And yet the spiritual body does come from the physical body like a plant from a seed, and the seed can be tiny because what it supplies is the information not the substance. It might be different enough that it is not easily recognized but it does take its form from the choices we make in life.
I enjoyed the video so far. They are both very polite and considered in their speech. Although I am a Christian, Richard Dawkins has a habit of saying things I have often wanted to ask in my fundamentalist churches when growing up.
I agree itâs not necessary for there to be a body. In most cases the matter isnât there anymore. But in the case of Jesus, I think we would have gotten all kinds of things mixed up about the resurrection if his body was not resurrected to new life. And yet the scars were still there.
Unless you think some people are resurrected carrying their heads in their hands or with faces horribly burned, there is only one possible explanation for those wounds. They were there because Jesus chose to have them. And the reason why is rather obvious. Thomas said he wouldnât believe unless the wounds were there. So Jesus chose to have them so that Thomas would believe. But in that case, there is no connection to the matter of the physical/natural body whatsoever.
There is another. First we have to know that many of the promises to the nation of Israel in the OT can be appropriated as personal to the individual in the New:
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are âYesâ in Christ. 2 Corinthians 1:20
Then there is this:
Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. Isaiah 49:16
Jesus is likely to be the only one with scars in heaven, and they have my name on them â I helped put them there and they will be forever a reminder of his grace to me.
He also chose to have them as reminders for us of his love for you and me (and maybe also to echo the words of Isaiah showing that the OT pointed to him).
But Dawkins doesnt know that we would be here without Godâs help. He doesnt seem able to consider the possibility that the only reason evolutionary mechanisms work as they do is because God designed them.
His physical body was transformed in the resurrection. It is still physical but no longer subject to disease and death etc. So He was raised physically as all Christians believe.
Dawkins is so desperate not to believe in God heâd rather give credence to a theory that has no evidence - the multiverse.
He also finds it hard to understand why God would sometimes intervene, for want of a better word. Heâs effectively saying to the Creator - thou shalt not intervene in thouest own creation. How dare God âbreakâ one of Dawkins commandments. Height of human arrogance.
Nope. That is not what all Christians believe. Neither you nor your church defines Christianity. What you say is in neither the Bible nor the creed of Nicea 325 AD. I certainly do not believe in magical fruit, magical golems of dust and bone made by necromancy, magical power of blood sacrifices, magical transformations, talking animals, non-physical entities operating human bodies like puppets by magic, and I certainly do not believe that God breaks the laws of nature He created in order to impress a bunch of ignorant savages who wouldnât be able to tell the difference anyway (let alone to give religious ideologues some kind of one-up-man-ship over scientists). I believe as the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrection is a physical/bodily resurrection not to a physical/natural body but to a spiritual body, made of the stuff of heaven and not of the dust of the earth â which Paul says cannot inherit the kingdom of God. And there simply are no bodies to be transformed because all the matter of our bodies is reabsorbed by the earth and recycled in other living organisms including other human beings.
He is certainly not so desperate to believe in Christian entitlement that He will arrogantly call God a liar in all the data God sends to us in the earth and sky. How dare he question the assumed authority of the religious to dictate to the truth to all mankind? Personally, I see no desperation not to believe in God. On the contrary He seems to me quite willing to consider the idea. He just doesnât find the arguments made by most Christians to be very convincing. Neither do I. I believe for different reasons â in a non-magical Christianity that is.
True, but it appears that His design was possibly only necessary for the very first step(s) such as the formation of the complex RNA polymerase (or synthase more likely). After that, the rest simply happens as Darwin suggested. Evolution by the combination of random mutations, natural selection of those with better survival and/or replication followed by heritability. AT least that is one good way to view it as compatible with both Godâs input and natural processes thereafter.
I believe the Bible is the word of God â not the word of Peter Culbert. So no, I do not believe you have any authority to tell us what the Bible means. But if you want to say I donât believe in the magic Bible of magical Christians then I would agree with that.
Dawkins seemed quite able to consider that possibility to me. He just hasnât found a reason to believe it.
I donât buy into the idea of evolution as a mechanism or a matter of design either. Evolution is simply the learning process. It is true that machines can be made to use evolutionary algorithms and the learning process. But the evolution of life is the activity of living things responding to the challenges and changes in their environment. And unlike Dawkins, I believe that environment includes God, for just because we have the ability to learn by ourselves doesnât mean there is no teacher.
I think Godâs design is earlier, in the set up of natural law in the space-time structure of the universe. This is not to suggest anything like Deism, but only that Godâs subsequent involvement is that of personal relationship rather than design â think in terms of the examples of creators of living things such as farmers, shepherds, teachers, and parents. God is not just watching â He is very much involved in events, but not as a designer, artist, or other examples of those who create non-living things. A parent does not design his children but that doesnât mean he doesnât design the childâs crib, bedroom, or house. But in the case of God and the universe, most things look to be a product of natural law, so it is only in the natural laws themselves do we see a likely role for design.
I was limiting my point to only the biologic necessity for intervention, and should have made my point better. For the purpose of understanding where ânatural evolutionâ collides with limitations, I was intentionally ignoring the creation of the universe as well as the laws of physics under which we operate. That is of course relevant, but my questions relate to lifeâs origins. E.g. the stages (very arbitrary) begin with the first combinations that allow for prokaryotic single celled organisms. Then we move to endosymbiosis to create our eukaryotes with organelles. Then to multi-cellular stuff, then to evolution of unique body-shapes, and finally to traditional understanding of the evolution we see in the world today. There are various levels of complexity and mystery for each, but I was suggesting that the barrier that was insurmountable without God might have been the formation of the impossibly complex molecule we now know is necessary for the energy creation and use across mitochondrial membranes.
Of course none of this matters without the original creation of the universe, but my limited focus was biological. At what point(s) is something more than random mutation, chemical reaction and blind luck necessary?
My point was that I donât think life began with some supernatural creation of prokaryotes and especially not with any divine design of DNA or RNA. These molecules are an information storage mechanisms for what self-organizing chemical systems learn and not any kind of design. Design is the difference between living organisms and machines. So, instead I would look to pre-biotic evolution and abiogenesis for the origin of such things.