Why don’t the most intelligent minds believe in God?

[Rob_Brewer (Robert Brewer)]

I think we have gone considerably off-topic.

[1Cor15.54 (Massimiliano)]

@Rob_Brewer

I think we have gone considerably off-topic.

I don’t think so. I think I have refuted your argument using the same character you wanted to use to strengthen it.

[leesouthard (George Lee Southard)]

Great question that we all have wondered. There were great scientists who believed in God and they were Christian. Some of the greats, were Newton, Galileo Galilei, Maxwell, Kepler, Faraday, Pascal, Lematire, Francis Collins. They did not see science as disproving God. Science does not prove God. If we could prove God where would our faith be? However, there is evidence of a creator. Some of us will call that creator God who before the creation of the world predestined that man would be found holy and blameless in his sight through Jesus Christ.

I see the Bible as telling us what God did and what he promises in the future bothe spiritually and physically and science from a material view as telling us how God did it and when.

[St.Roymond]

@Rob_Brewer

I believe the Gospels are describing something so very deep and intimate that the Greek or English doesn’t carry, and language is our main problem.

Unfortunately that’s historically been a recipe for ignoring what the text has to say and replacing it with subjective whims. It’s a great way for conforming the message to one’s preferences.
The fact is that the real surprise is that even in the Synoptics Jesus so baldly acts and speaks as though He is GOd that He lasted as long as He did.

@Rob_Brewer

More simply put: If the words that we have arise from the agenda of men who never knew the historical Jesus, I’m sure they would have been hard pressed to put it into a cultural setting that is completely compliant with the experience of the people they are speaking about.

That ignores the reality that Paul and the Gospel writers were communicating with and to scores of people who did in fact “know the historical Jesus”, and echoing that those people already knew.

[rsewell (All Truth is God's Truth)]

@leesouthard

Newton, Galileo Galilei, Maxwell, Kepler, Faraday, Pascal, Lematire, Francis Collins.

That might not be a very reassuring response to the OP. Apart from Collins, is the best we can do dead guys from a bygone era of classical physics? I do not question their brilliance, and Galileo’s letter the the Grand Duchess Christina should be required reading for every would be apologist, but the question really concerns the contemporary challenges of such seminal thinkers as Hawking and Weinburg, and recognized goto communicators such Nye, Tyson, Hossenfelder, and Krauss.

Part of the issue is that the outstanding questions in physics have become so fundamental as to press against what was once the domain of metaphysics - the search for a unified theory, the nature of spacetime and information, the resolution of quantum and cosmic scales. If methodological naturalism is to lead to any progress at all, investigators may need to presume upon territory once reserved for philosophy and theology.

All purported proofs for and against God, based on some conclusion from the material universe, are category errors. Nonetheless, the fine tuning of nature is compatible with divine intent, and is widely although not universally acknowledged as a standing problem even among leading scientists.

[St.Roymond]

@Rob_Brewer

I understand this passage as pointing to something universal. We all participate in the divine nature

In other words, you ignore what the words actually say and replace it with something pleasing to you.
That is a recipe for chaos.
I was trained in taking words for what they say in their context as opposed to “what it means for me”. The latter is a way to ignore an actual message and substitute what one would like to believe.

@Rob_Brewer

In fact, it was a dear old lady that I was driving home from a meeting who said to me, “Rob, how can frail old me attempt to have the mindset of Jesus. He was God!”

I asked her whether it would make any difference if Jesus were an exemplary human being, and she said, “of course it would! He would know my problems, even if he was never as old as I am.”

You missed it: You can have the mindset of Jesus because as the text says He was God but He emptied Himself.

@Rob_Brewer

I asked, “What if you already have divine nature but you have to awaken to it and have to learn to know yourself?”

And thus you threw away the text – you threw away the Jesus of the scriptures and chose a different one. You did the very same thing the Adversary did when he decided he was equal with God.
Having your own view is your privilege – just stop pretending that what you are holding to has anything to do with the scriptures.

@Rob_Brewer

only a small portion of these writings was eventually selected for canonisation. That selection was made by particular communities and leaders whose choices inevitably reflected the religious concerns and priorities of their time, roughly three centuries after the events themselves.

That’s false. The core was already accepted before the end of the second century, and most of the other writings you refer to were written later than that and were recognized as false when they were offered.

@1Cor15.54

It was not a “creative reinterpretation”. It was a reinterpretation that followed the facts that they themselves witnessed and that they were willing to be persecuted and face death to continue to preach.

Absolutely – it was an interpretation that didn’t drag in things from outside but emerged from the core.

[St.Roymond]

@Rob_Brewer

In modern Christianity, we have constructed a perfectly rational system, but that system has no love in it.

@1Cor15.54

Alyosha’s compassion is born from surrender to Christ, not from revision of Christ*.

The solution is not to reject the rational system, but to embrace the Love it commands/commends.

@1Cor15.54

So the real divide here is not between “system” (the “rational system devoid of love” that you speak of, which seems to me like a boogeyman that you created) and “love”, it’s between two radically different understandings of love:

1. One that receives Christ as true, even where he is absolute, unique, and difficult.
2. And one that feels compelled to reinterpret Christ until he becomes more bearable to human need.

The first is the love of discipleship, of creatures that recognize their creaturaliry, the second is the temptation of the Grand Inquisitor.

So my concern is not that you speak of love too much, It is that your account of love requires a Christ that is no longer Christ.

Most certainly.

[leesouthard (George Lee Southard)]

Agree- All truth is God’s truth.

[1Cor15.54 (Massimiliano)]

@St.Roymond

The solution is not to reject the rational system, but to embrace the Love it commands/commends.

And in fact the first letter of John teaches it with utmost clarity. 1 John 4:16: “God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”

But the same letter also teaches, in 1 John 2,22-23: “ who is the liar, if it is not the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father, but whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well.”

Setting love in opposition to truth is a satanic lie. Which doesn’t mean that all of those who do it are bad people or Satan’s disciples, far from It. But it does mean that this error, the error of setting love in opposition to truth, is satanic in nature.

[1Cor15.54 (Massimiliano)]

@Rob_Brewer

I appreciate that, but I also know we cannot rule out the possibility that what we call “inspired” scripture was written by men and women, and that only a small portion of these writings was eventually selected for canonisation. That selection was made by particular communities and leaders whose choices inevitably reflected the religious concerns and priorities of their time, roughly three centuries after the events themselves.

While it’s true that the canon was not established from the very beginning, the earliest writings (those accepted as inspired from the outset ) consistently affirm Christ’s resurrection. Indeed, the earliest creed we possess, found in the First Letter to the Corinthians, as u ah e already documented, already contains the central supernatural claim that was, and still is, the foundation of Christianity: the resurrection of Christ. And that was a creed that Paul himself received.

@St.Roymond

That ignores the reality that Paul and the Gospel writers were communicating with and to scores of people who did in fact “know the historical Jesus”, and echoing that those people already knew.

Unfortunately, claims like this can easily impress those who know little history and already have a negative bias. What amuses me, though, is that some people make these arguments in places where Christians actually know what they are talking about and aren’t easily deceived