Edwina, List: If we presuppose that all religions are purely human constructs, then your approach makes perfect sense. On the other hand, if we take seriously the hypothesis that Jesus is God Himself in human flesh--not a mere "mortal born of gods"--then we will obviously proceed very differently. My point was that one deductive consequence of that premiss is that Jesus, after predicting that he would rise from the dead, would in fact do so. If that is what actually happened, then the hypothesis is strongly corroborated; if not, then the hypothesis is definitively falsified.
Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 6:16 PM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> wrote: > Jon, list: > > Jon wrote: "With that in mind, a unique aspect of Christianity is its > startling affirmation that God Himself entered into Actuality--" > > I don't think that the concept of 'god entering into actuality' is unique > to Christianity. It's basic to many ancient beliefs [loosely term as > 'pagan'] about the gods. Zeus, for instance, had quite a few mortal > children. Mortals born of gods [and that includes virgin births] are found > in these Greek-Roman tales and other religions {Hinduism, Buddhism] > > I'd therefore suggest that this shows the influence of the Greek and Roman > religions on Christianity - whereas, to my knowledge, one doesn't find such > influence in Judaism. And, in my view, Islam is a 7th century economic > reaction to the settling of pastoral nomadic grazing lands by the > Roman-Byzantine empire...but that's another story. > > I think that the transition from animism, polytheism etc to monotheism is > something worthy of study - and of course - there is a lot of work in this > area. > > Edwina >
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