QUOTE(ramster83 @ Jul 3 2006, 06:27 AM) [snapback]1255800[/snapback]
The thing is us as people dont know how to interprete things like this...is it really a sign from God? Is it the Devil? Is it a ghost? This just proves that even if God was to show us a true sign we wouldnt be able to understand or comprehend it...why? Simply because God isnt on our "level" - he could perform any miracle for us and we'd always be skeptic about it.
Not true.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ric...rrection/1.htmlQUOTE
According to the Christian theory, God is god of All Humankind, and more than that, He is god of All the Universe. This is inconsistent with the proof offered for such a deity, that of the Resurrection of Jesus. This event is said to defy nature and thus prove God's supremacy over death and to assure us that, by believing in this deed, God will perform the same deed for us. An inconsistency exists here in two respects:
(1) A miracle whose purpose is to prove something to all humanity must logically be an event that can be observed by all humanity.
(2) An event that is to demonstrate the power and existence of a "god of the universe" must logically demonstrate divine powers of such a magnitude, and not of a vastly lesser magnitude.
These are different problems. The first concerns whether the resurrection is adequate to prove to all humanity that Jesus is the path to salvation. The second concerns whether the resurrection is adequate to prove the Christian God exists, as opposed to some other God (or gods).
For example, a "god of all humankind" could have carved "Jesus Lives" on the face of the moon, where all humankind could witness the miracle, and observe it for all time without relying on hearsay--at the very least, he could have extended the darkness and earthquake and mass rising of dead people, reported to have occurred at his crucifixion by Matthew (27:45-54)[Note 1], over the whole earth, where it would be recorded by every historian of every civilization, so that all humanity could share in the prodigy--he could have attended the moment with a voice or vision seen and heard by every human being, affirming his divinity and sending the message of Life to all. Why, a "god of the universe" could have even rearranged the stars to spell "Jesus Lives"--the sort of feat that can never be replicated by technology and which would demonstrate a truly universal power over all of nature. Without miracles of such magnitude, a god fails to show the extent of his power, fails to advertise to all his subjects, and fails to prove himself thereby. He fails to exhibit his means and message in a manner proportionate to what we are supposed to believe about him.
And it misses the point to object that IHSOUS ZWN in giant letters across the moon could not be understood by any but Greek speakers, since those who later heard the Gospel and wanted to confirm it was true would simply have to learn Greek, just as anyone today who wants to confirm what the Bible really says must, and can easily, learn Greek. And it would not matter that this mysterious change in the moon would not be immediately understood around the world. People everywhere, India, China, Rome, would record the event before knowing its significance, and thus we could today check these unbiased and independent records of the day the moon changed to bear the new carvings, and upon hearing the Gospel, we would have a strong, independent proof that it's central message, "Jesus Lives," was confirmed by a fantastic and universally confirmable miracle. And if God needed more room to write more, just to be sure, then the stars are available for an entire book to be written in the sky, only legible when seen from Earth, confirming our cosmic importance in a way that no natural explanation could dismiss. Or the big words on the moon could be surrounded by a whole book carved into the face of it, which could then be read when telescopes were invented, a technology which Jesus could even have given to mankind, with the call to use them to read God's message on the moon.
That's just an example. The point is that we only need a universally confirmable divine proof that the events related by the Gospels were in fact under divine sanction and did in fact happen when they say: "Jesus is not dead" sums up the one key event that needs independent proof. The rest is just the detail.
