On Creationism

The Jewish view of the messiah in Jesus' time was of a man appointed by God to be their new king, and so necessarily a direct male-line descendant of David, who would be adopted as God's son, and would lead Israel to victory over the oppressor of the day. Clearly this changed in Christianity; and modern Christians have a very different idea of what messiah means. How quickly did the concept evolve? Obviously the idea that the messiah would lead Israel to victory died when Jesus was crucified, but it was mutated into a victory over death , at least by the time Paul was writing. 1 Corinthians 15:55-57 ’Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” I believe that other than that, Paul's view of the messiah was the Jewish view. He certainly believed Jesus was a descendant of David, who was appointed to the position of messia...

 This is something I wrote about ten years ago responding to a guy called Joe Hinman (aka Metacrock), who uses Hood's "M Scale" to prove mystic experience come from God. I think I posted in on a forum blog, probably at CARM. I am reproducing it here for (my own) historical interest. The point here is that the M scale seeks to quantify mystical experiences, but does not in any way lead to the conclusion that God actually exists. Here then is the post... The C Scale I want to introduce the C Scale. The C Scale is something I have invented to measure people's experiences of commuting. This is, of course, a parody of the M Scale, but if you can see the flaws in my argument about the C Scale, you will see the flaws in Metacrock's argument too. If you cannot spot the flaws, you will have to accept that everyone works at the same place! Claim: We All Work At The Same Place That may surprise you, but it can be shown to true. Prof T. Raffic did some research and found thes...

This is responding to this blog post: https://thinkingtobelieve.com/2019/04/21/the-historical-evidence-for-the-resurrection-of-jesus-a-short-case-2/ Dulle starts by saying, very reasonably: You might be thinking that this is not fair because the gospels and Paul’s epistles were written by Jesus’ disciples, and therefore are biased.  That may be true, but all historical documentation is biased.  That does not prevent historians from sifting through the material to discover what is historical versus what is not.  They don’t need to presume the NT documents are divinely inspired or inerrant. He goes on to give some criteria (and he explains them in the post): The date and number of testimonies Eyewitness testimony Criterion of embarrassment Lack of embellishment Coherence From there he goes on to say what historians consider to be facts. The first is that " Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate ", and that is fine; not going to disagree with that. Jesus was buried in Joseph ...