I also have retained a couple of Christian-leaning twists. These twists are more hopes than beliefs and I’m reluctant to shed them for that reason (particulary that consciousness could exist apart from physicality or that there might be a resurrection of the body, more of a parallel universe kind of thought process). Then, I suppose I should be careful what I hope for.

Thanks for your good wishes.

Seems to me you hold a kind of panentheist position, whilst DD’s is more akin to pantheism.

I wish you well in your search for answers to your questions.

Thanks for the references, as those were two pieces of information of which I was not aware.

I had sent a note to Deacon apart from this thread in which I mentioned that when reading his description of patron goddess, being reality, I thought it to be eerily similar to my own description of God.

So I guess I view humanness as an extension of God, and therefore not apart from God, and therefore, not logically exclusive.

My questions have more to do with whether God is aware of this extension, and how aware God is of God’s extent, and subsequently, me.

Break a hologram into a thousand pieces and any one piece contains all the information to necessary to reproduce the original image.

True, but the resolution is dependent on the size of the piece, due to diffraction. There are physical limits (cf. Airy disk)

Also, matter also exhibits wave-particle duality (cf. de Broglie waves)

PS Are you saying that godhood and humanness are not logically exclusive, but only seemingly so?

One would be a hologram. Break a hologram into a thousand pieces and any one piece contains all the information to necessary to reproduce the original image.

Another would be light, which can behave as both wave and particle, two seemingly exclusive sets of characteristics.

And this may go into digital space and never return…

Regards,

Wayne

I’m sorry, but I won’t be publishing your most recent comment because it’s a return to the same sort of schtick you’ve pulled here before: re-writing other people’s arguments to make yourself look misunderstood and/or unfairly accused, taking “polyvalent” positions so that when people address your points you can claim to have said something else, distorting other people’s arguments, trolling for negative reactions, and so on. We’ve indulged you on that sort of thing before, but you’ve used up your lifetime allotment. No more.

As I’m sure you know, my argument is not that I’m having trouble understanding the Trinity, and therefore it must be wrong. The Trinity is not hard to understand. If you go to your math teacher and try to tell her that 36 is a prime number, your claim is not difficult to understand. If you try to tell her that you should be allowed to believe that 36 is a prime number because you believe that God is so smart that surely HE could find some convincing argument for 36 being a prime number, your argument is not difficult to understand. It’s just wrong.

The Trinity is similarly easy to understand: in God’s continued absence, men realized that there were contradictions in the myths they had been taught, and tried to invent a new doctrine to reconcile the contradictions, and failed, and re-labeled their failure as “holy mystery,” and claimed success anyway. But the fundamental contradictions are still there. The Bible still treats God as though He were a person (note, third person singular) and as though “God” were a category shared amongst multiple, distinct, individual persons. That’s a contradiction. It’s not incoherent because I lack the CPU registers to process it, it’s incoherent because it embodies some fairly simple, mutually-contradictory concepts.

If you want to try and address the points I’m making here, I invite you to begin by trying to come up with a coherent explanation of what you think the Gospel is, as it relates to the principle divine character(s) at its center. Don’t just admit that the dual nature of Christ is wrong; explain to us why the Bible calls him both man and Creator. Explain in what sense Jesus is indeed God (if you believe in the Trinity, anyway). If you think that Jesus has a divine nature that’s different from the Father’s, explain how that is different from Zeus having attributes that are not the same as Apollo’s.

Truth is consistent with itself. In order for the Gospel to be true, it should demonstrate consistency with itself and with reality at every point. If you can show me a Gospel that is self-consistent, and consistent with reality, then you can convince me. If all you have to offer are defensive maneuvers that focus on creating confusion and avoiding a clear and consistent exposition of your actual beliefs, then I’m afraid you haven’t got anything solid to contribute, and would invite you to post such things on your own blog instead.

On the other hand, if “form” means something more substantial, then we might get away with God having multiple forms, each of which possesses its own distinct set of characteristics. Perhaps “God” is like a kind of template that needs to be instantiated as discrete, individual instances. Applied consistently, though, this leads us eventually to the conclusion that knowledge (and other personal characteristics) reside within the form and are not attributes of God per se.

What we end up with in that case is the concept that “God” is not a person Himself, but rather is a species (like humanity in your example), which is made up of multiple distinct divine individuals. Thus, God has no personal knowledge of His own, but rather the knowledge resides, with different content and in different amounts, in each individual deity. This way we preserve the idea that the Father and the Son can have different knowledge, but at the cost of once again becoming polytheists. God as a species of distinct divine individuals is polytheism, whether we admit it or not.

Jesus = God(form=man)

(God(form=other) knows) = true (assumed, for now)
(God(form=man) knows) = false

This is not a contradiction as long as (X knows) can return different results for X1 = God(form = man) and X2 = God(Form = other)

If God = {X1 U X2}
(God knows) = true => ({X1 U X2} knows ) = true

If ‘knows’ is such that knows(S) = true if knows({E, E=subset(S)}) is true, then God can ‘know’ even if Jesus doesn’t.

Note this requires a) subdividing god into a partition and applying ‘knows’ to each partition b) ‘knows’ has to be reinterpreted as X knows if any member of X knows. Like how ‘humanity’ knows how to perform heart surgery, even though I do not.

Another way to understand the problem is to ask, Does God know when the Second Coming is supposed to happen? The Father knows, and He’s God, so the answer is Yes, God does know. Jesus, however, does not know, and Jesus is supposed to be the same God, therefore the answer is No, God does not know.

(Jesus knows) = ~true
Jesus = God, therefore
(God knows) = ~true

(The Father knows) = true
The Father = God, therefore
(God knows) = true

Combining the terms for (God knows), we have

true = (God knows) = ~true

which reduces to

true = ~true

QED.

Consider a computer network with three components; all three components are the same network, with only one set of network functions and programs, but each component might run different functions and programs at different times.

Category error, therefore invalid analogy.

The components are not the network – the network is an emergent property of the components.

The problem is that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are supposed to be the same God.

Consider a computer network with three components; all three components are the same network, with only one set of network functions and programs, but each component might run different functions and programs at different times. That sort of thing. Such is not polytheistic, rather plural.

Now if you’re a polytheist, then yes, you’re right, each of these three gods can have different characteristics because they’re not all the same God. If there is only one God, however, then their is only one set of divine characteristics. Different characteristics for different gods requires polytheism.

Hmm, so perhaps Jesus’ human weaknesses were not due to him being human but due to him being a different kind of god than the Father?

Well, I didn’t say that; I said “I see no reason to force the premise that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit must necessarily share the exact same set of features, functions, and characteristics.” I’ve always assumed many or most skeptics have implicitly granted this much, as to date I’ve never heard anyone make an argument that the Trinity is false because Jesus is different than the Holy Spirit (the former occupying a corporeal form while on Earth, the latter an ethereal or spiritual).

That’s an interesting way of avoiding the problem, although that opens up a whole new can of worms, because that means Jesus and the Father have to be different gods (polytheism). They can’t be the same God and have different divine characteristics.

I disagree per the aforementioned, and I’d add that IMO, about as much as scripture supports is the idea that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit couldn’t have evil characteristics. That they had different characteristics seems to have always been implied. At least, that’s what I got.

As an aside, my response to your contradiction matters is not how I ‘rationalize’ the Gospel story. I have my own way of looking at the situation – which I think makes sense – or at least more sense and with less problems than this ‘dual nature Christology you mention. If you’ll permit another aside, I enjoy talking to you sans the intervention of others because we typically concur on the shortcomings of mainline Christian dogma.

Is that what you were looking for?

No. I was just saying that although I find the “dual nature Christology” an intellectual impediment, I don’t necessarily accept your claims of contradiction, either. IOW, this time I still take your side against G&T, but for my own reasons. Let’s back up a bit. You opened with,

..the reason Christians have come up with the idea that Jesus possessed both a human nature and a divine nature is because the Bible very clearly states, in a number of places, that Jesus had certain weaknesses and limitations that were inconsistent with the idea that he was God. Consequently, theologians needed some way that two contradictory claims could both be true, and they “solved” the problem by assigning Christ a dual nature.

In order to discuss this in any productive way, we’d need specific verses else we’re simply arguing subjective generalities, but taking your “dates and times” argument as an example. You said that “Jesus as God” was incompatible with Jesus not knowing the dates and times – that such entails an instance of X and ~X. Well, it may or it may not. It does if we force the premise that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit necessarily share the exact same set of features, functions, and characteristics – but I see no mandatory reason to force that premise. Point was, it’s going to be hard to make a solid contradiction case against those who argue dual nature Christology, as they can just go back and forth between, “Oh, Jesus was God there, but man there,” which presents a forever-moving target. That’s what I meant by intellectual impediment.

Jesus = God (X)
Jesus = ~God (~X)

In order for dual nature Christology to be true, both of the above statements must be true. One, however, is the contradiction of the other.

Is that what you were looking for?

Also, before you judge me too harshly, please remember that I do not go around claiming that those who disagree with me about God are thereby proven worthy of suffering agonizing torture for all eternity. I may speak frankly regarding the doctrines, but I do not wish evil on those I disagree with.

Of course, there is ample precedent for the practice of speaking harshly about false doctrine, as Jesus himself was known to do on occasion.

Still, at present, I do see the ‘dual nature Christology’ as an intellectual impediment, a sort of “magic hypothesis” that can explain anything conveniently via post hoc reasoning: those parts where Jesus seems divine? He was God there. Those parts where He seems more human? Oh, he was human there. That sort of thing.

The Arians, who denied the deity of Jesus, were actually winning the debate at one point because they had so many verses documenting the human weaknesses and limitations of Jesus; the “dual nature” dogma gave trinitarians an excuse to effectively ignore all of the Arians’ scriptures and claim that Jesus was indeed God no matter what the Bible said.

The “dual nature” theory is absurd, though, which leaves Christians back in the same mess the Church Councils were convened to try and solve. It’s an insoluable problem, because Christianity is a mish-mash of superstitious and confused human thinking, and its inherent contradictions cannot be resolved. They are genuine contradictions.

For instance, one of the easier to understand proofs that the square root of 2 is irrational begins by assuming that it is rational, and ends up saying that therefore there exists some number that is both odd and even. This obvious impossibility leads us to discard the original proposition, and thus we know that the square root of 2 is irrational.

This is not some sort of new thing; this proof is included in Euclid’s Elements, written more than 200 years before Jesus was born. Why is it so important to hold on to an absurd position? Mathematics would have gotten nowhere if half the mathematicians said “well then, in that case we’ll just accept that there exists a number that can be both odd and even at the same time” (though that may be an interesting thing to explore).