It is not obvious to me why the young Muslim man choose me. I was sitting in a more secluded part of the room with my autistic son. All I know is that he singled me out then eagerly and passionately started to present his case against Christianity. With kindness and passion this gentleman put forward his arguments.
One of them being: Why would God need Jesus Christ to die in order for our creator to forgive our sins and give us eternal life? Further stating that God is without limitations and could simply forgive and give us eternal life. After all, God could change gravity or any kind of law in the universe just like that.
Not a unique argument I am sure, but from my perspective it was new and interesting. There is a deep longing in me for apologetic debates. A yearning that comes from having heard the voice of God, and wanting to use some of the information given. Hopefully in a humble way. We are all faced with a complexity that is beyond us.
That being said, I know that Jesus Christ is the truth, the light and the way. Proving this is an entirely different story. Not letting the impossible stop me though. You see, just like the Muslim man I have a fierce fire and passion burning in my heart. So, for the Love of God I will try to explain why we need Jesus Christ.
The fall of sin
That the fall of sin happened is a key point. Without this event we would not need saving. It gave us an event horizon, meaning space time and the laws of our universe. On a depressing note encompassing fear, shame, decay and death. These laws are reverse to our creator, meaning that we are heading in his opposite direction.
Here is where truth comes in to play the crucial part. As we all know, the Muslim man and I both believe in God. That is the truth according to our faith. This God we believe is our creator and that all things are created through him and without him nothing would have been created. In my faith we also say:
“In him there was life, and that life was light for the people of the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not defeated it.”
Let us expand, when the fall of sin happened death entered the scene. Meaning that we got separated from a life in him, and thrown out of the garden of Eden he had created for us. Why? Because we bought the lie instead of listening to our creator that is the Truth. Living a lie may be possible in our reality, but for God deceit is impossible. It does not exist in him. So, he cannot accept lies as it is the opposite of what he is. He is the truth and nothing is hidden in him:
“Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account”
To reverse the lie according to my faith, we need Jesus Christ that is the truth the light and the way. There are many scientific levels to this revelation, but I will try to keep it short:
A consequence from the fall of sin is that our bodies have mass and fall under gravity. We cannot reach God’s eternal light on our own due to this fact. This law of our universe looks like this: E=MC2. It connects mass to energy, stating that it is one and the same. For this reason, we cannot reach the speed of light. You see our bodies would become infinite mass as we approach this velocity therefore requiring infinite energy.
Jesus said at the last supper:
“And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”
Our new bodies given to us through Christ will be dressed in God’s eternal light. We will rise in the opposite direction of time and space and no longer fall under gravity. No longer restricted to the ground from which is was taken (not interacting with the Higgs field).
To wrap it up:
“Why would God need Jesus Christ to die in order for our creator to forgive our sins and give us eternal life? “
When his children ran away from home, got lost and ended up in trouble, he came to our rescue because he loves us beyond measure.
I am grateful that you wanted to debate with me dear Muslim man.
Love, Isabella
Redressed 
Setting aside what looks to me to be non sequiturs regarding the ‘science’ of your explanation and the implicit suggestion that faith is subject to objective proof I don’t see how “When his children ran away from home, got lost and ended up in trouble, he came to our rescue because he loves us beyond measure.” answers the question as to why Jesus Christ had to die (in a rather nasty manner) in order to save us. Surely an omniscient God understood our suffering without having to send his Son to experience it and a loving, omnipotent God is capable of forgiving us without the need for a human/divine sacrifice.
OTOH, if humans were to construct a religion predicated on inducing guilt over an almost irredeemable sin allegedly committed by our original ancestors and wanted to convince us their religion was the only way to expunge that sin then explaining that the most perfect man who ever lived had to die horribly to enable our salvation would be quite an effective way to both reinforce the guilt and justify the claim that religions without similarly extreme sacrifices just won’t get the stain out of our souls.
I think the wisest line in your post is “We are all faced with a complexity that is beyond us”.
Given that, using crude man-made symbolic tools such as language and science to try to objectively prove our heartfelt faith would seem to me to be a futile endeavor that doesn’t begin to do justice to the infinite sublimity of the task. I think the only people who’ve ever come close have instead resorted to art.
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Hi Cabrogal. Thank you for your like and comment.
“Setting aside what looks to me to be non sequiturs regarding the ‘science’ of your explanation”
Stating that the science does not follow logic without even touching it is a poor response. That is just a fancy way of saying “you are wrong”. Various and creative ways of stating “you are wrong” are not good nor valid arguments. Although I see it widely used by my opponents. You discuss guilt and stains of our souls and so on as it was made up. By pure observation of our world and its history one can arrive at the objective conclusion that evil exist. It exists in humans, not excluding religious people. Unfortunately, sometimes even especially in those. Jesus Christ, died (and rose from the dead) to save our lives and that should actually strike a chord with most people. Why? Well, every now and then there is someone in the news getting a hero status because they lost their lives when saving others. It is not at all an uncommon story in books and movies either. Why is that? Do people like it because we all have a thirst for human sacrifice?
“irredeemable sin allegedly committed by our original ancestors”
Are not traits favoured in evolution passed on? Is that not why it was selected in the first place? Such inherited qualities form our ancestors does not always favour of law and order. We may not feel related to the aggressive primate and support his life decisions yet we may have inherited his traits.
The original sin was listening and trusting an animal outsmarting (lying) God. Instead of living in creation we ended up with Darwin’s tree of life in evolution. The branch that led to humans branched out from fish. That is why Jesus said to the fishermen: I will make you fishers of men.
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I didn’t feel it necessary to spell it out as it was beside the point I was trying to make, which is why I explicitly set it aside. But as you mentioned it …
The corollary would be prior to the fall bodies had no mass, weren’t subject to gravity and simply floated around. It would also suggest animals and inanimate objects have no mass as they’re free from original sin.
Scientific laws and theories aren’t ‘laws of the universe’. They’re tentative tools we use to systematise what we’ve observed and use prior observations to predict future ones. They are subject to future falsification, revision and replacement. If they’re not they’re not scientific (according to Karl Popper), which is what distinguishes them from faith-based or ideological doctrines.
Einstein’s theories of relativity superceded Newton’s laws of gravity which in turn superceded the Aristotelian laws which Galileo falsified. Einstein himself thought there are laws of the universe – as per Spinoza – but generally wasn’t so conceited that he thought his own theories embodied them. When he did stick his neck out that way (e.g. by denying aspects of quantum theory with the statement “God does not play dice with the universe”) his faith-based statements have failed to hold up in the face of subsequent experimental evidence.
All of that is just one reason trying to use science to validate or justify non-scientific belief systems, such as religious theologies or political ideologies, is wrong-headed. It’s equally wrong-headed to try to apply religious or political doctrines to science, as ‘creation science’ and Soviet Lysenkoism has demonstrated. They’re category errors.
Only if you start by begging the question, i.e. with the assumption that good and evil are intrinsic qualities rather than judgements humans impose based on their own preferences of how things should be.
When I was a child homosexuality was widely assumed to be an ‘evil’, though fortunately the cultural context has now changed and fewer people now impose that particular judgement upon the behaviour of others. I think you’ll find all ‘evils’ are of the same nature. Like ‘scientific laws’ they aren’t universal fundamentals but rather judgements we impose for our own reasons (often very good reasons from our perspectives, but ultimately irrelevant to the universe as a whole). According to Leviticus, eating shellfish is just as evil as homosexuality, but that particular evil ceased to exist in Christian communities a very long time ago.
The original God of the Israelites wasn’t the omnipotent, benevolent One God of all things. He was one God among many – a jealous God who wouldn’t allow his followers to have other Gods before him – who made a Covenant with a particular tribe that included exclusivity of worship. The Jews picked up the notion of monotheism from the Zoroastrians during the Babylonian exile and like them were immediately faced with ‘the problem of evil’ – i.e. how could an omnipotent, all-loving Creator God allow suffering to exist in the world.
The answer to the problem is two-fold. First they have to adopt a demi-urge to personify the aspects of the universe they deny to their God. In the case of the Zoroastrians that’s Angra Mainyu (also called Ahriman). For the Abrahamic religions it’s Satan. Thus good and evil are personified and the ‘monotheisms’ become irrevocably dualistic.
The second part is to blame people for their own suffering, even if they’re innocent newborns – hence the doctrine of original sin. Of course that doesn’t explain why animals also suffer, but many Christian theologists got around that by claiming animals have no souls so, contrary to appearances, don’t actually suffer.
So I’d suggest the ‘observation’ that evil exists only arises if you’re starting from the assumption that evil exists. It’s entirely possible to realise a transcendent perspective whereby the universe is utterly perfect and all apparent opposites – including good and evil – exist as complementary qualities that give rise to our phenomenological experience.
Good point, but I’d suggest you’re asking the question the wrong way around.
If you start from the observation that those who sacrifice their lives for others are greatly respected – and assume that was probably the case long before Jesus was born, as many pre-Christian epics and legends seem to attest – then the question becomes “Why did a religious theology in which a Messiah sacrificed himself for all true believers gain so much traction and popularity”. The answer then becomes obvious.
I agree with all of that.
So if we take the view that some behaviours that promote the continuation of the human race are aggressive – even cruel – and further that the continuation of the human race is a good thing, then it can be seen that aggression and even cruelty isn’t intrinsically evil. It depends on perspective. That’s why we have expressions such as ‘sometimes you must be cruel to be kind’.
A common misapprehension arises from the Huxleyan interpretation of Darwinism whereby ‘survival of the fittest’ means ‘everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost’. That interpretation, which led to ‘Social Darwinism’ and Nazi eugenics, has always been favoured by the the rich and powerful but fails to account for much of the evidence supporting Darwinism. As Peter Kropotkin pointed out over a century ago, benevolent cooperation is at least as important a survival and reproduction strategy for most species as is selfish competition and doubtless is selected for by Darwinian evolution. The development of much of what seems intrinsic in human morality (and that of other animals), such as empathy, can be explained this way.
So it’s just down to chance He didn’t say “I will make you monkey-catchers of men” or “I will make you bacterial infection contractors of men”?
Or could it have had something to do with the fact he was talking to fishermen when he said it?
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As for good and evil, according to my theory that is equivalent to order and disorder. In our universe disorder always increases because it is overwhelmingly more likely that it will. That is the second law of thermodynamics playing out. Furthermore, I believe that creation was something comparable to the opposite of a black hole, namely a white hole. A point with no space, no time, infinitely small and infinitely dense and a “place” of extreme order. God is not a god of disorder, but of peace. Therefore, it makes sense that by rejecting God and be heading in his opposite direction we would experience an increasing amount of disorder. In our universe entropy always increases with the arrow of time. Something that again can be linked back to the true God particles (hidden in the Higgs field). Particles rising in the opposite direction of time and therefore also entropy. More and more order would be created in the opposite direction of space time, gravity and entropy.
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Thank you for debating with me.
«The corollary would be prior to the fall bodies had no mass, weren’t subject to gravity and simply floated around. It would also suggest animals and inanimate objects have no mass as they’re free from original sin.»
The gravity of the situation is that although I only mention our bodies the entire universe is as we both know is under its influence. Therefore, I regard the fall of sin affecting all of reality. In our universe Newton’s law is important and together with space time it is fundamental and we would not want it removed without alternative laws. Let us quickly dive into this:
First, an overview of the present state. Let us start with the Higgs field. Particles like photons that does not interact with this field are mass less, but the more particles interact with these Higgs bosons (also called god particles) the more mass they gain. Particles with mass fall under gravity. Particles combine and we get objects, and objects in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by another force. Where are these objects moving? On the fabric of space time. We can envision this as a big stretchy fabric in all 3D directions. In solar systems the sun has the biggest mass and create a deep downwards curvature on the fabric. All of the other planets will therefore fall toward it. However, since they themselves also create such a curvature on the fabric they do not fall all of the way in. So, on the fabric of space time objects constantly fall into their orbits.
According to my faith, Jesus Christ would be something comparable to a treasure hidden in the Higgs field. A true God field/God particles. Particles interacting with this God field would not merely become mass less, but instead be rising upward in the opposite direction of time (space and entropy). In addition, the speed of light where time stops would be more than reached. We would arrive at the light, truth and the way. On a side note the concept (when faith removed) is not unscientific, as it has been theorized that antiparticles have such repelling force. A theory explaining the missing antiparticles in our universe.
As for Karl Popper and the reasoning your present here is my view: If you cannot question it, it is not science. Meaning you must always be willing to question it. That is the relativity of our reality. Science is never absolute. It is truths that can be debunked and replaced with new facts in the future. Moving on to Einstein and his relativity, you are absolutely right. He was not willing to accept the weirdness discovered at the quantum level. Quantum physics is a part of my theory of everything. I will not expand on this topic now as it is impossible to cover everything in one go.
I will however, prioritize explaining why God does not throw dice. In our reality the past and future is inaccessible, and we are stuck in the present. In other words, events are separated by space and time. That is our frame on the fabric of space time. Something that can be visualized as frames in a movie. Due to this, we pick up a dice, roll it in our hand, throw it on the table, it rolls on the table, it lands and we observe the result. These events are separated by time and therefore also space. Time does not exist in God as he is infinite, and these events unfold instantaneously. Concluding that it would be pointless for God to throw a dice as the result is open and bare for him. Time and space hides future events from us, but for God nothing is hidden.
We cannot debunk this relativity just explained as we navigate through life based on it. If we are at point A. and need to get to point B., there is space in between these two locations and it takes time to move between them. Furthermore, if Einstein’s relativity was not calculated into the GPS system it would fail miserably. The theory has also been proved with atomic clocks on airplanes.
Connecting all of this back to the Higgs field and the quantum realm. Here, dices are actually thrown, but according to my theory there is also a hidden treasure the God particle/field. However, under our arrow of time it cannot be observed or measured due to its repelling force (not attracting and falling under gravity).
So, I will try to rise to apologetic opportunities given me. The fishermen and their net is a parable and has layers of meaning. That is the reason behind Jesus Christ’s choice of words. The fisherman’s net is the fabric of space time because it looks like a fisherman’s net in all 3D directions. It simply makes a better parable connecting this to the fact that the branch on Darwin’s tree that led to humans branched out from fish.
All the different religions are connected. It is ideas, concepts and traces of the living word and the tree of knowledge scattered in a confusing manner all over the place. The big bang or something equivalent threw us out of creation. We still carry the image of the living word, like a seed in all of us. The problem is that we also carry the image of the man of dust and live on a foundation of dust. The dust that restrict us to the ground from which we have been taken. The dust we call atoms that are made in supernovas. A dying light rather than the eternal light that is God. Dust that attract and fall under gravity. Repelled by God. In other words, space and time adds to our bewilderment as everything becomes piecemeal. That is the path of the three of knowledge playing out.
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Hello, dear Isabella and wishing you a free and glee 2023 year for new beginnings, a year for freedom. It is good to see you writing, I’ve missed you, love patricia at scribeforlove.
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Thank you so much and the same to you ❤ I am sorry that I have been so absent. Love, Isabella
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I keep you at heart always.
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You are in my ❤ too
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Yea!
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