He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. (Matthew 27:42)
Why didn’t Jesus do just that? He wasn’t limited in terms of the types of miracles he could perform, was he? Just doves up his sleeves, no rabbits in his hat? Too bad. Jesus could have made believers out of the Romans then and there. Instead, it was up to wandering prophets who, rather than witnessing anything first hand, heard about it through the stories of others, eventually establishing a dominant religion.
Had Jesus pulled himself from the cross, hopped on down, walked up to the priests and government officials who mocked him, brushed off his hands, and said, “You guys got nothing on me,” can you imagine the morning’s headlines! And had Jesus stuck around to perform his miracles for the widest possible audience — and why not? — there would have been no need for the whole Inquisition thing and all those annoying, well-scrubbed evangelists ringing our doorbells.
The world could have been such a nicer place.
—
[Illustration source: the Onion]
P.S. The latest Carnival of the Godless has been posted.
> Related Posts
Tags: belief, Bible, Christianity, Sunday Un-Sermon
July 5th, 2010 at 5:56 am
You haven’t specified a miracle and so cannot demand to see one. “Why didn’t Jesus do just that”? But you have to specify what it is that you want Jesus to do.
“Come down from the cross” won’t prove a supernatural event. You have to be more precise. You might say “let the nails disppear” so that he can come down from the cross. Otherwise, there’s no miracle at all.
But even if you should demand “let the nails disappear”, that also isn’t a specification of a miracle. And making a glancing reference to stage magic and rabbits in hats won’t give us an explanatory example of what you mean by “disappear”.
If you want the nails to disappear you have to demand “let the local cosmological constants change” for it is these that constutute the nails themselves. But then you have to examine the point of change, for this too, will have a causal infrastructure.
My point is that you haven’t specified a miracle and so cannot demand to see one. If you try to specify the point at which a miracle occurs you end up in an eternal, natural causal regress.