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God would be an atheist...
A rational look at religion, morality, politics and daily life |
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HOME / This Week About GWBAA WEEKLY COLUMNS Previous Print column Why subscribe? Schedule Terms & Rates Subscribe Online column Subscribe BASICS Definitions Atheism Faith God Religion etc Analysis The meaning of life Morality etc NEXT STEPS Buy Discuss Join Read REVIEWS CONTACT Link to this site All Rights Reserved World Copyright © Martin Foreman PREVIOUSLY... Let us suppose for a moment that Christians are right. That somewhere Antony is either beaming broadly as he sings God’s praises or screaming in agony as devils torture him. At what point in the continuum of life and death did his spirit, his soul, his personality, call it what you will, pass from this world to the next? In the final ten days when you could see his mind shutting down, where was the Antony we had known and loved? Death comes as the end One of our greatest failings as human beings is our inability to understand other people’s emotions and thinking. We almost always give much greater weight to our own perspective on the world than to that of those around us. The rhetoric of death or the tools of life? Within the parameters of culture we create our own God, and like love, we each experience God differently. And we do so because God does not creates us in his own image; we create him in ours. Make me a god... People kill to protect their faith. They kill to force others to accept it. They kill with a clear conscience because their imaginary God tells them it is acceptable, even desirable, that others die so the “true” faith can prosper. Kill God, save lives Let us be generous and accept the Family Research Institute’s definition. American society should support the ideal family of one husband and one wife living with their children, free of grandparents but holding fast to the option of divorce when times get rough. Nice theory, pity about the facts Chapter three tells us how Eve is tempted by the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit. She then persuades Adam to do the same. Suddenly they both realise they’re naked. Any other young couple would consider this a significant step forward in their relationship, but Adam and Eve aren’t that bright. The confused Christian creation myth |
Column 99: Where did Christ go? The Ascension By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 791 words Publication date: March 18, 2007 Print publications wishing to syndicate the column should click here. Individual subscribers wishing to receive columns by e-mail should click here. I haven’t seen James Cameron’s latest flight of fantasy – the one where he claims that Jesus’ tomb has been found. This is not a new assertion – the ossuary in question was unearthed in 1980 – but it’s been given a new lease of life by the “documentary” that recently aired on the Discovery Channel. Extracts that I have seen focus on the assertion that the inscriptions on the body-boxes include the words “Jesus, son of Joseph” and “Judas, son of Jesus”. The idea is that Jesus didn’t ascend to heaven but married Mary Magdalene and had at least one child. We’ve been here before, of course. We have had Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code and Antonio Banderas’ 2001 film The Body. Before these Michael Baigent and others offered us The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and many others have suggested that Christ lived for many years after he was supposed to have died. Few people are impressed by Cameron’s theory. It is not only that the names in the inscriptions were common in first century Palestine, but the writing is so unclear that many other interpretations are possible. Considerably more proof is needed to prove that Jesus’ ossuary has been found. But if the bone box is a red herring, it nevertheless raises interesting questions about the end of Christ’s life. Let us defy commonsense and assume there was a historical person called Jesus who was crucified in the manner described in the Bible. (We’ll ignore the question as to why anyone, human, divine or crossbreed, should have to die to save the human race. Besides, Jesus was only partly successful, since entry to Heaven is still dependent on passing God’s stringent tests.) What exactly happened after the crucifixion? Most authorities agree that it took 48 to 72 hours to die on the cross, but J C was up there for fewer than eight. He would not normally have expired in that short time, but death appears to have been brought on rapidly by the spear thrust into his side. So far, so clear. Jesus’ heart stops and his brain ceases to function. His body is taken down off the cross and placed in a tomb protected by a heavy stone. God now has two choices. He can hold the corpse in suspended animation, impervious to all the bacteria and insects which normally eat away at flesh as soon as life has departed from it. Or he can let these processes take place for a time and then reverse them. That, however, raises the question of what would happen to the bacteria and insects that had devoured bits of Jesus’ body? Would they suddenly be deprived of life as the various tiny pieces of the Son-God’s flesh were returned to him? Anyway, Jesus returns to life, the angels roll away the stone and soon the Son-God is reunited with his old disciples. This is not merely a spiritual resurrection, the Bible assures us, it’s a physical one. Some time later – some authorities suggest that eighteen months pass with Christ in the land of the living – Jesus ascends to Heaven. Setting aside all other doubts and uncertainties, here’s The Big Question. What Happened To Christ’s Body? The only surviving descriptions of the Ascension (Mark 16: 19, Acts 1:11) are minimal, but they make it clear that Christ was seen to rise into the sky. Unlike Christ’s contemporaries, we know that Heaven is not a physical place somewhere above us. If it exists, it exists outside our universe. So what happened after Christ rose into the sky? If only the Son-God’s spirit entered Heaven, there were three options for the body he left behind. It could have fallen to earth; in which case the flesh would soon have been eaten and the bones dispersed. It might have entered perpetual orbit. Or it might have escaped earth’s gravity and be headed into a eons-long journey into space. In both these cases, his bones might yet be discovered. Alternately Christ’s body was also taken into Heaven. If so, how did that happen? Even though it was a supernatural event, there must be some way of describing what happened to Christ’s blood and bones as they vanished from this universe. I’m not trying to be picky. I’m just using the powers of reason which - Christians say - God gave me to try to understand his works. It is easier to accept that God can overturn or ignore the natural laws of the universe if there is an intelligent explanation for what happens when he is minded to do so. A rational description of how Jesus’ life ended would significantly undermine the case for atheism. After 2,000 years, such an explanation is long overdue.
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If God existed, he would... If God existed, he would be an atheist. |
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