The Upper Room - 2014-12-18

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8:01 AM

@William'MindWorX'Mariager and @bruisedreed What exactly does "playing God" mean and is it inherently bad in the first place? I think that's a more important question.

Constructively, we cannot do more than what God has enabled us to do anyway. Remember, whether the Kind worships the true God or not, it is God who set up his kingdom and placed him on its throne.

So if God has enabled us to manipulate genetics and created artificial life then that should be fine, right? We're not taking anything from God. We're only using what He's already given us.

BTW, we've already done that. They splice bacteria with dna all the time so that the bacteria do specific things, like produce medicine.

Some labs are also creating biological machines (smaller than a cell and not living by traditional definitions) that do specific things and are applying for patents.

We breed livestock. This is really not any different. Just skipping the breeding part and going straight for the target traits.

As for robotics ... I don't see how any argument can invalidate computerized AI. It's just programming.

8:32 AM

♫ The Hulk is wearing a red shirt
♫ ...red shirt
♫ ...red shirt
♫ The Hulk is wearing a red shirt
♫ ...all the day long.

@Flimzy and @MattGutting Your comments here in chat are more of an answer than anything on the main site right now.

9:27 AM

So apparently the community user gets to wear hats too. If anybody has a better pick let me know.

1 hour later…

10:41 AM

@Caleb Awesome!

1 hour later…

11:41 AM

@Caleb Maybe, but it's just my personal opinion.

The Prophet Elisha

12:28 PM

0

Q: Can a Muslim convert into Christian Religion?

I have friend of mine who wants to convert himself(Muslim) into a christian, I wonder if its okay to convert.

christianity conversion other-religions religion christian-catholic

2 hours later…

2:24 PM

0

Q: Why is Jesus looking on an oddly standing stone?

I am not a christian so please excuse my philistinism if I can't see the obvious but ever since I saw this painting on my grandmas wall I've been intrigued by the particularly standing stone in the foreground and by the odd little stare Jesus seems to give it. Q: Does anyone know if there's any ...

So, is this off topic? I know it's about art, but it's about "Christian" art

and the interpretation of the art has theological undertones

2 hours later…

4:39 PM

Since we're on the topic, why would it be a sin for Jesus to make the stones into bread so he could eat?

He made fish out of nothing and fed thousands. That was a good thing. Why is this different?

@fredsbend it wouldn't have been, it would have been a break of his fast in the desert which was part of his preparation for his ministry.

@waxeagle But it is listed as a temptation.

I thought his fast was finished by the time he was tempted.

(the specific acts satan was asking him to do weren't necessarily sinful, the reasons why he would have done them would have been).

I understand how the others are, but not the stone.

If his fast was concluded and he was hungry, why would it be wrong?

He later cursed a fig tree for not feeding him.

@fredsbend everything in its season :)

4:44 PM

Well, that's helpful. You can say your stumped you know. That's okay ;)

gtg anyway.

The real temptation was to 'prove' through an act of power that He was the son of God rather than to trust the word of God.

2

@bruisedreed very good point :)

@fredsbend we know what he said to Satan: "Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’[b]”" that looks to me like the temptation was to rely on himself instead of God

the way the temptation was phrased "If you are the son of God..."

@bruisedreed yeah, it's very much a challenge of "prove to me that you're the one he claims you are" type of thing

very much like "Did God really say..." of Genesis 3

4:47 PM

very much so. (and I'm certain that's intentional)

That's probably also the reason the first temptation is food.

he needs the food way more than Eve needed the fruit in the garden, but he doesn't make it. Instead talking about how God supplies his needs.

2

4:59 PM

0

Q: Voltaire and his house being used by the biblical society? (Originally posted in Christianity StackExchange)

from: http://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/5487/voltaire-and-his-house-being-used-by-the-biblical-society

christianity bible sources society philosophy

1 hour later…

6:01 PM

hmm, this isn't one of my church's brighter moves. They are apparently doing their Christmas eve service at 5pm on Christmas Eve

4

@fredsbend It wouldn't have been a sin to turn stone into bread. It would have been a sin to give into Satan's temptation.

Does Elisha speak?

6:16 PM

0

Q: What about questions that are valid on other SE sites, but they're "culturally Christian" so they're asked here?

This is on the front page right now: Voltaire and his house being used by the biblical society? This is the first comment: This question appears to be off-topic because it is about the history of voltaire's house and not Christianity. You can visit History.SE where this is on-topic. - fredsb...

6:43 PM

First nominee for Question of the Year

0

Q: why weren't the Dinosaurs taken on Noah's ark

If man was created before dinosaurs, and the earth was created 6,00p years ago. Why aren't there dinosaurs now.

7:00 PM

@waxeagle @bruisedreed What about the water into wine then? Mary is not Satan, but she pressed him nonetheless to do it, and He did!

@waxeagle @bruisedreed Then it really doesn't make sense. Satan already knew he was the Son of God.

1 hour later…

8:20 PM

@fredsbend However, it appears that what Satan was asking Jesus to do was exert power simply for the sake of demonstrating his ability to exert power. Mary was asking Jesus to exert power for the sake of helping another person (the host of the wedding).

8:40 PM

We can't forget Jesus was in the dessert to be tempted, He knew it, that's why we say he understand us, because also he felt hungry, and He didn't listen to the devil!

@MattGutting It still doesn't quite make sense. Jesus was hungry. He was alone. The only benefit to turning the stones to bread is that he could eat. Basically, everyone is saying that it's only sin because the devil suggested it.

Suppose the devil suggested "prove you are the Son of God by dying on a cross then raising up in three days."

Certainly there is more at stake there, but the principle is the same. It is a good thing, but the devil suggested it with the 'prove it to me' tone.

Does that make it automatically bad? That's what the stones seem like to me.

Why was the act of eating a piece of fruit a sin?

There was a clear prohibition there. Which is a marked difference. But I'm not sure the substance is much different

(I'm very much still pondering this, I have some solid ideas about this, but it merits much further study)

@waxeagle Because God explicitly forbade it. That is enough.

God did not forbid Jesus to make himself food from nothing, as far as we know.

He also came to understand us that's why the Lord say "But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." He also had to experiment hungry.

8:56 PM

@fredsbend right, I guess my point is that something mundane can be sinful if it's done in violation of a command (or as Jesus later teaches, the wrong motivation in your heart)

This is actually leading to problems with the Trinity. If this was an issue of trusting God to take care of him then there is the problem that Jesus, possessing almighty power, was never truly in need of anything. Only that he intentionally made it appear so.

@fredsbend there's a duality to his becoming man that is missing from that statement. He took on real limitations when he became a man

So Jesus heads out into the desert and ends up hungry, but that's only because he hasn't bothered to eat. It is fully in his control the whole time.

@waxeagle He made food out of nothing. Unless you are proposing that he did not yet possess that power, then there is no limitation in this case.

Further, "faith of a mustard seed" kind of squashes that idea. Only that small bit of faith and you can "move a mountain" (incredible things).

Jesus was perfect in everything, including faith, therefore, he could "move mountains" or make food from nothing at his whim.

@fredsbend he could

that doesn't mean his faith wasn't tested at times

or that there wasn't a reasonable possibility of him failing those tests (if there wasn't then why would the devil have bothered)

@waxeagle So Jesus, almighty, sits hungry in the desert, only because he intentionally made it so, and is waiting for God, almighty, to feed him, presumably because that is what he is supposed to do? But then God lets him sit hungry for 40 days! What a jerk.

@waxeagle Why would he have revolted at all if he thought failure was certain?

9:05 PM

He felt hungry, but He had fasted forty days surely, the Holy Spirit lives into Him, He shows us "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

I challenge that Satan "knows he's going to loose". Unless he would prefer destruction over being God's top angel.

@fredsbend no, he's fasting and praying, a common Jewish practice (and one Christians still occasionally practice)

@fredsbend I'm saying there was a reasonable possibility of him (Jesus) failing

@waxeagle So then we are back to the problem. Why would it be a sin to make the stones into bread? The only thing logical is that his fast was a covenant with God and was still ongoing at the time Satan appeared to Him.

@fredsbend I think that's a possibility (though it requires a bit of an extrapolation that's beyond scripture...which I don't find completely problematic). I think there may be some answers in Jewish law (which merit study), and typology

The act itself cannot be sin. Satan merely suggesting it to "prove it to him" means nothing because Jesus' real motivation was hunger.

9:09 PM

I think there's an element of him turning to himself/giving in to his desires/etc, but I'm not sure that's the whole story. The idea behind that would be tied to his statement "man does not live on bread alone..." which is his response to the temptation. Creating food in this instance would be some kind of act of defiance on his faith.

@waxeagle Yeah, I'd ask on Judaism.se but they only want questions about the religion only. No history or anything. Kind of a boring and limited site. Also, they're very rude if you even hint on Christianity. It feels like a club more than an academic circle to me.

@fredsbend it's got a pretty different history since it's a converted SE1.0 site

I don't know what that means.

@fredsbend Milton's Satan? "Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven" and all that. Not that there's any Biblical indication that Satan does rule in Hell. That came later.

I think I know Andy Hamilton's Satan best.

SE used to license their software to private servers (similar to the way Jeff is doing with Discourse if you follow that). You could pick a topic and set up your own SE site. When they launched the centralized SE 2.0 they invited some of those sites to come into the fold. J.SE is one of them. Mathoverflow is one that thrived outside and only recently decided to come under the SE 2.0 banner

(point being, their site creation was dramatically different from how C.SE or I.SE or BH.SE was created)

9:13 PM

I don't see how that would change individual site cultures. The guidelines are still community made.

it just means their starting culture was a bit different from other sites. They didn't have SE corporate coming in on day 1 and saying "everyone has to get along or we're shutting you down"

The community there doesn't really want to talk about anything except mainstream Judaism.

5

Q: Seeking old Jewish recipes

What are some really old recipes that Jews are known to have used (actual recipes that say how to make the dish, not just names or descriptions of what was eaten like צלי קדר)? I'm seeking specifically recipes for food, not for medicine. And if you've tried one of the recipes, or know someone wh...

history food cooking-bishul

(Yeah, it was eventually closed, but it took time.)

@TRiG Closed as off-topic.

I tried to ask about some fringe ideas and they shut it down really quickly.

@waxeagle The MathOverflow people still seem a bit ambivalent about SE, while the Mi Yodeya community seem to have embraced it.

9:17 PM

@TRiG Yeah, I'm not even convinced that "Satan" was a person in Moses' mind. I think even that idea came later.

@fredsbend that's actually pretty accurate. I heard and explanation on that recently actually. It will have to wait until another time

@waxeagle Yeah. It's one of those things that led me into agnosticism recently.

I'm still baffled that I started on this SE in an effort to strengthen my faith, but instead it led me to abandon it altogether.

@waxeagle Posts with "fast" in them on J.SE. I don't even know where to start with that!

@fredsbend Really? The paths people take are strange. One of my starting points, having grown as a Witness surrounded by lapsed Catholics, was the realisation that people who are (a) strongly religious, and (b) studious about the Bible and their theology actually exist, and they look at the same text and come to very different conclusions. (At the time I was a lot more admiring of studious religion than contemplative religion.)

The question I would want to ask is what are the Jewish historical perspectives on fasting around the time of Christ and does it include a covenant with God?

@fredsbend Ask that question. But replace "the time of Christ" with "second Temple period".

9:22 PM

@TRiG Yes, I still can't seem to logically reconcile how I can study the same content with the same effort as you, but come to a completely different conclusion.

@TRiG Thanks. I knew I needed a synonym for that. That hate any reference to Christianity at all.

@fredsbend Well, referring to Jesus in a Jewish forum is perhaps merely tasteless. Calling him the Christ is also somewhat presumptuous.

2

@TRiG Well, it was like the icing on the cake. There were other, much larger things.

@TRiG Without knowing your suggestion, I would probably have asked "in the 1st century".

Send the link

Please

To the J.SE question? I'll have to draft it first.

Ok

9:32 PM

Probably won't be until later.

@TRiG This. I think it's fine to make your stated motivation for a question on J.SE "I'm Christian and want to know what Judaism prescribed in Jesus' day (1st century CE) in this circumstance, so I can know what Jesus was talking about. Now, my question about Judaism is ..."

... just don't expect J.SE to know or care how that fits into whatever teaching or experience of Jesus you're trying to evaluate.

4

Q: English books for better understanding of Jewish thought?

I consider myself a "Christian" (as in a "follower of 'Christ'"), and I am interested in learning more about Judaism, so that I can better understand the Jewish roots of Christianity. I've gotten myself a Hebrew-English parallel Tanakh, and have invested in learning the Hebrew language, but prog...

gentiles torah-study product-recommendation jewish-books christianity

for a case in point.

@TRiG Thanks for finding that. Note cordial reception and that it was exclusively upvoted

@TRiG ... but it was edited: "Removed off-topic argumentation about Christianity and focused on the request at hand."

sincerity

@waxeagle you don't really know fun until you've seen an SE1.0 site merge with an SE2.0 site

and then half the users of both communities pack up their bags and leave...

and a whole bunch of low quality posts sneak in in the confusion

and you end up as a moderator thanks to your efforts to try to help sort the mess out

9:44 PM

@AJHenderson Have you been engineering sound again?

@fredsbend History of the Jewish religion is on-topic on J.SE. History of the Jewish people is not. Is it different here? Are questions about history of the peoples of Christendom on-topic?

@IsaacMoses Yup. I found it by searching for "Christ" in V. Bam, where the editing was discussed.

@IsaacMoses More or less.

@TRiG how'd you guess what community I was talking about ;)

7

Q: How did Augustine of Hippo feel about Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible (the Vulgate)?

Augustine and Jerome wrote several epistles to one another. In these epistles, how did Augustine feel about Jerome producing the Latin Vulgate? What were his concerns?

augustine jerome latin-vulgate

9:46 PM

@fredsbend So, like, "what precipitated the Hundred Years War?"?

Meanwhile, I'm attempting another edit on a Christian-related topic over at Mi Yodeya. It's about etymology, which interests me Χριστός & Xmas.

@IsaacMoses That's not an exclusively Christian question. But the topic could be spinned to be about Christianity. For example, what role did the Pope(s) play in the ...

@AJHenderson I'd forgotten them till you brought it up. I remember poking around their meta and finding a lot of apparently wilful misunderstanding.

yeah, well, it was one heck of a debacle

People seemingly actively trying to misunderstand what was said.

9:49 PM

@fredsbend So, my point is that questions about Jews are similarly not [necessarily] Judaism questions and are similarly not [without relevance to the religion] on-topic on J.SE. I think the policies are probably pretty similar.

Social Sound Design was a little tiny SE1.0 site for sound designers that basically had no concept of SE norms on the main network. It was more of a discussion board centered around questions. The leadership decided to throw in the towel and it was merged in to SE2.0 but along with a merger to the audio side of audio/video production

the collision of SE minded AVP users that discussed a broad range of audio topics and the small community of dedicated sound designers was... intense

@fredsbend This appears to be history of the religion; its equivalent in history of Judaism would probably be on-topic at J.SE

@IsaacMoses My main complaint is that it is mainstream Judaism only. I asked a question about a fringe idea and it was squashed pretty quickly.

@AJHenderson Whereas Mi Yodea seems to have run fairly in accord with SE norms even before joining the network.

@IsaacMoses As long as the history can relate to the religion in some way.

9:52 PM

1

Q: Do any Jews, ancient or modern, hold that Michael the Arch-angel is the coming messiah?

I am currently studying the origin of an uncommon Christian belief that the angel Michael mentioned in the Jewish Bible (Daniel 12:1) is the same person as Jesus. It is becoming a frustrating mystery that ends at John Calvin who says only that "some think" this. So I thought to start at the begi...

messiah malach-angel

Wasn't closed or super-downvoted. You just objected to the answer it got.

Yeah, that's the one.

@fredsbend This site is about Judaism. It's not necessarily about everybody who has ever called himself Jewish. We accept some questions about some quasi-Jewish groups like Karaites and Samaritans, but questions about Jews for Jesus, for example, would be off-topic here. It's simply impossible to speak for everyone who has ever called himself Jewish. We can speak for what adherants to traditional Judaism have believed, though. — Daniel Aug 27 '13 at 21:53

This site is about Judaism. It's not necessarily about everybody who has ever called himself Jewish.

Exact opposite on C.SE.

I naturally expected the same. I didn't think the site would want to focus on mainstream only.

I think you're all really missing out on some fun stuff.

@fredsbend If your question is missing an answer, why didn't you post it?

At least in Christianity, the beliefs can get pretty wild and I'm glad they're all on-topic.

@IsaacMoses I don't know the answer. I was trying to research the origin of a Christian belief that turned out to be much older than most people think.

13

A: What is the origin of the idea that Michael is Jesus?

There is much negative information on the internet on this subject making it very difficult to earnestly study it and where the belief that the Archangel Michael is Jesus Christ originated. The Jehovah's Witnesses surely inherrited it from Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the movement that l...

Most people think that is exclusively a Jehovah's Witness belief, but I found a quote of John Calvin in 1500 something discussing it.

Nov 7 at 23:47, by El'endia Starman

"This site is for Christianity and all her heresies"...and wacky ideas too.

@fredsbend So you asked, "Is there a Judaism origin for this," and you got the answer "no." I don't understand how you can object to that answer, given that it's true.

9:58 PM

8

A: Do any Jews, ancient or modern, hold that Michael the Arch-angel is the coming messiah?

No, no, and no. The Jewish messiah needs to be a flesh-and-blood paternal descendant of King David. See the answers to this question for more details.

That's the answer I got. That appears to be more along the lines of "We don't really care if there's some fringe idea about this. We're about mainstream Judaism only."

If I asked for an overview on the various perspectives on who and what the messiah is/would be, would I get a decent answer or one similar to the one above?

This comment was a better answer:

@fredsbend The concept of angels becoming incarnated in the manner that Christians say Jesus was incarnated does not exist in any stream of Judaism, AFAIK. Not to say that it doesn't exist in any stream... but it probably doesn't exist in any stream. — Daniel Aug 27 '13 at 21:43

@fredsbend Which sect's fringe idea are you suggesting that this answer is ignoring?

I'm not. I'm suggesting that the answer there is clearly close minded about the topic.

There are no sects that say the messiah may have pre-existed, meaning, he existed before he will become flesh and blood? There are no sects that say he does not have to be flesh and blood? This seems like a knee-jerk reaction instead of an answer. — fredsbend Aug 27 '13 at 18:58

@fredsbend Or maybe it's just informed about what does and does not exist within Judaism.

@IsaacMoses You mean to tell me that throughout all of Judaism's history there is complete unity on the topic of the Messiah?

That's what that answer makes it sound like.

Edit done. Or overdone, rather. I'm curious to see whether it'll be accepted. I'm happy to rewrite questions when necessary, but I usually wield the scalpel more lightly on answers.

10:05 PM

@fredsbend It seems reasonable to take normative Judaism as a baseline assumption for determining whether a concept exists in Judaism. If you have evidence to the contrary, post it.

@fredsbend I encourage you to try it and find out, if you're interested. I can't vouch for what answers will be posted or whether they'll meet your standards for "decent." You may be interested in reviewing some of our 121 questions to date on the topic, some of which are close to what you're proposing including: yodeya.com/q/10599, yodeya.com/q/13359, yodeya.com/q/26938 yodeya.com/q/22271

@IsaacMoses Thank you. I might.

@fredsbend While the answer does read rather abruptly, the comments on your question seem quite welcoming.

@fredsbend Cool. Gotta go now. Sorry, room, for parachuting in and dropping a ton of comments. Have a good one.

@IsaacMoses Always welcome if you ask me.

10:47 PM

@Shmuel. Calling Martin Luther a "famous priest" is a very impressive bit of understatement. — TRiG 19 secs ago

El'endia Starman

11:02 PM

@waxeagle I initially read "topology" in your statement instead of "typology" and had to re-read it. :P

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Dec '1418

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