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Replying to The Nice Centurion in post #1]
I would like an opportunity to present an explanation for the Resurrection that is already contained within Scripture. I will need to excavate around the wording to highlight the structure. I have not seen any attempt to consolidate all the miracles with a single model and there is not enough detail to force that issue in every instance. This is a Scriptural accounting of supernature so I know I will not remove scientific objections and the violations of such and such conservation and I am not qualified to debate those anyway. Nothing I can say will remove the issue of faith as required by the text because that would be a paradox.
The specific word choices and editing of Scripture (OT/NT) by multiple individuals and groups over a millenia produced a self-consistent method for understanding the supernatural. Where details are given the miracles described within it could be primarily composed of interactions with anachronisms. Anachronisms are actual objects and events that previously occurred and that source restricts supernatural activity to a true, underlying, local reality. This is one of the simplest, most plausible, and natural explanations possible (see Occam’s Razor). Im rather flabbergasted that this kind of “reverse engineering” works very, very well in explaining and containing something that people have speculated about for more than a millenia. To me, factual content such as this and the consistency of this mechanism’s usage throughout the Old and New Testament then segregates The Bible from imaginative works like Grimm’s fairy tales and speaks to its authenticity.
Example: Instead of walking on water Jesus walks on the Plain of Galilee which subsided over time to the current ~250 m below sea level and has filled over with water. “The surface” is historically there at 210, -150, -10, -2m at various intervals in history. Obviously to me, an amateur student of geology, the most plausible, believable mechanism is that the apostles witness Jesus somehow interacting with the anachronism of a previous dry land surface just above or below the existing waterline. That somehow is still supernatural, but His footsteps are rooted and conditional to reality not fantasy.
To my understanding, this explanation requires the concept of block time for previous history to remain in existence to supernaturally affect the present moment. I also assume that the information of natural physics processes are stored in the temporal, aged properties of our environment. Therefore historical information is not lost and is accessible everywhere and also everywhen to enable supernatural events.
The structure of the example is now repeatable as an explanation forming a group of similar Biblical miracle accounts on the basis of geologic recurrences and because they recur across time we no longer care when they actually happened relative to the present moment:
The Red Sea was dammed up by an eruption of Mt. Perim, it dried up and could be crossed, and was shallower due to tectonic anti-rifting over time. The axe head called by Elisha did not float but rose up onto a previous creek bottom that existed before it eroded. A regular earthquake leveled the walls of Jericho from a very active fault region of the globe (a triple junction BTW). Water sprung from rocks that were once an aquifer when Moses struck it with his staff. Prehistoric trees- fossilized by those same aquifers in the matrix rock- once stood tall on the paleosurface the Exodus Hebrews were wandering on in Riyadh and perhaps dropped their strange, historic “first Cretaceous Era starchy fruit” as manna (KJV). Manna- when alternatively described as ‘flakes’(NIV)- is consistent with the living cambium layer of those trees that was shed for you and for all people according to their need. And one the best examples is that even today salt pillars grow where Lot’s wife turned to witness God's remediation of evil, as the mineral content in that geologic basin still has no outlet to the sea.
The repeatability allows another type of subgroup to be defined which are objects already in vessels of all types:
Herodotus Book III describes how Egyptian wine vats were conscripted to be taken into the deserts of Syria to be filled with water for pharaoh’s armies. It makes perfect sense to say a similar swapping of contents historically occurs at the wedding of Cana. That means that the oil and flour for Elijah, the fish and loaves at the sermon, and the air in Jonah’s lungs are all also examples of reworking of existing historic forms not the inner workings of human imagination about what magic can do. We then have a basis to extrapolate to all other miracles.
I can continue to spell it all out on a case by case basis, but leave it to the reader to make their own assessment. You shouldn't need my help to say that wet wood placed on an altar is ignited by all the other sacrificial fires that had burned there. We also now know how capable the human immune response is -with repetition- and what access to pre-developmental stem cells might achieve as far as healing the body. The lack of details about healings leave us unable to force one answer above another and there is no resounding historical referencing in the text. In one instance of retroactivity though- the case of healing the blind man- I feel that Scripture is deliberately recalling Adam's formation when Jesus spits in the dirt and reworks the clay of his eyes like a potter.
From the very first, though, The Word offers believers all the iterations and variations of form necessary to reconstruct this mechanism in sum- we have Joshua’s literal plea for time itself that extends the day to the obvious literal repeating of oil and flour day to day. Anachronisms, like seeing a bush burning in a wildfire across time and the snake that liked to sun itself on Aaron's staff, are the best universal and natural explanatory tool for all supernatural events. (1.)
Now going out of the text- How did the secular advisors to pharaoh find magic sticks to snakes to challenge Moses and can I connect this with my own experience in the modern era?
The mechanism can even help us understand secular supernatural magical events like pulling rabbits out of the hat (aka snakes from sticks again), ghosts of past spirits, déjà vu, feelings of reincarnation, and maybe even kharma if you consider how past information can be present in the moment. These reports from various times and cultures can laterally support the eyewitness accounts in Scripture. For me, the mechanism is even observable at an everyday of detail and I can attest to experiencing some time distortions, glitches, or the displacement of objects in my world that I would swear I moved yet remain “undone” under scrutiny. I attribute this to faulty human recall. I say “Man , time flies!” or “Man, that took forever!” as ordinary temporal distortions in my worldview. I witness other minor paranormal events of swearing I saw someone walk by or I heard footsteps downstairs when nothing was there and, upon inspection, I dismissed that as faulty mental wiring too. When I read stories across the internet I find many similar reports of other people who are observing quirks that they cannot fully explain or put their finger on. The Louisville slugger next to their bed stands as a testament to their belief and frequency of their observations. All of these instances paint a picture of mediocrity and ubiquity where the miraculous jumps and bumps of time are just an ordinary quanta in daily life. It feels ludicrous to promote these things to the level of miracle such is my casual dismissal of them. Obviously, if serious cases of possession, déjà vu , feelings of reincarnation, and these everyday observations of distortions are explained by encounters with atemporal information in my environment I can conclude that I have internal receptors capable of misleading me anywhen. Most often it is minor and casually dismissed, sometimes it is miraculous... Since time itself is the source of these anomalies – occurring both internal and externally -and history and ‘block time’ are generally unavailable, I find the repeatable assessment of the supernatural content of nature difficult and the presence of its source unavoidable in every context.
So I personally opt to turn back to Scripture in the days of Noah when God imparted this universal supernature on His Creation in the very first miracle causing it to appear distorted. Scripture seems to imply that in order to ‘start over’ God reaches backwards in the clockwork – similarly as in the day of Joshua- to recall the conditions of Genesis 1. I choose the mechanics that God recalls the waters for the Flood from where they were divided in the Days of Creation. Thus, in sum, God provided this written formula in the language of the first instance in the act of the remediation of evil from the world over. Because of the consistency of withdrawing from previous reality I find that the method of salvation, The Resurrection, the victory in the Holy Land, the fish and loaves, and reports of certain supernatural events from all over the world, at all historic times, are the same pool of equally valid eyewitness accounts when I see they are taken from reality following God’s provided formula in the first...
But wait Jesus’ incarnation did not have ‘a history’ to come from! That can’t fit mechanically, right? This hypothetical reconstruction of events below is as it occurred to me and may contain superfluous ideas:
I invite you to consider that Pope Exiguus tells us 500 years later to switch the method of counting years at His Birth from A.D to B.C and invert the direction of our thinking. If I tried to talk you into this anti-doctrine you would think I was mad. But science recognizes inversions, x^-1, complex conjugates, CPT symmetry, etc. and perhaps His life shows again the reason for the mechanism itself. Since the body of Christ is the miracle it must follow the retroactive pattern too. Many of you are familiar with the grandfather paradox from discussions of Relativity. It is when you go back in time and accidentally kill your grandfather. Why not apply that logic here? I mean it is like that that the body of Christ is going backward in time in Mary’s womb. Mary ‘s body is just a type 2 subgroup vessel like Jonah’s lungs. If Jesus is conceived but never implants the uterus He can ‘die’ in utero, be adsorbed, and be resurrected into Mary’s womb at any prior time to fulfill this supernatural condition. Since He is moving backwards isn't the cause/effect of Him (because Mary is in Communion with His Body) like trans-tempo-substantiation? He then arrives at the temporal legal boundary of the betrothal process accordingly having been spawned as their first child. They had to have faith that it made and would make sense in the long run in order to stay together as a couple. That to me answers the paradoxes and accusations about the virgin birth and the holy couple that have been debated for 2 millenia. If Mary and Joseph are allowed to consummate their marriage per custom after the fact then Jesus’ life has a symmetry. Jesus is resurrected into Mary’s womb and Joseph’s tomb (of Arimathea). Adopting this retrograde motion tells me Jesus refers to it when taken literally- “If a man is not born again..” and His path into incarnation perhaps became part the foundation of His Salvation teaching. It was difficult to find that scenario, to see how the pattern was fulfilled in Nicodemus’ question, and I felt it was reasonable to assert when it removed all the old arguments about the holy couple. Joseph was necessary to fulfill the XY chromosome of nature, but isn't the father of His Life. Mary was made worthy by Communion with Christ across time rather than needing it upfront. Jesus is a literal and figurative miscarriage of justice. Through this mechanism, knowing how every other miracle counted, made all the other answers clearer to me and justifies me in my unorthodox thinking. A typical Christian cannot get here unless they are willing to cross that line and follow the implications like a scientist would. Can we now, with this understanding, cross the threshold from miraculous to ordinary from then to now?
1. The talking serpent in Eden , Balaam’s talking donkey, and the statue that speaks in Revelations are not directly supported by Scripture or scientific data in favor of this idea due to a lack of detail. These require a special address that I think is convoluted, debatable, goes against even more doctrine and/or science, and boils down to accepting that this universal answer is intrinsically the most plausible. Trying to explain and incorporate them amidst these new ideas would be a stumbling block. I acknowledge that they are a small representation of miracles that can’t truly be decided mechanically with the information given but are made to fit.
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trying to play the 'eyewitness discrepancy' card. Yes, memory is notoriously bad especially in times of confusion and related some time after. But this is why I have 'Biggies' - you do not forget that you ran into Jesus while going into considerable detail about everything else. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I put it to you that this witness testimony is too discrepant to be credited.
) makes the other contradictions (e.g the death of Judas) also invented, as a go - to hypothesis.
