John Quigley

Journal 6: Jesus, Model of Faith, Model of Humanity

This section dealt largely with arguments of God's existence and Jesus being fully human and fully divine. Most people do not realize Jesus' existence as both fully human and fully divine, beliving him to be only divine. Jesus reveals his humanity in his fear of persecution from the Romans. When he tells those that he performed miracles on to not tell anybody, it is to avoid persecution. Jesus knew pain, lonliness and desperation on the cross, right before his death. This section also dealt with logical proofs to God's existence, giving examples such as The Golden Ratio and Anthropic Principle. All of the arguments for God's existence in this chapter seeks to prove His existence through logic and reason, not just on faith alone. Three things I want to remember from this section are The Golden Ratio, Pascal's Wager, and Plato and Aquinas' argument from the degrees of perfection. The Golden Ratio is a very precise decimal that seems to occur throughout nature. Some examples are a nautilus shell, and many flowers. For all of these natural objects to have the same ratio, .618, it is unlikely that this happened through natural causes. The consistency of our world is the argument made by the Golden Ratio for God's existence. Pascal's wager does not deal directly with God's existence, it deals with the belief in God's existence. Pascal explains that it is beneficial for humans to believe in God because no negative can come out of it. If we believe in God and He exists, we are rewarded beyond measure, while if we believe in God and he does not exist, there are no additional consequences. However, if we do not believe in God and he does exist, the punishment is eternal suffering. This is not how devout Christians should believe in God. Plato's and Aquinas' argument fromt he degrees of perfection deals with the levels of intelligence in the world, going from inanimate objects, through plants and animals, eventually to humans. The only logical way to go from humans is further along the path to perfection, until the level of God is reached. What interests me is that there are an undefined number of steps between humans and God. There could be several more advanced beings, that come ahead of us in the future.

A nautilus shell, one of many examples of the Golden Ratio

www.buckminster.info/pics/icosahedra/icos-nature-shells-nautilus.jpg

Am I able to do things of such greatness as Jesus did? He did these things despite being fully human. I can become a more faithful person by reading the Bible from a different viewpoint, from the viewpoint of Jesus as a man. This will enable me to grow closer to him because he is more personable when though as human.