Pale Blue Inspiration!
I actually teared up listening to Sagan's heartfelt and inspirational speech. So motivational, so awesome, so humbling. Please watch this video.
Discussing the Historicity of Jesus with a Christian Agnostic
Steven Jake, the author of the up and coming blog TheChristian Agnostic , [1] wrote a rather thorough response to my lengthy comment asking him about the state of the evidence regarding the historical Jesus. I am pleased he took the time to write a thorough response. I only feel that such a thorough response deserves my own more detailed response as my initial comment was merely that—a comment. So without further ado I will address some of Steven Jake’s comments and concerns. Initially Steven Jake (henceforth SJ) posted a quote from New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman claiming that there is an abundance of evidence for a historical Jesus. I merely contested this claim asking for what evidence we have that would be considered historically reliable. As I see it there is none. That doesn’t mean, however, I don’t think there wasn’t a historical Jesus, just that we cannot prove if there was or wasn’t and so I remain agnostic as to the historicity of Jesus—not a mythicist
Oh, yeah, I've seen this. The guy that told me about this said he cries every time he watches it.
ReplyDeleteI got a little misty eyed, too.
Being godless still has wonder, amazement, and beauty.
I wish Sagan was still around. We still need someone around with his oratory skill and wisdom from the scientific community.
Oh yeah, I also read that a person's awareness of numbers is in direct proportion with their awareness of humanities size in the universe.
ReplyDeleteI plan to blog about that in a few weeks. Sharing Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" might also be appropriate. Thanks for bringing this up again.
I recently read how the odds of a number confuses us and there is a psychological reason for this, interestingly enough.
ReplyDeleteSo I don't doubt that setting in contrast disproportionate sums is difficult for some people.
My math is mediocre at best. So I can see it perhaps causing a greater confusion with regards to sizing up the universe.
My math stinks, too. But after reading up on some science and finance, I see that math is a language where we cannot afford illiteracy. Math has the power to describe so much of what we cannot see with our eyes or even arrive to with our imaginations alone. I took a chance and read Einstein's "layman's"version of Relativity. He wrote it for the person who is *not* mathematically inclined. Regardless, you come to clearly you see that mathematics opens the door for even arriving at much of the scientific discovery over the past few hundred years, even if you don't walk way really understanding everything Einstein talked about. You get the gist of it at least and realize that numbers are far more important that we give them credit. I wish I understood math better.
ReplyDeleteI'm working on it.