Does his display of morality run congruent with that of a liar?

he was a "good moral teacher" b/c no one in his 33 yrs has witnessed any immorality.

I think this is the most absurd post I've ever seen from you. How can someone believe he is God and be a great moral teacher? If he's mistaken about being God (come on now, we're not talking about missing the solution to a differential equation) how can anyone think he isn't mistaken about almost everything else, or at least potentially so? If that's the case, how could you possibly know which moral statements of his are true and which are mistaken?

That last sentence is a true whopper. A liar may make a statement that contains moral truth but he almost certainly will make it in a way that contains something false, and he almost certainly will lie about moral truth. I don't see how you can justify the two ideas as anything but logically contradictory.

Just think about the known liars in history - Hitler, Stalin, Nixon (not to equate them on other aspects) - or anyone else - who sincerely believes any were GMT? On genuinely insane people - Jim Jones, David Koresh, Richard Dawkins - GMTs?

I was being facetious because I thought you were. If you were serious then your argument makes no sense which you basically admit since 1 and 3 are irrelevant.

I don't understand what "a little" insanity means when you just said an insane person must be completely crazy.

Don't play semantic games. Let's make the assumption that Jesus was delusional to believe that he was divine. To assume that this invalidates him from being a great moral teacher, Lewis's argument requires the unstated premise that a single delusional belief renders one incapable of being a great moral teacher. This is absurd. Imagine a devout Christian who lives an exemplary moral life which sets an example to those around her, and also claims to have been in contact with extraterrestrials who have visited her while she was sleeping. Does this belief disqualify her from being a moral teacher?

I suspect that the problem is that you consider a claim to divinity to itself have moral content - i.e. that it is immoral to incorrectly claim divinity. In an atheist worldview, claiming divinity is no more inherently moral or immoral than claiming to have been visited by aliens.

Even if I granted that a claim to divinity is immoral (and statements of Jesus' where he uses claims of divinity to control people - like "None come to the Father but through me" - are certainly heading in that direction) I still don't think it's true that someone who exhibits some immorality can't still be a great moral teacher. One doesn't have to be Tiger Woods to be a great golf teacher.

I was talking about logic, not reasonability. A person could be deluded about being God or lie about it, perhaps to get more listeners, while at the same time acting morally and giving good moral advice. Not likely but not impossible.

Lewis isn't talking about being a great moral person, but a great moral teacher. By teacher, he doesn't mean someone who simply repeats what is already believed about morality, but someone who teaches with authority. It's obvious a liar is disqualified. And someone who incorrectly believes he is God can't possibly have the insight or authority required.

The analogy is completely inapposite. To be qualified to teach golf one must only know the game and be able to teach. To be a GMT, one must have credibility which is obviously missing if one is insane or himself immoral. Again, GMT doesn't mean knowing a moral code already known, but teaching with authority, which is lacking if one is insane or a liar.

Reppert deals with this idea in the link I gave:

It comes down to this. If you think Jesus COULD be a GMT though either delusional or a liar, then we disagree about the nature of delusion, lying and moral teaching. If that's the case then the trilemma won't be persuasive. All I can do is put you in the position of making a defense that seems ludicrous. Lewis, Reppert and me think the trilemma is obvious. But then, I think the existence of God is obvious.

Jesus could have been tricked, by some being much more powerful than him, into thinking that he (jesus) was god.

The issue isn't just good moral advice, though, nor acting morally. I agree. The Bible agrees (Satan can come as an angel of light). But Jesus wasn't just giving well-known, good moral advice.

Read the Sermon on the Mount. This is a statement of morality that is unique and calls for an extreme position. And He made many statements of this kind. If He was crazy or a liar, all of these radical statements lose credibility.

"I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me". Would you even consider this "advice" if He was crazy or a liar?

"Take up your cross daily, and follow Me".

" He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.

Many, many more like this. If I thought He was crazy or a liar, no thanks, big time.

If He's that easily tricked, how can He be a GMT? He could have been tricked about the morality He taught.

The tricking doesn't have to be easy. The being could be smart enough that any human ever would have been tricked as well. You think the morals are objectively good, so your second sentence doesn't even make sense. Also, Jesus' intelligence wasn't a condition at all. If it can be proven that he thought the Poincare conjecture was false, is he no longer a GMT?

You are wrong. It is perfectly fine to define GMT less rigorously than you because the less rigorous way is how the typical person who claims that Jesus was simply a GMT defines it. It is those people who your trilemma is directed to.

Meanwhile what about those chick tracts over on the other thread?

You've lost me about the second sentence. Much of His teaching was based on His authority as God. And I wasn't referring to IQ but gullibility - also, anyone who can be falsely convinced he is God has a fundamental character flaw involving conceit, arrogance and pride(or is totally crazy).

This is in the category of my post to Chrisv - we disagree on the nature of morality. Maybe the nature of greatness as well. So the trilemma misses you. Oh well, it's just one argument.

David's most recent post explains this.

This is fine, you have to add another condition now. A GMT cannot be tricked into incorrectly thinking he is god.

Yeah, we've only covered a few of the 1364 necessary premises.

Yeah, thats why most of us think it is a terrible argument that couldn't possibly change the mind of any intelligent person since you almost need to think jesus was god going in.

HE WAS A MYSTIC. A MYSTIC. A MYSTIC.

Jesus' life, teaching, and self-perception as described in the NT are exactly the behavior and disposition of an exceptional Jewish mystic in a first-century religious climate.

Lord, liar, and lunatic are completely beside the point, because the obvious answer starts with 'M'. Really, people. Wow.

What's more, you need to think that Jesus was God in a much different sense than Jesus himself did. For example, there is absolutely no indication that Jesus thought he sustained the existence of the entire universe. (Although NotReady is confident that He still does---right now!)

+1

And probably everyone else who believes that Jesus was a GMT but not divine.

That's clear from reading the Johannine literature, esp. the gospel of John.

NotReady et al would probably point you to the first chapter of Paul's letter
to the congregation at Colosse/Colossae.

Or I might direct myself there, since I had 1:16-17 in mind while writing that.

St. Paul's vision of the Christ never struck me as entirely symmetrical or limited to that found in the Gospels. But I don't know the details, so I'll defer to you. Maybe Jesus did believe that he had the power to snuff out all n-million galaxies in the cosmos, in the twinkling of an eye.

Either way. In any case, I'm pretty sure that Protestant theology is missing the essential experience of Christ's life, no matter what stylistic similarities it has managed to His language.

Not that I'm a Christian, but I admire certain features of the early tradition.