LOL at a person whining about logical fallacies making this argument.

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Seriously, Aaron, you don't know the difference between academia and a comments thread. You never grew up.

That's actually nothing more than an ipse dixit. For all you know, the NON-CHRISTIAN authors of Genesis thought God had a physical body. They never said one way or the other in the text and we don't have any commentaries or annotations from them-- only their distant successors.

God was physical if the version of Jesus being God is true. At least for a bit.

God taking a physical form is not the same as God *being* physical. This is a more delicate discussion, if you really want to have it, but the short answer is a semi-rhetorical question: If Jesus' physical being is the entirety of God, then who is he praying to all the time?

Aaron is correct (for once) that the issue of God being physical as opposed to taking a physical form is a complex theological question. (Although actually his rhetorical question gets more to the issue of trinitarianism as opposed to God being physical or taking a physical form.)

That said, the theological debate has nothing to do with whether it is a legitimate move for him to place the claim of some Christian theologians that God is or is not physical in the mouths of those anonymous non-Christians who wrote Genesis. He really has no idea what they believed or were intending to convey when they wrote that man was created in the image of God.

If being a grown up means taking arguments that stem from formal logical fallacies seriously, I'll be happy to remain a kid. If a formal logical fallacy can produce a "reliable result" then nothing makes sense at all.

LOL -- You like the "you can't know" card... it's like your trump card when you don't have anything of value to say.

If you want to pull the Jesus body is physical but his Spirit isn't, then thats fine, i cant get around that. I do think it leads to us not being physical but thats probably another discussion.

Just to add to my other post. There are also some who say Jesus is God as part of the trinity and he is still physical now and will be in the future on the New Earth after Armageddon.

If Gods non-physical when he is Jesus then who is he prying to all those times? Both answers lead to God talking to himself in one way or another as far as i can tell.

Aaron, I'm not the one who insists on reading the minds of people who lived thousands of years ago.

It isn't a card to play. You really, truly, can't know some things. Your arrogance is immense.

I have no doubt that fringe groups say all sorts of things, but can you find anything remotely mainstream that says this? The implication here is that there is some sort of physical Jesus wandering around somewhere in the physical universe, and we should therefore be able to physically see and touch him if he were in our proximity.

The question is whether he is praying exclusively to the physical body that he has, or if he's praying to something more.

Being a grown up means that when you go to a garden party and have an informal discussion with some intelligent people over a few drinks, you don't continually insist on arguing that the things that people say couldn't be published in an academic journal.

At least, you don't do that if you wish to be invited back.

You seem to be perfectly reading the theology of a painting from a few hundred years ago...

Except that it is. You invoke this arbitrary standard when it's convenient to you, but don't ever apply it to yourself or other situations. Again, by this standard, you can't even determine that Shakespeare wasn't exclusively writing historical reenactments all the time.

If you invoke this standard consistently, the result is that you have nothing of value to say about anything at all. If you invoke this standard arbitrarily, then it's just a card to play when you don't really have anything else to say. If you don't ever invoke this card, then you're at least having a conversation.

Are we at a garden party now? At one of these parties, if a person is speaking out of a convenient orifice, do you nod your head and smile as if he actually does make sense?

If we're at a party where people are spouting nonsense all the time, I'm not sure if I want to go back to that party. Those pseudo-intellectual conversations are the worst.

But I can see why a big-shot lawyer would want to practice being in them.

Aaron, actually, this might help us get somewhere. Hypocrisy charges don't really falsify arguments.

In other words, if I say "we can't know something" in this situation, but in another situation I fail to apply the same standard when it applies, that may mean I am not being consistent, but it doesn't mean that I am wrong that we can't know the first proposition.

It's perfectly obvious that we can't know what the authors of Genesis believed about the corporeal nature of God or whether "in God's image" referred to a physical image. These people lived thousands of years ago and left no commentaries.

Now, if you really think I am applying that standard inconsistently, fine, I'm a hypocrite. I'll grant that point because I really don't want to argue it.

Now, having granted that, why, exactly, do you feel that your brilliant mathematical mind is able to read the minds of the authors of Genesis on theological matters, especially since you don't even belong to the same religion that they did?

I can see you are a real pleasant person to be around.

I agree its kind of fringe. Just saying there are some who say there is no heaven/hell for us to go see him and there will be a mass rising and judgment of all humans followed by a new earth that Jesus/God as part of the trinity will be lord over it. As far as where is Jesus physical resurrected self is now, idk, you will have to ask them.

That doesn't make sense.

If Jesus/God is physical he is praying to his non physical self.

If Jesus/God is non-physical he is praying to his non-physical self.

As I said, it's just a card to play when it's convenient.

Except that you can infer a lot if you trust that the book of Genesis and Exodus are part of the same religious tradition. Or do you not know about the fact that the Jews were not supposed to make images to represent God for the purpose of worship *BECAUSE* God is not a physical being (not a tree, not an animal, not a man, etc.).

From where does the Christian understanding of God arise? If you know the answer to this question, then you know from where I get my information.

Mark 16:19 So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

This is not God at the right hand of God, btw.

Edit never mind. You're agreeing i think?

So in both cases, there's something more than the physical self, so it's not an appropriate description to say that God is physical.

There's a boatload assumptions in this sentence that are pulled completely out of your stinky behind.

"Are part of the same religious tradition" =/ "people who wrote Exodus were the same as the people who wrote Genesis, or knew what the people who wrote Genesis thought when they said 'in God's image'"

"Jews were not supposed to make images to represent God for the purpose of worship" =/ "authors of Genesis didn't do so"

"Jews were not supposed to make images to represent God for the purpose of worship" =/ "this was because God was not corporeal"

"BECAUSE God is not a physical being" =/ there is any evidence that this was the reason that the people who wrote Exodus put that in the Ten Commandments

"BECAUSE God is not a physical being" =/ there is any evidence that the people who wrote Genesis were bound by or had even heard of the Ten Commandments

Aaron, you are one big level. Your certainty of knowledge about people that you don't have the foggiest notion about is simply amazing. And it's all because you make the biggest mistake at all-- you want your religion to be based on something other than faith. From that, all you other, numerous, egregious, douchebaggy errors flow.

There is no one Christian understanding of God, Aaron. But if you mean the Catholic understanding of God, accepted by some but not all Protestants, it arose from Catholic theologians over the course of 2,000 years, as well as the influences on the New Testament which included a lot of pagan traditions as well as the Hebrew scripture.

If you want to claim that it all flowed without modification from the beliefs of the ancient Jews, well, that's one more example of you being completely full of it.

Ok thats fine. If Gods not physical when he's Jesus then there's not much to say. Other then i think that means God never gave a physical sacrifice of himself. And it leads to making the word physical kind of meaningless when it comes to beings with non physical spirits, but...

Either

1) You're just played the "you can't know card" because you have nothing of value to add the conversation

2) You actually believe you know something about a religion, but you're wrong.

Yeah, if Aaron goes in that direction, he kind of invalidates John 3:16, doesn't he?