Is it really? Has anyone done a survey of all the seeds in that area? For example, Arabidopsis is common nearly worldwide and has seeds a tenth the diameter of mustard seeds. One can’t interpret this claim literally even by restricting the geographic context. This is a very silly argument.
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Ja, but I live in a farming community in West Michigan. Many farmers are really aware of a ton of agricultural things, but even with our current understanding of science, they don’t know what constitutes most of the forest seeds, etc. I suspect that the Hebrew farmers, who didn’t know even half what many nowadays do, may have been ignorant of this and Jesus was using a simplified argument.
I was arguing Jesuitically actually, I guess. I still think at base that Lamoureux is right and in overall interpretation, it was just accommodation by God to the known issues. It was factually incorrect, but the translation and message is the same.
I don’t really care much! I can accept any of those ideas. But thanks for the question. I should shut my mouth and go to bed.
Exactly. It’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturer of dairy products.
It wasn’t even an argument. It was a rhetorical flourish. His point that, “we just need a small amount of faith to please God.” It was not, “mustard seeds are the smallest seeds, therefore God only needs a small amount of faith.”
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Exactly! Thanks.
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I’d say that Chalcedon still holds, despite modern skepticism. Like many of the doctrinal councils, it refuses to explain the tension, but to describe it clearly. The Fathers were no fools in realizing that full divinity and full humanity were essential to theology… some modern writers are strong on simple explanations, but weak on the implications.
That doesn’t stop the question being amenable to philosophical treatment - whilst faith must remember that failure to achieve such a resolution is due to the weakness of philosophy, not the incoherence of God.
One of the best (but tricky) treatments I’ve found was by Bernard Lonergan. I wrote on it here, but include a link to an essay dealing with it in detail.
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Problems with the computer again?
It is obvious that further discussion on the theme is pointless. Clearly, Jesus was preaching to very simple people, the great majority of them being either farmers or shepherds, or at least to those who were familiar with farming. At that time, and in the region, mustard seed wasn’t necessarily the smallest seed, but rather, the smallest seed the people he was preaching to were familiar with it as the mustard seed was widely cultivated and sold in the markets.
Had Jesus been teaching to farmers in another region, he could have used the example of another smallest seed there being cultivated, cumin for example.
Had Jesus been preaching to the skeptical members of the Sanhedrin, or to evolutionary biologists, he could have used an example of the smallest seed known to them but not necessarily the smallest seed on the Earth.
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I suspect he wouldn’t bother to speak about seeds at all to those who were only interested in botanical records rather than faith.
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No problems.
I inserted @swamidass, then i asked the question.
I am at a loss as to how else to ask questions… except by using names more frequently, @John_Harshman !
Those interested in the “botanical records”, especially today, require faith, perhaps more than the religious. After all, nobody has witnessed one kind of life evolve into another. With such a great number of kinds of life on the Earth, no one has witnessed, or can even point to one kind of life, that is transitioning into another kind. And yet, some are certain all life forms are evolving and transitioning into another. Doesn’t this belief require a lot of faith? I’m not even going to mention the countless failures of the mutagenesis experiments, which are an embarrassment to the “botanical records”. They just prove the point I’m trying to make.
No. It requires the ability to understand data and derive conclusions from evidence. Your “point” demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of science and is a form of the creationist canard “Were you there?”
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I guess that this is a problem with how you access the web site. Your original question emerged as a response to a post of mine, with no mention of Swamidass. I don’t know what you see when you’re reading this, so can’t offer any proper advice. But as I and most others see it, one can click on a button right below the post to reply to a particular post or click on a different one at the bottom of the page to reply to the thread at large.
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Ha… let me try one last time to show you that you were mistaken:
Go to posting # 22… i referenced @swamidass… and you missed it. Period.
Yes, you are absolutely right there.
There’s a tree in my back yard that grew from a sapling.
I actually never saw it grow. It’s probably big because every night, when I was asleep, some leprechauns dug it up and replaced it with a larger tree.
But, not to worry. I have faith. And my faith allows me to believe that it grew from a sapling (and that it wasn’t the leprechauns).
Odd. I could swear it didn’t look like that when I replied to it. Anyway, yes, that was indeed Swamidass, quoting, he says, from his book.
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Such a pity that no evidence exists other than data that can be interpreted with bias. You are here, and?
Excuses and hiding behind the “science” word? It must be reassuring.
Isn’t that just saying that there’s evidence? What evidence can’t be interpreted with bias? Now, have you ever actually looked at any of this evidence?
There’s a rather hilarious extrabiblical story that makes the rounds among the Orthodox more often than in other traditions, which whimsically explores the notion and implications of both full humanity AND full deity coexisting in Jesus expressed nature, in light of kenosis.
In the story, Jesus, as a young boy, is whittling on a block of wood, intent on making a carving of a bird. His mother is watching him work with bemusement.
Slowly, the carving takes shape, going from comically imprecise to artfully superior as he works. Finally, the young Jesus gets to working on the fine details of carving out the patterns in the feathers, and with great concentration of purpose, he shifts it in his hands, and… voila! It suddenly comes to life, and flies away!
“Oops!” is all Jesus’ mother hears him say. He hastily looks around, embarrassed, to see whether any of his playmates have seen his “mistake.” No one, apparently, has. He visibly relaxes, while his mother quietly treasures the memory in her heart, aware of both the promise and the danger it implies.
Much later, she’ll call on him to turn some unremarkable jugs of water into no less than 300 gallons of wine for a rural village’s peasant wedding week’s festivities… quietly. By now, he knows full well what such powers bring when brought to public notice, and his awareness of a future ordeal, described in Isaiah 53, seems intertwined with it.
Public miracles, no matter how wonderfully manifested, start that inevitable clock of confrontation with the “powers that be” ticking.
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