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Reaffirming Jesus : How Convictions Challenged By Conflicting Evidence Yield Stronger Beliefs

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Daniel Barabino
Jesus through the Centuries
Dr. Millicent Feske
5 April 2017
Reaffirming Jesus:
How Convictions Challenged by Conflicting Evidence Yield Stronger Beliefs Jesus has been presented to me in a consistent way from my youth beginning in kindergarten through my high school experience. My initial understanding of Jesus is that he is a fully human, fully divine savior that serves as a teacher for his historical peers through contemporary times. The conceptions and understanding I have of Jesus had not been contested, challenged or questioned until I came to St. Joseph’s. While my original ideas of Jesus have largely remained unchanged throughout the course, they have been significantly strengthened through exploring and …show more content…

This division is knowledge is largely attributed to the scientific revolution. For example, in early India, God was said to be present where priests were left silent. This ancient understanding of divinity was rooted solely in mythos. As science developed and rose to a paramount discipline with the likes of Copernicus and Newton, religion was tested against a logos way of thinking. Because of this, people demanded that science yield proof of biblical accuracies and so were born atheism and fundamentalism. People were reading the Bible far too literally (which was not nearly as pervasive a thought prior to the scientific revolution), and concurrently the certainty that began being expected of the Bible was too demanding. Interpreters of the Bible began holding up something to the laws of logos, that is intrinsically grounded in mythos Theres a misconception that a scientist cannot be involved in organized religion, that these two systems are diametrically opposed. Scientists are only “supposed” to be believe in the observable and quantifiable things that we can physically have proof of, and religion is seen as fundamentally against everything being a scientist is about. This thinking really helped me to better understand Jesus, and perhaps more generally God an organized religion. I am a skeptical and rational person (perhaps because my father is scientist), but that does not preclude me from believing or participating in religion. I do

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