Strange ideas at Christmas
So there was this programme on Channel 4 last night. I had to turn it off fairly quickly to protect the television screen.
It was something about the Star of Bethlehem. Y'know, you've got this bunch of people believing in a guy who is miraculously born and comes down and performs miracles left right and centre until he dies, and he doesn't even stop the miracle stuff then, but somehow the Star has to have a 'scientific explanation'?
There was all this stuff about conjunctions, then some idea that it had to be a supernova. Despite no nearby supernova remnant that dates back appropriately (to the best of my knowledge). And then you have to have the supernova go off decades (at a minimum! The last naked eye supernova - SN1987A was 170,000 light years away) in advance to give the light time to reach us. Which means God had the whole of everything predetermined since before Mary was born, if not hundreds of thousands of years before a lot of this bunch would believe the universe was created.
Bonkers.
Why go to such extraordinary (and insanely broken) lengths to find a scientific explanation for a supposed miracle heralding the birth of a miracle-worker?? Especially when those lengths completely destroy free-will, which is the basis of man's sin which this guy is supposed to be coming to wash away?
Grrrrarrrgh.
It was something about the Star of Bethlehem. Y'know, you've got this bunch of people believing in a guy who is miraculously born and comes down and performs miracles left right and centre until he dies, and he doesn't even stop the miracle stuff then, but somehow the Star has to have a 'scientific explanation'?
There was all this stuff about conjunctions, then some idea that it had to be a supernova. Despite no nearby supernova remnant that dates back appropriately (to the best of my knowledge). And then you have to have the supernova go off decades (at a minimum! The last naked eye supernova - SN1987A was 170,000 light years away) in advance to give the light time to reach us. Which means God had the whole of everything predetermined since before Mary was born, if not hundreds of thousands of years before a lot of this bunch would believe the universe was created.
Bonkers.
Why go to such extraordinary (and insanely broken) lengths to find a scientific explanation for a supposed miracle heralding the birth of a miracle-worker?? Especially when those lengths completely destroy free-will, which is the basis of man's sin which this guy is supposed to be coming to wash away?
Grrrrarrrgh.