Expert: Marco - 11/16/2010

Question
In the Mosaic law both stoning and burning to death was commanded for certain offenses. Can you help me understand why? Even is the offenses were worthy of death, why such brutal means?...thanks

Answer
Dear Joel,

these punishments were really brutal, but they were the only means to obtain the respect of the law in that primitive and brutal society.
Of course it would be inacceptable at all to apply such kind of punishment in our society, because the civil authority is able to keep the order and the respect of the law with other more tender methods.
The situation was very different in primitive societies; in fact in all the ancient societies we find cruel physical punishments.
Through these brutal methods peoples began to understand the importance of the law, and once these understanding was reached, these brutal methods became unnecessary.
God choose the jews as the people who would have received Christ.
It was then necessary that the jews understood some basic moral and thelogical principles, in order to understand Chirst's teachings.
God revealed the Truth to humanity gradually, exactly as a father who teaches his children only step by step.
The divine pedagogy appears especially in the gift of the Law. God gave the letter of the Law as a "pedagogue" to lead his people towards Christ.
God wants to communicate his own divine life to the men he freely created. By revealing himself God wishes to make them capable of responding to him, and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity.
The divine plan of Revelation involves a specific divine pedagogy: God communicates himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome by stages the supernatural Revelation that is to culminate in the person and mission of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.


Your brother in Christ,

Marco

PS I think that faith cannot come only from logic, because to have faith in God means to trust and love God.
I think however that logics and science prove the existence of our soul and the existence of  God and that there are many rational arguments strongly supporting the christian faith.
The explanation of these aguments is rather long and Allexperts allows only to give short answers. You can find such arguments  in the following site

http://xoomer.alice.it/fedeescienza/englishnf.html

where  I analyse the incongruencies of the materialistic conception of the mind, on the basis of our present scientific knowledges about brain and matter.
This analysis points out how the laws of physics  prove that the   brain cannot generate consciousness, which existence implies  the presence in man of a unbiological/unmaterial element. The problem of consciousness is then strictly connected to the one of the existence of the soul and, consequently, the existence of God.
In the first article entitled “Mind and brain...” you can find a general discussion of the mind and brain problem from a scientific point of view.
In the second article entitled “Scientific contraddictions in materialism”
you  can find an explanation of the fundamental inconsistencies of  the  typical arguments used by materialists, such as the concept of emergent, macroscopic or holist property, complexity, information, etc.
In the section called “FAQ: answers to  visitors' questions” you can find the answer to many typical questions, such as "Are there any scientifically proved miracles?", "Does the existence of the universe imply the existence of God?", "Can science explain God?", "Can science establish which is the true religion?", "Can science explain consciousness in the future?", and many others.