what is meant by saying “God’s Son”?
Some Christians might claim that they don’t consider Jesus as God, but as God’s Son. The problem here is what is meant by saying “God’s Son”? A human son is human like his mother and father, so is God’s Son also God? If so, we are back where we started and we have the same problem as before. Also a son is a product of a sexual act. So did God have sex? Clearly this would contradict everything we know so far about God being unlike the creation. Well perhaps God sort of adopted Jesus as a son? This also makes no sense, since you can only adopt something as a son which is like you. For example, if someone had a pet fish called Flappy and said: “This is my son”, no one would take it seriously You might love it like a son, it may eat with you and have a room in the house and perhaps you might even get some adoption papers, but the fish is a fish and you are human. The two are not alike, and we know the Creator is not like anything in the Universe. In fact, we are more like fish than we are like the Creator. We are limited, finite, needy beings and so are fish, whereas the Creator is the eternal and self-sufficient. In fact, the Creator must be far removed from having a son, either literally or symbolically, except perhaps in the very metaphorical sense that our parents care for, guide and nurture us and so does the Creator. However, this term would apply to all creatures, not just humans, let alone just one human.
As for Buddhism, well the Creator doesn’t really get a look in. This leaves Buddhism more like a philosophy than a religion, and this comes with its own issues, namely that explanations for the purpose of life, the reason for suffering, and the big unknown of the afterlife are the ideas of a man, not God. What we really need is something definitive, and certainty can only come from the Knower of the unseen, who is the Creator of the unseen. Everything else is speculation.
There are a few other religions that one might mention. Sikhism is similar to Buddhism in the sense that it doesn’t claim to be of divine origins, at least not directly. The founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, took what he thought were the best parts of Hinduism and Islam and amalgamated them to form his own way. That is something many of us might be tempted to do in the face of such choice, but there is a simple rational problem here. If we agree that there is actually a revelation and message from the Creator, then how could we rationally choose to abandon the Creator’s guidance and follow something else or presume to mix it up with something else, unless of course we could establish that this is what the Creator actually wants us to do? One might be able to justify that from Hindu ideas, but it would be very hard from the point of view of Islam or Judaism, for example.
