Hopefully SelectThis! will respond shortly. In the mean time I will respond to the post by aglassdarkly
aglassdarkly wrote:
Christians believe in the resurrection because we have faith, not because we have demonstrable evidence. Also because it holds our worldview together, explains our religious experiences, and makes sense of how we perceive the world. Oh yeah, and it makes sense.
Faith specifically excludes all recourse to logic, reason, fact and critical thinking. Because faith is the conscious decision to believe in things which directly fly in the face of all logic, reason, fact or critical thinking, and which may or may not have any direct corollary to that which may be observed to be factual and true. For example, if one chooses to have total faith in the story that Superman's super powers are the result of his living in this solar system with a yellow sun, rather than the red sun of his native Krypton, then that is the person's conscious decision to believe that which appeals to them, and freely made. Such a decision is not subject to logic, reason, fact, or critical thinking. In a debate which specifically DOES have recourse to logic, reason, fact and critical thinking however, such claims must be accompanied by some sort of empirical evidence that changes in the color spectrum from star to star have any potential for producing such dramatic physiological effect as providing super powers. Without recourse to actual fact and evidence, faith is nothing more then an exercise in wishful thinking. If faith is all you possess, then you possess a potential handful of self delusion.
To what extent do you hold your personal self delusion? Answer: to the extent that you can confidently declare that a story which ends with a corpse coming back to life and then flying away "makes sense."
aglassdarkly wrote:
If Jesus died and stayed dead, that means someone lied.
Yes it does. And over the course of your life, which has proven to be the more likely in your experience; humans who lie and falsify in an effort to further some private agenda, or corpses which come back to life? Were there any obvious suspects with a possible motive for lying and falsifying the story of the risen Jesus? Let's turn to Gospel Matthew.
27:64
"lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first."
An explanation for the origins of Christianity are tidily contained in this single verse. The body of Jesus did indeed turn up missing, and his disciples did indeed spread the rumor of his resurrection from the dead. It's all right there in front of us in black and white.
aglassdarkly wrote:
Somehow that lie got spread around and some people believed it. How could that happen? Let's say the 11 apostles decided to make up the story. They go around telling everyone that Jesus rose from the grave... let's even say they stole the body so it would seem true. People are like "Oh yeah, he's alive? Where?" And Peter says "Well, he appeared to a bunch of people in the next town over, but he's not here anymore."
That's about right. On the day of Pentecost the disciples of Jesus began spreading the story of the "risen" Jesus. Who claimed to have seen the risen Jesus? The disciples, according to the disciples.
"And where is he NOW?" the crowds might rightly have asked. "Show us the risen man that we might believe!"
"Oh, he's not here NOW. He flew away, off up into the clouds. But we saw him and you can believe us."
Says who? Says the disciples! These would be those same individuals whom the chief priests suspected intended to move the body of Jesus and then spread the story of his resurrection from the dead. It seems the priests may well have, finally, gotten a grasp on the situation when they went to visit Pilate. .
aglassdarkly wrote:
And one guy says "Oh yeah? I'm going to go visit a friend there tomorrow, I'll ask about it because I'd like to know if it's true." No one can find anyone from the crowds that saw Jesus after the resurrection. No one can find anyone who saw Jesus ascend into heaven. No one can find any verification for the stuff the 11 apostles are saying. Everyone knows they're lying because their story is easily falsifiable.
Which is why the story was generally so widely ignored and disregarded at the time. The Jewish population of Jerusalem, THE VERY PEOPLE IN THE BEST POSITION TO HAVE KNOWN THE ACTUAL FACTS, overwhelmingly rejected the story of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And they still do. A fact which is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. The Jews believed "until this day" (Matt.28:15) that the story of the resurrection of Jesus was a lie and a hoax. That is what was widely believed among the Jewish population at the time of the crucifixion, that was what was widely believed by the Jewish population at the time Matthew was written, and it is still what is widely believed among the Jewish population "until this day." In fact the story was so poorly regarded and widely discredited at the time it was supposed to have occurred that it would be a quarter of a century before any historical mention of it ever even took place. The common Christian portrayal of the resurrection of Jesus is one of the glory of the risen Jesus witnessed hundreds, perhaps thousands of witnesses, and that it was so widely known to have been true at the time that no one even bothered to dispute it. But this portrayal has everything to do with popular Christian mythology and nothing to do with actual historical fact. The actual historical record tells a very opposite story in fact. Far from any great prevalence of "evidence" provided by hundreds of eyewitness accounts testifying to the truth of the resurrection of Jesus which most Christians envision, there were absolutely NO accounts whatsoever concerning the death and resurrection of Jesus provided by the historical record for about a quarter of a century or so after the time Jesus was supposed to have been executed. According to the time frame established by the Gospels, themselves written 40 to 60 years after the time of Jesus' execution, Jesus was executed circa 27-30 AD. The very first historical documentation EVER of the story of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead does not occur until Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, written circa 55 AD. And it is in 1Corinthians where we find the story of the "above 500" eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus. This is invariably misrepresented by Christians as 500 individual claims to the truth of the resurrection, but it is in fact A SINGLE CLAIM, provided by Paul for a supposed "event" for which Paul was not himself present. Paul was not a personal witness to the ministry of Jesus, nor was he personally present for ANY of the events detailed in the Gospels. Is Paul's account
credible? It may or may not be true that Paul himself believed it, and we have no way of knowing the source of this particular story, nor it is mentioned by any other source. Is there any reason to DISCREDIT Paul's account? According to Paul these 500 individuals walked, talked, and otherwise communed WITH A RESURRECTED DEAD MAN! Do you understand the concept of what is credible and what is not?
aglassdarkly wrote:
But that's not what happened. So why did so many people believe the story?
They didn't! Not in large numbers initially, and certainly not among the devout traditional practicing Jews of Palestine who never believed the story. The story of the early church at Jerusalem portrayed in Acts is the story of it's struggle to survive, and of the attempts by Paul and others to bring the story to the Greek speaking non Jews and the semi -Hellenistic (Greek speaking and Greek influenced) Jews living away from Jerusalem as a source of support. The story of the resurrected Jesus would become wildly popular in later centuries, but was overwhelmingly rejected by the very people in the best position to have known what actually occurred. The story did begin to gain traction over time among the Greek speaking Gentile peoples. These were non Jewish people for whom the story of the living dying resurrected messiah god was already an intrinsic part of their belief system and had been for many centuries. Much of the Mediterranean world was enslaved by the Romans, and the oppressed non Roman masses, especially the proud Greek peoples, were waiting for a long promised religious messiah to deliver them to the kingdom of God. The story of Jesus which was to evolve pressed all the right buttons for huge numbers of non Jewish people, as well as some small number of semi-Hellenistic Jews living away from Jerusalem. Not so for traditional Jews however, who were awaiting a messiah in the form of a new David, a warrior leader who would drive out the oppressing Romans. Not a messiah who would lead then to the kingdom of God, but who would return the Kingdom of David. The success of Christianity is the story of it's success in conforming to the prevailing religious beliefs of non Jewish individuals who were born long after Jesus was executed, had no more first hand knowledge of the Gospel stories than you do, but whose supernatural beliefs already closely conformed to the story of Jesus that was being presented to them by Paul and others. Christianity would develop into a conglomeration of various the beliefs and traditions widely popular around the Mediterranean area 2,000 years ago. It offered a tidy package of various of the most popular beliefs of the day, all tied up with the urgent imperative that the kingdom of God is at hand
NOW! And 2,000 years later Christians are still whistling the same empty tune. "Rejoice, the end is near." Half our nation is still living out this horrible end of times death wish. The very same end of times death wish which was already a well entrenched religious belief throughout the Mediterranean region 2,000 years ago. If you have ever wondered why atheists are so vocal in their disdain of religion, consider this one major reason.
aglassdarkly wrote:
We can even stipulate that the story was really clever and they paid a bunch of "witnesses" to give false testimony and somehow a bunch of people were gullible enough to believe the story. But why would the 11 apostles give up their lives for a lie, get tortured for a lie... without ever admitting that they made it up?
Acts 12:2 details the death of James the brother of John at the hands of Herod Agrippa. I will concede this entire point to you if you can provide an example anywhere else in scripture concerning the death and martyrdom of any of the remaining 10 apostles for refusing to give up their claims.
aglassdarkly wrote:
And why would Paul join them?
According to Acts 9, while on a trip to Damascus Paul became sick and disoriented. In fact he had symptoms consistent with heat stroke and acute dehydration, or possibly dysentery which also produces dehydration. Severe dehydration routinely produces confusion, blindness and dementia. At any rate Paul had to be helped into the city by his traveling companions who then left him at the home of a Christian man to be cared for. Sick and delirious,
unable to eat or drink for three days,(acts 9:9) and while being cared for and prayed over by a Christian man, Paul believed after his recovery that during his illness he had experienced a vision of Jesus, who had been executed some years earlier. This experience proved to be life changing for Paul and after his recovery Paul became a confirmed Christian. So we are left to conclude either that Paul, in his delirium, and while being tended to and prayed over by a Christian man, hallucinated a vision of Jesus. Or conversely, that Paul actually MET WITH AND COMMUNED WITH A DEAD MAN. As a matter of logic, reason, fact and critical thinking, not to mention HONESTY, I ask you, WHICH OF THOSE TWO POSSIBILITIES IS THE MORE LIKELY?
aglassdarkly wrote:
It only makes sense if they genuinely believed.
I have no reason to doubt that Paul's conversion was genuine, just as I have no reason to doubt that your belief is genuine. Nor do I question the genuine nature of devotion to their beliefs of Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists. Unswerving devotion to a belief does not serve to make stories of flying reanimated corpses either true or plausible however.
aglassdarkly wrote:
If you believe the resurrection was made up, you have to explain human behavior during the 1st and 2nd centuries after his death.
In what way, exactly?
