Let's cut to the chase. Do you have any evidence?

[no evidence no belief]

I feel like we've been beating around the bush for... 6000 years!

Can you please either provide some evidence for your supernatural beliefs, or admit that you have no evidence?

If you believe there once was a talking donkey (Numbers 22) could you please provide evidence?

If you believe there once was a zombie invasion in Jerusalem (Mat 27) could you please provide evidence?

If you believe in the flying horse (Islam) could you please provide evidence?

Walking on water, virgin births, radioactive spiders who give you superpowers, turning water into wine, turning iron into gold, demons, goblins, ghosts, hobbits, elves, angels, unicorns and Santa.

Can you PLEASE provide evidence?

[instantc]

Just because somebody says "I saw a pig fly", is not a good reason to believe that the laws of gravity were temporarily suspended. Are you kidding me?

Obviously it's not a good reason, who has argued that? My contention is that what we know about pigs doesn't invalidate, but merely raises the initial implausibility of the claim that pigs can fly. This is confirmed by the fact that if there were, say, a live broadcast and a million eye-witnesses observing a flying pig in laboratory conditions, then I would have to admit that pigs can fly.

Your claim that the laws of nature invalidate all historical evidence for the resurrection is simply rubbish.

Ok, so you are saying that the laws of nature, like for example the earth being round, do NOT invalidate the historical evidence for the earth being flat? Is that your position?

Your attempt to make an analogy between the resurrection and the shape of the earth fails, and here's why. The kind of evidence we would expect to see, had the earth changed its shape from flat to round, is tremendously different from the evidence we would expect to have from the resurrection. If the former were true, we could reasonably expect it to be a commonly known fact.

Not every claim that violates the laws of nature is equally implausible, that's another rubbish presumption. There are different levels of crazy.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to Goose]

Actually I think you might be knocking the strawman.

�Even though Lazarus phenomenon is rare, it is probably under reported. There is no doubt that Lazarus phenomenon is a reality but so far the scientific explanations have been inadequate.�
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2121643/

The article goes on to list about half a dozen of those proposed explanations but guess which explanation is curiously missing? That’s right, the one that hypothesizes the doctors made goofs. You see the medical community recognizes the Lazarus Syndrome as a real phenomenon and doesn’t merely dismiss it as Physician error. The recommendations to Physicians are, “Patients should be observed for at least 10 minutes using blood pressure and ECG monitoring after the cessation of CPR before confirming death.� Why do you think that is the case? That recommendation is given not because the Doctor may be mistaken where the person may not be truly dead because death is a process but in the rare event the doctor may have a case of Lazarus Syndrome on his hands. It’s only folks like you, arguing in a circle, that try to outright dismiss the Lazarus Syndrome as human error. Again, this gives us a baseline of plausibility for a resurrection, though it doesn’t fully establishes Jesus’. Whereas flying reindeer have no such baseline. Thus you have a bogus analogy. But never mind all that logic stuff, carry on with your juvenile arguments by ridicule. After all, it’s pretty much all you have and I wouldn’t want to deprive you of that.

I don't believe that I have ever seen anyone ride a red herring this hard for this long. But then it's your argument, so I suppose you are stuck with it. It doesn't seem to be working in your favor with anyone else however. You seem to be suggesting that the story of the resurrection of Jesus after being completely and fully dead for three days can be explained as a perfectly natural occurrence that occasionally happens to corpses. Which I suppose would also serve to explain Matthew's story of "many" corpses, presumably fully dead for years, coming up out of their graves and wandering about the city of Jerusalem. So all of the various movies and TV shows about the undead are not total make believe at all, but are perfectly plausible, at least in your mind. All I can say is; Whew!

But I'll tell you what. If you can find even a single actual medical article which suggests that the Lazarus phenomenon occurs when brain tissue and other vital organ tissue spontaneously regenerates causing the individual to return to the land of the living, then we can begin to have a real discussion on the possibility of a corpse returning to life.
But if you cannot produce such medical speculation, then I suggest you quietly drop the whole issue, if for no other reason then to give your poor battered personal credibility a rest.

The point you are missing is Cyclops are spoken of in only poetry and plays. They aren’t ever spoken of in a genre of ancient literature that was attempting to record actual history. So once again, your comparison fails as it is commonly understood the Gospels are a type of ancient biography. The letters of Paul are, well, letters and not poems.

Do you expect ancient writers to uniformly write in the idiom of modern historical textbooks?

"The Iliad (sometimes referred to as the Song of Ilion or Song of Ilium) is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illiad

In his epic poem Homer told of the war between the Trojans and the Greeks. Simply a poem and therefore a pure flight of fancy on the part Homer? Not exactly. In the 1870's, based almost entirely on his reading of Homer's poem, a wealthy amateur archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann begin digging at a site in modern Turkey which would prove to be the actual city of Troy, just as described in Homer's poem. Homer it seems was not just writing a mere "poem." He seems to have been attempting to describing genuine history. At least as he understood it.

"The extent of the historical basis of the Iliad has been a topic of scholarly debate for centuries. While researchers of the 18th century had largely rejected the story of the Trojan War as fable, the discoveries made by Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik reopened the question in modern terms, and the subsequent excavation of Troy VIIa and the discovery of the toponym "Wilusa" in Hittite correspondence has made it plausible that the Trojan War cycle was at least remotely based on a historical conflict of the 12th century BC, even if the poems of Homer are removed from the event by more than four centuries of oral tradition." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Iliad

So, Homer's poem is based on actual facts. Were the details and individuals prominent in the story factual as well? What of Helen, the "face that launched a thousand ships?" Was she really the daughter of Zeus? And what of the Greek hero Achilles? The Greeks certainly believe him to be a real person. Alexander the Great is reported to have paid tribute at the tomb of the fallen Greek hero during his campaign through the area. So was Achilles really rendered invulnerable, all but his heel, by having been dipped into the river Styx by his mother as an infant? There are those things which are plausible you see, and those things which simply ARE NOT! If we eliminate those things which are simply too implausible to be true from ancient accounts, what is left MAY have some relationship to actual facts. That is the way history works. It's not an exact science. But we certainly have every right to separate out the details which COULD be true from those details which are obviously fictional.

The ancients certainly believed in the existence of a race of one eyed giants known as the Cyclops. They included accounts of them in their stories, poems and plays. And if modern scholarly speculation is correct, they may have had what they considered physical proof that such creatures existed.




Notice how the location of the central hole in this mastodon skull, actually the nasal cavity, could be mistaken for a single eye socket of a one eyed giant. It's easy to see how simpler people in a simpler time could have developed the story of a race of such giants and thoroughly believed in their existence. Trying to imagine the being that possessed a skull such as this would have been the stuff of nightmares to simpler minds in a less knowledgeable age. But this is the 21st century, and we deal in fact and reason. Many of us, anyway.

Tired of the Nonsense wrote:
"Commentarii de Bello Gallico" represents the only real source available to historians on the Gallic Wars. Could it be partly or even largely fabricated to make Caesar look better? YOU BET IT COULD! But it remains our main source of information for what occurred, such as it is.

Goose wrote:
Which says nothing about my point regarding authorship.

Actually I addressed this point in some detail. Here it is again, since you seemed to have missed it.

Tired of the Nonsense wrote:
"Could "Life of Agustus" have been written by someone other then to whom it has been generally attested? Most certainly! "Commentarii de Bello Gallico" (Commentaries on the Gallic War) is Julius Caesar's account of the Gallic wars. The final book, of eight, on the campaign was well known to have been written by one of Caesar's generals, Aulus Hirtius however, and it is suspected by some modern historians that much of the first seven books were actually written by Hirtius as well, perhaps based on Caesar's personal notes. "Commentarii de Bello Gallico" is certainly a glowing account of Caesar's brilliance as a general, and a perfect testimony to the fact that history is written by the victors. Aulus Hirtius is also widely suspected to have been the actual author of "De Bello Alexandrino" which history also credited to Caesar."

Ah yes, the ol’ history is unknowable canard. By the way, it’s ironic you say my reasoning regarding the assassination is questionable since is the very same type of reasoning you apply to the resurrection. Thank you for making my point.

You consider the story of Caesar being stabbed to death on the floor of the Roman Senate to be questionable but the story of the corpse of Jesus coming back to life and flying away to be not only perfectly plausible but unquestioningly true. A canard is an unfounded rumor; something not credible and just a bit silly. A canard is also a duck; a kind of a small goose.

Tired of the Nonsense wrote:
You were the one asserting that the evidence for the flying reanimated corpse story was as overwhelming as it was undeniable. Now you are arguing "from silence" that the total lack of evidence derived from the time the events were supposed to have occurred is not all that unusual. You don't really get to have it both ways.

Goose wrote:
You’re failing to grasp the argument. Do take some time to try understand it because I’m tired of repeating it.

This IS actually rather at the heart of things, isn't it! You first suggested that eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus were to prevalent to be discounted.

Goose wrote:
"For the sake of clarity let me restate what it is I’m arguing. I’m arguing the Christian’s belief in the resurrection of Jesus is justified because the historical evidence is strong."

And then when confronted by the undeniable fact that no such historical evidence actually exists in the form of ANYONE MENTIONING ANYTHING at the time the event was supposed to have occurred, you contended that the later accounts which do exist establish the historicity of the resurrection as well as the historicity of many other generally accepted ancient historical events. And you pointed to the assassination of Julius Caesar as one example. As if the story of a man being stabbed to death is on equal footing with the story of a corpse coming back to life and flying away. But history is also based on credibility you see. Some reports are credible, and some simply are not. For example Roman historian Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79), wrote that ostriches "imagine, when they have thrust their head and neck into a bush, that the whole of their body is concealed." The belief that when threatened ostriches "hide their heads in the sand" persisted for centuries, based on Pliny's report. It's not only an implausible story, it can be seen from direct observation of ostriches that it doesn't happen to be true. And if it were true, it's hard to imagine that their would be any ostriches around to observe. It's also worth noting that MANY stories of the wondrous things that Jesus was able to do were in common circulation at the time. Including, as an example, the miracles he performed while still in the womb. But like stories of one eyed giants, or head burying ostriches, we have good reason to discount such stories today. Many of us.

This argument is a false dichotomy of either letter writer or courier. It wrongly assumes that Silvanus could not have been both secretary and courier. Further, we have evidence that the Greek terminology at 1Peter 5:12 has been used elsewhere by Eusebius to indicate a letter writer (Church History 4.23.11). Nor does anything you had cut and pasted from wiki counter the argument that Peter could have learned Greek quite well in a 30 year period.

Do you even notice what you have devolved to? Peter COULD have learned to read and write in perfect Koine Greek. Matthew the apostle COULD have written a gospel in both Aramaic and Koine Greek. And so upon such undeniable evidence stands your assertion that a corpse unquestionably came back to life and then flew away.

Firstly the direct link was regarding John not Matthew. Which isn’t a problem for Matthew since we don’t have a direct link for the Gallic Wars to Suetonius either. Secondly, you assume Markan priority which is one several theories. If we assume Matthew was the first Gospel written there is no longer the problem you suggest. Even if we assume Markan priority it’s not unreasonable to think Matthew might use Mark as a source since it was Peter standing behind Mark’s Gospel. In the ANE they didn’t have the same issues with plagiarism we do. In fact, it was a way to show respect. None of this has undermined the argument that Matthew could have written a Gospel in Hebrew and then later written another Gospel in Greek. The bottom line is we have virtually unanimous testimony that Matthew authored a Gospel. If we combine this with the fact that not one single manuscript tradition assigns Matthew to anyone other than Matthew we have a very strong case for authorship. At least as strong as the Gallic Wars and most other works from ancient history.

My point was that the direct link you spoke of indicated that the apostle Matthew undertook the writing a gospel in the language of the Hebrew, Aramaic. There is NO SUCH SUGGESTION that he also wrote a gospel in Koine Greek. No one knows WHO wrote the Koine Greek gospel contained in all modern New Testaments, plain and simple. And if "we assume Matthew was the first Gospel written," it becomes very difficult to ASSUME that Matthew would naturally have incorporated the Gospel of Mark, which HAD YET TO BE WRITTEN, into his own Gospel. For many of us.

Fundamentally you have an argument for disputing 2nd and 3rd John were not written by John the disciple. That’s about it. By the way, Eusebius didn’t like Papias because of his millennial views not because of John.

The author of 2John and 3John clearly identifies himself as "the elder." Are you suggesting that 1John, 2John, 3John and the Gospel according to John are not all written by the same author, thereby voiding 2,000 years of Christian tradition?

It’s clear in the first part that Papias conflates “elder� with one of the original twelve disciples as is also the case in 1Peter 5:1. It’s easier to think Papias was distinguishing between the aforementioned John the “elder� (or disciple) so as to clarify that Aniston was not one of the original twelve. If we take your interpretation then we are forced to think Papias believed Anistion and the other John, “John the elder�, were also original disciples of the Lord on par with John, Matthew, Peter, Phillip Thomas, James and so on. In context then, Papias is actually referring to the aforementioned John the elder who was placed in the same group as the disciples just mentioned by Papais.

In other words, there were two different John's. Which if I am not mistaken is exactly what I have been saying.

�Among the four Gospels, which are the only indisputable ones in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the first was written by Matthew, who was once a publican, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts from Judaism, and published in the Hebrew language. The second is by Mark, who composed it according to the instructions of Peter, who in his Catholic epistle acknowledges him as a son, saying, 'The church that is at Babylon elected together with you, salutes you, and so does Marcus, my son.' And the third by Luke, the Gospel commended by Paul, and composed for Gentile converts. Last of all that by John.� – Origen, as recorded by Eusebius CH 6.25.4-7

There is nothing here that contradicts anything I have said.

Did you notice this was life expectancy in Roman Egypt? But even if we assume an authorship date of c. 80AD for the Gospel of Luke and we further assume Luke to have died shortly after writing at say the ripe old age of 50 that would have Luke born around the time of Christ’s death/resurrection. By the age of, say, 20 he could have very easily met many of the witnesses.

Do you really suppose that the difference between Roman Egypt and neighboring Roman Judea at exactly the same time period are going to be in wild variance with each other? Your original statement was that Luke COULD have himself been one of the 120 original apostles gathered in Jerusalem just prior to the day of Pentecost, as described in his own Acts of the Apostles.

Goose wrote:
"Don’t forget Luke tells also us he received his information from witnesses. It’s also very likely Luke was one of those 120 followers you’ve been harping on."

Do you even notice how desperately you are grasping at straws? Because the rest of us do.

You haven’t shown the evidence to be weak but only offered flimsy reasons to question it. But when taken against a comparison to the evidence for the assassination we see the for the evidence for the resurrection isn’t any weaker.

Again your comparison of the story of a flying reanimated corpse to the story of a man being stabbed to death. As if both are truly on the same footing, logically and historically.

. �[O]ur Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sins suffered even unto death, [but] whom God raised from the dead, having loosed the bands of the grave� - Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians, 1.

�Wherefore, girding up your loins, serve the Lord in fear and truth, as those who have forsaken the vain, empty talk and error of the multitude, and believed in Him who raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, and gave Him glory, and a throne at His right hand.� - Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians, 2.

9. �under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch, nailed [to the cross] for us in His flesh. Of this fruit we are by His divinely-blessed passion, that He might set up a standard for all ages, through His resurrection� - Ignatius Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 1.

�For I know that after His resurrection also He was still possessed of flesh, and I believe that He is so now. When, for instance, He came to those who were with Peter, He said to them, Lay hold, handle Me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit.� - Ignatius Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 3.

I do not deny the existence of many believing Christians by the end of the first century. Just as I do not deny the existence of millions of believing Mormons in the world today, roughly 150 years after the death of Joseph Smith. I do have a problem with the peculiar brand of goose grease they are peddling to the world however. To those of us, the poor unwashed rabble of non Mormon believers, who weren't programmed from birth to subscribe to Mormon reality, the brand of goose grease they are peddling is laughably childlike. It's the clearest of certain realities to them however.

[no evidence no belief]

Just because somebody says "I saw a pig fly", is not a good reason to believe that the laws of gravity were temporarily suspended. Are you kidding me?

Obviously it's not a good reason, who has argued that? My contention is that what we know about pigs doesn't invalidate, but merely raises the initial implausibility of the claim that pigs can fly.

Maybe this is an issue for you because english is not your first language, and don't realize that you are saying the exact same thing as I am. I have no problem with wording it your way. As you say, the fact that my son is 6 years old raises the implausibility of the claim that he killed Martin Luther King. It raises the implausibility to such a point that no amount of historical/anecdotal/hearsay testimony can overcome the implausibility barrier. The historical evidence has zero "implausibility lowering" power. It doesn't matter if there is one hearsay testimony that my son killed MLK, or 2, or 3 or 5000. The total effect in lowering the implausibility of the claim is ZERO, in the face of overhwelming evidence that my 6 year old son couldn't possibly have killed MLK. I use the word "invalid" to describe evidence that has zero power to lower the implausibility of a claim. Maybe the word "invalid" has a different meaning in your native language, and that's why you are uncomfortable with it. That's ok. We don't have to use it.

Let's not say that when trying to determine who killed MLK, somebody claiming "NENB's son killed MLK" is invalid. Let's just say it is irrelevant.

Similarly, when we are trying to determine if a decomposing brain-dead and heart-dead bloated corpse half eaten by maggots suddenly came back to life 72 hours after all its organs failed, somebody claiming "He raised from the dead" is not invalid evidence. It's just irrelevant. It has ZERO value in the effort to ascertain what actually happened.

This is confirmed by the fact that if there were, say, a live broadcast and a million eye-witnesses observing a flying pig in laboratory conditions, then I would have to admit that pigs can fly.

The live broadcast and the million eye-witnesses is also irrelevant. Ever saw the video of David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear? The important part of your statement is "in laboratory conditions". If a pig could be made to fly in laboratory conditions, or a decomposing brain-dead and heart-dead corpse could be made to come back to life in laboratory conditions, that would count as evidence sufficient to lower the implausibility of the claim, and it would require us to reassess our tentative conclusion that pigs don't fly and corpses don't come back to life.

Your claim that the laws of nature invalidate all historical evidence for the resurrection is simply rubbish.

Ok, so you are saying that the laws of nature, like for example the earth being round, do NOT invalidate the historical evidence for the earth being flat? Is that your position?

Your attempt to make an analogy between the resurrection and the shape of the earth fails, and here's why. The kind of evidence we would expect to see, had the earth changed its shape from flat to round, is tremendously different from the evidence we would expect to have from the resurrection. If the former were true, we could reasonably expect it to be a commonly known fact.

Not every claim that violates the laws of nature is equally implausible, that's another rubbish presumption. There are different levels of crazy.

If the laws of physics are sometimes suspended, then corpses coming back to life, pigs flying, and the earth shifting from being round to flat for 15 minutes every 2000 years are all equally possible. If the laws of physics sometimes don't apply, all bets are off and no claim is crazier than any other.

If the laws of physics are not sometimes suspended, then the resurrection was not a supernatural event, and there is no point to discuss it on a thread about evidence for supernatural events.

[instantc]

Obviously it's not a good reason, who has argued that? My contention is that what we know about pigs doesn't invalidate, but merely raises the initial implausibility of the claim that pigs can fly.

Maybe this is an issue for you because english is not your first language, and don't realize that you are saying the exact same thing as I am. I have no problem with wording it your way.

There is no need to appeal to the language barrier in order to moderate your claims, there's an obvious difference here. Danmark also pointed out earlier that evidence isn't invalidated by the fact that there is overwhelming evidence for the opposite, and I believe he is a native speaker. Consider the following situation.

Suppose a man hears that his son, John, has died in battle in Iraq, this is confirmed by the members of his team who saw him being shot two times from a distance. Suppose that the body is never found from the field, and the man hears from his friend, who heard from his friend, who heard from his local friend from an Iranian village that they have found and taken care of an American soldier who was badly wounded and whose name is John. Now, this peace of hearsay is very weak evidence and doesn't justify the man's belief that his son is alive, but it obviously has a bearing, it's not rendered invalid by the fact that John was shot two times and fell to the ground. If the man later found out that his friend made the whole thing up to make him feel better, that would render the evidence invalid.

Your attempt to make an analogy between the resurrection and the shape of the earth fails, and here's why. The kind of evidence we would expect to see, had the earth changed its shape from flat to round, is tremendously different from the evidence we would expect to have from the resurrection. If the former were true, we could reasonably expect it to be a commonly known fact.

Not every claim that violates the laws of nature is equally implausible, that's another rubbish presumption. There are different levels of crazy.

If the laws of physics are sometimes suspended, then corpses coming back to life, pigs flying, and the earth shifting from being round to flat for 15 minutes every 2000 years are all equally possible.

Did you not understand what I said about the evidence that we would expect to have, had the earth changed its shape from flat to round in the past?

If the laws of physics sometimes don't apply, all bets are off and no claim is crazier than any other.

This is just patently false, there are other criteria by which we judge claims and plausibility than the laws of nature. All supernatural claims are implausible, but not equally so.

[Goose]

I don't believe that I have ever seen anyone ride a red herring this hard for this long. But then it's your argument, so I suppose you are stuck with it. It doesn't seem to be working in your favor with anyone else however. You seem to be suggesting that the story of the resurrection of Jesus after being completely and fully dead for three days can be explained as a perfectly natural occurrence that occasionally happens to corpses.

Have you already forgotten why I introduced the Lazarus Syndrome? It wasn’t to argue it proves Jesus’ resurrection. I introduced it to counter your inept analogy that Jesus’ resurrection is on par with flying reindeer in terms of plausibility. The argument ran: at least we have a starting baseline of plausibility for a resurrection with the Lazarus Syndrome whereas we have no such baseline for flying reindeer. Thus your analogy is fallacious. That you’ve now joined the ranks of Danmark, nenb and others who have resorted to incessantly knocking down this same strawman over and over only serves to demonstrate you either can’t grasp the argument or you find it easier to attack strawmen rather than deal with my actual position and counter argument.

Do you expect ancient writers to uniformly write in the idiom of modern historical textbooks?

No of course not. But the big pink elephant in the room you are attempting to unsuccessfully circumnavigate is the ancient Greeks were quite good at recognizing the genre of literature. Poetry was understood by the ancient Greeks to be creative storytelling, i.e. a form of fiction. Aristotle wrote a treatise on how to go about constructing a poem in his Poetics. He touched on plot development, character development, the proper metre to be used and so on. Homer’s Odyssey was also critiqued as a case study by Aristotle in Poetics. Here’s what Aristotle said about Homer’s Odyssey.

�Homer more than any other has taught the rest of us the art of framing lies in the right way.� – Aristotle, Poetics,24

What you are fallaciously attempting to do is line up a form of literature, i.e. Greek poetry, understood by those who wrote it and read it to be mythology alongside a form of ancient literature understood to be attempting to record actual history, i.e. ancient biography and letters, as though they carry the same weight as historical evidence. For some reason you think this is a compelling argument which isn’t surprising in the slightest when we consider how compelling you think your Paul didn’t eat or drink for three days argument is. They’re both horrible arguments.

Actually I addressed this point in some detail. Here it is again, since you seemed to have missed it.

And I addressed your point in my next post here showing your reasoning regarding how we establish authorship to be faulty. Your next post in response to that deviated off of authorship onto the veracity of the text by asserting the Gallic Wars may be a possible fabrication to make Caesar look better. You don’t seem to be addressing my arguments and no longer seem to be presenting coherent arguments of your own but have instead taken to mostly complaining.

You consider the story of Caesar being stabbed to death on the floor of the Roman Senate to be questionable but the story of the corpse of Jesus coming back to life and flying away to be not only perfectly plausible but unquestioningly true. A canard is an unfounded rumor; something not credible and just a bit silly. A canard is also a duck; a kind of a small goose.

It seems you are still not grasping the argument. By the way, a canard is not a duck and a duck is not a goose. To quote your favorite authority “geese are not considered ducks.� - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck

For one who appears to be having difficulty distinguishing between the historical weight of ancient poetry and ancient biography it’s not at all surprising there is also the apparent difficulty in distinguishing between a duck and goose.

This IS actually rather at the heart of things, isn't it! You first suggested that eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus were to prevalent to be discounted.

The argument is that the Christian’s belief in the resurrection is justified because the historical evidence is strong. The methodology I’ve offered to establish the strength of that evidence is to compare it to another event which is also strongly supported by historical evidence. Every objection you levy against the strength of the evidence for the resurrection (such as your inept arguments from silence) I apply to the evidence for the assassination as a control. If that objection makes the evidence for the assassination also seem weak, we are justified in concluding your methodology is flawed. Or you simply hold the resurrection to an unfair standard in how the strength of the evidence is evaluated since the evidence for the assassination is considered strong by historians. Thereby making your objection bogus.

On the other hand since we see the evidence for the resurrection is at least as strong as for the assassination we have an objective way to establish the strength of the evidence for the resurrection rather than simply asserting the evidence is strong. Is any of this sinking in yet? Hopefully.

Do you even notice what you have devolved to? Peter COULD have learned to read and write in perfect Koine Greek. Matthew the apostle COULD have written a gospel in both Aramaic and Koine Greek. And so upon such undeniable evidence stands your assertion that a corpse unquestionably came back to life and then flew away.

You’re complaint here is not addressing the arguments regarding the authorship of Peter.

My point was that the direct link you spoke of indicated that the apostle Matthew undertook the writing a gospel in the language of the Hebrew, Aramaic. There is NO SUCH SUGGESTION that he also wrote a gospel in Koine Greek. No one knows WHO wrote the Koine Greek gospel contained in all modern New Testaments, plain and simple. And if "we assume Matthew was the first Gospel written," it becomes very difficult to ASSUME that Matthew would naturally have incorporated the Gospel of Mark, which HAD YET TO BE WRITTEN, into his own Gospel. For many of us.

And I addressed your point with the bottom line that we have unanimous testimony that Matthew authored a Gospel. Wwhen combined with the fact that not one single manuscript tradition assigns Matthew to anyone other than Matthew we have a very strong case for authorship, at least as strong as other works from ancient history. You didn’t address this argument with your complaints above.

The author of 2John and 3John clearly identifies himself as "the elder." Are you suggesting that 1John, 2John, 3John and the Gospel according to John are not all written by the same author, thereby voiding 2,000 years of Christian tradition?

Who wrote 1st, 2nd and 3rd John is irrelevant to my argument. By the way, “elder� was used in the same context as “apostle� (1 Peter 5:1). So I don't see this as the insurmountable problem you do.

In other words, there were two different John's. Which if I am not mistaken is exactly what I have been saying.

No, I’m not arguing there were two different Johns. But so what if there was anyways? We have the weight of virtually unanimous external attestation that John the disciple authored the Gospel which bears his name. That is as strong, if not stronger, than the evidence for the authorship of other secular works.

Do you really suppose that the difference between Roman Egypt and neighboring Roman Judea at exactly the same time period are going to be in wild variance with each other? Your original statement was that Luke COULD have himself been one of the 120 original apostles gathered in Jerusalem just prior to the day of Pentecost, as described in his own Acts of the Apostles.

Luke possibly being one of the 120 was a side point. The main point being that Luke was certainly in a position to have met witnesses even if we assume a later dating of Luke/Acts and an average life span. This point has not been refuted by you.

Since it seems this debate is winding down allow to me give a brief recap of some of the evidence for the resurrection as presented by me.

• 1. The letter’s and testimony of Paul who met eyewitnesses
  2. The testimony of Peter who was an eyewitness
  3. An eyewitness account in John
  4. An eyewitness account in Matthew
  5. The account of Luke who met witnesses
  6. The account of Mark who met witnesses
  7. Clement’s first letter.
  8. Testimony of Polyarcp who met witnesses
  9. The testimony of Ignatius who met witnesses.

It’s been my contention this represents strong historical evidence which justifies the Christians’ belief in the resurrection of Jesus..

[Danmark]

I make no comment an anyone's use of English, since you both (by my low standard ) write much better than most native speakers.

Perhaps I'm picking at nits, but I don't like the term 'valid' or 'invalid' evidence since they are terms not used at law. "Evidence" is not even defined at law, rather the question is whether evidence is relevant.

Evidence is relevant if it has "... any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence."
ER 401

I see no reason to depart from viewing 'evidence' in our discussions on the forum differently than our courts of law do, since they have been dealing with this subject for thousands of years. The Rules of Evidence change from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and over time, but relevance has always been the key.

For various reasons most ER's exclude certain types of evidence that time has shown to be unreliable, by declaring them 'inadmissible.' Hearsay is the most well known be the lay public. "Hearsay" is a statement, other than one made by
the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered
in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted.
ER 801
There are many exceptions however; for example if someone makes a statement he adopts as true and it is against his own interest, that is not considered hearsay and is admissible.

There is no such concept as 'valid' or invalid evidence. Evidence is either admitted for consideration, or it is not. The real question usually becomes what weight does one give to the evidence.

[Student]

Since it seems this debate is winding down allow to me give a brief recap of some of the evidence for the resurrection as presented by me.

• 1. The letter’s and testimony of Paul who met eyewitnesses
  2. The testimony of Peter who was an eyewitness
  3. An eyewitness account in John
  4. An eyewitness account in Matthew
  5. The account of Luke who met witnesses
  6. The account of Mark who met witnesses
  7. Clement’s first letter.
  8. Testimony of Polyarcp who met witnesses
  9. The testimony of Ignatius who met witnesses.

It’s been my contention this represents strong historical evidence which justifies the Christians’ belief in the resurrection of Jesus..

I know it's late in the day but let's re-examine your 'evidence'.

The letter’s and testimony of Paul who met eyewitnesses
According to Paul, flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, so Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus is as a vision of a spiritual body, and not an encounter with a re-animated corpse.

From Paul’s description, the post mortem appearances of Jesus to Cephas, the twelve, the 500, James and to all the apostles, were all qualitatively the same as Paul’s own encounter with the risen Jesus, that is Paul’s experience was in no way different or inferior, other than Paul’s encounter came last.

Consequently, if Paul’s experience was in the form of a vision, then, in Paul’s opinion, so was that of Cephas, James and the rest. Paul’s letters contain no eye-witness reports of encounters with a re-animated corpse.

The testimony of Peter who was an eyewitness
1 Peter agrees with Paul; the physical is base, the spirit is incorruptible. So no physical re-animated corpses in 1 Peter but a spiritual resurrection:

1Pt 3:18 [literally] Christ was “…….on the one hand being put to death in the flesh, on the other being made alive in the Spirit�.

So no eye-witness encounters with a re-animated corpse in 1 Peter either.

Two down, seven to go.

[Danmark]

Regarding the weighing of evidence, conflicting testimony is considered.
If we ignore other evidentiary problems and accept the NT as evidence admitted and relevant, we still have a problem, since there are conflicts in the testimony from the same source, to wit: The New Testament. For example:

Matthew said that Jesus was born in the reign of Herod, who died in 4 B. C. (2:1)
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod. Luke said that Jesus was born during the Syrian governorship of Quirinius, who was not even appointed to the position until 6 A. D.
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration when[a] Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be registered, each to his own town. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. 6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
Luke 2:1-7

When the trier of fact receives these two pieces of evidence from a source claimed to be an omniscient and perfect errorless 'God', these clear conflicts require the trier of fact to either reject Matthews account, Luke's account, or [if he considers the NT divinely inspired by an omniscient 'god'] to reject the evidence of the NT entirely.

[Danmark]

I don't believe that I have ever seen anyone ride a red herring this hard for this long. But then it's your argument, so I suppose you are stuck with it. It doesn't seem to be working in your favor with anyone else however. You seem to be suggesting that the story of the resurrection of Jesus after being completely and fully dead for three days can be explained as a perfectly natural occurrence that occasionally happens to corpses.

Have you already forgotten why I introduced the Lazarus Syndrome? It wasn’t to argue it proves Jesus’ resurrection. I introduced it to counter your inept analogy that Jesus’ resurrection is on par with flying reindeer in terms of plausibility. The argument ran: at least we have a starting baseline of plausibility for a resurrection with the Lazarus Syndrome whereas we have no such baseline for flying reindeer. Thus your analogy is fallacious....

This is where you go wrong. The 'Lazurus syndrome' [autoresuscitation] is simply not any more analogous to the resurrection of a 3 day old corpse than flying reindeer. You may want to call it a 'baseline of plausibility,' but given the actual facts regarding autoresuscitation it is no more a baseline than flying squirrels are to flying reindeer.

You have refused to deal with the actual facts of documented cases of autoresuscitation and instead called people liars and 'dishonest' when they point out the fallacy of comparing autoresuscitation with the resurrection by claiming they said you cited autoresuscitation as proof of the resurrection. Granted, you did not claim it as proof of the resurrection. So why bring it up? As I say, it makes as much sense as claiming flying squirrels or bats provide a "baseline of plausibility" for flying reindeer. Your analogy is equally fallacious or equally apt.

In either case, analogies are merely teaching tools. They prove nothing.

Instead of this red herring of yours that has provoked you to hurl personal insults, you would be better served by answering contradictory passages in the NT that serve to invalidate the entirety of the NT.

[Nickman]

Regarding the weighing of evidence, conflicting testimony is considered.
If we ignore other evidentiary problems and accept the NT as evidence admitted and relevant, we still have a problem, since there are conflicts in the testimony from the same source, to wit: The New Testament. For example:

Matthew said that Jesus was born in the reign of Herod, who died in 4 B. C. (2:1)
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod. Luke said that Jesus was born during the Syrian governorship of Quirinius, who was not even appointed to the position until 6 A. D.
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration when[a] Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be registered, each to his own town. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. 6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
Luke 2:1-7

When the trier of fact receives these two pieces of evidence from a source claimed to be an omniscient and perfect errorless 'God', these clear conflicts require the trier of fact to either reject Matthews account, Luke's account, or [if he considers the NT divinely inspired by an omniscient 'god'] to reject the evidence of the NT entirely.

The evidence is the same as the Roswell Incident. Something happened but there is no clear cut evidence that we can rely on.