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]

Dear Goose,
I do not mean to put words in your mouth or to infer the reason for your silence.

Please don't assume my lack of response to you is because I can't.

I would just like to make it known that I would greatly appreciate it if you could simply specify if your position is that Jesus's resurrection violated the laws of physics or if your position is that it didn't. That's all.

I clarified my position to you way back on p. 127

I wrote:

"Now, what this essentially boils down to is whether or not the Christian is standing on strong enough historical evidence to justify the belief that our observation that usually dead people stay dead did not hold in the case of Jesus. Of course, I believe the Christian is standing on solid enough historical evidence – you no doubt disagree as you’ve stated."

But since you refuse to actually discuss the historical evidence we are at an impasse. Let me know when you are ready.

You seem to be dodging the question.

Is that a "yes" or "no" to the question: "Jesus' resurrection violated the laws of physics as we know them."

I'm not sure I understand why he is supposed to pick one. He is simply trying to infer from a bunch of second-hand documents that Jesus died and then came back. There is nothing in his contention that necessitates answering the above question. I don't see how a resurrection after three days could be a natural event though.

[scourge99]

Dear Goose,
I do not mean to put words in your mouth or to infer the reason for your silence.

Please don't assume my lack of response to you is because I can't.

I would just like to make it known that I would greatly appreciate it if you could simply specify if your position is that Jesus's resurrection violated the laws of physics or if your position is that it didn't. That's all.

I clarified my position to you way back on p. 127

I wrote:

"Now, what this essentially boils down to is whether or not the Christian is standing on strong enough historical evidence to justify the belief that our observation that usually dead people stay dead did not hold in the case of Jesus. Of course, I believe the Christian is standing on solid enough historical evidence – you no doubt disagree as you’ve stated."

But since you refuse to actually discuss the historical evidence we are at an impasse. Let me know when you are ready.

You seem to be dodging the question.

Is that a "yes" or "no" to the question: "Jesus' resurrection violated the laws of physics as we know them."

I'm not sure I understand why he is supposed to pick one. He is simply trying to infer from a bunch of second-hand documents that Jesus died and then came back. There is nothing in his contention that necessitates answering the above question.

1) That you don't think he needs to answer the question isn't an answer to the question. Its an excuse not to answer a straightforward question.

2) I don't care what you personally think about a question that has been asked of him.

3) He can pick any answer he likes: yes, no, i don't know, etc. But right now he's dodging answering it altogether. I don't know why its so hard for him to tell us what his honest belief on the matter is.

That it takes this amount of arm twisting just to answer what seems to me a straightforward question tells me a lot about a poster's character and their ability to contribute to a productive debate.

[Danmark]

Goose has abruptly ended the discussion he was having with me as well. Apparently when he doesn't like the way things are going he takes a hike.

Oh, please. I gave you my reasons for ending our discussion here. And was trying to be polite about it.

Your arguments against the historical evidence amounted to essentially walls of cut and paste jobs from Wikipedia. That was bad enough but I thought to myself, "Oh well, what the heck, at least he's trying to argue against the evidence unlike others in this thread. So let's see where it goes." When those wiki arguments were countered by me you seemed to be at loss for what to do next since Wikipedia doesn't have a counter to my counter arguments. All you seemed to be able to do past that point was muster up some superficial complaints and cry foul. When you've got something a little more sophisticated than cut and pasts from Wikipedia and rants, do let me know. I'll be around.

A lot of time has been wasted on personal remarks and rule violations about allegations of dishonesty as well as long runs down the Julius Caesar assassination path and reports of auto resuscitation.

Perhaps now we can focus on the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth?

The questions are:

Who are the witnesses?
How do we judge their reliability?
Are their conflicts in the testimony?
Do the witnesses have any interest in the case?
Were the statements made contemporaneously with the events recorded?
If not, how long after the alleged events were they made?
Was there any opportunity for cross examination of the witnesses?
Do any of the events testified to violate the laws of nature?

(this list of questions is hardly exhaustive)

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to Goose]

Your arguments against the historical evidence amounted to essentially walls of cut and paste jobs from Wikipedia. That was bad enough but I thought to myself, "Oh well, what the heck, at least he's trying to argue against the evidence unlike others in this thread. So let's see where it goes." When those wiki arguments were countered by me you seemed to be at loss for what to do next since Wikipedia doesn't have a counter to my counter arguments. All you seemed to be able to do past that point was muster up some superficial complaints and cry foul. When you've got something a little more sophisticated than cut and pasts from Wikipedia and rants, do let me know. I'll be around.

Here is a list of the references I provided ASIDE from various Wikipedia quotes. This list does not even include the rather extensive references I provided which were taken directly from the NT. SO your protestation that my arguments "amounted to essentially walls of cut and paste jobs from Wikipedia" is really quite disingenuous, isn't it! I do acknowledge the inherent problem with using Wikipedia as a source, which is why I provided these other sources as well.

(The Encyclopedia Britannica; "Biblical Literature" p813).
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-lazarus ... youknowout
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/papias.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20228683
http://drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com/20 ... %E2%80%AC/
http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/age/roman.html
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/dehydr ... N=symptoms
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/dehydr ... ION=causes
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/dehydr ... plications

We're calling you out Goose! You try to act as if you are the one holding the high ground here, factually, logically, and with all due consideration given to reason. Nothing could be further from the truth of course. You have inherited the problem of trying to defend a position, the truth of the flying reanimated corpse story, which is clearly contrary to all reason and logic. Nor do you have the advantage of hard, certain evidence. The best you can to is point to the fact that there were groups of believing Christians by the second half of the first century. No one is denying this. But the fact that some individuals had come to believe in the story of a flying reanimated corpse in the first century gives us no more probable cause to believe that such a story is true today, then do ancient tales of one eyed giants or unicorns, both of which were once considered to be fully true and existent in ancient times as well.

For the flying reanimated corpse story to be given even the tiniest beginnings of plausibility, you must establish that it HAD to have occurred as an act of the supernatural, and COULD NOT POSSIBLY be nothing more then simply another in a long line of tall tales and make believe stories derived from the fertile minds and imaginations of humans. You have to firmly establish that the only possible conclusion, given the story at hand, is that a corpse came back to life and flew away. AND YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T DO IT! If you had an overwhelming and undeniable argument you would already be lashing us with it. All you have is blind faith and a lifetime of programming. Every discussion you walk away from merely illustrates my point. But then, given the nature of the logical hole you find yourself forced to try and climb out of, walking away is the only real option you have.

[Goose]

3) He can pick any answer he likes: yes, no, i don't know, etc. But right now he's dodging answering it altogether. I don't know why its so hard for him to tell us what his honest belief on the matter is.

Oh brother. I answered this question back on page 127. And again, on this page.

Here I'll give it to you one more time since you apparently missed it as well.

On page 127 I wrote:

"Now, what this essentially boils down to is whether or not the Christian is standing on strong enough historical evidence to justify the belief that our observation that usually dead people stay dead did not hold in the case of Jesus. Of course, I believe the Christian is standing on solid enough historical evidence – you no doubt disagree as you’ve stated."


Are you guys done chasing me around on this rabbit trail? Are you ready to discuss my argument and the evidence yet? Let me know when you are.

[Danmark]

3) He can pick any answer he likes: yes, no, i don't know, etc. But right now he's dodging answering it altogether. I don't know why its so hard for him to tell us what his honest belief on the matter is.

Oh brother. I answered this question back on page 127. And again, on this page.

Here I'll give it to you one more time since you apparently missed it as well.

On page 127 I wrote:

"Now, what this essentially boils down to is whether or not the Christian is standing on strong enough historical evidence to justify the belief that our observation that usually dead people stay dead did not hold in the case of Jesus. Of course, I believe the Christian is standing on solid enough historical evidence – you no doubt disagree as you’ve stated."


Are you guys done chasing me around on this rabbit trail? Are you ready to discuss my argument and the evidence yet? Let me know when you are.

You seem to be avoiding the issue. Do you have a quarrel with any of the questions I suggested at post 1650? Should some be added?

If I claim 500 people saw the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster cook a 10,000 gallon vat of pasta and turn it into the moon*, what questions would be reasonable to ask about this unbelievable event?

Stated another way, Let's suppose something fantastic like the resurrection of Jesus did in fact take place. Other than saying it did not happen because it is 'against nature,' what would be the reasonable process to try to sort out that claim from the GFSM claim or Elvis sightings?

____________________________
*Makes me think of Dean Martin. 'When the moon hits your eye like a big Pizza Pie, that's amore.'

[JohnA]

[Replying to post 1652 by Goose]

Faith says you have no evidence. You have to convince me you have evidence before I ask for it. So you need to convince me your faith is wrong before you can offer evidence. Stop running and answer my questions.
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 833#605833

[Goose]

Here is a list of the references I provided ASIDE from various Wikipedia quotes.

Let's have a quick review shall we?

Regarding 1Peter’s authorship your opening argument was a cut and paste from here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Peter

When I countered the argument your response was a monstrous cut and paste again from here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Peter

Your opening argument for John’s authorship was a cut and paste from here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_john

Your didn’t really have a counter argument to my argument and still haven’t addressed 1 Peter 5:1.

Then of course there were the cut pastes from here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illiad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Iliad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehydration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck

I do acknowledge the inherent problem with using Wikipedia as a source, which is why I provided these other sources as well.

I don't have a problem with someone using wiki for incidental references. But you were blatantly cutting and pasting from wiki for your main arguments against the evidence for the resurrection. If I wanted to read wikipedia I'd, well, just read wikipedia. Where it started to go pear shaped for you was once the wiki articles seemed to run out of counter arguments to my arguments. You then began repeating yourself and started complaining about my arguments. There wasn't much being offered by you past that point so I ended things. Let me know when you've got some stronger arguments.

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 1652 by Goose]

Faith says you have no evidence. You have to convince me you have evidence before I ask for it. So you need to convince me your faith is wrong before you can offer evidence. Stop running and answer my questions.
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 833#605833

I disagree John. Having faith does not mean you have 'no evidence.' Tho' we are frequently burdened here with an argument that relies on equivocation based on different definitions of faith, I have no trouble with the idea that those of religious faith in god have, at least in their own minds, some evidence to support their faith.

Tho' their evidence falls far short of what a scientist requires for his belief in the theory of gravity or evolution, the Christian has some evidence for his belief in God or in the resurrection. Some of that evidence may be questionable historically, or even be evidence that a modern court of law would find inadmissible, but it is 'evidence' however weak.

[Danmark]

Here is a list of the references I provided ASIDE from various Wikipedia quotes.

Let's have a quick review shall we?

Regarding 1Peter’s authorship your opening argument was a cut and paste from here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Peter

When I countered the argument your response was a monstrous cut and paste again from here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Peter

Your opening argument for John’s authorship was a cut and paste from here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_john

Your didn’t really have a counter argument to my argument and still haven’t addressed 1 Peter 5:1.

Then of course there were the cut pastes from here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illiad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Iliad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehydration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck

I do acknowledge the inherent problem with using Wikipedia as a source, which is why I provided these other sources as well.

I don't have a problem with someone using wiki for incidental references. But you were blatantly cutting and pasting from wiki for your main arguments against the evidence for the resurrection. If I wanted to read wikipedia I'd, well, just read wikipedia. Where it started to go pear shaped for you was once the wiki articles seemed to run out of counter arguments to my arguments. You then began repeating yourself and started complaining about my arguments. There wasn't much being offered by you past that point so I ended things. Let me know when you've got some stronger arguments.

Are you dismissing a cut and paste argument from Wikipedia, simply because it was a 'cut and paste?' Whether the argument is original or copied from another source, don't you have the same obligation to attack the argument? Is your criticism the lack of originality? Isn't the key here that we deal with the arguments themselves and the facts they are based upon, rather than to get sidetracked by whether or not the debater is original?