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?

[keithprosser3]

Maggot-infested brain-dead, heart-dead decomposing carcasses with fully clotted blood and fully dead internal organs don't come back to life, and they don't fly into the sky like hot air balloons.

I don't agree with your argument. MGIBHDDC(etc)s don't normally come back to life but MGIBHDDC(etc)s are not normally the virgin born sons of God.

We don't have a lot of experience of recently dead Sons of God so how can we say whether sons of god can't or can't come back to life?

Your argument is - or assumes - that Jesus was not an actual son of god. You can see that by imagining that had you made the alternate assumption - that Jesus was divine. In that case you could not then assert that he couldn't come back to life no matter how maggoty he was.

I suggest this debate is based on false premises - that it is isn't about evidence at all but about whether one accepts or rejects the divinity of Jesus. If you believe He was divine, the evidence supports that belief. If you reject His divinity the evidence is too weak to change your mind.

[Sonofason]

Maggot-infested brain-dead, heart-dead decomposing carcasses with fully clotted blood and fully dead internal organs don't come back to life, and they don't fly into the sky like hot air balloons.

I don't agree with your argument. MGIBHDDC(etc)s don't normally come back to life but MGIBHDDC(etc)s are not normally the virgin born sons of God.

We don't have a lot of experience of recently dead Sons of God so how can we say whether sons of god can't or can't come back to life?

Your argument is - or assumes - that Jesus was not an actual son of god. You can see that by imagining that had you made the alternate assumption - that Jesus was divine. In that case you could not then assert that he couldn't come back to life no matter how maggoty he was.

I suggest this debate is based on false premises - that it is isn't about evidence at all but about whether one accepts or rejects the divinity of Jesus. If you believe He was divine, the evidence supports that belief. If you reject His divinity the evidence is too weak to change your mind.

That's a great argument.

[Star]

Maggot-infested brain-dead, heart-dead decomposing carcasses with fully clotted blood and fully dead internal organs don't come back to life, and they don't fly into the sky like hot air balloons.

I don't agree with your argument. MGIBHDDC(etc)s don't normally come back to life but MGIBHDDC(etc)s are not normally the virgin born sons of God.

We don't have a lot of experience of recently dead Sons of God so how can we say whether sons of god can't or can't come back to life?

Your argument is - or assumes - that Jesus was not an actual son of god. You can see that by imagining that had you made the alternate assumption - that Jesus was divine. In that case you could not then assert that he couldn't come back to life no matter how maggoty he was.

I suggest this debate is based on false premises - that it is isn't about evidence at all but about whether one accepts or rejects the divinity of Jesus. If you believe He was divine, the evidence supports that belief. If you reject His divinity the evidence is too weak to change your mind.

Who are you, and what did you do to Keith?

[keithprosser3]

SoS, we are 2000+ posts into this thread. I think if any conclusion was going to be reached, it would have happened by now. Of course, I don't have any evidence for that....

[Danmark]

Maggot-infested brain-dead, heart-dead decomposing carcasses with fully clotted blood and fully dead internal organs don't come back to life, and they don't fly into the sky like hot air balloons.

I don't agree with your argument. MGIBHDDC(etc)s don't normally come back to life but MGIBHDDC(etc)s are not normally the virgin born sons of God.

We don't have a lot of experience of recently dead Sons of God so how can we say whether sons of god can't or can't come back to life?

Your argument is - or assumes - that Jesus was not an actual son of god. You can see that by imagining that had you made the alternate assumption - that Jesus was divine. In that case you could not then assert that he couldn't come back to life no matter how maggoty he was.

I suggest this debate is based on false premises - that it is isn't about evidence at all but about whether one accepts or rejects the divinity of Jesus. If you believe He was divine, the evidence supports that belief. If you reject His divinity the evidence is too weak to change your mind.

The correct acronym is MIBDHDDC [sorry to be technical ].

Before we get to whether one 'accepts or rejects the divinity of Jesus,' we first have to look at the evidence. The evidence should come first, not as a secondary consideration for whether one's beliefs are justified or not.

How is the evidence for the divinity of Jesus stronger than the evidence for other religious claims? One can start with the witnesses for Joseph Smith's claim that he received golden plates from the angel Moroni. Next up is the claim of Sonofson that he has received personal evidence in the form of the Holy Spirit and demons...

... or thousands of other claims?*

What is the basis for accepting the claims of the anonymous witnesses of the NT, but rejecting the claims of the witnesses to Joseph Smith's claims?

See http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/three
and http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/eight?lang=eng

At least these witnesses had names. They too, at least some of them (including Joseph Smith) died for their beliefs.
_____________________
*
On November 2, 2000, a post appeared on the Time Travel Institute forums from a man claiming to have the knowledge of what it would take to make a time machine work. Over time, the posts evolved into an actual claim of time travel from a man calling himself John Titor. Titor declared he was an American soldier from the year 2036 assigned to a governmental time travel project and the posts blew up, establishing quite a following, including the John Titor Institute. What separated Titor's posts from an average crank was his complex detailing of events as well as technology that tended to pull people into the story.

His prediction of a civil war within the US by 2008 as well as the fact that there would be no Olympics after 2004 didn't exactly come to fruition, but Titor also asserted that, "the Everett-Wheeler-Graham (or 'multiple world') theory is correct. All possible quantum states, events, possibilities, and outcomes are real, eventual, and occurring. The chances of everything happening someplace at sometime in the superverse is 100%."

So it's actually impossible to prove that any of his predictions are incorrect because we could simply be living in a universe parallel to his.

In March 2001, the Titor posts stopped, never to pop up again because that's when John went back to his own time...supposedly.
http://www.ranker.com/list/5-convincing ... an-tindell

[keithprosser3]

Before we get to whether one 'accepts or rejects the divinity of Jesus,' we first have to look at the evidence. The evidence should come first, not as a secondary consideration for whether one's beliefs are justified or not.

Yeah, well what should be and what is can be different. Here is a link to evidence that Bigfoot is Elvis Presley's love child. Of course you are going to check it out before making any judgement about that, aren't you?

It's just a matter of degree. One doesn't approach evidence with an open mind - all your prior experience is also evidence. Your experience is that bigfoot stuff is nonsense, so you have already made up your mind that whatever that link leads to, it won't be real. Put another way, you already know enough about Bigfoot to know whatever that link is, it's nonsense. Same with the evidence for X in the Bible - you already know enough to reject it uncritically. Neutrality and objectivity are utopian myths.

[instantc]

Maggot-infested brain-dead, heart-dead decomposing carcasses with fully clotted blood and fully dead internal organs don't come back to life, and they don't fly into the sky like hot air balloons.

I don't agree with your argument. MGIBHDDC(etc)s don't normally come back to life but MGIBHDDC(etc)s are not normally the virgin born sons of God.

We don't have a lot of experience of recently dead Sons of God so how can we say whether sons of god can't or can't come back to life?

Your argument is - or assumes - that Jesus was not an actual son of god. You can see that by imagining that had you made the alternate assumption - that Jesus was divine. In that case you could not then assert that he couldn't come back to life no matter how maggoty he was.

I suggest this debate is based on false premises - that it is isn't about evidence at all but about whether one accepts or rejects the divinity of Jesus. If you believe He was divine, the evidence supports that belief. If you reject His divinity the evidence is too weak to change your mind.

But the resurrection is the argument that is supposed to prove Jesus's divinity.

It's a good prima facie assumption that someone is not the son of God until shown otherwise, isn't it?

[keithprosser3]

I am not sure what this thread has mutated into being about.

I think it's about whether the resurrection happened or not and I was commenting on NENBs argument that MIBDHDDCs can't come back to to life.

If it was a story about Socrates (or some other mortal) coming back to life then NENBs argument is fine, because 'Mortals don't come back to life' so a story about Socrates resurrection could be dismissed on that basis alone.

But Jesus is supposed to be a divine being. The assertion that 'Divine beings can't come back to life' is not so self-evident, unless maybe one has already decided that divine beings don't exist or that Jesus wasn't one, which is 'begging the question'.

[instantc]

But Jesus is supposed to be a divine being. The assertion that 'Divine beings can't come back to life' is not so self-evident, unless maybe one has already decided that divine beings don't exist or that Jesus wasn't one, which is 'begging the question'.

If Jesus is a divine being, then resurrection is a decent explanation. But we are still at the same square one trying to show that Jesus is a divine being. If there were sufficient evidence for the resurrection, then that would support the assertion that Jesus is a divine being. If there is no independently sufficient evidence for either claim, the only possible argument is a circular one. (Resurrection is a good explanation of the facts because Jesus is a divine being - we know that Jesus is a divine being because he was resurrected)

[keithprosser3]

But a believer has an additional fact - he knows that Jesus is divine anyway, independent of this story. To a believer, that Jesus is divine is as true as 1+1=2.

I can imagine it is pretty frustrating for a believer that NENB (standing as a token atheist in this case) can't see that the resurrection could easily have happened because "JESUS IS DIVINE. He's not a MIBDHDDC - he's the ruddy son of god, you thick heathen'.

Of course the correct answer to that is "NO HE ISN'T". Which goes to show its not about the evidence, it about the underlying belief or world-view one brings to the evidence.