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Replying to post 21 by DefenderofTruth]
I also appreciate your civil 'style', and that you have lots of members participating seriously in your thread(s) (or threads with OPs quoting you
) is a result of that. Theists are under a lot of pressure here, and outnumbered (understatement), but you try to respond to all posts. That is a daunting task! Just want you to know it's appreciated.
We all agree on the details of the story, as far as i know. Will you except "Paul had a vision of the resurrected Christ"?
No . . . and this is why. First, this is a profoundly important idea, it is fundamental to the Christian religion, and such important things shouldn't be trifled with. It's like getting vague directions to a hospital when you are bleeding. I lived in (very) rural north Idaho for three years and eventually got used to "down past that Chevy that's been sitting on the old Thompson property, if you see the bull you've gone to far" but DANG I wanted to squeeze their heads for the simplest details.
Skeptics just want to be sure. Same as you. We get lost, too. It may seem like word play to you, as a believer, to put up with skeptics parsing out 'resurrected' and getting all focused on that, but isn't it a LOT different, to say "Paul had a vision of Christ" and "Paul had a vision of the resurrected Christ"? For believers, Jesus and resurrection are peas in a pod. No nonbelievers and skeptics, our mind immediately goes to trying to imagine what a vision of a resurrected Christ would look like, is it a different kind of vision than one where Christ is not resurrected?
Off the top of my head, a resurrected Christ (in a vision) would feature wounds to Jesus' hands and feet and side, as the adjective 'resurrection' seems to imply.
These distinctions may be nutty or frustrated to a believing theist. I'm a nurse and sometimes use medicalese, forgetting I'm talking to a layperson. Discussing/debating with atheists and skeptics takes some understanding of their mind set, which is without 'belief' (yet).
I see you are implying this is a "hallucination". But lets explore that. Is Paul's vision not credible? Because thats what it feels like you are implying.
I was a psychiatric nurse for 17 years, and worked with a lot of people who had hallucinations. They 'saw' things that no one else saw, and 'heard' voices or noises no one else nearby heard. Most of them were calmly and quietly POSITIVE their hallucinations were happening in the same world they shared with other people. In functional MRI scans of patients actively hallucinating, their visual and auditory cortex areas light up with activity during the hallucinations.
We don't really see with our eyes (or hear with our ears) -- it all happens in the brain, that's what we've discovered. Stimulate the brain in the visual cortex, and the person will 'see' stuff, it's a physiological process. And you don't necessarily have to be mentally ill to experience hallucinations. People with epilepsy, brain tumors, metabolic conditions, head injuries, or who take certain medications hallucinate.
All we're doing is trying to get the story straight. When a believer says 'vision', the skeptic knows that little word means a bunch of stuff besides what the believer is telling them, so which is it? Again, this is VERY important, if one is to accept Christian claims as truth. It deserves serious attention! And some supportive evidence why I should accept that Paul had divinely inspired 'visions' versus one of the plethora of OTHER known causes for 'visions'.
If it was all a hallucination, in Paul's mind, and not credible to the rest of the world. Why did more people reported to have the same vision?
To even ask this question, one would have to accept, as true, the content and quality of the other people's visions. Were they, too, having divinely inspired visions or were there other causes/reasons for their visions?
The most simple and common cause is the most likely, across the board. Those ought to be ruled out before one accepts the vision as divinely inspired, that is just normal reasoning we employ in daily life. When you hear hoof beats, it's more likely to be horses than zebras. It's always more likely to have a simple, conventional explanation than an extraordinary, supernatural one. Sure, it COULD have a supernatural explanation, but shouldn't we rule out the simple and obvious explanations before claiming 'it was supernatural'?
Why would Paul have a "hallucination"? Why not someone he knew personal? Why Christ? Why didn't he have a hallucination that had nothing to do with Christianity? Why did it happen after the fact Christ was believed to be dead (and resurrected)? Why not while Christ was alive?
Eeeexactly! Why, indeed. You are getting where we are coming from. You are trying on the skeptical hat, and looking at the question from the many different angles it can be looked at through. How else would you ever know which is the more valid angle? Theists claim 'truth' in a narrow, specific angle, and disregard all other angles. That's putting it too lightly . . . often, theists vehemently reject all other angles, and attribute bad motives to those who won't accept the angle the theist insists is truth. There's a lot of scripture telling believers that nonbelievers are foolish or deliberately wicked, or 'given over to sin' by God, and ONLY because they won't accept the extraordinary claims of theists until the more banal, mundane reasons are ruled out?
One thing is clear, this "hallucination" change Paul's life, along with the Gentiles. Paul was literally transformed by this "hallucination"... Why did he hallucinate a resurrected Christ who he never met?
So in my skeptical POV, you seem to be saying Paul's 'hallucination' changed Paul's life AND somehow changed the life of the Gentiles. Technically, I agree, the Gentile believers are everywhere you look. But did Paul's 'hallucination' cause the Gentile's to believe? The implication is that Paul's 'hallucination' had some special powers, or was a 'special kind' of hallucination. Again, whether Paul had a divinely inspired 'vision' or suffered an epileptic seizure or had psychotic episodes or ate mushrooms is not resolved, how in the world could anyone ever know?
And since MOST hallucinations are verifiable instances of brain dysfunction, we'd need some serious demonstration of how this was not the case with Paul.
And finally, (this one used to really get me), isn't the fact that so many people believe and are Christians, and this religion has persisted for 2000 years, an indication of 'truth'? Surely this must mean Paul's 'hallucinations' were much more than him eating funny mushrooms or having a psychotic episode? After all what is consensus reality but what we all agree to be true? There's 2.3 billion humans agreeing that the Christian religion is true, and the implication of 2.3 billion people are deluded is a serious charge, you gotta admit.
Since it is impossible to jump in a time machine that moves backward in time and interview Jesus, Paul, or any direct witnesses, WHY in the world would a modern person devote their entire life to worship a Jew who claimed to be the Son of God 2000 years ago? Why would a modern person gratefully accept 'salvation' and 'commune' with this man-god by 'eating' his body and 'drinking' his blood? I mean, really??
Because of the
promises. Because 'eternal life' in a glorious, perfect 'heaven' sounds a LOT better than being snuffed out as if your existence meant nothing. Because if you don't, over and over again the Bible says nonbelievers are condemned, and suffer eternal torture in Hell as punishment for not believing. Or they just 'stay dead' and miss out on eternal life. These are seriously compelling promises the Christian religion makes. Scary and hopeful. Why not 'believe' just to be on the safe side? Rather than haggle over every word's meaning in Hebrew, for instance? Even a paramecium avoids painful stimuli. In this vein, it is stupid to just REFUSE to believe.
As a believer, are there reasons I haven't mentioned why a modern person would commit their lives to a 2000 year old story about a Jew in ancient Palestine that claimed to be the Son of God?
