The Resurrection is it provable?

[Sheldon]

Well then the case is closed,

Like your mind?

 

[Sheldon]

1 Paul had experiences of visions of Jesus

I don't believe you, since like Paul you are making an unevidenced subjective claim.

2 atleast some of the information that he received from the visions is true

I don't believe you, since like Paul you are making an unevidenced subjective claim.

3 therefore the experience was reall, Paul really and trully saw Jesus

I don't believe you, since like Paul you are making an unevidenced subjective claim.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Straw man fallacy, and I am being polite because the forum rules forbid a candid appraisal of that claim. There is a scholarly consensus that the gospels are anonymous, and no credible scholar can offer any independent validation for any of it, beyond the crucifixion. Your list offered people's subjective beliefs. just because someone is an historical biblical scholar, does not mean their subjective beliefs are historically valid. This is the very definition of an appeal to authority fallacy.

One of the problems in the understanding of this topic by many Christians is that they do not realize that apologists are not scholars.

 

[Sheldon]

Which is evidence that Paul and the authors of the gospels had different primary sources.

Nobody knows who wrote the gospels, and Paul never met nor did he know Jesus. You are just making up wild assumptions. Though how exactly having multiple hearsay sources strengthens the claims is baffling?

You still have this annoying tendency of ignoring the point of my comment and make a bunch of random and unrelated claims.

Irony overload, lost on you I'm guessing?

All I am saying is that the fact that none of the gospels mentioned the 500 strongly suggest that the authors of the gospels didn't copied from Paul. (Nor had Paul as a source)

And I pointed out that nobody knows who wrote the gospels, and Paul never met nor did he know Jesus. So you're just making up wild assumptions. Do you really not understand the significance?

So ether agree or refute this particular point.

I just pointed out twice, that your claim was nothing but pure assumption, do you not understand how this undermines yours assumption?

Answers such as "nobody knows who wrote the gospels " are just irrelevant and dishonest red harings intended to avoid the original point

It's Herrings, and no they're not, the fact the gospels are pure unevidenced hearsay, yet you try to pretend they are evidence, is a refutation of your unevidenced claim they are evidence. How can you not see this simple point?

 

[Sheldon]

However, while Christianity was undoubtedly tainted by European imperialism, I'd argue that the true source of that problem was imperialism rather than Christianity.

Maybe Imperialism was furthered or tainted by aspect of that religion's doctrinal teachings? The Catholic church signed a concordat with Nazism, that's a lot of Christians. Then there is the crusades, and the Inquisition, the thirty years war, etc etc etc...maybe the message of the doctrine is inherently pernicious, and open to subjective interpretation?

 

[Sheldon]

One of the problems in the understanding of this topic by many Christians is that they do not realize that apologists are not scholars.

I think the problem in this instance, is that @ElishaElijah doesn't seem to understand that while an apologist can be a scholar, it doesn't mean every opinion they offer is scholarly. It is the very definition of an appeal to authority fallacy. Like creationists who claim "scientists" deny species evolution, when they may not have any knowledge of species evolution, like a deeply religious humanities teacher, teaching infant school, who they are referring to as a scientist.

 

[Sheldon]

What is wrong with the story being repeated and added to because of other information?
Why do you say they were merely repeating oral tradition and none appear to be eye witnesses. How do you figure this out.
Which part of John is from Mark? Why is it improbably that John and Mark's source (probably Peter) would not have seen the same things?

There is no evidence for any eyewitnesses, and the gospels are anonymous, the names were made up and assigned in order to give the appearance they were written by disciples.

 

[Sheldon]

Sheldon said: ↑
Indeed, there are 45k varyingly different sects and denominations globally within the umbrella term Christian. Which suggest the bible that they all cite, is about as reliable as a chocolate skateboard in the desert.

Most of them believe in the same Jesus and the same gospel. No problem.

Could you offer a citation for this claim? Also explain what it has to do with my point about the reliability of the bible?

The variations in the teaching in the minor issues is not so important and is nowhere near 45K.

CITATION

"Followers of Jesus span the globe. But the global body of more than 2 billion Christians is separated into thousands of denominations. Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Apostolic, Methodist — the list goes on. Estimations show there are more than 200 Christian denominations in the U.S. and a staggering 45,000 globally, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity."

 

[Sheldon]

True... BUT... He is preaching the resurrection. So, obviously, he must have know what happened.

You're kidding right? If I describe Elvis's face exactly, does this mean I must have had a pint with him last night?

Are you saying you don't believe he existed, the people who saw him didn't see him, that the articles about him by those who were with him were all made up?

Read my post again and see if you can see whether your claim is a straw man, if not let me know, and I will walk you through your fallacy. Aw hell I have a minute, lets have a go:

"Are you saying you don't believe he existed,"

I exist, Elvis existed, if I claim I had a pint with with him last night, do those two facts support my claim? Take your time.

the people who saw him didn't see him

Are you saying I didn't have a pint with Elvis? Think carefully now.

the articles about him by those who were with him were all made up?

So my claim is made up then, and I didn't have a pint with Elvis? Think carefully now, and bear in mind that I can provide objective evidence I exist, and that Elvis existed, during my lifetime...

 

[Left Coast]

1. This betrays your understanding of why it is not pseudepigrapha. I would suggest you look at the opposing views before adopting this position. To my point, which stares starkly against yours is: 1 Peter 5:1 The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed - He is a witness, states that he wrote it.

It's a shame you didn't actually read the article I cited for you. It actually presents both sides of the argument.

Thus far your position is, "1 Peter says it was written by Peter so...see! It was written by Peter!"

Ken...have you read any non-canonical early Christian writings? How about the Gospel of Thomas? It starts like this: "These are the hidden sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down."

Wikipedia is NOT a source. It is a viewpoint of who wrote it.

Wikipedia can actually be quite a good source depending on the article. The article I quoted for you summarizes the scholarship quite nicely, and has lots of references for you to look up. You should go do that.

Please look for a counter point in as much as Wikipedia is NOT a source. It is the viewpoint of him who wrote it.

As noted above, the article actually does present both sides of the debate. You didn't read it, so you didn't know that.

It is clear that your statement did not address my point. He was killing Christians and then preached Jesus. He stated in his writings that the whole of the message is based on the resurrection of Jesus. You will have to be more convincing that referencing an irrelevant point

Your initial claim was: "He is preaching the resurrection. So, obviously, he must have known what happened." That doesn't follow logically, Ken. Does the fact that someone preaches something mean they must have accurate information about it? Does this apply to Joseph Smith, who also had visions of Jesus and then preached about it?

Again... back to the point. "Let's just eliminate all witnesses, their statements and a thorough review" and then say "What do you have to convince me?" . A very weak position.

I keep asking you for witnesses and you have yet to name any.

Who do you think he spoke to when he said "eye-witnesses"?

I have no clue. And neither do you. And neither does anyone else. That's the point. It's just a bald claim with nothing to substantiate it.

And how many letters were expressed that were anti-Luke/Acts saying they were false? None -- except for people living in the 20/21st century. A flat-earth position

This is an argument from silence.

Apples and oranges. We might as well say that the documents of Declaration of Independence is a fabric of our imagination.

Where in the Declaration do people walk on water, get magically cured of every disease, float up into the sky, magically turn water into wine, or rise from the dead? Indeed...comparing the DoI and the Gospels is apples to oranges. But that doesn't help your case.

Because it eradicates all that was written between 0AD and 300AD which have a more "been there or was close to there" application. If I were to review you 2000 years ago, I might hold to the position you were a bot.

No, it doesn't eradicate all that was written in early Christianity. It actually takes broader account of all that was written in early Christianity, which included many pseudepigraphal writings that circulated between churches.

Again... Just erase history so that we can establish our viewpoint.

Ignoring facts and history

Which facts? Which history?

So... we have established that you really weren't asking but rather simply enumerating your position (which is fine) but you certainly haven't presented a case that would cut the mustard.

LOL. Brilliant attempt to pass the buck, Ken. The case to be made is yours. You claimed there were witnesses to the resurrection. I've asked you who they were. You haven't been able to come up with anything. So either start showing us receipts, or admit that you made a claim you can't back up.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Is there any scientific proof or historic proof that Jesus was resurrected and crucified?

There is no reason to believe that any human being was ever clinically dead for three days and awoke. Nor that if one did, it floated away. So, no. There is no good evidence for resurrection, just unsupported claims from alleged witnesses whose characters, intelligence, and agendas are unknown.

There is historic evidence if you accept the gospel writers as being who the evidence shows them to be. (Matthew and John, apostles. Luke, the companion of Paul and who got his gospel information from witnesses and others who had been there from the beginning. Mark, a companion of Peter)

What are written words evidence of apart from somebody had an idea and wrote it down? The Bible, like all books, is just words. Nothing written in it can be known to be true except with empirical confirmation, in which case the latter is the evidence that the words corresponded to reality, not the words.

Scientifically there is a presumption that all things can be answered naturalistically. So there is no acceptance in scientific thinking just as there is no acceptance of the witness reports in sceptical thinking.

Science doesn't presume that all things can be answered naturalistically. However, what cannot be answered empirically cannot be answered by any other method, all of which are some form of faith (insufficiently justified belief). If resurrection ever occurs, it will science that determines how to do so, and it will be empiricism (observation) that the method worked.

The observation that science hasn't answered everything is often a prelude to the claim that religion can answer the rest, as with claims of nonoverlapping magesteria. But where's the meat from religion? Where are the demonstrably correct answers? There are none, just guesses. I don't consider them answers or knowledge, both of which are always decided empirically and demonstrably correct. I realize that there are others with different epistemologies and different standards for belief, all of which I call some form of faith whether it be reading a Bible, consulting a Ouija board, believing a horoscope, reading chicken bones, etc., but one shouldn't expect empiricists to respect such beliefs if they can be demonstrated to be correct. This strict adherence to empiricism as the only path to knowledge is sometimes also called the correspondence theory of truth.

If science cannot explain it away with natural laws then science still does not call it a miracle.

Do you think they should? If they did, they wouldn't be doing science any more. They'd be doing theology.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

We have witnesses of crucifixion and witnesses of resurrection.

We also have witnesses of Bigfoot and colonoscopies performed during alien abductions. The skeptic needs more than claims before believing.

A robbery took place and you have multiple witnesses. The witnesses give their story and it is recorded. 2000 years later, a person wants to know what really happened but they can't use the eye-witness recorded stories. And even corroborating outside sources are also non-admissible. Is this really fair?

The legal system, which is the culmination of centuries of considering evidence and its relationship to truth, seems to think it's unfair to introduce hearsay.

Your analogy would be more apt if those witnesses reported that extraterrestrials came back in time and committed the robbery.

There is no proof for any historic matter.

Are you implying that some things should be believed beyond what the quality and quantity of available evidence supports because there might not be enough to justify support? If so, I disagree. Better to believe that nothing definitely happened except for those things for which it would be impossible for them not to have occurred, such as that people had children in Bible days, or that the stars were seen at night.

The resurrection of Christ is proven by the fact that Christ is still within us and among us, to this day. Jesus, the man, however, is not.

So then, no, there is no proof of a resurrection, since, to our knowledge, Christ isn't within us or among us. That's a poetic way to say that the idea of Christ lingers, but that's a trivial observation irrelevant to the truth of resurrection or an actual referent somewhere outside of the heads of believers corresponding to that belief.

 

[Sheldon]

That has nothing to do with argumentum ad populum fallacy. That fallacy is when you point to most scholars and claim that what they say must be right because it is most scholars.

You made a bare appeal to numbers, that is an argumentum ad populum fallacy, here it is again:

Brian2 said: ↑
The Bible is not a book written by a single author, so one author can verify another.

You asserted that the biblical claims are credible, because a majority of biblical authors support each other.

 

[Sheldon]

Sheldon said: ↑
The gospel author or authors are unknown, the names Mathew Mark Luke and John are fictitious, and were assigned centuries later, to make it appear as if they authored by disciples.

If that is what happened they would not have had Mark or Luke.

???

 

[Sheldon]

But really it is the unquestioned existence of Paul and his proximity to the life of Jesus which verifies the life and death of Jesus.

Paul never met nor knew Jesus. His claims are mostly subjective opinion after the fact, hearsay in other words.

Nevertheless Paul did not start believing in a Jesus who was crucified and rose from the dead if he knew that Jesus did not exist and was not crucified.

What? You claimed "unquestioned existence of Paul and his proximity to the life of Jesus which verifies the life and death of Jesus." Paul neither met nor knew nor Jesus, thus your claim is demonstrably false?

 

[Sheldon]

[/QUOTE]

Nobody witnessed the resurrection, not even the original apostles. However they all are witnesses of the resurrected Jesus after His crucifixion.

I don't believe you, because all you have are subjective unevidenced claims.

 

[PureX]

So then, no, there is no proof of a resurrection, since, to our knowledge, Christ isn't within us or among us.

But Christ IS within us and among us, and anyone can see that for themselves if they understand what Christ is, and they are willing to look.

Jesus, the man, on the other hand, is not in us or among us in any way but as an idea. Like the idea of the man my father was is still with me, and in me, though my father is no longer here. He has passed away. The thing to understand is that Christ is an ideology about a way of being, while Jesus was the primary representative and revelation of that ideology. The ideology lived even when the human representative was killed, in an attempt to kill the ideology. This is what the "resurrection" part of the story of Jesus represents. What it is trying to convey to us. And it is true, if we understand it properly, and without all the silly magical thinking and religious dogma.

That's a poetic way to say that the idea of Christ lingers, but that's a trivial observation irrelevant to the truth of resurrection or an actual referent somewhere outside of the heads of believers corresponding to that belief.

You only think it's trivial because you refuse to recognize the fundamental importance of it. You bias against religion is blinding you to a very simple and obvious truth. Just as the bias of some religionists do the same to them.

And that is sad. Because the truth doesn't care what we believe about God or religion. It just is. And in this instance it's a very important and life-saving truth.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Nevertheless Paul did not start believing in a Jesus who was crucified and rose from the dead if he knew that Jesus did not exist and was not crucified.

People troll all the time. It’s not new.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Presuming that Jesus prophecies about the temple destruction are wrong and so the date of the authorship of the synoptics is after 70AD

Find us a source that predates it.

 

[Sheldon]

Christ IS within us and among us, and anyone can see that for themselves if they understand what Christ is, and they are willing to look.

No true Scotsman fallacy, irrational arguments are weak arguments.