all I am saying is that Liconas argument (from the op) is good enough to justify the resurection as a probable event, unless you afirm that the existance of god is impossible (or very unlikelly)
Licona is not doing history he is doing apologetics.
The OP doesn't argue for a resurrection, it argues for beliefs of some people 2000 years ago. Over 1 million people witnessed some miracle from Sai Baba in the early 1900's and believed he was a deity.
I saw Licona debate Carrier twice and Ehrman. He gets proven wrong and goes "well I don't agree (with facts and logic) so let's move on".
I can timestamp this.
Paul and those who came before him were part of a huge trend in Judaism. We can read in Josephus that there were Joshua Messiah's all over the place during this time.
The translation to this is Jesus Christ.
They were ALL
apocalyptic preachers claiming th eend times were coming soon. The Jesus of the NT is also believed to originally have been the same.
It's actually IN SCRIPTURE. The end will come in this generation, you people in this generation will see it.
Of course they were wrong and the apologetics had to take over but you know what the text really says.
This myth came from Persia. After several centuries of Jewish religious elites saying "I think God told me we are also getting a messiah" this movement started happening.
The Jewish Encyclopedia talks about may messiah figures but Carrier has specific examples of mentions of "Joseph Messiahs" as well.
Complete contents the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia.
www.jewishencyclopedia.com
These highly trained Greek writers were trained specifically in historical fiction and that is Mark.
Paul briefly mentions a shipwreck in his letters and another writer was definitely like "Hey, I can do a shipwreck narrative" and wrote the most fictive story ever, borrowing things from many sources but some very obvious from the Odyssey, even following the sequence of events exactly.
Dennis McDonald writes about this. Acts also uses all of the key features of all shipwreck fiction of that time. A subject for another time.
Anyway, yes God is not demonstrated. A general deism is possible but there is NO EVIDENCE whatsoever for any theism.
This God, Yahweh can be demonstrated to be a typical Near Eastern Deity. Genesis is a remake of Mesopotamian myth.
Later writings about Yahweh from Aquinas, Origen, Tertullian, Agustine, Boethius, Anslem are all
taking Greco-Roman moral philosophy and theology and delivering it to the masses, even though they are unaware.
If you want historical evidence of that a Pastor/historian lectures on it:
Plato and Christianity
But theism has no evidence that can be demonstrated to be from a theistic deity. Chance is generally what is used as proof, a healing of an illness, a tornado not killing a mother/daughter.
But basic probabability accounts perfectly for those things. Because other mothers and children do die in tornados and others with disease do die, at a predictable rate. The survivors cannot see the big picture. Creationists cannot see evolution because they thing a rock is supposed to become a fish and a monkey a human. They get people with mis-information.
I think there is evidence for a god………… but even without any evidence it doest follow that the existence of god is less probable than 50%.
What evidence is there for theism that can only be explained with a deity?
There is no evidence for intelligent life in other planets, but from that fact it doesn’t follow that there is no intelligent life in other planets, nor that the probability is less than 50%, nor that that “no aliens” should be the default position.
Because there is intelligent life on ONE PLANET ALREADY. There are NO GODS to demonstrate?
If you want to move the wager in favor of “atheism” you need an argument that justifies such a movement in the wager
Uh,m no argument for theism comes close to working.
Deism is as nonsensical as the secular ideas like infinite regress.
Deism implies God, an undivisible substance. Which means materialism is actually true. God would be an atheist making that true.
There are already paradoxes but why would an entity, undivisible, alone, infinite, perfect, atheist be the foundation of reality. We see unconscious creative forces at work. A conscious mind is not needed. Some paradoxes cannot be solved with or without a God.
These ideas came from Greco-Roman philosophy put onto a Near Eastern deity, they evolved over many centuries. They do not represent the truth but a vast variety of thought.
You do not have to justify not believing in Zeus. Yahweh gets moved over to that group and you have atheism. Non belief in myths. Nothing to do with deism.
