He is Risen - The Evidence

[PearlSeeker]

Myth, legend, does it really matter? It is an event that did not happen. And yes, Paul really believed that he saw Jesus. So what? There are countless people that believe their "visions". I do not see you following them.

I certainly don't believe Paul is the only one who have had a vision. I just mentioned him because of the topic (risen Christ).

 

[PearlSeeker]

Mohammad Atta literally gave his life because of his change in belief, when he flew a boeing into the WTC towers. Therefor, Allah?

Irrelevant.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Irrelevant.

Totally relevant. The same reason that you hopefully do not believe other religions are the same reasons that non-Christians do not believe yours.

 

[joelr]

What if its you that doesn't understand the bible and you believe life came from non life, evolved from pond slime through the magic process of time, as the only plausible explanation thats at hand . I admit Evolution never seemed credible before I was a Christian, but I loosely believed it because heck ,who was I to swim up stream . I never really questioned anything. We accept what were taught . We give over our sense making to those we think know more than us .

List of human evolution fossils - Wikipedia

All the hominid fossils from about 7 million years and up. Each has a separate page with complete information.
The actual emergence of life from self replicating compounds is a different study. There are more pieces of evidence every year demonstrating different ways self replication can happen with amino acids and all sorts of different chemicals in different conditions. It is not fully understood how to get from simple replication to RNA.

Regardless none of this science has any relation to myths. Evolution being wrong doesn't suddenly mean Krishna was the creator of man or the universe. That goes for Jewish mythology as well.

I don't buy that "evolution never seemed credible" since literally no one outside of religious fundamentalism tries to find ways to ignore the evidence of evolution.
But you are correct, you accept what you were taught and gave over sense to those who you thought knew more and became emotionally attached to ancient fiction.

 

[joelr]

It is evident that Paul really believed what he saw but we can't know if it was a hallucination or not. So it's possible it was real experience.

There are myths in the Bible but Damascus story is not one of them. It is an anecdote or legend at most.

It is highly unlikely that Paul "believed what he saw" as if he just had one vision. That isn't what he says. He claims he had these long extended meetings with ghost Jesus:

"Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past,"
Romans 16:25

"I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ."
Galatians 1:11-12

So every teaching he has is yet another "vision"? No. That is absurd. Clearly Paul was learning some concepts about this new movement from people and wanted to give his letters more authenticity and made up a story about being actually taught by the celestial being.
Same thing done by Joeseph Smith and Mohammud.
This was a common practice even in Christianity as we know now that 1/2 of all the Epistles are forgery and there are 36 other gospels considered heretical as well as the infancy gospels and all sorts of apocraphia meant to be true tales. So Paul doing it is rather mundane.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Irrelevant.

Your double standard / intellectual dishonesty is showing.

 

[PearlSeeker]

It is highly unlikely that Paul "believed what he saw" as if he just had one vision. That isn't what he says. He claims he had these long extended meetings with ghost Jesus:

"Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past,"
Romans 16:25

"I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ."
Galatians 1:11-12

So every teaching he has is yet another "vision"? No. That is absurd. Clearly Paul was learning some concepts about this new movement from people and wanted to give his letters more authenticity and made up a story about being actually taught by the celestial being.
Same thing done by Joeseph Smith and Mohammud.
This was a common practice even in Christianity as we know now that 1/2 of all the Epistles are forgery and there are 36 other gospels considered heretical as well as the infancy gospels and all sorts of apocraphia meant to be true tales. So Paul doing it is rather mundane.

I find your theory less likely. Why would he adapt and spread teaching he himself was prosecuting? And made up a story and risk his life for it? It makes no sense.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Your double standard / intellectual dishonesty is showing.

There are no parallels. Was M. Atta a convert? Was he prosecuting Muslims? Was he taught by a celestial being?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

There are no parallels. Was M. Atta a convert? Was he prosecuting Muslims? Was he taught by a celestial being?

The parallel is in the "he was risking his life".

The average islamist suicide bomber doesn't just risk his life - (s)he willingly sacrifices it.

If "risking his life" is an element that gives credibility to his beliefs, then sacrificing his life surely must be even more so.




Off course, neither are actual evidence that the beliefs are accurate.
All you can derive from "risking his life" or "sacrificing his life", is that they really believe it.

But "really believing it", does not make it true, nor does it count as evidence that it is true.

The schizofrenic who believes the CIA is monitoring him, also REALLY believes it. To the point that he's also willing to kill for it and do all kinds of crazy stuff.

Does the schizo's action and risk-taking give credibility to his claims? Off course not. All it does, is demonstrate that he really believes it to be true. Which is not the same, obviously.

 

[PearlSeeker]

If "risking his life" is an element that gives credibility to his beliefs, then sacrificing his life surely must be even more so.

You haven't taken into account other elements (in my questions).

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You haven't taken into account other elements (in my questions).

None of those give the claims any credibility either.

All it speaks to is that they really believed it.
A claim doesn't gain credibility or evidential support merely on the basis of how hard believers REALLY believe it.

So you call it "other elements", but really it's all just the same type of element.
ALL those elements only speak to how hard they believed their religious claims. Not to how credible or accurate the claims are.

You're making a deeply fallacious argument here.

"he really believed it, so it must be true".


Surely you can see the fault in that.

 

[rational experiences]

The God of man says man is cruel as so am I. I believe in sacrifice.

I am a woman. My god is the eternal..unconditional love.

A term or a word is just words.

No argument exists about creation not existing yet the cruel man tries to con you into believing his thesis.

I can say my god is eternal. Had always existed. Always will exist. As an explanation to use words described and meaningful by intention.

If my god always did exist had existed will exist then science can't thesis God the eternal. As their thesis is to find the God state God remove God into sciences lower form. A resource.

Why the cruel man says my man god believes in sacrifice and to be saved is to be removed from your present form.

When you use words.
When you own words inferring double meanings....what you think and what you don't say.

As we all prove reading the same words causes lots of thoughts and meanings yet many thoughts are not shared publicly.

 

[PearlSeeker]

None of those give the claims any credibility either.

All it speaks to is that they really believed it.
A claim doesn't gain credibility or evidential support merely on the basis of how hard believers REALLY believe it.

So you call it "other elements", but really it's all just the same type of element.
ALL those elements only speak to how hard they believed their religious claims. Not to how credible or accurate the claims are.

You're making a deeply fallaciou argument here.

"he really believed it, so it must be true".


Surely you can see the fault in that.

It's not just a claim. It's an event and message (Paul's personal revelation). I just said it's highly unlikely he made it up. It must have really happened. If it's real or hallucination we can't know for sure. It's possible but it's a matter of faith.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I find your theory less likely. Why would he adapt and spread teaching he himself was prosecuting? And made up a story and risk his life for it? It makes no sense.

Let me help you on that. His story was that he did used to prosecute Christians. @joelr is saying that he probably did not do that and only claimed to to get more support from other Christians. It is sort of like the lie of "I used to be an atheist" that we hear quite often from apologists. Almost none of them were ever atheists.

 

[metis]

There is absolutely no scientific evidence for Macro evolution.

You must think thousands of scientists with decades of expertise are fools that they harp on a theory if the evidence was not so blindingly convincing? Let me state something clearly, IF you reject evolutionary theory, one of the most well established and well evidenced theory in the entire history of science, you are rejecting the entire practice of science.

It is the rejection of basic scientific evidence in order to believe what someone whom we don't know wrote roughly 3000 years ago minus any knowledge about how things started being the reason I left the fundamentalist Protestant church that I grew up in whereas I had thoughts about going into the ministry.

To put it another way: Evolution is very much real even if one just uses some common sense, namely that it appears that all material things tend to change over time, and life forms are material things. And there is simply not one logical reason why a person cannot believe in God and also the ToE.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Let me help you on that. His story was that he did used to prosecute Christians. @joelr is saying that he probably did not do that and only claimed to to get more support from other Christians.

Any evidence? Or just conspiracy theory?

 

[rational experiences]

Dead in human men science of old was the God stone cold not burning gases entombed to be stone.

Entombed first is God.

Science a liar caused the God gas spirits to burn unnaturally and form underground radiation gas alight conditions removing the entombed spirits so that it arose alight alive burning. What an illuminated science liar would claim was being illuminated in a burning gas attack from the body God stone.

You seem to forget two minds in science those who reverence destruction and want and cause it...such as nuclear fuel and bomb blastings sending human life into a hell on Earth status. Owning the self destructive psyche to KNOW. Believing in the knowledge, studying it, building it then burning his own human family to death scenario.

A human man born to the human being female Mother was given birth to. The ONLY scientific medical status for a man male baby as a human and a man. If you quote any other ideal you are lying. Simple fact.

No one today is the first two original human parents, a long time dead. Anyone since was born a baby grown into a human being adult. So if you try to use first two human parent information they are dead, died by radiation conditions constant.

Why I can say science is a liar.

Therefore if a baby man adult human said I knowingly by conditions human DNA and human memories that my life currently living being sacrificed given stigmata witnessed living conditions is radiated attacked by a known Satanic statement radiation effect....then he was.

If he said he was made aware of man men images of the past manifesting speaking to him as records of life being destroyed in burning gases....then he was. And he told you so. Ignored by Rome.

Ever wonder why name change to Italian was accepted in life? As no one likes to be linked to a history where their human choices caused such harm and desolation as the humans who choose it.

A man a real human said, when the God gases leave the tomb empty you will see my death occur and you will see my spirit form arise in image in the spirit body and then disappear. As it did.

All humans die. Humans can de manifest self body life presence in a lesser asteroid stone gas radiation input x mass, yet always the human will re manifest presence and physically die. As radiation is the reason why bio form dies. You wonder did Jesus a human man disappear bodily and then reappear. And if it were true science never owned it, the man human self lived the experience himself. Science is the machine and what a human man controlling the machine causes it to apply. Reaction in science disappearance of the higher body form, given a replaced present lower form. Science as its status.

So we must all ask today what does science think it wants for science? A reaction to get given back a non reaction first higher body status and claim self sane. Claiming but I never changed the mass of God Earth yet got sink holes, and they were new sink holes. If he only got old sink holes in the times of Jesus and no new sink holes then he could claim and I redid a Jesus completely without changing anything as the holes already existed caused.

Known in the sciences if they increase Earth heavens irradiation of its gases human life dies sacrificed as radiation kills us.

The coercion is to make human believe as humans that the human form did not die. So then when it gets sacrificed known by the occultists that you would not argue why. Seeing they already coerced you into believing that a human being body did not own death.

If you cared to tell the truth about humans as humans and human behaviour as those humans.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Any evidence? Or just conspiracy theory?

Oh my. Please learn what a conspiracy theory is.

 

[joelr]

I find your theory less likely. Why would he adapt and spread teaching he himself was prosecuting? And made up a story and risk his life for it? It makes no sense.

There are not "my theories?" Paul says he received all his teachings from visions:
(Galatians 1:11-12; Romans 10:14-15; Romans 16:25-26).


Paul simply changed his theology, he was already a Jew and then he decided the accepted the stories about the Jewish messiah. Obviously at some point he began to encounter people who had some new writings about a messiah and he became convinced.
You do realize there are millions of people who are in a religion and then read about another faith and convert? This happens still today so how could this possible be considered strange back then?
Your logic is like "well Jesus must have been a real demigod or why else would Paul convert?
Uh....I don't know, how about the millions of other conversion stories to and from every religion and cult ever where people just heard the "good news" from other people???

Paul claims to have persecuted anti-temple Jews but obviously was converted with an updated savior messiah version of Judaism that took away the need for the temple. Hellinizations of religions was happening all around Paul in other religions and now the Jewish version was here.
People converting to religions or to updated forms of a religion does not mean they are true. It does not mean claims of visitations by celestial beings are true. Joseph Smith and Muhammad also did not likely have a visit by a celestial being. But it made their story and claims have much more weight.
It also allowed them to make some of the new theology into "divine words from a divinity".
Total scam.


Next Paul did not risk his life by converting. No one cared. On his 3rd mission he violated laws regarding temple behavior.

Some of the narrative you are putting forth is not from the authentic Epistles. It's from Acts which is most definitely historical fiction.
The leading scholar on Acts is Richard Purvoe:
The Mystery of Acts: Unraveling Its Story


"The author of Acts unwittingly committed a near-perfect crime: He told his story so well that all rival accounts vanished with but the faintest of traces. And thus future generations were left with no documents that recount the history of the early Christian tradition; because Acts is not history. According to Richard Pervo, 'Acts is a beautiful house that readers may happily admire, but it is not a home in which the historian can responsibly live.' Luke did not even aspire to write history but rather told his story to defend the gentile communities of his day as the legitimate heirs of Israelite religion. In The Mystery of Acts, Pervo explores the problem of history in Acts by asking, and answering, the fundamental questions: Who wrote Acts? Where was Acts written? When was Acts written? Why was Acts written? How was Acts written? The result is a veritable tour-de-force that enlighten, entertains, and brings Acts to life.

"This is the most important book I have read in five years. Bravo Pervo! Summarizing the discoveries made during the writing of his magisterial commentary on Acts, this little book makes it wonderfully clear that there is little if anything of historical value in the book of Acts, apart from what it can tell us about the community that wrote it. In one fell swoop, the only basis of support for the traditional model of Christian origins has been eliminated. It is now possible to entertain seriously other models of Christian origins, including the theory that Christianity did not begin at any particular place in space or moment in time, but rather began like the ancient religions of Egypt, India, Greece, and Rome. The fact that as soon as the curtain goes up on the stage of Christian history there is evidence of division and "heresies" such as Docetism--inexplicable on the basis of traditional notions of an historical "Jesus of Nazareth"--now becomes understandable if "Christianity" developed (and continues to develop) as the intertwining of threads of religious tradition into braids of tradition that change as time goes on. "

 

[PearlSeeker]

People converting to religions or to updated forms of a religion does not mean they are true. It does not mean claims of visitations by celestial beings are true. Joseph Smith and Muhammad also did not likely have a visit by a celestial being. But it made their story and claims have much more weight.
It also allowed them to make some of the new theology into "divine words from a divinity".
Total scam.

Paul's revelation is a testimonial evidence (written in his letters - not in Acts). Not an irrefutable proof. Just something to consider (even if his theology is questionable). Yes, Paul substantiated his authority on revelations.