Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus

[Trailblazer]

The difference between the Baha'i Faith and other religions, particularly Christianity is that no one outside this forum has ever heard of or gives a hoot about the Baha'i faith.

Why would that matter?

In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for "appeal to the people") is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it: "If many believe so, it is so." Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia

The converse of this is that if many or most people do not believe it, it cannot be so, and that is fallacious.

Matthew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

 

[lukethethird]

Why would that matter?

In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for "appeal to the people") is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it: "If many believe so, it is so." Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia

The converse of this is that if many or most people do not believe it, it cannot be so, and that is fallacious.

Matthew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Wasn't making an argument, just an observation.

 

[leroy]

No, historians do not support those "three facts'. The second one definitely fails. You may be conflating apologists with historians.

The second one definitely fails.

added to the list of unsuported claims made by you

 

[Apologes]

The person I'm engaging with today is you. Let's pretend I've never heard of Michael Licona before or heard or read a word he's ever said. That isn't true, but it's also irrelevant. My replies here remain the same. And you will need to reproduce here whatever features of his arguments that you think are pertinent for purposes of making the case that Jesus rose from the dead.

No. In the OP I specifically called for responses from people familiar with the argument. That means I expect my interlocutors to understand what I'm talking about when I quote Licona's work. If we're supposed to pretend you have no background knowledge or if you refuse to plainly state what body of work I should bother explaining, then we're going against the point of the thread.

 

[Subduction Zone]

added to the list of unsuported claims made by you

No, it was supported. It was explained to you. Just because you do not understand something does not mean that an idea was not supported.

Also, when you change your debating techniques then you can begin to expect more in the way of answers.

 

[Subduction Zone]

No. In the OP I specifically called for responses from people familiar with the argument. That means I expect my interlocutors to understand what I'm talking about when I quote Licona's work. If we're supposed to pretend you have no background knowledge or if you refuse to plainly state what body of work I should bother explaining, then we're going against the point of the thread.

Being familiar with the argument does not mean accepting the claimed premises. In fact all one has to do is to state that one rejects various premises. The burden of proof is upon the person making those premises.

 

[leroy]

sayak83 said:
There is no instance of anyone in Roman world getting crucified unless he or she is part of an insurrection against the authorities. Crucifixion is a specific punishment reserved for treason and insurrection alone. If the Jesus account has any historicity to it, then the fact of crucifixion on the charge of proclaiming himself king and leading a mob of his followers (armed mob) into the Temple is it. That he was not arrested there and then implies that his group was quite strong and he was picked up only later in the night after the mob has dispersed.
It seems somewhat similar to what happened with the US Parliament building and it's near but failed storming by the Trump supporters. It may be the case that this modern Trumpist movement may get chronicled by its supporters in a book 20 years from now...and it is not hard to see that the book will portray the movement as heroic having divine support for its semidivine leader and will strive to whitewash it's violent tendencies.

.



Do you have any evidence for that claim? I've seen plenty of resources state that crucifixion was also used for thieves, murderers, slaves rebelling against their masters, religious transgressions etc. I'm genuinely interested where you're getting this information. Regardless, even if that is true, I believe Jesus was crucified on that charge, however he could've been charged with that for proclaiming himself the king of the Jews. This would be taken as treason and would be enough for Pilate to crucify him. This is the traditional story as found in the Gospels and it found support from skeptical scholars. I do not see the need to postulate Jesus arriving at the temple with an armed mob, especially when the only extra-biblical account of this is talking about a vague incident at the Temple. What this incident was exactly we don't know. (Well, we don't know unless we look at the Gospels narrative of cleansing the temple, although it could've been something else.)

It is likely that the Jewish leaders simply wanted Jesus out of the picture, and Pilate helped them. Pilate was just doing a favor to the Jews, ………… all the king of the jest stuff seemed to be just an excuse to justify the crucifixion

But in any case, the 3 facts from the OP are not dependent on the motives for why was Jesus crucified.

 

[leroy]

No, it was supported. It was explained to you. Just because you do not understand something does not mean that an idea was not supported.

Also, when you change your debating techniques then you can begin to expect more in the way of answers.

And why didn’t you quote the alleged post where you supported the claim?

 

[leroy]

Being familiar with the argument does not mean accepting the claimed premises. In fact all one has to do is to state that one rejects various premises. The burden of proof is upon the person making those premises.

Well at least it is not personal

You avoid at all cost the burden prove with everybody, not just with me.



If you what to reject a premise, you have to explain why do you reject it, why do you think the arguments proposed by Licona are wrong or unsupported in your view.

 

[Subduction Zone]

And why didn’t you quote the alleged post where you supported the claim?

Because there is no need to. You keep forgetting why.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well at least it is not personal

You avoid at all cost the burden prove with everybody, not just with me.



If you what to reject a premise, you have to explain why do you reject it, why do you think the arguments proposed by Licona are wrong or unsupported in your view.

No, at best that is false. But to be honest it does look like a lie. You simply refuse to understand how you have been refuted all to often and then obnoxiously demand that people need to support what they already supported to you many times. When you only have denial of refutations you lose the right to demand others. Follow the rules of polite debate and this will change. I may be overly optimistic in this expectation of you.

As to why one can easily reject number two is that it has not been supported. And actually one does not need to support a rejection until the person making it has asked why. You are simply looking for an excuse to shift the burden of proof. This reason should have been obvious to you. Why didn't you see it?

 

[Subduction Zone]

The difference between the Baha'i Faith and other religions, particularly Christianity, is that we have no man-made doctrines that are 'taught' by any religious leaders. I will concede to the fact that we do have God-given doctrines, what we call the teachings.

No, that is just another claim very similar to that of other religions. They all claim that their teachings come from God. It is also a claim that I could have demanded proof for. If you like I could show how other religions do the same thing.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Why would that matter?

In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for "appeal to the people") is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it: "If many believe so, it is so." Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia

The converse of this is that if many or most people do not believe it, it cannot be so, and that is fallacious.

Matthew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

It was a joke, and a very good one. It was not an argument. Though it has a huge grain of truth in it.

 

[leroy]

No, at best that is false. But to be honest it does look like a lie. You simply refuse to understand how you have been refuted all to often and then obnoxiously demand that people need to support what they already supported to you many times. When you only have denial of refutations you lose the right to demand others. Follow the rules of polite debate and this will change. I may be overly optimistic in this expectation of you.

As to why one can easily reject number two is that it has not been supported. And actually one does not need to support a rejection until the person making it has asked why. You are simply looking for an excuse to shift the burden of proof. This reason should have been obvious to you. Why didn't you see it?

The burden proof for point 2 has been accepted and supported in detail by Licona.

You are simply rejecting it without any justification.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The burden proof for point 2 has been accepted and supported in detail by Licona.

You are simply rejecting it without any justification.

No, that is part of the premise. You have to demonstrate that it has been accepted and that simply does not appear to be the case.

You need to remember that apologists quote often distort the facts (and that is putting it mildly, when it comes to some topics they outright lie).

 

[Trailblazer]

No, that is just another claim very similar to that of other religions. They all claim that their teachings come from God. It is also a claim that I could have demanded proof for. If you like I could show how other religions do the same thing.

That was not the point I was making. The point I was making was that the Baha'i Faith has no man-made doctrines that are 'taught' by any religious leaders, as we see in Christianity. All we have are scriptures. Whether or not our scriptures came from God is a different discussion.

 

[danieldemol]

So the next question would be, what is the best explanation for those facts.

In the case of Elvis we can dismissed as lies and/or hallucinations……………… nobody died (nor in the name of the resurrection of Elvis…….. this is why the case of Jesus is different

It is special pleading that the case of Elvis is different in my view.

BTW do you really think that a scholar like licona would make a 600 pages for an argument that could be easily refuted with “elvis”

You mean an apologist like likona? Yes I do think that.

Do you think that Licona and his peers didn’t consider that ?

Sure they considered it then applied special pleading in my view

 

[Subduction Zone]

That was not the point I was making. The point I was making was that the Baha'i Faith has no man-made doctrines that are 'taught' by any religious leaders, as we see in Christianity. All we have are scriptures. Whether or not our scriptures came from God is a different discussion.

That is not a fact. That is merely a belief. Once again, almost all religions believe that their doctrines came from God. Your doctrines appear to be as manmade as all other doctrines.

What evidence do you have for your claims that Baha'i doctrines are not manmade?

 

[Subduction Zone]

I absolutely do accept that those sorts of things can happen. Mass delusion is a thing, I'm not denying that a priori, it is a possible explanation. This is why competing hypotheses should be compared to see which satisfies the 5 criteria better (or at least the first 4 since illumination is more of a bonus criteria).

And it does not even take "mass hallucination" for Christianity to begin. Trying to claim that others are proposing mass hallucination is a strawman argument since that is not the claim being used against you.

It is very unlikely that the disciples invented the resurrection story. The apostles suffered greatly for their proclamations and they knew this would happen. Their leader was just killed and they could be next. It's unlikely that they would invent the story to continue on with the cult when they knew what persecution awaited them. I'm not saying they were martyred but that they were ostracized and humiliated for their beliefs is pretty well established. I'm not saying this proves their beliefs were correct, it just shows they were sincere in holding them.

Sorry, but you would need to support this. As far as I am aware there are only a couple of the deaths of the disciples that are even weakly supported. The evidence that the apostles suffered greatly is missing. Some of them, yes. All of them? We do not know that. You are conflating church tradition with history.

Furthermore, this doesn't explain the appearance to Paul who was a persecutor of the Church and yet he experienced something that made him convert. Your theory (as vague as it is) only attempts to explain the disciples and doesn't do that very well and as such lacks explanatory scope and power.

Are you saying that a person involved in an immoral action may not come to his senses? At least somewhat? Serial killers do sometimes quit. The ones that we catch are usually those that cannot quit. And remember, your explanation involves magic. Any naturalisitic explanation has more explanatory power than yours as a result. This is not a good argument to use.

Your complaint boils down to the argument lacking plausibility because it goes against what is established by natural sciences. Thing is, as I said numerous times in this thread, there is no scientific fact that says there is no supernatural component to the world, that is by definition beyond the scope of science. If you're going to protest reference to the supernatural you're merely being guided by your naturalistic biases.

Oh my. This is such a weak attempt to shift the burden of proof. Sorry, but if you want to claim that supernatural events occur the burden of proof is upon you. What we can say is that there do not appear to be any reliable cases of supernatural events. We do know of endless events that are explained without the supernatural.

Licona is a New Testament scholar so I am sure he read historiography before, the book literally is about historiography. Instead of telling Licona what he should've read, I suggest you actually read the work in question because if you did you'd know it's a scholarly work that serves as a contribution to the dialogue in which critical scholars take part. Preaching to the choir couldn't be further away from truth.

That does not mean that he cannot make obvious errors when his religious beliefs override his ability to reason rationally.

 

[leroy]

No, that is part of the premise. You have to demonstrate that it has been accepted and that simply does not appear to be the case.

You need to remember that apologists quote often distort the facts (and that is putting it mildly, when it comes to some topics they outright lie).

Licona already explained why he thinks that point 2 form the OP is correct.

If you disagree, if you think that his arguments are wrong or fallacious, or weak, you have to explain why