Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus

[sayak83]

There was an epic debate between Barth Ehrman and Michael Licona. I have not found a free version of it yet, and it is Seven Freaking hours long!! You can pay to see it at least at one source. But I did find an overview of it and how Ehrman pointed out the errors in many of Licona's claims:

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Smaller debate here

 

[ppp]

Smaller debate here

I saw that debate. It was rough. Licona always starts off relatively grounded, then he jumps off the freaking rails.

 

[Trailblazer]

In other words, no real difference from Christianity or Islam.

The teachings are different. Otherwise there would be no reason for God to send a new Messenger.

No, when one believes in any religion one is saying that is the right religion. Otherwise why believe in that one and not another?

I believe that the Baha'i Faith is the right religion for this age since it is the latest of the revealed religions.

By the way, you lose even by your standard. Pastafarianism appears to be an even more recent religion. Or are you saying that the claims of some that it has existed forever is correct?

Pastafarianism is not a religion by my definition of religion since it was not revealed by a Messenger of God.

You have made quite a few claims, that has been shown over and over and over again. And no, your evidence is not "factual". It is subjective. We have been over that.

The evidence is factual but one's interpretation of the evidence is subjective.

 

[Truthseeker]

The evidence is factual but one's interpretation of the evidence is subjective.

How many times have I seen you having to say that? They can't admit to that. Atheists tend to not being to admit they are wrong. Religious people in general tend to not to be able to think straight. The result is the same, whatever the reason is.

 

[Truthseeker]

The teachings are different. Otherwise there would be no reason for God to send a new Messenger.

To be more precise the teachings relating to the different condition of each time and place are different, including Baha'i. See that @Subduction Zone?

 

[Subduction Zone]

To be more precise the teachings relating to the different condition of each time and place are different, including Baha'i. See that @Subduction Zone?

That is the claim. Is there any reason to believe it?

 

[Subduction Zone]

The teachings are different. Otherwise there would be no reason for God to send a new Messenger.

I believe that the Baha'i Faith is the right religion for this age since it is the latest of the revealed religions.

Pastafarianism is not a religion by my definition of religion since it was not revealed by a Messenger of God.

The evidence is factual but one's interpretation of the evidence is subjective.

No, the evidence is subjective. You may be conflating confirmation bias with evidence. Also what qualifies you do deny Pastfarianism? By your standards it has "factual evidence". And Bobby Henderson is clearly a Messenger from God if one exists. I bet that you have no understanding of Pastafarian doctrine at all.

 

[Truthseeker]

That is the claim. Is there any reason to believe it?

There is reason to if you investigate carefully. The subject is so vast, you would have to do it yourself.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I recently finished ..
If so, what are your objections to it?

Dead do not return.

There is reason to if you investigate carefully.

For what illogical reason?

 

[Truthseeker]

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.

I have seen that response many times before. Too bad you have to give that response.

 

[Colt]

There is reason to if you investigate carefully. The subject is so vast, you would have to do it yourself.

The people who accept that a single cell organism could evolve over millions of years into a personality that could create an Apple iPhone find it difficult to believe that a personality could re-emerge in a different life form.

 

[Trailblazer]

No, the evidence is subjective.

No it is not. It is just evidence. How people interpret the evidence is subjective.

 

[Trailblazer]

I have seen that response many times before. Too bad you have to give that response.

Too bad I have to give it over and over and over again.

 

[Apologes]

Nah. We're having a pretty productive conversation thus far. You even invited it.

We stopped doing that a while ago. Half of this post is you repeating questions I already answered, even in the very post you quoted. That you'd break up my post to pose a question to one paragraph that is answered immediately in the next and treat them as separate points is just baffling.

The only questions that make sense given the stage of the conversation are the following.

You can't just claim something with no evidence - not reasonably, anyway. How do you know that premise is true?

Are you asking how we can know about the historical bedrock or how we know this would provide context for divine vindication? If it's the latter, the question is strange. If there is a God and Jesus claimed to be his unique eschatologial agent among other things, then that God has a chance to confirm this or deny it and one way that can happen is resurrecting Jesus. I fail to see what in this statement doesn't follow to you.

Again, no. Bracketing our worldviews requires that we only look at what can be demonstrated outside of our worldview. The overlap of that Venn diagram between the naturalist and the supernaturalist is natural things. Again, this is why serious professional historians don't explain historical events with "God did it," or "Magic did it," or "Ghosts did it," even if they might privately believe those things.

Again, I explained why that's just a presumption of naturalism that doesn't consider all options. When Licona says that we should bracket our horizons he means by that that we should leave our worldviews at the door. That doesn't mean bowing down to the standards of the most reductive worldview. An argument against that is the fact that you miss out on possible explanations.

Your only response to this has been that other historians apply methodological naturalism but that's irrelevant since the point of Licona's book (and the entirety of Chapter 2) just is to challenge the claim that we must limit ourselves like that. That's why the book has "A New Historiographical Approach" in the title (one of the reasons anyway).

But that doesn't account for your potential ignorance of a natural explanation. Just because you can't think of something, doesn't mean it isn't there. So again I ask - how do you distinguish between a natural cause you don't understand, and a supernatural cause? At this point it seems you don't have a method. When you encounter something you don't know how to explain, you chalk it up by default to the supernatural.

You clearly don't appreciate arguments for the best explanation. They are a valid type of argument used in all sorts of other disciplines including history. In fact, no method can account for possible ignorance. There's always a chance we don't know something so by your logic we shouldn't ever conclude anything as it's always possible there's something else that we could eventually discover that proves us wrong. This, of course, isn't how you actually reason but it is an argument you're willing to use when the best explanation is one you don't like. That's why you're driven by your bias rather than the evidence.

@bold that is quite plainly not what I said. At this point if I said the sky is blue you'd ask me why I'm saying it's red...

One of the problems with supernatural explanations, and why they're not very useful or explanatory, is that they can be used to fit any evidence. What evidence could we possibly find that your version of God couldn't cause to happen? It's unfalsifiable. This is why I asked for your methods of discerning one type of cause from another.

If you're saying that it's possible to offer the supernatural as an explanation for anything, yes that's true but in most situations the relevant context isn't present to warrant that so the explanation loses to better natural alternatives. So it is falsifiable in the sense that it can be demonstrated to be an inferior explanation. Same would apply for the mysterious natural phenomena you'd rather rely on in that case from before as there is no case for which you couldn't posit an unknown natural phenomena as an explanation. Regardless, you don't just dismiss it before hand, you see if there's better explanations.

 

[leroy]

That too is an unjustified assumption. People can think that they have seen things. A person's strong belief is not good evidence that it was real.

Granted, but it is good evidence that he was not lying, he didn't made it up.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Granted, but it is good evidence that he was not lying, he didn't made it up.

So what? The people that thought they saw Elvis didn't make it up either.

 

[ChristineM]

1. Jesus was killed by crucifixion under Pilate

So the bible says, i have a different idea, that he was released while still alive, spent a few days recovering before showing his face again. Eventually succumbing to blood poisoning from bacteria on rusty nails.

2. Very soon after his death, his disciples reported having experiences which they interpreted as the risen Jesus appearing to them, both individually and in groups

If he hadn't actually died then what?

3. The early Church persecutor Paul also had an experience which he interpreted as Jesus appearing to him and this experience convinced him to convert to Christianity

Again what if he hadn't died?

- Explanatory scope - does the hypothesis account for all the data

If you want it to.

- Explanatory power - how well does the hypothesis explain the data

As well as people want to believe it.

- Plausibility - is the hypothesis compatible with or implied by facts that are generally accepted as known

Totally implausible.

- Less ad hoc - does the hypothesis go beyond what is known and makes unevidenced assumptions

Yes

- Illumination (a bonus criteria) - does the hypothesis shed light on other areas of inquiry

Again people believe ehat they want to believe.

 

[rocala]

So the bible says, i have a different idea, that he was released while still alive, spent a few days recovering before showing his face again. Eventually succumbing to blood poisoning from bacteria on rusty nails.

It is an interesting take on a story that I have often wondered about. My favorite though (it is not my own theory) is that it was a volunteer martyr for the cause that got arrested, tried, and executed. The whole affair was planned and stage-managed and Judas played a leading role. Presumably, there was some actual facial resemblance but most people closest to Jesus were in on the plan.

Far-fetched, quite likely it is, but I find it a lot more likely than a virgin birth and a resurrection.

 

[Colt]

I recently finished Michael Licona's book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach which argues that there are 3 minimal facts that are accepted by virtually all New Testament scholars which form the so called historical bedrock regarding the fate of Jesus. These are as follows:

1. Jesus was killed by crucifixion under Pilate
2. Very soon after his death, his disciples reported having experiences which they interpreted as the risen Jesus appearing to them, both individually and in groups
3. The early Church persecutor Paul also had an experience which he interpreted as Jesus appearing to him and this experience convinced him to convert to Christianity

Licona argues in detail against the naturalistic hypotheses that attempt to account for the bedrock and concludes that the best explanation is that Jesus actually rose from the dead. He does so by ranking each hypothesis based on how well they satisfy the following criteria:

- Explanatory scope - does the hypothesis account for all the data
- Explanatory power - how well does the hypothesis explain the data
- Plausibility - is the hypothesis compatible with or implied by facts that are generally accepted as known
- Less ad hoc - does the hypothesis go beyond what is known and makes unevidenced assumptions
- Illumination (a bonus criteria) - does the hypothesis shed light on other areas of inquiry

Has anyone interacted with this argument or others similar to it such as those of N.T. Wright, William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas? If so, what are your objections to it?

Keep in mind that the apostles (and others) had already experienced Lazarus resurrected from the dead!

 

[ChristineM]

It is an interesting take on a story that I have often wondered about. My favorite though (it is not my own theory) is that it was a volunteer martyr for the cause that got arrested, tried, and executed. The whole affair was planned and stage-managed and Judas played a leading role. Presumably, there was some actual facial resemblance but most people closest to Jesus were in on the plan.

Far-fetched, quite likely it is, but I find it a lot more likely than a virgin birth and a resurrection.

I did quite a bit of research into Rome+/- 100 years of the end of the republic. It happened to coincide with the said life of JC. I created a thread about my findings that you may find interesting.

My view on Jesus.