Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus

[Left Coast]

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.

If I asked you a question again, it's for one reason: you didn't answer it.

Are you asking how we can know about the historical bedrock or how we know this would provide context for divine vindication?

I very explicitly asked you both questions.

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.

Why would God need to resurrect Jesus to prove Jesus is his "unique eschatological agent?" And what does that term even mean? And, yet again, because you haven't answered, I'll ask yet again: how do you know any of those things (that there is a God, that Jesus is his unique eschatological agent, that we'd expect a resurrection as a result) are part of the "historical bedrock" of what's known in history about Jesus?

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.

The very fact of us leaving our worldviews at the door means we must exclude certain ideological possibilities that are predicated on a particular worldview. Supernatural events, by their nature, assume supernaturalism is true. Natural events, which both parties agree exist, do not assume naturalism is true. Again, this is why serious mainstream historians do not entertain magical ideas to explain history. Such notions are simply off the table, neither denied nor confirmed. I don't know how many different ways to explain this to you.

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).

And thus far, you've provided ****-poor reasons why we ought to do so. So if you're reiterating Licona's view, I can see why it hasn't gained much traction in academic circles outside perhaps conservative Christian seminaries.

Moreover, if what you've said here is true, then you have to concede that you're arguing based on premises outside of what you're calling the "historical bedrock" about Jesus. If you recognize that your argument is completely at odds with how serious mainstream historians analyze history, then let's stop talking about this "historical bedrock" as though that's all that's needed, and admit that your view extends far, far beyond that to things most historians would never even entertain as serious ideas, let along assent to them as historical fact.

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.

This is a painfully thin attempt at false equivalence, and I suspect on some level you know that. There is an obvious difference between having a margin of error in one's analysis, and having no systematic method by which one even knows how to start carrying out an analysis at all. Serious scientists and scholars have actual systematic methods by which they test and falsify various hypotheses and candidate explanations for phenomena to determine what best fits the evidence. You, on the other hand, don't.

If you're saying that it's possible to offer the supernatural as an explanation for anything, yes that's true

Then there's nothing else to say!

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.

Wait, how? Walk me through this. How can the supernatural ever be shown to be an inferior explanation? It can always perfectly fit the data. You're trying to have it both ways now, and it's not working.

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.

What we'd reasonably say in that case is...we don't know what caused the event. Because that's....the truth. I know that can be a hard pill to swallow, but sometimes until we have more information, we simply can't determine what caused something. But that doesn't allow us to just jump to our favorite conclusion. That is the point.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Ok so

Paul: Hallucination

Peter: Hallucination

What about James, all apostles, “the twelve” and the 500?

What about them? I see that you did not understand the refutation of the 500. What makes you think that there were 500? Paul was only reporting hearsay at that point. We know that he was not one of the 500. His "vision" came later. We do not even know who told him. He also told it to people that had not way of checking out the claim.

And we really have no idea what James or the rest of the apostles saw. Again, at best Paul was working with hearsay.

Which of them was a hallucination, and which where based on rumors (or lies, or whatever explanation you have in mind)?

They probably simply did not exist. You need to be able to judge if someone is just blowing smoke or if it is a real event. The 500 is very very very unlikely since it is only mentioned once . Rumors and gossip was probably the source for many of the stories. You keep denying Elvis, but he was a perfect example of what can happen.

I did, and I aked you if Bart´s claims form that link represent your view, and you didn’t answer. This is why I am asking you directly.

Not to mention that Bart doesn’t explain all the appearances in that link (he only explains 3 Paul Peter and Marry)

what about the other 4 aperances that Paul mentiones in corinthians 1-15?

Bart is an expert in the field and he also has not lost the ability to reason rationally. The source of the OP clearly lost that to some extent. So I am going to agree with the man that has demonstrated to know more than me and is still reasoning rationally.

that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas,[b] and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

Yep, a lot of rumor, hearsay and other unsupported claims. We can be pretty sure of Peter and Paul, but that is about it.

 

[Apologes]

Since this discussion has been going nowhere for a while with you now dragging the level of the conversation down with vulgarities, I find little value in continuing it. This will be my closing statement to our conversation if you will. You are free to make your own afterwards and I will read it but don't expect a response.

To summarize our discussion, the main point of contention was the argument that positing a resurrection is implausible due to our normal experiences of dead people staying dead. I explained that our experience shows that people aren't resurrected naturally but that this is irrelevant since Licona isn't arguing that Jesus was resurrected via a natural process.
If I were to steelman your argument (and I assume that is what you meant) you said that even if there is a supernatural force, it seems to be uninterested in raising anyone since, regardless of the cause, our experiences show that dead people stay dead; no resurrections happen be it naturally or supernaturally.
I answered this by pointing to the historical bedrock for the life of Jesus which contains facts about him that make him fall into a far smaller subset of people than the general population (which forms the large part of the experience that lends the argument it's force) due to the religiously charged context surrounding him and not most other people. This serves as an undercutting defeater to the a priori dismissal as it shows our experience is actually rather limited.
You then contested this response in the same way you do now:

how do you know any of those things (that there is a God, that Jesus is his unique eschatological agent, that we'd expect a resurrection as a result) are part of the "historical bedrock" of what's known in history about Jesus?

I answered this (contrary to what you said) by explaining that it's not the factuality of Jesus' claims that establishes a religiously charged context, but the claims themselves and a potential vindication via a resurrection would be what shows those claims to be true. Since then I haven't seen a substantial refutation of this, with you instead simply reasserting that the miracles need to be established as factual which completely misses the point. You also seem to assert that God's existence must be established beforehand but I explained that this is getting the argument backwards as the resurrection hypothesis would only require the possibility of a supernatural agent (and not even that as the cause is specifically left ambiguous at the start, with Licona later narrowing it down after establishing that a supernatural event did indeed occur).

You now go on to ask:

Why would God need to resurrect Jesus to prove Jesus is his "unique eschatological agent?"

And while it's true that Jesus could have been vindicated via other ways, the resurrection is the one that is mentioned in the bedrock. That's why we go with it.

The very fact of us leaving our worldviews at the door means we must exclude certain ideological possibilities that are predicated on a particular worldview. Supernatural events, by their nature, assume supernaturalism is true. Natural events, which both parties agree exist, do not assume naturalism is true. Again, this is why serious mainstream historians do not entertain magical ideas to explain history. Such notions are simply off the table, neither denied nor confirmed. I don't know how many different ways to explain this to you.

This is merely reiterating what you already said. I answered this by explaining that this isn't leaving worldviews at the door as we would be presuming that there is nothing supernatural at hand which is just a presumption of naturalism, which is a worldview. For that reason a more proper meaning of the term is that we restrain ourselves from dismissing explanations a priori based on ideological differences. I further went on to argue in favor of this by pointing out that a presumption of naturalism would force us to reject an explanation even if it satisfies all the criteria better than natural explanations just on the basis that it goes against someone's worldview. To which you respond:

you've provided ****-poor reasons why we ought to do so.

... right. Moving on you say:

Moreover, if what you've said here is true, then you have to concede that you're arguing based on premises outside of what you're calling the "historical bedrock" about Jesus. If you recognize that your argument is completely at odds with how serious mainstream historians analyze history, then let's stop talking about this "historical bedrock" as though that's all that's needed

Putting aside the fact that you dismiss scholars as not being serious because they go against the grain, you demonstrate further ignorance of what the argument actually is. It never says that the bedrock alone tells us that Jesus rose from the dead. Rather, the bedrock is the data that needs to be explained. The resurrection hypothesis is provided as one explanation and is compared with the rest to see how they fit. Each explanation will have behind it the approach of the scholar presenting it. You can argue about these approaches but this is in no way a problem of the argument per se.

You go on to say that Licona lacks a method of analysis:

There is an obvious difference between having a margin of error in one's analysis, and having no systematic method by which one even knows how to start carrying out an analysis at all. Serious scientists and scholars have actual systematic methods by which they test and falsify various hypotheses and candidate explanations for phenomena to determine what best fits the evidence. You, on the other hand, don't.

but here you're ignoring the fact which I pointed it out in that very paragraph. Arguments for the best explanation based on the 5 criteria are what Licona uses to weigh different explanations. As I said he's using the same tools used by other historians and scholars from other disciplines.

Wait, how? Walk me through this. How can the supernatural ever be shown to be an inferior explanation? It can always perfectly fit the data.

You are confused in this statement because fitting the data is satisfying just one of the 5 criteria, namely explanatory scope. Depending on the claim being looked at natural explanations could provide greater explanatory power, greater plausibility, greater parsimony and illumination. Given how you ignored my question to go beyond an a priori dismissal of miracles very early in our discussion, you haven't really laid out any natural explanations for the bedrock (thus haven't provided an example with which we can demonstrate this) and at one point downright protested such a thing calling it silly! You mistook it as me shifting the burden of proof and asserted that only the ones claiming a resurrection ought to provide an explanation. This completely misconstrues the nature of the subject which is that historians look at the data and provide explanations for it. It's puzzling how a person familiar with the topic could make such a claim given how a plethora of skeptical scholars such as Gerd Ludemann and John Dominic Crossan do just that. A sea of ink has been spilled on such hypotheses so your statement is truly puzzling.

In the following:

But that doesn't allow us to just jump to our favorite conclusion.

you again imply that Licona is simply jumping to his favorite conclusion despite me already explaining that the argument is an inference to the best explanation where he meticulously compares competing hypotheses and on the basis of his analysis concludes that the resurrection hypothesis is the best explanation.

What we'd reasonably say in that case is...we don't know what caused the event. Because that's....the truth. I know that can be a hard pill to swallow, but sometimes until we have more information, we simply can't determine what caused something. That is the point.

This is only the case if we refuse to consider explanations that don't align with the naturalistic horizon. It's thus not a hard pill to swallow at all because the proponent of this argument doesn't need to swallow it. This is because, once again, he doesn't dismiss readily available explanations but follows the evidence where it leads.

I must say before I leave you to it, while our exchange did inspire me to write down some objections to the argument I hadn't considered beforehand, your behavior here was rather disappointing. Least of all your repeated assumptions about me personally, how I reason myself to certain conclusions and funnily enough the idea that I actually agree with Licona at all. The point of this thread was to analyze objections to the argument and I myself actually find the argument suspicious and have already written for myself nearly 40 points of contentions I have with it. I was thus disappointed when all you had to offer was an argument I heard already and found implausible all the while refusing to provide anything else or define your familiarity with the subject so as to allow the conversation to flow more smoothly. I am neither an apologist nor credulous so those comments weren't warranted and while you didn't go too far with them, they are a trademark of bad faith conversations that dominate this forum and are the reason why the last time I came here before posting the thread was 3 years ago. As a staff member you should know better than to slip into that given how I haven't thrown any personal assumptions or profanity your way nor did I try to discredit any scholars you may have quoted (though I don't recall you quoting any).

Having said all this, I'll be once again taking my leave although this time I won't be returning. You may have the last word.

 

[danieldemol]

The allege special pleading is irrelevant.

Even if I am committing that fallacy, that doesn’t affect the argument in the OP, at most it would prove that I am intellectually hypocrite but the argument in the OP is not dependent on weather if I am a hypocrite or not.

I don’t think Elvis is analogpus to the argument in the OP, but even if it where, that would have no bearing on weather if the argument is good or not.

I have no idea about Marshall Applewhite but assuming that you are correct, I would conclude that this man honestly thought that his believes are true,. (just like Paul did)

Whether if they were in a delusion or not is a different thing.

That proves that self delusion is a thing in my view, Applewhite believed his/her own claims.
Thus opening the door to the likelihood that any disciples who actually knew Jesus from his lifetime that made claims and verifiably died for those claims (if any) could simply have been self deluded in my opinion.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Since this discussion has been going nowhere for a while with you now dragging the level of the conversation down with vulgarities, I find little value in continuing it. This will be my closing statement to our conversation if you will. You are free to make your own afterwards and I will read it but don't expect a response.

To summarize our discussion, the main point of contention was the argument that positing a resurrection is implausible due to our normal experiences of dead people staying dead. I explained that our experience shows that people aren't resurrected naturally but that this is irrelevant since Licona isn't arguing that Jesus was resurrected via a natural process.
In an effort to steelman your argument (and I assume that is what you meant) you said that even if there is a supernatural force, it seems to be uninterested in raising anyone since regardless of the cause our experiences show that dead people stay dead; no resurrections happen be it naturally or supernaturally.
I answered this by pointing to the historical bedrock for the life of Jesus which contains facts about him that make him fall into a far smaller subset of people than the general population due to the religiously charged context surrounding him and not most other people. This serves as an undercutting defeater to the a priori dismissal.

You are using quite a bit of special pleading in this argument. Both the method of Jesus's resurrection and the reason are prime examples of special pleading fallacies, and it really does not matter. Your argument was for plausibility and if anything you have made the plausibility even lower.

You then contested this response in the same way you do now:



I answered this (contrary to what you said) by explaining that it's not the factuality of Jesus' claims that establishes a religiously charged context, but the claims themselves and a potential vindication via a resurrection would be what shows those claims to be true. Since then I haven't seem a substantial refutation of this with you instead simply reasserting that the miracles need to be established as factual which completely misses the point. You also seem to assert that God's existence must be established beforehand but I explained that this is getting the argument backwards as the resurrection hypothesis would only require the possibility of a supernatural agent (and not even that as the cause is specifically left ambiguous at the start, with Licona later narrowing it down after establishing that a supernatural event did indeed occur).

There does not appear to be even any "there" there. That is just massive handwaving. You are not setting up a reason to believe any of the supernatural claims about Jesu.

You now go on to ask:



And while it's true that Jesus might have been vindicated via other ways, the resurrection is the one that is mentioned in the bedrock. That's why we go with it.



This is merely reiterating what you already said. I answered this by explaining that this isn't leaving worldviews at the door as we would be presuming that there is nothing supernatural at hand which is just a presumption of naturalism, which is a worldview. For that reason a more proper meaning of the term is that we restrain ourselves to dismissing explanations a priori based on ideological differences. I further went on to argue in favor of this by pointing out that a presumption of naturalism would force us to reject an explanation even if it satisfies all the criteria better than natural explanation just on the basis that it goes against someone's worldview. To which you respond:



... right. Moving on you say:



Putting aside the fact that you dismiss scholars as not being serious because they go against the grain, you demonstrate further ignorance of what the argument actually is. It never says that the bedrock alone tells us that Jesus rose from the dead. Rather, the bedrock is the data that needs to be explained. The resurrection hypothesis is provided as one explanation and is compared with the rest to see how they fit. Each explanation will have behind it the approach of the scholar presenting it. You can argue about these approaches but this is in no way a problem of the argument per se.

You go on to say that Licona lacks a method of analysis:



but here you're ignoring the fact that I pointed out in that very paragraph. Arguments for the best explanation based on the 5 criteria are what Licona uses to weigh different explanations. As I said he's using the same tools used by other historians and scholars from other disciplines.



You are confused in this statement because fitting the data is satisfying just one of the 5 criteria, namely explanator scope. Depending on the claim being looked at natural explanations could provide greater explanatory power, greater plausibility, greater parsimony and illumination. Given how you ignored my question to go beyond an a priori dismissal of miracles very early in our discussion, you haven't really laid our any natural explanations for the bedrock and at one point downright protested such a thing calling it silly! You mistook it as me shifting the burden of proof and asserted that only the ones claiming a resurrection ought to provide an explanation. This completely misconstrues the nature of the subject which is that historians look at the data and provide explanations for them, both natural and supernatural. It's puzzling how a person familiar with the topic could make such a claim given how a plethora of skeptical scholars such as Gerd Ludemann and John Dominic Crossan do just that. A sea of ink has been spilled on such hypotheses so your statement is truly puzzling.

In the following:



you again imply that Licona is simply jumping to his favorite conclusion despite me already explaining that the argument is an inference to the best explanation where he meticulously compares competing hypotheses and on the basis of his analysis concludes that the resurrection hypothesis is the best explanation.



This is only the case if we refuse to consider explanations that don't align with the naturalistic horizon. It's thus not a hard pill to swallow at all because the proponent of this argument doesn't need to swallow it. This is because, once again, he doesn't dismiss readily available explanations but follows the evidence where it leads.

I must say before I leave you to it, while our exchange did inspire me to write down some objections to the argument I hadn't considered before hand, your behavior here was rather disappointing. Least of all your repeates assumptions about me personally, how I reason myself to certain conclusions and funnily enough the idea that I actually agree with Licona at all. The point of this thread was to analyze objections to the argument and I myself actually find the argument suspicious and have already written nearly 40 points of contentions I have with it. I was thus disappointed when all you had to offer was an argument I heard already and found implausible all the while refusing to provide anything else or define your familiarity with the subject so as to allow the conversation to flow more smoothly. I am neither an apologist nor credulous so those comments weren't warranted and while you didn't go too far with them, they are a trademark of bad faith conversations that dominate this forum and have been a reason why the last time I came here before posting the thread was 3 years ago. As a staff member you should know better than to slip into that given how I haven't thrown any personal assumptions or profanity your way nor did I try to discredit any scholars you may have quoted (though I don't recall you quoting any).

Having said all this, I'll be once again taking my leave although this time I won't be returning. You may have the last word.

I am not going to go over this entire rather pointless argument. The problem is that the explanation using just Peter and Paul having after death hallucinations is far superior in all of your categories to that of an actual resurrection.

 

[sayak83]

Ok so

Paul: Hallucination

Peter: Hallucination

What about James, all apostles, “the twelve” and the 500?

Which of them was a hallucination, and which where based on rumors (or lies, or whatever explanation you have in mind)?


I did, and I aked you if Bart´s claims form that link represent your view, and you didn’t answer. This is why I am asking you directly.

Not to mention that Bart doesn’t explain all the appearances in that link (he only explains 3 Paul Peter and Marry)

what about the other 4 aperances that Paul mentiones in corinthians 1-15?


that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas,[b] and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

One or two hallucinations, rest sightings like the Elvis Case that number into hundreds or thousands

 

[joelr]

I haven’t seen the debate, but at least in that summery Bart doesn’t explain why he rejects the group appearances of Jesus, and he doesn’t provides an alternative explanation

Because they are stories from the Gospels, which are theological fiction.

Genesis, White Jesus, and Debating the Resurrection (with Dr. Bart Ehrman)



22:50 It has to do with how do you know what happened in the past. Can you say somebody was raised from the dead never to die again? Is that like a historical statement or…it’s a Christian belief, but is it historical? How do you decide what’s historical? How many historians who write books about the 2nd World War claim that the allies won because God intervened at the Battle of the Bulge? If you are going to do it with Jesus how do you justify that?


25:17 No historian (from that time) chronicles any events you find in the Gospels, there are huge historical problems with the Gospels.

26:30 He (Mike Licona) is wrong, the implications that you can prove Christianity to be true are troubling and problematic.

28:23 The Gospel accounts of Jesus resurrecting are not historical and do not pass any historical criteria.
(After this interview Ehrman held a day long debate with Apologist/fundamentalist Mike Licona explaining why the Gospels are not history)
Side note, Licona admitted in a debate that the story about Saints raising from the grave during the resurrection were not literally true. He was immediately fired from the fundamentalist university where he worked.

32:12 Jesus central message was wrong. He believed the end of the world was coming in his own generation, all the forces of evil would be destroyed, resurrection of the dead, kingdom of God would come. (This is a Persian myth, Dr Ehrman doesn’t get into other myths, he just deals with what’s in the Gospels and it’s OT origins)

34:55 The idea that Jesus preaches family values is wrong. Jesus tells followers to leave family behind and follow him. This was not possible for family at this time. Leaving a wife was a death sentence for her and children.

The actual origins of this is likely something that happened after Jesus. After Jesus died stories circulated that he was raised, some people believed it some didn’t which would split family members. Jesus did not likely actually have that type of influence when he was alive. Much of what was said about Jesus is almost certainly not historical.

36:55 Ehrman on crucifixion - “God killed his own son, really?”

Not well known, actual Christian theologians are more like philosophers, the good ones are incredibly smart and all have problems with the atonement idea.

Ehrman believes after Jesus was killed for crimes against the state the disciples have to figure out what to do with that because he was supposed to be the messiah who saved them from the Romans. This led to them connecting magic blood sacrifice which was done with animals with a more potent magic of a savior.


(Ehrman doesn’t look to Hellenism or any other theology to explain this, he keeps everything within the religion)
40:30 Why would God need apologist and why do they all disagree on doctrine so much? Religion is not historical, not based on history or logic, it’s a belief based on faith.
42:18 You cannot accept the resurrection without faith. It isn’t an accident that only Christians believe the resurrection. If it were provable everyone else would believe it.

 

[joelr]

Yes, but the claim is that you are unlikely to die, in the name of a lie that you yourself invented.

1 yes one could lie

2 yes one can die for a lie

3 but nobody dies for a lie that he himself invented.

The Jesus story was invented before Paul. He bought into it and added a story about visions but still decided to believe it.
Who else was going to die? People in the Gospels? Those are stories that have no proof of being real and contain improbable events like fishermen leaving their families which is a death sentence for women and children as well as possessed pigs and all sorts of made up folklore.
And it copies other stories, also fiction.

 

[joelr]

So paul had a hallucination and the rest are just rumors that paul quoted?

Is that your view?

Wether Paul was adding flare to the story and inserting his personal opinions (he did), yes, the Jesus tale had long before started. The Greeks were in Judea in 167 BC. Every nation occupied by the Hellenistic Greeks took their religion and made it into a mystery religion with a son/daughter of the supreme God acting as a savior figure. This was the Jewish version.
Nothing Paul claims to get from a deity isn't anything a man could not hold as views. It's better to not marry (because the world is going to end), but if you have to......
Besides giving basic details there is nothing profound. Paul is only concerned with doctrine and rules of conduct, never the far more interesting questions of how the Son of God lived and died? In tens of thousands of words not one word on the burning issue of the facts of Jesus's life and death.

Even weirder is at this time there were countless moral and doctrinal disputes arising in the congregations (the reason Paul was writing letters), which would have rested on the actual words of Jesus and would clearly have been addressed, answered or pertained to.
These facts should be points of debate and contention. Which in turn would involve eyewitnesses weighing in, directly (writing letters), indirectly ( letters through scribes within Christian congregations). But we see none of that.

In a psychology book about fundamental Christians they ask to imagine if you had a letter from a friend sharing excitement about a new teacher. The only topic is this new teacher but at the end of the letter you still don't know anything about the teacher. It seems impossible to imagine how Paul could avoid telling one story of parable or personal trait of Jesus.

Paul mentions Jesus in his 7 authentic letters 280 times. Of all the facts he mentions about Jesus none of them connect him with any earthly life. Crucifixion and resurrection are mentioned over 30 times with no details. They could have happened in the celestial realm.

Paul never mentions Jesus baptism, his ministry, his trial, any miracles, any historical details about what he was like, what he did, suffered, where was he from, who he knew? No memories from anyone who knew him. Paul never mentions Galilee, Nazareth, Pilate, Mary, Joseph. miraculous powers or anything about his life from the gospels. None of Paul's opponents ever referenced a fact about Jesus's life in support of their argument. No one ever doubted anything about his life and asked for witnesses to confirm or give more details.

Paul knows private revelations and hidden messages in scripture and appears to not know any other sources.
In Gal .1.11-16 scripture and revelation are the only sources. he recieved the gospel.
Rom 15.25-26 he says Christians only have information about Jesus from scripture and revelation.

Paul says "according to the scriptures" Jesus died and was raised and was seen after that only. No reference to Cephas, the twelve seeing Jesus or traveling with him, or sitting at his feet, or being chosen,
According to Paul Jesus had no ministry, was unknown to anyone until he appeared to an elect number after his resurrection. This is also confirmed in Phil. 2.5-11 where he has no ministry, descends from heaven, submits to death and reascends.

So clearly the Gospels are creating an entirely new earthly story for Jesus.
But Paul has encountered a sect of people with basic beliefs (possibly a celestial Jesus, who died and rose in an upper realm, Satan was in the 3rd level) and he has bought into it.

He is not quoting rumors, he has fully worked out theology from a sect who may have writings and basic concepts. Just not Gospel stories, those had not been invented.
But it sounds like they are either reading into the OT and finding hidden messages or have written something down. Making a pesher (hidden text combining seperate parts of text) was very common.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

So Paul borrowed/copied from pagan Gods myths ? is that your view?

Somebody did, maybe Paul.

Take a giant step back. You're arguing that something that is likely impossible occurred - a three-days dead human cadaver came alive again. The argument against that is thermodynamic and involves the laws of chemistry and heat transfer. A living thing is a complex configuration of biomolecules kept in a far-from-equilibrium condition by energy requiring metabolic processes. This activity is what keeps a living body warm, and why with death, it re-equilibrates with the environment and returns to room temperature. Once death ensues, this chemistry shuts down. Tissues and biomolecules break down as entropy increases.

This is what we need to focus on when considering the likelihood of a resurrection, not how many witnesses it is claimed there were or who died for their beliefs. These elements need to be intact and arranged properly, but cell walls are already losing integrity and leaking contents into and out of cells. Rigor mortis has already set in and disappeared in the ride from life to equilibrium as muscle tissue loses the ability first to relax then contract. Blood pools at the lowest point of the body when there is no heart to oppose gravity. These are all signs of irreversible death.

You have zero chance of convincing a skeptic that resurrection actually occurred until you can surmount these scientific objections. No number of words you can write changes the apparent impossibility of resurrection, especially words about history. But that's the kind of thing you are forced to argue instead of the biological impossibility of resurrection of a three-days decomposed body.

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.

Yes, we presume naturalism because we see nature. It exists. Supernaturalism is some people's unfalsifiable claim, a hypothesis not needed in science at this time. The faithful often object, claiming a conspiracy by the scientific community and its professional journals to keep gods out of science to protect their turf from religion.

How many ways are there for faith-based thinkers to object to the rigors of critical scrutiny? Here, we shouldn't "bracket our horizons." Nor should we bow down to strict empiricism. Translation: you need to loosen your criteria for belief.

Here are more commonly seen requests to lower the shields to let faith-based beliefs in. You need to lower these shields against belief of false and unfalsifiable ideas. You're too myopic. You need to see further. You're a materialist and guilty of scientism.

To what benefit, one might ask? To see the truth, we are told. Well, what is your truth and how is knowing it benefiting you? Crickets or deflection.

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.

This says what Occam says. When naturalism alone suffices, adding supernaturalism adds unnecessary complexity to the narrative and thus should be avoided.

So it is falsifiable in the sense that it can be demonstrated to be an inferior explanation.

That's not falsification. Falsification is demonstrating that an idea is incorrect, the same as rebuttal (as opposed to mere dissent with or without unfalsifiable beliefs). Occam allows us to order our logical possibilities as when we say that all naturalistic explanations that can account for the available observations are preferred to supernaturalistic ones. We're not falsifying supernaturalistic claims. The can't be falsified (ruled out), which is why they are called unfalsifiable.

 

[leroy]

Somebody did, maybe Paul.

Take a giant step back. You're arguing that something that is likely impossible occurred - a three-days dead human cadaver came alive again. The argument against that is thermodynamic and involves the laws of chemistry and heat transfer. A living thing is a complex configuration of biomolecules kept in a far-from-equilibrium condition by energy requiring metabolic processes. This activity is what keeps a living body warm, and why with death, it re-equilibrates with the environment and returns to room temperature. Once death ensues, this chemistry shuts down. Tissues and biomolecules break down as entropy increases.

This is what we need to focus on when considering the likelihood of a resurrection, not how many witnesses it is claimed there were or who died for their beliefs. These elements need to be intact and arranged properly, but cell walls are already losing integrity and leaking contents into and out of cells. Rigor mortis has already set in and disappeared in the ride from life to equilibrium as muscle tissue loses the ability first to relax then contract. Blood pools at the lowest point of the body when there is no heart to oppose gravity. These are all signs of irreversible death.

his is what we need to focus on when considering the likelihood

(there is a Question at the end of this text please answer it)

Well the problem is that you are assuming that a god doesn’t exists or that his existence is very unlikely.………….. why are you making that assumption? Do you have conclusive arguments against the existence of a god?

If you dont have conclusive evidence against a god, then your default position should be agnosticism (we don’t know) ……… something close to 50%/50%

If we consider the intrinsic probabability of

1 a god excists (50%)

Vs

2 the disciples lied and then died in the name of a lie that they themselves invented probability 1 in thausands atleast)



I would say that 1 is more probable.

To put it simple terms , I understand and grant that under your view (naturalism is almost certainly true) the resurrection is the least probable explanation.

But

Do you grant gh that under my view (theism) or even under agnosticism , the resurrection is the most probable explanation given the “bed rock facts”?

 

[leroy]

Because they are stories from the Gospels, which are theological fiction.

Genesis, White Jesus, and Debating the Resurrection (with Dr. Bart Ehrman)



22:50 It has to do with how do you know what happened in the past. Can you say somebody was raised from the dead never to die again? Is that like a historical statement or…it’s a Christian belief, but is it historical? How do you decide what’s historical? How many historians who write books about the 2nd World War claim that the allies won because God intervened at the Battle of the Bulge? If you are going to do it with Jesus how do you justify that?


25:17 No historian (from that time) chronicles any events you find in the Gospels, there are huge historical problems with the Gospels.

26:30 He (Mike Licona) is wrong, the implications that you can prove Christianity to be true are troubling and problematic.

28:23 The Gospel accounts of Jesus resurrecting are not historical and do not pass any historical criteria.
(After this interview Ehrman held a day long debate with Apologist/fundamentalist Mike Licona explaining why the Gospels are not history)
Side note, Licona admitted in a debate that the story about Saints raising from the grave during the resurrection were not literally true. He was immediately fired from the fundamentalist university where he worked.

32:12 Jesus central message was wrong. He believed the end of the world was coming in his own generation, all the forces of evil would be destroyed, resurrection of the dead, kingdom of God would come. (This is a Persian myth, Dr Ehrman doesn’t get into other myths, he just deals with what’s in the Gospels and it’s OT origins)

34:55 The idea that Jesus preaches family values is wrong. Jesus tells followers to leave family behind and follow him. This was not possible for family at this time. Leaving a wife was a death sentence for her and children.

The actual origins of this is likely something that happened after Jesus. After Jesus died stories circulated that he was raised, some people believed it some didn’t which would split family members. Jesus did not likely actually have that type of influence when he was alive. Much of what was said about Jesus is almost certainly not historical.

36:55 Ehrman on crucifixion - “God killed his own son, really?”

Not well known, actual Christian theologians are more like philosophers, the good ones are incredibly smart and all have problems with the atonement idea.

Ehrman believes after Jesus was killed for crimes against the state the disciples have to figure out what to do with that because he was supposed to be the messiah who saved them from the Romans. This led to them connecting magic blood sacrifice which was done with animals with a more potent magic of a savior.


(Ehrman doesn’t look to Hellenism or any other theology to explain this, he keeps everything within the religion)
40:30 Why would God need apologist and why do they all disagree on doctrine so much? Religion is not historical, not based on history or logic, it’s a belief based on faith.
42:18 You cannot accept the resurrection without faith. It isn’t an accident that only Christians believe the resurrection. If it were provable everyone else would believe it.

As I said Bart claims that the apperance to Paul and the aperance to Peter where halucintations, but he says nothing about the other 4 reported by Paul in Corinthians



“ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas,[b] and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”

 

[leroy]

The Jesus story was invented before Paul. He bought into it and added a story about visions but still decided to believe it.
Who else was going to die? People in the Gospels? Those are stories that have no proof of being real and contain improbable events like fishermen leaving their families which is a death sentence for women and children as well as possessed pigs and all sorts of made up folklore.
And it copies other stories, also fiction.

The majority of the verifiable historical facts that are reported in the gospels are true.

Under that basis I assume that the documents are historically reliable and each historical claim should be granted as true unless good positive reasons are given to the contrary.

But the bed rock facts from the OP don’t depend on the gospels being historically reliable.

 

[lukethethird]

The majority of the verifiable historical facts that are reported in the gospels are true.

Under that basis I assume that the documents are historically reliable and each historical claim should be granted as true unless good positive reasons are given to the contrary.

But the bed rock facts from the OP don’t depend on the gospels being historically reliable.

Blah blah blah, so much hot air.

 

[syo]

I recently finished Michael Licona's book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach

Burn it.

 

[leroy]

Wether Paul was adding flare to the story and inserting his personal opinions (he did), yes, the Jesus tale had long before started. The Greeks were in Judea in 167 BC. Every nation occupied by the Hellenistic Greeks took their religion and made it into a mystery religion with a son/daughter of the supreme God acting as a savior figure. This was the Jewish version.
Nothing Paul claims to get from a deity isn't anything a man could not hold as views. It's better to not marry (because the world is going to end), but if you have to......
Besides giving basic details there is nothing profound. Paul is only concerned with doctrine and rules of conduct, never the far more interesting questions of how the Son of God lived and died? In tens of thousands of words not one word on the burning issue of the facts of Jesus's life and death.

Even weirder is at this time there were countless moral and doctrinal disputes arising in the congregations (the reason Paul was writing letters), which would have rested on the actual words of Jesus and would clearly have been addressed, answered or pertained to.
These facts should be points of debate and contention. Which in turn would involve eyewitnesses weighing in, directly (writing letters), indirectly ( letters through scribes within Christian congregations). But we see none of that.

In a psychology book about fundamental Christians they ask to imagine if you had a letter from a friend sharing excitement about a new teacher. The only topic is this new teacher but at the end of the letter you still don't know anything about the teacher. It seems impossible to imagine how Paul could avoid telling one story of parable or personal trait of Jesus.

Paul mentions Jesus in his 7 authentic letters 280 times. Of all the facts he mentions about Jesus none of them connect him with any earthly life. Crucifixion and resurrection are mentioned over 30 times with no details. They could have happened in the celestial realm.

Paul never mentions Jesus baptism, his ministry, his trial, any miracles, any historical details about what he was like, what he did, suffered, where was he from, who he knew? No memories from anyone who knew him. Paul never mentions Galilee, Nazareth, Pilate, Mary, Joseph. miraculous powers or anything about his life from the gospels. None of Paul's opponents ever referenced a fact about Jesus's life in support of their argument. No one ever doubted anything about his life and asked for witnesses to confirm or give more details.

Paul knows private revelations and hidden messages in scripture and appears to not know any other sources.
In Gal .1.11-16 scripture and revelation are the only sources. he recieved the gospel.
Rom 15.25-26 he says Christians only have information about Jesus from scripture and revelation.

Paul says "according to the scriptures" Jesus died and was raised and was seen after that only. No reference to Cephas, the twelve seeing Jesus or traveling with him, or sitting at his feet, or being chosen,
According to Paul Jesus had no ministry, was unknown to anyone until he appeared to an elect number after his resurrection. This is also confirmed in Phil. 2.5-11 where he has no ministry, descends from heaven, submits to death and reascends.

So clearly the Gospels are creating an entirely new earthly story for Jesus.
But Paul has encountered a sect of people with basic beliefs (possibly a celestial Jesus, who died and rose in an upper realm, Satan was in the 3rd level) and he has bought into it.

He is not quoting rumors, he has fully worked out theology from a sect who may have writings and basic concepts. Just not Gospel stories, those had not been invented.
But it sounds like they are either reading into the OT and finding hidden messages or have written something down. Making a pesher (hidden text combining seperate parts of text) was very common.

I don’t see that as a big of a deal, Paul simply considered Jesus´s teachings more important to share than his personal life…………. I see that as evidence that everybody knew who Jesus was and there was no need to repeat what everybody knew.

If I where the mayor of your city, would your car about my personal life? Or would you care about my political and economic views?

The few verifiable historical facts that Paul mentions are true, Jesus had a brother name James, Jesus had a disciple named Peter, a disciple named John he was crucified, etc…… so under that basis I would conclude that he was not making things up. Nor copying from ancient myths


We don’t have a single ancient text that refers to Jesus as a celestial person, we have plenty of roman and Jewish historians writing about Christians, and nobody mentioned that Jesus was just a celestial being.

And if I understand your view correctly, “celestial Jesus” was not supposed to be a secret, so why didn’t Christianity flourished as a religion that worships a celestial Jesus?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

the problem is that you are assuming that a god doesn’t exists or that his existence is very unlikely

Neither. I'm agnostic about gods in general. I've told you that I have ruled out the Abrahamic god described in scripture, but regarding gods like the deist god, for whom no evidence for or against its existence would be expected, nothing can be said about the likelihood of its existence.

If you dont have conclusive evidence against a god, then your default position should be agnosticism (we don’t know)

Agreed. I consider myself an agnostic atheist as you can see from what I just wrote.

something close to 50%/50%

No such estimate can be made about noninterventionist gods. We can only say the logically impossible ones like the tri-omni ones can be ruled out, and nothing about other kinds of gods.

I understand and grant that under your view (naturalism is almost certainly true) the resurrection is the least probable explanation. But Do you grant gh that under my view (theism) or even under agnosticism , the resurrection is the most probable explanation given the “bed rock facts”?

No, but you know that already. Your strongest argument is that a miraculous resurrection might have occurred. OK. Or maybe something extraordinary was witnessed. An alien abduction is a more likely explanation for that than a supernatural event.

 

[leroy]

Neither. I'm agnostic about gods in general. I've told you that I have ruled out the Abrahamic god described in scripture, but regarding gods like the deist god, for whom no evidence for or against its existence would be expected, nothing can be said about the likelihood of its existence.

Agreed. I consider myself an agnostic atheist as you can see from what I just wrote.

No such estimate can be made about noninterventionist gods. We can only say the logically impossible ones like the tri-omni ones can be ruled out, and nothing about other kinds of gods.

No, but you know that already. Your strongest argument is that a miraculous resurrection might have occurred. OK. Or maybe something extraordinary was witnessed. An alien abduction is a more likely explanation for that than a supernatural event.

Ok just to finish this point.

Would you agree that form the point of view of what I call an agnostic (someone who roughly is 50% / 50%) the resurrection is the most probable explanation for the bed rock facts?

(just assume for the sake of the argument that the 50% is granted) (and assume that the bed rock facts are likely to be true)

 

[lukethethird]

Ok just to finish this point.

Would you agree that form the point of view of what I call an agnostic (someone who roughly is 50% / 50%) the resurrection is the most probable explanation for the bed rock facts?

(just assume for the sake of the argument that the 50% is granted) (and assume that the bed rock facts are likely to be true)

When you say facts you really mean to say fantasy.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Ok just to finish this point.

Would you agree that form the point of view of what I call an agnostic (someone who roughly is 50% / 50%) the resurrection is the most probable explanation for the bed rock facts?

(just assume for the sake of the argument that the 50% is granted) (and assume that the bed rock facts are likely to be true)

I don't know any agnostics that would put a probability of deity at 50 percent. I think you are constructing a straw man here.

As an agnostic, I certainly would not grant in a discussion such an estimate. I would instead ask believers about their estimates of probability...and as has been discussed in this thread by supporters, I have not been favorably impressed by the arguments for.

Can you show any evidence for agnostics as a general rule giving a 50 percent probability?