Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus

[SkepticThinker]

I find it very interesting that instead of proving me wrong, by showing that you are not avoiding the burden proof (but rather that you are willing to show that your world view is correct)……….you decided to play semantics and definitions again.

I did prove you wrong.
You're conflating "naturalism" with "atheism" so your argument doesn't work.

And you're making illogical assertions and claiming atheists do it too.

I do find it hilarious that you think that showing where you've made errors in your thinking are just "playing semantics."

 

[paarsurrey]

I set out the basics back at #45.

I pointed out that if Jesus "came back to life", out here in reality that must mean he was never dead; and that extraordinary claims require evidence of extraordinary quality, whereas the evidence for the resurrection is of extremely poor quality ─ a routine kind of miracle to attribute to a religious hero in that culture, no eyewitness account, no contemporary account within 20 years and none with any details within 45 years, no independent account.

Then we have Paul's mention, the four descriptions in the gospels, and the mention in Acts 1 ─ as I said, none by an eyewitness, none contemporary, none independent AND each of the 6 contradicting the other 5 in major ways.

Here are some of the contradictions I'm talking about. (I posted it once before but neglected to note the page.)

As I said earlier, you couldn't renew a dog license on evidence of that quality,
'

1. Who went to the tomb?

Paul: –
Mark: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome
Matthew: MM, MmJ
Luke: MM, MmJ, Joanna
John: MM


2. What did they see?

Paul: –
Mark: Open tomb
Matthew: An earthquake. An angel descending who rolled away the stone and sat on it.
He looked like lightning, his raiment white as snow
Luke: Open tomb
John: Open tomb


3. Were any guards there?

Paul: -
Mark: No.
Matthew: The guards trembled.
Luke: No
John: No


4. What did they do?

Paul: -
Mark: Went in.
Matthew: -
Luke: Went in
John: Ran to fetch Peter and the Beloved Disciple who ran to the tomb and saw the linen


5. Did they see anyone in or at the tomb?

Paul: -
Mark: Saw one young man in a white robe. Told Jesus had risen, and would meet the disciples at Galilee
Matthew: Addressed by an angel. Told Jesus had risen, and would meet the disciples at Galilee.
Luke: Saw two men in dazzling apparel. Told Jesus was risen.
John: No.


6. What did they do next?

Paul: -
Mark: They fled in fear.
Matthew: They left.
Luke: They went and told the eleven but weren’t believed.
John: Peter and the Beloved Disciple went home.


7. To whom did Jesus first appear?

Paul: Peter
Mark: MM
Matthew: MM and MmJ
Luke: ‘Cleopas’ (= Cephas/Peter?) and Simon
John: MM


8. How?

Paul: -
Mark: As MM fled.
Matthew: As MM and MmJ were going home. He told them he’d meet the disciples at Galilee.
Luke: As Cleopas and Simon walked to Emmaus. They didn’t recognize him. That night at dinner he broke the bread and they realized who he was.
John: At the tomb. MM mistook him for the gardener. Then she recognized him. He said, ‘Inform my brethren’.


9. What did the guards do?

Paul: -
Mark: -
Matthew: Told the chief priests. Were paid to say, Disciples stole the body.
Luke: -
John: -


10. What did the others do?

Paul: -
Mark: -
Matthew: The eleven went to Galilee.
Luke: Went to Jerusalem, told the disciples &c.
John: MM told the disciples.


11. To whom did Jesus second appear?

Paul: The twelve [sic].
Mark: ‘two of them’.
Matthew: The eleven.
Luke: The eleven and others.
John: The disciples and others


12. Where?

Paul: -
Mark: -
Matthew: At Galilee
Luke: While MM, MmJ and Joanna were reporting to the eleven.
John: At table, with doors shut


13. With what result?

Paul: -
Mark: The two told the others but weren’t believed.
Matthew: They worshiped him but some doubted. He told them to preach to all nations.
Luke: They thought he was a ghost. He reassured them. He led them to Bethany. He was carried up to heaven.
John: They were glad. He gave them the Holy Spirit and power to forgive.


14. To whom did Jesus third appear?

Paul: The five hundred.
Mark: The eleven at table. He upbraided them for their disbelief. He told them signs - demons, tongues, serpents, poisons. He went up to heaven.
Matthew: *
Luke: *
John: At the same house as before, with the doors locked. He reassured Thomas.


15. To whom did Jesus fourth appear?

Paul: James
Mark: *
Matthew: *
Luke: *
John: Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, the BD and another disciple. They didn’t recognize him at first. They caught lots of fish. They recognized him at breakfast. They argued over the Beloved Disciple waiting till Jesus returned.



16. To whom did Jesus fifth appear?

Paul: All the apostles.


17. Where did Jesus ascend to heaven?

Galilee (Mark 16:7, 16:19; Matt 28:16)

Bethany / Jerusalem Luke 24:50, John, unclear, Acts 1:4+1:9

A marvelous post of our friend @blü 2 , exposing the quality of witnessing of the 4 Gospels on the event of Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah's Crucifixion.

Regards

 

[Subduction Zone]

Again , more excuses for not defining "evidence "

No, I defined it. You are still making excuses for ignoring that fact.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes in the real world I would have a burden proof and theist usually accept that burden and provide arguments…………….. but using atheist logic I can avoid the burden proof, all I have to do is say that “there is no sufficient evidence for naturalism”

Been there, done that bought the T-shirt. When everyone is pointing out the same errors of yours to you it is time to move on.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Ok which laws of inference show that you shouldn’t believe in God?

None. It's skepticism - the belief that nothing should be accepted as correct or likely correct without sufficient supporting evidence - suggest unbelief. The rules of inference do not suggest the existence of a god, and skepticism say then don't believe there is one.

In this case you do have evidence; we have “Mendel laws” that show that one result is more probable than the other.

Yes, I know. That's why this example refutes your claim that when an outcome is unknown, that 50/50 necessarily applies. Nobody knows the outcome of that pregnancy until it is possible to test for cystic fibrosis (amniocentesis, post-natal test), which meets your criterion for calling the yes/no outcomes unknown and therefore equally likely, yet you admit that that is not the case in this example. That makes you wrong, Leroy. If truth matters to you at all, now that it's been falsified, it's time for you to say that you now see that your claim was wrong.

that is not sufficient evidence for naturalism

Only naturalism is supported by the available evidence. The only alternative is not. Better evidence than that is not possible even if there is nothing but nature.

We would expect observations and events that can´t be explained by the laws of nature

I wrote, "What should we expect to see if there were only nature and no supernatural realm or denizens? I suggest that all we would see are natural objects passively obeying physical laws and no miracles (violations of those laws). That's what we see as best we can decide. That's the evidence for naturalism - it can account for all observations ever made."

OK. Do you have any observation which can not possibly have a naturalistic explanation? I'll bet not.

My point is that the author of John didn’t concluded that there was a resurrection because he read Paul…………. Do you reject this?

Your point was that John's and Paul's accounts were arrived at independently. Now you want to move the goalpost to something that can be stipulated and the accounts still not be independent.

I dont see the relevance

I showed you a way to use one post as a template for a reply without omitting important points made in the first one.

No, O.R. is only one of many criteria. What about explanatory power, or explanatory scope, or predictive power? If everything is equal then sure, one should go for the simplest explanation

Your last statement paraphrases Occam. Yes, if all competing hypotheses account for all relevant observations, that is, "If everything is equal," we prefer the simplest explanation, where simplest doesn't mean fewest words, but the least number of elements proposed to exist or be implicated.

Go back to the missing dog example. Every one of those things listed from an open door to Odin account for a dog missing if they occurred. They all have full "explanatory power," but not equal parsimony in so doing.

to invoke an unevidence “natural mechanism” is as antiparsimonous than to invoke an unevidnece supernatural mechanism. Two unevidenced natural mechanism are less parsimonious than one supernatural mechanism.

Unevidenced natural mechanism? That there are mindless processes in nature in is well evidenced. Drop a ball to see one at work. Or do you think a falling ball implies supernaturalism?

For example claiming group hallucinations is as unparsimonious as the resurrection because there is no prior evidence for any of them

Wrong twice.

You still don't seem to understand what parsimony means in this context. Claiming supernatural resurrection is ALWAYS the least parsimonious hypothesis. ALWAYS. No exceptions. But you will never understand that without understanding what parsimony means, and it appears that none of us can teach you. You keep making the same error.

Also, the Asch conformity experiment showed that people will doubt the evidence of their senses if enough peer pressure is applied: "The Asch conformity experiments consisted of a group “vision test”, where study participants were found to be more likely to conform to obviously wrong answers if first given by other “participants”, who were actually working for the experimenter." That falsifies your claim that there is no evidence that such a thing can happen. Ready to agree that that is correct and you just learned something?

You are just saying “error” or “fraud” but you haven’t developed any hypothesis and you haven’t shown that it is more parsimonious than the resurrection

Twice wrong yet again. Both were already done. If you didn't read it, or didn't understand it before, there is no reason to believe repeating it will help you.

The appearances are relevant, because they show that the “disciples saw something”

You keep forgetting that most of us don't accept that account as factual, yet you keep arguing as if others do. What appearances? You mean the unevidenced, unfalsifiable claim that there were appearances?

The conversion of Paul, is relevant, because it shows that he didn’t made it up, he honestly and sincerely thought that his experience was real

Wrong again. Of course he could have made it up. Or are you going to contend that, "there is no prior evidence for" people making false claims as you did for mass delusion?

My impression is that You are not willing to provide a naturalistic hypothesis for the bed rock facts (a well developed hypohteiss) because you know that then you would have to show that such an explanation is better and more likely to be true. You don’t want such a burden (that is the impression that I have from you)

Already done, twice at least.

the resurrection is falsifiable

Only if we not invoking supernaturalism, in which case it's already falsified by thermodynamics. There is no natural path back to the organized structures that characterize life. If you want to make the tissues and cells of a three-days dead body live again, you'll need to feed it to a living thing to digest, absorb, and metabolize into new living cells.

I find it very interesting that instead of proving me wrong, by showing that you are not avoiding the burden proof

You probably should give that trope up for multiple reasons, one being that it is incorrect, the other being that there is no burden of proof absent a student prepared to identify a sound, evidenced argument and willing to change his belief set if he encounters one. Why? Because there is no possibility of proof, and that's where we are in this thread with you. Sound arguments have no impact on your belief set (or memory, either, or you would say you disagreed rather than you never saw it), and so there is no duty to continue presenting them, although I may at times anyway for reasons of my own.

 

[leroy]

I did prove you wrong.
You're conflating "naturalism" with "atheism" so your argument doesn't work.

And you're making illogical assertions and claiming atheists do it too.

I do find it hilarious that you think that showing where you've made errors in your thinking are just "playing semantics."

You proved me wrong in a semantic (vocabulary) issue……… that doesn’t sound like a huge victory

The OP is falsifiable, why didn’t you do that, instead finding creative ways of avoiding the burden prove and try to win by default?

 

[viole]

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

Did Licona reply to the simplest naturalistic explanation of all? Namely, that all that has been written is just fiction? Completely made up nice stories, possibly written as entertainment for some bored Roman matron? A sort of "Adventures from the colonies"?

Think about it. If the story would be reliable, then Jesus performed amazing miracles that would make the resurrection sort of superfluous to prove His divinity. So, why concentrate on the latter, considering that it has the same reliability as the former?

Actually, to try to defuse something that looks like simple fiction to start with, is like debating about events that happened in the Game of Thrones. OK within the fictional context, ridiculous when projected to be an account of real events.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Subduction Zone]

You proved me wrong in a semantic (vocabulary) issue……… that doesn’t sound like a huge victory

The OP is falsifiable, why didn’t you do that, instead finding creative ways of avoiding the burden prove and try to win by default?

One of your arguments that you use far too often is "prove me wrong". Though that has been done endlessly for almost all of your claims there is really no need to do that. Anyone repeatedly using that phrase has already lost. They use it because they are trying to shift the burden of proof. The OP has been refuted, you have been refuted.

You simply refuse to understand even the simplest of concepts. That frees us of explaining anything to you. To demand anything you first need to demonstrate that you can be an honest interlocutor.

 

[SkepticThinker]

You proved me wrong in a semantic (vocabulary) issue……… that doesn’t sound like a huge victory

I'm not claiming a "huge victory." Just pointing out that I did prove you wrong when you claimed I didn't.
And instead of responding to that, you claim I'm being semantic again.

The OP is falsifiable, why didn’t you do that, instead finding creative ways of avoiding the burden prove and try to win by default?

You're just projecting at this point.

 

[leroy]

None. The rules of inference do not suggest the existence of a god. It's skepticism - the belief that nothing should be accepted as correct or likely correct without sufficient supporting evidence - suggest unbelief.

granted, but that has nothing to do with rules of inference

and the same applies to naturalism, given that you dont have sufficient supporting evidence, we shuold also be skpetickal of naturalism.


and ofcourse skepticism doesnt mean "free of burden proof"

Yes, I know. That's why this example refutes your claim that when an outcome is unknown, that 50/50 necessarily applies. Nobody knows the outcome of that pregnancy until it is possible to for cystic fibrosis (amniocentesis, post-natal test), which meets your criterion for calling the yes/no outcomes equally likely, yet you admit that that is not the case in this example. That makes you wrong, Leroy. If truth matters to you at all, now that it's been falsified, it's time for you to say that you now see that your claim was wrong.

Straw man, and the new rule is: every time you make an obvious mistake I will stop right there and ignore the rest of the thread untill you admit your mistake (or show that it waste a mistake)

I didn’t say that when the outcome is unknown we should assign a 50% 50% probability, that is a missrepresentartion of my view.

I said, when you have 2 alternatives and you have zero information and zero evidence for or against any outcome, you should assign 50%

If you have good reasons to think that one outcome is more probable than other, then you are justified in moving the wager beyond the 50% (as you did in your example about receive genes)

So please acknowledge your mistake and admit that you made a strawman fallacy, so that we can move on.

 

[leroy]

One of your arguments that you use far too often is "prove me wrong". Though that has been done endlessly for almost all of your claims there is really no need to do that. Anyone repeatedly using that phrase has already lost. They use it because they are trying to shift the burden of proof. The OP has been refuted, you have been refuted.

You simply refuse to understand even the simplest of concepts. That frees us of explaining anything to you. To demand anything you first need to demonstrate that you can be an honest interlocutor.

And why won’t you quote a comment of mine, where you proved me wrong?

 

[SkepticThinker]

granted, but that has nothing to do with rules of inference

and the same applies to naturalism, given that you dont have sufficient supporting evidence, we shuold also be skpetickal of naturalism.


and ofcourse skepticism doesnt mean "free of burden proof"



Straw man, and the new rule is: every time you make an obvious mistake I will stop right there and ignore the rest of the thread untill you admit your mistake (or show that it waste a mistake)

I didn’t say that when the outcome is unknown we should assign a 50% 50% probability, that is a missrepresentartion of my view.

I said, when you have 2 alternatives and you have zero information and zero evidence for or against any outcome, you should assign 50%

If you have good reasons to think that one outcome is more probable than other, then you are justified in moving the wager beyond the 50% (as you did in your example about receive genes)

So please acknowledge your mistake and admit that you made a strawman fallacy, so that we can move on.

Those are the same thing.

 

[leroy]

I'm not claiming a "huge victory." Just pointing out that I did prove you wrong when you claimed I didn't.
And instead of responding to that, you claim I'm being semantic again.

You're just projecting at this point.

Once again, you are trying to win with semantics.

Why don’t you start a post s}with

I think that the best explanation for those bed rock facts mentioned in the OP is xxxxxxxx I think that it is a better explanation because xxxxxx

Wouldn’t that be more satisfying that simply “wining by default”

 

[leroy]

Those are the same thing.

Not knowing the outcome doesn’t necessarily implies that you have no evidence or information that makes one outcome more probable than other.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Not knowing the outcome doesn’t necessarily implies that you have no evidence or information that makes one outcome more probable than other.

"I didn’t say that when the outcome is unknown we should assign a 50% 50% probability, that is a missrepresentartion of my view.

I said, when you have 2 alternatives and you have zero information and zero evidence for or against any outcome, you should assign 50%"

I think you need to read them again.

 

[Subduction Zone]

And why won’t you quote a comment of mine, where you proved me wrong?

Because I don't play that silly game with you. You have repeatedly demonstrated that doing so doesn't help you to understand.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

So please acknowledge your mistake and admit that you made a strawman fallacy, so that we can move on.

OK. It seems I misunderstood you and rebutted a straw man. You did not claim that unknowns are always 50/50.

 

[sayak83]

I am the one who is making the claim…………. Therefore I know what the claim is.


Yes you agreed with the claim, (people don’t conclude that his brother resurrected, because they saw someone that looks like him)………… there are comments that you made that imply that you agreed with that claim like 20 minutes ago

But apparently you changed your view … ok what made you change your mind?

Seeing loved ones after death is one of the most common types of hallucinations
The phenomenology and impact of hallucinations concerning the deceased | BJPsych Open | Cambridge Core

So there is little need to invoke anything to explain James experiences, even if they are true. The Elvis case shows how sighting of a dead person by his fanatical followers (non relatives) can happen in the thousands over many years.
The explanation of such sightings will differ based on the expectation of the group. Because Jesus followers expected a general eschatological resurrection, they explained it that way. Elvis followers lived in times of paranoia about Big Govt conspiracy. So they explained it that way. The explanation is ad hoc and fits the culture of the day.
That explains everything. What else have you got

 

[paarsurrey]

These are some of the problems with the resurrection as an historical event ─

The story is truly, madly, deeply not believable, just on the face of it. There is no way that a person whose body's life support functions have irreversibly ceased ─ which is what death is ─ can come back to life. If they can they never satisfied the definition of death.
•
The story is a common one in ancient times, the sort of thing all sorts of people in all sorts of stories did because it was expected. Just in the bible alone ─
* Samuel came back after his death and spoke with Saul (though arguably he was a ghost, not a resurrected body.)
* Elijah raised the Zarephath woman’s son (1 Kings 17:17+).
* Elisha raised the Shunammite woman’s son (2 Kings 4:32+).
* The man whose dead body touched Elisha’s bones was resurrected (2 Kings 4:32+)
* Jesus raised the Nain widow’s son (Luke 7:12+).
* Jesus raised Lazarus (John 11:41-44).
* Peter raised Tabitha / Dorcas (Acts 9:36-40).
* Matthew describes the faithful dead at large in the streets of Jerusalem (Matthew 27:52-53).
(And excepting Tabitha alone, notice how nobody raises dead women. Even Orpheus couldn't do it.)
•
There is no eyewitness account of it.
•
There is no contemporary account of it.
•
There is no independent account of it.
•
There are four 'accounts' in the gospels, a mention by Paul and a mention in Acts 1. Each of those 'accounts' contradicts the other five in major ways. You couldn't renew a dog license with evidence of that quality ─ it's abysmal.

It didn't happen. It's a no-brainer.

Truly analyzed by our friend @blü 2 , a winner post.

Regards

 

[paarsurrey]

There are no claims or clues that Jesus wasnt crucified in the Gospels. You are simply overlaying your disbelief onto the story, seeing things that are not there.

The creator of life can easily restore life such as the resurrection of Lazarus. The body of Jesus died on the cross, the spirit of the Son of God did not. He returned on his own just as he said that he would.


Urantia Book revelation IMOP:


189:2.6 (2023.5) The Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus has been based on the fact of the “empty tomb.” It was indeed a fact that the tomb was empty, but this is not the truth of the resurrection. The tomb was truly empty when the first believers arrived, and this fact, associated with that of the undoubted resurrection of the Master, led to the formulation of a belief which was not true: the teaching that the material and mortal body of Jesus was raised from the grave. Truth having to do with spiritual realities and eternal values cannot always be built up by a combination of apparent facts. Although individual facts may be materially true, it does not follow that the association of a group of facts must necessarily lead to truthful spiritual conclusions.

189:2.7 (2023.6) The tomb of Joseph was empty, not because the body of Jesus had been rehabilitated or resurrected, but because the celestial hosts had been granted their request to afford it a special and unique dissolution, a return of the “dust to dust,” without the intervention of the delays of time and without the operation of the ordinary and visible processes of mortal decay and material corruption.

189:2.8 (2024.1) The mortal remains of Jesus underwent the same natural process of elemental disintegration as characterizes all human bodies on earth except that, in point of time, this natural mode of dissolution was greatly accelerated, hastened to that point where it became well-nigh instantaneous.

189:2.9 (2024.2) The true evidences of the resurrection of Michael are spiritual in nature, albeit this teaching is corroborated by the testimony of many mortals of the realm who met, recognized, and communed with the resurrected morontia Master. He became a part of the personal experience of almost one thousand human beings before he finally took leave of Urantia." UB 1955

" Urantia Book "

What is this "Urantia Book" ,is it written by Jesus??
Anybody, please

Regards