Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus

[leroy]

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.

Of course I can´t, that is an impossible task.it is impossible to prove that there is “no possible natural explanation” because I don’t know everything about the natural world. ……..If my drawers start to open and close and then I see an nebulous image of man that says “BOOO” I would probably conclude that it was a ghost (supernatural) but I would not be capable of showing that a naturalistic explanation is literally “not possible”

But I think there are many observations/events where supernatural explanations are better than their naturalistic counterparts………. The OP provides an example of such event.

Consider 2 hypothesis

1 a god exists and he decided to resurrect a man 2000 years ago

2 James and the disciples saw someone that looks like Jesus and therefore mistakenly concluded that he is the risen Jesus

I would claim that hypothesis 1 is better……. And honestly I think that 1 is a better hypothesis than any other naturalistic hypothesis that I am aware of.

The probability that a god exists given the data that we have, is much stronger in my opinion, than the probability that someone would conclude resurrection just because they saw someone similar

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.

My point is that John likelly didn’t concluded that there was a resurrection because he read paul----------any disagreement?

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

and that is what John did? is that what you are claiming?

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.

Granted, simpler means “less elements” O.R. is only concerned in the number of elements, not on weather if the elements are supernatural or not

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?

All I am saying is that a naturalistic hypothesis that invokes 2 elements is less parsimonious than a supernatural hypothesis that invokes 1 element

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.

I think that you are the one that doesn’t understand O.R. any hypothesis with say 2 elements is more parsimonious than a hypothesis that adds 3 elements. This has nothing to do with being natural or supernatural………….

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?

Yes that is correct, but I don’t see the relevance……… you mean that the apostoles hallucinated because they had peer pressure?

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.

I haven’t seen a post where you develop a hypothesis and explain why is that a better explanation than resurrection…………… you simply say “fraud” “error” “myth” without developing a clear hypothesis……….. I wonder why?

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?

I made loooooooong post explaining why I think the appearances are historical events and your reply was “it doesn’t matter”……. So which one is it?

1 do you reject the historicity of the apperances? Why? why is the evidence that I provided not good enough? Why do you think that most scholars are wrong?

2 do you accept the historicity of the apperances? (at least for the sake of this thread)? How do you explain them?

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?

First of all that is a strawman, I never said that “mass delusion is impossible” I said that mass hallucinations are impossible (or very very very unlikely)

Second, Paul was a persecutor of Christians, the fact that he changed his religion and was willing to become a persecuted person who eventually was imprisoned and killed strongly suggests that he didn’t made it up (he honestly thinks that the things that he preached are true)…………. So once again you made a straw man. The claim is not that “someone making up stuff” is improbable………… the claim is that it is improbable for someone to make something up, if he had nothing to win and everything to lose.

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.

That is fine, because I am invoking supernaturalism, and I told you how to falsify the resurection hypothesis...............so your accusations of "not falsifiable" are not justified

If you find the tomb of Jesus, you would falsify the resurrection hypothesis, if you find 1st century documents that explain that Jesus didn’t died in the cross, or that his cadaver was found, etc you would falsify the hypothesis.

 

[Colt]

" Urantia Book "

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

Regards

It’s a revelation from our unseen celestial friends.

 

[leroy]

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

I apriciate

 

[blü 2]

Again , more excuses for not defining "evidence "

Oh Leroy!

You protest about what evidence is yet you made no reply to my post #45 and you're ignoring my #525!

Was it something I said?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Consider 2 hypothesis
1 a god exists and he decided to resurrect a man 2000 years ago
2 James and the disciples saw someone that looks like Jesus and therefore mistakenly concluded that he is the risen Jesus
I would claim that hypothesis 1 is better……. And honestly I think that 1 is a better hypothesis than any other naturalistic hypothesis that I am aware of.

OK. I don't, and you already know why: parsimony violation.

The probability that a god exists given the data that we have, is much stronger in my opinion, than the probability that someone would conclude resurrection just because they saw someone similar

Same answer.

My point is that John likelly didn’t concluded that there was a resurrection because he read paul----------any disagreement?

I don't know the answer to that but will stipulate to it. I don't think that it is relevant to the question of whether the writings of those two men were independent. You ignored the comment that they had doctrine in common. That's either because they influenced one another, were both influenced by a prior source, or invented the same religion independently.

and that is what John did? is that what you are claiming?

No. I showed you how my wife and her girlfriend write to one another. Each values acknowledging the other's comments, and that is how they make sure to not overlook one in a reply. It was offered to you as a suggested way to not overlook significant comments and questions in posts written to you. All I am saying is that a naturalistic hypothesis that invokes 2 elements is less parsimonious than a supernatural hypothesis that invokes 1 element

Granted, simpler means “less elements” O.R. is only concerned in the number of elements, not on weather if the elements are supernatural or not

Perhaps it's time to leave Occam's Razor and parsimony behind. You still don't understand, I'd bet you've done no reading, and you keep making the same errors.

Yes that is correct, but I don’t see the relevance……… you mean that the apostoles hallucinated because they had peer pressure?

No. It means groups of people can be wrong about what they say they saw even when they agree.

Will you ever stop it with the misidentification and turn to other naturalistic explanations such as my preferred one - mythmaking after the fact. That one is a bout 98% likely to be correct. Explanations that require witnesses of anything actually existing including mass hallucination and a magic trick are essentially all of the other 2%, and supernaturalism is 0+%. Please address that position.

I haven’t seen a post where you develop a hypothesis and explain why is that a better explanation than resurrection

I'm sure that's true. I'm not repeating myself again.

Why is this so tedious? I don't seem to be able to write anything to you that doesn't need extensive explaining.

I made loooooooong post explaining why I think the appearances are historical events and your reply was “it doesn’t matter”……. So which one is it?

It doesn't matter because even if people did claim to see a risen Jesus, that wouldn't convince me that that happened. That one.

1 do you reject the historicity of the apperances? Why? why is the evidence that I provided not good enough?

Yes, and already answered. I believe almost nothing in the Bible that hasn't been confirmed empirically.

I never said that “mass delusion is impossible” I said that mass hallucinations are impossible (or very very very unlikely)

So mass hallucinations are impossible (or very very very unlikely), but supernaturalism isn't? That's backwards.

Second, Paul was a persecutor of Christians, the fact that he changed his religion and was willing to become a persecuted person who eventually was imprisoned and killed strongly suggests that he didn’t made it up (he honestly thinks that the things that he preached are true)…………. So once again you made a straw man. The claim is not that “someone making up stuff” is improbable………… the claim is that it is improbable for someone to make something up, if he had nothing to win and everything to lose.

So what? You haven't gotten a femtometer closer to making your case for supernaturalism.

I told you how to falsify the resurection hypothesis...............so your accusations of "not falsifiable" are not justified

If you find the tomb of Jesus, you would falsify the resurrection hypothesis, if you find 1st century documents that explain that Jesus didn’t died in the cross, or that his cadaver was found, etc you would falsify the hypothesis.

I'm discussing your belief that resurrection is possible, not whether Jesus was resurrected. The evidence of his dead body wouldn't be available to us today even if somebody found a body claimed to be that of Jesus then or now.

 

[Brian2]

Aside from the many implied errors here.....

Please explain how you have determined that "spirits" do not change nor require time to "exist and live".

What I was meaning is that God is not a part of His creation and is not controlled by it, including time.
The Bible tells me that God does not change and so can just be without needing time for changes to happen in Him.

Also, you seem unaware that "to exist" and "to live" are BOTH temporal phenomenon.

I have just been told that the most popular theory in science about origins is the BB in which time began and so the universe has always existed.
You and @Subduction Zone disagree. Who is right?
Now you are saying that without time nothing can exist.
So time and everything popped into existence and spread out and changed.
All sorts of strange things are said even by science at this edge of reality where nobody knows what they are really talking about.
A popular idea it seems is that everyingthing has existed always, just as it is now, and time can go forwards or backwards through this lump of space time and causality is seems must be an illusion and does not tell us the direction that time actually travels, because time does not travel. It's all really weird stuff and people of science actually believe it.

 

[Brian2]

What are the qualities of the nonexistent things like werewolves that distinguish them from things that exist, like wolves? How about "does not change or require time to exist and live"? I would add 'does not exist in space' and 'cannot impact or modify things that DO exist.'

Edit: added later

View attachment 80279

A problem we have is that science does not really know what it is talking about when it comes to spirit and timelessness and spacelessness. But some scientists seem to want us to believe they know what they are talking about.

 

[paarsurrey]

paarsurrey said:
" Urantia Book "

• #561

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

• #563

It’s a revelation from our unseen celestial friends.

And on whom this revelation was revealed and who are these y-"our" unseen friends, please identify them, right???

Regards

 

[Subduction Zone]

What I was meaning is that God is not a part of His creation and is not controlled by it, including time.
The Bible tells me that God does not change and so can just be without needing time for changes to happen in Him.

That sounds a lot like the description of something that does not exist.

I have just been told that the most popular theory in science about origins is the BB in which time began and so the universe has always existed.
You and @Subduction Zone disagree. Who is right?

Clearly not you. Since I may have been the one that pointed that out to you. Or perhaps someone else. Nor does anything in @TagliatelliMonster 's post indicates that he disagrees with that either.

Now you are saying that without time nothing can exist.
So time and everything popped into existence and spread out and changed.
All sorts of strange things are said even by science at this edge of reality where nobody knows what they are really talking about.
A popular idea it seems is that everyingthing has existed always, just as it is now, and time can go forwards or backwards through this lump of space time and causality is seems must be an illusion and does not tell us the direction that time actually travels, because time does not travel. It's all really weird stuff and people of science actually believe it.

This seems strange to you because it is very hard for the human mind to contemplate a beginning. What can I say. The evidence supports this. Do you have any evidence for your claims?

 

[Subduction Zone]

paarsurrey said:
" Urantia Book "

• #561

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

And on whom this revelation was revealed and who are these y-"our" unseen friends, please identify them, right???

Regards

It appears to have been written by some Americans that used to be Seventh Day Adventists, a sect of Christianity.

 

[paarsurrey]

Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus​

Left Coast said: #8
Because people don't come back alive after being dead for days, as a rule. It's a one way trip. Any claim of some miracle explanation for a phenomenon that violates everything we know about how the world works is going to have automatically very low plausibility.
Apologes said: #10
We know that people don't rise from the dead on their own, true, but here we are talking about God raising someone from the dead. This isn't going against how the world works as its not the laws of nature that are raising the dead but an act of God. On what basis would you assign a low plausibility to God choosing to raise Jesus from the dead a priori?
paarsurrey said: #421
Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah rising from the physical dead is against Sign of Jonah, I (therefore) must say (Jesus did not resurrect at all), as I understand?
Right?

paarsurrey said: #430
Jonah did not die in the belly of the fish so Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah could not and did not die on the Cross or in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, please, right?

paarsurrey said: #449
Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah pegged the Sign of Jonah to be shown to the Jews and the Jews knew as per Book of Jonah that (1) Jonah entered the belly of fish alive, (2)remained alive in the belly of the fish and (3)came out alive from the belly of the fish, so if the Sign was for the Jews then Yeshua had to remain alive and he did remain alive (1) on the Cross, (2) in the tomb where he was laid and (3) afterwards as he was seen by many, please, right?

paarsurrey adds:#476
Since Jonah was a truthful prophet of G-d so applying the same criteria Jesus/Yeshua- the Israelite Messiah was also a truthful prophet, please, right?

#496
Jesus did not resurrect
The Jews of the time failed to kill Jesus (which they must have done to a false prophet in terms of Deuteronomy) this also shows that Yeshua- the Israelite Messiah was a truthful person/prophet, right?

• paarsurrey#540
• There are many clues in the Gospels itself that Yeshua- the truthful truthful Messiah did not die on the Cross in the firs place so there is no question of his being resurrected from the dead, please, right?

1. Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah prayed in the garden of Gethsemane most fervently to G-d (whom he used to call God-the-Father) that his life may be saved:

Matthew 36-40
36 Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. 38 Then he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” 39 And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” 40

Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 26 - New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

The Plot to Kill Jesus - When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the...

www.biblegateway.com

So G-d willed and accepted Yeshua's prayer to the astonishment of Pauline-Christianity people and saved the life of Yeshua against all the odds, please, right?

Regards

 

[Brian2]

Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus​

Left Coast said: #8
Because people don't come back alive after being dead for days, as a rule. It's a one way trip. Any claim of some miracle explanation for a phenomenon that violates everything we know about how the world works is going to have automatically very low plausibility.
Apologes said: #10
We know that people don't rise from the dead on their own, true, but here we are talking about God raising someone from the dead. This isn't going against how the world works as its not the laws of nature that are raising the dead but an act of God. On what basis would you assign a low plausibility to God choosing to raise Jesus from the dead a priori?
paarsurrey said: #421
Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah rising from the physical dead is against Sign of Jonah, I (therefore) must say (Jesus did not resurrect at all), as I understand?
Right?

paarsurrey said: #430
Jonah did not die in the belly of the fish so Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah could not and did not die on the Cross or in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, please, right?

paarsurrey said: #449
Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah pegged the Sign of Jonah to be shown to the Jews and the Jews knew as per Book of Jonah that (1) Jonah entered the belly of fish alive, (2)remained alive in the belly of the fish and (3)came out alive from the belly of the fish, so if the Sign was for the Jews then Yeshua had to remain alive and he did remain alive (1) on the Cross, (2) in the tomb where he was laid and (3) afterwards as he was seen by many, please, right?

paarsurrey adds:#476
Since Jonah was a truthful prophet of G-d so applying the same criteria Jesus/Yeshua- the Israelite Messiah was also a truthful prophet, please, right?

• paarsurrey#540
• There are many clues in the Gospels itself that Yeshua- the truthful truthful Messiah did not die on the Cross in the firs place so there is no question of his being resurrected from the dead, please, right?

1. Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah prayed in the garden of Gethsemane most fervently to G-d (whom he used to call God-the-Father) that his life may be saved:

Matthew 36-40
36 Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. 38 Then he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” 39 And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” 40

Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 26 - New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

The Plot to Kill Jesus - When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the...

www.biblegateway.com

So G-d willed and accepted Yeshua's prayer to the astonishment of Pauline-Christianity people and saved the life of Yeshua against all the odds, please, right?

Regards

Jesus, the truthful prophet said:
Matthew 17:22 As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, 23 and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.” And they were greatly distressed.

Mark 9:30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, 31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”

These are plain statements of Jesus and other statements which are not so plain can be seen in the light of these statements.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

What I was meaning is that God is not a part of His creation and is not controlled by it, including time.

Now I'm just going to ask you how you have determined that that is the case.

The Bible tells me that God does not change and so can just be without needing time for changes to happen in Him.

Ow, so you just read it in a book and believe it. Great.

ps: god changes throughout the bible. From OT sadistic monster to NT hippy who condemns thought crimes.

I have just been told that the most popular theory in science about origins is the BB in which time began and so the universe has always existed.

Yes.
So?

You and @Subduction Zone disagree. Who is right?
Now you are saying that without time nothing can exist.

I'm saying that "to exist" and "to live" has temporal implications.
Did the person that told you that time has origins in the BB that something existed "before" time existed?
No? Then what are you objecting to?

So time and everything popped into existence and spread out and changed.

We don't know how the universe originated.

All sorts of strange things are said even by science at this edge of reality where nobody knows what they are really talking about.

Considering we are temporal beings whose daily life deals with sub-light (and even sub-sound) speeds and relativily low gravitational forces...
Environments of extreme gravity, extreme speeds or T = 0 are bound to be experienced as "strange" to us.

Like Lawrence Krauss so infamously said once:

Our brains evolved to avoid being eaten by lions. Not to understand quantum mechanics.

Another nice way to illustrate this was once shared by Brian Green. I loved what he said. Paraphrasing:

Quantum physics is weird. Primarily because it is outside of our scope of experience. I would love it if quantum physics would come intuitively to us, similar to newtonian physics. I have this tennis ball here... Suppose I throw it to you while saying "catch!". Many a times, you will be able to catch it. With one hand even. In a split second. Consider the process your brain has to go through to catch that ball... You need to instantly, literally in a split second, figure out where you are going to need to place your hand and when to close it in order to catch it. How do you do this? You figure it out by how it threw it. The force with which I threw it. The path it takes, the curve it takes,... You instantly figure it out. We can calculate its trajectory with newtonian physics equations as well. But your brain doesn't need to go to that length at all. You'll still catch it while knowing absolutely NOTHING about newtonian physics or its equations.

Now.... just imagine the length we have to go, the budget we need to spend on machinery, the insane math we have to deal with, to "catch" a neutrino.
Yes, I would love to be able to just catch it intuitively... but sadly, it doesn't work that way. We need to build billion dollar machines to be able to do that.



This little anecdote just to illustrate: why would you expect anything but an explanation that will feel "strange" to us, for the origins of the universe?

A popular idea it seems is that everyingthing has existed always, just as it is now, and time can go forwards or backwards through this lump of space time and causality is seems must be an illusion and does not tell us the direction that time actually travels, because time does not travel. It's all really weird stuff and people of science actually believe it.

Popular with whom?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

A problem we have is that science does not really know what it is talking about when it comes to spirit and timelessness and spacelessness.

Nobody does, since nobody has ever observed a spirit or studied one, let alone that they can distinguish "spirits" from things that don't exist.
So everybody who tries talking about that subject, is by definition talking out of his / her behind.

But some scientists seem to want us to believe they know what they are talking about.

I'm not aware of any science dealing with "spirits".

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Well who knows, first you have to define some terms

1 what do you mean by evidence

2 what do you mean by “supernatural”

3 how can someone distinguish the “supernatural” from “unknown natural mechanisms”?

Those are all questions for people who claim the supernatural exists.
Don't ask me to do your homework

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Yes in the real world I would have a burden proof

We are in the real world. So go for it.

and theist usually accept that burden and provide arguments……………..

And they have been dealt with and shown how they are cesspools of logical fallacies.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

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.

Says the person who in this thread has done nothing but playing semantic games.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

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?

The OP has been dealt with by pointing out how it's fallacious.
That's not "semantics". That's showing the "argument" doesn't work due to it being invalid logically.

The job is done at that point.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Consider 2 hypothesis

1 a god exists and he decided to resurrect a man 2000 years ago

2 James and the disciples saw someone that looks like Jesus and therefore mistakenly concluded that he is the risen Jesus

I'll add a third:

3. it's just a story

I would claim that hypothesis 1 is better

I would claim number 3 is better.

But even only considering your 2... I don't get how you can conclude that 1 would be better...........

What is more likely?
That someone made a mistake?
Or that the laws of nature were suspended / violated?

It's just bizar that you would go for the latter.

 

[Brian2]

That sounds a lot like the description of something that does not exist.

What description of something that does not exist are you talking about?

Clearly not you. Since I may have been the one that pointed that out to you. Or perhaps someone else. Nor does anything in @TagliatelliMonster 's post indicates that he disagrees with that either.

TagliatelliMonster said: Also, you seem unaware that "to exist" and "to live" are BOTH temporal phenomenon. (post 529)
Subduction Zone said: Do you realize that the most popular version of the Big Bang Theory has time beginning with the Big Bang? That means that the universe has always existed. (post 519)
If these 2 statements agree that would mean that you are using "has always existed" to mean, "has always existed since there was time".
This is a deceptive statement as "has always existed" implies that the universe did not come into existence, but has always been there in some form even when there was no time.

This seems strange to you because it is very hard for the human mind to contemplate a beginning. What can I say. The evidence supports this. Do you have any evidence for your claims?

Why would I, a creationist, want to say that there was no beginning. No beginning is something that science once said and then the Hubble Telescope helped to develop the BB idea, a beginning. The steady state theory was popular in the mid 20th century.