Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus

[Brian2]

I'm saying that thinking requires time and involves change. You seem to agree. Yet you also claim that God is outside of time and never changes.

I can't say I agree, as I don't know how God thinks. In the Bible when God seems to be thinking in time there seems to be a change of stance, but then again God knows what He will do way before He does it or thinks about it in time, it seems. Certainly the picture of God thinking about things in time shows a God who is torn at times between different actions, but that just shows us God and what He is like.

You don't? I do. Here's what can be done with no time passing: nothing.

So you say. And what if there was time before the BB and a changeless God did things in that time?

Yes, I know. We use different rules of inference to connect observation and conclusion. I don't think you have any consistent rules. I don't think that you can write out the steps that connect what you call evidence for your beliefs to those beliefs. Any critical thinker can, and those rules will be the same for the next critical evaluation of other evidence and the same as with other critical thinkers.

The belief, faith, is a consistent thing that helps connect everything. Without that then conclusions could end up anywhere.

But you can't say that to a critical thinker without justifying it. Double standards need to be justified. We have different standards for adults and children regarding driving, drinking, smoking, and the like, and we can justify them. But when we have different standards for men and women in these same areas, we can't justify them. The faithful commonly say the rules don't apply to their gods but can't give a reason why better than, "because he's God." That makes their claim a special pleading fallacy, just as it is when asked why women shouldn't be allowed to drive and the answer is "because they're women".

But my God is a special case if He is what the Bible tells us.
So that is a matter of faith also, and it is reasonable also starting from that position of faith.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I can't say I agree, as I don't know how God thinks. In the Bible when God seems to be thinking in time there seems to be a change of stance, but then again God knows what He will do way before He does it or thinks about it in time, it seems. Certainly the picture of God thinking about things in time shows a God who is torn at times between different actions, but that just shows us God and what He is like.

You seem to have accepted the doctrine that nothing about God is comprehensible or needs to make sense. You write as if anything goes when the word god is substituted for any other noun, that all bets are off.

what if there was time before the BB and a changeless God did things in that time?

You don't seem to understand that doing things and being changeless or outside of time are antithetical ideas - mutually exclusive claims. Now you seem to want to put God into a meta-time of sorts as a compromise between being out of OUR time yet in some other time.

I feel intuitively that that is more correct, but it's an unconscious multiverse that is eternal into the past and future, not a god or heaven, and out T=0 was just another moment in its timeline, the moment a local region of the substance of the multiverse began expanding then inflating and a new universe was born like another bubble forming in champagne. This concept seems to answer the fine-tuning objection as well as the universe's expansion having a beginning but not the milieu in which it occurred.

The belief, faith, is a consistent thing that helps connect everything. Without that then conclusions could end up anywhere.

It's faith that permits any "conclusion." Rigorous methods don't do that. The rules of arithmetic connect addends and correct sums. Try adding by faith for even one step, and you've left reason and sound conclusion.

But my God is a special case if He is what the Bible tells us.

This is you saying that God is special and deserves a separate standard because he's god.

it is reasonable also starting from that position of faith.

Reasoning is nullified by the addition of even a drop of faith. Think of the addition problem. Imagine thousands of simple additions (2+3=5, 4+7=11, etc.) with just one faith-based belief:

• "If somewhere in the Bible I were to find a passage that said 2 + 2 = 5, I wouldn't question what I am reading in the Bible. I would believe it, accept it as true, and do my best to work it out and understand it."- Pastor Peter laRuffa

And at that point, he derails the reason express and can no longer generate a correct sum. Is that what you mean by faith being reasonable?

 

[Brian2]

I'm confused why you would say this?

Because you have an initial presumption on the non existence of Jesus and so the only true evidence is the evidence that points to that and this is your facts and is the things that other academic Jesus mythicists use as their evidence, and who also use them in such a way as to make their conclusion about undeniable.

No my beliefs are based on what evidence presents. In the historical NT field there are 2 options, Jesus was a human Rabbi who was later made into a Greek savior demigod in stories OR the Jesus character is completely made up. The NT story about salvation, devils, and God/supernatural things is a myth. It's set in real places and among some real people in the story.

See what I mean?

Christainity is a Jewish version of the Hellenistic myth with Persian elements as well. So of course it ties to the OT? Why wouldn't it?

The OT written when it was supposed to have been written is the non Hellenistic source of the gospel stories, if you want them to have been made up.
If the gospels were accounts about the real Jesus then those OT passages are the prophecies.

Again, the evidence does support Genesis being a reworked Mesopotamian myth and the NT is a Jewish version of the Greek/Persian trend of mystery religions (local religions with a supreme God and a son/daughter of the god who undergo a passion, sometimes death and resurrection and bring salvation to followers. Members are baptized into the cult, a communal meal is part of the ritual and so on.

I expect a true flood should have other versions of the same flood.
Rituals are rituals and humans make similar things into rituals, but really I don't see much similarity in the stories in the mystery religions and Jesus, but do see it in the OT prophecies.

The NT is vert different from the OT. They do have some messianic predictions (Persian influence) but Yahweh was a typical Near Eastern deity, Heaven was only for God, souls did not go to heaven or need salvation. Resurrection was bodily and at the end of time after the final battle (Persian myth they used) and the NT resurrection is spiritual, a Greek idea.

Well salvation is either spiritual or physical. There is the idea of physical resurrection in the OT and it is also what the NT teaches.
YHWH was a God who made Himself known to the Jews and fulfilled promises and made Himself real to them over time.

There is good evidence Jesus is completely made up, mostly the lack of evidence for Jesus. Everything else I say about the gospels is standard knowledge in historical academia. Because you attend some church and members may refuse to accept what is known in academia doesn't make your revision of history true. It means they won't accept what the evidence shows because they already have beliefs to uphold and refuse to let go of them.
It's not worth arguing mythicism with a fundamentalist. That is a debate for those who like to dig deep into the history. The consensus in historical fields is Jesus was a human who was mythicized into a demigod in the folktales in the Gospels.

I suppose that once people put in skeptical presumptions about the supernatural and God and rejected the gospels as history and say that only what is proven can be believed to be true, then that ends up throwing a bit of doubt on the gospels and their historicity.
I don't see the gospels as being my revision of history, I see the modern academic re writing of them as a revision and making them into superstitions that only the uneducated could believe.
Of course "The consensus in historical fields is Jesus was a human who was mythicized into a demigod in the folktales in the Gospels".
No modern historian who wants to keep their job in academia is going to say the gospels are history.

 

[Brian2]

The problem is that causality is temporal in nature.
Causes happen before effects.
Effects happen after causes.
Necessarily so.

No, if I start to open my hand the effect of creating a gap happens at the same time.

Another problem is that causality only really applies to classical physics. It gets spooky at the quantum level.

This has been pointed out to you many a times already.

Causality furthermore is a phenomenon of physics. The physics of the universe.
You can't invoke the physics of the universe and pretend it applies in an environment where the universe does not exist.

Creation is not causality at the quantum level, it is causality of the quantum level.
Causality is not something that physics (the subject) can take ownership of or that the physical universe can take ownership of.
But if you want to throw away causality and hence reason where the universe does not exist, then why not just go along with the idea of a God.

That's not really the case, actually.

Yes I know.
But when time is going so slow (relative to us) that it stops, then that stop, relative to us, is also relative to every other observation point of that time. It really stops.,,,, in theory.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Because you have an initial presumption on the non existence of Jesus and so the only true evidence is the evidence that points to that

This is how the faith-based thinker thinks, not the critical thinker. The critical thinker draws sound conclusions from evidence by applying accepted rules of inference (avoiding fallacious thought). What you described is how the faith-based thinker perverts that process, begins with a presumption believed by faith, and then tries to fit the evidence to it after the fact.

I expect a true flood should have other versions of the same flood.

I expect that a true global flood would have left no human survivors but Noah and his family to tell the tale.

I suppose that once people put in skeptical presumptions about the supernatural and God and rejected the gospels as history and say that only what is proven can be believed to be true, then that ends up throwing a bit of doubt on the gospels and their historicity.

That's a feature of the method, not a flaw. The method is intended to identify false, unfalsifiable, and insufficiently supported claims and prevent their entry onto one's personal map of reality, where only demonstrably correct ideas belong and deserve to be called knowledge. The Gospels shouldn't be believed just because they were written. We need more before believing, or should.

if I start to open my hand the effect of creating a gap happens at the same time.

One results from the other. You seem to know which is which. You seem to understand that the resulting gap is not causing the hand to open, but that it is the other way around.

 

[Colt]

For it to matter that God was first cause, everything else would have to happen as a result of that, But that's true if you're omniscient and omnipotent too, nothing can happen without your entire approval and intention.

In physics strict determinism is mitigated by quantum randomness ─ not in any way that might admit the dignity of freewill, of course ─ but with God, well, nothing stops any of [his] intentions from happening.

That is correct, God is the First Source and center of all that exists.

 

[shunyadragon]

Detectable by faith when God reveals Himself to us.

That is not detectable by the English definition of the word.

Hmmm OK thanks for that.

I consider this a failure to respond on a rational way the objective and science/academic history considers what is evidence and, of course, detectable.

 

[leroy]

That is completely false.
Evolution makes testable predictions.
There's a huge body of independently verifiable facts that demonstrably match those predictions.

And I mean HUGE.
You couldn't have picked a worse example to make your silly point.
Evolution as a scientific idea has probably the largest body of verifiable facts supporting it then any other idea in science.



Why? Because it shows your nonsense has no evidence?



No.



False.
The exclusive part is rather important. If data can support multiple mutually exclusive ideas, then it isn't evidence for any of them. Or at least not in the sense that you can determine which of the mutually exclusive ideas is right or wrong.

For example, the nested hierarchical structure of DNA exclusively supports evolution theory. There is no other proposed explanation from which the predictions of nested hierarchies flows naturally. This is why it exclusively supports evolution theory.



No shift. It's upto people who claim that the supernatural exists, to define it.
And if those people want to deal with evidence, they'll have to define it testable ways so that it even CAN have evidence on principle.
Untestable / unfalsifiable ideas are infinite in number and can't have evidence (for or against). They are unverifiable by definition.



Then the conversation is over. If you don't even know yourself what you are talking about when using the term, why are we still talking about it?
Might as wel talk about "gooblydockbloblo".



lol, but *I* am the one making the shifts, right?????

lolololol



By definition, since there is no testable definition of the word.
Anything that has no testable definition, has no evidence by definition........
That goes for "gooblydockbloblo" as well as "supernatural".

How can there be evidence for the supernatural if the term can't even be properly defined?



No, the ones who claim it exists have to do that.
When I talk about it, I am RESPONDING to people who bring it up.
Someone needs to claim X exists, before I can reject X (for whatever reason)



And I explained multiple times how that is ridiculous.
It ignores extremely mundane things that happen EVERY DAY in favor of mega-extra-ordinary things that NEVER happen.
If you think the argument in the OP is good enough to support Jesus' resurection, then you should also believe that Tupac, Michael Jackson and Elvis are alive and well.


I already did.
People make mistakes.
People lie.
People are delusional.
People exaggerate.

All 4 happen EVERY DAY.
All 4 are a LOT more likely then "the laws of nature were violated / suspended".



People never come back alive after being dead for several days.
But people make mistakes, lie, hallucinate, exaggerate, .... every single day.

And I explained multiple times how that is ridiculous.

It ignores extremely mundane things that happen EVERY DAY in favor of mega-extra-ordinary things that NEVER happen.

That has been answered,

No, none of th enaturalistic hypotheisis that you propose are “mundane claimes” that happen every day.

(using your elvis example)

People don’t conclude that someone resurrected because they saw someone that looks like him. To say that hundreds of people , (including people like are closely related to Jesus) concluded that Jesus resurrected just because they saw someone that looks like Jesus would be an extraordinary claim, something that has never been reported to happen.

So it doesn’t matter if you pick resurrection, or “mistake” as a hypothesis, in any case you are stock with an extraordinary event that has not been proven to happen. and the same is true with other naturalistic hypotheis.

No shift. It's upto people who claim that the supernatural exists, to define it.

So basically your arguments is that “there is no evidence for the supernatural, because you don’t know how to define it?” that doesn’t seem like a huge victory, all you did is a semantic move.

I am personally not interested in labels, the OP is about the resurrection, whether if you want to call label it as “supernatural or not” is irrelevant.

 

[leroy]

Its a fake argument, there were no historians writing about a great many people who lived in that age and or what they wrote is lost! Jewish historians or "journalists" certainly had no desire to write about Jesus! Great forces inside Judaism were trying to erase him! They thought that by killing Jesus their periblems with him would be gone! They were only just beginning because Jesus wasn't on trial before his enemies, THEY were on trial before God!

Agree,

And to demand for sources outside the bible, presupposes that none of the documents of the new testament is reliable, this assumption has to be justified…………..

Its funny, the same people who argue the lack of scholars or historians present is some sort of proof will also claim that hundreds of millions of years ago lightning struck a puddle of water, proteins popped out and life fell up hill to the point of conscious man!

I agree, those who claim that the resurection didnt happen, because resurections have not been observed. Should by that logic reject abiogenesis too.

Check this out

So @TagliatelliMonster faith means "belive without evidence" and evidence is defined as “vidence is any available body of independently verifiable facts that either exclusively matches or contradicts the testable predictions of a certain hypothesis / theory / idea.

Would it be fair to say that you have faith in “natural abiogenesis?”……….. you obviously don’t have what you call evidence for abiogenesis, so there is no way out

Ether: change your defintions or admit that you have faith in abiogenesis.

 

[leroy]

Which is nonsensical for reasons already stated.
Like talking about north of the north pole.


They are not. You can't invoke the physics of the universe and pretend they apply in a context without said universe.

Well if the options are

1 Nothing caused the big bang

2 and something caused the big bang

Option 2 seems more reasonable, all you have to do is invoke “different physycs” or different “rules”

While option 1 absurd. (logically abusrd)

 

[leroy]

Independent of the people who have religious reasons to believe it; of people who are invested in said story and need / require to believe it.

Granted, given that definition of “independent” we don’t have “independent evidence” for the resurrection.

but so what?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Seeing Big Foot isn’t a subjective experience.

What? It is. If only one person sees it it is definitely subjective. Could anyone else go out and have a reasonable chance of duplicating those results?

An "objective experience" could be experienced by anyone, within reason. Subjective is something that only happens to one or a few.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well if the options are

1 Nothing caused the big bang

2 and something caused the big bang

Something caused the Big Bang does not imply that some entity caused the Big Bang. You have to demand an entity did so when there is no reason to believe that.

Option 2 seems more reasonable, all you have to do is invoke “different physycs” or different “rules”

While option 1 absurd. (logically abusrd)

And no, option 1 only seems to be absurd to the ignorant. There are events that occur quite regularly with no apparent cause. The timing of a particular nuclear decay does not seem to have any clear cause.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Granted, given that definition of “independent” we don’t have “independent evidence” for the resurrection.

but so what?

Biased claims are less reliable than unbiased ones. The Bible is not merely biased. It had a pasteurization event when it was made.

 

[leroy]

It has everything to do with it, as it 100% matches what "evidence" is as I defined it.



It isn't. There is no other idea from which testable predictions naturally flow which includes nested hierarchies.



It is. You are welcome to give me a single well defined idea for the origins of species from which a prediction of nested hierarchies naturally flows.
You can't, because there is no such idea. Only evolution has this prediction naturally flowing from it.



Let's stick to the real world and not your fantastical imagination that is neither here nor there and which makes absolutely no sense.
Also, the prediction of nested hierarchies is one that naturally flows from the model.
It's not a prediction simply because some scientist "claims" it is.



What I meant by "exclusive" is that there is no other competing well defined idea that makes the same testable predictions.
If you have mutually exclusive ideas that both make prediction A, then finding A will not tell you which of both ideas is more fitting to the evidence.
Hence "A" becomes "useless" as evidence for either, as it doesn't allow you do distinguish between both.

Again: only evolution requires life to exist in nested hierarchies. There is no other well-defined idea that requires this.


Because there are other well defined reasons for why you might want to buy dog food.
Like you having to take care of your brother's dog while he is on vacation.
So the data of you buying dogfood is not capable of distinguishing between these well-defined ideas.

I'm sorry that you can't seem to comprehend the difference.

Ok so does your observation of me buying dog food counts as evidence in favor that I have a dog?

Yes or No?

It isn't. There is no other idea from which testable predictions naturally flow which includes nested hierarchies.

Maybe, but “naturally flows, “ was not part of your definition.

What I meant by "exclusive" is that there is no other competing well defined idea that makes the same testable predictions.
If you have mutually exclusive ideas that both make prediction A, then finding A will not tell you which of both ideas is more fitting to the evidence.
Hence "A" becomes "useless" as evidence for either, as it doesn't allow you do distinguish between both.

Ok, but assume that there are 3 competing hypothesis and only 2 of them predict “A”…………. would A counts as evidence for these 2 hypothesis (yes)

Does it matches your definition (NO)

Let's stick to the real world and not your fantastical imagination that is neither here nor there and which makes absolutely no sense.
Also, the prediction of nested hierarchies is one that naturally flows from the model.
It's not a prediction simply because some scientist "claims" it is.

My conspiracy theory says that scientists are fabricating evidence so that people wrongly think that evolution (common ancestry) is true

So in this hypothesis the alleged nested hierarchies that you found in various reports, are just lies and made up information.

So in both hypothesis we would predict to have evidence/reports, of NH ………….. so nested hierarchies are not an exclusive prediction for common ancestry.

 

[leroy]

Biased claims are less reliable than unbiased ones.

Sure, but bias, doesn’t mean “wrong” historians know how to deal with bias in ancient documents.

And even with “bias” taking in to account, most scholars happen to agree with the bed rock facts mentioned in the OP

 

[Subduction Zone]

Sure, but bias, doesn’t mean “wrong” historians know how to deal with bias in ancient documents.

And even with “bias” taking in to account, most scholars happen to agree with the bed rock facts mentioned in the OP

But it does indicate that it is unreliable. You do not seem to understand the burden of proof again. When one uses unreliable sources that does not help one's cause.

And no, you cannot just claim that most scholars agree with the so called facts in the OP. You need to demonstrate that they do. From what I have seen they do not.

 

[leroy]

But it does indicate that it is unreliable. You do not seem to understand the burden of proof again. When one uses unreliable sources that does not help one's cause.

And no, you cannot just claim that most scholars agree with the so called facts in the OP. You need to demonstrate that they do. From what I have seen they do not.

And do you reject all biases historical sources? Or only those that contradict your view?

Historical Sources as a whole are not reliable nor unreliable, each sentence stands or fall by their own merits.

 

[Subduction Zone]

And do you reject all biases historical sources? Or only those that contradict your view?

Historical Sources as a whole are not reliable nor unreliable, each sentence stands or fall by their own merits.

Let's follow the same standards that historians do. They simply reject supernatural claims because they are always the least likely "correct" version. Whether it is Christian history, Roman history, Greek history, Arabic history, the list goes on and on and on.

And I noticed that when your silly claim was challenged that you did not support it. Are you admitting that it was false?

 

[shunyadragon]

And I explained multiple times how that is ridiculous.

What academic qualifications and experience in the sciences involving evolution and a universe billions of years old do you have to question science other than saying it is ridiculous?

People don’t conclude that someone resurrected because they saw someone that looks like him. To say that hundreds of people , (including people like are closely related to Jesus) concluded that Jesus resurrected just because they saw someone that looks like Jesus would be an extraordinary claim, something that has never been reported to happen.

There are no independent records that report that any of the above actually happened involving Jesus or the resurrection.

So it doesn’t matter if you pick resurrection, or “mistake” as a hypothesis, in any case you are stock with an extraordinary event that has not been proven to happen. and the same is true with other naturalistic hypotheis.

Not true a naturalistic hypothesis must have objectively verifiable evidence and confirmed repeatable predictions before they can be considered falsified.

So basically your arguments is that “there is no evidence for the supernatural, because you don’t know how to define it?” that doesn’t seem like a huge victory, all you did is a semantic move.

I am personally not interested in labels, the OP is about the resurrection, whether if you want to call label it as “supernatural or not” is irrelevant.

The supernatural and the miraculous are clearly and specifically defined as beliefs and claimed events that cannot be explained by Methodological Naturalism and without objectively verifiable evidence.