Your best argument that god exists

[outhouse]

. The style of the Gospels is NOT the same as any myth

False


The contradictions between then show they wrote theology using mythology, as well as the nature of the text itself. Many events are factually mythological in nature.


Now if you had ever taken a REAL class on the subject, you would know they wrote in rhetorical prose. You know nothing of what this prose even is, and debating with you on this concept would be inane due to your severe lack of knowledge on historical aspects.

 

[kepha31]

He fits it to a T

Not only that, mythology surrounding a living person can develop very quickly.

Your statement of taking longer then 30 years is false, that's why YOU NEVER substantiate your opinion. You cant.

Because there isn't a single example anywhere in history of a great myth or legend arising around a historical figure and being generally believed within thirty years after that figure's death. If you can't name one, other than Jesus, how is that my opinion?

 

[Bunyip]

Because there isn't a single example anywhere in history of a great myth or legend arising around a historical figure and being generally believed within thirty years after that figure's death. If you can't name one, other than Jesus, how is that my opinion?

I can think of a few great examples, just off the top of my head. Sai Baba, William Wallace, St Joseph of Cupertino, St Francis of Assisi, it is not uncommon.

 

[kepha31]

Argue away.

Paul wrote from the Diaspora far removed from any eyewitnesses.

Paul belong to a different culture then Jesus and never knew or met him or heard a word pass his lips.

Paul also wrote about theology and did not describe any credible historical details about the man.

Paul describes the resurrection which is highly debated if it was spiritual or physical.

I believe it was a spiritual resurrection that grew in mythology to physical by the time Paul wrote some 15 years after death.

There were eye witness of the events that Paul wrote about. There isn't a shred of evidence of a cover up of that magnitude. There were eye witnesses to the events that Paul taught and wrote about, they could not have all died off in 15 years.

The New Testament could not be myth misinterpreted and confused with fact because it specifically distinguishes the two and repudiates the mythic interpretation (2 Peter 1:16). Since it explicitly says it is not myth, if it is myth it is a deliberate lie rather than myth. The dilemma still stands. It is either truth or lie, whether deliberate (conspiracy) or non-deliberate (hallucination). There is no escape from the horns of this dilemma. Once a child asks whether Santa Claus is real, your yes becomes a lie, not myth, if he is not literally real. Once the New Testament distinguishes myth from fact, it becomes a lie if the resurrection is not fact.

If Paul really wrote lies contrary to the living eye witnesses of the events, what's the motive? So Christians would be more accepted to the Jews and the Romans? The apostles were deceivers who conspired to foist on the world the most famous and successful lie in history, not noticed until 1900 years later?

Weird Theories To Get Around The Resurrection of Jesus - Scott M. Sullivan

 

[Bunyip]

There were eye witness of the events that Paul wrote about.

Maybe there was, but none of them left a record and we can not identify any of those witnesses anyway.

There isn't a shred of evidence of a cover up of that magnitude.

Well, there is no evidence of the event either.

There were eye witnesses to the events that Paul taught and wrote about, they could not have all died off in 15 years.

We have no eye witness accounts for anything in the life of Jesus.

The New Testament could not be myth misinterpreted and confused with fact because it specifically distinguishes the two and repudiates the mythic interpretation (2 Peter 1:16). Since it explicitly says it is not myth, if it is myth it is a deliberate lie rather than myth. The dilemma still stands. It is either truth or lie, whether deliberate (conspiracy) or non-deliberate (hallucination). There is no escape from the horns of this dilemma. Once a child asks whether Santa Claus is real, your yes becomes a lie, not myth, if he is not literally real. Once the New Testament distinguishes myth from fact, it becomes a lie if the resurrection is not fact.

If Paul really wrote lies contrary to the living eye witnesses of the events, what's the motive? So Christians would be more accepted to the Jews and the Romans? The apostles were deceivers who conspired to foist on the world the most famous and successful lie in history, not noticed until 1900 years later?

 

[outhouse]

Because there isn't a single example anywhere in history of a great myth or legend arising around a historical figure and being generally believed within thirty years after that figure's death. If you can't name one, other than Jesus, how is that my opinion?

There is plenty.

Davy Crockett had mythology as well as George Washington.

Jesus became popular because he was tied to the evolution of monotheism in Hellenism. He would be just another Aramaic Jewish teacher has monotheism not spread through the Diaspora.

 

[outhouse]

There isn't a shred of evidence of a cover up of that magnitude

There was no cover up.

They wrote rhetorically and lived mythology. You really need to have a basic historical education to begin to discuss this topic. You don't have it.

The New Testament could not be myth

Many parts are.

it becomes a lie if the resurrection is not fact.

No that is from your lack of knowledge on this subject. You cannot see the forest through the trees. There is the same epic beauty without the mythology or supernatural.

The lessons and morals do not change.

If Paul really wrote lies contrary to the living eye witnesses of the events, what's the motive?

Paul only knew what he learned hunting down sect members in the Diaspora.

First ill start you off with a little education. Paul did not write alone, have you even read his epistles? many mention who the co-authors were. They were a community effort, not a songle man.

Second, everything you know about Jesus floated around the Diaspora in oral tradition with different communities that had different aspects of Jesus they found important. There are many contradictions in the gospels that show no one knew much of anything about someone 40-100 years in the past from another part of the world.

Paul dealt with theology not history, how many times do I have to tell you? don't you listen? The only thing people witnessed was his crucifixion at Passover much of his story was back filled in from different oral traditions.

All this is worthless talking to you because your literally lost here. You need to know what your talking about. Here is vids to help you understand what actually going on.

26-lecture course: Introduction to New Testament History and Literature (RLST 152) | Virtual Professors

 

[kepha31]

Maybe there was, but none of them left a record and we can not identify any of those witnesses anyway. Well, there is no evidence of the event either. We have no eye witness accounts for anything in the life of Jesus.

...So, for example, the reason we know that the little girl Jesus raised from the dead was “the daughter of Jairus” is because Jairus himself is the eyewitness source of the story; presumably, Jairus joined the Christian movement, and then told his story (and was frequently asked to tell his story) within the Christian movement, and very naturally became an eyewitness source when it came time to write down the Gospels. There are other examples.

A number of prominent Bible scholars believe that Richard Bauckham’s book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses just might be the most important book of New Testament scholarship in many decades–the kind of paradigm-shifting work that will be ignored by most current scholars and only taken up by a new generation, as science advances “one funeral at a time”.

In a word, the book argues that the Gospels are books of oral history; in other words, that they are based on the direct accounts of specific, named eyewitnesses to the life and ministry of Jesus. This is contrary to the assumption of most New Testament scholarship, drawn from the form criticism of the early 20th century, that the Gospels are works of oral tradition, in other words collections of anonymous traditions passed down through many iterations between the actual witnesses and the writers of the Gospels.
Book Review: Richard Bauckham, “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”
We actually more about Jesus beliefs than Caesar's because while Caesar express some ideas Jesus is quoted by his followers in a full body of teaching that covers many aspects. Since the Jews had an oral culture in which they memoirs the words of their teachers and spit them back ver batum we probably do have a good accurate understanding of Jesus' teachings, at least as they were applied by his first follows a few years after the communities were established. Oral tradition was not just wild random rummer but actuate reflection of the teacher through the student's memorization. It worked and there is a great deal of evidence to that effect.

We have the attestation of Papias, his writings dated bewteen 95 and 120 AD. That he sure was before the third century.Clement of Rome is said to have been writing around 94 AD. Polycarp's death is attributed to 155 AD..The point is all of these guys attest to the resurrection and all of them claim to have had ties with actual disciples and Apostles who knew Jesus. One might argue that they are not established historians but the historians of that era were not academically trained social scientists they were just any educated person who wrote about what happened in the past these guys have a link to the eye witness testimony that has to outweigh the onus of being "church historians."

A method commonly used today to determine the historicity of an event is "inference to the best explanation." We "begin with the evidence available to us and then infer what would, if true, provide the best explanation of that evidence." In other words, we ought to accept an event as historical if it gives the best explanation for the evidence surrounding it.

When we look at the evidence, the truth of the resurrection emerges very clearly as the best explanation. There is no other theory that even come close to accounting for the evidence. Therefore, there is solid historical grounds for the truth that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

 

[Bunyip]

...So, for example, the reason we know that the little girl Jesus raised from the dead was “the daughter of Jairus” is because Jairus himself is the eyewitness source of the story; presumably, Jairus joined the Christian movement, and then told his story (and was frequently asked to tell his story) within the Christian movement, and very naturally became an eyewitness source when it came time to write down the Gospels. There are other examples.

That is not an example, you do not have that person's account.

A number of prominent Bible scholars believe that Richard Bauckham’s book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses just might be the most important book of New Testament scholarship in many decades–the kind of paradigm-shifting work that will be ignored by most current scholars and only taken up by a new generation, as science advances “one funeral at a time”.

In a word, the book argues that the Gospels are books of oral history; in other words, that they are based on the direct accounts of specific, named eyewitnesses to the life and ministry of Jesus. This is contrary to the assumption of most New Testament scholarship, drawn from the form criticism of the early 20th century, that the Gospels are works of oral tradition, in other words collections of anonymous traditions passed down through many iterations between the actual witnesses and the writers of the Gospels.
Book Review: Richard Bauckham, “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”
We actually more about Jesus beliefs than Caesar's because while Caesar express some ideas Jesus is quoted by his followers in a full body of teaching that covers many aspects.

Don't be absurd, we have three books Caesar wrote, and not a word of Jesus.

Since the Jews had an oral culture in which they memoirs the words of their teachers and spit them back ver batum we probably do have a good accurate understanding of Jesus' teachings, at least as they were applied by his first follows a few years after the communities were established. Oral tradition was not just wild random rummer but actuate reflection of the teacher through the student's memorization. It worked and there is a great deal of evidence to that effect.

We have the attestation of Papias, his writings dated bewteen 95 and 120 AD. That he sure was before the third century.Clement of Rome is said to have been writing around 94 AD. Polycarp's death is attributed to 155 AD..The point is all of these guys attest to the resurrection and all of them claim to have had ties with actual disciples and Apostles who knew Jesus. One might argue that they are not established historians but the historians of that era were not academically trained social scientists they were just any educated person who wrote about what happened in the past these guys have a link to the eye witness testimony that has to outweigh the onus of being "church historians."

A century later is hardly an eye witness.

A method commonly used today to determine the historicity of an event is "inference to the best explanation." We "begin with the evidence available to us and then infer what would, if true, provide the best explanation of that evidence." In other words, we ought to accept an event as historical if it gives the best explanation for the evidence surrounding it.

Yes, sure. But inferences to the best explanation only produce guesses, not facts.

When we look at the evidence, the truth of the resurrection emerges very clearly as the best explanation.

What evidence is that?

There is no other theory that even come close to accounting for the evidence.

That's not true, there are several. A better theory is that we can not be sure.

Therefore, there is solid historical grounds for the truth that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

Like what?
And just as a heads up - that definition of atheism you use is just laughable. Whoever told you that is what atheism means was lying to you, I would stop quoting it if I were you.

 

[outhouse]

The point is all of these guys attest to the resurrection

The point is not one eyewitness ever wrote a word about the man.

26-lecture course: Introduction to New Testament History and Literature (RLST 152) | Virtual Professors

 

[kepha31]

The point is not one eyewitness ever wrote a word about the man.

26-lecture course: Introduction to New Testament History and Literature (RLST 152) | Virtual Professors

That's your theory. Suppose its true, then the accounts written as oral history were just made up lies and there was no one alive to counter it due to your theoretical dating that conflicts with a zillion scholars. So Paul didn't write all of Paul which allows you to claim Paul was lying as well.
Romans 1:4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.
Phil 3:10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
1 Thess. 4:14-16 We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.

You may respond by pointing to other supposed dying-and-rising pagan gods. But the consensus of recent scholars in this area argues against the categorization (see Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: Dying and Rising Gods in the Ancient Near East). The reason for this is that the other gods almost never return in a permanent sense, and rarely as the same deity. Jesus does both, and in a real historical context according to Paul. But the way out of this is to claim the literary style of myth is the same. I gave you two examples of myth, which you said I didn't give any (Gospel of Peter was one of them) written within a reasonable time frame and the literary style is clearly NOT the same.

Where Paul was at the time he wrote it does not dismantle the text or the meaning of the text. No matter how many ways you critique it, Paul knows that Jesus rose from the dead. It's not an airy principle he snatched out of thin air, he writes of Christ's divinity in too many places to be dismissed as myth, or he is part of the greatest conspiratorial con job in human history.

Dale Martin does not explain away the reality of the empty tomb, as he poses questions about it on another lecture. The problem with videos is you can't ask it questions. He wants to know why Christians did not make a shrine out of it. The answer to me is obvious: They were afraid of the Jews (it was a Jewish burial ground), Joseph of Arimathea who owned it most likely lost his place on the Sanhedrin. They were afraid of the Romans, and with good reason. If the body was stolen (first conspiracy theory) the Romans would want to find out who did it, and where the body went. It's still a seditious crime punishable by crucifixion. Another point is it was never a custom to make a shrine where no one was in it, just the remains. So if there were no remains, a shrine would be pointless. The fact that they made no shrine out of empty tomb, discounting the Jews and the Romans, is simple proof it was empty. These are plausible reasons why Christians did not make a shrine out of the tomb, and if you can make plausible conclusions, so can I. But you can't deny the historicity of the empty tomb without shredding at least 7 NT books.

As Paul Althaus writes, the resurrection proclamation "could not have been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact for all concerned."

Dale Martin preaches a novel approach to the historical/critical method, and I have learned much from the lectures, but he is not without his critics. He says, "you cannot put God into history" but goes out of his way to remove Him.

 

[kepha31]

In the ancient eastern church, there were (broadly) 2 schools of biblical studies: the Antiochene and the Alexandrian. Antiochene scholars emphasized the literal, historical method whereas Alexandrians were more prone to allegorization. Origen was an Alexandrian.

But Arius, Sabellius, Nestorious, and Apollonarius were of the Antiochene school and this method eventually gave rise to the Bogomil and Paulician heretics.

Theodore of Mopsuestia was another scion of this school who was never condemned in life but whose works were later censured after his death at the Councils of Ephesus and Constantinople. Orthodox members of the Antiochene school included St. John Chrysostom.

Protestants in the 16th Century would look back to the Antiochene school as their intellectual forbears. That is one reason why St. John Chrysostom has always been unpopular with them.

But a careful study of Church History shows that the desire to be crassly literal lay at the root of all the heresies of the Patristic period. The willingness to be flexible and to interpret difficult passages allegorically has been the usual manner of orthodoxy.

By doing so, paradoxes and outright contradictions are avoided. It also allows one to move beyond the literal meaning of the text to discern larger patterns of similarity between various portions of the Bible.

Scott Hahn has championed this understanding and has pointed out in some of his recent talks on a biblical worldview that the NT writers used allegorical methods in interpreting the OT.

The reformers and their descendants have stated that this method cannot be used 'safely' in the Church because the Holy Spirit alone can do this safely and he no longer works within the Church as he did among the Apostles. This is one consequence of denying the existence and charism of the Magisterium.

Bottom line: People who want to interpret the Bible for themselves always prefer the Antiochene literal to the Alexandrian allegorical. They think that they can be guided by sound methodology which will lead to logical results. They denounce the Alexandrian method as a flight of fancy that may lead to wild conclusions.

The reality is that without allegorization, people get carried away by their method into atomized conclusions that cannot be harmonized with other parts of the Bible and Tradition.

Virtually every major heresy has been the result of being too rigid and methodical in interpreting the Bible while not being willing to interpret the Bible in the light of the Holy Spirit. IMHO, this is the opposition of Spirit and letter, which St. Paul warned against:

2Cor 3:5 Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, 6 who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

This error is a form of Pelagianism where human effort is pitted against the superintendence of the Holy Spirit. What's great about the Catholic Church is that she accepts both of the methods of Antioch and Alexandria. She sees them as two gifts.

Heretics try to limit mystery. When I talk to some (not all) Protestants, they tend to rationalize everything. When I look at Protestant doctrine, I do not see development, but reductionism. They tried to reduce "faith" without the sacraments, revelation to Scripture alone, righteousness into a mere declaration without the person's status itself. I hope I do not offend anyone here, and I'm not trying to, but whenever I read Protestant theology, it seems like it is a reductionist Christianity.

When they do not understand how the Cross and the Mass can be the same sacrifice, they reject it.
If they do not understand how Mary can be the Mother of God without producing divinity, they reject it.
If they do not understand how a person can partake the sufferings of God so that he can offer his sufferings for another, they reject it.
If they cannot understand why a mere man is chosen to feed His sheep, they reject it.

My question is, as it is the same to Ockhamists or reductionist philosophers, why take the reductionist position rather than the mystery? Is it because if we take the mystery, we will have to acknolwedge our limitations? The issue is really humility isn't it?

The Antiochene "method" was abstracted from their whole system. What was advocated by the radicals was a truncated version of it that was reduced it to a mechanical method instead of a tool to aid faith. Many were seduced by the Antiochene "method" because it appealed to their rationalism. I think this is why the ‘reformers’ and their descendants have fallen into that trap.

There were problems with the extremists using the Alexandrian "method" as well, but they were always perceived as flighty and Gnostic and so they had less attraction to educated people. Their heresies degenerated into folk practices.

Carried to an extreme, the Antiochene "method" leads to a greater dependence on human nature than is wise. I think it assumes a kind of Pelagianism. The Alexandrian approach recognized that "there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in {OUR} philosophy." Humility is the only way to approach the text. Having absolute assurance in our Greek grammar and our concordances is just another form of works righteousness.

 

[outhouse]

Because there isn't a single example anywhere in history of a great myth or legend arising around a historical figure and being generally believed within thirty years after that figure's death. If you can't name one, other than Jesus, how is that my opinion?

The Emperor was first named "son of god" before Jesus, and he was deified.

 

[outhouse]

your theoretical dating that conflicts with a zillion scholars.

\

Provide sources.

 

[outhouse]

Paul knows that Jesus rose from the dead. It's

Not with any credibility.


He could have believed his spirit rose from the dead. There is a reason it is called faith.

Paul was not witness to anything.

 

[outhouse]

As Paul Althaus writes, the resurrection proclamation "could not have been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact for all concerned."

He is wrong. he has no historical credibility at all.


Born 4 February 1888

he was a theologian not a historian. You have much to learn here.

 

[outhouse]

Bottom line: People who want to interpret the Bible for themselves always prefer the Antiochene literal to the Alexandrian allegorical.

Simply not the case in modern scholarships.

 

[slow joe]

My argument that God exists is this- observe creation, it's aesthetically pleasing, harmonious, it's the work of a master craftsman. Random genetic mutations, mostly harmful to nature could never have achieved this.

 

[Robert Landbeck]

Simple as that.

Identify your god and convince us that it exists. ​

More than just banal argument, this hypothesis you can test out for yourself if you have the measure of moral courage necessary? I'm doing so myself at this moment:

"The first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the moral teachings of Christ has been published. Radically different from anything else we know of from theology or history, this new teaching is predicated upon the 'promise' of a precise, predefined, predictable and repeatable experience of transcendent omnipotence and called 'the first Resurrection' in the sense that the Resurrection of Jesus was intended to demonstrate Gods' willingness to reveal Himself and intervene directly into the natural world for those obedient to His Command, paving the way for access to the power of divine Will and ultimate proof as the justification of faith.

Thus 'faith' becomes an act of trust in action, the search along a defined path of strict self discipline, [a test of the human heart] to discover His 'Word' of a direct individual intervention into the natural world by omnipotent power that confirms divine will, law, command and covenant, which at the same time, realigns our mortal moral compass with the Divine, "correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries." Thus are we 'created' in the image and likeness of his Creator.

So like it or no, and many won't, a new religious teaching, a wisdom not of human intellectual origin, empirical, metaphysical and transcendent, fully testable by faith, meeting all Enlightenment criteria of evidence based causation and definitive proof now exists. Nothing short of an intellectual, moral and religious/spiritual revolution is getting under way. To test or not to test, that is the question? More info at The Final Freedoms

 

[outhouse]

the moral teachings of Christ has been published. Radically different from anything else we know of from theology or history,

No it was not, his teachings were typical in Aramaic Judaism in Galilee as he learned all he knew from John.


The rest of your post was apologetic in nature and holds no credibility in a historical setting.