Friend of the blog Truth Unites...and Divides has asked me to host a debate between him and another individual. I have to go away from blog for a day or two but I can give a better name to this post when I get back if the two individuals would like to carry on debating in this combox.
No links to pr0n is pretty much all I ask.
255 comments:
1 – 200 of 255 Newer› Newest»Origins of this debate and of this request for Rhology to host this debate:
There's an apostate Lutheran (who originally started out as Baptist/Evangelical) who said the following on a Lutheran blog: "Let's talk about the Main Event: the Resurrection of Jesus. Can anyone give evidence for this supernatural event?"
I responded: "Gary, can you tell me what evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ that you have previously examined and accepted, but now reject? And why you reject them?
#1. I might be able to locate other evidence that you haven't examined.
#2. You might, or probably are, rejecting evidence wrongly.
#3. Are you open (to some degree, perhaps at least 1% or more) to becoming a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Second Person of the Holy Trinity, as your personal Lord and Savior, turning to him in a confession of repentance and faith? Or are you 100% committed to being a Christ-Rejector?"
Gary then said: "Very good questions. ...
I am committed 100% to Truth, not to any ideology or philosophy. Prove to me the Resurrection really happened, and you will have a new convert."
So it's with that hope, the hope that Gary will believe in the literal, physical, bodily, and historical Resurrection so that he will become a new convert to Jesus... that is the reason why I asked Rho to host this debate.
P.S. After moving from the Lutheran blogpost which has over 1300 comments, the debate moved to WinteryKnight's blog. But Gary was unfortunately banned. That was when I asked Rho if he would host. Gary would like to host the debate on his moderated blog, but I prefer the unmoderated blog that Rho runs.
Here's the WK thread that we previously used:
WLC Debates Crossley on the Resurrection of Jesus.
The following helps to understand where Gary is coming from.
Mr. X E Van Gelical • 13 hours ago
Somewhere in one of the over one thousand comments below, “Todd” accused me of being angry. He’s right. I am angry. And here’s why: I don’t like being played the fool.
I believe that the church leaders in whom I trusted to teach me and my children the doctrines of the orthodox Lutheran Christian Faith, and specifically, the doctrines of the LCMS orthodox Lutheran Christian Faith, failed me…and fooled me.
What am I talking about?
As many of you know I was a Lutheran for about 25 years, but during the first 21 of those years, I was a liberal ELCA Lutheran. I started attending an LCMS church about four years ago. I felt that I had found the true Apostolic Christian Church! I was so eager to learn about this incredible version of Christianity that I studied every confessional Lutheran book I could find on the subject and even started an orthodox Lutheran blog.
Over the course of time, interacting with many LCMS laypersons AND LCMS pastors on my blog, I began to discover that the LCMS has a very serious, very deep, but very real division within its pastors and theologians.
There is a very vocal, and very passionate “ultra-conservative” or as they would refer to themselves, “conservative” group, and there is a more “moderate” group. Both groups confess their allegiance “quia” to the Lutheran Confessions. There is no disagreement on those documents. And, they both pledge their allegiance to the 1932 and the 1973 Doctrinal Statements of the LCMS…at least in public.
What I came to see was that there is a very large segment of the LCMS which believes that the two LCMS doctrinal statements mentioned above are “outdated”. To these LCMS pastors and theologians, there is just too much scientific and scholarly advancements in the study of the Bible in the last few decades to believe that the earth was created in six literal days without any form of evolution, that the entire planet was flooded, when the geological evidence proves this impossible, that many of the apparent discrepancies in battlefield statistics and historical accounts in the OT are not just “apparent” but real, true, inrreconcilable discrepancies, and that there may be some non-inspired passages in our modern Bibles.
Now, no one is denying the Virgin Birth or the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus here. But, the bottom line is…this segment of the LCMS does NOT believe in the inerrancy of the Bible…in any sense. This segment of the LCMS believes in the inerrancy of the “MEANING” of the Word of God and in the inerrancy of the core “TEACHINGS” of the Word of God.
So why don’t you hear talk about this in LCMS publications or online discussions? Answer: Because the “ultra-conservatives would declare all-out WAR on the “heretic” moderates (which to conservatives is code for “liberal”) and the new view of inerrancy would be too much for the man and woman in the pew to swallow.
So this MASSIVE division regarding how the modern Christian should view his or her Bible lies simmering beneath the surface of the LCMS, but most laypersons never see or hear of it.
But every once in awhile… a whiff of it bubbles to the surface.
Well, I got a good whiff of it. And I was furious. How could any pastor or theologian who belongs to the orthodox/confessional Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod believe let alone teach this heresy?? Evolution? The Bible is only inerrant in its meaning and teachings???
But what was I to do? Report every pastor who I found thinking and teaching this way? I asked (anonymously) for advice on what to do from prominent LCMS pastors and from the LCMS itself, the local DP and the national office. All were upset about what is happening, but no one really wanted to stir the pot.
(cont.)
However, the damage, to my personal view of the Bible, had been irreversibly damaged. Where once I refused to even consider that a story such as the Creation, the Flood, Jonah in the belly of a whale, or men living to be over 900 years old could even possibly be hyperbole or metaphorical…now I wasn’t sure what I could believe. And, as you know, I began to investigate the “inerrant-in-message-only” Bible and with my eyes now wide open and my brain willing to review all my past unquestioned beliefs…I suddenly found myself questioning more than just if Methuselah really lived to be over 900 years old.
So, yes, I am angry. I am angry that “men of God” put their careers before my spiritual well-being. Instead of just telling me that the LCMS is wrong, as they believe, and that the Bible is NOT inerrant…they slowly eroded my faith in ANYTHING that the Bible or my denomination told me to be Truth.
The moderates in the LCMS need to come clean. Tell the truth.
And if you think that this “moderate” wing of the LCMS is a small minority, you have another thing coming. It is either a very large minority or it is a slight majority. And do you want to know where your pastor stands. Here’s how to find out:
Don’t ask him directly, “Do you believe that the LCMS Doctrinal Statements of 1932 and 1973 to be 100% correct on the issue of Biblical inerrancy?” Your pastor has a family to feed and a huge education debt to pay off. You may not get a straight answer.
So, ask him what he thinks of the orthodox/conservative Lutheran blog, “Brothers of John the Steadfast” instead:
If he says, “I read it all the time! Those pastors are great! They really stand up for confessional Lutheran doctrine.”—he is an “ultra-conservative”.
If he says, “I find that website too fundamentalist. They are very strident. I avoid those types”—he is most likely a “moderate”.
If he says, “I have never heard of BJS.”—your pastor is over 80 years old and has never touched a computer.
Ok, so "TUAD" has asked to have a discussion/debate with him on the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus. I have told him that if he can convince me that this supernatural event really happened, I will convert to evangelical Christianity...again.
Let me give you more background on me: I grew up the son of a fundamentalist Baptist preacher. I believed that all sinners were condemned to eternal suffering in hell due to Adam's original sin. I believed that the only way to avoid this awful fate was to repent/ask forgiveness for one's sins and ask Jesus Christ to be one's Lord and Savior. Which I did when I was nine years old with the fullest sincerity and deepest remorse for my sin...and again in my early teens and probably a few more times after that.
However, Baptists and later evangelicals told me that if I was saved I would "feel" God in my heart, and "hear" God speak to me. I would feel and hear God for a time and these times felt wonderful! I felt great. But slowly over time, those feelings of spiritual euphoria faded...every time. All the evangelical Christians around me seemed so "filled with the Spirit" all the time. What was wrong with me?
I left the Church and was basically a "backslider" for several years.
In my late 20's I became a liberal Christian. Liberal Lutheran/liberal Episcopalian. In my forties, I married and had children. My old fear of hell, brought me back to a more fundamentalist form of Christianity. I became a fundamentalist/orthodox Lutheran. And you can read above what happened after that.
I was very happy as an orthodox Lutheran. I believed that it was the closest Church to the early Apostolic Church. But then I had the above mentioned experience with more moderate pastors teaching that the Bible is NOT inerrant, which I had decided to believe once again when I became orthodox, and I also made the "mistake" to start up conversations with some ex-Bapstist and ex-evangelical Christians on-line. These people presented me with information about the inerrancy of the Bible that really rocked my Christian faith. After four months I no longer believed that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, but even more I realized that the Christian god does not exist. I realized that Christianity is built upon assumptions and superstitions...and nothing more.
Well, TUAD, thinks he can change me mind. I doubt it but I am willing to let him take a shot.
Next, I am going to post a comment I placed today on my blog which reflects my current thinking regarding "evidence" for a supernatural claim, such as a dead man coming back from the dead, proving that he is the God of Creation. Please do not take this as an attack on Christians or on Jesus. I do not mean to be insulting, just honest:
Remember David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco Texas? Yes, the ones who sadly died in the terrible fire in the 1990's?
How would you react if someone told you that David Koresh's grave was found open and empty three days after his burial; that multiple people have seen, touched, and eaten fish with his resurrected body; and that several anonymous books have been found, believed by his followers to have been written by four of Koresh's closest disciples, allegedly written within only a few short years of the Waco fire, all which give multiple attestations to this alleged resurrection.
Let me guess what you would say:
"Baloney."
Now upon hearing your reaction, the Branch Davidian followers of the resurrected David Koresh refer you to some of their "scholars", men and women who possess very impressive titles and degrees from very well respected institutions of higher learning, who give you all sorts of theoretical and evidentiary law algorithms for why based on this "evidence" you should believe in this supernatural event.
Your reaction?
"Baloney."
But, if pushed to pursue this nonsensical claim, what would you demand:
"I want video and audio!"
or...
1. I want to know the names and addresses of the alleged witnesses.
2. I want to compare each eyewitnesses' individual testimony regarding very specific details of how Mr. Koresh looked, what he was wearing, what exactly he said, what exactly he did, the locations of these appearances, the date/day and time. I want to see if there are any significant discrepancies in the testimony of these eyewitnesses. I want to make sure that the eyewitnesses not only did not conspire beforehand to coordinate and harmonize their testimony but that three of them did not all copy the written testimony of the first.
3. I want to know the history and background of the eyewitness. Are they all Branch Davidians? If so, I don't buy the story. If there are non-Branch Davidians with reputations as reliable sources, then I will consider that something really unusual happened, but dead people do not walk out of their graves and have a fish fry with their buddies.
It just doesn't happen friends. It never happens.
"I grew up the son of a fundamentalist Baptist preacher."
Thanks for the background info, Gary. Out of curiousity, is your dad still among the living? If he is, and he's still of sound mind, body, and health, then perhaps he can listen to you and give you fatherly counsel.
"told me that if I was saved I would "feel" God in my heart, and "hear" God speak to me. I would feel and hear God for a time and these times felt wonderful! I felt great. But slowly over time, those feelings of spiritual euphoria faded...every time. All the evangelical Christians around me seemed so "filled with the Spirit" all the time. What was wrong with me?"
Nothing was wrong with you, Gary. IMHO, you were (and still are) way TOO feelings based. Too much of a psychological need to get your "feelings" fix as prescribed by your sincere, yet misguided friends and informal leaders in the church environment you grew up in. That kind of sappy emotionalism is rather shallow. Bleah.
"These people presented me with information about the inerrancy of the Bible that really rocked my Christian faith."
Although we're talking about the case for the Resurrection, we'll eventually talk about the doctrine of Scripture of which Inerrancy is just one component. Methinks you don't have a nuanced, scholarly understanding of the Doctrine of Inerrancy.
"Well, TUAD, thinks he can change me mind. I doubt it but I am willing to let him take a shot."
Actually, I don't think I could. More precisely, I think you have a "heart" problem and only the Holy Spirit can convict you of that. Of course, He might use me as flawed instrument, but it's all God.
Gary:
1. I want to know the names and and addresses of the alleged witnesses.
2. I want to compare each eyewitnesses' individual testimony regarding very specific details ... I want to see if there are any significant discrepancies in the testimony of these eyewitnesses. I want to make sure that the eyewitnesses not only did not conspire beforehand to coordinate and harmonize their testimony but that three of them did not all copy the written testimony of the first.
3. I want to know the history and background of the eyewitness."
Gary, you sound like a homicide detective. You really do.
In fact, why don't you read a book by an atheist homicide investigator who applied the methods and techniques of his profession to examine the case for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? And guess what? He became a Christian!
Here's the book: Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels.
Buy it. Read it. Also, the author has a blog.
No, I am open to hearing YOUR arguments, TUAD, (hereafter just "T.")I'm not interested in reading anymore books or websites.
Pretend that I know NOTHING about Christianity. What would you tell me that would convince me of the validity of this 2,000 year old supernatural story.
And for the sake or argument, let's just accept that not only do I know nothing about Christianity, I do believe in modern science, reason, and logic. I do not believe in ghosts, demons, zombies, or invisible deities. I don't believe that there are invisible good spirits and invisible bad spirits vying for control of my mind and soul.
So appealing to me to let an invisible deity or his invisible good spirit to "convict" me, isn't going to work with me. I demand evidence, like eyewitnesses.
I am also a happy, content person. I am therefore not susceptible to such pleas as, "Believe in my invisible deity and he will make your life so wonderful!" My life is already wonderful.
So that is what you are up against, T.
"I am also a happy, content person. ... My life is already wonderful."
Gary, thanks for sharing that. Would you also mind sharing whether your wife and all your children have joined you in rejecting Christ as their Lord and Savior? Has your whole family followed your lead in rejecting Christ?
T.
I agreed to discuss the Resurrection, not discuss my family and personal life. Just as you request that I respect your privacy including by not using your real name, I request that you respect my privacy. Let's talk about Jesus, not Gary.
I AND my family are very happy TOGETHER. That is enough for you to know.
I am going to list the reasons below why I believe that Christians are just as unable to give real evidence for their supernatural belief that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, as our imaginary Branch Davidians above are unable to give evidence that David Koresh rose from the dead.
1. Examine the grave.
So if you decide that you want to investigate the claim that Branch Davidian leader David Koresh rose from his grave 20 years ago, what is the first thing you would want to do?
Look at and examine the grave, right? So, can we do the same with Jesus?
No one today knows for sure where Jesus was buried. So we cannot examine the grave to see if there is still a skeleton inside.
But aren't we making a big assumption? We are assuming that a body was buried! What was the usual custom of the Romans regarding the disposition of the bodies of crucified criminals? Historical records tell us that it was the usual Roman custom to leave the bodies on the crosses...for days, even weeks! This was done as a reminder to other potential trouble-makers within the Roman occupied countries, that this is what would happen to THEM if they started any trouble. And when the Romans did decide to finally take down whatever was left of the corpses (birds and scavengers had usually consumed much of the body), they were thrown into a common grave.
So IF Jesus was buried at all, most likely he was buried in a common pit with many other bodies.
The anonymously written letters of David Koresh's four friends may tell us that Mr. Koresh was buried in the newly built mausoleum of one of the top officials of the FBI, but how likely is that to be true?
The anonymously written letters of Jesus' four friends tell us that Jesus was buried in the newly hewn tomb of a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, the same Sanhedrin, who the night before had condemned Jesus to be nailed to a tree and suffer an agonizing death. Possible? Yes. Probable? Well, probably just as probable as Janet Reno letting Koresh be buried in her family mausoleum.
So, in regards to examining the tomb of Jesus...we can't. We don't know where it is.
Therefore, there could be a grave somewhere in the vicinity of Jerusalem that at one time (or still does) contain the remains of Jesus of Nazareth...but no one knows.
So since we can't examine the grave itself, next we need to speak to eyewitnesses of this extraordinary, supernatural claim.
2. Eyewitnesses
So, you go to Waco Texas and look for eyewitnesses to the alleged resurrection of David Koresh. When you ask around town for the eyewitnesses' identities, everyone says, "Oh, there were a lot of eyewitnesses" but when you ask for names, no one can give you actual, LIVING people to interview.
But they Branch Davidians do have FIVE books which claim that many individuals witnessed this event, and these books do list some names of the alleged eyewitnesses.
One book is written by a man named Paul. It is considered to be the oldest of the five books that tell us about the resurrection of David Koresh.
Paul gives a list of eyewitnesses, but not to the actual event of Koresh coming out of his tomb, but of seeing the resurrected Koresh later that day or even weeks after the event.
However, Paul gives us ZERO details other than that Koresh was killed, buried, and then resurrected. Other than giving us the names of alleged witnesses to Koresh's post resurrection appearances, Paul tells us nothing else, such as mentioning the alleged mausoleum location or the appearance of Koresh upon leaving his tomb. Did he look the same as before his terrible death? What was he wearing? What did he say? What did he do?
Paul tells us none of these things other than to give us a list of names and a claim that 500 people saw the resurrected Koresh at the same time and that if anyone bothers to do it, they can go and ask these 500 people to verify the story as most of them are living. But, he does not give us the names or addresses of these 500 "eyewitnesses".
And, Paul never says that HE witnessed the resurrection of David Koresh, not that he saw him during the 40 days before Koresh's alleged ascension into heaven. Paul is not an eyewitness to the resurrection. He has received his "evidence" and witness list second hand.
Gary, just curious whether your family followed you in rejecting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Nothing more than that. If they did, it would make me even sadder.
"We are assuming that a body was buried!"
No, we are not assuming. There is recorded evidence that Jesus was buried. Of course, you have previously rejected the evidence that Dr. William Lane Craig has provided, but that doesn't mean that the claim was made without evidence, and therefore, just a mere assumption. Furthermore, there are a number of atheists who will stipulate to Jesus being buried.
WLC's brief outline of evidence for the burial of Jesus (which you've rejected):
“Fact 1: The burial
◦The burial is multiply attested
◦The burial is based on the early source material that Mark used for his gospel
◦Scholars date this Markan source to within 10 years of the crucifixion
◦The burial is also in the early passage in 1 Cor 15:3-8
◦So you have 5 sources, some of which are very early
◦The burial is credited to a member of the Sanhedrin
◦the burial is probable because shows an enemy of the church doing right
◦this makes it unlikely to to be an invention”
No. I did not deny a burial.
I believe Jesus most likely was buried, but I don't think we really know for sure where.
I question your evidence PROVING a burial. I question even more the evidence for a burial in a rich man's "tomb".
How many sources state that Jesus was buried in the newly hewn tomb of Joseph of Arimethea, a member of the Sanhedrin?
"I question your evidence PROVING a burial."
Hi Gary,
Here's a comment from a Wintery Knight post that addresses the heart of your statement above:
"I’m not aware of any apologist who demands the atheist prove his stand is true in the sense of a mathematical or philosophical proof. I’m not aware of any proof in that sense that God exists.
The standard is what it’s always been: is it more reasonable to believe A or not-A?"
From:
Are atheists right to say that you can’t prove a universal negative like “God does not exist”?
"How many sources state that Jesus was buried in the newly hewn tomb of Joseph of Arimethea, a member of the Sanhedrin?"
I don't know, but here's an interesting fact for you to chew on about it:
"Following a two day debate over the evidence of the resurrection between Dr. Gary Habermas and well-known skeptic, Dr. Anthony Flew, a panel of five philosophers from American universities (including the University of Virginia, James Madison University and the University of Pittsburgh) voted 4 to 1 in favor of the case for the resurrection, with 1 judge voting the debate was a draw. After listening to both sides of the debate, one of the judges concluded the historical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection was “strong enough to lead reasonable minds to conclude that Christ did indeed rise from the dead.” [Ankerberg & Weldon, Ready With an Answer, pgs. 132-133 (1997) citing to Terry L. Miethe (ed.), Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, pg. xiv (New York Harper & Row, 1987)]. Another of the judges stated:
"Since the case against the resurrection was no stronger than that presented by Dr. Flew, I would think it was time I began to take the resurrection seriously."
From: Was Jesus Tomb Found Empty Because Joseph of Arimathea Moved the Body?.
Eyewitnesses (cont'd)
Now we look at the other four books which DO give details of the resurrection of David Koresh.
When we ask the Branch Davidians who wrote these four books, we are told that as everyone knows and agrees, four devout Davidians: Matt, Mark, Luca, and Johnnie wrote these four books. Matt and Johnnie were close disciples of Koresh who were eyewitnesses to his post-resurrection appearances. Luca was a close friend of Paul mentioned above, and Mark was a close friend of Koresh's deputy leader, Pete.
When asked for proof that these men wrote these books, the Davidians become upset and offended. "All the earliest Davidians attest to the authorship of these books", they retort. You politely ask to interview these early Davidians, but they are either dead or unavailable to be interviewed... one man, whose name but they do have a book by a Davidian named, Pappy. Pappy was not a witness to the resurrection of Koresh, nor does he state that he knew any of the eyewitnesses, but Pappy wrote a book in which he describes all kinds of wild mystical visions of David Koresh, including the claim that Koresh lived (after his resurrection) to be 55 years old! Pappy also states in the book that a Davidian named Presbyjohn told him that Mark the associate of deputy leader Pete wrote the book of Mark.
You reply, "Hmmm. Kind of iffy testimony. Do you have any other sources who can prove who wrote these four books. "Of course," the Davidians reply, we have Irenie. Irenie wrote a book several years after Pappy died in which Irenie quoted Pappy's claim that Presbyjohn knew that Mark, the associate of deputy leader Pete, wrote the unsigned, anonymous, written-in-the-third-person Letter of Mark.
The Davidians then state that another early Davidian leader named, Justin Martin, referred to "the letters" in one of his writings, so this confirms that the Four Letters were written by the above disciples. Besides that, every Davidian leader living after the time of Pappy, (who are not eyewitnesses and very likely never met one of he alleged eyewitnesses) has believed and written confirming the authorship as traditionally ascribed by all Branch Davidians of these anonymous literary works.
"No. I did not deny a burial."
So Gary, do you stipulate to Fact 1 from Dr. William Lane Craig's presentation? I.e., that Jesus was buried?
"I believe Jesus most likely was buried, but I don't think we really know for sure where."
Fair enough.
Anyways, please stipulate to Fact 1: Jesus was buried.
It's more reasonable to believe that than of the alternative, an alternative for which you have no recorded eyewitness evidence.
No, I will not stipulate. We all ASSUME that Jesus was buried as a probability. We cannot say it as FACT.
Fair enough. Stipulate then that there is a greater than 50% probability that the Burial of Jesus was and is a fact.
So, the Branch Davidians base their belief that disciples Matt, Mark, Luca, and Johnnie wrote the now "Divine" Four Letters based on a very unreliable source...a guy named Pappy, who admits receiving this claim from someone else that we cannot be sure even knew any of the alleged eyewitnesses.
When you tell the Davidians that this is very poor evidence, they are again aghast.
"What do you mean? These four books have been in circulation since just a few years after Koresh's death! If the accounts in these four books are fictitious legends, people who were alive at the time of Koresh's death would be able to point out the fictitious claims and prove them to be false."
Ok," you say. "Could you tell me where these books were written? Were they written here in Waco? In Texas? In the United States? And how can we know for sure that they have been in circulation as long as you seem to believe. Does Paul refer specifically to these "Four Divine Letters" in his writings, since everyone seems to agree that Paul wrote his letter first?"
The Davidians respond that no, Paul does not specifically mention these four Letters in his own writings. In fact, Paul rarely ever mentions any of the events as recorded in the Letters, nor does he record or discuss much of anything of Koresh's teachings that fill up page after page of the Letters!
So we have a BLACK HOLE in the history of this resurrection story. Between the time of Koresh's alleged resurrection and the writing of Paul we have no documentation of any Branch Davidian making statements of a resurrection, let alone a resurrection from a mausoleum. Paul tells us very little and then we have four anonymous books appear on the scene, books for which we do not know the authors, where they were written, or when they were put into circulation! Also of the first three books of Matt, Mark, and Luca, it appears that much of Matt and Luca are exact copies, often word for word, of Mark, the the oldest letter of the four Letters. And Johnnies' letter has minimal historical information other than a resurrection account that looks like Mark's resurrection account on steroids.
And, the first three Letters have Koresh almost always teaching using parables, which even his disciples have a very hard time understanding, but Johnnie has Koresh giving these incredible long sermons.
Are we reading about the same Koresh in the Book of Johnnie???
I will stipulate that there is a great than 50% chance that Jesus body, or what was left of it, was buried SOMEWHERE.
Ok, so we have no verifiable eyewitnesses to the out-of-this-world claim that David Koresh walked out of his grave three days after this death.
"Not so fast!" say the Branch Davidians. "Luca, the traveling companion of Paul, states in a follow up letter to his Letter of Luca, titled the Acts of the disciples of Koresh, that Paul had an experience with the resurrected David Koresh on the Road to Mexico City.
Luca says that Paul said that he and some buddies were traveling down the Road to Mexico City when a bright light appeared in front of them which immediately blinded Paul for three days. Luca also says that Paul said that he also heard a voice and the voice said, "I am David Koresh. Why don't you believe in me? I am going to make you my missionary to the Mexicans."
Luca then adds that Paul says that his traveling companions could corroborate that they heard a unintelligible voice but did not see the bright light...or was it...they saw the bright light, but miraculously, they were not blinded like Paul was, but they heard nothing...anyway, these buddies could corroborate Paul's story...if we knew their names and addresses or how to contact them...but we don't.
Oh, and Paul said that all this happened in a "vision". He didn't actually see a body or touch a body, or watch the body eat broiled fish...he just saw a blinding light for a fraction of a second and heard voices...in a vision.
"But hold on a dog gone minute!" complain the Branch Davidians.
"Paul met with deputy leader, Pete, and our new leader Jimmie Koresh, the younger brother of David Koresh, for two weeks after his experience on the Road to Mexico City. And we are absolutely certain that Paul told these two hand picked Davidian leaders what the resurrected David Koresh looked like in his "vision" and that this description matched the known appearance of David Koresh, as known by is deputy leader and his younger brother."
But you ask, "Does Paul describe this 'Comparing of appearances of the resurrected David Koresh' in his book?
No.
"We just believe he MUST have done so or why would Pete and Jimmie have accepted Paul's divine calling as Branch Davidian missionary to the Mexicans?
Hmmm. ...maybe...because they believed that Paul really did see a bright light for a split second and heard a voice saying it was David Koresh...in a vision...on his roadtrip to Mexico City since he was soooo sincere in his belief that it really did happen.
Besides, Paul probably also told them that he had been teleported into space, to the "third heaven", to personally hear top-secret Branch Davidian prophecies, shortly after his "vision" on the Mexico City Road. So anyone who had been teleported to see David Koresh in the THIRD heaven, and had received such top secret divine information which he could share (and prove) to "no man", HAD to be the real "McCoy", so Pete and Jimmie accepted his claim to be the Branch Davidian missionary to the Mexicans.
Dear Readers: So as I told this hypothetical Branch Davidian story, and provided 'evidence' for the alleged resurrection of the charismatic and controversial spiritual leader, David Koresh, in Waco, Texas, twenty years ago, you didn't buy this tall tale for one second, did you?
So why do you accept the same tall tale and same lack of evidence for the alleged resurrection of another charismatic and controversial spiritual leader who lived and died TWO THOUSAND years ago...making it much, much more difficult to verify the accuracies of these ancient assertions?
Isn't it much more likely that Jesus very devout, very dedicated, but very superstitious and very despondent, and therefore emotionally vulnerable, disciples THOUGHT that Jesus was resurrected, either by visions or false sightings, and THAT is how this supernatural tall tale got to us today? Or do you really believe that invisible deities and divine spirits hover around each one of us penetrating into our very thoughts to control our minds???
Haven't we advanced beyond the dark, superstitious, and fearful beliefs of invisible ghouls, gobblins, and mind-controlling evil spirits?
"I will stipulate that there is a great than 50% chance that Jesus body, or what was left of it, was buried SOMEWHERE."
Against my better judgment, I'll accept that weak stipulation to FACT #1: After his crucifixion, Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea.
Excerpt: "4. No other competing burial story exists. If the burial by Joseph were fictitious, then we would expect to find either some historical trace of what actually happened to Jesus’ corpse or at least some competing legends. But all our sources are unanimous on Jesus’ honorable interment by Joseph.
For these and other reasons, the majority of New Testament critics concur that Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea. According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”"
Gary, let's move to FACT #2: On the Sunday following the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers.
Do you stipulate to Fact 2?
"The standard is what it’s always been: is it more reasonable to believe A or not-A?"
Is it more probable that Jesus was buried...somewhere...than that his bones were cremated?
Yes.
Is it more probable that Jesus body was buried in the mausoleum equivalent of a Jewish member of the Sanhedrin than that his cadaver was tossed into a common grave for condemned victims of the Roman Empire?
No.
"Is it more probable that Jesus body was buried in the mausoleum equivalent of a Jewish member of the Sanhedrin than that his cadaver was tossed into a common grave for condemned victims of the Roman Empire?
No."
Repeating the answer above:
Excerpt: "4. No other competing burial story exists. If the burial by Joseph were fictitious, then we would expect to find either some historical trace of what actually happened to Jesus’ corpse or at least some competing legends. But all our sources are unanimous on Jesus’ honorable interment by Joseph.
For these and other reasons, the majority of New Testament critics concur that Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea.
According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”"
"Against my better judgment, I'll accept that weak stipulation to FACT #1: After his crucifixion, Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea.
Excerpt: "4. No other competing burial story exists.
Gary: So what? Was it the custom of the Romans to show the public where they dumped the corpses of executed criminals into a commom grave??
The story of the "tomb" is so unlikely to be true for this reason: we have no record of the Romans taking down corpses out of consideration for the Passover. The Romans crucified THOUSAND OF JEWS during their occupation of Palestine. The idea that they would let the friends and family of Jesus take down his body and bury in is preposterous. As said above, the custom was to let the body rot on the cross for days, in full view of the public.
If the burial by Joseph were fictitious, then we would expect to find either some historical trace of what actually happened to Jesus’ corpse or at least some competing legends. But all our sources are unanimous on Jesus’ honorable interment by Joseph.
Gary: the story of a burial in a rich Sanhedrin member's tomb was most likely created and believed because NO ONE knew where the remains of Jesus body was tossed by the Romans.
The absence of a known grave allowed for ANY outrageous claim to be concocted.
For these and other reasons, the majority of New Testament critics concur that Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea.
Gary: the majority of NT scholars are Christians who would lose their jobs at their Christian universities if they denied this Christian assertion. It has no support whatsoever other than the claim in only ONE Gospel, a book written anonymously, in a foreign language, in a far away place, and time.
According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”"
Gary: pure speculation by people who have already decided the outcome of their investigation.
Gary: I never stipulate any such thing! I stipulated a greater than 50% probability that the corpse of Jesus was buried...somewhere. How you included "the tomb of Joseph of Arimethea into that stipulation was a nice slight of hand, T."
Please provide how many of the resurrection accounts tell us about a Joseph of Arimethia.
"The idea that they would let the friends and family of Jesus take down his body and bury in is preposterous. As said above, the custom was to let the body rot on the cross for days, in full view of the public."
Gary, you're overlooking something. Would you stipulate that the trial and conviction of Jesus was a very big and significant event in Jerusalem at at the time?
Ok, so, there are six resurrection accounts that I know of in the New Testament: the four Gospels, the Book of Acts, and I Corinthians 15.
Which is the earliest account? Answer: I Corinthians 15.
I Corinthians 15 says nothing about the location of Jesus' grave, what type of grave---a hole in the ground or a rich man's tomb---and does not mention that the tomb was that of Joseph of Arimethea, a member of the Sanhedrin, the body that killed Jesus, the same body that would have been Paul's "bosses" in his job of persecuting Christians...but Paul says not a word about this amazing detail.
So, the story of Joseph of Arimethea does not show up until the Gospel of Mark, 30-40 years after the alleged event. Plenty of time for this detail to be an embellishment to the story. And remember, Matthew, Luke, and most likely John used Mark's gospel as a template...so we do not have four independent attestations to the existence of Joseph of Arimethea. We most likely have just one: the author of Mark. The others are most likely plagiaristic copies.
"Which is the earliest account? Answer: I Corinthians 15."
Gary, here's an excerpt of a recent blogpost by WinteryKnight:
"First, the creed – which is found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8:
3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
5and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.
6After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
8and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
Almost all historians accept this creed as dating back to within 5 years of the death of Jesus. But why?
Here’s a great article from Eric Chabot, director of Ratio Christi Apologetics Alliance, The Ohio State University to explain why.
Excerpt:
The late Orthodox Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide was so impressed by the creed of 1 Cor. 15, that he concluded that this “formula of faith may be considered as a statement of eyewitnesses.”
Read it all at: What’s the earliest historical source on the life of Jesus?
"Gary, you're overlooking something. Would you stipulate that the trial and conviction of Jesus was a very big and significant event in Jerusalem at at the time?"
Well, let's look at the evidence that we have in chronological order of our sources:
1. I Corinthians 15 says nothing of the crucifixion being a "big" event in Jerusalem. Paul gives us no details...anywhere in ANY of his writings regarding the crucifixion and resurrection.
2. The Jews
There is no non-Christian Jewish source that I am aware of that indicates that the crucifixion of Jesus had so agitated Jerusalem that the city was on the brink of revolution or sever social unrest.
3. The Romans
There is no Roman source that tells us that Jerusalem was ready to erupt over the crucifixion of Jesus. In fact, since it was the Jews themselves who wanted Jesus dead, I would think that rather than tension, there would have been a festive atmosphere. The only people who would have been upset was the small band of Jesus followers...who were all in hiding..except the women.
4. Egyptian, Syrian, or sources in other surrounding countries.
No source that I no of in the entire Near East mentions unrest in Jerusalem regarding the crucifixion of one of many messiah pretenders in AD 30.
5. The Christian Gospels
These works appear to have been written decades after the alleged event, by anonymous writers, writing in a foreign language, in far away places, mostly for non-Jewish audiences. Three of them are plagiarized versions of the first, which might well be simply a historical novel.
Hi Gary,
Something for you to be aware of. The following was written by a critic just like yourself:
"Rome was one of the most bureaucratic civilizations in history. The Romans kept records about every detail of life—births, marriages, adoptions, taxes, olive production, and legal documents. Along with the Roman legions, the official government records were a means to control the lands and peoples they conquered. So why is there a total absence of official Roman records concerning Jesus? At the very least, should not there be a record of the trial and the crucifixion? All the historical references to Jesus are all many decades later."
Read the rebuttal to this at Jesus Christ: Myth or Genuine History
If this assertion is correct, then please provide references to all the Roman records of the actions, life, and rule of Pontius Pilate.
I misunderstood the purpose of your quote.
Whether the Romans did or did not keep good records; whether the Romans purposely refrained from recording the events around Jesus crucifixion or they did not, doesn't really matter.
The point is: we have no record of any commotion in Jerusalem during the execution of Jesus other than the story by the author of Mark, copied by the other three gospel writers.
Therefore, we have no reason to believe that the Romans would have treated the body of Jesus any differently than the records tell us what they usually did: they left his body on the cross for several days for carrion, and then threw what was left in a common grave.
So, let's assume that the mostly likely of alternatives occurred with the deceased body of Jesus:
1. The body of Jesus hung on the cross for days, as per the usual custom of the Romans.
2. At some point what remained of his body was taken down and along with the bodies of other executed criminals, were tossed into an unmarked mass grave...and covered over.
3.Therefore, Jesus disciples would not know where his body was buried.
4. However, days, weeks, months, or even years later, someone sees a man in a crowd, or in the distance that looks like Jesus...and the legend of a resurrected Jesus takes off. Soon multiple people are seeing "Jesus" whether in false sightings or in visions or apparitions in the cloud formations, a shadow on a wall, etc.
Paul is one of those who has a vision of Jesus. Why? Who knows, but even though he was a Jewish Pharisee, stranger conversions have happened. Maybe Paul was feeling guilty for all the suffering he was causing fellow Jews who just happened to believe that the messiah had finally come. But since Paul only saw a light, and since none of the post resurrection appearance accounts in I Corinthians, Acts, or the Gospels give a description of exactly how Jesus looked, the possibilities of how the legend of a resurrection developed is potentially limitless.
Paul never mentions a tomb. Paul never mentions Joseph of Arimethea. Paul never gives us ANY details. But what Paul does give us is visions with lights and voices and space travel to the "third heaven" to receive top secret information from Jesus himself.
So maybe when Paul says, "Have I not seen Jesus" he was really referring to his space trip to heaven, not an experience on the Damascus Road. But the sad truth is, we will never know, but because Paul didn't tell us.
"The late Orthodox Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide was so impressed by the creed of 1 Cor. 15, that he concluded that this “formula of faith may be considered as a statement of eyewitnesses.”
I've read Lapide. I get the impression that Lapide wanted to make points with Christian readers by saying things that make Christians feel better about the scarcity of evidence for their belief system.
But regardless, Lapide may have been a very smart man, but jst because he had a gut feeling that this early creed was eyewitness testimony if just opinion. It is speculation. That's it!
This is my point: The conservative/orthodox Christian faith is based on assumptions, guesses and gut feelings.
There is NO evidence.
Seneca (d. 65 C.E.) refers to a variety of postures and different kinds of tortures on crosses: some victims are thrust head downward, others have a stake impale their genitals (obscena), still others have their arms outstretched on a crossbeam. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing of the Jewish War of the late 60s, is explicit about Jews captured by the Romans who were first flogged, tortured before they died, and then crucified before the city wall. The pity he reports that Titus, father of Josephus's imperial patron Vespasian, felt for them did not keep Titus from letting his troops dispatch as many as five hundred in a day: "The soldiers, out of the rage and hatred they bore the prisoners, nailed those they caught, in different postures, to the crosses for the sport of it, and their number was so great that there was not enough room for the crosses and not enough crosses for the bodies." Josephus calls it "the most wretched of deaths." He tells of the surrender of the fortress Machaerus on the east shore of the Dead Sea when the Romans threatened a Jewish prisoner with crucifixion.
An especially grim description of this punishment, meted out to murderers, highwaymen, and other gross offenders, is the following from a didactic poem: "Punished with limbs outstretched, they see the stake as their fate; they are fasted, nailed to it with sharpest spikes, an ugly meal for birds of prey and grim scraps for dogs."
Tacitus reports the actions of Tiberius: "People sentenced to death forfeited their property and were forbidden burial" (Annals 6.29). Beyond such imperial vengeance, severity is assumed to be normal by Petronius (Satyricon 111-12), as in Nero's time he writes the story of a soldier at Ephesus who neglected his duty of preventing the bodies of dead criminals from being removed from the cross. While he was absent in the night making love to a widow, the parents came stealthily, took the body down, and buried it, causing the soldier to fear the severest punishment. Evidently it was almost proverbial that those who hung on the cross fed the crows with their bodies (Horace, Epistle 1.16.48).
The information presented on the Roman practice of crucifixion shows that the very act of taking a body down from the cross for burial was, if practiced at all, the exception to the rule. The popular phrase "Food for Crows," the line about the crucified being an "ugly meal for birds of prey and grim scraps for dogs," the response of Tiberius to the request for burial, the comment from Horace, and finally the story from Petronius about the guard who allowed the body to be stolen off the cross all indicate that part of the very shame of crucifixion was the denial of burial rites as a last act of humiliation. Moderns do not quickly recognize the cruelty of this, but in ancient times to die without proper burial was considered a most horrible fate, particularly to the Jews. Yet, as Sloyan shows, crucifixion itself was an exercise in cruelty. Reserved for "slaves and those who threatened the existing social order," it cannot be assumed that any mercy would be shown to one who had been considered deserving crucifixion.
The exceptions truly are exceptional. As Brown indicates, the comments of Ulpian and Paulus in favor of permitting burial - except, as always, for treason - apply to the more clement situation in Rome. Philo of Alexandria indicates that a case of releasing the body was a somewhat unordinary gesture of goodwill that was extended on a Roman holiday yet sometimes not even then.
If one thing is clear, however, it is that no leniency is shown for those who fall under the banner of insurrection, sedition, or treason against Rome. Although Brown makes a distinction between maiestas in Roman jurisprudence that would apply strictly to those arranging military manouvers as opposed to a more informal execution of a perceived instigator or trouble-maker by the governor of a province, the principle in either case is the same. To respect a common crucified criminal with honorable burial is unusual, but to respect one who is perceived as a threat to Roman rule is, well, right out.
Yet continuing with the idea that Pilate made the judgment for crucifixion, is it most likely that Pilate would have left the body hanging on the cross for several days? While it should not be ruled out entirely, there is at least one reason that judges against it. This consideration has nothing to do with the mercy or brutality of Pilate. Pilate should not be assumed to act as a sadist (or saint) but rather as a prudent politician. Pilate could only be acutely aware of the fact that the time was the Passover festival, that Jerusalem was swarming with travelers and activity, and that it would do grievous insult to the Jerusalem populace and Jews at large to continue to hang the bodies on display through the sabbath and the rest of Passover. Pilate was no fool and had no wish to incite unrest by his own actions. At the same time, however, Pilate could hardly intend to give respect to the one he crucified. Pilate would want to avoid insulting the people as well as to avoid respecting the crucified. The logical conclusion is that Pilate should order dishonorable burial in a criminal's graveyard for the body of Jesus and the two lestai with him.
I say it in this way, that Pilate should order dishonorable burial because that is indeed what Pilate should do. Pilate is perfectly capable of finishing off his own executions. If Pilate is acting on his own authority in crucifying Jesus, not merely acquiescing to the demands of a Sanhedrin unwilling to carry out their own verdict, there is no reason for Pilate to allow any third party burial service to swoop in.
And I say it that way because the character of Joseph has all the signs of deus ex machina in the Markan plot. Jesus has been abandoned by his disciples, convicted by the Sanhedrin, and executed by Pilate. Yet along comes the noble knight riding in from Arimathea, daring to ask Pilate to be able to meddle in his affairs, disregarding the prohibition on honorable burial for the condemned, and providing proper interment in his own newly rock-hewn tomb before sundown on the sabbath, which just happens to be nearby and which just happens to have never contained anyone yet (lest he defile the grave of his ancestors).
How does Raymond Brown deal with this enigma of a man, Joseph of Arimathea? Brown suggests that Joseph was merely a "pious Sanhedrinist" who desired to see that God's law be carried out with respect to burial before the sun sets.[58] This thesis is not without its difficulties. For example, in Mark, Joseph requests the body of Jesus specifically and disregards the other two crucified. The pious Jew presumably would have wanted to take care of all three; alternatively, if it be supposed that the thieves would have been buried by the Romans anyway, then there is no reason for the pious Jew to get involved at all. Brown suggests, "We have to assume that the story in the Synoptics has been narrowed down in its focus to Jesus, ignoring the two others who were no longer theologically or dramatically important."[59] This is not entirely unreasonable, although it would be another mark against the reliability of Mark, who does seem to assume that no other bodies were placed in the tomb with Jesus. But is it very likely that a pious Sanhedrinist would be rushing about on the day before the sabbath during the Passover to have the bodies of the crucified properly buried? As I have indicated, Pilate was perfectly capable of performing the burial with his own means, and thus there would be no offense to the law of God. Indeed, the Romans were in an easier position to perform the burial, since they would not have acquired ritual impurity thereby. Moreover, the historical Joseph would probably have had better things to do at this time than greatly inconvience himself for those who could only be commonly perceived as crucified scum, the Galilean just as much as the highwaymen.[60] Not only would it require the ritual impurity of himself or the summoning of his servants to the cross, as well as the expense of the linen and anointing oil, but most of all it would require the use of his own nearby rock-hewn tomb (which, again, just happens to have nobody buried there yet). Tombs at that time were undoubtedly expensive to build or to quarry, and for this reason tombs were jealously preserved within families over several generations. The only motivation for a pious Jew to undertake a tomb burial for the man would be a strong belief that the crucified deserved an honorable burial. However, this would require that Joseph considered the charge to be unjust in the sight of God. Not only is it difficult to understand why a simple pious Sanhedrinist would be moved to conclude that such a one had been crucified unjustly, but it is hardly plausible that Pilate would have allowed Jesus to be given an honorable burial, as this would be tantamount to an admission that Jesus was crucified without just cause.
There is one final reason to think that Pilate would have ensured that Jesus did not receive an honorable tomb burial. Raymond Brown notes, "There was in this period an increasing Jewish veneration of the tombs of the martyrs and prophets."[67] Craig agrees, stating, "During Jesus's time there was an extraordinary interest in the graves of Jewish martyrs and holy men and these were scrupulously cared for and honored."[68] If Pilate considered the historical Jesus to be an enemy of the state, how much more would Pilate have to fear not only making him a martyr but also establishing a shrine to Jesus right in Jerusalem? It is in Pilate's best interest to make certain that Jesus would have been buried without honor and in obscurity.
I will try to not make it a habit to post so many citations but this issue is so critical.
If we are going to weigh probabilities, T., as you seem to insist, then the probability weighs heavily in favor of my position, and that of many skeptics, that Pilate would NEVER have allowed Jesus to be given a proper burial! Are we really to believe that the prefect of Rome is going to allow some rich Jew named Joseph, who for whatever motive, wants to give Jesus a proper burial... so that Roman-hating, rebellious Jews can have a new national SHRINE: "Here lies Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, executed by Rome. He will one day rise again, as he promised, to liberate us and re-establish a great Kingdom of Israel!"
Pilate would have been a complete military and political MORON to have allowed Jesus to be buried ANYWHERE...but in an unmarked hole in the ground...where none of his followers will ever find him.
Good Morning T.(TUAD)! I read your link, "Jesus Christ: Myth or History". Here is an excerpt. I will comment below it:
It was during this time frame that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke—together with much of the balance of the New Testament—were being produced. These works provide far more information about the condition of Palestine in the first century than anything that issued from Rome. And there is a way to illustrate this in a most dramatic fashion.
Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate was the ruler of Judea from A.D. 26-36. His technical title was “prefect,” a term used with precision by the Gospel writers. Pilate is mentioned in the New Testament by name about twenty times. Aside from these references, there is very little historical information about the man.
Two Jewish writers—Philo (ca. 20 B.C. – A.D. 50) and Josephus (ca. A.D. 37-95)—mention him briefly, and describe the ineptness of his administration. Philo depicts the ruler as “inflexible and relentlessly severe,” noting that he dedicated shields with the emperor’s name in Herod’s temple (The Mission to Gaius 38).
Josephus records that Pilate marched Roman troops, with their pagan standards, into Jerusalem, and that he financed a water supply out of the temple treasury (Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.1-2). He further notes that the Roman governor attacked a group of Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim, killing and capturing a host of them. For this outburst he was called to Rome and relieved of his position (The Wars of the Jews 18.4.1-2). The manner of his death is not known for certain, though Eusebius, a fourth-century historian, asserted that he committed suicide (Ecclesiastical History 2.7).
Tacitus (ca. A.D. 60-120), a Roman historian, mentions Pilate only one time, and that incidentally. He contended that the “Christians” derived their name from “Christus,” who “was executed at the hands of Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius” (The Annals xv.44).
In 1961, a team of archaeologists from Milan, Italy were excavating at Caesarea, just north of modern Tel Aviv. They had been focused upon the huge amphitheater that initially was built by Herod the Great (ca. 73 – 4 B.C.). Among these ruins, archaeologists discovered a limestone slab. It was thirty-two inches high, twenty-seven inches wide, and eight inches thick. A partial inscription was clearly visible. It was not difficult to decipher the complete message. A free translation reads:
The Tiberieum [a temple dedicated to Tiberias] of the Caesareans Pontius Pilate Praefect of Judea has given.
Alan Millard, Professor of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages at the University of Liverpool, has observed that this represents “the only known inscription from his lifetime naming Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who ordered the crucifixion of Jesus” (1997, 327) (emphasis added).
So what information does the above excerpt from the article you referred to me tell us in relation to the alleged resurrection of Jesus:
1. Very little evidence from the time period of Pontius Pilate remains in historical documents outside the Christian Gospels.
2. So the fact that Jesus' crucifixion is not mentioned in non-Christian historical documents from that specific period in ancient history is NOT surprising.
3. However, the absence of the crucifixion in the historical record of 30-32 AD, neither proves that this event did not happen nor that it did. Neither does it prove that the crucifixion was significant event in Jerusalem or that it was not.
4. So how does this information help us in regards to the alleged supernatural claim that a dead man walked out of his grave? It doesn't. It doesn't at all.
One point to mention here is this: Skeptics such as myself do NOT believe that the Gospels are 100% fiction; that the cities mentioned did not exist; that the prominent political figures during the first half of the first century Mediterranean world did not exist; that all events mentioned are fictional, not based on any historical reality.
Most skeptics believe that there is a lot of historical, factual information in the Gospels. Our criticism is not that Christians refuse to acknowledge that everything in these four works is 100% fiction...our criticism is that conservative Christians believe that ALL historical details, events, and assertions in the Bible MUST be historical fact.
Yes, the Bible is correct about Tiberius being the Roman Caesar. Yes, the Bible is correct about Herod the Great's rule. Yes, the Bible is correct about Pontius Pilate; Yes, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by the Romans; but just because those historical assertions are facts does not mean that demons possessed herds of pigs, men walked on water, or that a dead man walked out of his tomb.
"This is my point: The conservative/orthodox Christian faith is based on assumptions, guesses and gut feelings.
There is NO evidence."
Gary, there are times when you lack self-awareness. This is one of them. No offense, but I could not refrain from chuckling at your statements above.
The reason why I'm laughing is because it's *really* YOU who is using assumptions, guesses, and gut feelings to reject the evidence for Christ's Resurrection.
Evidence. You wrote above at 9/16, 11:12 pm:
"So, let's assume that the mostly likely of alternatives occurred with the deceased body of Jesus: ..."
You're making an evidence-free assumption with regard to Jesus's body. Followed by guesses.
So your point is turned back on YOU:
"The Christ-rejecting Apostate faith is based on assumptions, guesses and gut feelings.
There is NO evidence."
I should not have made this statement. I should have let you present all your evidence before making this categorical declaration. I apologize.
Let's continue the discussion.
Another excerpt from your link regarding Jesus: myth or historical:
Why is it that liberal scholars are anxious to bend over backwards in granting credibility to numerous events of ancient history (many of which are undergirded by the scantest of evidence) yet they obstinately resist granting virtually any audience to the New Testament writings? There can be but one answer: they are militantly biased against the biblical records, hence, reject their veracity—no matter how compelling the evidence!
A.N. Sherwin-White was one of Oxford’s premier historians on Roman culture. In his valuable work, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (1978, 186), the professor demonstrated that the Gospels and Acts are much more historically credible than the common works of the Roman world. For example, the New Testament narratives were written by men who were contemporary with the events they recorded.
When the author refers to "liberal scholars", without specifying which SUBGROUP of liberal scholars he is referring to, he does his readers a great disservice.
"Liberal scholars" can be divided into three broad categories.
1. Liberal Christians: they do believe that Jesus was a real historical person, that he was crucified, and that he rose again...but only spiritually, not bodily.
2. Mythicists: this group denies that Jesus even existed. It is all a myth.
3. The majority of non-Christian skeptics: this group believes that Jesus was a real historical figure, that he was crucified, and that his disciples genuinely came to believe at some unknown point in time, that Jesus had been bodily raised from the dead.
It is THIS supernatural claim that his group denies as they believe it lacks evidence other than blind faith. They also question all other supernatural claims made in the Bible. However, they are very willing to acknowledge that the Bible does contain a lot of accurate historical record and therefore may be used as a source of historical fact...just not an INFALLIBLE source of historical fact.
I belong to this last group.
Tuad,
You posted another link above that discusses the origin of the Creed mentioned in I Corinthians 15. Here is an excerpt:
Overall, my recent overview of critical sources mentioned above indicates that those who provide a date generally opt for Paul’s reception of this report relatively soon after Jesus’ death, by the early to mid-30s A.D.[14] This provides an additional source that appears just a half step removed from eyewitness testimony.
(3) Paul was so careful to assure the content of his Gospel message, that he made a second trip to Jerusalem (Gal. 2:1-10) specifically to be absolutely sure that he had not been mistaken (2:2). The first time he met with Peter and James (Gal. 1:18-20). On this occasion, the same two men were there, plus the apostle John (2:9). Paul was clearly doing his research by seeking out the chief apostles. As Martin Hengel notes, “Evidently the tradition of I Cor. 15.3 had been subjected to many tests” by Paul.[15]
These four apostles were the chief authorities in the early church, and each is represented in the list of those who had seen the resurrected Jesus (1 Cor. 15:5-7). So their confirmation of Paul’s Gospel preaching (Gal. 2:9), especially given the apostolic concern to insure doctrinal truth in the early church, is certainly significant. On Paul’s word, we are again just a short distance from a firsthand report.
(4) Not only do we have Paul’s account that the other major apostles confirmed his Gospel message, but he provides the reverse testimony, too. After listing Jesus’ resurrection appearances, Paul tells us he also knew what the other apostles were preaching regarding Jesus’ appearances, and it was the same as his own teaching on this subject (1 Cor. 15:11). As one, they proclaimed that Jesus was raised from the dead (15:12, 15). So Paul narrates both the more indirect confirmation of his Gospel message by the apostolic leaders, plus his firsthand, direct approval of their resurrection message.
That’s how solid this early creed is – even atheists like Crossan and Ludemann accept it as historically reliable. It’s historical bedrock, as Michael Licona likes to say. This is the stuff that everyone accepts – across the ideological spectrum!
"“Evidently the tradition of I Cor. 15.3 had been subjected to many tests” by Paul.[15]"
I do not question that I Corinthians 15 is an early creed and I do not doubt that Paul discussed with Peter, James, and maybe John. The issue is, what exactly did these men see?
It must be remembered that the accounts of Jesus being touched and eating broiled fish do not appear in the record until the later Gospels...even the original ending of Mark does not mention ANY post-resurrection appearances by Jesus.
So based on the information available only from Paul, what evidence can we assume, even though not explicitly stated, as Paul says so little about the details.
1. I think that we can safely assume that Paul believed that he had seen Jesus after his resurrection.
2. I think that we can also assume that Peter, James, and John believed that they had seen Jesus after his resurrection. It certainly is possible that the belief in a resurrected Jesus came entirely from Paul's experience either in his vision on the Damascus Road or his vision/dream or actual space travel to the third heaven. But for argument's sake, let's assume that all the apostles believe that they had seen the resurrected Jesus.
The question is: what exactly did they all see???
If Paul only saw a bright light and heard voice(s)and believed that he had been teleported to the third heaven to hear top-secret information, how can we be sure but that this is how the other apostles "saw" Jesus: bright lights, hearing voices, trips to outer space??
Hopefully, Tuad, is going to continue our conversation, but for now, let me say this:
Skeptics such as myself are under no obligation to prove that the Resurrection of Jesus did NOT happen. Neither are we under obligation to prove that the angel Gabriel did NOT deliver God's message to Mohammad, or that the angel Moroni delivered God's message to Joseph Smith.
These three claims are supernatural claims that we believe cannot be proven to have actually occurred by natural means of investigation. We believe that these three beliefs can only be believed by faith, which is really the politically correct way of saying, "believed by superstition".
And, Christians are NOT under any obligation to prove that their faith-based beliefs are true...UNLESS...Christians insist on doing the following:
1. "We can prove that this supernatural, divine event happened with evidence that can be investigated, thereby proving science, reason, and logic wrong and untrustworthy."
2. "Our belief system is the one and ONLY Truth. If non-Christians in society fail to listen to us and fail to adopt our belief system, then they are evil, then they deserve, and will be, punished harshly by our God."
3. "Since our God's moral laws are the one and only truth, society should base its laws and moral code by the morality and values of our Holy Book. We will aggressively attempt therefore to force non-Christian members of society to comply with our divinely given standards of morality.
If conservative Christians were like the Amish, and simply kept to themselves, non-Christians would most likely care less about what these Christians believe.
"And, Christians are NOT under any obligation to prove that their faith-based beliefs are true.."
Gary, I would say the following instead: "Christians seek to obey 1 Peter 3:15: 'But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.'"
Giving a sound and good reason for the hope that we have will fall under sound and good evidence. Whether a skeptic regards that evidence as sufficient to trust Christ as Savior and Lord, or whether the skeptic deems it as falling short of a "proof" is rather different.
Very true.
But wouldn't you agree that if conservative Christians are going to tell me and other skeptics that we are going to suffer unspeakable eternal torment in Hell for our decision to not believe in Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, we skeptics are not being unreasonable to ask you to back that horrific, fear-inducing threat/promise with more evidence than just warm fuzzy feelings, intuition, and/or intense personal experiences?
So, Tuad, are we at an impasse since I will not agree to stipulate that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimethea's tomb?
With all respect, the impasse is on you.
I've provided testimony that He was buried in Joseph of Arimethea's tomb. And you've provided no evidence to the contrary. Only conjecture.
That reflects on you and your position.
"So, Tuad, are we at an impasse since I will not agree to stipulate that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimethea's tomb?"
Here's another excerpt:
"There are several arguments that have convinced a good many historians that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was indeed found empty on the Sunday following His crucifixion.
First, the location of Jesus’ tomb would have been known to Christians and non-Christians alike. While it is true that most victims of crucifixion were either thrown in a graveyard reserved for common criminals or simply left on the cross for birds and other scavengers to feed upon, the case of Jesus appears to have been different. The historical record indicates that Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, the very group that had orchestrated Jesus’ execution. Many skeptical New Testament scholars have been convinced that Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to have been a Christian fabrication. Given the understandable hostility of the earliest Christians toward the Sanhedrin, whom they felt were largely responsible for their Master’s death, it is unlikely that Jesus’ followers would have invented a tradition about a member of the Sanhedrin using his own tomb to provide Jesus with a respectable burial.
In addition, recent archaeological discoveries have demonstrated that the style of tomb described in the burial accounts in the Gospels (an acrosolia or bench tomb) was largely used by the wealthy and other people of prominence. Such a description fits nicely with what we know of Joseph of Arimathea. Moreover, when we couple these considerations with the fact that Arimathea was a town of little importance that lacked any type of scriptural symbolism and that no competing burial tradition exists, any serious doubt that Jesus was buried in Joseph’s tomb is eliminated."
From Here.
"I’m simply discussing the historical plausibility of the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea. This is something Christians of every stripe, Jews, atheists, and agnostics can all agree on. ...
"I think both views (his burial and his empty tomb) are unlikely"
“In my judgment, we cannot know that Jesus received a decent burial and that his tomb was later discovered to be empty.”
-Bart D. Ehrman (How Jesus Became God, pgs. 7 & 151)
Ehrman begins his assault on the Jesus burial tradition by discussing the famous pre-Pauline tradition we find in the first letter to the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 15:3-7). This letter was likely composed approximately 20-25 years after Jesus’ time on earth. Ehrman rightly acknowledges the antiquity of the tradition found within this passage. He asks an excellent question: “Does it go back even to before the time when Paul himself joined the movement around the year 33 CE, some three years after Jesus had died? If so, it would be very ancient indeed!” (pg. 138). Ehrman makes a big deal of the fact that in 1 Cor. 15:4 it doesn’t say who buried Jesus but only that Jesus was buried. Ehrman wonders why the creator(s) of this ancient creed didn’t provide the name of the person who buried Jesus? He answers his own question by saying: “My hunch is that it is because he knew nothing about a burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea.” (pg. 142). I find this line of reasoning odd. Because Paul does not specifically name Joseph as having buried Jesus this is evidence that Paul probably didn’t know Joseph buried him? In that case, we would have to say that Paul likely didn’t know about Jesus’ mother Mary either because he doesn’t name her explicitly (Paul only says he knew Jesus was born of a woman in Galatians 4:4). But this is hard to accept considering Paul knew Cephas (Peter) and James the brother of Jesus (Galatians 1:18-20). Ehrman himself recognizes the importance of Paul knowing Cephas (Peter) and James as he states in his previous trade-book (Did Jesus Exsit?): “These are two good people to know if you want to know anything about the historical Jesus.” (pg. 144) Is it likely that Peter (Jesus’ top disciple) or James (his own brother) had no clue who buried Jesus? This is very unlikely. The purpose of a creed is to be memorable and easy to pass on to future generations. This means being brief and including what was absolutely necessary. Only the most important details were included within it to preserve the essential outline of what happened. Ehrman wishes Paul mentioned much more in his recounting of what the Corinthian Christians already knew. Fair enough. But this is no argument that Paul was unaware of the Jesus burial tradition. Why does Paul mention the burial of Jesus at all in verse 4? Why not skip it entirely? The fact that the burial was included in this extremely primitive creed should strike us as not only important to Paul, but also historically plausible considering how old this tradition is. James D. G. Dunn posits that this tradition was likely composed within months of the death (and resurrection?) of Jesus. (J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, vol. 1, pg. 855). If so, this is extremely early tradition that should not be discarded too quickly.
(cont.)
Ehrman wonders why Joseph of Arimathea (as referenced by all four gospels) is said to have been the person who buried him since Mark’s Gospel (14:55) tells us the entire Sanhedrin voted for Jesus to be executed (including Joseph of Arimathea)? Ehrman sees this as problematic. However, in my opinion, this strengthens the historical plausibility that Joseph of Arimathea did in fact bury Jesus in his own tomb. Why would the early Christians create a fictional account of a member of the Sanhedrin doing something so noble as to place Jesus’ corpse in his own sepulcher? Ehrman argues in many different places (including this present book in pages 94-98) that historians prefer historical accounts that are attested in two or more independent sources. In the case of Joseph of Arimathea he is named in all four Gospels. Ehrman himself believes John’s Gospel is an independent source for the life of Jesus. In this case we have the Synoptic account (Matthew, Mark, Luke) and the Johannine source both attesting to the burial of Jesus by one–Joseph from the town of Arimathea.
Ehrman postulates that because Paul’s speech in Acts 13 mentions Jesus being buried by the Sanhedrin (plural) that this conflicts with the Gospel narratives of Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea alone (however, see John’s Gospel 19:38-42 which mentions Nicodemus giving Arimathea a helping hand in Jesus’ interment). The problem with this line of thinking is at least two-fold. Firstly, Luke (the author of Luke-Acts) is likely writing in generalities here by referencing the Sanhedrin as the group that had charged Jesus with a crime deserving of death and who later took him down from his cross and buried him. This actually agrees with not only the Gospels which reference at least one member of the Sanhedrin (Joseph) and maybe more (Nicodemus in John’s Gospel) as being involved in Jesus’ burial. But also, according to the Mishnah (compiled around AD 200) the Sanhedrin was responsible for the burial of the executed (m. Sanhedrin 6:5). Secondly, considering the likelihood that the same author penned both Luke and Acts it would be strange for Luke to have purposely included two contradictory traditions within his own two writings. Keep in mind that flexibility was allowed in the re-telling of ancient stories, and variation was completely acceptable (see the three differing accounts of Paul’s conversion in Acts 9, 22, 26). This is not an argument against the burial of Jesus by someone named Joseph of Arimathea who was a member of the Sanhedrin. It’s simply hard to imagine why early Christians would have fictionalized this figure."
Excerpted From: How Bart Ehrman Gets Jesus' Burial Wrong Part 1.
"First, the location of Jesus’ tomb would have been known to Christians and non-Christians alike."
Absolutely not true. This is just one of many Christian assumptions regarding the evidence for the Resurrection.
Probability is highly in favor of the option that the Romans tossed Jesus' corpse into a common grave with other executed criminals as was their custom. This was especially true when the condemned man was executed for treason, which was the case regarding Jesus, "King of the Jews".
The idea that Pilate would let Jesus' Jewish disciples have his body to bury him in a marked tomb...to be potentially be venerated as a national Jewish martyr would have been the height of stupidity...and Romans prefects were not known for being sloppy or stupid.
"While it is true that most victims of crucifixion were either thrown in a graveyard reserved for common criminals or simply left on the cross for birds and other scavengers to feed upon, the case of Jesus appears to have been different. The historical record indicates that Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, the very group that had orchestrated Jesus’ execution."
What historical record? The Roman record? The Jewish record? The writings of Josephus? The writings of the governments in Egypt or Syria?
No.
The only documents that we have from the entire first century that discuss the details of this alleged event are the Christian Gospels, four books written by ______?
We have four works of literature, written anonymously, in a foreign language, in foreign countries, anywhere from 35-55 years after the alleged event.
AND...three of these works of literature are almost word for word duplicates of the first work, Mark. Today we call that plagiarism.
So, what do we have? We have ONE book, written by who we do not know, when we do not know, where we do not know, AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE we do not know!
And, it is quite possible that "Mark" was written as an historical fiction for ONE benefactor's personal use. We have no idea if a Christian even wrote this book or if it was meant for public consumption.
So, yes the four "Gospels" are historic works...but that does not mean that they are historic works of HISTORICAL FACTS!
You have NO evidence that Jesus was buried in a private grave, let alone in the mausoleum of a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. All you have is anonymous hearsay. Quite probably this detail is an embellishment made decades after the alleged event.
Paul never says a word about an empty tomb or Josephus ANYWHERE in his many epistles.
"Many skeptical New Testament scholars have been convinced that Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to have been a Christian fabrication."
Most NT scholars are Christians, and most of them would risk their jobs at their Christian universities if they stated that the detail of Joseph of Arimethea was most likely an embellishment.
Gary, here's a rebuttal to one of your claims:
"We actually have evidence that the Romans encouraged the burial of the executed in the Roman writing known as the Digesta:
"The bodies of those who are condemned to death should not be refused their relatives; and the Divine Augustus, in the Tenth Book of his Life, said that this rule had been observed. At present, the bodies of those who have been punished are only buried when this has been requested and permission granted; and sometimes it is not permitted, especially where persons have been convicted of high treason. Even the bodies of those who have been sentenced to be burned can be claimed, in order that their bones and ashes, after having been collected, may be buried" (Digesta 48.24.1).
"The bodies of persons who have been punished should be given to whoever requests them for the purpose of burial" (Digesta 48.24.3).
...
Of course, Ehrman doesn’t mention any of this. There is much more literary evidence that proves the Jewish sensitivity around the burial of the executed. We see this in Josephus: “We must furnish fire, water, food to all who ask for them, point out the road, not leave a corpse unburied, show consideration even to declared enemies” (Against Apion 2.211; cf. 2.204), and Tobit who was considered virtuous for burying the dead (1:18-20; 2:3-8; 4:3-4; 6:15; 14:10-13), and again in Philo (De Iosepho 25), and even in the Dead Sea Scrolls which likely speak about burying those who were crucified (11QT 64:7-13a = 4Q524 frag. 14, lines 2-4). But this isn’t even given a passing notice from professor Ehrman.
Keep in mind that Jesus' execution took place during the Jewish high holiday of Passover. The Jews would have been infuriated if corpses were left unburied during such a sacred holiday. One can imagine the reaction from the Jewish populace if a dog made his way onto the temple mount with a human hand in his mouth or a bird dropping pieces of human carcass onto the floor of the temple!"
Excerpted from Why Bart Ehrman Gets Jesus' Burial Wrong, Part 2.
"Given the understandable hostility of the earliest Christians toward the Sanhedrin, whom they felt were largely responsible for their Master’s death, it is unlikely that Jesus’ followers would have invented a tradition about a member of the Sanhedrin using his own tomb to provide Jesus with a respectable burial."
Ok, check this possible scenario out:
1. Jesus' body was tossed into an unmarked grave by the Romans, as was their usual custom for non-Roman criminals crucified for treason.
2. Within a short period of time after his death, many of Jesus despondent disciples begin to have visions and false sightings of Jesus.
Jesus is risen!
This sincere, but unfounded, belief brings renewed hope and courage to a downcast group of disciples who only weeks prior believed that they were going to shortly sit on thrones and rule the restored Great Kingdom of Israel at the side of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah.
A legend then builds of appearances (in visions and false sightings) to individual disciples (such as Paul) and to large groups at the same time, comparable to the 70,000 people who all say that they saw the Virgin of Fatima at the same time. A Creed develops of witnesses to these appearances with Peter being mentioned first, and James, the brother of Jesus, last.
This is the message that Paul preaches to the Corinthians: "Jesus was killed, buried (we don't know where), but, he has been raised by God from the dead. Here is a list of witnesses to prove it.
This scenario would fit perfectly with I Corinthians!
However, the author of the Gospel of "Mark", who is actually just some pagan guy in Antioch, Syria, trying to make a buck writing historical novels, writes an anonymous novel about one of the early messiah pretenders, Jesus of Nazareth, and embellishes the story with some fanciful details, such as instead of burying Jesus in a common grave, burying him in a tomb so that he can come out of it...resurrected...just as the Christians believe, but now they will have a tomb!
But whose tomb? Jesus' family can't afford a mausoleum. The disciples are too poor also AND they are in hiding. So...hmmm...who could we have bury Jesus in a tomb? He would have to be rich. Hand hewn tombs are very expensive. Hey! Let's make him a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin! What a twist in the story that will make!
"That little embellishment will really spice up the story!" says the Antiochan writer to himself, and there you have it, the belief that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimethea's tomb is born!
Now, I know you are going to say something like, "That preposterous! Why go to all the trouble to make up a story like that when we have four first century documents that say Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimethea's tomb?!!
My answer: the Mormons have the signed affidavits of eleven men who SWORE that they saw the Golden Tablets of Moroni with their own eyes, and three of them swore in affadavits that they saw the angel Moroni himself!
Now, in a court of law, eleven signed two hundred year old affadavits are going to carry alot more weight with the jury than four ANONYMOUS two thousand year old literary works written in the third person.
"Such a description fits nicely with what we know of Joseph of Arimathea. Moreover, when we couple these considerations with the fact that Arimathea was a town of little importance that lacked any type of scriptural symbolism and that no competing burial tradition exists, any serious doubt that Jesus was buried in Joseph’s tomb is eliminated."
What incredible chutzpah!
What do we know about Joseph of Arimethea? There is another burial tradition: the Romans tossed him into a pit along with other executed criminals, covered it up, did not mark it, and told no one.
This is the MOST traditional of burial traditions...because that is the tradition of the Romans for burying criminals executed by crucifixion for treason!
And imagine if the Mormons said this, "The fact that Joseph Smith's story has the angel Moroni coming to one small town in New York is evidence that this story is true."
Baloney!
"In that case, we would have to say that Paul likely didn’t know about Jesus’ mother Mary either because he doesn’t name her explicitly (Paul only says he knew Jesus was born of a woman in Galatians 4:4"
I think you are on to something here, Tuad. Paul not only never mentions Mary by name...he never once mentions the virgin birth...ever in any of his epistles!
There is a good chance that Paul had no idea that Christians a few decades later would invent the virgin birth.
"But this (the idea that Paul knew nothing of Mary or the virgin birth) is hard to accept considering Paul knew Cephas (Peter) and James the brother of Jesus (Galatians 1:18-20)."
Here is a perfect example of how conservative Christians make so many assumptions in piecing together what they believe to be evidence for the Resurrection:
Where in Galatians or I Corinthians does it say anything about what Peter and James believed about the virginity status of Mary prior to the birth of Jesus?
Answer: NOTHING!
It is very possible just from the information in I Corinthians and Galatians that Jesus' mother was named "Sally" and that everyone, including Peter, James, and Paul KNEW that Jesus had an earthly father! It is quite possible if you read Paul's writings and the Synoptic Gospels that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus was ADOPTED as the Son of God, either at his "resurrection" or at his baptism.
"Is it likely that Peter (Jesus’ top disciple) or James (his own brother) had no clue who buried Jesus? This is very unlikely. The purpose of a creed is to be memorable and easy to pass on to future generations. This means being brief and including what was absolutely necessary. Only the most important details were included within it to preserve the essential outline of what happened."
I think that Peter, James, and Paul knew very well who buried Jesus. Answer: the ROMANS! It was WHERE he was buried that was the issue.
I agree that the list of witnesses in I Corinthians is very likely an early creed of witnesses. But witnesses to what? Do Christians claim that these witnesses witnessed Jesus roll the stone away and walk out of his tomb?? No.
This early creed is a list of witnesses to the alleged post-resurrection appearances not the resurrection itself. (And I hope you will notice that the only appearances that occur at the tomb in the Gospels are to WOMEN which Paul does not mention, leaving it possible that the earliest Christians did not believe that there was any tomb or any garden.) Even if some of the post resurrection appearances (those not involving the tomb or garden) were genuine, it still would have been quite probable that the belief in a resurrection initially developed of it having occurred out of the GROUND, out of the common grave the Romans had thrown the corpse into!
"Why does Paul mention the burial of Jesus at all in verse 4? Why not skip it entirely? The fact that the burial was included in this extremely primitive creed should strike us as not only important to Paul, but also historically plausible considering how old this tradition is. James D. G. Dunn posits that this tradition was likely composed within months of the death (and resurrection?) of Jesus. (J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, vol. 1, pg. 855). If so, this is extremely early tradition that should not be discarded too quickly."
This is very early evidence that there was a BURIAL...but says nothing of a burial in a rich man's mausoleum.
"Why would the early Christians create a fictional account of a member of the Sanhedrin doing something so noble as to place Jesus’ corpse in his own sepulcher?"
The only way Jesus could have been buried in a hand hewn tomb was if a rich person paid for it. Jesus' family and disciples were peasants. Peasants didn't bury their dead in mausoleums.
So if you have invented an empty tomb, which is what I believe that the author of the first Gospel, Mark, did, who paid for it?
How about making it a rich man from the most unlikely of sources! A rich man from the very group who the night before voted to nail him to a tree!
What a shocking embellishment to the story THAT will make!
"Ehrman himself believes John’s Gospel is an independent source for the life of Jesus. In this case we have the Synoptic account (Matthew, Mark, Luke) and the Johannine source both attesting to the burial of Jesus by one–Joseph from the town of Arimathea."
I will have to look it up but I question the accuracy of this assertion to Ehrman.
If you look at the gospels in chronological order, there are several odd things you will see:
1. The resurrection story becomes more and more detailed. Compare Mark's original ending with John's ending. John's resurrection story look's like Mark's story on steroids. Guards, TWO angels, earthquakes, the temple veil tearing in two, and more.
2. In the Synoptics, Jesus almost always teaches in parables...that even his disciples can't understand.
3. In John's gospel, Jesus never or rarely speaks in parables. He gives some very, very long, theologically deep sermons. Many of them never found in the first three gospels.
4. John's gospel includes very, very little historical details.
5. Many skeptics believe that the author of John used "Mark" as a template for the very basic story and then made up everything else because it has no relationship to the Synoptics in many instances.
6. John, the last Gospel to be written, announces that Jesus is God himself all over the place! In Mark, Jesus told his disciples to keep his identity a secret.
These four works are anonymous, with three of them based on the first. We have no idea what the purpose of these books were. For all we know, they were written by starving novelists who needed to put out a fascinating read to put food on the table.
"This is not an argument against the burial of Jesus by someone named Joseph of Arimathea who was a member of the Sanhedrin. It’s simply hard to imagine why early Christians would have fictionalized this figure."
I think that there are very good reasons for inventing this figure.
1. If it is true that the earliest Christians including Paul, Peter, and James, believed that Jesus was buried (somewhere unknown) by the Romans. However, he had been resurrected! People have seen his resurrected body (in visions and false sightings).
2. "Wouldn't it be great if we had more evidence for the resurrection?" some Christians began to say. So "Mark" writes a novel that ends with Jesus being buried in the tomb of a rich man, and let's make it a rich Sanhedrinist who had just condemned Jesus the night before. What a story!
3. Oh, and how are we going to explain why no one has heard of an empty tomb and Joseph of Arimethea until now? Pual, Peter, and James didn't know this "fact" and it is not in Paul's writings. Hey, let's say that the women who find the empty tomb...tell NO ONE! That is why no one knew until we "discovered" it.
"There's an apostate Lutheran (who originally started out as Baptist/Evangelical) who said the following on a Lutheran blog: "Let's talk about the Main Event: the Resurrection of Jesus. Can anyone give evidence for this supernatural event?"
Evidence. The blog that you were banned from has an owner who is really big on evidence. To wit:
"it was a good for me to explain that it is OK for people to critically evaluate a worldview – any worldview – by using evidence. It’s important because a lot of Christians who believe that religion is about believing sincerely in things without evidence are going to have a hard time knowing why apparently moral, definitely sincere people in other religions are going to Hell, apparently just for the small crime of getting a few questions wrong on a theology quiz. The real answer to the question “Why am I a Christian?” is “because of the evidence”. And the real answer to the question “Why I am not some other religion?” is “because of the evidence”. Let’s take a look.
Here are a couple of worldviews that can be easily falsified with evidence."
Read the rest at Why are you a Christian?
Keep in mind that Jesus' execution took place during the Jewish high holiday of Passover. The Jews would have been infuriated if corpses were left unburied during such a sacred holiday. One can imagine the reaction from the Jewish populace if a dog made his way onto the temple mount with a human hand in his mouth or a bird dropping pieces of human carcass onto the floor of the temple!"
I agree that leaving Jewish bodies on crosses during the Passover may have caused concern for the Romans. So I agree with you, the Romans probably did not leave corpses up during the Passover during this time period (later, during the Jewish-Roman Wars, that would change).
But just because the Romans would take the body down out of concern for unrest, doesn't mean that they would give the body to the friends of the executed criminal. Especially if the criminal had been executed for treason. There is NO good reason to believe why the prefect of Rome would give the body of an executed traitor of Rome to his friends to receive a proper burial. Even more, why give the Jews the body of their "King" to make a martyr's shrine out of it??
No, probabilities would tell us that the Romans took the three bodies down and threw them into a common, unmarked hole in the ground.
The idea of giving a rich man's burial to a traitor against Rome and her Caesar is preposterous.
"We actually have evidence that the Romans encouraged the burial of the executed in the Roman writing known as the Digesta:"
Not when you are talking about non-Roman traitors and agitators against the Empire. Please read on in the Digesta and it will tell you this very clearly.
Ok, Tuad, its time to go to bed but I will leave one more comment regarding the latest link you left me above. Here is the conclusion of the Christian author's post:
A sincere Hindu or Muslim or Mormon or atheist may be very adept at complying with the moral standards of their families and communities. They may feel very confident in the meaningfulness of their plans and achievements in this world. They may feel that they have lived a good life, one that they are happy about. They may have friends and family who affirm the goodness of their beliefs and actions. But in the end, that is not the purpose of life – we don’t decide what we are here to do, since we didn’t choose to be here. Someone else made us for a purpose. We didn’t create and design this universe.
I think people who spend their entire lives in a non-Christian religion or no religion obviously invent a story for themselves that makes them feel comfortable. The real question that everyone has to answer is “is it true?”. And for that, we look to the evidence. We do not look to our feelings. We do not look to our friends. We do not look to our family. We do not look to customs and traditions. We look to the evidence and we fashion and proportion our beliefs to the evidence."
Gary: I find it odd that the author points out the errors of Hindus, atheists, Muslims, and Mormons...but never gives evidence for his faith-based, supernatural saturated Christian belief system...except for the "universally accepted fact of the crucifixion of Jesus".
Huh???
So the leader of your religion was executed...and every agrees on how he was executed...and that proves your faith-based, supernatural saturated faith is the one and only TRUTH???
Think again, partner.
I'm still waiting for evidence for the RESURRECTION, not whether or not Jesus was a real historical person or whether or not he was crucified by the Romans. I believe all that, but none of than proves that I must worship and pray to this very good, but very dead human being.
I want evidence that a dead man walked out of his tomb!
Your friend Wintry Knight's post entitled "Why are you a Christian" points out a very interesting point:
Most Christians are Christians based on the way their belief system makes them feel, just as the Christian young people in Knight's post state.
Most Christians have never examined the evidence or lack of evidence for the alleged supernatural resurrection of their god from the dead.
Most Christians are simply content to believe that the "evidence" for the resurrection is so overwhelming that it isn't even necessary to confirm that it exists.
Most Christians assume the following:
1. There is documented eyewitness testimony of this event.
2. There was a marked tomb in which skeptics could go to verify a missing body.
3. Paul saw a recognizable body on the Damascus Road.
4. The disciples would not die for something that they knew was a lie.
If you start digging, you will find false assumption stacked on false assumption.
The laws of probabilities tell us that Jesus was NOT buried in a hand hewn tomb but in an anonymous common grave with other executed criminals. So, Tuad, if your entire argument for the historicity of the Resurrection rests upon believing the legend of Joseph of Arimethea and his hand hewn tomb, your supernatural belief system rests on very, very shaky evidence, my friend.
Gary: "I want evidence that a dead man walked out of his tomb!"
First things first, Watson. Stipulate to the evidence that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimethea's tomb, and then we can proceed.
Otherwise Watson, you'll continue to be clueless.
Ahahaha!
Nice try, my friend, but you have failed to provide any evidence that a Jewish prisoner, executed for treason against the state, was given an honorable burial in a rich man's mausoleum other than the statement of such an event in one anonymous, first century historical novel, and then included in the plagiarized, copy-cat works in three other first century, anonymous works of literature.
At least the Mormons have eleven signed affadavits of eleven known men whose identities and signatures we can verify. You have four anonymous, two thousand year old novels, and three of them are simply copies and embellishments of the first.
You are going to have to do better than that, Tuad, if you are going to convince me or any rational, educated, non-superstitious man or woman of the "evidence" for your supernatural belief system of invisible deities and flying ghosts.
Gary, you have most definitely received evidence for the burial of Jesus' body in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, as well as the logic and sound reasoning for why this is good evidence.
You, like an OJ Simpson juror, have exercised your right to dismiss the good evidence with your own preferred evidence-free conjectural narrative.
But you cannot say that you have not been provided evidence. That would be patently dishonest.
Ok, instead of referring me to multiple links and posts by other Christian authors, Tuad, I would like YOU and you alone to tell me CONCISELY why the mention of a Joseph Arimethea and his tomb in ONE anonymous first century literary work (and three plagiarized copies), written 35-55 years after the alleged event counts as significant evidence.
Is the Gospel of "Mark" an historical document? Yes. Is it an historical document that documents accurately the historical events surrounding the death of Jesus of Nazareth.
We have no way of knowing! It could well be an historical novel, with some core historicity and the rest completely made up fiction.
THAT is what you have not provided any evidence for, Tuad.
This has been a really eye-opening experience. Why? I have just realized that the entire conservative/orthodox Christian belief system rests upon one very big assumption:
That Jesus was buried in a marked grave---the tomb of Joseph of Arimethea.
Without a known tomb, the Christian argument that Jesus' tomb was EMPTY, and that therefore anyone in Jerusalem who knew where the tomb was located could have gone to verify the story...and no one did, proving that the tomb WAS empty...has suddenly fallen through the floor.
If Jesus' body was tossed into an unmarked grave along with the bodies of other executed criminals, no one could have proven that Jesus had not risen from the dead! So Christians could claim a resurrected body without needing to provide an empty grave! Potential converts to this new faith either believed the resurrection story by blind faith in a usually second or third hand story of someone "seeing" (most likely in visions, as in the case of Stephen the first martyr and Paul on the Damascus Road) of the resurrected Jesus...or they didn't
buy these resurrection stories.
And the overwhelming majority of the citizens of Jerusalem and Judea did NOT believe this resurrection story, did they?
They did not believe...because there was no tomb to examine!
THIS, my friends, is the strongest evidence that the story of Joseph of Arimethea was NOT a real historical event. It is almost certainly an embellishment added 35-55 years after the death of Jesus in the historical novel written by the author of the first 'gospel'---"Mark".
Elementary, dear Watson, elementary. Of course, the burial of Jesus in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea is non-trivial. Further, it is a well-attested to with a preponderance of good and sound evidence.
Sadly, it is singularly unfortunate that your persistent dullness of mind has failed to register this historical fact, preferring instead to leap to evidence-free conjecture.
Professor Moriarty has written a note, requesting that you join him. If that is your wish, dear boy, I shan't hinder you.
"Of course, the burial of Jesus in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea is non-trivial. Further, it is a well-attested to with a preponderance of good and sound evidence."
And this, dear reader, is what seems to happen every time I debate a conservative Christian regarding the alleged resurrection of Jesus.
The conservative Christian lists statement after statement from...his "inerrant" Holy Book... followed by a list of scholars and website links of statements by these scholars who agree with the veracity and historicity of the Holy Book, but who also happen to be faithful members of the same religion and believe in the divine/supernatural assertions contained in that Holy Book.
After presenting me with this very biased "evidence", from very biased scholars, regarding the claims of a supernaturally saturated Holy Book, the conservative Christian then demands that I accept these statements from his Holy Book as absolute historical fact.
But, if we were to examine the Holy Books of Muslims and Mormons, the same conservative Christian would scoff at the Muslim and Mormon believers' attempts to use statements from THEIR Holy Books, supported by statements from a multitude of THEIR highly educated scholars, as statements of unquestioned historical fact.
The conservative Christian would scoff at the nonsensical notion of believing the superstitious claims from a book written by superstitious human beings....of ANOTHER religion, but the poor fellow just cannot see that he is following the very same biased, false reasoning in assuming that HIS Holy Book contains no error and is 100% historically accurate.
Gary: "The conservative Christian lists statement after statement from...his "inerrant" Holy Book... followed by a list of scholars and website links of statements by these scholars who agree with the veracity and historicity of the Holy Book, but who also happen to be faithful members of the same religion and believe in the divine/supernatural assertions contained in that Holy Book."
Gary, that's demonstrably false. There are non-Christian scholars who will stipulate that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb.
Please provide the names of these non-Christian scholars and their statements regarding the historical reliability of the Joseph of Arimethea story.
And if I do provide the names of non-Christian scholars who affirm that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb, will you stipulate to that fact, and reject the alternatives that you've been espousing?
You are asking me to make a judgment prior to even seeing your evidence! What's up, Tuad?
Are YOU willing to abandon your belief in a bodily resurrection of Jesus, from the tomb of Joseph or Arimethea, if I can provide statements by CHRISTIAN New Testament scholars who deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus from ANY tomb??
No. You wouldn't, would you?
So don't ask me to do the same.
Present your evidence, let me look at it, and then we can discuss it from there.
Quid pro quo, Gary.
I pony up the evidence only if you agree to stipulate that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb.
You claimed that only Christian scholars affirm that truth-claim. I will show you non-Christian scholars who will also affirm that truth-claim, thus invalidating your claim, and showing you to tell falsehoods.
Therefore, you agree to stipulate to Fact 1 upon my showing you evidence.
Oh my goodness, T., you are funny!
If you can provide me with evidence that non-Christian NT scholars believe that the assertion that Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimethea following his crucifixion is historical fact, I will admit that I made a false assertion about "only Christian scholars believe the Arimethea story", but I will NOT agree to declare this Arimethea story as historical fact until I am able to review the evidence.
You are being very unreasonable, my friend. We are having a debate, you do not have me on the witness stand.
No deal, Watson.
Having you repudiate a false claim of yours is best shown when you stipulate to Fact 1: Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb.
Gary Watson, copy-and-paste the following for your own benefit:
"I will stipulate with true and genuine conviction that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb if and only if TUAD can provide evidence of non-Christian scholars who also believe that."
Then do the rest to publish this comment. Once you do that, we can proceed to Fact 2.
I don’t think the evidence presented is enough to establish any of the 4 facts that Dr. Craig mentioned. I will take them in turn.
The first fact is that after the crucifixion Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimeathea. We know this because Mt, Mk, Lk, Jn, and Paul all say it. It’s part of Mark’s source material, which is dated within 7 years of the crucifixion. Paul quotes a creed that likewise is rooted to material that dates within a few years of the crucifixion. It’s contained in the sources for Mt, Lk, and Jn as well as extra-biblical gospels like the Gospel of Peter. Additionally, Joseph of Arimathea, as a member of the Jewish court that convicted Jesus, is an unlikely invention given early Christian hostility to Jews.
But the issue is not the number of sources. The issue is the quality of those sources. The sources Dr. Craig cites also assert that Jesus cast out of demons to cure illness, that he turned water into wine, that many corpses resurrected simultaneously, that Jesus could teleport, disappear, and float up to the sky. Some sources (Mt, Lk) borrow from others (Mk) and when they do so they often improve on the previous story, which suggests we’re not dealing with unbiased reporting, but attempts to one up one another. We don’t really know for sure that Mark had source material, or that the other gospel authors did. Some scholars speculate that there was, but there may not have been. Perhaps Matthew and Luke didn’t have sources beyond Q and Mark, so they just made things up. We don’t really know, so we can’t just assume they did and call them independent sources, much less quality independent sources.
Preceding quote from Prove Me Wrong blog:
http://bigwhiteogre.blogspot.com/2008/06/my-first-rebuttal.html
Dr. Craig says that some of this material is dated very close to the crucifixion event itself. But if the crucifixion happened we don’t really know when. Was it in 100 BC as per Epiphanius, before 5 BC as per Jospehus record of when James died combined with Epiphanius claim of James’ age (96), was it at 21 CE as per the Acts of Pilate, 26-27 CE as per Tertullian, under Claudius at the age of 50 as per Ireanaeus, who reports that he got this information directly from those that knew the disciples? Even Mt and Lk can’t agree on when Jesus was born, so do we really know when he died? These claims are made by those that simply grant all kinds of claims contained in the NT about when Jesus was killed. These are claims I cannot grant, especially in light of the fact that these texts are not the best quality as I mentioned above.
Is Joseph of Arimathea an unlikely invention due to Christian hostility toward Jews? I don’t see why. If I wrote a novel that was historical fiction about the Nazis and I included a character that was a Nazi but turned out to be sympathetic to my position, I don’t know why that would need to be considered unusual or would suggest that my fictive tale was in fact historical since I don’t like Nazis.
Dr. Craig’s second supposed fact is the discovery of the empty tomb. He says that many sources mention it. But I already pointed out that he hasn’t argued that these sources are reliable. He needs to explain why we shouldn’t conclude what we normally conclude about supposed historical books that claim supernatural events or that appear to modify a story to improve on it. He further says that since women are reported as the first to discover the tomb, this makes the claim likely true because that would be otherwise embarrassing. Since women’s testimony was regarded as less reliable than that of a man, then if you were inventing the story you’d sooner report men as the first to discover the tomb. He points out that the earliest Jewish polemics against the tomb presuppose that it is empty (you stole the body). Further it is simple and lacks legendary embellishment.
The argument that women discovered the tomb presupposes that Mark intends to write a persuasive narrative. If in fact he is writing what he knows to be fiction and if he doesn’t mind if his readers take his gospel to be fictive, then there is no problem. C.S. Lewis in writing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, reports that two children were the first to discover that Aslan was raised. Children are not the most reliable witnesses. But Lewis is not concerned because he is writing fiction. There are a number of good reasons for thinking that Mark is likewise writing fiction.
The fact that a story (the resurrection of Jesus)lacks legendary embellishment is not a proof that it is historical.
There’s nothing implausible about Huck Finn running away from home by floating down the river with a slave, but this doesn’t make it true.
Hi Gary,
You don't have to copy-and-paste the entire post by the Big White Ogre.
Is he your main guy for being a Christ-rejector?
Well, until you stop being stubborn and give me the list of non-Christian scholars who support the Joseph of Arimethea legend, I have nothing else to do but copy and paste a few very interesting rebuttals to conservative Christianity's chief apologist for the Resurrection superstition, William Lane Craig.
Here is another one:
The third supposed fact is that people had post mortem appearances of Jesus. The evidence is Paul’s claims in I Cor 15 and the claims of the Gospels. Again, the gospels need to be shown to be reliable before we can trust the reporting and I’ve shown that they are not. As to Paul’s claims, appearances to groups of people are not all that unusual. My Pentecostal family is familiar with these type of events as are the reports of visions of Mary at Lourdes and Fatima. In addition these sections of I Cor 15 show evidence of being a later interpolation. Paul’s claim that the gospel he received from the head apostles blatantly contradicts his claim in Gal 1 that no human agency gave him the gospel, but in fact he got it by revelation. The “passing on of traditions” phrase is anachronistic. Paul is a pioneer missionary of a brand new religion. The thought that he’s passing on traditions and creedal formula suggest we are at a later stage of development, as do the lists of the apostles which appear to be an attempt to bring together rival factions of Christianity, another Catholicizing tendency. The text may have been original, but it’s not certain. We have no manuscripts that are early enough to settle the question.
The fourth supposed fact is that the disciples came to believe that Jesus was raised. But Dr. Craig did not claim that these disciples believed that Jesus rose in the exact same sense that he does. Did they believe Jesus was physically raised, and that he rose with the same body he died with as Dr. Craig believes? We don’t know that. We know that the earliest Christians held a variety of views about what the resurrected body was like. Some were docetists, claiming that Christ was never physically present but only had the appearance of flesh. Some Gnostics likewise thought Christ had never come in the flesh. A skeptic has no difficulty explaining that some people, such as the apostles, really believed that Christ rose in some sense.
Dr Craig says Jewish beliefs preclude anyone from believing that a particular resurrection could occur prior to the general resurrection. But the NT records that Herod believed Jesus was the resurrected John the Baptist, and likewise many of those that followed Jesus believed the same thing.
Finally Dr Craig asserts that the best explanation of these facts is a miraculous resurrection. He’s wrong about the four facts and he’s wrong to say that a miracle is the best explanation. Even if the 4 facts were true, and even if it were recorded by eyewitnesses (which it wasn’t) and even if it were written within a couple of years of the events rather than several decades and even if it were written in a scientific era rather than a superstitious one, it still should not be accepted. This is because we all know from experience that miraculous claims are extraordinarily unlikely. So to establish them we likewise need an extraordinary amount of evidence.
But Dr. Craig will say that he agrees. He’ll say that of course it’s unlikely that Christ was raised NATURALLY. But there’s nothing unlikely about God raising Christ supernaturally. But that’s not true. If I told you that I arrived here tonight via intergalactic spaceship, you’d dismiss my claim. Does my claim become more probable if I add that God was involved? With or without God we have no experience of such a thing, so we regard it as extremely unlikely.
"Is he your main guy for being a Christ-rejector?"
Now, now, now, T. Would Jesus want you to be that nasty?
Let's have a civil debate without name-calling and without trying to FORCE the other person to do things our way...or threaten to take our marbles and go home.
Being known as a Christ-rejector is simply for the sake of accuracy, or truth-in-labeling, if you will.
Embrace it.
Gary,
Your guy, the Big White Ogre, is name is Jon Curry.
Go over here to this site:
Jon Curry.
And you will see hundreds of articles debunking and refuting his arguments.
Please learn from those articles.
"Being known as a Christ-rejector is simply for the sake of accuracy, or truth-in-labeling, if you will.
Embrace it."
And you, Tuad, are an ancient-middle-eastern superstition believer...simply for the sake of accuracy, or truth-in-labeling, if you will.
Embrace it...Tuady.
Now, are you going to relent from your temper tantrum so that we can continue our discussion or have you already picked up your "marbles"?
Gary,
Seriously, just go to: Jon Curry.
And take the time to see his arguments get dismantled and demolished time and time again.
Doing so should help you see the severe lack of sound and honest reasoning utilized by Christ-Rejectors.
No. I have read enough of your links, Tuad.
I'll wait for you to present your next evidence.
So you see, dear readers, the entire Christian belief system is built upon one alleged fact: a marked grave.
If the body of Jesus was tossed into an unmarked, common grave with other executed criminals, as was the customary practice of the Romans, then the only "evidence" left for the Resurrection are the alleged post-resurrection appearances. The stories of appearances appear in writing 35-55 years after the alleged event, in one anonymous literary work which was then plagiarized and embellished by three other authors.
Is this enough "evidence" for you, Reader, to believe that the Christian Holy Book, filled with the most far-fetched supernatural stories of walking/talking snakes, talking donkeys, demon possessed pig herds, and virgin impregnating ghosts is describing to you real historical facts...or is it a collection of ancient, middle eastern tall tales, hocus pocus, fables, and superstition?
Gary,
I not only believe in the miracles written in the Bible, but I believe that God can create a miracle in you, and regenerate you into a Bible-believing follower of Jesus, repenting of your sins of unbelief before you die.
For your sake, I hope he doesn't allow you to harden your own unbelieving heart, despite all the good evidence, like Pharaoh did when confronted by Moses.
And just like you rejected the faith of your dad, a Baptist preacher, I hope your kids and your wife reject your apostasy.
From a post that has reference to your Christ-rejecting buddy Jon Curry:
"Just how ignorant does one have to be in order to think that William Lane Craig "made up a figure he found reassuring"? Or to think that men like Habermas and Craig "think the majority of scholars agree with themselves" because "the only scholars they know are the ones they hang out with in their christian circles"? Or to think that Biblical scholars are "People who study with the intent of proving the Bible 'true'"? Gerd Ludemann, John Dominic Crossan, and Bart Ehrman can be classified as Biblical scholars. Do they "study with the intent of proving the Bible true"? Do these skeptics apply the same sort of reasoning to philosophers, scientists, historians, and other scholars who agree with them on various issues? Should we be as dismissive of such non-Christian scholars as these skeptics are of Christian scholars? After all, non-Christian scholars have a non-Christian bias. Etc.
Thus, the fact that early Christians, such as Jesus' disciples, thought they saw Him risen from the dead isn't just accepted by "conservative Christians". It's also accepted by most non-Christian scholars.
Furthermore, Curry is misleading in his claim that "Conclusions about the beliefs of the majority of scholars are based upon studies by Christian apologist Gary Habermas." I've also cited similar conclusions by other scholars, such as William Craig, and, as the quote above illustrates, men such as Craig and Habermas cite other scholars agreeing with them about the widespread scholarly acceptance of conclusions relevant to the resurrection. Both Craig and Habermas frequently cite other scholars, including non-conservatives, agreeing with their conclusions about scholarly trends.
Curry is also misleading in his comment about 75% of scholars believing "that Jesus rose from the dead". Habermas is including scholars who believe in some type of non-physical appearance of Jesus. For Curry to make an unqualified reference to "rose from the dead" after misleadingly referring to these scholars as "conservative Christians" doesn't imply the sort of nuance that Habermas had in mind."
Excerpted from: How Significant Is It When Modern Scholars Affirm The Historicity Of A Biblical Account?
Gary, you've been mislead by your apostate Christ-rejecting friend, Jon Curry.
Don't eat the Curry Chicken!
Remember, Tuad, pharaoh did not harden his own heart. Your god did the heart-hardening. In doing so, your god inflicted horrific suffering on the Egyptian people who had no control over their pharaoh's decisions, including Egyptian children, just so he could show how mean, ruthless, vindictive, brutal, and powerful he is.
Your god is either a sick, sadistic, child-murdering monster or he is the figment of the imagination of ignorant, superstitious, ancient, middle-eastern goat-herders.
My children will NOT be taught this ignorant, superstitious nonsense. Their are no invisible good and bad ghosts swirling around you, attempting to penetrate your skull to control your brain.
Wake up, Tuad! You don't believe the ridiculous superstitious tall tales of the Hindus, Muslims, and Mormons, so why do you believe this one?
Instead of worrying about my children, Tuad, you should worry about your own. You are filling their heads with ignorant, superstitious nonsense which they will use to denigrate and discriminate against those "sinful and evil" Muslims, those "stubborn and hard-hearted" Jews, and those "vile, perverted, immoral" gays.
You are raising bigots, Tuad. Rude, obnoxious, ignorant, superstitious bigots.
Ready to get back to our debate, or are you still pouting?
Gary, go back and read the comment this morning that ends with:
"Gary, you've been mislead by your apostate Christ-rejecting friend, Jon Curry.
Don't eat the Curry Chicken!"
"Thus, the fact that early Christians, such as Jesus' disciples, thought they saw Him risen from the dead isn't just accepted by "conservative Christians". It's also accepted by most non-Christian scholars."
Whoaaaaa!
This statement, and YOUR statement, TUAD, are making two very different claims.
I and most non-Christian skeptics readily agree that Jesus' disciples BELIEVED that Jesus had been raised from the dead. I don't know of any respected scholar who believes that these eleven Galilean peasants concocted the greatest hoax ever created in the history of the world based on a known lie!
No, we are all agreed that the disciples genuinely believed that Jesus had risen from the dead.
What we disagree on is this: WHY did the disciples believe that Jesus was risen from the dead? Based on what? An empty tomb? Touching and seeing a real, flesh and blood body? Or simply based on visions and possible false sightings?
Your statement that you demanded that I agree with and stipulate as fact was that: "non-Christian scholars agree that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimethea's tomb".
You still have not provided any evidence of this assertion. I am waiting patiently, Tuad.
Gary: "My children will NOT be taught this ignorant, superstitious nonsense."
Your dad believed it Your children's grandpa believed it.
I pray your kids and your wife reject your apostasy.
"You still have not provided any evidence of this assertion. I am waiting patiently, Tuad."
You must do the following.
Gary Watson, copy-and-paste the following for your own benefit:
"I will stipulate with true and genuine conviction that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb if and only if TUAD can provide evidence of non-Christian scholars who also believe that."
Then do the rest to publish this comment. Once you do that, we can proceed to Fact 2."
Here is the point, Tuad, about "New Testament Scholars":
How many avowed atheists do you think go to college for four years, then go to Bible college for four years, and then go to seminary for two to four years all to become a New Testament scholar?
I will bet very, very few.
So who is it that goes through 10-12 years of education and spends tens of thousands of dollars to become a "New Testament scholar"?
Answer: Christians! Believers!
Now, some of them may be liberal believers; they may believe that Jesus only spiritually rose from the grave, but they still believe many of the supernatural and historical claims of the Bible.
Now, yes, there are atheist and agnostic New Testament scholars, but I will bet that most of these people are FORMER believers, and they represent a small minority of New Testament scholars.
So for Craig or any other Christian apologist to say "The majority of NT scholars agree with me" is no different from a Muslim cleric saying, "The majority of scholars of the Koran agree with ME".
Such a claim, whether Christian or Muslim, means absolutely nothing because the majority of "scholars" are BELIEVERS...therefore they are biased in favor of the supernatural and historical Christian claims.
To verify the historicity of the supernatural claim of a dead man's resurrection, we need EVIDENCE, not majority consensus from biased scholarly believers.
" "My children will NOT be taught this ignorant, superstitious nonsense."
'Your dad believed it Your children's grandpa believed it.'
If my dad believed in Big Foot, does that mean I should believe that tall tale also? Poor logic, Tuad. Poor logic.
Just so your troubled mind can finally rest on this issue, my wife also rejects this superstitious nonsense and so do my children.
Now, let's talk about the little bigots you are raising, Tuad. You are poisoning their minds with ignorant, superstitious nonsense. You are teaching them the hocus pocus beliefs of the Dark Ages: to believe in invisible deities, ghosts, ghouls and goblins, instead of trusting in reason, logic, science...and good ol' common sense.
Come on, Tuad, do you really believe that two thousand pigs were suddenly possessed by invisible little demons and hurled into the sea? Your children watch cartoons on Saturday morning that are not as ridiculous as that tall tale.
"To verify the historicity of the supernatural claim of a dead man's resurrection, we need EVIDENCE, not majority consensus from biased scholarly believers."
Watson, you badly missed the point. Please think about breaking that annoying habit of yours, dear boy.
Not only that, but you're not even following your own argument. C'mon Watson, surely you can do better.
Again, the offer is waiting for you:
Watson, copy-and-paste the following for your own benefit:
"I will stipulate with true and genuine conviction that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb if and only if TUAD can provide evidence of non-Christian scholars who also believe that."
Then do the rest to publish this comment. Once you do that, we can proceed to Fact 2."
Then the game will be afoot!
"I will stipulate that Tuad and his genuine, but baseless conviction that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb is nothing more than ancient, superstitious nonsense, and I will only continue this debate if TUAD can provide evidence of non-Christian scholars who also believe that and stop acting like a control freak and ass."
Watson, since you're unable to accept reasonable terms, please feel free to go and eat the Curry Chicken at Professor Jon Moriarty's house.
Farewell.
P.S. Sad news about your wife and kids. Tis a pity.
Hello Gary.
Could you be wrong about everything you think you know, about any topic at all?
You have just demonstrated my point: without a marked grave, the Christian belief in a resurrection of Jesus completely falls apart. That is most likely why "Mark" invented it.
Admit it, Taniel, your belief is based entirely on faith, which is just a politically correct term for "superstition".
PS. The real shame is that you are raising the next generation of superstitious self-righteous, judgmental, intolerant religious bigots. How many people will have to suffer the same kind of intolerance and self-righteous verbal abuse from them, that people today have incurred from their self-righteous, easily angered father.
The good news is that the internet is shining the spotlight of reason and truth into every dark corner of religious superstition and false belief. The membership in fundamentalist religions, including fundamentalist Protestantism and Evangelicalism, will continue its death-spiral downward.
We can only hope that this ancient, superstitious belief system dies the same death as did the religions of Ra, Baal, and the gods on Mt. Olympus.
If you happen to get over your little temper tantrum, let me know and we can resume our debate.
Gary, since you won't stipulate to the terms regarding Fact 1, how about you engaging the owner of this blog, Rhology, instead?
He asked you above:
"Hello Gary.
Could you be wrong about everything you think you know, about any topic at all?"
Would you provide an answer for him?
I'll disengage for the time being.
Sure, I'll talk to him.
Hi Rob: Absolutely. I could be completely wrong about everything I believe.
Now, I have a question for you: do you believe that it is possible that your entire Christian belief system is false? That the Bible is simply a collection of man-made ancient, middle-eastern historical novels, which contain some historical truth mixed with a lot of superstition and fables?
If we both can agree that our positions are simply of human origin, and since no human is infallible, BOTH our positions could quite possibly be completely false, then I think we have a good basis to continue a discussion of these issues.
Not Rob. :-) Rho.
So you could be wrong about everything.
Including everything you have posted in this debate so far.
No, my position cannot be wrong. It is actually logically impossible that the Christian position be wrong.
It's not about whether a human is infallible. Nobody is. It's whether there is any way to know ANYTHING.
And the only way a fallible human can know anything is if the God of the Bible reveals things to him such that he can know them for certain.
Since you could be wrong about everything, you could be wrong about whether the external world exists, your senses and reasoning are valid, and whether other people exist. Right?
Do you see the illogical extremes to which you must go to justify your belief in an invisible ancient Hebrew deity named, Yahweh?
What you are basically saying is this: Gary, nothing you see, nothing you hear, nothing that you touch can be known for sure to be reality. You must accept that these entities in your environment are real only by faith. Therefore, to believe in the god of the Bible is no different than believing that the chair that you are siting in is real
You are being foolish, Gary. The god of the Bible is just as real as your chair...now...keep looking at my watch...you are getting sleepier and sleepier...keep looking at my watch...when you wake up you will believe all the nonsense...I mean truths...that I have just told you.
Now, substitute for "god of the Bible" any other god: the god of the Hindus, the god of the Muslims, the god of the Mormons...and the same ridiculous logic that you just tried on me words just as well for Hinduism, Islam, and Mormonism.
I CHOOSE to believe in science, human reason, and logic which all demonstrate very clearly to me at least, that your ancient, superstitious beliefs are not real. They are inventions of uneducated, ancient, middle-eastern nomads.
Solipsism:
From Latin solus, meaning "alone", and ipse, meaning "self")[1] is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.
What you are basically saying is this: Gary, nothing you see, nothing you hear, nothing that you touch can be known for sure to be reality.
That's what YOU said. I didn't say it.
You must accept that these entities in your environment are real only by faith. Therefore, to believe in the god of the Bible is no different than believing that the chair that you are siting in is real
Hold on. You don't know my argument. Please don't make it for me. Let ME make it. Fair enough?
Now, substitute for "god of the Bible" any other god
Are you an adherent of one of these other religions? Why would you defend their rationality? Defend YOUR position against MY critiques. Fair enough?
I CHOOSE to believe in science, human reason, and logic
By blind faith, I know you do. But you are wrong to believe in those things for the reasons you do so, and you think about them wrongly.
As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.
Please disprove solipsism in a manner that is consistent with your worldview.
Here is the thing Rho and Tuad:
I am not espousing a supernatural belief system based on invisible deities, ghosts, and evil spirits and trying to CONVERT either of you to this belief system. We are having this discussion because Tuad wanted to do just that (convert me to his belief system) with me. I told Tuad that I was willing to listen to his evidence and that if he could give me convincing evidence (convincing to me)that a dead man named Jesus walked out of his grave 2,000 years ago and 40 days later levitated into space to never be see again...I will believe and convert.
So I do not need to prove to you that my reason, logic, and science based belief system is true. If you want to know that information, you can buy a college level science book.
It is TUAD who asserted to me that there is "evidence" for the conservative Christian belief system. If Tuad had just said, "I believe in Yahweh/Jesus and all the supernatural statements in Christian holy book by FAITH", I would have said, "Ok, Tuad, we all have a right to our beliefs. I don't agree with you but I do believe in your right to believe as you do."
And that would have been the end of the discussion.
But Tuad tells me that he has more than just blind faith to confirm the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus...AND...he advises me that I am going to suffer eternal punishment in a horrific torture chamber called "hell" if I refuse to believe this 2,000 year old middle-eastern story.
So the onus is on you, not me.
I am not espousing a supernatural belief system based on invisible deities, ghosts, and evil spirits
So?
You can prove the existence of the world you think you see just as much as you think I can prove ghosts and such - zero. So if your worldview is true, we are on an equal playing field.
Right?
trying to CONVERT either of you to this belief system
What has that to do with anything?
if he could give me convincing evidence (convincing to me)that a dead man named Jesus walked out of his grave 2,000 years ago and 40 days later levitated into space to never be see again...I will believe and convert.
That's a lie, though. You know Jesus is Lord, but you suppress the truth in wickedness. What you need to do is repent of your sin and beg God to open your eyes. I can tell your eyes are blinded b/c you keep espousing a foolish and literally absurd worldview.
So I do not need to prove to you that my reason, logic, and science based belief system is true.
Then I don't need to prove Jesus rose from the dead.
Ta da! You have just destroyed communication.
If you want to know that information, you can buy a college level science book.
Which one can answer the questions I'm asking you, which you have so far not interacted with?
But Tuad tells me that he has more than just blind faith
You keep acting like YOU have more than blind faith that solipsism is false, whether the external world exists, your senses and reasoning are valid, and whether other people exist. Right? So what's the difference, again?
Also, I note that you keep appealing to your remembered experiences like seeing TUAD defend the resurrection of Jesus. How do you know your memory is valid?
How do you know the onus is on me? I thought you said you could be wrong about everything you think you know. How do you know that?
"That's a lie, though. You know Jesus is Lord, but you suppress the truth in wickedness. What you need to do is repent of your sin and beg God to open your eyes. I can tell your eyes are blinded b/c you keep espousing a foolish and literally absurd worldview."
It is really sad to hear you speak like that, Roh. You seem to believe that I rejected belief in Jesus as God because I had some secret sin I want to commit or because I am angry at "him".
However, it is impossible to be angry or commit a sin against something that does not exist. It is like someone telling me that I am angry at Zeus. I can't be angry at Zeus because Zeus is a superstitious figment of some ancient Greek's imagination, and I can't be mad at Jesus because Jesus is dead. And if Jesus is dead, which he most certainly is, then your Canaanite god, Yahweh, is also a superstitious figment of some ancient Hebrew's imagination.
So instead of frightening me with your bellicose threats I see them as ignorant superstitious nonsense. I take them no more seriously than I would the threats from a medieval witch to "cast an evil spell" on me.
Conservative Christians do not realize how ridiculous, silly, and ignorant they make themselves look when they spew these superstitious nonsense and educated, non-superstitious people.
Your imaginary deity does not exist, Rho.
"How do you know your memory is valid?
How do you know the onus is on me? I thought you said you could be wrong about everything you think you know. How do you know that?"
This is the silly, circular nonsense used by all cults to convince someone that he cannot trust his own brain...so he must trust his cult leaders.
You have a brain, Rho. Use it. Use it to see how absolutely ridiculous and irrational your world view really is.
It is interesting to note that you both have given up on presenting evidence. You have resorted to silly solipsistic circular nonsense and character assassination.
Very telling. These are the favorite tools of a cult.
I don't know if you're angry or whatever but I do know that the infallible omniscient God who never lies says that you suppress the truth in wickedness and that's why you have rejected Him. Because of your sin. And your eyes are blinded as a result.
it is impossible to be angry or commit a sin against something that does not exist.
Sure. But Jesus not only exists but is Lord, so you sin against Him every second of every day.
So instead of frightening me with your bellicose threats I see them as ignorant superstitious nonsense.
That's hardly my problem, though it does grieve me.
Here's a way you could start making progress in this intellectual discussion - answer my challenges.
How do you know the onus is on me?
I'm happy to answer any question I ask you. Just let me know which ones you want. I promise to make a good faith effort to answer them consistently with my worldview. But you need to go ahead and answer the question yourself as well.
I thought you said you could be wrong about everything you think you know.
You misunderstand. *I* never said that, b/c I don't think it is true. I asked if *you* could be, and you agreed you could be, so I'm continuing from there.
This is the silly, circular nonsense used by all cults to convince someone that he cannot trust his own brain
The genetic fallacy will get you nowhere. Just answer the questions, please.
Use it to see how absolutely ridiculous and irrational your world view really is.
I'm not the one who thinks that there was nothing and nothing acted on it and magically everything exploded out of it. You have a pump in your chest made of meat that never stops beating, for decades, and it runs on peanut butter. And I have to prove there's a god? Laughable.
Go ahead and answer my challenges, please.
You have resorted to silly solipsistic circular nonsense and character assassination.
Character assassination? Come now, that is nonsense.
And I haven't resorted to solipsism. And I haven't said anything circular. YOU have said circular things. I am EXPOSING the circles you're running in. I am EXPOSING the fact that your worldview has no answer for solipsism.
Your worldview is literally absurd. We can't discuss evidence yet b/c you haven't conceded the obvious, that evidence presupposes the God of the Bible (tGotB).
If you disagree, answer my questions honestly and forthrightly and stop resorting to handwaving and the for-real character assassination of false accusations of character assassination.
Ok, give me your evidence that the god of the Hebrew/Christian Bible exists? To be clear, I am not asking you to prove to me that there is a Creator God. I am willing to concede that there MIGHT be a Creator God...or not.
I'm asking you to prove to me that IF there is a Creator God, that he is the Christian god, Yahweh/Jesus Christ, and cannot be anyone else.
I get confused RHO, I am not an atheist, even atheists told me to not be an atheist because it made me so miserable. I dont hate God, I have tried because I was trying to fulfill Romans 1 because I did not "believe" in every single doctrine, which a true believer would agree on every aspect of doctrine. I actually get physically ill when I try to hate God, I keep believing. I fully expect God to send me to hell, I earned it. But there are some I have worked with I think differently. I get mixed up communications from a variety of faith communities.
Im still trying to figure out the international conspiracy of scientist in very specific disciplines that seek to suppress the Word of God. I mean it works for gravity, mathematics, all engineering disciplines... that list goes on for several pages, but the same tools used to measure these accepted measurements for lack of a better word on issues like Genetics, paleontology, hydrology etc. This is not perfectly worded and I apologize that.
Look RHO, it is just confusing for some of us, I am sure that is on us, because you seem so sure, and that is not a slight, I envy you in a strange kind of way. I have wanted so long to try to reach across the abyss to just dialog but the word games are mind numbing, on both sides.
I think abortion is horrible, I raised a kid that could have been "aborted", thank God my sister did not and it was 18 years of my life and much of my economic emotional etc. power. I did pay a very small price seeing what a fine young man my nephew turned into.
I have a feeling this dialog will go right down the drain but I am willing to try. What I promise, I wont blaspheme God or your beliefs, wont swear or threaten, wont play any apologetic cards, all I ask is that maybe just maybe, you admit, I dont hate God. Thanks. brian
"I have a feeling this dialog will go right down the drain but I am willing to try."
Hi Brian, don't put too much trust in your feelings. :-)
You're willing to try, right?
I'm not Rho, but I don't see from your comment where you hate God. ;-)
If I may ask, how did you happen to find this blog, and this particular post and thread to place your comment on?
"I have a feeling this dialog will go right down the drain but I am willing to try."
Hi Brian, don't put too much trust in your feelings. :-)
"Feelings" is the wrong word, I am not as well versed as some of you folks, I put my trust in a great deal of things such as flu shots, vaccines, seat belts, and probabilities which have proven to be rather accurate in the modern era. I trust in the students I work with first and foremost. That is on my eternal soul. The have been my salvation on so many occasions.
You're willing to try, right?
It depends on what one means as try. I am willing to dialog, admit I may well be wrong and agree that I operate on presuppositions that are partly predicated on emotions / feelings. I also admit some folks tick me off and I get mad / frustrated.
I'm not Rho, but I don't see from your comment where you hate God. ;-)
Beg to differ Romans one is clear I hate God because I dont believe all aspects of the faith, the problem I struggle with is, no I dont hate God.
If I may ask, how did you happen to find this blog, and this particular post and thread to place your comment on?
Honestly demands I state this I have read Triablog for years and they ticked me off so much I came here because of the abortion issue, probably the only issue I agree with RHO on. Im just some soul looking for the peace some of you seem to have. Hope that helps. brian
"I dont believe all aspects of the faith"
Brian, please share what aspects of the faith that you don't believe in.
I guess my last question was too hard. Let's try another one:
Do you believe that God sent the angel Moroni to give a new revelation of his Holy Word to Joseph Smith?
Gary,
give me your evidence that the god of the Hebrew/Christian Bible exists?
That unless He is Lord, you can't prove or know anything.
The impossibility of the contrary.
You are sort of misunderstanding here. I'm happy to talk about my own position and all, but you need to either deal with my challenges or concede out loud that your position lies in shambles and that it is absurd to be an atheist.
Do you concede this?
I guess my last question was too hard.
I don't sit by computer 24x7 waiting for you to comment, Gary. You ought not to say such things.
Do you believe that God sent the angel Moroni to give a new revelation of his Holy Word to Joseph Smith?
No. If you want to know why, here are two ways I can know.
1) Since the Bible is true and Joseph Smith's teachings contradict it, I can know he did not hear from God. Just like I know you are wrong b/c the Bible says so.
2) His teachings are internally inconsistent. So I can know you are wrong b/c your own teachings are internally inconsistent.
Thankfully, the biblical worldview is internally consistent.
"That unless He is Lord, you can't prove or know anything.
The impossibility of the contrary."
This is actually the best answer you could have given me. Why? Let me give you an analogy:
If I told you that two years ago, on a cold, dark night, as I was traveling alone down a deserted desert road, a group of space aliens from the planet Gezor abducted me, imprisoned me on their space ship, took me to Gezor, in the distant solar system of Shrang, held me captive on their distant planet probing my brain and recording every detail of every thought I have ever had using Kripton-laced Rayon beams...what would you say?
You would say that I am certifiably nuts, right?
But I am very sincere and very persistent. I go on to tell you that the Gezorians are making plans to liquidate our entire solar system. At any second of any day, the earth along with Mars, Jupiter and the others will be zapped with a massive carbon-compressed radiation beam from Mt. Krumpet, the highest mountain on Gezor.
What is your response now? You begin backing away from me, thinking that I am so mentally deranged that I might be dangerous, right?
But I persist, and in very urgent, almost threatening language I tell you that unless you get on your knees right at this very moment and plead for clemency to the great god of Gezor, Rakkus, you will perish in the radiation beam apocalypse to come.
To humor me. you ask me for evidence of this tall tale.
I respond with disgust: "You will never believe by the presentation of evidence. Even if I brought the Gezorian spaceship itself down right in front of your eyes, you would not believe, so therefore I will not waste my time to present you with evidence. If the great Rakkus wants you to believe, you will believe. If not, no evidence will make a difference.
You must believe in the Great Gezorian Truth by faith, and faith alone.
So, you see Rho, if I believe with 100% surety that my Gezorian tale is absolutely true, regardless of ANY evidence to prove it, there is no way anyone can convince me otherwise. And you have chosen this same line of defense. You are claiming the complete veracity of an equally spectacular, out-of-this-world science-and-reason-defying supernatural belief...and telling us that you don't need to provide evidence for it, because the only way we will see that it IS truth is if we surrender all appeals to science, reason, and logic...and simply ACCEPT YOUR WORD FOR IT.
Now, you wouldn't accept my word about the Great Truth of Gezor without evidence, would you? So why should I believe your Holy Bible Story without evidence?
Without evidence, both of these stories are just silly, superstitious fables.
In response to my question regarding the veracity of Mormonism, you responded:
1) Since the Bible is true and Joseph Smith's teachings contradict it, I can know he did not hear from God. Just like I know you are wrong b/c the Bible says so.
2) His teachings are internally inconsistent. So I can know you are wrong b/c your own teachings are internally inconsistent.
a. You have not proven the veracity of the Bible. Maybe we should start there. Please tell me where God the Creator declared that the 27 books of today's Christian New Testament canon are his God-breathed, inerrant Words.
b. Mormons can show that there is complete harmony between the Bible and the Book of Mormon, just as conservative Christians seem to always be able find a way to harmonize the many alleged discrepancies in their Holy Book.
c. Mormons have an answer for every alleged "discrepancy" in the Book of Mormon. Mormons actually believe that they have much more evidence to support the story of Joseph Smith and Moroni than Christians have of Jesus and his angels.
So here is the Mormon evidence for their supernatural story:
1. Joseph Smith, a man living in the nineteenth century in New York state, claims that an angel from God named Moroni appeared to him and showed him Golden Plates which told the story of ancient, seafaring Hebrews who came to the shores of North America prior to the time of Christ an established great walled cities and a great civilization.
2. The Mormon Church has eleven signed affidavits of men who swear that they saw these Golden Plates.
3. The Mormon Church has three affadivits from three of the above men who also swear that they also saw the angel Moroni!
What does conservative/orthodox Christianity have as evidence:
1. Four anonymous, first century works of literature, which make the supernatural claim that a dead man rose from the dead in approximately 30 AD, two thousand years ago, and that this resurrected dead man was seen by more than 500 persons over a period of 40 days until he levitated before their very eyes from the top of a mountain into outer space.
These four books are alleged to have been written by two eyewitnesses and two close associates of eyewitnesses but we have no statement or documentation, in affidavit form or otherwise, of anyone in the first century claiming that they personally verified the authorship of these books by knowing or speaking with the traditionally ascribed eyewitnesses and almost eyewitnesses who allegedly saw this supernatural event.
All we have is SECOND century hearsay regarding the authorship of these books.
The three of the four anonymous books appear to be plagiarisms and embellishments of the first book.
Therefore, what we really have is:
One first century anonymous piece of literature, written by whom we do not know; when we do not know; where we do not know; for what purpose we do not know; and in a foreign language.
We have no first hand statements/affadavits from any eyewitnesses of this event, who say, "I, John Ben Doe, do hereby swear under oath that I saw the resurrected Jesus in bodily form and touched his body to verify that I was not having a vision."
The Mormons DO have such affadavits for THEIR supernatural claim. In a court of law, the Mormons would have a much stronger case. However, most educated, non-superstitious people would not buy either of those superstitious ghost-filled fables.
To humor me. you ask me for evidence of this tall tale.
Because my worldview can actually account for evidence. Yours can't. So, you're not getting anywhere yet. When are you going to start actually dealing with the problems your worldview entails?
if I believe with 100% surety that my Gezorian tale is absolutely true, regardless of ANY evidence to prove it, there is no way anyone can convince me otherwise.
That may be, but it is also quite irrelevant.
And you have chosen this same line of defense.
You have quite misunderstood.
You are claiming the complete veracity of an equally spectacular, out-of-this-world science-and-reason-defying supernatural belief
You haven't shown how you can know ANYTHING, so you're in no position to tell anyone what is spectacular or out of this world or defying reason.
So why should I believe your Holy Bible Story without evidence?
There's tons of evidence for it. But we don't even need to discuss the evidence for it until we can know that evidence is a good way to discover truth. If your worldview is true, we have no way of knowing whether it is. So that's why you need to answer my challenges and stop obfuscating.
You have not proven the veracity of the Bible.
I don't have to prove it. Its truth is the precondition for proof and intelligibility.
God's Word is the foundation for human knowledge. There's no proving it and no need to prove it. You also know that it is true but you suppress the truth in wickedness.
Mormons can show that there is complete harmony between the Bible and the Book of Mormon
They can try, but they fail spectacularly. Don't say this kind of thing until you stand ready to defeat the reams and reams of Christian apologetic material that debunks Mormonism.
Mormons have an answer for every alleged "discrepancy"
Your scare quotes were in the wrong place. They have an "answer" for every discrepancy. But very few of them are of any actual rational value. I've studied this matter quite a lot. Since you think they have good answers, you apparently haven't.
What does conservative/orthodox Christianity have as evidence
You keep jumping ahead w/o dealing honestly with the situation at hand. There are challenges on the table that you need to answer. Answer them BEFORE we talk about evidence.
Hello Anonymous/Brian,
Thanks for commenting. I'm glad to see that you agree with the Scripture that you deserve Hell. I fully agree, and I agree that I too deserve Hell. It is only by the grace of Jesus that any of us draw another breath on this earth. And it is only by His grace that any human is born from above by His Spirit to walk in newness of life.
that list goes on for several pages, but the same tools used to measure these accepted measurements
Are you asking why so many professional scientists reach conclusions that contradict the Word of God? Please clarify. Sorry for my misunderstanding.
I think abortion is horrible, I raised a kid that could have been "aborted", thank God my sister did not
Praise God for sparing you from that.
all I ask is that maybe just maybe, you admit, I dont hate God
Well, since I don't think I have a very good handle on where you're coming from and what you believe, I wouldn't want to say that.
Would you call yourself a follower of Jesus?
I have read Triablog for years and they ticked me off so much
They can be an acquired taste. That said, I admire most of their work and appreciate them, but I can also understand if you find them too harsh or something similar. What was it about them that ticked you off?
Im just some soul looking for the peace some of you seem to have
I've been there. Lack of peace was a major factor in leading me to bow before Jesus.
TUAD I will be getting back to you, I have awful eyesight issues so it is often a hit and miss, some good questions just wanted to let you know I did not fall off the planet. Maybe Sunday thanks
Brian (this is my first name) I usually dont use my last name unless required.
TUAD got some sight back so I will do my best.
"Brian, please share what aspects of the faith that you don't believe in."
I am referring to your faith as I understand it from what I have read so I could be way off base so with that caveat I will try. First you folks are super concerned with definitions and really clear lines of logic as you see it, no diss there just trying to clarify. So with that let me try to be clear and transparent, first I am a universalist, I think God will restore all eventually. The reason I am like that is not scripturally based but out of personal experience I would not like to go into because it is just to painful. I do believe in a judgement but it will be a restorative justice.
The only time I struggle with universalism is when I look at me, but that is also a far to personal issue I would not like to approach.
Second I have hurt fellow Christians with my arrogant rants in the real world, I am disgusted with that aspect of my life. It is not a place for me to hurt any person emotionally / spiritually and only physically to protect others life.
I think Jesus is historic along with the events in the bible. I think Evolution is a viable theory of our physical decedent, I think the RCC is the oldest version of the Christian faith in the West as EO is the Earliest faith in the East.
What I think deep down. God is good and He will do what is right.
"A lack of peace is what lead me to bow before Jesus."
This is a very telling statement. I believe that the overwhelming majority of people who join fundamentalist religions, whether that be Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, does so based on emotion; usually the emotions of sadness, loneliness, and/or fear.
I am currently reading a fascinating book on this subject that I highly recommend that each of you consider reading. The book is "The Bondage of the Mind" by RD Gold. Here is an excerpt from the preface:
An unstable world in which individuals seem to have less and less control over their lives has led more and more people to seek refuge in the security blanket of a fundamentalist belief system that explains that what is happening is God's will.
I intend to try and coax you away from your security blanket. It may feel comforting at times, but it is robbing you of seeing the Truth. And as the saying goes, "The truth shall set you free!"
I agree with Kant on the perception of Reality:
The notion that reality is "all in the mind" resurfaces repeatedly in modern philosophy. The person who is generally regarded has having made the greatest contributions in this area was the eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Building on the work of Berkeley and Locke, Kant drew a clear distinction between our perception of reality and the actual object of perception. His key insight was the realization that all we ever know are the structures generated in our minds; the world that gives rise to this perception, what he termed "the thing-in-itself", remains forever unknowable.
All we can ever know, propsed Kant, is how reality appears to us -- what he referred to as the phenomenon of our experience, "that which appears to be". The underlying reality he called the noumenon, a Greek word meaning “that which is apprehended", the thing perceived.
Kant's statement that the noumenon is forever unknowable should be interpreted as forever inexperiencable. The mind is forever barred from a direct knowing of the thing-in-itself. This does not imply that we cannot understand it, or form concepts about it, which is what modern science sets out to do.
(cont'd)
Science attempts to look behind appearances to discover the nature of the underlying physical reality. Although, as we shall see in the next chapter, what it discovers there is very different indeed from the phenomenon we experience. Returning for a moment to the analogy with a computer screen, the noumenon corrresponds to the physical state of the microcircuits in the chip. The computer can never directly access this level; it cannot explore the nature of its own chips, or see the state of the electrons. All that can ever be displayed on the screen is an interpretation of this information by the software -- just as all we can ever experience is the mind’s interpretation of the sensory data. The closest a computer can get to its own underlying reality would be a string of binary code, a series of ־”s and ֿ”s representing its internal state (although, these, too, are just symbols created by the computer, and could just as well be a string of “A”s and “B”s.) Similarly, the closest we can probably come to an understanding of the noumenon is mathematics -- which is where the physical sciences tends to end up. But even this is a set of symbols and models created within the human mind. It is still not a direct knowing of the noumenon.
Here is the thing, folks.
Conservative Christians base their beliefs on a collection of middle-eastern writings written between 2,000 and three thousand years ago. The first half of the Old Testament has been proven to be a collection historical novels: a kernel of historical data mixed with a lot of fiction. So how can we believe that men are inherently evil, inherently "sinners" doomed to eternal damnation unless they repent and bend the knee to a "savior" if we now know that the ancient story this doctrine is based on was a superstitious Canaanite fable.
Even if conservative Christians are unwilling to accept these facts regarding the Old Testament, the facts are much more clear and much more damning regarding the New Testament.
The belief that the 27 books of the Christian New Testament are the very Words of God is based on...what?
Did God send these books down to earth with an angel, written on Golden Plates, as a sign that they really were written by him and not just by some superstitious first century man? No.
Did Jesus leave a list of what books would be included in his Word in God's new revelation for the Gentiles? No.
Did the prophets of the Old Testament give us a list of which "gospels" written in the post-resurrection era should be accepted as the Word of God? No.
Does the Bible record a meeting of the apostles and early Church in which they decided which books to include in the canon and which to not include/ No.
Did Paul or any other apostle give us a list of what was and what was God's holy, inerrant Word? No.
Does the Bible say that God would guide post-Biblical era Christian leaders to correctly select the books of the New Testament? No.
The fact is that MEN selected the canon of the New Testament, and they made these choices over a period of years, not at one great Church Council.
If you say that the Church Fathers were united in their decisions on canonical works, that is incorrect. Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria both considered The Shepherd of Hermas as the Word of God, a part of the New Testament. How did later Church Fathers know better? Did they receive a third divine revelation?
And if you say, "Well, God said he would preserve his Word. That is how we know that the New Testament is the Word of God" my response is: What if the only "Word of God" that God has preserved is the Epistle of Jude??? What if everything else is just man made opinion and superstition.
Bottom line, conservative Christians assume that the stories in the New Testament are true and historical because they believe a priori that the New Testament is the Word of God.
But if men chose the canon, how can we know that the Holy Book upon which we base our entire lives, is really the very Word of God?
Brian: "Second I have hurt fellow Christians with my arrogant rants in the real world"
I take it that you're a Christian because you wrote, "fellow Christians." I should like to hope that that is the case. If so, please share with me the basis of your conviction and belief that you are a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ.
Also, what do you think is the Gospel?
Just curious, just want to keep a good conversation going.
This is a very telling statement
Yes, how dare I speak consistently with my worldview?! :-)
I believe that the overwhelming majority of people who join fundamentalist religions, whether that be Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, does so based on emotion
To discount it for that reason is to commit the genetic fallacy, which I'm sure you're eager to avoid doing.
Humans are not objective analysis machines. The opening of my eyes was a spiritual event, a work of God, that did involve my emotions, yes, for I am a being with emotions.
I have spent years and many millions of words defending my worldview to skeptics like yourself, and nobody has given me persuasive reasons to abandon Jesus. What I *have* seen is obfuscation, fallacious reasoning (and a lot of that!), and question avoidance. You yourself have done all three of these things during this short conversation between us.
An unstable world in which individuals
That is a very strange statement. The modern West is a zillion times more stable than, say, European or Middle Eastern society in the Middle Ages.
I intend to try and coax you away from your security blanket
Thanks, I guess.
Start by engaging my challenges. Don't make me ask again.
as the saying goes, "The truth shall set you free!"
Huh? What is freedom, if atheism is true? Are my thoughts not biochemical emissions of my brain much like bile is secreted by the liver? In what way is freedom a thing if atheism is true?
All we can ever know, propsed Kant, is how reality appears to us
And how would you propose proving that?
And wouldn't that mean that you can't actually know the underlying reality? Thus making my challenges correct?
Science attempts to look behind appearances to discover the nature of the underlying physical reality
Since every single observation that any human makes about anything, including discussions about the observations that others have had, how is it indeed possible to penetrate to the underlying reality? Give evidence, not naked assertions, please.
Conservative Christians base their beliefs on a collection of middle-eastern writings written between 2,000 and three thousand years ago.
You forgot to mention that they were breathed out by God, the omniscience, all-powerful, timeless Creator of the universe.
The first half of the Old Testament has been proven to be a collection historical novels
Nothing of the kind has been proven.
a kernel of historical data mixed with a lot of fiction
Since you have already admitted you could be wrong about everything you claim to know, you don't know anything about history. So this is an ironic accusation.
The belief that the 27 books of the Christian New Testament are the very Words of God is based on...what?
The impossibility of the contrary, and God's leading His people providentially to accept them as His Word.
Does the Bible say that God would guide post-Biblical era Christian leaders to correctly select the books of the New Testament? No.
Yes. John 10, among other places.
The fact is that MEN selected the canon of the New Testament, and they made these choices over a period of years, not at one great Church Council.
At least you got that right. Far too many people think the Canon was selected at, say, the Council of Nicea.
How did later Church Fathers know better? Did they receive a third divine revelation?
The basis of understanding the Canon is not dependent on any single individual.
What if the only "Word of God" that God has preserved is the Epistle of Jude?
Fine, make your argument. Start with explaining:
1) Why you gave up defending atheism in favor of a worldview in which there is a God and He revealed one single tiny book.
2) Answer how you know much of anything about this God if that's all He revealed.
Prepare your systematic theology. This I want to see.
I think you'll find that constructing a worldview from scratch isn't as easy as it sounds. But the thing is, we've already seen that, since you haven't even attempted to engage my challenges about atheism, and atheism is as made-up as it gets.
how can we know that the Holy Book upon which we base our entire lives, is really the very Word of God?
We trust God, Who is the highest authority in the universe.
Gary,
You keep avoiding my challenges.
Here they are again.
As promised, this is an unmoderated combox, but I never promised to go around in circles with anyone.
Answer my challenges in your next set of comments, or you can talk to yourself. I'm not going to waste my time anymore.
Here they are again:
1) Please disprove solipsism in a manner that is consistent with your worldview.
2) Since you could be wrong about everything, you could be wrong about whether the external world exists, your senses and reasoning are valid, and whether other people exist. Right?
Engage those questions and we can continue the conversation. Ignore them again, and I'm done talking to you.
First, this conversation/debate was supposed to be between myself and "Truth Divides". In the middle of the debate, he suddenly tagged out and now you are in the ring trying to force upon me a new set of rules for the "fight".
The debate began as a discussion regarding the evidence or lack thereof for the supernatural claim of the resurrection of Jesus. We are not debating MY worldview! So you and TUAD either have evidence for this magical, superstitious event or you don't. I am not going to chase down your rabbit trails. Either provide evidence for the Resurrection or this debate is ended...AND I WON!
This isn't a fight.
And I asked if we could talk; you didn't seem to mind. As far as "tagging out", who's the one abandoning the field at this point? I've asked just a very few questions that get at the heart of the fundamental problems your worldview contains. If you can't answer them, all the stuff you've posted above is completely vacuous. You don't even know whether an external world exists and you're talking about "testimonies" and "evidence" and such. You can't even prove that evidence is a thing.
We are not debating MY worldview!
Well, that's true. I have been, and you've been running away.
Either provide evidence for the Resurrection or this debate is ended...AND I WON!
I already did - the impossibility of the contrary.
Anyway, you can proclaim that YOU WON in all caps all you want. Let the reader judge who can answer whose questions.
Rho,
I tell you what, I will be happy to debate my worldview but first TUAD needs to keep his word and finish debating me on the evidence or lack thereof for the Resurrection.
If you want to sub for him that is fine, but don't try and force me to FIRST defend my worldview. The issue on the table is very simple: Is there any evidence for the supernatural claim that Jesus of Nazareth was bodily resurrected from his grave or is this belief solely based on blind faith.
Admit to me that this alleged event can only be believed by blind faith and that there is zero evidence to prove it really happened, just as is the case with the Mormons and their supernatural claims, and I will be happy to move on to a second discussion regarding my worldview.
But I completely deny that belief in the resurrection is by blind faith. I know that tGotB is real, and I know it with certainty. Further, His Word is the single highest authority, the most powerful evidence of anything of which it speaks, in the universe.
His Word says the resurrection happened.
It happened. There is no doubt and no question.
You deny it, but EVERYTHING you hold to is blind faith. You need to admit THAT. Because it's obvious. Because you've already said you could be wrong about everything you claim you know.
Admit to me that this alleged event can only be believed by blind faith and that there is zero evidence to prove it really happened, just as is the case with the Mormons and their supernatural claims
No, you need to admit to me that the alleged reliability of your senses and reasoning can only be believed by blind faith and that there is zero evidence to prove they really are reliable, just as is the case with the Mormons and their supernatural claims.
Hi Gary,
You claimed that I couldn't provide non-Christian scholars who would affirm that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb. I said I would, but only on the condition that if I did produce such scholars, you would then stipulate to Fact 1.
You refused the reasonable terms, so there was no point in continuing. Furthermore, I showed you numerous times that there is evidence that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb while your competing alternatives have no evidence whatsoever. This is truly laughable hypocrisy, given that you keep insisting that you want evidence, but then the reality is that you prefer your evidence-free conjecture over proffered evidence!
Thus by your demonstrable actions and statements, you don't really want evidence.
Given this state of affairs, let's have you examine your worldview for internal consistency. Doing so may shed helpful light for you. This is where engaging Rho is urged.
Actually what you and Rho both are doing is basing your arguments on the fallacious circular argument called "Begging the Question".
You both argue that the Resurrection occurred because the Bible says that it did. You argue that the Christian god exists because the Bible says that he does. However, you have not given any evidence whatsoever that your Holy Book is inerrant and completely trustworthy as to the historical events that it asserts as fact.
Present the evidence, boys, or admit defeat. Your circular arguments would not be tolerated in a formal debate.
It is absolutely preposterous to force me to accept as fact that Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimethea's tomb just because TUAD can maybe find one non-Christian who believes this story. It would be like me insisting that TUAD accept as fact that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in the assassination of President Kennedy just because I can find one author who believes that there was second gunman!
It is a silly, childish, manipulative ploy to avoid providing evidence for your superstitious religious belief.
Sorry, you misunderstand begging the question.
You both argue that the Resurrection occurred because the Bible says that it did.
You argue that your breakfast occurred because you think you remember it occurred. However, you have not given any evidence whatsoever that your Holy Book (i.e., your memory) is anything close to trustworthy as to the historical events that it asserts as fact.
Present the evidence or admit defeat. Your circular arguments would not be tolerated in a formal debate.
Your obfuscation and handwaving is a silly, childish, manipulative ploy to avoid providing evidence for your superstitious naturalistic belief.
Gary, Rho has said that your position reduces to absurdity. He used the phrase "The Impossibility of the Contrary."
Let me unpack that a little for you.
Suppose Rho presupposes A, and Gary presupposes G. The impossibility of the contrary would be shown by Rho (for example) concerning Gary, if Rho demonstrated that all who presuppose G must necessarily affirm
“not G” at some point. This demonstration then conclusively excludes G as a legitimate axiom to start from. And if Rho does this to all the other worldviews around him, but his A cannot be made to reduce to “not A,” then he has shown the impossibility of the contrary.
Gary, would you like to see whether and how your current perspective reduces to absurdity? If so, reply honestly to Rho.
No. I've had enough of your smoke and mirrors. The truth is, you have no evidence. That is why you resort to philosophical nonsense.
If you get serious about debating the historicity of this supernatural event, TUAD, come to my blog and we can pick up where you stopped. I'm not going to waste my time here.
Gary, you don't have any evidence either. If you did, you'd answer my challenges.
This is the atheist double standard. Your foolishness has been exposed. You barely even put up a fight.
Gary,
Even now Jesus, the risen Savior and the one who will judge you when you breathe your last breath, will forgive you. Turn to Him in repentance and faith. Your sin and your foolishness will be washed away and redeemed. Your eyes will be opened. You will be able to answer intellectual questions with consistency and intellectual honesty. You won't have to resort to obfuscation and nonsense, avoiding questions that you don't like.
Seek His forgiveness today and thus be saved from the wrath that is coming on those who are disobedient and foolish, of which you are both.
Sorry to break the news to you guys...but Jesus is dead.
The only evidence you really have (but don't want to admit) is the evidence "in your hearts": your warm, fuzzy feelings, your intuition, and your personal experiences of your god's presence.
The problem is that Muslims, Hindus, and Mormons report the same intense feelings, intuition, and personal experiences.
So you can shake your tom toms and stick needles into voodoo dolls to try and frighten me but your invisible deity and his virgin-impregnating side-kick of a ghost does not hear you. He does not hear you because he does not exist. The Christian god has made too many errors in his knowledge of even grade school level science to be the Supreme Ruler of the universe, let alone capable of casting millions of non-evangelical Christians into a divine torture pit to burn forever.
Wake boys! You beliefs are on the same intellectual level as the ignorant goat herders of the Middle East.
Yawn. TUAD, wake me when this guy makes an argument.
Hi Gary,
FWIW, here's something that might be of interest to you:
Simon Greenleaf was royal professor of law at Harvard and a main founder of the Harvard law school. Greenleaf, was considered to be the greatest expert of evidence the world had ever known. He wrote the famous legal volume—A Treatise on the Law of Evidence, which many consider to be the greatest legal volume ever written. Greenleaf was a skeptic firmly set against Christianity, and taught his students Christianity was false. When one of his students challenged him to investigate evidence for Christianity for himself, he set out to disprove the Biblical testimony concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Greenleaf was certain that a careful examination of the internal witness of the Gospels would dispel all myths at the heart of Christianity, and disprove it once and for all. However, this legal scholar concluded Bible eyewitnesses were reliable and that Christ’s bodily death and resurrection were objective fact. If anyone should be qualified to state the reliability of Christ’s resurrection as an actual historical event according to the laws of legal evidence, it is Greenleaf. After years of exhaustive research and analysis, Greenleaf concluded: ....
The Supreme Justice of the Supreme Court said that Greenleaf’s testimony is the most basic and compelling testimony that can be accepted in any english speaking court in the world. When Greenleaf spoke, that settled the matter. He was far and away the most knowledgeable person on evidence the world had ever known. The London Times said that more light on jurisprudence had come from Greenleaf than all the jurists of Europe combined.
Greenleaf had one inviolable principle in his classrooms at Harvard, and that was, you never make up your mind about any significant matter without first considering the evidence. Greenleaf was not a Christian. When challenged by one of his students with this principle, he admitted that he had not considered the evidence. When he did, he became a Christian: believed in the deity, death and resurrection of Jesus.
...
Greenleaf concluded that according to the jurisdiction of legal evidence the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the best supported event in all of history! Not only that, Dr. Greenleaf was so convinced by the overwhelming evidence, he committed his life to Jesus Christ!"
There's a lot more. Read it all: HERE.
Simon Greenleaf
In attempts to confirm apologetic claims, I can get caught up in lengthy rabbit trails. Since this is one sure to resurface in the future, I figured I may as well blog the journey.
Simon Greenleaf was a luminary in legal jurisprudence during the early 19th Century. He became a lawyer in 1806, and advanced to become the reporter for the Maine Supreme Court. In 1833 he became a professor at Harvard Law School, retaining the position through the late 40’s. He is famous for writing two (2) works:
1) His Treatise on Evidence, written in 1844-46; and
2) Testimony of the Evangelists in 1847
The second work makes Christian apologists salivate. No less than Drs. Geisler & Turek’s book I don’t have enough Faith to be an Atheist makes the claim:
Simon Greenleaf, the Harvard Law professor who wrote the standard study on what constitutes legal evidence, credited his own conversion to Christianity as having come from his careful examination of the Gospel witnesses.
This is repeated and regurgitated on numerous internet sites:
Dr. Greenleaf is considered by many to have been one of the greatest legal minds we have had in the U.S. He was formerly an outspoken skeptic of Christianity and who set out to disprove the deity of Christ. In the end he concluded that the Resurrection was true “beyond any reasonable doubt.” Greenleaf became a Christian after studying the evidence for himself.
see here
Of course the story grows to his being instigated by a student’s challenge. See Snopes for the common theme of student challenging professor.
Do a google search on Greenleaf being an atheist and you will hit literally 1000’s of sites (including the infamous Wikipedia.) And, this morning in my perusal of blogs, I saw this platitude repeated once more when Wintery Knight indicated, “[S]imon Greenleaf…assessed the evidence as [an] atheist and became [a] Christian.”
Having seen this so many times, I decided to verify.
Was Simon Greenleaf an atheist? Did he attempt to disprove the resurrection and become convinced by the evidence?
Ahh…in short…no. Some apologist seems to have leaped to this conclusion, and the next copied him/her, and the next copied him/her and so on, until each is copying the other, never attempting to verify it in any way. If 40,000 Google hits say its true—it must be, right?
First we should note Mr. Greenleaf’s own words about the subject. There are none. Nowhere that he claims to be an atheist (quite the opposite as we shall see in a minute), nowhere where he claims this started off as an attempt to disprove the Resurrection. Nothing. The testimonials and foreword in the 1874 version, edited by Tischendorf make no mention of Greenleaf’s desire to disprove the Resurrection, nor his theistic belief being changed by the study.
Nothing contemporary indicates he ever was an atheist, or even a theist who disbelieved the resurrection. All the evidence we have demonstrates Simon Greenleaf was a lifelong Episcopalian! He is reached the position of being on the Standing Committee for the Episcopalian diocese of Maine as of 1927. He was at the Maine Episcopalian Convention of 1831 And at the Maine Episcopalian Convention of 1832
Remember, this was all before he became a professor, let alone write his treatise on evidence.
But the nail in the coffin is this Christian who has reviewed Mr. Greenleaf’s writings and agrees this is nothing but a myth.
Simon Greenleaf was an early 19th Century lawyer who wrote a good book on Evidence. We don’t use it anymore. He used information which is now outdated to substantiate his own belief. He wasn’t an atheist; he wasn’t convinced by the evidence. He already believed and looked for support.
Time to let Simon Greenleaf rest in peace.
From: "Thoughts from a Sandwich", the blog of DagoodS, attorney at Law
"He [Simon Greenleaf] used information which is now outdated to substantiate his own belief."
Gary, his arguments are even better now.
"But is Greenleaf still relevant today? Would existing copies of the Gospels (and the rest of the New Testament) be admissible in evidence today in accordance with the 2011 Federal Rules of Evidence that govern every federal trial court in America? Or have archeology and the evolution of legal thought rendered his conclusions incredible or irrelevant because they are based on documents no longer sufficiently authenticated to be admissible in evidence?
...
In light of the above, any objection to Greenleaf’s relevance today should, and must necessarily be, summarily denied. He is as credible and relevant today, perhaps even more so, as he was in his own day because the evidence for the authenticity of the documents on which he based his argument is more conclusive today than it was then. Accordingly, if one is to “pick him apart,” one must pick him apart on his argument, not his evidence."
Excerpted from: Here.
How about you stand on your own two feet, Tuad, and instead of appealing to Rho and Simon Greenfield for assistance list the evidence for the Resurrection yourself?
Hi Gary,
Rho is not taking an evidentialist approach with you at this time.
You've asked for evidence. You got evidence. And you instead turn towards your own evidence-free conjecture by which to reject Jesus, all the while hypocritically claiming that you want evidence to base your beliefs on. Furthermore, you also hypocritically claim that you'll follow the truth, no matter where it leads. Yet when you are provided the truth, you won't follow it.
Since you had proclaimed so loudly that you wanted evidence, what matter way than to give you someone of the stature of Simon Greenleaf who loves evidence far, far more than you do, and yet found the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ compelling?
Greenleaf is a far better lawyer than your Christ-rejecting attorney friend DagoodS.
Gary, own your hypocrisy. Confess your hypocrisy.
I confess that Tuad has done nothing but refer me to website after website instead of having the gonads to present evidence himself.
You have been backed into a corner and are looking for a clever way out. I don't intend to give you that out. I agreed to debate You, Tuad, not Rho, not Greenleaf. Now step to the plate and stop your stalling, for Peter's sake.
Gary,
You claimed that I couldn't provide non-Christian scholars who would affirm that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb. I said I would, but only on the condition that if I did produce such scholars, you would then stipulate to Fact 1.
You refused the reasonable terms, so there was no point in continuing. Furthermore, I showed you numerous times that there is evidence that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb while your competing alternatives have no evidence whatsoever. This is truly laughable hypocrisy, given that you keep insisting that you want evidence, but then the reality is that you prefer your evidence-free conjecture over proffered evidence!
Thus by your demonstrable actions and statements, you don't really want evidence.
You have no 'nads, Tuad.
Stop the BS and put up some evidence.
Tuad has been trying ever so desperately to force me to follow an outlined algorithm of how to prove a skeptic of the Resurrection wrong instead of just discussing the alleged evidence. So if any reader is interested in seeing a refutation of William Lane Craig regarding the historicity of the story of Joseph of Arimethea, here is an excerpt below. I will post the link in the next comment.
Rebuttal to Tomb Burial by Joseph of Arimathea
In order to present the arguments for the empty tomb in a fair way and in order to comment on these arguments in full detail, I have chosen to quote and to respond to an essay by Craig in a manner made popular through Usenet and e-mail in which it is poor form to "snip" any words written by the other person. Yet in order to make the discussion comprehensible, I will begin with an outline of the logical structure of Craig's apologetic.
To accept the empty tomb story requires that one accepts both that Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea and that this tomb was discovered empty three days later. With this in mind, there are two types of argument for the historicity of the empty tomb.
•A. Evidence for both tomb burial and subsequent discovery
•B. Two-Step Argument 1.Evidence for tomb burial
2.Evidence that tomb burial implies subsequent discovery
Craig makes use of both types of argument. In order to refute these arguments, it is necessary to refute all evidence of type A. Further, it is necessary to refute either B1 or B2, but it is not necessary to refute both. I am willing to grant the existence of good evidence of type B2. However, I believe that the evidence for B1 is not good. In this way, the arguments for the empty tomb can be refuted.
In the essay that will be quoted, William Lane Craig does not provide much evidence of the type B1. For this reason, I will begin by examining the evidence specifically for the tomb burial by Joseph of Arimathea presented in Craig's book Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, pp. 352-256. Craig brings together nine considerations, each of which will be examined in turn.
(a) Paul's testimony provides early evidence for the historicity of Jesus's burial. We saw that in I Cor. 15:4 the pre-Pauline formula received and delivered by the apostle refers in its second line to the fact of Jesus's burial. The four-fold oti, the chronological succession of the events, and particularly the remarkable concordance between the formula and the preaching of Acts 13 and the narrative of the gospels concerning the order of events (death--burial--resurrection--appearances) make it highly probable that the formula's mention of the burial is not meant merely to underscore the death, but refers to the same events related in the gospels, that is, the laying of Jesus in the tomb. If this is so, then it seems very difficult to regard Jesus's burial in the tomb as unhistorical. . .
Craig takes Paul as testimony not only to the tomb burial by Joseph of Arimathea but also the discovery of the empty tomb by women three days later. The issue of Paul's testimony will be considered in more detail below.
At the present, I will state that Craig seems to fudge between burial and burial in the tomb. Paul's statement is perfectly consonant with a dishonorable burial by enemies. Just as Paul's ambiguous testimony should not be taken to deny the gospel narratives of tomb burial, neither should Paul's ambiguous testimony be taken to affirm the gospel narratives of tomb burial.
Link for excerpt above:
http://infidels.org/library/modern/peter_kirby/tomb/rebuttal1.html
(d) The person of Joseph of Arimathea is probably historical. Even the most sceptical scholars, such as Broer and Pesch, agree that it is unlikely that Joseph, as a member of the Sanhedrin, could have been a Christian invention. To this may be added the fact that the gospels' descriptions of Joseph receive unintentional confirmation from incidental details; for example, his being rich from the type and location of the tomb. His being at least a sympathizer of Jesus is not only independently attested by Matthew and John, but seems likely in view of Mark's description of the treatment of Jesus's body as opposed to the body of the thieves.
It is clear to see that we have to divide the argument between evidence that there was a certain Joseph of Arimathea and evidence that this person laid Jesus in his tomb. Craig states, "It is unlikely that the Christian tradition would invent a fictional character and place him on the historical council of the Sanhedrin."[94] This argument provides limited evidence that there was a person named Joseph from Arimathea on the Sanhedrin. But even this evidence is inconclusive if it is allowed that the narrative in the Gospel of Mark was composed over 40 years later, after the destruction of Jerusalem, possibly in a setting of diaspora Jews and Gentiles. Moreover, even if there were a considerable number of Palestinian Jews with strong traditional ties, it is difficult to suppose that their memory would be so strong that they would be able to remember the names of those on the Sanhedrin so as to be able to argue for the exclusion of any fictional name. There were about seventy people on the Sanhedrin, and forty years later most of them would died and been replaced at one point or another, not to mention that most people at the time that Jesus died would have also died, making it nearly inconceivable that the average Jew knew all the names of the Sanhedrin c. 30 well enough to spot a name that doesn't belong. At the very least, the assumption cannot be granted that there were a considerable number of such sagacious people that would pose a threat to gospel writers. Although the analogy is not perfect, the fallacy of the argument may be understood by the comparison of expecting the average American to be able to recall the names of the senators in 1960. Perhaps a few of the most memorable ones stuck in the general consciousness. But I seriously doubt that the author of Mark would have feared that someone would have been able to produce a list of all the Sanhedrin members c. 30 or, generally, would have been able to argue that there never was a Joseph of Arimathea on the Sanhedrin. To argue that Joseph was described as "distinguished" and that this would raise eyebrows is inadequate, for who is to say that any person who is on the Sanhedrin is not a distinguished or influential member? Indeed, a natural reaction would not be to think that there was no Joseph but rather that he perhaps was not so influential as to be remembered forty years later. Besides, a translation in the sense of "prominent" is tendentious when the word can refer to wealth or nobility. However, let it be accepted on this inconclusive evidence that there was a historical Joseph of Arimathea as one of the seventy-one Sanhedrin members. If it can be argued that people may not have remembered the names of all the members, how much more so may people not have remembered the entire life and times of each member! It cannot be simply supposed that the actual activities of a certain Sanhedrin member on a certain day would be common knowledge. Thus, this is not good evidence that Joseph of Arimathea laid Jesus in a tomb.
Craig: (h) No other burial tradition exists. If the burial of Jesus in the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea is legendary, then it is very strange that conflicting traditions nowhere appear, even in Jewish polemic. That no remnant of the true story or even a conflicting false one should remain is hard to explain unless the gospel account is substantially the true account.
I do not agree with Craig's statement that "no remnant of the true story or even a conflicting false one" appears. I have argued for the probability that there were conflicting burial traditions. Moreover, even if Craig would dispute this evidence, the sources presented should be enough to belie the claim that there is no "remnant" of a different tradition. As Raymond Brown states, "With effort all the following are capable of being explained in another way, but their wording favors a burial of Jesus by Jews condemnatory of Jesus rather than his disciples."[98] To state categorically that there is no trace of an alternate tradition and to use this premise for an argument suggests that Craig should show not only that a harmonizing interpretation of these references is possible but also probable or necessary.
Furthermore, I don't believe that it would be too difficult to explain. Suppose that the story of tomb burial by Joseph of Arimathea is the invention of the author of Mark. Where should we expect to find the true story or a conflicting one? Because the authors of Matthew and Luke are dependent on the author of Mark, I don't think it is reasonable to suppose that they would correct the story. Even if we would like to see the Gospel of John as literarily independent, the author could have been influenced by liturgical readings or oral traditions that have their source with the Gospel of Mark. It is well worth keeping in mind that the story of tomb burial in the Gospel of Mark is a relatively nice story, and it is not reasonable to assume that it would be contradicted with a story that is worse, such as shameful burial or nonburial. The only kind of source that should be expected to preserve a different tradition is one that is not dependent on the canonical gospels. Yet none of these sources speak of the tomb of Joseph at all.
Craig:
(i) The graves of Jewish holy men were carefully preserved. During Jesus's time there was an extraordinary interest in the graves of Jewish martyrs and holy men and these were scrupulously cared for and honored. This suggests that the grave of Jesus would have also been noted so that it too might become such a holy site. The disciples had no inkling of any pre-eschatological resurrection, and they would probably therefore not have allowed the burial site of the teacher to go unnoted. This interest makes very plausible the women's lingering to watch the burial and their subsequent intention to anoint Jesus's body with spices and perfumes (Lk. 23:55-56).
The necessary assumption for this argument is that the disciples had some control over the preservation of the gravesite of Jesus. This assumption is not only unproven but, as I have argued, improbable. It is not the disciples but rather those who had Jesus crucified who would have control over the burial of the body. The very fact that the disciples would have been interested in preserving the grave of Jesus is a good reason to think that those who had Jesus executed would not have allowed the burial site of the teacher/leader to be noted. At the least, if such a scenario is plausible, then this argument fails.
This may not be the whole account, but it does help to explain why the person who buried Jesus in Mark was on the council that condemned him. There are other factors that may have played a part in the shaping narrative. One factor is that the author of Mark may have considered anyone other than someone on the council to be unable to persuade Pilate to hand over the body, given that it was the council's decision that Jesus be crucified and that Pilate was passively in cooperation with them. Another factor is that the author of Mark may have realized that the disciples, who are from Galilee, would not have had a tomb in the vicinity of Jerusalem in which Jesus could be buried that day. Another factor is that the author of Mark may be emphasizing themes such as the failure of the disciples in that a stranger buries Jesus. If these factors are taken along with the theory that Mark was constrained by an earlier tradition of burial by enemies, the story about Joseph of Arimathea becomes nearly a narrative necessity.
Now that the arguments for the tomb burial by Joseph of Arimathea have been considered, an assessment of the effectiveness of any "two-step argument" for the empty tomb can be made. The arguments in (a), (b), (c), and (g) are parallel to arguments made by Craig for the historicity of the empty tomb story in general, and thus they might be more properly considered part of evidence type A, as evidence for the total story of tomb burial and discovery of the empty tomb. Yet all the arguments have been answered, and the evidence of type B1 has been found to be wanting. For this reason, any subsequent arguments that argue with the tomb burial as a premise are considered to be unsound.
Procedural Difficulties with the Burial Account
The first problem starts with the very first verse of the above passage. "When evening had come" means that it was already sundown (i.e. 6pm) and the new day, which was the Sabbath, had already started. (Even if evening can be taken the mean an earlier time [say about 4pm] the problem remains because according to the synoptics that day was the first day of Passover.) On a Sabbath or a Passover no business transaction is allowed. Yet we are told that Joseph purchased a linen shroud on that day. The wording and arrangement of the passage does not permit the interpretation that Joseph bought the shroud earlier. And the work of laying Jesus in a tomb and rolling a stone to close it are all the kind of labour Jews avoid on the Sabbath and on the Passover. These difficulties led the theologian D.E. Nineham to conclude:
Perhaps the simplest explanation is that the story originates from a cycle of tradition which knew of no chronological tie-up between the crucifixion and the Passover. [1]
What this means, when translated to lay terms is this: the whole story of Jesus' last few days being closely tied to the Jewish feast of Passover and the story of the burial of Jesus are mutually exclusive; they cannot both be true at the same time. At least one of these must be fictitious and the possibility that both of these being unhistorical is not excluded on logical grounds. Indeed, given the track record of the gospels so far, it is perhaps more likely that both the crucifixion happening on a Passover and the burial are unhistorical.
Back to the top
The Identity of Joseph of Arimathea
The second problem involves the person of Joseph of Arimathea. According to Mark he was the member of the council, i.e. the Sanhedrin, who was also looking for the kingdom of God. The gospel of John even made him a secret disciple of Jesus (John 19:38). But this is obviously incompatible with what Mark had described earlier: [2]
Mark 14:55
And the chief priests and all the council [i.e. the whole Sanhedrin-PT] sought for witness against Jesus to put him to death; and found none.
If Joseph of Arimathea was in the Sanhedrin, which according to Mark, unanimously condemned Jesus, it is unlikely that he would be described as one who was "looking for the kingdom of God." It is even more unlikely that he would be a disciple of Jesus, as John would have us believe. The two evangelists who used Mark as their source, Matthew and Luke, each tried to modify the story to make it more convincing. Luke added the statement that Joseph had not agreed with the action of the Sanhedrin:
Luke 23:50-51
Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God.
This statement in Luke is possible because he had deliberately avoided saying earlier that the whole council was present during the trial of Jesus:
Luke 22:66
When day came, the assembly of the elders of the people, both chief priests and scribes, gathered together, and they brought him to their council.
Matthew, to avoid Mark's pitfall, made a more drastic alteration to the identity of Joseph:
Matthew 27:57
When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus.
Anyone reading Matthew's gospel alone (as doubtless its author never originally intended the gospel to be compared to other gospels) will not know that Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin and the problem in Mark is evaded. The source for Matthew's alteration is, again, not from history but from the Old Testament:
Isaiah 53:9
And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death...
(cont'd from last comment)
This problem about Joseph of Arimathea does not end here. John, in keeping with his maverick style, gave Joseph a collaborator, Nicodemus:
John 19:38-42
After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
Needless to say, John's account completely contradicts the account in the synoptics. In the first place, no mention is made in the other gospels of Joseph having an assistant. In the second place, John had Joseph and Nicodemus anoint the body of Jesus, something which completely contradicts the account in Mark. Not only is the anointing not mentioned in Mark it was expressly excluded. For Mark had the women witness Joseph laying Jesus in the tomb (Mark 15:47), and then came on Sunday with the specific purpose of anointing Jesus' body:
Mark 16:1 (Luke 23:56-24:1)
When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.
It is impossible to try to reconcile John's account with Mark's. For the women would obviously had known that Jesus body was already anointed by Joseph and would not bought spices to do the same on Sunday. [3]
In fact the whole account of the burial by Joseph of Arimathea has a fatal logical flaw. This was aptly stated by Craveri:
They [the evangelists] take no account of their own invention. At the very time when the most fanatical followers of Jesus are in flight lest they be accused of complicity, this eleventh hour convert dares to risk expulsion from the Sanhedrin and from his own social circle in order to perform an act of mercy towards the cadaver of a rebel whom everyone had deserted. [4]
We can conclude a few things based on our study above. It is apparent that Luke and Matthew had nothing new to add to the Markan account but each made changes they deemed necessary to correct the inconsistency in their source. John's version is so different form Mark, and, indeed, is in direct contradiction to it, that both the passage cannot be true at the same time. The story itself, regardless of which version, is rather unbelievable. We are asked to believe that at a time when Peter, James, John and the rest had fled for fear of prosecution, a Jew (let alone a council member) would dare to risk all to associate himself with someone so soon after his sentence by the Romans and condemnation by the Sanhedrin. All in all the story of Jesus burial by Joseph of Arimathea cannot be historical.
TUAD you asked I take it I am a Christian. No, I cant be because I am not good enough. Now I know the whole saved by grace and none of us are good enough. In reality, nope, there are the real Christians and the not so real Christians. I cant ever be a Real Christian because I am not good enough. More so than the resurrection I learned that. Of course that is not doctrinal or scriptural it is just reality.
Just to be honest I will try to summarize they theological pov. I am first a universalist, it seems the only consistent view given my understanding. If one is not a universalist one thinks God rules by exception. I E babies and babies that pass before being born are saved, people with cognitive disabilities are saved, covenant children are saved if they pass before the age of "accountability.
Of course this is poorly worded and I am sure I have made many logical errors but I am not a robot I am some poor sod just trying to hack through the brush to find the light.
I am a Cessationist as I do not think God owes us anything, He should take us all out. But I cant believe that about God. I do think charismatic tend to lean to much to the other side of experience.
I think the oldest expressions of the Christian religion in the west is Catholic and in the East Coptic but the most representative of scripture is reformed.
Hope that helps some, this is just off the cuff, please excuse any errors in judgement.
Hmm, if refusing to engage an argument demonstrates a lack of 'nads, Gary, what does that say about you?
If anyone still believes the nonsensical idea that Joseph of Arimethea, a "secret" disciple of Jesus, would risk his status among the Jews, his livelihood, and even his very life to bury a criminal who had just been crucified for treason against the state, while all of Jesus' known male disciples were cowering in some hideout...check out this chart that compares the MASSIVE discrepancies in the four Resurrection Accounts in the Gospels.
If you click on the link below and review the chart, anyone with a high school education can see that these four books were NOT written by an inerrant God, but by four fiction writers:
http://www.lutherwasnotbornagain.com/2014/09/chart-of-major-discrepancies-in.html
Meh. I'll see that lame article and raise you a for-real harmonisation.
Homework, Gary. Homework.
The Mormons have had only two hundred years to concoct their "harmonization" stories for the many discrepancies in the supernatural stories in their Holy Book, and how many Mormon churches have shut down when non-Mormons point out that these harmonizations are absolute nonsense?
Answer: None.
Christians have had TWO THOUSAND years to concoct THEIR "harmonization" stories for the many discrepancies in the supernatural stories in their Holy Book, and how many Christian churches have shut down when a non-Christians point out that these harmonizations are absolute nonsense?
Answer: Again, probably none.
So why would both Mormons and Christians believe "harmonizations" that every other educated, rational human being on earth finds ridiculous?
Answer: Because both devout Mormons and devout Christians WANT to believe that their superstitions are true...and this desire to believe is so strong...that no amount of reason, logic, and evidence can change their minds.
I believe that it is only those Mormons and Christians who CHOOSE to look at the evidence, with an open, but educated/rational mind, who will see that their superstitious religious beliefs are just as ridiculous and unfounded as the beliefs of the most uneducated, primitive, ignorant natives in the deep jungle of South America or Africa.
You want to believe your superstitions are true. I can tell b/c you won't engage the arguments that wreck your position.
Anyway, how precisely is my harmonisation nonsense? Be specific.
I have come to realize that a conservative Christian will NEVER accept this massive amount of evidence that disproves his cherished belief system UNTIL he or she is willing to drop all preconceived beliefs regarding the supernatural and just look at the claims of Christianity with a neutral, non-biased brain.
Until conservative Christians are willing to entertain the idea that their Holy Book just might be a collection of historical novels and fiction, and that their god just might be an invention of ancient, Canaanite nomads they will never see...what every other educated, rational non-Christian on the planet sees: It is just superstition....and that's all.
I have come to realize that a committed atheist will NEVER accept this massive amount of evidence that disproves his cherished belief system UNTIL he or she is willing to drop all preconceived beliefs regarding the supernatural and just look at the claims of atheism with a neutral, non-biased brain.
Until committed atheists are willing to entertain the idea that their senses and reasoning just might be a collection of biochemical fizz, the secretions of an organ, and that the external world just might be an invention of fantasy they will never see...what every other educated, rational Christian on the planet sees: It is just superstition....and that's all.
In other words, Gary, you're not actually saying anything of substance. You're just emoting. How about you make an argument and respond to my own?
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