Seems like there is very little to support this extraordinary claim of a man dying and rising from the dead three days later. Such an event would have been very documented specially by Jews and Romans who were very good when it came to keeping records. What gives?
shareIt was not documented because it's fantasy. Christians will come up with all kinds of spin and hooey to account for it; they've got an answer that makes sense (to them) for everything. But it's just in the Bible, and the argument that something in the Bible is true because it says so in the Bible is a classic case of the logical fallacy of begging the question.
share" the argument that something in the Bible is true because it says so in the Bible is a classic case of the logical fallacy of begging the question."
And I'll say a big "hallelujah" to that!
It's hard to explain faith when the people you're explaining to don't have it. It's like trying to describe color to a blind person, or music to a deaf person. They just don't get it at all.
shareHow very convenient. You actually have no reason to believe it so you use the "it's too hard to explain" excuse coverup.
shareIt's hard to explain faith when the people you're explaining to don't have it. It's like trying to describe color to a blind person, or music to a deaf person. They just don't get it at all.
^^
have you considered they might not get FAITH because it doesnt exist?
what I'm getting at is, You might have confirmation bias....Your going in Presupposing FAITH exists and those who dont have it,cant understand it
have you even considered the possibility that Maybe FAITH doesnt exist(Or at least FAITH thats described in the bible) doesnt exist and maybe thats why some people dont have FAITH
have you consider that MAYBE you dont actually have FAITH and Instead you have "confidence based on evidence"
I can honestly say I do not have FAITH in Anything, I can honestly say I do not believe FAITH(or Faith thats described in the bible) has any useful purpose and in fact is the equivalent to flipping a coin
FAITH in the bible basically boils down to "Believing in something without evidence"
I would put forward, if you actually truly thought about it, Theres not a single other thing in your life that You BLIND FAITH in.
The Believing in God, Jesus, a religion and the afterlife is the ONLY thing In Life you actually dont need any evidence for to believe....
for example....again I dont have FAITH in anything and I dont think YOU DO EITHER....
If someone asked me, do you have a wife?
or asked you, do you have a Husband?
we say yes, then they ask....
do you have faith your husband/wife LOVES YOU....
I get theres an attraction there to say Yes
but the correct answer is NO
We do not Have BLIND FAITH(Like in the bible) that our husband and wife loves us....Instead we have CONFIDENCE they love us based on demonstrable facts and evidence
we have confidence that our wife and husbands loves based on experiences and past actions of those people that either demonstrate they love us or dont...does your husband cheat, has he abused you, is he a good father, does he lie to you all DATA, Facts and Evidence that demonstrably proves someones feeling and gives you confidence to judge "does your wife/husband love you"
Instead, If you took it on faith(Or Blind Faith like in the bible)...
You would have no data,facts or evidence to base your confidence on....
It would like if someone asked "do you have faith your husband loves you"
you say yes
they say how do you know?
and you say, Well my husband is invisible, I cant prove he actually exists, I cant prove He's ever actually manifested in my life, But I have a Book that some told He WROTE, and In the Book it says he loves me"
lol, You dont have FAITH your husband loves you....You have confidence he loves based on his past action and experience that you can weight as evidence....
FAITH cant get you that....FAITH is the excuses people give when they dont have a good reason for believing in something....
FAITH is not a pathway to truth....
Its a coin flip
The same exact FAITH YOU have that gets you to Jesus
Is the same exact FAITH someone else has that gets them to Islam
there is NOTHING one couldnt take on FAITH.....I could take it on FAITH the earth is flat....
In conclusion....
I dont think Its hard to explain FAITH to people.
Its not hard for people to understand FAITH....
Instead I think Its IMPOSSIBLE for you to accept people do in fact understand FAITH, They just dont have or want it
and whats probably truly scary for you is, FAITH might not even exist.
You would much rather believe "people are incapable of understand FAITH rather than entertain thought.....Maybe YOU dont have FAITH and instead are using Confidence based on evidence"
again I'm not sure you can think of a single other thing in life you use BLIND FAITH for other than The Invisible Creator of the universe that lives outside of place and time and has no way to be detected in reality....
again another example would be, have you ever flown on a plane?
do you have FAITH The Pilot is going to fly you there safe? I mean you've never met him? you have to have FAITH to fly right?
WRONG.....You have confidence in The Pilot you've never met, because You have facts and evidence, You know in order to be a pilot you have to go through years of training, you know you are flying in a Major Airplane manufacturer that has protocols and procedure , you know its a law that there are 2 Pilots in the cockpit, so If one Pilot has a medical problem, there are procedures for safety.....all this data and evidence give YOU CONFIDENCE The Pilot you've never met is going to fly you there safely....
you dont take in ON BLIND FAITH The Pilot is going to fly you there safely.....you dont have FAITH at all, you have confidence based on evidence
99.9 % of every decision you have ever made in your life is NOT based on FAITH....Its instead Confidence based on evidence and facts.....honestly The LONE exception is GOD/Religion...
you take Nothing else in life on Blind FAITH!
Again, all you did with that blather was prove to me just how blind and deaf you are. So perhaps I can explain true faith to you in a way your materialistic understanding will appreciate. No guarantees you will understand it, however.
I've heard this sales pitch many times. Better babblers than you have tried to sell me these beautiful houses on the beach, and yet I have refused you every time. Can it be that you resent the fact that I was given the sturdy house upon the great rock overlooking the beach for free? The one you are too blind to see? The one that has never faltered and has weathered every storm, no matter how terrible and violent? The one I have been able to find refuge in and never had to pay a terrible price to live in, because a kind and honest man died in the process of building that home, because he loved me, my family, and my friends more than he loved himself?
We'd let you come in too, but you refuse to acknowledge our house and the great rock it sits upon exists. You refuse to do what it takes to climb up here, because you have had evil whisper in your ears that the rock is a lie, that it doesn't exist because you can't see it, and that those who live upon it are delusional. You continue to sell those terrible, rickety, shaky houses on the sand, because you love the pleasures the money you swindle from your customers will bring you in the here and now. You don't care what comes when the here and now is over. You don't care what will happen when the next storm comes in. You don't care that your boss is laughing at you for unwittingly following his plan, which was never to provide homes for the people on the beach at all, but to murder them. He is delighted that you gleefully set others up to die every time a storm comes in and flattens those homes, and resent anyone who tells you the truth of such things, because you are too much of a coward to face it yourself.
The houses you sell may look pretty on the outside. They may appear solid, reliable, and have easy access to the pleasures of the beach. But inside, the wood is rotting from termites and mold, the glass has become pitted from sand and salt in the air, the lead pipes are leaking poison into the water, the electricity is faulty, the gas is a fire hazard, and the roof is weak in various spots.
You get angry every time someone like me points out the unreliability of these homes on the sand, and yet refuse to do anything to fix that. You don't think of the lives that are lost because of your aiding and abetting the enemy for profit. You don't want to take any responsibility for it and face the truth. And you especially don't like hearing about my Father who built our home on the rock up above.
You will continue to keep this up, just to prove you're "right" in all of this, until the day that your home is washed away on the sand, while we're still up on the rock, still here, still alive, and wishing you hadn't been such a fool.
Neither the Jews nor the Romans would have believed it. The Jewish Sanhedrin certainly wouldn't admit it; they had just maneuvered his execution. Admitting he had come back to life would topple them from power. They wouldn't be writing anything down.
The Romans simply would not believe anything happened. Its unlikely they would notate a barbarian superstition.
Also, keep in mind that while we know the Romans were excellent record keepers, we only have a fraction, a tiny fraction, of their records. The ones we have indicate how fanatical they were, but that doesn't mean we have many of the records.
Paul also mentions in his letters that there were hundreds of witnesses, most of whom were alive while Paul was writing.
Paul also mentions in his letters that there were hundreds of witnesses, most of whom were alive while Paul was writing.
Corinthians 15: 3-8
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve. After that he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
As is so often the case the referenced Bible passage raises more questions than it answers. Who were the "more than five hundred" brothers and sisters ? When and where did the resurrected Jesus appear to them, at a market ? Or were they advised to gather together for the occasion ? And most importantly where are the eyewitness accounts ? Don't tell me, they're in the Gospels !
Ah, so you wanted Paul to leave a detailed list of names, date and addresses. Why do you need to know who the specific people were? I doubt it was common anytime to list the members of a crowd in any detail for any event, political, religious or otherwise.
shareWow, you're a real comedian. You should turn professional.
Never been accused of that. I'm just perplexed that you apparently want details from 2000 odd years agao that couldn't be produced for any recent political rally with all our modern equipment and ubiquitous cameras.
shareAnd disingenuous on top of it. Did I ask for names and addresses ?
You asked "who were the "more than five hundred" brothers and sisters ? When and where did the resurrected Jesus appear to them, at a market ? Or were they advised to gather together for the occasion ? And most importantly where are the eyewitness accounts ?"
So yes, you were asking for their names and, metaphorically, their addresses. You wanted to know when and where. You wanted to know where the accounts were.
Most of those people were likely illiterate. There are eye witness accounts; the gospel authors. (Yes, I'm quite well aware of the belief they were written much later. I think its highly likely they were passed down to what historians believe are the "authors." No, I don't intend to debate it with you.) Paul was of that generation and he believed; and he didn't come to that belief easily.
The facts are that we have very little documented, written evidence from anywhere that old. We know there was a lot written from what we do have. But papyrus and other mediums written upon do not hold up well over that expanse of time. What we do have are fragments, which relates back to the OP's original statement.
Costumer, it has always puzzled me that an event of such magnitude as a man resuscitating himself after having been deceased for 72 hours was recorded on such perishable material as papyrus. If it was really orchestrated by an omnipotent god, surely he would have taken steps to ensure that the description of the event would not be lost. After all, he knew humanity was going to still be around at least 2000 years after the event, (depending upon his mood swings), and he would know that writing materials were not long-lasting. Does this ever give you pause?
shareNot in the slightest. You are applying human logic to God. He's not going to come down and inscribe the Gospels onto stone tablets or the wall of the Temple or the Imperial Senate. He reveals Himself and allows people to write and record as they will. This is all part of Free Will. You can believer or not. He wants that to be our choice.
I'm sure that won't satisfy you. It hasn't satisfied many. But these are all old objections. I have never seen a new or original argument against God.
But logic isn't something a rational entity can choose to use or not. It's simply another word for truthful thinking.
I've never seen an original argument for God. In fact I've never seen any kind of argument for God. People who want to convince you of God's existence simply settle for saying, "Have faith and just believe". That's quite the opposite of argument. It's much like a parent saying to a child, "Just do it because I say so".
So you're still insisting that I asked for names and addresses but this time you say that I did it "metaphorically". You are not a person to be taken seriously but all the same.
Paul was said to be born in 5AD so he lived at the same time as Jesus although not in the same place. He also was in contact with James the Just said to be the brother of Jesus, Cephas also known as Peter presumably the Apostle and John who were the leaders of the first Church in Jerusalem.
And yet Paul has next to nothing to say about the life of Jesus. This excerpt is from Bart Ehrman's blog where he talks about what Paul didn't say about Jesus:
We hear nothing here of the details of Jesus’ birth or parents or early life, nothing of his baptism or temptation in the wilderness, nothing of his teaching about the coming Kingdom of God; we have no indication that he ever told a parable, that he ever healed anyone, cast out a demon, or raised the dead; we learn nothing of his transfiguration or triumphal entry, nothing of his cleansing of the Temple, nothing of his interrogation by the Sanhedrin or trial before Pilate, nothing of his being rejected in favor of Barabbas, of his being mocked, of his being flogged, etc. etc. etc.
And these witnesses were willing to face death rather than retract their story.
shareWe don't even know who these witnesses were let alone what their story was. All we have is what Paul said and what the Gospels said. But I have to hand it to you for stating that these anonymous people who we know nothing about were facing the death penalty. Where did you get that piece of information ?
From a history book.
The Roman Empire's persecution of Christians, which included execution.
Oh boy. Firstly which history book ? Secondly at the time of Jesus there were no Christians, they were all Jews including Jesus. Rome's persecution of Christians didn't happen until well after the death of Jesus. For example the burning of Rome for which the Christians were supposedly blamed happened in 64AD a good thirty years after Jesus died.
We are lucky to have posters like you. Be innocent as doves, but wise as serpents. The cretinous posts in this section break my heart, but He is impervious to it, one of the myriad reasons why I love Him. Thank you for your contribution.
shareThe fundamentalist Christians like the fundamentalist Jews before them are their own worst enemies.
People always talk about how the Romans kept meticulous records as evidence that if Jesus existed, his deeds would have been found in the Romans' records. But they always fail to mention that the reason we know the Romans kept great records is because of the KINDS of artifacts we find: tiny fragments of receipts documenting things like the number of wine sacks delivered from one place to another or letters about the minutiae of interpersonal contracts. We don't have some great library of Roman birth and death certificates from the time of Jesus Christ, of which his and only his is missing. Another thing people fail to mention when complaining about the lack of document evidence for Christ, is the seige of Jerusalem in 70CE, at the end of which much of Jerusalem was burned to the ground. Any historical records would likely have been destroyed by the fire.
shareAll the same it is remarkable that apart from a few very brief and doubtful mentions of Jesus such as in Josephus and Tacitus we have nothing else. Here is a guy working gob smacking miracles that left everyone amazed and no-one records it at the time ?
And why didn't Josephus mention Paul ? And what happened to the records of the first "church" in Jerusalem ? We have nothing at all from James the brother of Jesus or from Peter. Why didn't Paul ask James about Jesus' life and record what he said ?
There should be much, much more in the way of written records than there is and the absence of it raises questions.
I don't think it's at all surprising. We think of people in the past as being very gullible, but surely they understood that rising from the dead doesn't happen every day. If some random guy on the street came up to me and told me his friend rose from the dead, come let me show you the empty tomb, I would back away slowly and think of some very urgent appointment I absolutely must get to, on the other side of town. Then I find out his friend is some guy who got executed for sedition. I wouldn't go around telling people about it because they might think I was crazy too, or they might report me to the authorities; nor would I write it down, for the same reason. That is why the witness of people like Mary Magdalene was important: they were trusted by the apostles.
If you haven't already done so, it's worth reading about what was going on in Israel around the time of Jesus and up to the seige of Jerusalem. The Romans were not very nice to the Jews and there was quite a bit of political instability. I doubt the early Christians were paying attention to accumulating historical artifacts. They had other problems to worry about. And then of course Jerusalem burned down, including the Temple (which was a religious disaster for the Jews) and everyone fled.
I think you are actually misunderstanding something quite fundamental about Christianity, which is that the evidence is not in the artifacts. The evidence is in the people, particularly in the apostolic succession, but also in people's faith itself. If the planet Earth were demolished by Vogons in order to create an intergalactic bypass, obliterating all evidence of the place where Christ lived and died, then even so, as long as there were Christians living on some other planet, Christianity could go on.
I don't think it's at all surprising.
You wouldn't.
NASA told me so. I believe everything NASA says.
shareI am a Christian and I know the hardcore athiests in this topic will disagree with me but here are my points of why I believe in the ressurection as told in the Gospels of the New Testament.
1. The women being the ones who found the empty tomb first. Women were not respected at the time of Jesus and if the gospels were made up by the writers at that time, the male disciples would have found the empty tomb first. But the fact that the writers said the women found it first tells me it's true because of historical context.
2. The Disciples running away in fear after Jesus is arrested. If it is made up by the disciples why would the disciples who wrote the Gospels write themselves and their friends as cowards who ran away after Jesus was arrested? Why not have them all wait in the courtyard bravely and actually have the courage to watch Jesus' crucifiction? If you were making up a false story about yourself would you write yourself as a coward?
3. And this goes along with number 2. Why write that the Disciples as having locked themselves up in a house to avoid Roman and Jewish authorities before Mary Magdeline and Jesus' mother Mary come to tell them about the empty tomb if it's all just made up?
Also with how scared the disciples were of getting killed by Jewish and Roman authorities during Jesus' arrest, trial, and crucifiction, there is no way they would have just made up a story that would get them killed at a time like that. As far as I am concerned if Jesus did not raise from the dead, all the disciples would have just gone back to living like they did before they met Jesus. There would be no Christianity.
4. The linen sheets Jesus' body is wrapped in still being in the tomb and not only that being neatley folded. I do not think if it was made up they would have thought to say they were folded. Also if someone stole the body they would have kept his body in the sheets. By the way American Girl, I like your 2nd post here.
But this contradicts the Quran which says that Christ didn't not get crucified/ressurect.
shareBut this contradicts the Quran which says that Christ didn't not get crucified/ressurect.
How can Christians not believe it?
shareFor the same reasons some people believe that Disney is frozen somewhere in a lab and Elvis is still out there too. Some people just never die!
share