Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby slacker » Sun Sep 24, 2017 10:31 am

So I am looking over my latest post and I guess I am worried it might look like an attack on Tsunami. I was feeling the pressure to get something up since I didn't post yesterday and I had the kids crawling over me so I was a little bit rushed. It's not meant as an attack and I sincerely apologize if it comes across that way.
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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby Coogan Football » Sun Sep 24, 2017 11:00 am

The older I get the more I believe that religion (and the fighting/wars that has been a result of) is just stupid.

I believe in a "creator", but at the same time there is many, many scientific things that are prove true and factual and they contradict what the Bible says.
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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby slacker » Sun Sep 24, 2017 2:02 pm

Coogan Football wrote: Sun Sep 24, 2017 11:00 am The older I get the more I believe that religion (and the fighting/wars that has been a result of) is just stupid.

I believe in a "creator", but at the same time there is many, many scientific things that are prove true and factual and they contradict what the Bible says.
I hear ya Coog, but it's a mistake to put more faith in science than in God. Science can and does change all the time. I am turning 51 in a few months and remember almost every stage of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA
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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby Tsunami » Sun Sep 24, 2017 10:52 pm

slacker wrote: Sun Sep 24, 2017 2:02 pm
Coogan Football wrote: Sun Sep 24, 2017 11:00 am The older I get the more I believe that religion (and the fighting/wars that has been a result of) is just stupid.

I believe in a "creator", but at the same time there is many, many scientific things that are prove true and factual and they contradict what the Bible says.
I hear ya Coog, but it's a mistake to put more faith in science than in God. Science can and does change all the time. I am turning 51 in a few months and remember almost every stage of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA
Science can and does change all the time.. because new science proves older science wrong. Which means that yes, science is sometimes wrong, but also that science is getting better all the time. But how often has religion disproved science? When religion is proven wrong they either deny the proof or just write off that part of the religion.

It appears that I should have researched some of my claims more thoroughly. I'm not used to arguing with people who know what they are talking about; I will try not to make that mistake again.
slacker wrote: Sun Sep 24, 2017 8:43 amVirgin Birth - No where in Egyptology does it claim Horus was born of a virgin. As a matter of fact it claims just the opposite. That his mother used her god powers to temporarily resurrect his father from the dead so she could have sex with him and conceive Horus. She had to create a penis for him out of gold, but as the story is told, it was by no means a virgin birth.
Isis, the mother of Horus, was worshiped as the "great virgin" who gave birth to the sun 7 centuries before Christ. There is also Danae, who was locked up in a tower and impregnated by Zeus in the form of golden rain. Or Kunti, who was made pregnant by the god Surya while unmarried, which she put into a basket and sent down a river (sound familiar?). Nana, the mother of Attis, was impregnated by an almond. While these might not be exactly the same, it shows the idea was prevalent in multiple different cultures long before Jesus.

However, many of the other claims I read and repeated are hard to support from before Christianity might have influenced them. So I withdraw my argument that Jesus is just a copy of a previously existing story.

But I feel that my point still stands that the popularity of Christianity isn't proof of its accuracy. The stories of Muhammad and Buddha and basically all other religions could make a similar claim that something miraculous must have happened for it to catch on so well.
Josephus... was a Jew born in Jerusalem in AD 37 - 38, just a few years after the crucifixion. He was well positioned to know eyewitnesses of Jesus and the crucifixion as well as the doctrines of the early church... Josephus may not have written about Christianity til much later but his ability get an account from eyewitnesses was very real.
Saying that it is possible that they heard it from an eyewitness doesn't even raise your evidence to the level of hearsay, which itself is inadmissible as evidence in any court of law. Anything is possible, what makes you believe this particular claim over all the others?
So, I have mentined religious athiesm a number of times and I guess I should probably spell out what I mean by that. I spent almost a decade in Madison, WI and counted many athiests as friends, acquaintences, and co-workers. In talking with them I found the knee jerk reaction was to nit pick at any claim Christianity made but blindly belive any easily disprovable lie so long as it is pro athiest or anti Christian, such as Christ got a promotion at the council of Nicea, You can't trust the Bible, Swoon Theory, Etc. It finally dawned on me that the root of their athiesm was not intellectual, but emotional. Simply put, they were rooting to believe there is no God so they would blindly grasp on to any teaching that reinforced that belief no matter how dubious. In my admittedly subjective experience I found that about 90% of athiests were the religious kind and if you popped one myth, they just moved on the the next.
It's clever how you have placed the burden of proof on the atheists to provide evidence disproving something that is probably unfalsifiable. I agree that a lot of the arguments atheists make are flawed, and I may have just fallen for one of those myself. But us being sometimes wrong doesn't mean you are right. If I said Superman was just a copy of Horus, and you proved me wrong, it wouldn't follow that Superman was real. You are right that people tend to believe in evidence that supports what they already feel is true, but that can happen on both sides. To believe a story was taken from an earlier story isn't all that far a leap, whereas believing in miracles and gods that contradict established science should take quite a bit more convincing. It makes more sense to blindly reinforce disbelief than it does belief.

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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby jimmy jr. » Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:56 pm

Love this site.. i'm 57 not trying to start a fuss, been through a few things in my life , to reply to this thread though : Jesus Died & Rose From The Dead For US ALL , I would hate to be Near Death & Not Know Him As My Savior, Think on it Hard, & Read the NEW Testament, he also came to set the Temple System ( Church ) straight . Yeah Coog , I hear you, all those wars , some fought in the name of Religion, and the Powers That Be , & the Bankers, All things that Benefit THEM , also in this Country, They Keep Us Divided so THEY can RULE us all , if we could ever ALL come together , maybe just maybe , we could CHANGE Things for the GOOD of all of us, oh well its nice to Dream sometimes.
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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby Tsunami » Mon Sep 25, 2017 4:49 pm

jimmy jr. wrote: Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:56 pm Love this site.. i'm 57 not trying to start a fuss, been through a few things in my life , to reply to this thread though : Jesus Died & Rose From The Dead For US ALL , I would hate to be Near Death & Not Know Him As My Savior, Think on it Hard, & Read the NEW Testament, he also came to set the Temple System ( Church ) straight . Yeah Coog , I hear you, all those wars , some fought in the name of Religion, and the Powers That Be , & the Bankers, All things that Benefit THEM , also in this Country, They Keep Us Divided so THEY can RULE us all , if we could ever ALL come together , maybe just maybe , we could CHANGE Things for the GOOD of all of us, oh well its nice to Dream sometimes.
Persecution complex. The country is 80% Christian and yet somehow "they" are ruling and you want what's best for "all of us". Total nonsense of course. If the world is screwed up it's in a large part because of Christianity. Ask a Native American or a homosexual if they wanted your help. Ask a scientist. Christianity has been standing in the way of history for 16 centuries, and little has changed. Why protect the environment if God won't let us all die?

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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby lukkynumber13 » Mon Sep 25, 2017 6:32 pm

Tsunami wrote: Mon Sep 25, 2017 4:49 pm
jimmy jr. wrote: Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:56 pm Love this site.. i'm 57 not trying to start a fuss, been through a few things in my life , to reply to this thread though : Jesus Died & Rose From The Dead For US ALL , I would hate to be Near Death & Not Know Him As My Savior, Think on it Hard, & Read the NEW Testament, he also came to set the Temple System ( Church ) straight . Yeah Coog , I hear you, all those wars , some fought in the name of Religion, and the Powers That Be , & the Bankers, All things that Benefit THEM , also in this Country, They Keep Us Divided so THEY can RULE us all , if we could ever ALL come together , maybe just maybe , we could CHANGE Things for the GOOD of all of us, oh well its nice to Dream sometimes.
Persecution complex. The country is 80% Christian and yet somehow "they" are ruling and you want what's best for "all of us". Total nonsense of course. If the world is screwed up it's in a large part because of Christianity. Ask a Native American or a homosexual if they wanted your help. Ask a scientist. Christianity has been standing in the way of history for 16 centuries, and little has changed. Why protect the environment if God won't let us all die?
The country is not "80% Christian". Not even close.
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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby slacker » Mon Sep 25, 2017 7:21 pm

"But I feel that my point still stands that the popularity of Christianity isn't proof of its accuracy. The stories of Muhammad and Buddha and basically all other religions could make a similar claim that something miraculous must have happened for it to catch on so well."

- I have never argued that the popularity of Christianity is the proof of it's accuracy.

Josephus... was a Jew born in Jerusalem in AD 37 - 38, just a few years after the crucifixion. He was well positioned to know eyewitnesses of Jesus and the crucifixion as well as the doctrines of the early church... Josephus may not have written about Christianity til much later but his ability get an account from eyewitnesses was very real.

Saying that it is possible that they heard it from an eyewitness doesn't even raise your evidence to the level of hearsay, which itself is inadmissible as evidence in any court of law. Anything is possible, what makes you believe this particular claim over all the others?

- Let me escalate it. The early Christian church was headquartered in Jerusalem and was a decades long sore spot for the Jews. I think it unreasonable to believe that as a Pharisee Josephus did not verify the basic claims of Christianity, even from hostile witnesses 1) Jesus Christ existed. 2) Jesus Christ was crucified 3) The Christians claimed he was raised from the dead. 4) The Christians believed him to be God. .

It's clever how you have placed the burden of proof on the atheists to provide evidence disproving something that is probably unfalsifiable.

- I absolutely put the burden of proof on atheists. If Christianity were a fabrication there should be documents out there saying "This is what really happened". Christianity had plenty of enemies who would have been happy to dime them out if they were making it up. Josephus had a front row seat. Why didn't he write "There is a sect called Christianity that had a teacher named Jesus and over the years he evolved from a teacher to their God" You can't just reject a piece of history just because you don't like what that piece of history says.
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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby Tsunami » Tue Sep 26, 2017 1:15 pm

slacker wrote: Mon Sep 25, 2017 7:21 pm - I have never argued that the popularity of Christianity is the proof of it's accuracy.
You said the evidence for your belief is that "Something happened that caused the disciples to go from cowering in a room wondering if they would be the next crucified to guys who transformed the world." which is the same thing as saying it became miraculously popular.
Josephus... was a Jew born in Jerusalem in AD 37 - 38, just a few years after the crucifixion. He was well positioned to know eyewitnesses of Jesus and the crucifixion as well as the doctrines of the early church... Josephus may not have written about Christianity til much later but his ability get an account from eyewitnesses was very real.

- Let me escalate it. The early Christian church was headquartered in Jerusalem and was a decades long sore spot for the Jews. I think it unreasonable to believe that as a Pharisee Josephus did not verify the basic claims of Christianity, even from hostile witnesses 1) Jesus Christ existed. 2) Jesus Christ was crucified 3) The Christians claimed he was raised from the dead. 4) The Christians believed him to be God.

- I absolutely put the burden of proof on atheists. If Christianity were a fabrication there should be documents out there saying "This is what really happened". Christianity had plenty of enemies who would have been happy to dime them out if they were making it up. Josephus had a front row seat. Why didn't he write "There is a sect called Christianity that had a teacher named Jesus and over the years he evolved from a teacher to their God" You can't just reject a piece of history just because you don't like what that piece of history says.
So let me get this straight, if Jesus didn't do any miracles and thus was just a regular guy, then you would expect the eyewitnesses to the nothing that he did to have written down documents which survived 2000 years stating that he did nothing? That doesn't make any sense. If I tell you my grandfather met the first space aliens 60 years ago, is it true because nobody documented otherwise? No, it's more likely someone would have written it down if he indeed performed public miracles, but there are no contemporary accounts.

Your argument about Josephus assumes that the Christ myth is true. If someone performed miracles and rose from the dead it might be likely that Josephus would have heard about it. But if Jesus was just a regular guy then Josephus might never have heard of him until much later, which would explain why he wasn't mentioned in any of his early writings. He may have never met anyone who met Jesus, so he had no direct evidence that the myths were false if they were false, and he didn't seem particularly interested nor did he convert. And there is widespread belief by scholars that at least one of those references, the Testimonium Flavianum, was edited by 4th century Christians to support their teachings, if not written by them entirely. He may in fact have written that it didn't really happen, but his original words didn't survive.

Neither did the original words of the New Testament, by the way. Strange how the Muslims can keep the Koran exactly the same over the centuries, but every single early Greek text of the New Testament is different.
lukkynumber13 wrote: Mon Sep 25, 2017 6:32 pmThe country is not "80% Christian". Not even close.
It is 75% in 2015, 78.4% in 2001, 86% in 1990. Guess my numbers were slightly out of date.

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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby slacker » Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:55 pm

So let me get this straight, if Jesus didn't do any miracles and thus was just a regular guy, then you would expect the eyewitnesses to the nothing that he did to have written down documents which survived 2000 years stating that he did nothing?
- No. My argument is if Christ did no miracles and the early Christians were running around claiming he did, I would expect eyewitnesses to say "The Christians are making up stories about Christ that did not happen."

Your argument about Josephus assumes that the Christ myth is true. If someone performed miracles and rose from the dead it might be likely that Josephus would have heard about it. But if Jesus was just a regular guy then Josephus might never have heard of him until much later, which would explain why he wasn't mentioned in any of his early writings. He may have never met anyone who met Jesus, so he had no direct evidence that the myths were false if they were false, and he didn't seem particularly interested nor did he convert. And there is widespread belief by scholars that at least one of those references, the Testimonium Flavianum, was edited by 4th century Christians to support their teachings, if not written by them entirely. He may in fact have written that it didn't really happen, but his original words didn't survive.

- Here is an account of Josephus describing how Annas lost his position as high preist. To the best of my knowledge this passage has never been in dispute.

"Being therefore this kind of person [i.e., a heartless Sadducee], Ananus, thinking that he had a favorable opportunity because Festus had died and Albinus was still on his way, called a meeting [literally, “sanhedrin”] of judges and brought into it the brother of Jesus-who-is-called-Messiah … James by name, and some others. He made the accusation that they had transgressed the law, and he handed them over to be stoned"

James is just incidental to the story, but Josephus feels the need to identify him. Normally the father's name would be used to identify him (James the son of Joseph) but James, Joseph, and even Jesus were common names so he identifies him as the brother of Jesus who is called Messiah. James died about 62 AD which was about 30 years after the crucifixion. From this story we can conclude a few things. 1) Jesus existed as a person. 2) Jesus was thought of as Messiah very early on in the Christian church. If the Christians had just started calling him Messiah in AD 62 then no one would have known who Josephus was talking about. Jesus had to be thought of as the Messiah well before then.

but every single early Greek text of the New Testament is different.

- NT Documents agree in 99.5% of the texts
- Of that .5% that disagrees 75% are spelling issues, 24% are insignificant variants - word order is switched such as referring to Him as Christ Jesus when the rest of the ancient texts say Jesus Christ, 1% is of interest but impact nothing theologically, such as the end of the Gospel of Mark, where if it didn't exist nothing would be changed theologically because what is recorded there is found elsewhere. Modern Bibles contain footnotes noting that these passages do not show up in all of the ancient texts

Strange how the Muslims can keep the Koran exactly the same over the centuries.

-There were multiple versions of the Koran in existence. The caliph Uthman published his own version of the Koran and ordered all other versions burned. There is significant evidence that the version we have today differs from the original.

You are going about this the wrong way. You seem to be rejecting the Bible because it has miracles, but the sciences of archeology and textual criticism do it the opposite way. The starting point for verifying whether or not a text is valid is investigating the things that can be checked out. If the things that can be checked out are valid, then it gives credibility to the things that can't be checked out.

If a text is ambiguous it is also given less credibility, like the guy lying to the cops who is intentionally vague in the hopes his story can't be broken. The Bible is very detailed and every verse is given intense scrutiny.

For example John 5:2 states "Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades." For years skeptics listed this as one of the reasons the Bible wasn't believable because the ancient world was in love with even numbers. Four or six colonnades would have been reasonable to believe but not five. Archeologists discover the pool of Bethesda and it has 5 colonnades just like the Bible says.

Another example is Luke 2:1-2 "2 Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all [a]the inhabited earth. 2 This was the first census taken while [c]Quirinius was governor of Syria." Skeptics claimed it was ridiculous that Joseph and Mary would have been made to travel to his ancestral home to register for the census, but today some of those census documents have been recovered and they make it clear that the emperor required them to return to their ancestral home land.

These are just two examples of the thousands upon thousands of ways the science of archeology has confirmed the minutia of the New Testament. Are there things that don't pan out? Yep, but they pale in comparison to the things that do. And there are quite a few things that didn't pan out initially but later did.

The things that can be investigated in the New Testament have proven to be extremely reliable,

The flip side of this is if you ambiguously claim "something else happened" then the onus is on you to account for all the science that confirms all the small things that add up to a big thing.
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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby Tsunami » Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:14 pm

slacker wrote: Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:55 pm
So let me get this straight, if Jesus didn't do any miracles and thus was just a regular guy, then you would expect the eyewitnesses to the nothing that he did to have written down documents which survived 2000 years stating that he did nothing?
- No. My argument is if Christ did no miracles and the early Christians were running around claiming he did, I would expect eyewitnesses to say "The Christians are making up stories about Christ that did not happen."
Josephus didn't write this until around 93 AD. There's no evidence that these claims were being made until decades after Jesus' death, and even then he remained an insignificant figure for some time. So it's not surprising there is no record against these events. I think if an actual miracle happened it would be far more likely that there would be supporting evidence than contradicting evidence, and there is none of that either.

How do you have an eyewitness to say Jesus didn't resurrect? The best anyone could say was "I didn't see him" which proves nothing. The claims are unfalsifiable now and they were unfalsifiable then. You are expecting some kind of 1st century Snopes who debunks myths, but fact checkers didn't exist then. These were people who believed in witchcraft and superstition and gods like Zeus regularly, and they had the excuse of not knowing any other explanation, so it's asking a lot for them to be debunking something from decades earlier. You have no such excuse yet you still believe in these dubious miracles.
You are going about this the wrong way. You seem to be rejecting the Bible because it has miracles, but the sciences of archeology and textual criticism do it the opposite way. The starting point for verifying whether or not a text is valid is investigating the things that can be checked out. If the things that can be checked out are valid, then it gives credibility to the things that can't be checked out.
Umm no. Try applying what you just said to the movie Forrest Gump; the existence of accurate historical references might speak to the authenticity of a document's age, but aren't proof of its accuracy. A single uncorroborated reference in a history text which proves otherwise accurate might be more likely true than not, but not with a high level of certainty. And Miracles in particular should be rejected because there is evidence to the contrary -- they conflict with everything we know about the physical world which we do have evidence for. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence because they contradict other evidence.

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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby slacker » Thu Sep 28, 2017 8:58 am

Umm no. Try applying what you just said to the movie Forrest Gump; the existence of accurate historical references might speak to the authenticity of a document's age, but aren't proof of its accuracy.

- Umm, Yes. This is the way the science of archeology works. For you Forrest Gump analogy to be correct you would have to claim the the writers of the NT got together and conspired to write something where the minutia was amazingly correct but the main story was a fabrication, for which most of them were executed without recanting Even I don't have that much faith. If the NT isn't true then the entire science of archeology is false and we can know nothing of history, because any time someone does not like that history they will just use the "Forrest Gump" argument.
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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby Tsunami » Thu Sep 28, 2017 3:28 pm

slacker wrote: Thu Sep 28, 2017 8:58 am Umm no. Try applying what you just said to the movie Forrest Gump; the existence of accurate historical references might speak to the authenticity of a document's age, but aren't proof of its accuracy.

- Umm, Yes. This is the way the science of archeology works. For you Forrest Gump analogy to be correct you would have to claim the the writers of the NT got together and conspired to write something where the minutia was amazingly correct but the main story was a fabrication, for which most of them were executed without recanting Even I don't have that much faith. If the NT isn't true then the entire science of archeology is false and we can know nothing of history, because any time someone does not like that history they will just use the "Forrest Gump" argument.
Or a third possibility is that you're not understanding the entire concept of archaeology.

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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby slacker » Fri Sep 29, 2017 7:40 am

[/quote]

Or a third possibility is that you're not understanding the entire concept of archaeology.

[/quote]

...says the guy who put forth the "Forrest Gump" theory of Archeology. I suppose I should clarify my position though. I don't believe that proves it in the sense that it's iron clad, but I believe it proves it to the point where it is irrational to believe anything else. If you claim that it didn't happen you are still stuck with having to argue that the NT writers collaborated to write a series of books where the peripherals of the story are amazingly accurate but the main point is a fabrication, for which most of them were executed without recanting. If this is not an accurate summary of your position, then tell me what your position is. I think it takes way more faith to believe in that than to just believe they were telling the truth.
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Re: Did Jesus Christ die and rise rom the dead?

Postby Tsunami » Fri Sep 29, 2017 12:25 pm

slacker wrote: Fri Sep 29, 2017 7:40 am...says the guy who put forth the "Forrest Gump" theory of Archeology. I suppose I should clarify my position though. I don't believe that proves it in the sense that it's iron clad, but I believe it proves it to the point where it is irrational to believe anything else. If you claim that it didn't happen you are still stuck with having to argue that the NT writers collaborated to write a series of books where the peripherals of the story are amazingly accurate but the main point is a fabrication, for which most of them were executed without recanting. If this is not an accurate summary of your position, then tell me what your position is. I think it takes way more faith to believe in that than to just believe they were telling the truth.
It's not irrational to believe that the gospels were written by people who had geographic and historical knowledge of the area, but no first-hand knowledge of the supposed miracles. It's not irrational to believe that the gospels weren't written by the apostles themselves, or that we don't know who the actual gospel writers were or how they died. It's not irrational to think that the apostles might not have been real people, or that they might not have died in martyrdom without recanting, as there is no evidence for any of this except maybe that Paul mentions a couple of them by name.

But even if all of these previous things were true despite the lack of evidence, it still isn't irrational to think they might have some motive for their actions other than witnessing an actual miracle. People today sacrifice themselves for their faith without actually witnessing any miracles. People are fooled by cults and con artists and Slender Man all the time, this doesn't prove anything other than the gullible and superstitious nature of our species. This was especially true in the 1st century.

It's not irrational to think that science provides an accurate and well-established explanation of the laws of physics that is supported by evidence. It's not irrational to think that any belief that conflicts with science is unlikely to be true unless it has evidence on an equal scale. It's not irrational to think that the Biblical account without any corroborating evidence falls short.


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