Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[Randy Carson]

Ooooooh yes, you do. Maybe not you personally, but you atheists, in general.

You want to be able to simply write Jesus off as a legend, a figment of someone's imagination, a conspiracy of delusional fools because that is the easiest way to respond to Jesus.

Otherwise, you have to think.

Come on, bro. We don't have to be able to write Jesus off as fictional to write the gospels off as myths. They're full of magical bullshit.


Let's try your line of argument with another historical character whose historicity itself does not cloud the debate: Abraham Lincoln.


Now, nobody with any sense will try to debate the historicity of Lincoln. There are plenty of documents and photographs to lead us to reasonably assume that he was a real person.


What most people don't know, however, is that he was a vampire hunter. You see, there's this book, and in that book we get a different picture of Civil War history. In this book, Abraham Lincoln hunts vampires.


The book contains references to various characters, events, and places that historians can agree are definitely real, so the events of this book must also be real.


Some people may try to argue that vampires do not exist. Well, let me ask you this: if vampires don't exist, why would Abraham Lincoln have been hunting them? Besides, you can't prove vampires don't exist. There's even some evidence that they do: many people openly claim to be vampires, and certain corpses have been observed to regrow hair and fingernails after death.


Some might claim that people who say they are vampires are really just humans, and that a medical exam will prove this. The truth is that vampires have magic powers and use them to seem human for medical purposes. They do this to create doubt. They're willing to tell us that they're vampires, but they also know that if humans could medically prove the existence of vampires, they would simply kill them all out of fear. Instead, they only choose to truly reveal themselves to humans who choose to believe in them without any evidence.


Some scientists (and people who blindly follow them) might claim that hair and nails don't grow after death. The scientists who claim that are obviously vampires themselves who are spreading doubt for the aforementioned reasons.


Now, this story is being touted as fiction by many people, including the author of the book. He claims to have made it up, but the truth is that his writings are based on historical documents that have been destroyed by the vampires since the modern version of the story was written. They destroyed this evidence because they knew that if humans found it and connected it to the book, they would know for sure that the story was true and vampires are real, causing the aforementioned problems of fear-fueled genocide. The author refuses to admit the story is real for fear of getting murdered by vampires, or possibly because he himself has been turned into a vampire by now.


I KNOW these things to be true because as I was reading the story, I realized it was true and accepted that into my heart. I already kind of believed in vampires anyway, so it wasn't that hard. When the vampires sensed that I had truly accepted their existence on faith, they knew it wasn't dangerous to approach me. It was at that time that they reached out to me with vampiric telepathy, sharing with me all of the information I just shared with you. They have given me permission to share this because they have seen with their magic that nobody of consequence will believe me.


Even though I have never seen a vampire in its true form, nor have I seen the documents I've mentioned, I still believe the things these vampires told me. In my head. With their magic powers. You can't really disprove anything I'm saying, so you believe me...right?

[Randy Carson]

Now, quit using this aforementioned nebulous academy of scholars as justification of anything. They clearly aren't what you've made them out to be. It's just a fatuous canard tossed out in a dishonest attempt to shelter your baseless assertions from criticism. These scholars of yours are nothing more than intellectually dishonest vermin circle jerking themselves in a petri dish of delusional shit.

Does that include Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who is author of more than twenty books including the New York Times bestselling Misquoting Jesus; God's Problem; Jesus, Interupted, and Forged?

He's an "intellectually dishonest vermin", etc?

I posted his thoughts already, but in case you missed them, here's a handy link:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-34162-po...#pid988184


You're actually on my ignore list, but I was curious to see what you were ranting about this time. Nothing of value, I see.

[Cato]

Does that include Bart Ehrman,?

Last I checked Ehrman wasn't Christian, so no. Again you seem to be having a difficult time with facts and basic logic. You obviously missed the point. The 'scholars' in general as justification for your bullshit is meaningless. This is not claiming that all scholars are biased, but that the bias pervades the academy. How fucking obtuse can you be?

You're actually on my ignore list,...

What the fuck do I care? I'm likely a member of that esteemed group of people precisely because I have no problem demonstrating how disingenuous you are and have no compunction about shoving your bullshit back where it came from. You dismiss without consideration any contribution that doesn't already agree with your foregone conclusions so my replies to you aren't for your consideration anyway.

Keep posting your crap and I'll keep making sure its exposed.

but I was curious to see what you were ranting about this time. Nothing of value, I see.

That's right, no need to tarnish your perfect record of willful ignorance. Those quotes are from biblical scholars. You know, the same group you keep using to justify your ignorant secretions. You're talking out of both sides of your mouth. From one we constantly hear scholars, scholars, scholars. From the other we now have they add 'nothing of value'. Dolt.

[rexbeccarox]

You didn't attempt to answer the question at all. You just used semantics to move the goalposts.

Then he plays definition lawyer with the word "dodging." That's kind of funny.

if you're saying that ndes are the way god reveals himself now, how does that not violate our free will?

And btw, a propos the head spinning thing.....didn't you say that creating us unable to sin would violate our free will? How is creating us unable to spin our heads any different?

God created us as finite beings.

If we assume that any and every limitation that we experience is a violation of our free will, then we arrive at the conclusion that because God did not create us as infinite, limitless beings, he has somehow violated our free will. IOW, he would have had to create us AS GODS like himself.

But God is not created and has no beginning. So, even if He created us as "gods", the fact that we were not uncreated beings would be argued as a violation of our free will because we would will to be uncreated and without origin.

I'm sure that philosophers could reason their way out of this far better than I can, but the problem is not with my answer but with a logical contradiction within the question.

So we don't have free will.

[Randy Carson]

So we don't have free will.

As it is properly defined and understood, yes, we have free will.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
SECOND EDITION

PART THREE
LIFE IN CHRIST
SECTION ONE
MAN'S VOCATION LIFE IN THE SPIRIT

CHAPTER ONE
THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

ARTICLE 3
MAN'S FREEDOM

1730 God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be 'left in the hand of his own counsel,' so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him."

Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.

+++

You can read that whole section of the Catechism here.

[rexbeccarox]

I can't "initiate or control [my] own actions" because I can't swivel my head 360 degrees.

Edit: Post #666

[Randy Carson]

I can't "initiate or control [my] own actions" because I can't swivel my head 360 degrees.

Correct. Consequently, you have no free will.

In fact, you couldn't choose to believe in God if you wanted to. John Calvin taught that some are simply predestined to hell.

Tough luck, becca. Wish I could help, but it's out of my hands.

[rexbeccarox]

I can't "initiate or control [my] own actions" because I can't swivel my head 360 degrees.

Correct. Consequently, you have no free will.

In fact, you couldn't choose to believe in God if you wanted to. John Calvin taught that some are simply predestined to hell.

Tough luck, becca. Wish I could help, but it's out of my hands.

Can you spin your head 360 degrees? You don't have free will either if you can't.

How do you know I'm predestined for hell? Did your god tell you that?

You are a vile little creature, Randy.

[IATIA]

I can't "initiate or control [my] own actions" because I can't swivel my head 360 degrees.

Correct. Consequently, you have no free will.

In fact, you couldn't choose to believe in God if you wanted to. John Calvin taught that some are simply predestined to hell.

Tough luck, becca. Wish I could help, but it's out of my hands.

Which relates to one of my threads, why create a person destined for hell in the first place?

[Cato]

John Calvin taught that some are simply predestined to hell.

Five minutes ago Randy was Catholic. What the fuck happened?