Atheists: would proof of the resurrection matter to you?

[Bob Kelso]

Let's assume that somehow it was proved beyond reasonable doubt that there was a real, single historical person who Jesus was loosely based on, and that he really did come back to life after being dead for 3 days. What difference would this make to you, other than learning such a thing is possible?

To me it would make no difference.

Whoops typo in the poll question. How do I change it?

On a personal level? No. It would raise some great scientific inquiries I'm sure but not personal ones. Why the hell would it matter to me if some 2000+ year old Jew rose from the grave?

[robvalue]

Thanks for the replies everyone

I'm interested to hear how some people would think it goes some way towards making "Christianity true". I wonder, what does this mean exactly, to those who may think that? That Jesus was God? That everything in the bible happened? I'm not quite sure what is being proposed. I may completely misunderstand

Personally, this all seems like a non sequitur. He came back to life in a way we can't yet explain. Why does this mean we should consider to be true anything else he said? (I call this the "wow fallacy"). Clearly if it happened, it isn't impossible. It would just raise questions about our scientific understanding. Assuming this was properly proven (this is pretty much an impossible scenario, it's just a thought experiment) it may raise questions about whether he was actually human as we know it, I suppose. But to leap to god seems unjustified to say the least!

You could say that it goes one step further towards showing Christianity isn't completely false, but that's not the same as proving that it's true. To be fair, you could call this proof of Christianity insane claim #1 I suppose, the most mundane claim in fact of the religion! It's more of a pre requisite than actually important. If he's just an alien or whatever fucking with us, big whoop!?

Like I said, this is all purely hypothetical. I don't mean to ruffle feathers about it This is almost certainly never going to be proven, even if it did somehow happen. Feel free to ignore me if you think I'm being a nob.

Personally, even if Christianity was true, whatever that may mean, it still would make absolutely zero different to how I live my life (except in the interests of scientific enquiry).

[ignoramus]

Starvald Demelain


On a personal level? No. It would raise some great scientific inquiries I'm sure but not personal ones. Why the hell would it matter to me if some 2000+ year old Jew rose from the grave?

It won't. Unless you've been jerkin the gerkin!

[robvalue]

Let's take it a step further, forget Jesus for the minute.

Say a guy made the following claim, "You can't kill me. I'll come back to life no matter what, because [reason X]"

X could be "I am God" or "I'm a super powered alien" or "your reality isn't true", or anything at all.

We put him to the test, and he is correct. We shoot him, slice him into pieces, fire the pieces across the earth... We do everything we can to try and kill him. But every time, as we watch, he reforms. He sucks himself back together and he's alive. It's repeatable, and everyone can see it.

Now. What does this tell us about his reason X? Does it mean:

(A) It is definitely true, his demonstration is sufficient

Or

(B) It is something worth investigating, and may be true if we can gather sufficient evidence for that particular reason

This is what I call the "wow fallacy". If we take position A, then we are in the position where we believe anything and everything, just because he says it. I suppose it's a version of the appeal to authority fallacy. Of course, he may himself be able to provide further evidence for his reason X. But that's not the same as taking his cool tricks to be evidence.

[ignoramus]

All he claimed is we can't kill him.
He didn't qualify that with other crap like If you don't worship me, you'll rot in hell.

And we tried to kill him and we couldn't.
What's the issue? He made a claim to be true and we proved him correct.

[robvalue]

He claimed we can't kill him because of a reason. I'm asking if we should believe the reason. If he says he's god, she we accept that as true? If he says it's because we're not in the "real reality", should we accept that as true?

Sure, he's proved beyond reasonable doubt we can't kill him.

[Cato]

Say a guy made the following claim, "You can't kill me. I'll come back to life no matter what, because [reason X]"

Highlander was also fiction.

Seriously though, these claims should be tested to assess whether the guy's immortality is true and the reason for it.

[loganonekenobi]

This is what the Christians base their legitimacacy on. buddha did not come back from the dead and nothing like that happened from the jewish or muslum prophits. I believe they were all living when they were taken to heaven or something like that.

All other faiths would have to cease as they could no longer compete with that (hypothetical) reality and every one would turn to Christianity for their salvation from death.

However true to the word of many of these fine upstanding atheists, God as a character would then be God as a real being but would he be what the average person thinks of as a kind loving deity or would he be jealous and vengfull as he is in the old testements.

If he were to be a tyrant then I too would fight,die and, gladly go to this hell because, sadly, my moral standards as a mere human are higher than the God of the Bible.

[robvalue]

Cato: For sure.

I wonder, how could we go about investigating that the guy in front of us "is God"?

Start by asking him to define what that means, I suppose.

[ignoramus]

Being the persistent little bastards that we humans are, we don't like being told what to do by anybody.
If this dude could prove that we wouldn't stand a chance of survival unless we succumb to him, (like in a marvel movie), we'd have no choice.
If this happened, I'd ring 1800skynet!