RE: Confessions of a former Christian fundamentalist.
December 26, 2015 at 7:57 am
(This post was last modified: December 26, 2015 at 7:58 am by Jehanne.)
(December 26, 2015 at 6:10 am)Delicate Wrote: So while I admire your attempt I think your account is quite weak due to the issues raised.
While I think one might be rational in not believing, if we concede there is no a priori impossibility of miracles established, believing in the resurrection given God's existence seems not terribly problematic one the anti miracle bias if dealt with.
One could make the same claim regarding the so-called Miracle of Calanda:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Calanda
With this supposed "miracle", we have "people, places, and things," and with respect to the latter category, documentation. And, yet, few, if any, Christian evangelicals are believers. Belief in Jesus' bodily resurrection is predicated upon a whole host of assumptions (historical reliability of the Gospels & Epistles, their unembellished transmission down through the centuries, etc.) With such a "standard", one might as well believe the 1500 or so individuals who've claimed to have been abducted by aliens, psychic readers, or those who've claimed to have had direct experiences with the so-called paranormal. If we can say anything about the so-called "resurrection" of Jesus, it is that it is not unique. Now, ask yourself, do you believe in this:
Quote:The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many. (Matthew 27:52-53)
So, not only did Jesus supposedly rise from the dead, others did as well! We are talking not about one resurrection here but "many", and yet, no one, other than the "believers" noticed any of this. Life went on in the Roman Empire as before, and the reaction of the Empire was not terribly significant, was it? (In fact, there was no reaction of the Roman authorities.) Of course, many of those 1st-century Christians believed that the World was flat, and that was the World in which they lived in. Only later on, as more intellectually-minded individuals began to embrace Christianity, did the idea of a spherical Earth enter into Christian theology and doctrine.