(September 15, 2019 at 6:24 am)Grandizer Wrote: I think the belief in a risen Jesus is better explained by potential naturalistic explanations than by a potential supernatural one, and you don't even need to argue the Gospels are complete myths to come up with a naturalistic explanation that's more compelling than a miracle case. One example: Joseph of Arimathea ended up moving Jesus' body to a private place during the night, in the hope that it would make things easier for the Messiah to come back to life and fulfill the expectations that he was supposed to meet. When that didn't happen, Jesus' body nevertheless stayed there and was never moved back to the original tomb. Joseph also decided not to let anyone know about this, so when rumors spread that Jesus had risen, he chose not to say anything about it.
Or it may be he decided to lie to the other disciples and have them believe Jesus rose from the dead (he or one of his men could have been the "angel" in the empty tomb when the women came to visit Jesus' body). Perhaps to spark some strong faith-based rebellion against the Romans.
Too many necessary information withheld from us so that one cannot really make any confident case for what triggered the Christ faith, but the point is the case for the Resurrection is just damn weak.
It wasn't at the time it was going on. remember from the same book you get the resurrection narrative you also get a record of hundreds of people who saw jesus including some of the jewish Anti christian temple officials.
If Christ's body had been simply moved and he had failed to have resurrected he would have just been another on of the hundreds of false messiahs forgotten to time.
The story persists because it an absolute in the time when it was most scrutinized. Even some of the temple leadership were convinced as well as non partisan unaffiliated historians. Not to mention the men tied to this event were still going around the country side reproducing a lot of the same things Jesus did when he was still alive. In fact according to christ many more ludicrously impossible things the church would be able to do once he went back to the Father.
Like it or not the reason any religion survives is it makes good on the promises it makes.
The primary here being Christian puts the believe directly before God, no filters no middle men. (so say the bible if you are in a form of christian that says other wise then, know the bible/Jesus himself says God himself via the Holy Spirit is available to you personally.
It is on this idea this promise this religion has lasted.
NO OTHER RELIGION not judaism not islam not buddhism puts the common person in each and every case before God. All other religions demand prophets emissaries and priests.
