Challenge to atheists: I find your lack of faith disturbing!

[Psykhronic]

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There's a number of you here that consistently deny that Jesus was a real historical person, which is utterly ridiculous and to that I would encourage you to listen to Bart Ehrman on this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUQMJR2BP1w

But let's get back to basics. I want to talk about facts. We have a Bible, it has 66 books, 49 Old Testament and 27 New. There are various different ways of counting the OT books, so you also hear ancient sources talking about the "22 scrolls", etc.

In the video above we have the Jesus-denying Reginald saying "how do we know [Paul] didn't lie about it" ('it' being knowing Jesus's relatives and disciples) and Ehrman responding with "why would he lie about it". And then he says "if he wrote it, if he wrote it, if he wrote it", to which Ehrman says "oh there's no doubt Paul wrote Galatians". Reginald says "but aren't there some theories that say that Paul had scribes that wrote for him?", Ehrman explains to him "Every person who wrote epistles in the ancient world dictated them to scribes".

Now sadly, this video just goes to illustrate the point that even secular historians/biblical scholars do not believe the nonsense I hear repeatedly from some atheists on this form.

Here are the things I want you address.

Firstly, we have excellent evidence that Jesus existed as a historical person, the only account of his death is by crucifixion, and importantly, we have very early written records.

Now I'm going to assume that most of you are going to at least agree that Jesus did exist, and that he claimed to be the son of God.

Let's skip straight to his death - he dies by crucifixion, there is no other ancient historical account of his death. Muhammad writes 600 years later that Jesus did not die of crucifixion, and Muslims are taught this, yet we would generally want to believe the earlier records, there are no early records - none - that have a different account of his death.

Next, we have the epistles from Paul. For those of you not in the know, "epistle" simply means letter, or you could even think of it more as a telegram. Many historians will emphatically tell you that many epistles were intended to be read allowed instead of read in silence.

We do not know anywhere near as much about Paul as we do Jesus, but we do know more about him than most of the 12. Peter and Luke both write about Paul, and Paul writes about Luke, and Luke and Paul both write about Peter.

• 1 Corinthians 15:1-11:
  Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
  
  For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

This is written within living memory of Christ. I would point out that by all know accounts, Paul is indeed martyred by no later than 67 AD.

So I'm going to give you all a short Biblical lesson - but not a preached sermon.

What we have here (1 Cor 15:1-11), is a passage from the epistle to the Corinthians written by Paul. The authorship is not in any doubt. What is interesting though is what Paul is writing about. Re-read that first paragraph - "Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain." This preface means that what follows is something that has already been preached to the Corinthians, it's an existing message that has already been passed to them, that they already accepted and that they already know.

So let's analyse the message that Paul is "reminding" them of:

• "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me."

This idea that resurrection is a legend is also debunked in this one single passage. It could not have developed long after Christ's life, what we have here is a very early testament to the Christian faith - and then later Josephus also records independently that it is what Christians believe.

Christ died for our sins, was buried, was risen and then appeared in bodily form to Cephas, the disciples, five hundred followers of Christ, James and Paul. And the other accounts of the resurrection are consistent with this. Luke is the one who writes about Paul's conversion in the book of Acts, where Jesus meets Paul on the road to Damascus and blinds him. Paul references to it as above elsewhere in his epistles, but never talks about the actual event.

This isn't a "legend". We have an early record of an even earlier creed. We think that the letter was written around 55AD. This is too early to allow for legend, and bare in mind the message that is contained is that Christ died for our sins; which by all accounts is the purpose of the crucifixion. The creed itself goes right back to within a few months or years of the crucifixion itself. There was no contradictory belief taught before this, and of that you can be certain.

Atheists tend to be unimpressed by these facts, mostly because they stubbornly don't believe any of them.

From that same epistle we also get this:

• 1 Corinthians 1:13: Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
  1 Corinthians 1:23: but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,

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