Theists: What makes your claims right and the claims of other theists wrong?

[Vicki Q]

Nothing to disagree with here so far. In fact I really like the part I bolded and I like your attitude.

I spent a large part of a particularly dull meeting today preparing cutting retorts to the expected standard atheist responses. I now feel positively ashamed of myself.

Mind you, it did help to pass the time.

I never got the memo assigning the explanation for the transition from Judaism to Christianity to atheists. I would have declined at any rate.

That was me, muddling up the “Since Hume people have been trying to explain the resurrection” point with, “How do we explain the rise of early Xianity with the modified Jewish beliefs?” point.

Have you tried "what they saw is what they truly but mistakingly thought they saw"? There need be no deliberate attempt to deceive for people to misinterpret what they see. Furthermore, the actual number who would have seen anything extraordinary would be miniscule in comparison to the number swept up in believing it.

Of the many explanations, it's one of the least implausible. Anyone who thinks the disciples didn't believe they saw something huge is kidding themselves- these guys really believed they saw something life changing. That's why they went from scare to share.*

The obvious question being- what did they see?

The thing is, in C1 Judaism there was masses of language and background around seeing visions. All sorts of non-physical appearances occur in Jewish writings. That's clearly the route a “mistakenly thought” would have followed.

But that's resolutely not what the disciples claimed happened. Something came which broke bread, could be poked and ate fish. Anastasis- the emphatically physical. Not an ethereal vision. A single resurrection before the general one- completely against every belief and expectation a Jew living in C1 would possess.

If a shared vision couldn't reasonably have given rise to belief in a physical resurrection, what could?

And don't get me started on redefinition of Jewish ideas of God's Kingdom- how simple physical 'appearance' couldn't by itself have generated the change in core beliefs about Judaism. And about what must have gone on before the Passion.

Actually, come to think of it, do get me started.




What's the sig picture of?




*I did not do that. No. Wasn't me. I would never do that.