(June 27, 2015 at 5:59 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:(June 27, 2015 at 12:39 pm)pocaracas Wrote: They were first hand witnesses and they had to "believe"? Didn't they know? Hadn't they witnessed enough miraculous events yet?!
Sounds like someone manufactured the story well after the alleged fact.
But you can go on believing that they believed it... Just shows how much thought you poured into your favorite myth.
As you know, I have argued the very point you are making in other threads. I do so because I HAVE thought about it.
Here, I am using Habermas' terminology.
But I agree with you; the apostles did not believe; they were in a position to know.
Sorry for the delay... and I know the thread just keeps on moving forward...
Anyway...
Just a note: they knew it as much as George knew that Vader was Luke's father.
And that ties in neatly with the current discussion on Mark's description of the tale as if he made some of it up, taking cues from previously existing stories.
Personally, I couldn't care less if whoever wrote those stories believed they were writing real events. Some of those events sound unreal, so they are most likely fiction.
And the fact that some people managed to convince a lot of other people that those stories portray real events is no evidence for the reality of those events.
Also, there are, around the world, several other stories that lodge themselves in the belief part of the brain, just like your favorite one. The similarity in techniques that perpetuate all these different and mutually exclusive beliefs leads me to the conclusion that they are all equally fictional. At best, one of them would be true... and that one should be the very first, the original one... sadly, for you, yours is far from first. Sadly for the other beliefs, the first kinds of "religious" experiences seem to have taken the form of shamanism, or a simple cult of the dead - clearly indicating a fear of death, a desire of immortality, present in most humans and which has since been preyed upon by the ruling classes... not hinting towards any deity whatsoever.
Religion is, ultimately, a political tool... It is unfortunate to note that many rulers (mainly in Europe, 10th to 20th century) fell prey to the religious leaders' power, which could seem to negate it as a political tool... not every actual ruler has been made aware of this little fact, and the religious leaders took advantage of that flaw in education, whenever possible...
I know I'm going beyond the scope of this thread, but the fact is, no matter how well you think you may wield the apologetics scepter for your particular myth, or for some aspect of your favorite myth (like you wished to do with this thread), it's still fiction.
A fiction that, if representative of reality, would mean that the deity in your stories is a bit limited in scope (preference for a single tribe?! reboot when things don't go according to plan?! need to remind people of the rules!? needs to send himself as a standard human to teach a correct interpretation of those rules?!), is absent (would so many of us [2/3 of the world population] not adhere to the story, if it wasn't this absent?) and is not required... so it seems the story is flawed, at its most basic level.
So, at best, you get a deist reality, where people of Earth made up religion.
