RE: Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach
July 7, 2015 at 1:17 pm
(This post was last modified: July 7, 2015 at 1:37 pm by Pizza.
Edit Reason: prose
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(July 7, 2015 at 9:33 am)Randy Carson Wrote:(July 6, 2015 at 7:03 pm)Pizza Wrote: The point at issue is the whether there was a resurrection of the dead body of Jesus. This is a claim about biology. Dead bodies don't normally resurrect. Something as unlikely to me as ghosts existing and the apostles seeing a ghost, not a resurrected body, would be more likely than a body resurrecting. People report ghost sightings more than bodily resurrections, this is all common sense.
Give me evidence like biologists resurrecting dead people after days of being dead, and I'd likely change my mind or at the very least be more sympathetic to Christianity. It doesn't matter how reliable the gospels are. They are not enough. Claiming a dead man walks again is a claim about biology of the human body. You can't ignore biology and the evidence on this. Assuming theism is not enough, because again the question at issue would be whether god causes dead men to walk. According to the common sense evidence, dead bodies don't get up after days, so god likely doesn't resurrect the dead. That's a natural theology argument against the resurrection of Jesus for you. Resurrections aren't a dime-a-dozen and if they are that would undermine the theological importance of Jesus's resurrection.
You can't just assume god did in fact resurrect Jesus, because that assumes Christian views of god are true which begs the question because the goal for the arguing for the resurrection is to argue for the truth of the Christian view of god.
Please stop dancing around these problems.
You're right. They don't NORMALLY resurrect. Here's what we know:
Jesus died by crucifixion.
The women who went to the tomb found it empty.
The disciples believed that they saw Jesus alive after the crucifixion and were willing to suffer rather than recant.
Paul, an sworn enemy of the Church, was suddenly converted.
James, the skeptical brother of Jesus, was suddenly converted.
What theory do you have that account for these facts BETTER than the resurrection of Jesus?
I get the feeling you're not listening to me and I'm getting tired of repeating myself. Why are we to hold the explanation that there was a bodily resurrection more likely than other explanations of the gospel writings? The simplest, and most consistent with the facts about dead bodies is that the resurrection narrative is (1) disciples lied and died for it because recanting wasn't a live option for them (ex. the Romans didn't care and would kill them regardless of recanting, and it would be better to die a heroic martyr than as a lying con-man), (2) outright folklore like urban legends we have today which given that historians don't know who actually wrote the gospel accounts this is very likely. There, I named two explanations that have the explanatory virtues of simplicity, not ad hoc and consistent with and supported by biology and commonsense folk psychology. My explanations are even consistent with a god existing and natural theology. What do you actually have? If you assume Christian views on god and metaphysics you beg the question against me. So, if you want to get me to Christianity you need to back up and defend those claims. We need common ground here and I'm just not seeing it. If it's okay to argue in a circle in the bigger web of arguments then I see no reason why rivals to Christianity like other religions, irreligious theism, and strong atheism can't argue the same way.
As for supernaturalist explanations, "Jesus was a ghost and not a resurrected body" is more likely than bodily resurrection since people report seeing ghosts all the time.
If we are going to allow for events that conflict with regularities like dead bodies not normally resurrecting after days, then why not allow for other such irregularities like people willing to dying for a lie, naturalistic resurrection, swoon theory, ghost-Jesus, Alien-Jesus, false prophet-Jesus? Humans reason using regularities and generalizations there is no way around this. If I throw them out I'm going to have no way to decide which irregularity to choose.
Note, you can't just use gospel writings as evidence of the likelihood of the your explanation when they are what you're aiming to explain. That's would be viciously circular reasoning.
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all. - Denis Diderot
We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing. - Gore Vidal
We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing. - Gore Vidal