Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[Randy Carson]

Here's another set of minimal facts:

1) The bible is the claim. The truth of what it says is the subject of debate. Any attempt to demonstrate the truth of one part of the claim by using another part of the claim at best only shows internal consistency. The gospel accounts are certainly not independent sources; at best they amount to two accounts rather than four and there's no evidence that they are anything other than hearsay.

It appears you have not been paying attention. In this thread, I have posted material from NON-BIBLICAL sources in support of the minimal facts. But your problem goes deeper than this, and it is addressed by Bart Ehrman:

"[There] is another group insisting that the books of the Bible need to be given special treatment. These are certain agnostics and atheists who claim that since, say, the Gospels are part of Christian sacred scripture, they have less value than other books for establishing historical information. As odd as it might seem, the nonbelievers who argue this are making common cause with the fundamentalists who also argue it. Both groups treat the Gospels as nonhistorical, the fundamentalists because the Gospels are inspired and the atheists (those who hold this view) because the Gospels are accepted by some people as sacred scripture and so are not historical. The (sometime) atheist opinion of the Bible as nonhistorical is no better than the (typical) fundamentalist opinion." (Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 72)

Additionally, if you were REALLY up on the subject, you would know that the list of independent sources for the existence of Jesus includes:

Q
M
L
Mark
Matthew
Luke
John
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Peter

plus all of the Jewish and Roman sources that I have cited previously in this thread.

2) The claims that are of any importance (the magical ones) are of an extraordinary nature. Anyone approaching the claims objectively and with any kind of rigour should therefor expect a similarly extraordinary standard of evidence before believing such claims. To accept anything less is the result of special pleading or points to someone who believes anything they are told at face value.

And I have pointed out repeatedly that this is incorrect. Like ALL claims, an extraordinary claim only requires sufficient evidence. And this I am attempting to provide to you via this thread.

3) The only evidence we have outside of the claim is a bunch of vague references to the mere existence of one of the characters, and people's opinions and beliefs about him.

Which from a historian's point of view is a staggering wealth of information unlike that available for virtually any other figure of antiquity about which you would not even begin to argue. And remember, these historians are highly educated professionals, fluent in multiple languages, who have spent YEARS studying the material which you so quickly gloss over.

4) This level of evidence is barely enough to establish that one of the characters was based on a real person. It is about as far away from extraordinary evidence of these magical claims as you could get.

The existence of Jesus is a historical fact. The skeptic John Dominic Crossan admits, "That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be."

This should be of utmost importance to anyone who makes life decisions based on whether or not these claims are true. As it happens, I'm not one of those people. It wouldn't change a thing for me even if the magical claims were true. But I take it seriously anyway because such a large number of other people do.

I think it is more troubling that ignorant people make decisions based upon dubious "facts" gleaned from Internet sources and filtered through their own personal biases.