Proof of Christianity

[Vicki Q]

(reply)

Thank you for your reply.

So the question I'm insistently asking is, where did the fundamental changes in belief come from? Your suggestions-

It could've been driven by faith, motive, profit, may even have been rewritten

Faith- how could a change in faith be driven by faith? If I believe X is a true religious statement, then I will assert X until something changes my ideas (what I think happened here).

Motive- my point exactly; what motive?

Profit- given the atmosphere in C1 Israel, a really good kicking is considerably more likely than profit. Can I stress that religion wasn't a game there. Get it wrong, and your death would be painful and imminent, from the Romans, the Sanhedrin or the lynch mob.

May have been rewritten- I'm not sure what you think was rewritten, or how rewriting something could affect belief in this case.

You do know that there are several living humans claiming to be messiahs right now and they all have a following?

And if enough evidence is generated that one of them in the future has indeed inaugurated 'Olam Ha Ba' (the age to come) we will all need to review our beliefs. I am suggesting such evidence exists in the case of Jesus.

And jesus was supposedly tortured...he probably had a lot of facial hair...so they pretend.

I have no idea whether Jesus had a beard or not. That one has origins in art, not historical study. (I believe long hair wasn't the fashion at the time, contra Hollywood.) The claim that he was facially mutilated beyond recognition also has no basis. The disciples were in no doubt that they had seen Jesus resurrected. The suggestion that a facially damaged person wandered in claiming to be him (why?) and they believed it (why?), whilst highly original, fails on plausibility.

Maybe someone heard something wrong, and then this belief started, and then the disciples thought it'd be a good idea to keep it going.

Heard what wrong? How could that create a huge change in beliefs on a series of vitally important questions? Why would the disciples think it a good idea to continue (again, religion wasn't a game)?

I don't know, Vicki, I wasn't there, a million things could've happened.

I'm still waiting for any one which has me going “Actually, that's a decent alternative”.

I don't think any scientific laws were broken at all. Our understanding of Science is incomplete, and needs revising according to evidence.

If we start with an open mind on the existence of God, then there is reason to suppose that He could communicate with us by appearing in human form. Could this human form be killed? What would happen if it did? We have no data to help us with these questions.

And if my mother appeared to me and made me dinner, it would have exactly the same sort of impact on my beliefs that Jesus re-appearance had on the disciples beliefs.

science wins every time.

Science, Linguistics, Geography. Which is better?

[Locke]

One other thing I don't understand about Christians is how they manage to conclude that Jesus is the Messiah that was predicted in the OT, given that he doesn't meet the criteria. He wasn't even descended from King David, ffs.

He actually was - the supposed contradiction there was formed by a critic who had limited understanding of Jewish record keeping traditions.

Edit: There were also no religions before Christianity that had anything similar to the resurrection of Jesus - the closest thing was a deity who was cut to pieces and later sewn together into a sort of weakened zombie state, and another who came back to life.. Inside the confines of hades. Ohh wait maybe thats not so incredible, since thats the realm of death anyways =/

[Psykhronic]

I do not understand why the resurrection is so important. Your messiah supposedly came back to life, so what?

[pineapplebunnybounce]

@Vicki, you completely missed my point. I only brought up whatever possibilities that occurred to me at that time. Reality is not confined by your or mine imagination. I'm not going to refute your points one by one (although they are flawed, but I think it's pretty obvious so no point pointing them out), because that's not the point. Even if every single possibility I mentioned is actually impossible (which, let's face it, you can't prove), it still doesn't mean your version of events is correct, that's a false dichotomy. Everything that I mentioned doesn't posit a god, and yours does. Yours isn't the simplest explanation, it's the explanation that requires a whole lot of other explanations, which you don't have.

And what do you mean faith couldn't have driven them to do what they did? Haven't you heard of people converting from one religion to another? Happens all the time.

If you look into a university handbook, Linguistics and Geography are often classified as science. Linguistics sometimes Art.

[Vicki Q]

And what do you mean faith couldn't have driven them to do what they did? Haven't you heard of people converting from one religion to another? Happens all the time.

Conversions happen because the convert believes that evidence supports adopting a new set of beliefs. Which is exactly my point. What was the evidence for the disciples? Try to imagine the situation in first century Israel.



The disciples went around saying that Jesus, not Caesar, was king, It is, on the face of it, rather surreal to suggest that of a dead person; why would they do this? The Romans took an extremely dim view of alternative claims to kingship, and we know from their sources that Christians suffered terribly as a result.

They also claimed that religious practices such as the Torah could be ignored. Given that this was seen as coming directly from God, and was an absolutely non-negotiable part of C1 Judaism, it is a dramatic move which begs an explanation why. The ruling (religious) authorities took an extremely dim view of challenges to their rule, and the murder of Stephen in Acts 7 outlines their typical reaction.

They also said that Jewish nationalism should be abandoned and the identity of the Jewish people redefined around a relationship to this dead Jesus. This directly contradicted everything the Jewish people had believed about themselves from Moses onwards, and there's no obvious reason for making this change. Every Jew alive would take an extremely dim view of this, and Paul tells very graphically in 2 Corinthians 11:22-29 how they reacted.

I would ask you to read it, because I'm picking up that you don't see the changes as significant. This was C1 Israel. They were beyond massive.

The disciples would have been told they were betraying God, their people and their religion. They would have asked themselves why they were doing it.




While engaging on this thread, I got thinking about how I would react if my mother appeared at the door. It brought home to me vividly that it would change my core beliefs in exactly the same way the disciples changed theirs.


I don't see another explanation coming anywhere close.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

@Vicki Q, I don't take the bible as fact, more as a very badly written fiction.

You ignored the rest of my post, are you really not seeing my point or are you deliberately avoiding it?

You keep saying you don't see another explanation, I've already addressed that. And you still haven't addressed how other religions come to be, with your argument they should all be true.

[fr0d0]

you still haven't addressed how other religions come to be

Don't you guys get bored of regurgitating the same tired old cliches? New faces, same old.

[gall]

you still haven't addressed how other religions come to be

Don't you guys get bored of regurgitating the same tired old cliches? New faces, same old.

You really have no idea what you are doing here or you are doing it on purpose to bait people...

Good job acting like an asstophat.

[Bad Writer]

you still haven't addressed how other religions come to be

Don't you guys get bored of regurgitating the same tired old cliches? New faces, same old.

The statement still stands.

[Simon Moon]

Don't you guys get bored of regurgitating the same tired old cliches? New faces, same old.

As soon as Christians produce new arguments and evidence for the existence for their god, we'll come up with new responses.

It's not our fault that every philosophical argument presented (Kalam, Teleological, Ontological, TAG) are fallacious. As long as fallacious arguments are presented, the same old refutations will suffice.