Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[Longhorn]

There there, Pinkie. Deep breathing and herbal tea
I'm afraid your efforts are in vain

[robvalue]

I admire your tenacity, my beardy friend

[Redbeard The Pink]

Keep in mind that I'm a fictional character. My outbursts are generally for dramatic effect. The human who portrays me does not give two buckets of Wartok shit about Randy or how thick his ogre-skull is. I am getting more trollish and less responsive as the thread winds closer to repeat-argument-death because I'm mostly done pointing out the same fistful of crap arguments over...and over...and over...


On a side note, having once again scraped the bottoms, sides, and insides of my galoshes after trudging through this thread, I am now offering better than wholesale pricing on buckets of Wartok shit!

[Jenny A]

Keep in mind that I'm a fictional character. My outbursts are generally for dramatic effect. The human who portrays me does not give two buckets of Wartok shit about Randy or how thick his ogre-skull is. I am getting more trollish and less responsive as the thread winds closer to repeat-argument-death because I'm mostly done pointing out the same fistful of crap arguments over...and over...and over...


On a side note, having once again scraped the bottoms, sides, and insides of my galoshes after trudging through this thread, I am now offering better than wholesale pricing on buckets of Wartok shit!

This thread is nothing.  We have some real humdingers just waiting for necro posts (don't please).  Randy's nothing new, just the latest in a long string of people convinced they can prove god with the bible.

[pocaracas]

Redbeard... please, calm yourself.... no need to shout.

What Randy doesn't get, and it's something that's making you very emotional, is that most scholars of matters concerning the Jerusalem of the first century are themselves christians.
Of course, some may claim that they've done their best to remain unbiased by that sort of childish beliefs... but can we say it of most of them?
Can these scholars, who happen to be christian, separate their own beliefs from their research so fully as to be unbiased by their beliefs in their conclusions?
It is known that most (if not all) archeologists of the 19th and early 20th centuries carried around a bible and were digging to find the locations mentioned in there... Heck, still today, people are searching for Noah's ark!
Failure to find what's in the bible is seldom regarded as a problem with the bible, but rather with the methodology, digging in the wrong place, interpretation... oh well...

The point is, if a guy goes off, holding to a set of beliefs, he is very likely to single out details that confirm his belief and ignore those that don't and even slander those that go against it as forgeries.

[Jenny A]

There is lots of proof that Jesus was dead including this special report from the Journal of the American Medical Association:

On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ
William D. Edwards, MD; Wesley J. Gabel, MDiv; Floyd E. Hosmer, MS, AMI
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/deathjesus.pdf

No, it's the SAME evidence over and over and over, i.e. the gospels.  The report relies not just on Jesus' crucifixion, but all of the details given about it in the gospels. The report acknowledges that in this little disclaimer at the beginning:

The source material concerning Christ’s death comprises a body of literature and not a physical body or its skeletal remains. Accordingly, the credibility of any discussion of Jesus’ death will be determined primarily by the credibility of one’s sources.

The authors then accept the gospels as accurate. They appear to accept the Shroud of Turin as Jesus' actual burial cloth. Idiots.

[Minimalist]

No, it's the SAME evidence over and over and over, i.e. the gospels.

I'm really starting to think that Randy is just too stupid to comprehend that, Jen.

[Crossless2.0]

No, it's the SAME evidence over and over and over, i.e. the gospels.

I'm really starting to think that Randy is just too stupid to comprehend that, Jen.

Shit, I knew that about him weeks ago when he trotted out Pascal's Wager.

[Esquilax]

Simply saying, "Gee, people rise from the dead a whole lot less frequently than con men die for a lie" doesn't really cut the mustard. First, we're talking about a dozen of these con men and not one of them cracked. How likely is that? Second, Paul would not have been converted by the mere stories of con men when he was already putting believers into jail and had seen the stoning of Stephen, the first con man to die for his faith.

Serious question: do you really think that your fan-fiction about people who, even if they were real entities, you've never met and have no basis for ascertaining the likelihood of their actions, should be considered seriously?

Why do you think "I imagine these people I never met would have acted in this way," is any kind of real rebuttal?

[KevinM1]

If the sort of God described in the New Testament exists

Stop. Stop right there. This is you trying to twist what evidence exists of the events at the time to support a conclusion that you already believe in without consideration of the evidence itself. This is how creationists work: "We know god exists, now let's compile evidence for it." It's a completely fallacious, intellectually dishonest means of 'inquiry'. And that's the main reason you've been taken to task. The scholars that you have no problem quoting? They don't work that way.

You also continue to prop up the claim - the biblical account of Jesus' resurrection - as evidence of itself. It also doesn't work that way. You need corroborating evidence. And there's very little. Most of it is in the form of, "This is what these people in the ancient middle east actually believed, and here's some actual history providing context for some of the oddities/events/whatever." There is nothing at all that suggests that the resurrection actually happened. Nothing at all to suggest divinity in action. Except in your bible.

Moreover, the bible as the claim is suspect itself since the gospels aren't direct evidence. They're not even direct eyewitness testimony. They were written, what, 50+ years after the fact? And contain conflicting accounts of Jesus' life? The claim is literally hearsay, compiled and written by people with a vested interest in selling their messiah to the masses. It cannot be taken with nearly the seriousness you demand.

You want to talk about presupposition? You're exhibiting it in spades. And stomping your feet while repeating the same thing with new quotes from various scholars (often bereft of context and not actually saying what you think they're saying) is not an argument.

If this is the best you can do after a decade of online apologetics, consider me unimpressed.