Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[Godscreated]

They are usually referring to a specific god or a specific description of god.  No one wants to live under a tyrant, and if they see god described as a tyrant, it's natural that they reject that god.  Keeping in mind that until any god makes his existence known, it's hypothetical to them as well.

Some may have, but a great many atheist here have said they would not serve the God of the Bible even if He appeared to them.

I don't think he would be correct.  I don't see why god would give us the ability to turn away from him if the only possible outcome of that is eternal torment.  It's a pretty fine line between offering that and forcing us to obey.  How free can we really be when one of the two choices ends in the worst possible outcome?

He accused God of lying when he deceived Eve, that in itself shows Satan has no limit to his evil. He gives us this ability to choose what we want for our lives because He wants only those who love Him to spend eternity with Him. Those who choose Christ and stand with Him love Him and those who love Christ love the Father and the Holy Spirit. Free enough to choose not to go into eternal punishment. Jesus said, the way to eternal destruction is a wide road with a wide gate and the way to eternal life is a narrow road with a narrow gate. He was say there is a big difference and not a fine line, He's saying that it's apparent the choice we have.

But this implies that they were expected to obey without question.  In the face of deception, their only recourse was blind obedience to god, otherwise they risked damnation.  That doesn't seem very different from the concept of forced love.

Correct they were to obey without question, as you had stated before in our conversation god walked with them and talked to them, I'm assuming He taught them what obedience consisted of. God gave then the freedom to choose the deception or to obey, they allowed self interest to over ride what they had learned.

I meant risky for god, in the sense that he desires for everyone to be saved, yet implements a situation that he knows many will fail.  If each lost soul pains god in the way that a lost child pains its parents, he has placed an enormous burden upon himself, even though it's in his power to change it in a way that makes it better for everyone: him and all of humanity.

Yes, I understand you meant God, but what risk does an omniscient and omnipotent God actually face, risk involves the unknown and God knows all. God knew all would not be saved yet it was His desire because He loves people enough to give them the chance they want take.
How could it be better for those who do not want to spend eternity with God, should God force them, would that be love on God's part, to me that would be tyranny. It's not within God's power to change the plan of salvation, this plan is His will, it comes from His omniscient mind. If God were to change the plan now what would those who do not want to spend eternity with Him do, they would be mad, they would accuse Him of fallibility and Satan would be at the head of the group.

But with a very bad end to those whose desires do not follow those of god.  It's a bad choice because god has the capability to save us all if he chooses.  He chooses a situation where most will fail and suffer.  That is a bad setup.  Why couldn't we have the freedom to choose anything except to reject god?  Is it really a bad thing to be incapable of choosing only the things that would be bad for us?  Would world be a worse place if no one felt the urge to hurt one another?

That's the risk I explained in my last post, but it's also what choice is about. Again it's not God's choice, it's about the gift of choice He has given us, our gift to do as we want to, not as we're made to do. God's not setting anyone up, He's giving us a gift, one to experience as we desire, our desire overrides His in this instance.
The world would be a better place if everyone chose not to hurt others but, the last few thousand years have shown us this isn't part of who man is. If we were incapable of choosing bad things then where is choice. We choose between things all the time and inevitably we will chose bad things because we can't see the future. In the case of salvation God shows us the future and we actually know which decision is bad, so is there an excuse for choosing wrong when it comes to salvation.

I don't know how to judge my time as a Christian.  To the believer, there has to be an explanation that covers what they expect from god, and so it is not possible that I was sincere or that I was doing it the right way.  To me, it seems much more sensible to recognize the extent to which we interpret our lives when we want god to be real, and understand that if we have to do all the lifting, then god is either very lazy or not there.

Have you actually given that time the thought and consideration it justly needed. Could it be the bold above, by me, is how you felt. If so I think you've made the same mistake many Christians do. It's not about what God does for us, it is about living the life He a has planned for us as Christians, God knows these plans and will provide for the believer what he/she needs and bring blessings to us. Now these blessings are not necessarily physical things, but some of them could be, I've experienced both but, the ones that mean the most and I remember the most are those that were not physical.

I've skipped over any parts that I don't want to respond to or that I am satisfied with your reply.  You can consider those points conceded in your favor.

I'm not even sure what to say here, so I guess I'll say thank you and hope no one thinks me arrogant.
I enjoy our conversations and I do thank you for good sensible conversation, conversation that can give both of us things to consider.

GC

[Redbeard The Pink]

(Randy, I'm gonna do this bold because I think it makes this color easier to read...I'm not yelling at you   )

Let me try to make this as clear as I can: I've been an atheist for a matter of weeks. Before that, I was a sincerely believing protestant christian who grew up in a preaching household under two very intelligent, well-educated parents. I'm also a borderline genius and an extremely quick study. I have a comprehensive knowledge of the bible (including some bits about the ancient-language versions of the texts), and I have a reasonably sophisticated grasp of what you call "evidential apologetics," enough so that I used to string together my own arguments that were (in my head) miles ahead of the same old Pascal's Wager circular logic bullshit you see most people spouting on the internet.


Example: I used to go around telling people that it was possible to use quantum mechanics to mathematically prove that depending on where you're standing as space-time rapidly expands, 7 days and 14 billion years are actually the same amount of time, meaning the Old-Earth and Young-Earth people are essentially arguing about nothing. Then going to scripture, I'd point out two passages in particular: the one that states that to Jehovah, 1,000 years is like a day and a day is like 1,000 years; and the one that states that Jehovah is so large, he is able to hold the universe in the hollow of his hand.


Now, in general, people will use these two passages to describe the eternity and vastness of Jehovah, and to illustrate the fact that he exists outside time as we understand it. I, on the other hand, saw it as a biblical reference to the complex workings of quantum mechanics and space-time. The argument was essentially this: humans have an inherently limited perspective of time because we occupy a specific, finite location within space-time. Because Jehovah can perceive all of space-time, he can perceive 7 days and billions of years as the same span of time, and so tell us the earth is 7 days old without technically being wrong. We just didn't read the "1,000 years is like a day" passage correctly because it's in a different place than the creation story.


I now realize, of course, that this argument is horse shit and the "science" behind it probably isn't even legitimate. Suffice it to say, however, that I am personally and thoroughly familiar with the kind of mental gymnastics it takes to allow an otherwise rational, intelligent, scientific mind to believe that there's an invisible, benevolent creator in the sky, and that the christian bible is his inerrant word. I can also tell you that there is only apologetics. Evidential apologetics does not exist because, strictly speaking, there is no evidence for the existence of any gods. Apologists attempt to enter various arguments and logical tricks into the discussion as if they were evidence, but the simple fact remains that there is no evidence to suggest that any gods or supernatural things exist, just as there is no observable evidence to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth existed. Scripture is not evidence because scripture is the claim.


All that said, let's get to your points.

Let's agree for the sake of argument that the town/village of Nazareth has not yet been discovered by archaeologists?


Is that sufficient reason to discount the rest of the New Testament and the extra-biblical data concerning Jesus?

Perhaps not. It IS, however, reason to not believe that Nazareth existed until evidence surfaces that it did actually exist. Likewise, it is reasonable to withhold belief in the existence of Jesus Christ and Jehovah himself until evidence surfaces to demonstrate that one or both of those things does exist.


This is because of the way that science looks at questions. The existence of something, say Nazareth for instance, is a non-falsifiable hypothesis; as you pointed out, it's always possible to say "Well, they just haven't found it yet." The non-existence of something, on the other hand, CAN be proven wrong because all you have to do is find one shred of definite evidence that Nazareth existed, and the hypothesis is wrong. Because of the way these two relate to each other, the premise that Nazareth existed is the hypothesis (h1), and the premise that it never existed is the null hypothesis (h0). Because the null hypothesis is the falsifiable claim, it is ALWAYS the default position until it is proven false.


In this case, the default position is that Nazareth did not exist. Until that position is proven false, that is the continued belief because it's the only one that is supported by a complete lack of evidence. That's not to say that it's true, that's just to say that until somebody proves otherwise, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the opposite is true: that Nazareth did exist. All the evidence brought forth thus far has been forged and/or misrepresented, so at this time there is no valid reason to believe that the town of Nazareth ever existed.


Let me stress again that scripture is not evidence of the town of Nazareth because it's the actual source of your claim. To support that claim, you must find evidence in the real world rather than within the text of scripture, or at least a secondary, non-christian text that mentions the place.


It's the same with the gods. Until somebody can prove otherwise, non-existence is the default position and the default belief because it's the only one supported by the current level of evidence concerning the question of the gods' existence. 


There is also no "extra-biblical data" concerning Jesus. The bible and the christian writings that didn't make it in are the only data we have, and those (once again) are the claim. If you're talking about Josephus, there is no consensus on how much of that document is forged and how much of it is legit, but historians can definitely agree that those writings have been heavily forged and tampered with. If you're talking about Tacitus, there are two problems with his writings as evidence for Jesus: for one, they were written over 100 years after Jesus is supposed to have lived; the other problem is that Tacitus only briefly mentions a cult who called themselves Christians and who served a crucified lord named Jesus. He could have gotten that information by listening to them preach for 10 minutes or reading one of their texts...this does not qualify as evidence that the character they believed in was a real man.

However, Jesus was a peasant carpenter from an obscure village in a remote corner of the Roman Empire under occupation. How much information about him should we reasonably expect from contemporaneous sources? And yet, we have some, don't we?

So, no...the resurrection of Jesus and His other miracles are not "normal"...but they are "reasonable" given who Jesus is.

I really don't mean to sound trollish here, but you can't have this both ways. Either he was a regular carpenter dude from an obscure place whose mere existence is not an extraordinary claim, or he was a god-sent human sacrifice with magical powers whose mere existence IS an extraordinary claim.


If it's the first one, then sure maybe he existed, but he's not the god-being he's supposed to be, regardless of what people wrote about him later, and there ESPECIALLY isn't evidence to justify the claim that he had magic powers or was somehow walking proof of Jehovah's existence. If it's the second, then there just isn't evidence to justify his own existence at all.

Aramaic has no word for "cousin". Mary remained ever-virgin; consequently, Jesus' "brothers" were actually kinsmen - not uterine siblings.

Oh, that's right...you're catholic. Ok, listen dude...I hate to break this to you, but if Mary and Joseph really existed and she really gave birth to Jehovah's miracle baby, they fucked like rabbits when that was done. Maybe not right that moment, but soon after, I assure you. Joseph plowed the shit out of that Jew chick. Seriously. Believing a young, healthy, married couple never fucked takes more faith than even the protestants can muster.


Joking and stolen movie-humor aside, I'm telling you that this passage does not reference Jesus' earthly family, cousins or otherwise. The phrase "brothers of the Lord" consistently refers to Jesus' followers throughout scripture, and throughout modern colloquialism for that matter (for are not all Christians brothers and sisters in Christ?). Trying to use this passage to argue for historicity might be the strongest leg Jesus' existence has to stand on, and it's still a weak, wobbly leg, my friend.

Which verse in Corinthians are you thinking of here?

I don't normally bother with that chapter and verse shit, but just for you I'll look it up. Let's see...ah yes, here it is.


For context, the passage I'm describing is 1 Corinthians 2:6-10, and the particular verse I'm referencing is verse 8, which reads: "None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."


Now, there are two interesting things to note about that verse. The first, as I already mentioned, is that if the humans in the gospel story had understood Jehovah's wisdom and message, they still would have killed Jesus because Jesus was a required sacrifice to fulfill Jehovah's laws; this is the express purpose for his coming. Sparing him would have screwed humanity, and a perfect understanding of Jehovah's plan would have revealed that to them, hence their still-apparent motivation for torturing and murdering god's son.


The second thing, though, is the phrase "rulers of this age." Throughout the New Testament, that phrase CONSISTENTLY refers to spiritual, demonic forces, not earthly rulers. This further supports the narrative of Jesus being killed in outer space by demons and not on Earth by people. If you wanted to say that in this one instance, they're talking about earthly rulers, I'd say show me evidence of that. If you wanted to say that everyone involved in the crucifixion was demon possessed, then you start having to prove that demons exist, that they can possess people...it's a whole other can of worms that you'd probably just dump more scripture on top of.

Rightfully so. Evidentialist apologists believe that sufficient evidence exists.

They might believe that, but they're wrong, and I've described why earlier in this post. Apologists do not have evidence, they have arguments based on circular logic, fallacies, and misrepresentation of both scripture and science.

Are you a mythicist like Carrier?

At the risk of inviting accusations of "blindly following atheist authorities," yeah...I'm pretty much a mythicist like Carrier.

Sure. In terms of science. God created all that science studies, but He Himself is not bound by that. Magic, dude. God has BIG magic.

Oh really? I love magic. I'd love to see some. You know something of this magic? I've heard great stories of the past, but I guess he's more subtle these days. It sounds like you know something I don't, though, so let's see some magic. Surely you can summon up faith even the size of a mustard seed, yes? That's all you need to move mountains, after all.

The point is, without evidence of Jehovah and his magic powers, there's no reason for me to be swayed by that claim. I could as easily claim that the Flying Spaghetti monster has BIG magic, and in his infinite wisdom he influenced the religious writers of the world to write a bunch of unsupported, easily dismissed bullshit, driving the most enlightened humans ever-closer to the impending universal worship and acceptance of his noodle-y, saucy grace.

[Randy Carson]

Fact 3: S/Paul, the persecutor of the Early Church, was suddenly changed

Habermas and Licona note that scholars (believers as well as skeptics) who have studied the source materials carefully are overwhelmingly in agreement that S/Paul, an opponent of the early Church, was suddenly and radically changed.

S/Paul's opposition to the Church was recorded by Luke:

Acts 8:1-3
And Saul approved of their killing [Stephen]. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2 Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.

So, what evidence do we have of S/Paul's conversion from skeptic and persecutor to believer and evangelist? There are three sources: S/Paul himself, Luke and the early Church.

1. S/Paul attests to his conversion experience

In a letter to the believers in Galatia, Paul writes:

Galatians 1:13-24
13 For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. 14 I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. 17 I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. 18 Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie. 21 Then I went to Syria and Cilicia. 22 I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23 They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they praised God because of me.

From this personal testimony, we can see that S/Paul went from unbelieving persecutor of Christians to being a Christian himself.

2. Luke records S/Paul's conversion story

Luke, the author of Luke-Acts, records the account of S/Paul's conversion:

Acts 9:1-17
Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

10 In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”

“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”

13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”

17 Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

From this passage, we learn of the details of S/Paul's encounter with the risen Jesus and of S/Paul's baptism into the Christian Church.

3. Paul's opposition to the early Church widely known

Finally, we can see from these accounts that S/Paul's opposition to Christianity was widely known.

In Damascus, Syria, Ananias objects to interacting with S/Paul because he has heard reports about S/Paul that made him fearful:

Luke 8:13-14
13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

Similar reports had reached Galatia as S/Paul himself pointed out:

Galatians 1:13
For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.

Other parts of Judea had also heard these reports:

Galatians 1:22-23
22 I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23 They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.”

Thus, from three sources we have attestation that S/Paul was converted from being opponent of Christianity to a believer in the resurrection in Christ.

[Minimalist]

I'm not yelling at you

Go ahead.  He deserves it.

[Longhorn]

There we go again ._.

[robvalue]

Very nice, Redbeard! I'm hugely impressed with your dissection of the bible and the apologetics on display here.

[Minimalist]

Red will learn that when questioned all Randy ever does is puke up more of his discredited bible bullshit.  It is a consistent act.

[Randy Carson]

(Randy, I'm gonna do this bold because I think it makes this color easier to read...I'm not yelling at you   )

Let me try to make this as clear as I can: I've been an atheist for a matter of weeks. Before that, I was a sincerely believing protestant christian who grew up in a preaching household under two very intelligent, well-educated parents. I'm also a borderline genius and an extremely quick study. I have a comprehensive knowledge of the bible (including some bits about the ancient-language versions of the texts), and I have a reasonably sophisticated grasp of what you call "evidential apologetics," enough so that I used to string together my own arguments that were (in my head) miles ahead of the same old Pascal's Wager circular logic bullshit you see most people spouting on the internet.


Example: I used to go around telling people that it was possible to use quantum mechanics to mathematically prove that depending on where you're standing as space-time rapidly expands, 7 days and 14 billion years are actually the same amount of time, meaning the Old-Earth and Young-Earth people are essentially arguing about nothing. Then going to scripture, I'd point out two passages in particular: the one that states that to Jehovah, 1,000 years is like a day and a day is like 1,000 years; and the one that states that Jehovah is so large, he is able to hold the universe in the hollow of his hand.


Now, in general, people will use these two passages to describe the eternity and vastness of Jehovah, and to illustrate the fact that he exists outside time as we understand it. I, on the other hand, saw it as a biblical reference to the complex workings of quantum mechanics and space-time. The argument was essentially this: humans have an inherently limited perspective of time because we occupy a specific, finite location within space-time. Because Jehovah can perceive all of space-time, he can perceive 7 days and billions of years as the same span of time, and so tell us the earth is 7 days old without technically being wrong. We just didn't read the "1,000 years is like a day" passage correctly because it's in a different place than the creation story.


I now realize, of course, that this argument is horse shit and the "science" behind it probably isn't even legitimate. Suffice it to say, however, that I am personally and thoroughly familiar with the kind of mental gymnastics it takes to allow an otherwise rational, intelligent, scientific mind to believe that there's an invisible, benevolent creator in the sky, and that the christian bible is his inerrant word. I can also tell you that there is only apologetics. Evidential apologetics does not exist because, strictly speaking, there is no evidence for the existence of any gods. Apologists attempt to enter various arguments and logical tricks into the discussion as if they were evidence, but the simple fact remains that there is no evidence to suggest that any gods or supernatural things exist, just as there is no observable evidence to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth existed. Scripture is not evidence because scripture is the claim.

Well, I should probably be intimidated when dialoguing with someone who is so much smarter than I am, but I do it so frequently that I've grown accustomed to it.  

Given your intellect, I would recommend reading William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith if you have not already done so. He gets a bad rap from folks in this forum, but I don't really think the negativity is deserved. The man is well-educated, highly intelligent and articulate. Even if you don't agree with him, you will undoubtedly enjoy being challenged by him.

All that said, let's get to your points.

Let's agree for the sake of argument that the town/village of Nazareth has not yet been discovered by archaeologists?


Is that sufficient reason to discount the rest of the New Testament and the extra-biblical data concerning Jesus?

Perhaps not. It IS, however, reason to not believe that Nazareth existed until evidence surfaces that it did actually exist. Likewise, it is reasonable to withhold belief in the existence of Jesus Christ and Jehovah himself until evidence surfaces to demonstrate that one or both of those things does exist.

I disagree. Witnesses disagree with one another all the time on various details of a crime or accident that they have witnessed, but they agree on the main points. Whether Nazareth existed or not is not a main point, is it? Certainly it is no where near as significant as whether or not God exists. And on that point, all of the gospel writers agree.

This is because of the way that science looks at questions. The existence of something, say Nazareth for instance, is a non-falsifiable hypothesis; as you pointed out, it's always possible to say "Well, they just haven't found it yet." The non-existence of something, on the other hand, CAN be proven wrong because all you have to do is find one shred of definite evidence that Nazareth existed, and the hypothesis is wrong. Because of the way these two relate to each other, the premise that Nazareth existed is the hypothesis (h1), and the premise that it never existed is the null hypothesis (h0). Because the null hypothesis is the falsifiable claim, it is ALWAYS the default position until it is proven false.

In this case, the default position is that Nazareth did not exist. Until that position is proven false, that is the continued belief because it's the only one that is supported by a complete lack of evidence. That's not to say that it's true, that's just to say that until somebody proves otherwise, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the opposite is true: that Nazareth did exist. All the evidence brought forth thus far has been forged and/or misrepresented, so at this time there is no valid reason to believe that the town of Nazareth ever existed.

Let me stress again that scripture is not evidence of the town of Nazareth because it's the actual source of your claim. To support that claim, you must find evidence in the real world rather than within the text of scripture, or at least a secondary, non-christian text that mentions the place.

Why? If I read in a book about the Civil War that a Union soldier recorded in his diary that his men had taken up a position near a farm house AND THAT FARM HOUSE HAS VANISHED AND BEEN PAVED OVER BY A WALMART PARKING LOT, is it unreasonable for me to accept the existence of the farmhouse using the diary as evidence for its existence 150 years earlier?

It's the same with the gods. Until somebody can prove otherwise, non-existence is the default position and the default belief because it's the only one supported by the current level of evidence concerning the question of the gods' existence. 

I agree that the positive claim has the burden of proof.

There is also no "extra-biblical data" concerning Jesus. The bible and the christian writings that didn't make it in are the only data we have, and those (once again) are the claim. If you're talking about Josephus, there is no consensus on how much of that document is forged and how much of it is legit, but historians can definitely agree that those writings have been heavily forged and tampered with. If you're talking about Tacitus, there are two problems with his writings as evidence for Jesus: for one, they were written over 100 years after Jesus is supposed to have lived; the other problem is that Tacitus only briefly mentions a cult who called themselves Christians and who served a crucified lord named Jesus. He could have gotten that information by listening to them preach for 10 minutes or reading one of their texts...this does not qualify as evidence that the character they believed in was a real man.

Wrong on both counts. First, scholars do have a pretty good idea of what they can safely remove from the Testimonium Flavianum and second, there is no dispute over the second passage from Josephus which mentions James, the brother of Jesus. Finally, you might want to check your dates for Tacitus. Tacitus was a contemporary of Josephus.

However, Jesus was a peasant carpenter from an obscure village in a remote corner of the Roman Empire under occupation. How much information about him should we reasonably expect from contemporaneous sources? And yet, we have some, don't we?

So, no...the resurrection of Jesus and His other miracles are not "normal"...but they are "reasonable" given who Jesus is.

I really don't mean to sound trollish here, but you can't have this both ways. Either he was a regular carpenter dude from an obscure place whose mere existence is not an extraordinary claim, or he was a god-sent human sacrifice with magical powers whose mere existence IS an extraordinary claim.

If it's the first one, then sure maybe he existed, but he's not the god-being he's supposed to be, regardless of what people wrote about him later, and there ESPECIALLY isn't evidence to justify the claim that he had magic powers or was somehow walking proof of Jehovah's existence. If it's the second, then there just isn't evidence to justify his own existence at all.

Of course I can have it both ways. Think this through:

1. Jesus was an obscure itinerant preacher from a backwater of the Empire. During His lifetime, he was virtually unknown.
2. His disciples came to believe that He was God (based upon His post-resurrection appearances). They eventually overcame the Roman Empire.

Now, the fact that (1) preceded (2) doesn't create a problem. Jesus began his ministry in Galilee, but today, His teaching is known all over the world. That took time to accomplish.

Aramaic has no word for "cousin". Mary remained ever-virgin; consequently, Jesus' "brothers" were actually kinsmen - not uterine siblings.

Oh, that's right...you're catholic. Ok, listen dude...I hate to break this to you, but if Mary and Joseph really existed and she really gave birth to Jehovah's miracle baby, they fucked like rabbits when that was done. Maybe not right that moment, but soon after, I assure you. Joseph plowed the shit out of that Jew chick. Seriously. Believing a young, healthy, married couple never fucked takes more faith than even the protestants can muster.

What evidence do you have for your position?

And as a hint: Why do you think that Joseph was young when he married Mary?

Joking and stolen movie-humor aside, I'm telling you that this passage does not reference Jesus' earthly family, cousins or otherwise. The phrase "brothers of the Lord" consistently refers to Jesus' followers throughout scripture, and throughout modern colloquialism for that matter (for are not all Christians brothers and sisters in Christ?). Trying to use this passage to argue for historicity might be the strongest leg Jesus' existence has to stand on, and it's still a weak, wobbly leg, my friend.

After 10 years of online apologetics, I can bury you on this point. But I think we have more important issues at hand. We can discuss Catholicism later.

(To be continued...)

[robvalue]

It is a shame because Randy could learn an awful lot from him, were he so inclined.

[Randy Carson]

Very nice, Redbeard! I'm hugely impressed with your dissection of the bible and the apologetics on display here.

rob-

You are always impressed when someone argues for what you want to hear. However, is that wise?

Proverbs 18:17
The first to state his case seems right,
until his opponent begins to cross-examine him.