Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[Randy Carson]

Randy to prove the resurrection with five facts you must first prove the facts.  I give you two of five on that:  Jesus was crucified and Paul switched sides after having an experience of some sort.    After that you must explain how those five facts prove the resurrection happened.  That you have utterly failed to do.

When people find a body missing they don't usually jump to the conclusion it was raised from the dead and for very good reason.  That the disciples claimed to have seen him is not particularly credible evidence since we no virtually nothing about them, their credulity, or their veracity.  Saul's vision is a vision and proves nothing.  If James changed his mind, he did.  But that isn't evidence of the resurrection only Jame's state of mind.  And your minimal facts don't explain why he changed his mind.    

Now you want to add martyrs, eyewitness accounts, details about the exact circumstances of the five "facts" and who knows what else.  But you don't have good evidence for those things and they are beyond the scope of the five facts.

What part of facts 2 & 4 do you doubt? And on the basis of what evidence?

[Randy Carson]

Only since May 13 with atheists, but I'm coming up to speed pretty quickly on the arguments and tactics.

However, in this thread, I'm defending five minimal facts.

What refutation have you offered to any of them?

Did you even read what I wrote?

You continue to conflate the claim for evidence of the claim.  The claim itself is incredibly weak, given it's hearsay.

Your 'facts' are mostly assertions.  Others have given you plenty of point-by-point refutation, so I don't feel the need to regurgitate what they have already said.  I'm not a Christian apologist [emphasis added]; I understand that simply repeating the same thing in different ways doesn't strengthen my position.

Neither are Tim O'Neill and Bart Ehrman.

[pocaracas]

There's a report about a "teacher or righteousness", dated to before 50BC, which sort of describes such a person...

Addressed by Tim O'Neill in this forum in old threads.

And it wasn't entirely dismissed out of the picture.
It's a possibility that can't be discarded.

Randy, is it not conceivable that such a leader of people could have existed and sparked the christian myth, which then evolved, passing several people, several retellings, until you get Paul?

No, poca. And the reason is really straightforward: we know how the oral tradition of the Early Church was handed down and enscripturated.

You know nothing, Jon Snow!

We also know how the oral tradition passed down from Muhammad through his family and tribesmen and some 70 years after his death, we got a qur'an. And yet, you don't believe in the qur'an... how come?

As for a brother called James, aren't all members of a sect "brothers" amongst themselves?

Possibly. But that does not mean that Jesus didn't have a real "kinsman" named James.

Indeed, it doesn't.
However, it opens up the possibility space. You can now have more than one James who belonged to this cult and was called a brother. How can you tell which possibility is more likely, or even which was the real one?

[Randy Carson]

Here some are minimal facts:
1. Dead bodies don't normally resurrect after three days.

No, they don't, but that doesn't mean that they cannot...particularly if the type of God described in the Christian scriptures exists. If so, there is simply no reason to reject the possibility of a miracle as the explanation of a well-attested event for which no plausible natural explanation exists.

To simply deny Jesus' resurrection, no matter how strong the evidence, is to be biased against the possibility that this could be the one case for which we have been looking to prove the supernatural and God exist.

2.Heaven's gate members all died for a falsehood they sincerely believed. So willingness to die for something and religious context is useless criteria for truth.

Sure. People die for a belief all the time.

How often do people die willingly for something that they know is a lie? Not "believe", KNOW to be false.

[Randy Carson]

Again, if you believe you have sufficient evidence to suggest that we should study the Greek gods for any reasons other than literary interests, please present it.

I think you're missing the point we're trying to make when we bring up the greek gods... or any other gods. But this quote of yours might just help.

If you believe you have sufficient evidence to suggest that we should accept your christ as a god for any reasons other than literary interests, please present it.

A fair request. That's why this thread was started.

Feel free to show me why the scholars whom Ehrman described in my post above are WRONG to accept the five minimal facts listed in my OP.

Thanks.

[Randy Carson]

Randy,
Ehrman does not even mention the resurrection in that post, you seem to be arguing that because scholars agree that there was a historical jesus, they also accept that he rose from the dead.

I have not gotten to fact #5 or begun to draw conclusions from the five facts taken together.

[Easy Guns]

So basically, the only substance Randy has to offer to this thread is *word salad*

[Mr.wizard]

Randy,
Ehrman does not even mention the resurrection in that post, you seem to be arguing that because scholars agree that there was a historical jesus, they also accept that he rose from the dead.

I have not gotten to fact #5 or begun to draw conclusions from the five facts taken together.

Who cares

[Randy Carson]

Addressed by Tim O'Neill in this forum in old threads.

And it wasn't entirely dismissed out of the picture.
It's a possibility that can't be discarded.

Yeah, it can. So, here's your assignment: you assert that Jesus was conflated with the "Teacher of Righteousness". Okay. Prove it.

But please, start another thread for this.

No, poca. And the reason is really straightforward: we know how the oral tradition of the Early Church was handed down and enscripturated.

You know nothing, Jon Snow!

Is that a light-hearted cultural reference with which I am unfamiliar?

We also know how the oral tradition passed down from Muhammad through his family and tribesmen and some 70 years after his death, we got a qur'an. And yet, you don't believe in the qur'an... how come?

Another thread, another day.

Possibly. But that does not mean that Jesus didn't have a real "kinsman" named James.

Indeed, it doesn't.
However, it opens up the possibility space. You can now have more than one James who belonged to this cult and was called a brother. How can you tell which possibility is more likely, or even which was the real one?

Scholarship. Oh, and the fact that some people were around when Jesus, James, John, Peter and Paul were actually alive...people who wrote stuff down.

Damn, poca...do you think we just happened upon this odd book last week?

[Minimalist]

As I noted in the OP, "this discussion will not consider whether the New Testament is reliable nor attempt to prove that it is. The conclusion that Jesus did rise from the dead will not depend upon that argument."

Fuck you, Randy.  You can make rules for yourself.  No one else.