Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[Minimalist]

The idea that Jesus is no different than the 2,000+ gods of ancient history who have been largely forgotten may make it easier for you to discount Christianity (without actually thinking), but it's not a legitimate argument. The alleged parallels between Jesus and other so-called gods lack any real substance.

The alleged events in the life of Jesus lack any real substance.

Chas,

On page 173 of Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus he has this footnote.  I've got to find this article so I can read it in full.

The component of vanishing corpses as a mytho-type for translation to heaven
is demonstrated to have been a commonplace in pagan literature of the time in Richard
C. Miller, 'Mark's Empty Tomb and Other Translation Fables in Classical Antiquity',
Journal of Biblical Literature 129 (201 0), pp. 759-76. He shows this theme was so
distinctive of pagan tradition (as opposed to Jewish literature) that it is unlikely to have
come from anywhere else. That translation to heaven was almost a/ways understood
by pagans to be bodily (typically by the assumption of a new, indestructible, divine
body) see Carrier, 'Spiritual Body', in Empty Tomb (ed. Price and Lowder), pp. 1 10-13,
137-39, 212 nn. 169-70, particularly in regard to Philo, who often uses words such as
' incorporeal' to refer to what he actually means are physical bodies of astral material.

Really an extraordinary book in many respects.  Jesusism, it appears, was just warmed over shit...easily recognizable to people living at the time.

[Minimalist]

Another interesting web site, right on point for our jesus freak who will avoid it like the plague.

http://vridar.org/2012/02/05/hypocritica...onse-back/

Cameron portrays theologians who study “the historical Jesus” as reasonable enough to set aside their ideological commitments in order to objectively seek out only “the truth” of the matter. This is a naive Pollyannish portrayal of a scholarly field dominated by faith-committed theologians. Let’s break down Cameron’s comment and examine each piece.

Biblical studies is probably the most ideologically oriented of all academic disciplines. Hector Avalos has shown that clearly enough in The End of Biblical Studies. R. Joseph Hoffmann remarked on this blog that the reason the Christ myth theory is not given more attention among scholars has more to do with conditions of academic appointments than common sense. Stevan Davies recently pointed out that a list of the Westar Institute Fellows shows nearly all are or have been affiliated with seminaries and theological institutions. Most of the scholarly books one picks up on the historical Jesus contain prefaces or concluding chapters in which one reads reflections that sound more like homilies or spiritual confessions. James Crossley has publicly denounced the way biblical scholars so regularly open their academic get-togethers (seminars, workshops) with prayers. Blogs of theologian scholars are dominated by spiritual reflections and sayings. Atheists and atheism are generally derided. Ideology is important. The Christian faith dominates the entire field of biblical studies. To suggest that these scholars are all committed to setting aside their personal faith and seeking truth regardless of where it may lead sounds about as plausible as expecting Nazi era scientists to set aside their political ideology in order to study the biological grounds for racial differences.

[robvalue]

I got another one.

The bible speaks in metaphor a lot, doesn't it? Whenever it says something that is obviously untrue or inconvenient, then somehow we know that must be metaphor.

Well, the resurrection is a metaphor then. It's something that is obviously untrue (for those of us grounded in reality, I'm not alluding to 100% certainty of anything) and so it would be consistent to assume this is a metaphor also.

If it isn't metaphorical, how exactly do we know that it isn't? There are no guides in the text telling us what is and isn't a proper real account. If it's down to "interpretation" then we can't possibly know anyone's particular interpretation is correct.

Let's summarise:

1) God either sends/allows theists here to this forum knowing they will fail to convince us, or is surprised when they fail.

2) The accuracy of the majority of a book does not guarantee the accuracy of the rest of the book (at best it gives us some level of confidence if the rest of the book makes mundane and relatively unimportant claims). To say otherwise is to make the false dichotomy that authors are either 0% or 100% accurate.

3) There's no way to know the resurrection isn't metaphorical, if we allow that any of the bible can be metaphorical.

I'll be reading replies from theists to these points, and I'll reply to any honest attempts to address them.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Randy, Jesus is not unique. Jehovah is not unique. While many of what I call "The Zeitgeist Claims" are a bunch of historically dubious, half-baked bullshit, stripping them away still leaves us with plenty of ammo to say that the Jesus character could have been influenced by other stories that came first.


Christianity shows up during a historical period when a series of Hellenistic Mystery Cults were forming up in the Greco-Roman area. These cults had various things in common, and many of them predate Christianity.


For one thing, virtually all of these cults share the trait that they borrow extant characters from other mythologies (Persian, Egyptian, or Jewish gods, for example).


Second, many of the gods these groups chose were dying-and-rising gods, and virtually all of them are characters who experience and overcome a struggle of some variety. Generally these were agricultural gods, and their struggles, dying, and rising usually symbolised some kind of seasonal transition (i.e. the death and rebirth of the Sun at the Solstices).


Despite centering around agricultural gods that were originally believed to relate to a community as a whole (rather than individuals), the Hellenistic Mystery Cults generally repurposed these gods to lend personal salvation and personal relationships with one's deities.


Finally, it was common practice during this time period to rewrite purely celestial characters as humans with stories that place them amongst historical figures.


The point is that your deity is not a special snow flake, especially in the context of the historical period during which he arises. There is no religious theme or idea that is truly original or unique to Christianity.

[Longhorn]

I'm starting to feel like you don't like me, Randall
:c

---

Guys, while many less attentive (or more hostile) members of the forum simplistically dismiss me because they claim I'm only here to preach my own gospel. However, I'm actually more interested in finding and presenting good answers to your questions.

Now, you will both want to respond to my question below, but you seem to be raising the same objection. I'm happy to attempt an answer but I want to be sure that I understand exactly what the objection is.

Are you asking: Why doesn't God reveal himself dramatically today like he did in the Old Testament?

If not, please express the issue in your own words.

This is NOT my answer, but if Abraham, Moses, the prophets and others had a personal encounter with God that managed to get written up in the various books which we know collectively as the Bible, why do you count those as somehow "legitimate" whereas the Near Death Experiences or other supernatural occurences in the lives of modern believers are discounted?

What's the difference?

My questions are, why is god silent (compared to the OT at least) and why don't OT revelations interfere with human free will like you claim they would?

And to answer your question, there is no difference. They are all unsupported claims, events that have natural explanations and are all equally invalid as evidence for god; however, for the sake of argument, let's pretend that god exists. Why doesn't he interfere like he used to? how did his interferences not violate free will?

if you're saying that ndes are the way god reveals himself now, how does that not violate our free will?

---

And btw, a propos the head spinning thing.....didn't you say that creating us unable to sin would violate our free will? How is creating us unable to spin our heads any different?

[robvalue]

I'm caught in a trap...

And I can't get out...

Because of fear since I was a baby.

[Randy Carson]

Guys, while many less attentive (or more hostile) members of the forum simplistically dismiss me because they claim I'm only here to preach my own gospel. However, I'm actually more interested in finding and presenting good answers to your questions.

Now, you will both want to respond to my question below, but you seem to be raising the same objection. I'm happy to attempt an answer but I want to be sure that I understand exactly what the objection is.

Are you asking: Why doesn't God reveal himself dramatically today like he did in the Old Testament?

If not, please express the issue in your own words.

This is NOT my answer, but if Abraham, Moses, the prophets and others had a personal encounter with God that managed to get written up in the various books which we know collectively as the Bible, why do you count those as somehow "legitimate" whereas the Near Death Experiences or other supernatural occurences in the lives of modern believers are discounted?

What's the difference?

My questions are, why is god silent (compared to the OT at least) and why don't OT revelations interfere with human free will like you claim they would?

And to answer your question, there is no difference. They are all unsupported claims, events that have natural explanations and are all equally invalid as evidence for god; however, for the sake of argument, let's pretend that god exists. Why doesn't he interfere like he used to? how did his interferences not violate free will?

if you're saying that ndes are the way god reveals himself now, how does that not violate our free will?

N-

Are you actually saying on the one hand that God needs to reveal himself or you won't believe but on the other hand if he does reveal himself he's violating your free will?

[Randy Carson]

You didn't attempt to answer the question at all. You just used semantics to move the goalposts.

You didn't attempt to answer the question at all. You just used semantics to move the goalposts.

Then he plays definition lawyer with the word "dodging." That's kind of funny.

if you're saying that ndes are the way god reveals himself now, how does that not violate our free will?

And btw, a propos the head spinning thing.....didn't you say that creating us unable to sin would violate our free will? How is creating us unable to spin our heads any different?

God created us as finite beings.

If we assume that any and every limitation that we experience is a violation of our free will, then we arrive at the conclusion that because God did not create us as infinite, limitless beings, he has somehow violated our free will. IOW, he would have had to create us AS GODS like himself.

But God is not created and has no beginning. So, even if He created us as "gods", the fact that we were not uncreated beings would be argued as a violation of our free will because we would will to be uncreated and without origin.

I'm sure that philosophers could reason their way out of this far better than I can, but the problem is not with my answer but with a logical contradiction within the question.

[pocaracas]

Sorry, Randy.... I never got around to reply to this.

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.

I assert that Jesus MAY have been conflated with the "Teacher of Righteousness".
It is within the realm of possibilities - far more than magic fairy god exists.

You know nothing, Jon Snow!

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

Indeed it is.

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.

Fair enough.

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?

There you go with your biased scholarship... it only became less biased within the last few decades and this was too late.

People were around when the tale is supposed to have happened, indeed.... people were writing stuff down... Some of them were those you mentioned, like Paul... as for the others, they are the tale

Last week, or tens of years after the action described... it's the same. Unverifiable claims are written down. Some people believe that those events happened as described... others are skeptical.... others still think it's utter fantasy.
If you wish to present those tales as more than fantasy, then something extra must be brought forward... sadly for you, no such extra exists.

[Redbeard The Pink]

A gift for you, Randy.

Look up false equivocation. Attacking the head spin argument from that angle is probably your best bet. Good luck. If you need some help...ask someone else.