In what way is the Resurrection the best explanation?

[GrandizerII]

But they didn't just believe Jesus body was missing. But that he truly rose again. They believed in the reality of the resurrection as much as they did in the reality of an empty tomb. The depictions of the resurrection may be mysterious in nature, but people truly did believe in it, as a real as believing touching human flesh.

Yes, and all that takes is seeing an empty tomb where they thought Jesus' body was supposed to be and a viral faith-based interpretation of that. Note that in the earliest copies of Mark, no one witnessed the risen Jesus; they believed on faith.

The community defies the sort of expectations and reality of other communities of disappointed expectations, like those communities that thought the world was going to end on an exact date. They go from a communities of high hope and expectations, to communities of disappointment, at at best a haggard hope, that's been shot and dismembered. They have a mortal wound that they've never able to recover fully from, that the drains the life out of them.

Um, no, not necessarily.

See Millerism and the Seventh-day Adventists. If there is enough trigger(s) to keep the community's faith going, then the community can recover in no time and be even more strengthened in their faith. You should read Influence by Cialdini, where he tells a story among many of how a faith-based group will go out of their way to validate their faith after a crisis of disappointment and falsified prophecy and be even more strengthened in terms of their faith.

Ultimately, however, as I said in the OP, we don't have sufficient relevant information to go by to make any confident claims about what may have happened back then. Even if we were to be very charitable and grant that supernatural events are possible and that the Gospels were not entirely myths. We can speculate, but that's about all one can do. The case for the Resurrection just doesn't have a good basis, and it doesn't help that it's supposed to be a supernatural event (even if we grant that such events can be possible).

This is where our different presuppositional elements lay. I'm not into epoche (The Pyrrhonists developed the concept of "epoché" to describe the state where all judgments about non-evident matters are suspended in order to induce a state of ataraxia (freedom from worry and anxiety)), like many atheist. Rather than withholding a conclusion, I look for one that smooths it all out. One which the pieces fit more comfortably in, than ones that leave more nagging suspensions about certain pieces of the puzzle.

The resurrection exists as such a conclusion, because any naturalistic explanation that has ever been offered, or that I can imagine, never seems capable to doing that. It's make sense only when one contemplates the question less, but not for someone like me who wants to contemplate it more and more, till something is revealed. Epoche may relieve the anxiety for you, but not for me, who needs to contemplate and contemplate more, about what happened.

Nice try but this has nothing to do about relieving anxiety (maybe for you it is, but not for me). For me, this is about intellectual honesty. If we don't have enough details to go by, we can't come up with a confident conclusion. The fact of the matter is that, given what we do have, the case for a supernatural Resurrection is pretty weak and the case against it is stronger. Otherwise, "Mark" would not have shied away from giving the full details of what happened. Instead, we have a very minimalistic account of the resurrection in the earliest copies of the Gospel.

[Drich]

I think the belief in a risen Jesus is better explained by potential naturalistic explanations than by a potential supernatural one, and you don't even need to argue the Gospels are complete myths to come up with a naturalistic explanation that's more compelling than a miracle case. One example: Joseph of Arimathea ended up moving Jesus' body to a private place during the night, in the hope that it would make things easier for the Messiah to come back to life and fulfill the expectations that he was supposed to meet. When that didn't happen, Jesus' body nevertheless stayed there and was never moved back to the original tomb. Joseph also decided not to let anyone know about this, so when rumors spread that Jesus had risen, he chose not to say anything about it.

what book chapter and verse is any of this in?
Are you guys seriously adding straw men material to the story of christ just to have more to say when you try and knock it down? Seriouly look at what you are doing you are literally creating a straw man by telling us what you think was going on in the minds of people you have no way of knowing. THEN you have the juevos to tell me how this is all wrong... what you created is wrong...

Or it may be he decided to lie to the other disciples and have them believe Jesus rose from the dead (he or one of his men could have been the "angel" in the empty tomb when the women came to visit Jesus' body). Perhaps to spark some strong faith-based rebellion against the Romans.

Too many necessary information withheld from us so that one cannot really make any confident case for what triggered the Christ faith, but the point is the case for the Resurrection is just damn weak.

Or everything is there yet there and you can't refute how it was written without a big empty sweeping dismissal.

[GrandizerII]

I think the belief in a risen Jesus is better explained by potential naturalistic explanations than by a potential supernatural one, and you don't even need to argue the Gospels are complete myths to come up with a naturalistic explanation that's more compelling than a miracle case. One example: Joseph of Arimathea ended up moving Jesus' body to a private place during the night, in the hope that it would make things easier for the Messiah to come back to life and fulfill the expectations that he was supposed to meet. When that didn't happen, Jesus' body nevertheless stayed there and was never moved back to the original tomb. Joseph also decided not to let anyone know about this, so when rumors spread that Jesus had risen, he chose not to say anything about it.

what book chapter and verse is any of this in?
Are you guys seriously adding straw men material to the story of christ just to have more to say when you try and knock it down? Seriouly look at what you are doing you are literally creating a straw man by telling us what you think was going on in the minds of people you have no way of knowing. THEN you have the juevos to tell me how this is all wrong... what you created is wrong...

Mark 15 provides the background to these two possible scenarios. Of course I added to the story but so did the early Christians (see the later copies of Mark 16, Matthew, Luke, John, and other sources).

Also, the phrase "straw men" ... not what you think it means.

[Acrobat]

Yes, and all that takes is seeing an empty tomb where they thought Jesus' body was supposed to be and a viral faith-based interpretation of that. Note that in the earliest copies of Mark, no one witnessed the risen Jesus; they believed on faith.

Thats not what the earliest copies of Mark indicated. Mark indicated he had risen, and he was going before the disciples, in Galilee. Mark closes without narrating that encounter. But he acknowledges that the disciples did witness the risen Jesus.

The earlier followers of Jesus, his disciples strongly believed in the reality of the resurrection, just as strongly, if nor more strongly than christians today. They staked their life, and their communities life on it.

Um, no, not necessarily.

See Millerism and the Seventh-day Adventists. If there is enough trigger(s) to keep the community's faith going, then the community can recover in no time and be even more strengthened in their faith. You should read Influence by Cialdini, where he tells a story among many of how a faith-based group will go out of their way to validate their faith after a crisis of disappointment and falsified prophecy and be even more strengthened in terms of their faith.

What followed Miller’s failure, was The Great Disappointment, this disillusionment of his followers, many of whom who abandoned him, or offshoot into other traditions like the SDA. Miller pretty much died along with his failed prophecies. But they did have the additional of being built of Christianity, that most of his followers were able to settle back into some version of Christianity in his demise.

Some of his followers tried to still desperately cling on to Miller, reinterpretating his failure differently, but it was severely wounded, but they were patients on life support. Their fervor commitments didn’t increase after the failure of its vision, they evaporated, and took a severe being, were diminished significantly by it.

No other messiah claimant at the time, came back from his demise, the communities that followed them, lost hope as soon as they were strung up and died. Not only did the followers of Christ buck that trend, but took whatever death blow his crucification had, and survived not as haggard disillusioned community, but profoundly reawakened community. No matter how you want to look at it, it defied all expectations, even those of Rome. No one has ever imagined the Roman Cross as a symbol of hope, but the absolute Power of Rome.

In fact if it wasn’t for our views of supernatural events, if we believe they were just as possible as natural events, we’d easily conclude that Jesus did resurrect as we would do that he existed.

It’s only because of precommitments, that we’s unlikely to accept this explanation. It’s only based on commitments like extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, that ordinary evidence isn’t sufficient.

Nice try but this has nothing to do about relieving anxiety (maybe for you it is, but not for me). For me, this is about intellectual honesty. If we don't have enough details to go by, we can't come up with a confident conclusion.

It has nothing to do with intellectual honesty. It has everything to do with our presuppositions, not honesty. 

The resurrection defies all naturalistic explanations. Every attempt to paint it into any natural pathology, fails. Whatever transpired after Christs death, looked nothing like failed expectations, like the impact of disillisonement, or anything that ever took place from a messiah claimant getting strung up.

Now you might reject that it was supernatural still, but you can perhaps concede that?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think the belief in a risen Jesus is better explained by potential naturalistic explanations than by a potential supernatural one, and you don't even need to argue the Gospels are complete myths to come up with a naturalistic explanation that's more compelling than a miracle case. One example: Joseph of Arimathea ended up moving Jesus' body to a private place during the night, in the hope that it would make things easier for the Messiah to come back to life and fulfill the expectations that he was supposed to meet. When that didn't happen, Jesus' body nevertheless stayed there and was never moved back to the original tomb. Joseph also decided not to let anyone know about this, so when rumors spread that Jesus had risen, he chose not to say anything about it.

what book chapter and verse is any of this in?
Are you guys seriously adding straw men material to the story of christ just to have more to say when you try and knock it down? Seriouly look at what you are doing you are literally creating a straw man by telling us what you think was going on in the minds of people you have no way of knowing. THEN you have the juevos to tell me how this is all wrong... what you created is wrong...

Or it may be he decided to lie to the other disciples and have them believe Jesus rose from the dead (he or one of his men could have been the "angel" in the empty tomb when the women came to visit Jesus' body). Perhaps to spark some strong faith-based rebellion against the Romans.

Too many necessary information withheld from us so that one cannot really make any confident case for what triggered the Christ faith, but the point is the case for the Resurrection is just damn weak.

Or everything is there yet there and you can't refute how it was written without a big empty sweeping dismissal.

I don't think it needs to be in chapter and verse.  It's simply an alternative, prosaic explanation for one of the myths in the Gospel narrative.

Boru

[GrandizerII]

Yes, and all that takes is seeing an empty tomb where they thought Jesus' body was supposed to be and a viral faith-based interpretation of that. Note that in the earliest copies of Mark, no one witnessed the risen Jesus; they believed on faith.

Thats not what the earliest copies of Mark indicated. Mark indicated he had risen, and he was going before the disciples, in Galilee. Mark closes without narrating that encounter. But he acknowledges that the disciples did witness the risen Jesus.

No, he doesn't. He states what the women reported hearing from that man in the tomb, but nowhere in the passage does it say that they did witness the risen Christ. Early Mark simply reported what the women were told. It took Later Mark and the other Gospel authors to state that people did see the risen Christ.

The earlier followers of Jesus, his disciples strongly believed in the reality of the resurrection, just as strongly, if nor more strongly than christians today. They staked their life, and their communities life on it.

Yes, they truly believed. It wasn't an insincere belief. But it doesn't mean the belief itself was true. 

Um, no, not necessarily.

See Millerism and the Seventh-day Adventists. If there is enough trigger(s) to keep the community's faith going, then the community can recover in no time and be even more strengthened in their faith. You should read Influence by Cialdini, where he tells a story among many of how a faith-based group will go out of their way to validate their faith after a crisis of disappointment and falsified prophecy and be even more strengthened in terms of their faith.

What followed Miller’s failure, was The Great Disappointment, this disillusionment of his followers, many of whom who abandoned him, or offshoot into other traditions like the SDA. Miller pretty much died along with his failed prophecies. But they did have the additional of being built of Christianity, that most of his followers were able to settle back into some version of Christianity in his demise.

Millerism managed to survive through SDA. Just as how Messianic Jesusism managed to survive through later Christian church.

In fact if it wasn’t for our views of supernatural events, if we believe they were just as possible as natural events, we’d easily conclude that Jesus did resurrect as we would do that he existed.

No, we still wouldn't ... maybe you, but not others ...

It’s only because of precommitments, that we’s unlikely to accept this explanation. It’s only based on commitments like extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, that ordinary evidence isn’t sufficient.

It's not simply just that. It's a matter of Bayesian reasoning. If the evidence we keep seeing corresponds to the case against the Resurrection more than the case for the Resurrection, then this decreases the odds that the Resurrection is true and eventually renders it a weak explanation.

Just look at some of the points here that correspond more to the cases against the Resurrection:

Early Mark 16 was very minimalistic.

According to contemporary/later sources, only a handful of named persons were said to have seen the risen Christ.

Jesus conveniently ascends into heaven after a short while after the Resurrection.

This event just happens to occur in a time and place where there were no cameras and videos to record the event.

As a group, people have been prone to believe in fantastical things that just weren't true.

We just don't have a case of the supernatural that we can conclusively agree actually happened.

Nice try but this has nothing to do about relieving anxiety (maybe for you it is, but not for me). For me, this is about intellectual honesty. If we don't have enough details to go by, we can't come up with a confident conclusion.

It has nothing to do with intellectual honesty. It has everything to do with our presuppositions, not honesty. 

The resurrection defies all naturalistic explanations. Every attempt to paint it into any natural pathology, fails. Whatever transpired after Christs death, looked nothing like failed expectations, like the impact of disillisonement, or anything that ever took place from a messiah claimant getting strung up.

Now you might reject that it was supernatural still, but you can perhaps concede that?

Nope, because I don't agree with that assessment of history.

[Drich]

what book chapter and verse is any of this in?
Are you guys seriously adding straw men material to the story of christ just to have more to say when you try and knock it down? Seriouly look at what you are doing you are literally creating a straw man by telling us what you think was going on in the minds of people you have no way of knowing. THEN you have the juevos to tell me how this is all wrong... what you created is wrong...

Mark 15 provides the background to these two possible scenarios. Of course I added to the story but so did the early Christians (see the later copies of Mark 16, Matthew, Luke, John, and other sources).

Also, the phrase "straw men" ... not what you think it means.

let's see what the defination actually says
Straw man:
straw man
/ˌstrô ˈman/
noun

1. 1.an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument.
   

Now what did I say?
Are you guys seriously adding straw men material to the story of christ just to have more to say when you try and knock it down? 

So the definition says= intentionally misrepresenting a position to set it up as a means to make it easier to defeat. Then I said you are making up narrative to have more to say when you try and refute or know down the narrative.

IDK chief but it sounds like I got a pretty good understanding of the definition and was able to successfully identify such work in the op.

for instance chapter 15 of Mark simply informs us Joseph took the body down in time for the sabbath and entombed the body.
The rest of what you say here:

Joseph of Arimathea ended up moving Jesus' body to a private place during the night, in the hope that it would make things easier for the Messiah to come back to life and fulfill the expectations that he was supposed to meet. When that didn't happen, Jesus' body nevertheless stayed there and was never moved back to the original tomb. Joseph also decided not to let anyone know about this, so when rumors spread that Jesus had risen, he chose not to say anything about it.

is not based on any teachings in mark 15 nor any other of the gospels. in fact it leaves out huge chunks of texts which would make it impossible for Joseph t have taken the body.

That is what makes you whole effort a straw man it is the fact that you omit points in the narrative that make your little man of straw topple over upon it's telling. which is why I assume you do not include these details. IE the contingent of Roman soldiers who placed an imperial seal on the tomb. a seal if broken would mean the lives of those soldiers.

[GrandizerII]

is not based on any teachings in mark 15 nor any other of the gospels. in fact it leaves out huge chunks of texts which would make it impossible for Joseph t have taken the body.

That is what makes you whole effort a straw man it is the fact that you omit points in the narrative that make your little man of straw topple over upon it's telling. which is why I assume you do not include these details. IE the contingent of Roman soldiers who placed an imperial seal on the tomb. a seal if broken would mean the lives of those soldiers.

You're getting this from Mark 15? I know in other later sources there are added details and commentaries on the Mark story, but how is what I'm doing any different?

[Drich]

what book chapter and verse is any of this in?
Are you guys seriously adding straw men material to the story of christ just to have more to say when you try and knock it down? Seriouly look at what you are doing you are literally creating a straw man by telling us what you think was going on in the minds of people you have no way of knowing. THEN you have the juevos to tell me how this is all wrong... what you created is wrong...

Or everything is there yet there and you can't refute how it was written without a big empty sweeping dismissal.

I don't think it needs to be in chapter and verse.  It's simply an alternative, prosaic explanation for one of the myths in the Gospel narrative.

Boru

which is refuted in the whole narrative with the addition of the roman soldiers who's lives depended on Christ being in that tomb. That's what makes it a strawman. 1/3 of the original telling was omitted and this new one put in it's place which makes it easier to believe the 'natural explanation.'

[Acrobat]

No, he doesn't. He states what the women reported hearing from that man in the tomb, but nowhere in the passage does it say that they did witness the risen Christ. Early Mark simply reported what the women were told. It took Later Mark and the other Gospel authors to state that people did see the risen Christ.

No early Mark ends at verse 8: “And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” 8 And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Mark indicates the disciples saw the resurrected Christ, he just does not narrate that account, even in its early form.

Yes, they truly believed. It wasn't an insincere belief.  

Yes they believed it truly, as fervently and earnestly as anyone could believe anything. The truly believed that Christ Resurrected, lighting the fire and commitment of the early christian movement. This is not a disillusioned belief, but one that came back after the death and resurrection more alive more impassioned to who Christ was that before. I can see why Christ was so appalling to many before his death, why he had the following he did, I can follow all that myself, and see the allure of his being, but how can anyone come from that scene of living tragedy, not disillusioned? How can the fire of hope survive as it did, without being real?

Millerism managed to survive through SDA. Just as how Messianic Jesusism managed to survive through later Christian church.

Not really, Miller is hardly even acknowledged by the SDA. If you look at their beliefs on their official website, they’re almost indistinguishable from generic evangelical beliefs, with some additional peculiarities, like Saturday worship. There’s no mention of Millers failed prophecies, or any reinterpretations of the date he indicated etc… All that appears to have been an embarrassment, to be irradiated from memory.

According to contemporary/later sources, only a handful of named persons were said to have seen the risen Christ.

They all indicated that he appears to his disciples. And these disciples where the primary witness to that experience of the resurrected Christ.

And the reality of resurrection isn’t purely a historical occurrence, it also the reality of hope. The writers of the Gospel were careful not to make it about one reality, over the other, but see these two together. Hope as real as touching human flesh.

For unbelievers hope is perhaps some predictable outcome, hope is unknowable, only to be anticipated in dread and anxiety. In the Gospels Hope is real, and knowable as touching human flesh. The Resurrection is a historical event, but also exists in a mysterious way that defies simply being categorized as that. That that they truly believe in both.