In what way is the Resurrection the best explanation?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I'm over here giggling at the idea of a naturalistic explanation for an explicitly supernatural event, in a fictional narrative.

Category failure.  The natural explanation™ is that it's in the story as an important detail to the plot, lol.

But Jesus' missing corpse is not 'an explicitly supernatural event'.  Bodies go missing for all sorts of reasons.  Why is being attempted is a possible explanation as to how an explicitly natural event might be perceived by a gaggle of superstitious, semi-literate religious fanatics to have been supernatural.  Happens a lot.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

I'm over here giggling at the idea of a naturalistic explanation for an explicitly supernatural event, in a fictional narrative.

Category failure.  The natural explanation™ is that it's in the story as an important detail to the plot, lol.

But Jesus' missing corpse is not 'an explicitly supernatural event'.  Bodies go missing for all sorts of reasons.  Why is being attempted is a possible explanation as to how an explicitly natural event might be perceived by a gaggle of superstitious, semi-literate religious fanatics to have been supernatural.  Happens a lot.

Boru

It is just as naturalistic, and in my opinion likely to be much closer to more of the truth,  to say somewhere along its descent some of this gaggle of superstitious , semi-literate religious fanatics knew, through contact and trial and error, what would impress their fellow superstitious, semi-literate fanatics, and manufactured bullshit to suit the purpose.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

But Jesus' missing corpse is not 'an explicitly supernatural event'.  Bodies go missing for all sorts of reasons.  Why is being attempted is a possible explanation as to how an explicitly natural event might be perceived by a gaggle of superstitious, semi-literate religious fanatics to have been supernatural.  Happens a lot.

Boru

It is just as naturalistic, and in my opinion likely to be much closer to more of the truth,  to say somewhere along its descent some of this gaggle of superstitious , semi-literate religious fanatics knew, through contact and trial and error, what would impress their fellow superstitious, semi-literate fanatics, and manufactured bullshit to suit the purpose.

Not an unreasonable position.  Supernatural explanations are only to be preferred when all possible naturalistic explanations are eliminated.  In the case of Jesus, that's not happened (nor is it likely to).

Boru

[EgoDeath]

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.

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.

Oh, you didn't know?

The resurrection is a metaphor, inside of an allegory inside of a dream. It's Christception, starring Jim Caviezel.

There you go with your hyper-literal interpretations again, silly atheist.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm over here giggling at the idea of a naturalistic explanation for an explicitly supernatural event, in a fictional narrative.

Category failure.  The natural explanation™ is that it's in the story as an important detail to the plot, lol.

But Jesus' missing corpse

What missing corpse?  You have to see what I mean about this rabbit hole. Get back to me when you find Mina Harkers missing corpse. She had to be buried somewhere, but without the body how can we know she recovered from the curse to marry Jonathon? Maybe the disappearance of her body had some hand in the stories about her vampirism. That would be the natural explanation, and not an unreasonable position.

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The resurrection is a metaphor, inside of an allegory inside of a dream. It's Christception, starring Jim Caviezel.

There you go with your hyper-literal interpretations again, silly atheist.

There was a group of proto-christians who believed exactly this.  Their beliefs were important to the formalization of literature even if they were executed and declared heretics by a mob of other heretics. The story was allegorically true of a non literally equivalent divine reality.

[GrandizerII]

But Jesus' missing corpse

What missing corpse?  You have to see what I mean about this rabbit hole.

If the Gospel of Mark is completely fictional (and not an ancient man's journal log of some teacher's ministry and last days of his life), then there is no missing corpse. But just saying it's all a myth doesn't really explain the onset of Jesusism/Christianity.

[The Grand Nudger]

No one "just says" it's a myth, and there's no thing as just a myth..either.  The onset of christianity is explained as a social movement, not by reference to fairy tale god-corpses.

The fact that people (in this case non-believers) are even speculating on this "natural explanation" is, itself, a facet of that social movements explanation. By which myths and legends become as real and mundane as a door jamb. Fundamentally explicable.

Explain the pop music top 10, lol.

[GrandizerII]

No one "just says" it's a myth, and there's no thing as just a myth..either.  The onset of christianity is explained as a social movement, not by reference to fairy tale god-corpses.

Christianity revolves around the risen Christ. There's no Christianity without the Resurrection.

I noticed you mentioned something about proto-Christians that viewed the Resurrection as a metaphor. If it's not just speculation, can we know on what basis you believe this to be true?

[The Grand Nudger]

Christianity revolves around christ, indeed.  Not some guy named jesus with a body to go missing. "Paul" heard a voice and saw a vision on a road.

You can take the time to do your own research on the various groups that survived or didn't into 400ad to become christians and define the movement as we know it. The short version of the long story is that institutionally useful myths end up being selected for over personally important or "authentic" ones. Christianity has about as much to do with the beliefs it formed out of as taco bell has to do with mexican food, lol. It's own records of socially important heresies have been assiduously scrubbed, but their mere existence tells us more than the people who declared them heretical would have ever had us know about how christianity came together.

Some things we only know about because records survive of the orthodoxy arguing against them, and they're probably arguing against a straw version....but they're arguing...so.

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The better version of this question, btw, a natural explanation, is not for how the details of reality can be made to match the story..but in why the group of christians who succeeded in defining that article for the orthodoxy (and in some cases the heterodoxy) felt that they needed to believe in a body.  In a man.  In a sort of divine crucible where a human existence added the necessary currency of the redemptive sacrifice.

It's a story about sympathetic magic, not a missing body. About beating the shit out of a doll so that it doesn't happen to us. The better and more lifelike the doll the more effective the spell will be. This was one of the first articles of christology formally decided. That he had to be fully man in order for the crucifixion to be effective.

That's how the universe works in the story, lol. Thats why god doesn't just say "fuck it, mulligans for everybody"..or just let shit go without fanfare. Think of how many times people ask -these- questions, as well, as though it were more than the narrative details of a fantasy world. The natural explanation™ of the force..is midichlorians. There's no beating around the bush here. The details of christ in magic book are necessities of the myth, not a garbled report from the frontlines of some real world. Not only aree they explicitly theological details..right down to ownership of a body and chasing people off a temple step..... they're just wrong. The people who came up with that idea of how that world worked are just plain and simply wrong. Their mistake is the basis of further mistakes in category, assumption, and question.

[EgoDeath]

There was a group of proto-christians who believed exactly this.  Their beliefs were important to the formalization of literature even if they were executed and declared heretics by a mob of other heretics.  The story was allegorically true of a non literally equivalent divine reality.

Source?

Also, that there was one group of Christians who did take the resurrection metaphorically means little. It says no more than saying Protestants oppose the beliefs of Catholics.