Perry

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Posts by Perry

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  113

  No Bible = No God?

  by menrov in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  some doubt about the bible completely, some partially.

  what if the bible turns out to be a product of humans, nothing divine.

  would you still believe in a creator?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Perry

  Anders,
  
  I read your link on mass hysteria/hallucinations. This has been suggested before as a possible explanation and is a skeptic favorite. There are some pretty big absurdities with this explanation:

  Such hallucinations, if this is what they were, are quite unique and should warrant careful psychological scrutiny. These [supposed hallucinations of the disciples] were experienced by a considerable number of different individuals, all seeing the same vision, but in different groups, at different times, both indoors and outdoors, on a hilltop, along a roadway, by a lakeshore, and other places. Furthermore, they were not looking for Jesus at all. Several times they didn't recognize Him at first, and at least once actually believed it was a ghost until He convinced them otherwise. He invited them to touch Him and they recognized the wounds in His hands (John 20:27; Luke 24:39). They watched Him eat with them (Luke 24:41–43). On one occasion, over 500 different people saw Him at one time (1 Corinthians 15:6), most of whom were still living at the time when the evidence was being used.5

  Still more problems exist for this popular skeptical view. How does one explain the appearance of Jesus to Paul on the road to Damascus? Surely Paul was not grieving over the death of Jesus. He was zealously persecuting followers of Christ and “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples” (Acts 9:1). He was not in any state of mind to experience a hallucination of Jesus, particularly one that would transform his life so drastically. Yet Paul’s experience is one of the five key evidences, meaning it is well-evidenced and accepted by the vast majority of scholars on the subject.

  Also among the key evidences are the empty tomb and the conversion of James due to a purported post-Resurrection appearance of Jesus. The mass hallucination theory cannot account for the empty tomb .

  Nor can the hallucination view make sense of the conversion of James. While James may have grieved the loss of his half-brother, the death of Jesus would have confirmed his skeptical view of the Lord’s claim to be the Savior. Only upon seeing the risen Lord did James come to believe in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.6

  I think that if a defeated, disillusioned & ragtag group of disciples could pretty much overnight be transferred into a dedicated & energetic faith movement through mass hysteria, self-deception, & dedication to living and dying for a KNOWN LIE; then that would be a greater miracle than the resurrection itself.
  
  
  

  Hume argued that the wise man “proportions his belief to the evidence,”8 so he thought the evidence would always favor a naturalistic explanation over a supernatural one. Yet in this case, it would be a far greater miracle for entire groups of people in different mental states to undergo shared hallucinations on different occasions, in different places, and for different reasons.9
  
  I guess we all choose the miracles we believe in. For many, the resurrection is the more believable.
  
• 
  113

  No Bible = No God?

  by menrov in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  some doubt about the bible completely, some partially.

  what if the bible turns out to be a product of humans, nothing divine.

  would you still believe in a creator?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Perry

  There are a lot of evidences; I think most of them by themselves would come up short. But, put them all together, and it creates quite a portrait.
  
  The one that I personally can't get past is believing that hundreds of people would choose persecution, family rejection and many of them death for something they knew to be a lie. Ordinary, common people just don't up and do that, especially in large numbers. You simply can't compare this to people choosing the same for a belief. Totally different.

  The notion that all this was made up over decades is discredited by modern scholarship from the bulk of both liberal non-believer & conservative scholars.... as the previous gary habermas clip shows. That is beyond dispute in my opinion. There he detailed the "minimum facts" argument. This is reasoning that only uses facts that most liberal non-believing scholars agree with. These facts place the witnesses at the right place at the right time.

  So, skeptics are stuck with the problem of why many, many people:

  1. chose persecution,

  2. chose to give up their previous religion that had been inculcated into them from birth

  3. chose to be shunned by family

  4. chose death over recanting

  ... All this for something they KNOW to be a LIE.

  Comparing this to a belief is apples and oranges. Dying for something you believe to be true vs. dying for something you know to be a lie.... are completely different things.

  So far, Anders is the only one to offer a couple of relevant possibilities within the framework of accepted scholarship from liberal and conservative consensus:

  1. Some people perpetuate a lie to gain power or money.

  The general view of the first Christians were that they "shared all things in common" and they were taught to treat others as more important than themselves, and to be a servant rather than a traditional-style leader. So, I think this possibility falls pretty short.

  2. Some people believe their own lies.

  Again, the issue is not whether or not people believe their own lies or anything else for that matter. The issue to grapple with here is why large numbers of people were willing to suffer and die for something they KNOW to be a lie.
• 
  113

  No Bible = No God?

  by menrov in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  some doubt about the bible completely, some partially.

  what if the bible turns out to be a product of humans, nothing divine.

  would you still believe in a creator?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Perry

  it comes down to is the baby Jesus, it's quite sad really, for grown adults to buy into such obvious baloney

  I don't think that it is far fetched for God to appear in his creation. Lots of artists have appeared in their creations.... reminds me a little of Hitchcock. It almost became a challenge to spot him when watching his films:
  
  
  

  Jesus' life displayed a very delicate balance on how an authority can hold onto Law while at the same time, extend mercy under a certain type of circumstance. He showed that the heart of God is mercy, patience and love, but also that he is quite capable of justice. He encourages us to seek mercy, rather than justice; especially when dealing with others.

  His teachings were profound. Simple statements stopped the most morally arrogant people on the planet (Pharisees) cold in their tracks. Statements like : It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth.
  

  Amazing.
  
  Anders,
  
  I don't think the Mormons have a resurrection account that in anyway mirrors what happened in Israel with Jesus. Scholars, both conservation and non-believers place the events of the resurrection exactly where they are purported to be.
  
  Lots of other people have suffered died for their belief in something, true. But almost no one suffers & dies for something they KNOW to be a lie. This would have been the case in the 1st century.
  
  Here is a quick review of the minimum of what most skeptical scholars believe about the resurrection:

  http://www3.telus.net/trbrooks/garyhabermas.htm
  
• 
  113

  No Bible = No God?

  by menrov in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  some doubt about the bible completely, some partially.

  what if the bible turns out to be a product of humans, nothing divine.

  would you still believe in a creator?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Perry

  I think that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus that we do have raises the event far above simple hearsay. Here are just a few lines of reasoning:
  
  
  

• The First Eyewitnesses were Women. The first eyewitnesses of the resurrection were women. All the Gospels note that the first individuals to discover the tomb empty were women. Matthew notes that “After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to view the tomb…The angel told the women, ‘Don’t be afraid, because I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. For he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the play where he lay” (Matthew 28:1, 5-6).[1] Women were not held in high esteem. In Greco-Roman culture, a woman’s testimony was not admissible in court. In Jewish circles, it took the testimony of two women to equate that of one man. If one were to invent a story, the last people one would place as the first witnesses would have been women, unless it were otherwise true.
• Minimal Facts Concerning the Resurrection. Gary Habermas has popularized the so-called minimal facts argument for the resurrection. The minimal facts are those things that are accepted by nearly all New Testament scholars. The minimal facts are “1. Jesus died by crucifixion. 2. Jesus’ disciples believed that he rose and appeared to them. 3. The church persecutor Paul was suddenly changed. 4. The skeptic James, brother of Jesus, was suddenly changed. 5. The tomb was empty.” [2] These facts are nearly universally accepted by New Testament scholars, including liberals.
• Transformation of the Early Disciples. As noted in the minimal facts, James, the brother of Jesus, was changed from a skeptic to a believer because of the resurrection. James along with his brothers did not believe in Jesus during Jesus’s early ministry (see John 7:5). However, Jesus appeared to James (1 Corinthians 15:3-9) and James became a leader in the early Jerusalem church. His death is recorded by Josephus.[3] Paul is another example of one who was completely transformed by the resurrection of Jesus. Paul had been a persecutor of the church. After witnessing the risen Jesus, Paul became a proclaimer for the church.
• Embarrassing Details of the Resurrection. Historically speaking, embarrassing details add veracity to a historical claim. The fact that women were the first witnesses, that a member of the Sanhedrin (the same Sanhedrin that executed Jesus) had to give Jesus a proper burial, and that the disciples were fearful and fled all serve as embarrassing factors for the resurrection account.
• Willingness to Die for What Was Known. Many people will die for what they believe to be true. But no one will die for something they erroneously invented. The disciples knew if they were telling the truth. Yet, one finds that the disciples were willing to die for what they knew to be true. Stephen died by stoning (Acts 7:54-60), James of Zebedee died by the sword at the hands of Herod (Acts 12:2), James the brother of Jesus died,[4] and Peter and Paul died at the hands of Nero.[5]
• Documentary Evidence. The documentary evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is quite good. The historian seeks to find how many primary and secondary sources[6] can be gathered for an event to determine the event’s historicity. Concerning primary sources, the resurrection has Matthew’s account, John’s account, and Paul’s account in 1 Corinthians 15, including the additional references by James (if one accepts that James wrote the letter attributed to him) and Jude. The following are secondary sources for the resurrection: Luke, Mark, Clement of Rome, and to a lesser degree Ignatius and Irenaeus.
• Circumstantial Evidence. Douglas Groothius notes that circumstantial evidence for the historicity of the resurrection is “namely, the practice of the early church in observing baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Sunday worship.”[7] Baptism is based upon the analogy of Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection. The Lord’s Supper is a symbol of Christ’s sacrificial death. In addition, it is quite odd that faithful Jews would move their worship from a Friday evening into Saturday to a Sunday morning unless something major had occurred on a Sunday morning. The major Sunday morning event was Jesus’s resurrection.
• The Missing Motive. J. Warner Wallace has noted in his lectures and books that when a conspiracy is formed, three motivating factors are behinds such a move—power, greed, and/or lust.[8] The disciples would hold no power behind claiming the resurrection as history. They were running around while often being threatened by the Jewish and Roman authorities. As far as greed, they taught that one should not desire earthly possessions, but spiritual ones. Lust was not a factor, either. They taught celibacy before marriage and marital fidelity after marriage. In fact, N. T. Wright notes in his classic book, The Resurrection of the Son of God, that the disciples had no theological motivation behind claiming that Jesus had risen from the dead as they were anticipating a military hero and a final resurrection at the end of time. What motivating factors existed for these disciples to invent such a story? None! The only reason the disciples taught the resurrection of Jesus was because Jesus’s resurrection had occurred.
• Enemy Attestation of the Resurrection. Historically speaking, if one holds enemy attestation to an event, then the event is strengthened. When one considers the claims of the authorities that the disciples had stolen the body of Jesus (Matthew 28:11-15), the testimony of the resurrection is strengthened. The early belief that the disciples had stolen the body of Jesus is strengthened by the discovery of the Nazareth Inscription that orders capital punishment for anyone who steals a body from a tomb.[9] In addition, several refences to Jesus and his resurrection include citations from Josephus,[10] Tacitus,[11] and Suetonius[12] among others (including the Babylonian Talmud).
• Multiple Post-Resurrection Eyewitnesses. Finally, there is multiple eyewitness testimony pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus. Several people had seen Jesus alive for a period of 40 days. The eyewitnesses include Mary Magdalene (John 20:10-18), the women at the tomb accompanying Mary (Matthew 28:1-10), the Roman guards (Matthew 28:4), the Eleven disciples (John 21), the two men on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), an indeterminate number of disciples (Matthew 28:16-20); over five-hundred disciples (1 Corinthains 15:6), to James (1 Corinthians 15:7) and to Paul (1 Corinthians 15:8-9). I am certain that there were many other witnesses that are unnamed.