Steven Carr

http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nowayjose.html - The Impossible Faith - is an essay by JP Holding , where he attempts to show that Christian converts were all sceptics, who converted because the evidence was overwhelming for a corpse rising from the grave, eating some fish, and then travelling into the sky on its way to Heaven.

Most of it is really bad, but JP Holding does make one or two good points.

I quote him 'Suppose, for example, you are starting a new UFO cult, where the faithful will be taken up into a UFO that is waiting for them. Such a cultist would usually follow advice from factor #7, and make sure the UFO is somewhere where people can't go and check up on it (e.g., assert that the UFO is hiding behind the Moon). But suppose you ignored this advice, and instead asserted that the UFO was waiting in a cave in a mountain not far from the city. The last thing you would do is encourage people to go to the cave and check out your claim - thereby discouraging the very gullibility that your cult's survival depends on.'

This seems like good advice for early Christians , who made sure that this alleged resurrected Jesus had gone to Heaven before telling people about a resurrection.

If you claim that somebody has been resurrected, then you need a really good answer when somebody asks to see this resurrected person.

But what should we conclude if this hypothetical cult of JP Holding's had members who scoffed at the whole idea that there was a UFO in a cave in the mountain, but still remained cult members?

We would have to conclude that the cult did not think it a central belief that there was a UFO in a cave in the mountain. People could remain cult members, and still scoff at such a claim.

And they clearly could not have been converted to such a cult by stories of a UFO in a cave in a mountain.

After all, these cult members scoff at the idea.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is writing to cult members who scoff at the idea that God would choose to raise a corpse.

Clearly early Christianity could not have been built on the idea of a corpse rising from the grave. The logic of JP Holding's analogy is very clear - cult members do not scoff at central beliefs of their cult. So if they do scoff at any belief, we know that that belief is not central to the cult.

Zenaphobe

How early in the development of early Christianity are you suggesting?

peanutaxis

I think [some of the] the Corinthians disbelieved in an afterlife (resurrection of the dead) for normal people, while still believing that Christ was raised.

lpetrich

Richard Carrier has written a very nicely detailed response: Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False?

He argues that early-Xian epistemology was mainly "Our sacred books go back a long, long, long, long way" and "IT WAS REVEALED TO ME!!!" and not careful testing of hypotheses, as J.P. Holding seems to claim.

Zenaphobe

Is there another conclusion we could make, like the cult held that the UFO in a cave (UFOIAC) was central, and those who scoffed would be corrected and if they did not recant, would be ejected from the cult?

It just doesn't seem to follow that we can decide what the cult considered central beliefs due to the existence of "heretics".

I can imagine a scenario where someone converts to a cult and remains in it even after a major doctrine turns out to be false or unfalsifiable. Consider a cult in 1899 that believes the UFO is arriving at 1900, and after it fails to come to pass, still remains in the cult after the arrival is pronounced to have been a "spiritual" arrival that you can see with "eyes of faith".

The mere fact that, others have faith in the UFOIAC, can be enough for certain people to accept it and join the cult. Mormons and the golden tablets are illustrative of this phenomena. Intense belief can be contagious.

I wonder though, why couldn't the resurrection be a central idea just because the Corinthians had dissenters among them? The letter Paul writes them seems to be suggesting that the resurrection is important to his version of Christianity (whether physical or spiritual) and he is calling out those who are denying it.

Saying the resurrection was not a central belief, due to dissenters among the rank and file, seems to be a stretch to me.

Even today we find groups who dissent from common Christian doctrines and still consider themselves as Christians,

"One of the more intriguing findings is that not all people who call themselves Christians believe all the conventional Christian beliefs. For example, one percent of Christians do not believe in God, 8% do not believe in the survival of the soul after death, 7% do not believe in miracles, 5% do not believe in heaven, 7% do not believe in the Virgin birth and 18% do not believe in hell."
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/har...ex.asp?PID=359

I don't think that we would say these dissenters beliefs "prove" that those doctrines have not been central to the majority of Christians through history.

spamandham

...as is often the case, Holding is oversimplifying things. In this case, his oversimplification results from an implied assumption that Christian history was linear in nature.

The evidence points toward multiple steps of divergence and syncretization. In that framework, the central tenet of one group could easily be scoffed at by another group who had differing central tenets (sort of like modern Christianity).

You could even argue that the fact something is scoffed is proof of opposing viewpoints (what are the odds of that I wonder?).

Steven Carr

According to JP Holding , that is impossible.



Paul still considers people who scoff at the idea of God choosing to raise corpses as Christians.

In his view, they have a wrong understanding of resurrection, as it does not involve the raising of corpses.

But he does not consider them heretics for denying that God chooses to raise corpses. He regards them as wrong for saying there is no afterlife.

Eric H

If God can create the universe and life from nothing; then he should also be able to raise the dead.

Steven Carr

Not an argument used by Paul, who assumes that the scoffers accept that God created Adam from dead matter.

The scoffers believed Jesus was alive.

They scoffed though at the idea of God choosing to raise a corpse.

Paul tells them they will be resurrected like Jesus , and that they are idiots to discuss how corpses can be raised , or to think that the body that is planted is the body that rises.

Crowley

Paul is clearly saying that God raised Jesus and that it was a spiritual resurrection. This seems to be a contradiction to the Gospels and the basic tenets of Modern Christianity.

I don't believe I ever read all of Corithians at one go. When I was a kid the Sunday School teacher would read only a part of it or the Preacher would pick out just one or two verses. Odd to see it, and read it, for the first time.

It is nothing like how I perceive Christianity.