rizdek

If they take communion that's exactly what they are doing. People who take part in the communion ritual are celebrating human sacrifice by pretending they are eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus. I wonder if church goers explain it to their children like that? Primitive peoples used to eat the body and drink the blood of heroic people in hopes they can gain the strength from the dead person's body. Civilized people still do.

Sean McHugh

Though some of the theories might be entertaining, plots and exotic theories are best avoided for arguing against the Resurrection.

Firstly, invocation of such theories affords Christianity's claims undeserved credibility, simply by way of inadvertently suggesting that something exotic is required to explain the evidence.

Secondly, it places the eggs in one basket. Whereas one can generally argue several reasonable and mundane alternatives to any Resurrection proposal, a 'plot' proponent is usually limited to one

Thirdly, it shifts much of the onus of proof from the miracle claimant onto the 'plot' claimant, who will invariably need to rely on a fair amount of speculation and conjecture.


Regards,


Sean McHugh

Jo

The debate is now over. Please feel free to continue any discussions here.

Alcyonian (FDP Moderator)

Adonael

Did PfC mention why he did not submit his last statement?

Roland

This is really a great post - simple, succinct and logical. Frankly, I don't see how anyone could ever really argue against it..but many will. :banghead:

Sean McHugh

He did. The debate was 5 rounds and he went first.

Adonael

then why did the mod's final statement claim that:

Sean McHugh

You will have to ask the administration. Let's just say that it didn't come as a complete surprise.

Thank you for your interest. In a span of thirty posts from the PGers, your query and madmax's excellent review provided two posts that actually commented on the debate.


Sean McHugh

Jo

I corrected my statement in the Debate forum. My apologies to PFC, Sean and the observers

Alcyonian.

Sean McHugh

During the debate, my opponent’s main argument was the alleged empty tomb. I suggested several natural possibilities. The PG also presented several alternatives to the supernatural for a tomb becoming empty. Some of these could be entertained easily, however even the more speculative were more credible than a corpse coming back to life.

My main argument was that Jesus' alleged tomb didn’t become an issue till late – too late. The empty tomb is reliant on the Gospels and mainly Matthew, which posits guards at the entrance. But these are the very religious documents that are being challenged and it has been demonstrated that their credibility is highly suspect, especially Matthew, the only Gospel that includes tomb guards guards. That Gospel shows itself to be particularly over the top.

Here is part of the ‘empty tomb’ stuff that I presented this in my opening statement:


Here and elsewhere I argued that the Jewish war and the destruction of Jerusalem gave the Gospel writers a blank canvas. I spoke of the war’s erasing effect. I will now submit further evidence that this could have easily aided the empty tomb stories.

This page writer was trying to find the graves of his ancestors. He talks about how this was made impossible after the Germans occupied the area in WWII.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb....strFamily.html

I haven't been able to find out much information about my Raczki ancestors to date, primarily because so many records were destroyed during the ravages of war: for instance, in World War II the German front remained at the Rospuda River for about 3 months.

Consequently, it was no surprise--though such a great disappointment--that when I searched the cemetery, I couldn't find the graves of any known ancestors. Nor, when I stopped into the Gmina offices, was the person helping me able to find the names I was looking for in the extant record books.

Here is a more recent case of cemeteries being victims of war. This happened in 2005:

http://blogian.hayastan.com/category/anti-christian/

Another Place of Memory Erased in Azerbaijan Blogian on 05 Jun 2007

Vandalized graves; broken stones. Another Christian cemetery has been erased in the Republic of Azerbaijan this time containing not only Armenian, but also Russian, Georgian and Ukrainian graves.

Here is another one:

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/li...cal_cemeteries

Some Berlin cemeteries were devastated during World War II

And lastly:

http://home.att.net/~shat/pages/rosin3.htm

The Jewish cemetery was erased during the Nazi rule and the tombstones used by the Lithuanians for building purposes.

In the time of Jesus, graves would likely have been even more attractive to plundering armies:

http://www.cathydeaton.com/Jewish%20...%20No%2019.htm

The preparations for the burial of Jesus that are mentioned in the gospels - the ointment against His burial, the spices and ointments, the mixture of myrrh and aloes - find their literal confirmation in what the Rabbis tell us of the customs of the period.
. . . . . . . . . .

This foolish practice had led to not only just the funeral rites themselves, but to the burning of expensive spices at the grave site, depositing money and valuables in the tomb,

If the tombs were thought to contain valuables and money, it would increase the possibility of their being ransacked and destroyed. Also, this potential could provide sufficient inducement for a family to rebury a body in a less conspicuous grave.

Now consider that and recall that the empty tomb became an item of Christianity only after the destruction of Jerusalem. By then it would likely be too late to find and point to the bones. Tombs would likely have been difficult to identify, and might have been emptied through ransacking or precautionary removal. Bones could also have been reburied (elsewhere) by Jews after a tomb was destroyed/ransacked. If this was happening it would even make it easy to concoct an empty tomb story from scratch, without there ever having been a sealed tomb with Jesus in it. I consider this to be quite likely.

The destruction of cemeteries and opening of tombs might also provide the seed for the bizarre story in Matthew’s death-of-Jesus narrative (27:50-53), where the graves were opened (and presumably destroyed) and undead saints came out of them and walked into Jerusalem. Matthew might have been concerned with there being too many opened/destroyed graves in Jerusalem, which would make a story about one empty tomb fairly ordinary and certainly not supernatural.

The Jewish war/s and the destruction of Jerusalem definitely did produce an erasing effect, where Jerusalem went into a historical vacuum that lasted a very long time. Over one and a half million Jews were either killed, displaced or enslaved. This could have not only provided the opportunity for the empty tomb story, but could have explained how Christianity traded up from the Pauline type, where Jesus was somewhat a shadowy figure all but devoid of detail with respect teachings, deeds and temporal placement, to the fleshed out high profile public figure that one finds in the Gospels. I don’t think that the sequence of happenings is just a coincidence.


Sean McHugh