Steven Carr

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...ham/heart.html is a good article on what sort of testimony would justify a belief in miracles.

Victor Reppert

There's been some controversy about this passage. My own reading of it is that there can certainly be events that contravene the laws of nature as we know them, but if we encounter them, we should search for the (natural) causes of them and not attribute them to the supernatural.

Victor Reppert

Victor Reppert

But I don't think it's just every one in the world that needs to provide the evidence. First, there are a couple of different versions of Hume's position. Hume doesn't tell you what to do if what you experience appears to contravene the laws of nature. If we take Hume's position to be that your own experience could justify you in believing in a miracle, but testimony could not, then instead of using the Hanson example let's go back to the example of seeing it yourself vs. having a bunch of people who have a history of debunking apparently supernatural occurrences saying "We're stumped." I just don't see a principled way to accept direct experience (which could be hallucinatory), and always reject testimony. Most of what I know about the world I know through testimony, broadly speaking, anyway.

Victor Reppert

Steven Carr

So you cannot find a way to tell the Yorkshire Ripper that his experience of God ordering him to kill prostitutes was not genuine?

Why should the Yorkshire Ripper have ignored his direct experiences?

(Considering I don't think this is a very good argument on my part...)

Victor Reppert

Largely as a result of our uk.r.c discussions, I'm not as inclined as I would have been at the time I wrote the essay to use martyrdoms as a primary argument against the theft theory. But not because you've persuaded me that there weren't any relevant martyrdoms. It's just I think the theft theory has so many problems that my evidence, independent of martyrdoms, for its falsity is considerably less than my evidence that, say Peter was martyred. I think instead of focusing on martyrdoms it is better to focus on the kinds of risks the early Christians took of being martyred by what they said. And the theft theory has the same sorts of problems conspiracy theories have with respect to all sorts of other subjects.

I was talking primarily about what my arguments were designed to refute. And it really wasn't so much a refutation of theft theory as it was an explication of Hume.

Victor Reppert

Steven Carr

Out of curiosity, what are the problems with the view that Joseph of Arimathea switched the body so he could be first in the Kingdom when Jesus resurrected, then packed it all in when he realised how foolish he had been?

And what are the problems in comparison with the view that Jesus's body was witnessed in Acts to take off vertically in the Ascension and is now presumably somewhere in outer space? Minor surely?

Victor Reppert

Steven: This theory seems extremely implausible because there's no good reason to suppose that Joseph of Arimathea could think, even in a moment of foolishness, that robbing Jesus's grave would improve his position in the Kingdom (which wasn't looking like much of a possibility since the one who was supposed to bring it in had been executed as a common criminal), and an empty tomb alone, without appearances, would hardly be sufficient to result in an Easter faith. Assuming the we are going to go on to account for the experiences of the disciples in terms of hallucinations, Joseph would have to know in advance what kinds of hallucinations the disciples were going to have.

With the Ascending Body of Christ, on Christian assumptions it could have been a demonstration of Christ's going into heaven accomodated to the understanding of the Disciples. The body could, of course, have been translated into the non-3-dimensional heaven later. This seems to involve mystery but not absurdity, and there is a difference between the two.

Victor Reppert

Steven Carr

Victor denies everything he cannot sell to himself. The Bible clearly states that the disciples witnesses Jesus ascending into Heaven, and he was hidden by a cloud. As that does not fit his worldview, he denies it.

What does 'accomodated to the understanding of the disciples' mean? Are the Gospel accounts no more than the misunderstandings of ignorant, pre-scientific peasant fishermen, who never understood what was happening, and thought they were seeing things which never actually happened?

Is Victor saying the disciples were hallucinating when they saw the Ascension and did not see what was really taking place?

Where is this 'non-3-dimension Heaven'? How can a physical body get there? Can Victor explain? Can theism explain *anything*, or is it all bold assumptions to patch over holes, as his assumption of a later translation appears to be? Isn't this one of those many, many promissory notes of theism that will never be fulfilled?

I find it amazing that Victor cannot think of a reason why somebody would not believe Jesus when he said he was going to be resurrected, and want to be there when it happened. Not everybody had little faith!

Victor Reppert

The disciples saw Christ's body go up, and be covered by a cloud. Obviously Heaven is not in outer space, but since God is supposed to be the creator of space and time, so I'm not sure this is a problem from the point of view of , say, Augustine's theology.

Where would a non 3-dimensional heaven be? After all, it's not three-dimensional.

Is Jesus supposed to give his disciples a scientific eduction, along with everything else?

Jesus predicted his resurrection to a bunch of people who weren't expecting him to be killed, but rather they expected him to restore the kingdom to Israel.

Steven Carr

Nor was it a problem for somebody with the theology of Luke, who assumed that Heaven was , in some way, above the sky, and so used that fact in his imagined reconstruction of what must have happened.

Actually, they had been given the secret of the Kingdom of God, which makes you wonder why they didn't know what the kingdom was.

Jesus said Mark 10:32T hey were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. 33"We are going up to Jerusalem," he said, "and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, 34who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise."

Seems pretty straightforward to me. Even an idiot, or a disciple could understand that, especially as all of these prophecies came true.

But why did Jesus pick such totally moronic imbeciles that they failed to understand even his clearest teachings. I wonder what else of the message of Jesus has been similarly garbled.