Steven Carr

http://www.knightslayer.dsl.pipex.com/resurrection.mp3 has a recording of the show.

The Christians were reduced to saying that I was the Antichrist, and that they had a bit of the True Cross.

Hallandale

Who buried Jesus after his crucifiction?
According to Matthew, Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus.
Matthew 27:57-60
57When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus.
58This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him.

59And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,

60and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away.


But the Apostle Paul flatly contradicts Matthew and says the Jews and their rulers buried Jesus.
Acts 13:27-29
27"For those who live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, recognizing neither Him nor the utterances of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled these by condemning Him.

28"And though they found no ground for putting Him to death, they asked Pilate that He be executed.

29"When they had carried out all that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the cross and laid Him in a tomb.

If they can't figure out who buried Jesus, how can they say he was resurrected?
Doesn't this contradiction cast doubt on the "Jesus rose from the dead story"?

_________________
Nick Hallandale enterprisestrategy@earthlink.net

RUmike

Listening to it now... nice to put a voice to a poster!

SkepticBoyLee

Steven, why didnt you oblidge them on the air and say "Dude, Jesus if you exist and your the nly way to avoid the big ole flame pit, like lemme know and stuff".

The callers and host were painting you as someone who was just afraid ti let the lord in who had a hardened heart and so far you seem to just ignore those question. Almost every atheist I know has prayed that prayer. Either we never got an answer or we realize eventually that its just our imaginations. There is no magic in that prayer. There aint no Jesus. All of the religious get these internal feelings that tell them they are on the right path. Not just Christians.

You allowed them to paint you as just a hardned atheist who is afraid to ask the jeeeeeysuuus if hes really there.

RUmike

I didn't have time to finish the recording (I will later), but it seemed to me like the host was fair and understood Steven's points well (and maybe was even seemed convinced by them!).

The opponent seemed to debate the resurrection in general, and didn't actually address the difference between Paul and the gospels.

SkepticBoyLee

Steven stuck to the actual debate points more closely. His voice was less clear than the others. Possible because it was the phone line he was on. Possibly because I an an American, tough the host and the other Christian were British and I could hear them more clearly.

I felt that he missed several opportunities to nail them, especially callers on the absolute bullshit they spouted. Calling him "The atheist", almost as if they were talking down to him. Like he was "less than". Saying "The Lords ways are not our ways". Oh well then Im God and if I do something that you dont understand, say I smack you in the face its just because my ways arent your ways. What nonsense.

When they asked him what it would take to believe possibly he could have said that if there were many, many cooberating accounts from many different sides fo the issue instead of simply 4 biased religious accounts -- and he could have pointed out just how biased religious accounts are and that Christians do not belive that Muhammed flew into the sky on a rock at Mecca.

Also the assertion about the many, many new testament and gospel documents. Thats could have been trashed.

Steven stuck strictly to the discussion points though and didnt venture too far outside of that realm. Its just that I have seen his knowledge here on this board as well as on his website and blog -- so I felt he could have made a more impressive accord of himself on the show if he had deviated a little like his opponents did.

Steven Carr

I did point out to the 'ex-atheist' that if there is a God, you do not have to search the universe to find him, you just have to search your heart. I said that millions of people throughout history have searched their hearts for God and not found him.

Actually many of the people who ran in seemed to have abandoned the idea that Jesus was physically resurrected into an eternal body.

They seemed to forget that it is all very nice and good to have an eternal body, but it does mean you only have one pair of ears, and can't hear millions of prayers all at once.

And having a physical, resurrected eternal body does prevent one from being omnipresent. How can Jesus hear people when he is literally not there?

It is one of the inconsistincies of Christianity. A bit like believers in ghosts who believe ghosts can walk through walls, but not sink through the floor.

Or Canon Michael who maintained that the body of Jesus before the resurrection was God made flesh, but a body that houses God cannot be described as a spriritual body.



I did like the way that the Christians of today who rang in condemned the earliest Christians in Corinth for denying a resurrection. Why had the Corinthians become Christians, if they denied the resurrection? (In reality, they accepted the resurrection but denied that dead bodies could rise. Before you criticise them, as Kent Hovind's question 'Were you there?')

Canon Michael never addressed the fact that the earliest Christian creeds (Romans 1, 1 Cor. 15, Philippians 3) never have a resurrected Jesus walking the earth.

As far as time allowed, I addressed everything he said, apart from his inconsistency in claiming that the disciples could not possibly have recognised Jesus as God from his behaviour and teaching (only from the resurrection), while Canon Michael also used C.S. Lewis, who claimed that the behaviour and teaching of Jesus meant he was mad, bad or God.

Which is it? Could only God have taught what Jesus taught, in which case the disciples would have believed he was God? Or did Jesus not do anything to show he was God, until he was resurrected?

There were many more things he didn't address, and anybody who has studied as he has and comes up with the 24,000 manuscripts argument is simply someone who will say anything. Happily, in this information age, Christians can no longer hide the truth.

Far from being on any Index., Bart Ehrman's books are on the NY Times bestseller list.

The Christians were incredibly disturbed by the plain English of what Paul says.

Paul says in Romans 7 that he wants to be rescued from his body of death. He clearly does not think his body will be saved. He had seen what happened to Jesus body, saw where his body was heading, and said 'I want out of there.'

And 1 Cor. 5:5 has Paul say very plainly that the flesh and the spirit will suffer different fates.

But the Gospels say the flesh and the spirit will be saved together ,as did the later Christians who took 1 Corinthians 15 and forged a new letter (3 Corinthians) making Paul say all the things that the real Paul never said.

We just have to look at modern Christians to see that the Gospels are false.

The audience who rang in had more faith than the disciples who doubted even after the resurrection (Matthew 28:17).

And, just before the show started, there was an advert for a talk on how to interpret dreams.

If modern Christians think that what happens in dreams is somehow real, then perhaps a Christian of 2,000 years ago might think Jesus would 'appear' to him in a dream.

Just talking to Christians , seeing their faith, makes you realise that it is not true.

And the more faith modern Christians have, the more the Corinthians would have belived Jesus walked the earth after being resurrected, and the more obvious it is that he didn't.

Steven Carr

Don't forget the callers who rang in with talk of eyewitness testimony (Canon Michael said the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses). These callers sometimes got my name wrong. So much for eyewitness testimony.

GakuseiDon

I listened to the radio broadcast and I can't quite see where you think the problem is. That's the same point that Paul is raising. It sounds similar to the "fisherman dilemma" that I touched upon in my debate with Doherty: http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakus..._Part2.htm#1.2

The problem can be stated this way: a fisherman falls into a sea and drowns. A large fish eats him. A second fisherman captures the fish and eats it, and later dies. When the two fisherman are raised, how are the bodies reconstituted?

There were several philosophical problems relating to people being raised that Paul was trying to address. Remember that Paul was writing at a time when people believed that only permanent incorruptible things (like souls and spirits) could exist above the firmament. Flesh was corruptible, and so had to be changed before it could go into the incorruptible realm in the heavens above the firmament.

The Corinthian crowd appears to be saying that dead bodies won't be raised (I assume because they believed that only their souls would ascend to heaven). My guess is that they were concerned about something similar to the "fisherman dilemma" I listed above.

Paul replied, "You idiots! Of course bodies will be raised. Christ after all was raised". But he still faced the "fisherman dilemma". His solution: an allegory relating to how seeds died and then bloomed again, implying that there was a transformation from perishable flesh to imperishable flesh. The body wasn't left behind, but transformed and taken up.

I used to think that Paul thought that the resurrection was spiritual only, until I started looking into Middle Platonist concepts. While we think of "spiritual" as meaning "non-material" (so a "spiritual body" is in a sense an oxymoron), the people of Paul's time regarded "spiritual bodies" as an actual type of body that paralleled a physical body. Only an incorruptible spiritual body can ascend above the firmament to heaven. Since my debates with Doherty, I now think that Paul believed that the resurrection is a physical one, with the fleshly body transformed into a spiritual body. The body is not left behind.

Yes, exactly. There will be a transformation from dust to a heavenly incorruptible substance. The body won't be left behind. Justin Martyr makes a similar point, using the allegory of seeds (though he believed that the flesh itself could be purified and made incorruptible):

“In the same way, then, you are now incredulous because you have never seen a dead man rise again. But as at first you would not have believed it possible that such persons could be produced from the small drop, and yet now you see them thus produced, so also judge ye that it is not impossible that the bodies of men, after they have been dissolved, and like seeds resolved into earth, should in God's appointed time rise again and put on incorruption"

Steven Carr

Paul says that is a stupid question.


It is stupid because they won't be reconstituted. They will get a new body made of heavenly material.

Do you really think God will reconstitute their bodies from earth, air, fire and water (in Paul's thought), only to transform all those elements into spirit? Remember, even to ask the question marks you out as stupid , as far as Paul is concerned.

Paul immediately attacks the Corinthians for asking how dead bodies could be raised , and immediately tells them that what goes into the ground dies.

Up to that point he sounds just like an atheist ' How can a corpse be raised? You idiot! When you go into the ground, you are dead!'

The difference between Paul saying that dead bodies are dead, and atheists saying dead bodies are dead, is that Paul then says we will get a new body. An atheist wouldn't say that.


Which is why they would have found 'Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God' so congenial to their views?

Or 1 Peter saying 'All flesh is grass'.

Or Paul pointing out that stuff above the firmament was made of totally different materials to earthly things, and that we will not be made of the dust of the earth when resurrected, but will also be made of heavenly material.

Paul believed exactly what you describe. The Gospels and the OT don't of course. Elijah goes to Heaven in his normal body.

So you are taking seriously this idiotic question 'What sort of body will a corpse have?' You think the material of the corpse will have to be changed (first after being carefully restored from the elements it has gone back to)

Paul gives a whole load of stuff made of different things - men, birds, fish , animals, the sun, moon , stars etc.'


Presumably this was to rub the noses in the Corinthians that one material turns into another. They would have looked at all the birds becoming fish, the sun becoming a moon, or men becoming animals, slapped their heads in expasperation and exclaimed 'Of course! Paul is telling us that one material changes into another. How stupid we were not to draw the right conclusion from what we see around us when we look at birds, fish , animals , men and the sun, moon and stars'.



Wrong again! They denied *any* reward for the dead. They did not join in baptising for the dead. They would have joined in that if they thought of souls in Heaven being alive.

They were worried that they would not be resurrected, because , unlike Jesus , they did not have a dual nature. Jesus was a god and so could leave his body behind, and still be alive. But they were men, and so when their body died, they were dead.

Paul shared the same worry. He wants to be rescued from his body of death (Romans 7). In 2 Cor. 5, he reassures people that it does not matter if thir bodies are destroyed, because they will get a new body, not made by hands.

Paul goes so far as to call us 'clay pots' using exactly the words from Leviticus for objects that God decrees must be destroyed after use.

I see you have to resort to misquotes to get anywhere.

No worry. I can always quote what Paul does say

' 35But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?" 36How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.

Paul is clear that the seed dies. It is dead. It has ceased to be. It is extinct. It is no more. It is bereft of life. It is an ex-seed.

You do not plant the body that will be. God gives it a new body. The seed is just a place-holder, a marker.

God sees a dead wheat seed, and knows to create a wheat plant. God sees a dead mustard seed and knows to create a mustard plant. God sees a dead human corpse and knows to create a 'life-giving spirit'.

This is why the Corinthians were idiots. They worried why there was still a corpse, not realising that there was bound to be a corpse if a resurrection had take place.

The wheat had been separated from the chaff.

Paul writes totally differently about seeds to Justin Matryr, who says straight out what Paul never does 'The resurrection is a resurrection of the flesh which died.'

You are utterly correct that Paul thought only an incorruptible spiritual body can ascend above the firmament to Heaven, and that celestial elements were just as material as the earthly elements of earth, aire, fire and water.

What a pity that the Gospels say clearly that Jesus body was made of flesh and bones, and still had wounds. Totally contradicting your attempt to reconcile Paul and the Gospels.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:5 that the body and the spirit will have a different fate. One will be destroyed, and the other saved.

How more clearly does Paul have to write before you grasp that the two will not be saved together?

Paul says in 2 Cor. 5:5 ' so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.'

The word for swallowed up is 'katapino' - to gulpd down, consume to the last drop.


As I said in the debate , can anybody really say that when Jesus was resurrected with flesh and bones and wounds, that what had previously been mortal about Jesus had been consumed to the last drop, so that none of it existed any more?

Still, I'm sure you are happy with your view that Paul wrote to the Corinthians 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?You idiots! The dead are going to be raised with a transformed body, so that their flesh is turned into spiritual flesh.'

Pardon me, if I don't see the idiocy in asking a question that Paul himself must have thought very deeply about. (in your view)

They way you phrase your answer, it seems quite a sensible question to me.


It is much more natural to me to think of a modern analogy. Somebody goes to a magic show, sees a magician crack an egg open, and then produce a whole egg out of 'nowhere'. If I wonder how the egg was put back together again, I am an idiot - because there are two eggs. I would just be too dumb for words for wondering how eggs can be out back together again, just as the Corinthians were dumb for wondering how corpses of dead fishermen could be reconstituted from the elements they had dissolved into.