Doug Shaver

To the best of my awareness, no Christian has ever claimed that God died and came back to life. What Christians claim is that a man known as Jesus of Nazareth died and came back to life.

Of course, most of those Christians also claim that in so doing, he proved that besides being a man, he was also God; but they still deny that God died. The coherence (or lack thereof) of that particular elaboration need not distract us here, though. The claim at issue here is that a certain man died and came back to life.

Amaleq13

Nothing "intemperate" about it (quite restrained, actually, given the level of bullshit you've been flinging) but, no, I don't expect you to have anything of substance to say in response. You couldn't possibly as long as you retain such a transparently foolish position.

Other than "Yes, I'm only playing at rational thought and I'm not quite ready for the real thing.", I suppose. :wave:

spin

"[C]ontemporary" is a wonderful notion for history. It cuts the dags from the fleece. Contemporary evidence for Tiberius abounds. We have thousands of coins, carrying various historical indications. We have lots of inscriptions, statues of the man.

Trivial pointing to the fact that sources such as "Tacitus, Suetonius, Cassius Dio and Josephus" are not contemporary with Tiberius shuts both eyes to the reality of the contemporary evidence. "Tacitus, Suetonius, Cassius Dio and Josephus" all receive the support of the contemporary evidence to such a degree that one needs to take notice of their data, as they have been shown over and over and over again to be reliable.

At the same time, historical research is full of attempts to test information in these sources to see if they aren't at times as useful as believed. Historians these days are more willing to question their sources than at any time in the past. This is because they trust the contemporary evidence more than the story tellers.

If there is nothing from the period to give tangibility to the accounts in a text these days -- no coins, no statues, no inscriptions, no letters, no archaeologically relevant traces --, there is no meaningful way to use the text as history for the specific period. It is only through contemporary indications that stories can be objectively located in time. (Internal indications by themselves only supply when the story was set -- be that real, erroneous or imaginary.)

Anyone who rails against the necessity of "contemporary" indications in history is not interested in history.


spin

ph2ter

Everybody would agree that the resurrection is a supernatural event. A supernatural event is an event which is above the natural laws, but there exist several understandings of it:

1. The supernatural events are real, verifiable, and part of the laws external to nature
2. The supernatural events are real, not verifiable, and part of the laws external to nature
3. The supernatural events are real, verifiable, and part of the laws of nature that we do not yet understand
4. The supernatural events are not real

I subscribe to the last definition. The third definition could be dropped, because it is in itself contradictory. If the supernatural obeys the laws of nature, then it is not supernatural.
Those who believe that the resurrection of Jesus really happened probably ascribe to the first definition. That definition assumes that supernatural event is verifiable. Verifiable means to be capable of being tested by experiment or observation by outsiders. But if something is verifiable the science will immediately accept it as natural. Such kind of supernatural is not supernatural. It is natural.
What is left is the second definition. That leave us with the resurrection not being verifiable.

It is irrational to believe in something above natural laws which is not verifiable. Such reports can not be credible and good historian would always explain them as a deviation of reality.

Roger Pearse

You're not married, then? A married man will know all about things of this nature.

As I remarked earlier, it does no credit to atheists to scurry around looking for reasons to ignore evidence or refuse to investigate things. Don't do this.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spamandham

At this point Roger, you've already tipped your hand. If your intentions were not obvious before, they are now. Your position is completely irrational, and it's doubtful you give the same credence to similar nonsense recorded in the nonChristian the manuscripts of history.

You'd be better served sticking to legitimate historical analysis rather than trying to pass quackery off as if it were reasonable.

spamandham

There are those of us who during the course of our rational investigations, have not blinded ourselves to modern observations and their applicability to historical analysis, and there are those people who approach historical analysis from a perspective biased by their religious underpinnings.

Not upset in the least. It's refreshing to see religious biases exposed for what they are.

Amaleq13

:rolling:

There is nothing "rational" about pretending that it is reasonable to believe that an embalmed man or a 3-days-brain-dead man actually came back to life.

Stop this foolishness, Roger. Nobody is buying your pseudo-skepticism. Everybody sees it for what it is. You believe silly things to be true so you want everyone to give silly beliefs the benefit of the doubt despite their inherent silliness and despite your utter inability to lend them any credence with argument or evidence.

There are people who, quite rationally, recognize certain claims as inherently incredible and, quite rationally, recognize that considerable evidence is required before they can be taken seriously. These are the people who, unlike Roger, take into account their existing knowledge of physics and biology when confronted with an extraordinary claim. They use what they already know about the way the world works to determine the credibility of a claim. They do not pretend that they know absolutely nothing that is contrary to the claim. They do not pretend that, prior to any specific investigation of the claim, they don't already have information that denies it.

The claim that an embalmed man returned to life is an example of such a claim. The claim that a brain-dead man returned to life after three days is another.

Roger's muddle-headed approach wouldn't even allow him to regard as incredible a claim that a decapitated man grew back his head!!

There is nothing rational about you pretending that either claim is not prima facie incredible and you've made no effort to "investigate" anything. You just want everyone to forget everything they already know about physics and biology so you can pretend that retaining incredible beliefs is somehow rational.

Taking into consideration how a claim stacks against existing knowledge is not deciding in advance, Roger. It is how truly rational individuals judge any claim. It is a wonder you've lived as along as you have if this is truly the way you evaluated claims.

AtheistGamer

Thanks for the answers everyone. I'm in the process of moving right now so I just haven't had time to respond. I heard from more than a few people that a professional historian gave the same objection as I did, when he debated WLC. One thing I noticed when I was in Karate was that whenever someone pointed out the lack of evidence for Karate being an effective means of self defense, we just gave excuses for the lack of evidence. I've noticed that whenever apologists talk about the Exodus or the Ressurrection they tend to do the same thing. They give excuses for the lack of evidence. I'd still like to see whether the JCR really qualifies as history though. If it does... what do you call someone who acknowledges Yehweh's existance but refuses to have anything to do with him?

trendkill

I just thought this bore repeating.

You are not being unreasonable, nor closedminded. All we can expect in terms of evidence from that particular period is sparse written testimony and artifacts. No evidence extraordinary enough to prove supernatural claims can reasonably be expected, so the complaints about your "presuppositions" are unfounded.