Dean Anderson

Well, as we have established, Christians such as yourself who already believe what Strobel is peddling are his target audience. His book remains utterly unconvincing to those who do not already agree with him, though.

Last week, I saw a unicorn.

This must be true, since a week is not long enough for a legend or false story to develop.

Once you realise what is wrong with what I have just said, you will realise that the same thing is wrong with what you have just said.

There are people alive who can refute the "written evidence" that Aliens landed at Roswell. There are people alive who can refute David Icke's "written evidence" that the British royal family are actually shapeshifting reptilian aliens who eat babies in rituals.

Just because something can easily be refuted doesn't mean that it is considered worth refuting - and certainly doesn't mean that "true believers" will stop believing.

For that matter, Young Earth Creationism can be easily refuted - and look how many people believe that.

Can you show us the calculations that allegedly led Davies to those conclusions? Otherwise we just have Strobel's word for it - and quite frankly, if Strobel said that the sky was blue I'd go out and check before believing him.

Can you explain how atheism "robs death of meaning"? According to most forms of atheism, this short life is all we have and death is the permanent end of a person. That sounds meaningful to me. Whereas by Christianity, death is fairly insignificant because you get to live forever in Heaven after living on Earth. It's just like moving house.

Yep, that's Strobel's opinion all right.

Now, do you have any reason at all why we might give any credence to that opinion?

That's a pity. You could learn a lot here.

We are "narrow minded", yet you are the one who won't stay and hear opinions other than your own. I find that kind of ironic.

spamandham

A few points.

1. There are no known scrolls dating to within 20 years of Jesus death.

2. The vast majority of ancient documents have been lost. If someone who knew better had in fact refuted Paul, odds are we would not be privy to it.

3. The earliest Christian author, Paul, who's writings are generally dated to about 50 CE, never makes any claim that Jesus died in the recent past. The idea that Jesus died in 30 CE stems 2nd century tradition, long after anyone who could possibly have been a witness would have died. There are numerous threads in this subforum debating these details.

There are indeed a few people like that here, but they don't generally stick around long.

Diogenes the Cynic

Logos, the primary problem with Strobel's empty tomb arguments is that he presumes a lot of facts not in evidence -- namely that the Gospels are reliable sources of information in their claims about the tomb and the alleged witnesses. Since the historical reliability of the Gospels is exctly what he's trying to prove, he's engaging in circular logic when he tries to cite them as a source for something like what the Jews supposedly said about the tomb.

If you substitute just about any other work of fiction, the clearly fallacious nature of this approach should become obvious to you. If 100 characters in a Stephen King novel all see a werewolf, that doesn't mean you have 100 witnesses for a werewolf and just because some characters in the Gospels saw an empty tomb or a risen Jesus doesn't mean any such people really existed or made any such claims.

The empty tomb is a fairly late development in Christian tradition. It doesn't exist in the earliest Christian literature (The Pauline Epistles, Q, Thomas). It appears first in Mark (c. 70 CE at the earliest) and the other Gospel writers got it from Mark.

For a variety of reasons which I won't go into, the mere claim that Jesus would have been allowed to be placed in a tomb at all is highly implausible. Theoretically possible? Perhaps, but it's a claim which has to be proven in and of itself before the alleged "emptiness" of that tomb deserves any consideration at all.

The fact of the matter is that there is no good historical evidence that any human being on earth ever claimed to have seen an empty tomb or to have seen a physically resurrected Jesus. None of the Gospels were written by witnesses. None of the claims about the tomb are made by witnesses. None of the apostles (if they existed at all) left any written record. We actually don't know what any of Jesus' direct followers (assuming there was a Jesus at all) believed about Jesus or about any kind of resurrection.

Paul claims to have known some apostles but is quite vague in telling us exactly what they beleived and Paul seems to know nothing at all about an empty tomb.

Getting to the specific claim of how "the Jews" reacted -- there is no evidence that the Jews reacted at all. Matthew's claim that the Jewish leadership claimed the body was stolen is completey uncorroborated, unsupported hogwash. Ther first Jewish responses to historical Christian claims don't surface for over a century after the alleged crucifixion and even then, they are clearly responding to already existing Christian literature and tradition.

These are hardly the only problems with Strobel's work. His books are riddled with recycled fallacies, special pleading and circular arguments. Strobel appeals to unsophisticated evangelicals and to people inexperienced with Biblical criticism not because he says anything original (he doesn't), but because his presentation is presented in a simplistic enough manner that his arguments (such as they are) are easy to grasp and because his pretense to being a hardboiled journalist gives his fans the illusion that he's being objective and finding the bottom line.

The reality is that he interviews only other fundamentalists, never challenges their claims and never interviews skeptics or even mainstream Christian scholars. Trust me when I say Strobel is laughed at by any serious historian or Bible critic (or journalist, for that matter). I think that his books are most useful as illustrations of the worst kinds of apologetic fallacies and can just about be utilized for classroom exercises in dissecting invalid arguments.

Sparrow

Somewhere I have a copy of a 'documentary' on the empty tomb shown a few years ago on the History Channel or one of its sisters. Lee Strobel was interviewed about the gospel story and basically says 'It's too unbelievable not to be true!' I think I could find the clip if anybody cared.

Anyway, if unbelievability were an accurate measure of the truth of a claim, bodily resurrection would be mundane and ordinary. I can come up with lots of wilder stories than that. Strobel writes for the gullible faith heads. The intelligent ones won't be convinced by his transparently poor journalism. the gullible ones are at risk of following some other crackpot with an emotionally comforting story.

Lógos Sokratikós

Please do. I care.

Thanks fellas, lots of good arguments, some new for me, like the "I saw a unicorn last week", "Arthur's sword" and the "shot in the barn". Although the shot in the barn, though valid, takes more braincell work and may not be that easy or acceptable for believers.

I think the Case for faith is a great book (I'm not supporting the validity of the theistic arguments therein), since it gives a good amount of arguments, pro and con. Whoever came up with the list of atheist arguments (Stroebel or whoever) seems to be able to think like an atheist, although he chooses not to in the end -ticking my sense of wonder.

In the end it is one sided, since only theists answer. It would be interesting to email Stoebel to suggest including an appendix with atheist counter-arguments for subsequent editions. I wonder if he will agree?

windsofchange

For those asking "why bother reading Strobel?", I'd say, for the same reason Christians should read Hitchens, Dawkins, et al - to get a better idea of what one's opponents really think, rather than just relying on others' opinions.

Reading anything = good. Reading differing opinions = priceless.

Toto

But you can see that skeptics who read Strobel come away with a very low opinion of Christian reasoning. Is he the best example that modern Christianity can come up with? (and don't offer CS Lewis. Skeptics tend to have a similarly low opinion of his logic, although he has other redeeming literary qualitites.)

Iznomneak

I didn't read the book, but I get the same impression from this video of him:

Was The Tomb Really Found Empty? - Lee Strobel

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9jzgsflTFAE

The problem I see is that Strobel is asserting these events as facts, but I see no basis for accepting his alleged facts.

windsofchange

I don't know if he's the best, but he's certainly one of the most popular - and as others have pointed out, he's the one that's thrust upon atheists (and other skeptics) most often by well-meaning Christians. So a familiarity with at least one of his works might be useful.

windsofchange

I just did that, and the first result that came up was your post! :devil: