Zadok001

Sorry to break up this little discussion, but can someone explain to me how John died naturally for a cause? Dying of a heart attack is matyrdom now, neh?

semyaza

Joseph Smith was murdered by an angry mob in Carthage, Illinois. He never once renounced his faith in the Book of Mormon. Ergo, the Book of Mormon must really be inspired of God, and all Christians are going to Hell for not believing.

The argument works both ways, which of course means that it is useless.

The Admiral

If that list of martyrs is in the N.T. I missed it completely. Guess I'll have to read it yet again.

The Admiral

Marduk

"Nobody has ever been able to name a Christian who died in the Colosseum"

I've seen on the History channel that there is no proof that ANY Christians died in the Closseum, if any died in the arena at all it would have been at Capua, the place that made Spartacus famous.

diana

Ah. Ye Olde "Men Wouldn't Die For Something That Wasn't True" argument. That argument is so full of holes, it's a miracle in itself that it's still afloat.

As semyaza pointed out, it works for any cult you care to mention. If belief = truth, they're all true.

But let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that the only people who've ever died for their beliefs were Xn.

The Xn is left to verify the historical existence of these characters, for starters.

The Xn is then required to verify how they died. As Tercel pointed out, most of the "martyrdoms" of the apostles are legend.

Once we've ascertained the "how," we must then determine the "why." As the only "evidence" we have of these men's existence is the written records of anonymous believers--even if we dismiss the doubt-inducing bits about writer anonymity and no established historicity--we must still deal with the fact that a believer is very likely to record the "facts" in such a way that his belief is strengthened. That is, lying by omission or outright lying is very common (such as the Cassie what's-her-name Littleton shooting "Xn martyr").

Those who try to use this argument with me get a hearty belly laugh in return. Then I try to sell them some oceanfront property in Arizona.

d

Mageth

??? Lots of Christians have been killed for preaching the resurrection.
Perhaps you are restricting this to those who have claimed to have seen the resurrection?
In which case that's easy:
James, Jesus' brother.

Perhaps you meant to say James, the brother of John. Here's the account of his execution:

Acts 12:1 Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. 2 And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.

It doesn't clearly indicate that James was killed for preaching the resurrection, does it?

Tom Sawyer

Using the same argument, David Koresh was correct when he said he was a god (or whatever the hell it was he was saying), since people who knew him personally died for him. The same goes for the pharohs and Mohammed and for everyone else who's claimed to be a god and/or prophet.

This is a dumb argument. People die for lies all the time. It's the person's belief that the thing is true that brings about martyrdom, not the truth of the thing itself. Also, none of these people went out looking to get martyred, they just ended up that way. This speaks a lot more to the Romans' ability to kill people who opposed them than it does to what these people died for.

Butters

That's right Peteyh,
Now if the Christian God had intervened, and smote those darn pagan Romans, that would have been impressive!

Valmorian

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Of course, because even if you DO assume that all the apostles died because of their faith, it says NOTHING about if the faith was well-founded.

The Heaven's Gate cult died for their faith too, doesn't make it true.

Tercel

Is that an order or a prediction?

Anyway, the oldest account of James' death is found in Antiquities 20.9.1

I see... Exactly what are you arguing?
-That we don't have accounts of Christians being martyred?
-That they're not sufficiently evidenced for your taste?
-That there's no reason to think that it was ever due to them specifically "proclaiming the resurrection" as opposed to "being Christian". (Though I'm not convinced there's any important distinction)
-Or that the evidence we have for the previous is insufficient for your liking?

That's quite amusing coming from you. Anyway, you're wrong, it's a very good argument as far as arguments from silence go.

I don't quite know about "never to be heard of again"... what you mean is that no other books that are in the NT mention them, which is hardly the same thing.
While Christian writers would probably not proclaim happily that apostle XXX recanted, there were enough anti-Christian writers and enough Christian factions around to happily record any apostasy. Also it seems likely that any recanting apostles would start getting negative or at the least extremely neutral comments from the orthodox Christian writers. Eg they seem quite happy beating up Judas - Papias gives us a story of his death when he is so fat that he couldn't fit through a gap that a Chariot could and got run over. Instead we have positive comments about all the apostles and what glorious deaths they died and he great they all were. -Unlikely if they were considered traitors.