Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus

[leroy]

I did. I pointed one out to him that was very clear. Like you he simply ignored the explanation and asked the same question again. When a person refuses to understand that is there problem.

You should read entire posts before posting questions. That is a self refuting belief. That is how it affects the argument. Only one can be right. But all of them can be wrong.

Oh my a bunch of nonsense. It was not a red herring fallacy, it shows that the gospels are not historically reliable. And it seems that in this post you now appear to be arguing, "The Gospels are no more reliable than other myths, but we should still believe them". Is that really your point? If you want to say that they show that Jesus probably lived, that was already granted by almost everyone here. No one is arguing that he does not exist. But none of those arguments support magic Jesus. You appear to be conflating the two concepts.

He is sometimes a scholar. But this latest argument is nonsense that is not respected by other scholars and has already been refuted. He even had to modify it a bit.

The Gospels are no more reliable than other myths, but we should still believe them". Is that really your point?

No, the point is that even if you dismiss the gospels as legends, the minimal facts would still be likelly to be true.


And the point of the OP (and Liconas book) is that the resurection is the best explanation for such facts.


You are expected to ether refute the historicity of atleast one of the "minimal facts" or provide an alternative explanation for those facts and explain why is that explanation better thst the resurrection.



Your comments on "other gods" or "the date of census" or" your opnionos on Licona's scholarship " are just red harrings because you cant deal with the OP.

 

[leroy]

And they all tend to be "So what?" claims. They do not support the parts of the Bible important to mythical Jesus. No matter how many "minimal facts" one has that does not support the supernatural.

Well the point of the book and the op is that the truth of these minimal facts strongly support the resurrection.....and arguments are provided.

This is something that apologists do not seem to understand. The odds of anything supernatural appear to be so low that any, and I mean any, naturalistic explanation is more likely.

Why? This is an ungranted assumtion that requires justification.

Please include a definition of supernatural in your justification.

Yes, you can quote, but it does not mean that you understand what a strawman fallacy is. How is that a strawman fallacy? Even worse you did not understand the argument. I never said or implied that the minimal facts are legends. So no strawman there.

Yes you did implied that the minimal facts are legends


"And if one lowers the "minimal facts" to the point of being legends then that is automatically admitting that they Jesus stories are just legends"

And you are back to using the "minimal facts" as a "So what?" argument. Your argument is refuted by a simple:

So what?

So what? The book proposes that the resurrection is the best explanation for thise facts.


If you disagree you are free to provide an alternative explanation

 

[Subduction Zone]

No, the point is that even if you dismiss the gospels as legends, the minimal facts would still be likelly to be true.

So what?

And the point of the OP (and Liconas book) is that the resurection is the best explanation for such facts.

Sorry, that is not supported by a so what argument. You are now crossing over into the supernatural and any natural explanation refutes a supernatural one. You are making a totally irrational conclusion based on admittedly weak evidence.

You are expected to ether refute the historicity of atleast one of the "minimal facts" or provide an alternative explanation for those facts and explain why is that explanation better thst the resurrection.

Why? There is no need to? Sorry, but all that you have is a So what argument. The argument does not support your above conclusion.

Your comments on "other gods" or "the date of census" or" your opnionos on Licona's scholarship " are just red harrings because you cant deal with the OP.

No, they go as to the credibility of the Gospels. Now you seem to be granting that you have nothing and somehow that helps you.

You guys really really really . . . . really really really need to work on basic reasoning skills.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well the point of the book and the op is that the truth of these minimal facts strongly support the resurrection.....and arguments are provided.




Why? This is an ungranted assumtion that requires justification.

Please include a definition of supernatural in your justification.


Yes you did implied that the minimal facts are legends


"And if one lowers the "minimal facts" to the point of being legends then that is automatically admitting that they Jesus stories are just legends"



So what? The book proposes that the resurrection is the best explanation for thise facts.


If you disagree you are free to provide an alternative explanation

Sorry, you lost. I am not writing long posts for you. If you can try to find one valid point then we can discuss that.

Here is the problem with the "minimalistic facts" If one accepts that then all religions are "true". But they clearly refute each other which means that only one at the most can be true. But by the minimal facts approach they are all true. This problem is solved by realizing that the "minimal facts" argument is horse puckey.

 

[rocala]

The claim also is that Ananias, an early Christian, was told to go to Paul and heal him. That seems to confirm Paul's story as being actually Christ to me.

I am not saying that Paul did not see anything, nor am I saying that it was not Jesus. I am saying that he did not see a flesh and blood person and therefore his experience is irrelevant to claims of a physical resurrection.

 

[Brian2]

I am not saying that Paul did not see anything, nor am I saying that it was not Jesus. I am saying that he did not see a flesh and blood person and therefore his experience is irrelevant to claims of a physical resurrection.

True.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Speaking of resurrections, where is the robust defense of Matthew 27:50--53? One would expect that such an occurrence would have cotten more press back in the day.

 

[leroy]

• the resurrection
• that which makes evident

Please try to keep up.

Well the evidence for the resurrection is in the OP

 

[Thrillobyte]

I recently finished Michael Licona's book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach which argues that there are 3 minimal facts that are accepted by virtually all New Testament scholars which form the so called historical bedrock regarding the fate of Jesus. These are as follows:

1. Jesus was killed by crucifixion under Pilate
2. Very soon after his death, his disciples reported having experiences which they interpreted as the risen Jesus appearing to them, both individually and in groups
3. The early Church persecutor Paul also had an experience which he interpreted as Jesus appearing to him and this experience convinced him to convert to Christianity

Licona argues in detail against the naturalistic hypotheses that attempt to account for the bedrock and concludes that the best explanation is that Jesus actually rose from the dead. He does so by ranking each hypothesis based on how well they satisfy the following criteria:

- Explanatory scope - does the hypothesis account for all the data
- Explanatory power - how well does the hypothesis explain the data
- Plausibility - is the hypothesis compatible with or implied by facts that are generally accepted as known
- Less ad hoc - does the hypothesis go beyond what is known and makes unevidenced assumptions
- Illumination (a bonus criteria) - does the hypothesis shed light on other areas of inquiry

Has anyone interacted with this argument or others similar to it such as those of N.T. Wright, William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas? If so, what are your objections to it?

Licona's book is all smoke and mirrors, Apologes. ES, EP, P, and I etc. are all clever terms of art to try to put flesh and plausibility onto a theory that has been discredited over and over and over again. There's so much to prove wrong in your post that I can't do everything. I'll do maybe half or a third. Everything you say about Paul cannot be demonstrated with anything outside the Bible. One must take the Bible as an inerrant historical source to believe what Licona says about Paul and the Bible is neither inerrant or historical. It's a statement of faith, nothing more.

There isn't a single historical fact that can prove the resurrection. There is no historical evidence for Jesus, no evidence for the apostles, no empty tomb, no witnesses to the resurrection outside of what the NT claims, no reliefs of Jesus, no artifacts, no mention of a Jesus of Nazareth in the secular historical records coming out of that period--no nothing that could remotely begin to prove the resurrection or Jesus for that matter. But we do have dozens of mythologies of prior demigods and sons of gods who were killed and rose from the dead well before Jesus from which the writers of the gospels likely copied in telling their tale of Jesus.

With absolutely no evidence to prove anything about Jesus and the apostles Christian apologists had to come up with something--ANYTHING to try to prove their case. They invented the terms "explanatory scope" and "explanatory power" to try to sound really PhD-ish in the midst of a graveyard of facts. Notice WL Craig first came up with these terms and Licona, his disciple copied them. So do a lot of other apologists to try to make them sound like they have lots of evidence when in fact ES and EP are no evidence at all, just theories.

by virtually all New Testament scholars

Loaded phrase "virtually all...." In fact only Christian scholars accept that the apostles must have seen something which they interpreted as the risen Christ, no virtually about it. Scholars cannot even prove the apostles were real. None including Paul appear in a single historical entry outside the Bible. There is a mention of Peter and Paul in the 1st Epistle of Clement but again it's a problem of authenticity.

I could go on and on but that good for starters.

 

[Thrillobyte]

our best source afaik is Paul himself

Prove Paul was real with anything outside the Bible. Show us anything outside the Bible that describes his missions around the Mediterranean.

 

[leroy]

Sorry, you lost. I am not writing long posts for you. If you can try to find one valid point then we can discuss that.

Here is the problem with the "minimalistic facts" If one accepts that then all religions are "true". But they clearly refute each other which means that only one at the most can be true. But by the minimal facts approach they are all true. This problem is solved by realizing that the "minimal facts" argument is horse puckey.

False but irrelevant

The truth or falsehood of other religions has no bearing on weather if jesus resurected or not.


The claims are
1 these mínimal facts are true
2 the resurection is the best explanation for these facts.

Whether if other religions could make a similar case is is irrelevant and have no bearing in the truth of those 2 claims.

 

[leroy]

Sany natural explanation refutes a supernatural one.

Why ? This is the second time you make that assertion , but you still refuse to support it. Why are natural explanations *always* better than supernatural explations?

Dont forgget to define supernatural in your justification

 

[bchalloner]

Maybe they believe they saw Jesus after his death, but it has to be taken on faith that he physically rose from the dead. There are many other possibilities for why they believe they saw him - they saw his spirit, they hallucinated, they just believe they saw him but were mistaken (like the Elvis legend).

 

[ppp]

Prove Paul was real with anything outside the Bible. Show us anything outside the Bible that describes his missions around the Mediterranean.

Why would anyone need to show that Paul was real with anything outside the Bible? He wrote, at least. 7 of the books of the New Testament. What about his simple existence do you think is in dispute?

 

[leroy]

Speaking of resurrections, where is the robust defense of Matthew 27:50--53? One would expect that such an occurrence would have cotten more press back in the day.

Who knows.

Luckelly none of the arguments in the OP depends on mathew 27,50-53 being true.

 

[bchalloner]

But perhaps these naturalistic explanations of Jesus's appearances are what the apostles meant when they said he rose from the dead, and what we encounter often with many people when they pass on. There's maybe not a contradiction between the theist and atheist here, or perhaps, the super- naturalist and the naturalist. What's clear is that they saw him after he died. I don't doubt that. This actually isn't as implausible as a more supernatural explanation that he was like, I dunno, opening doors and talking to the Guinness book of world records instead of his devoted followers (if you bear with me and and imagine they were around back then). If he was, maybe someone would have called ghost busters. I know I saw (in visions) and experienced the presence of my own mother after she died. But what are we arguing here? Whether he (or she) actually rose from the dead? What does that mean exactly anyway? Surely he (and she) lives on in spirit, is that not enough? But let's say you insist he's in a specific place called heaven reigning at the right hand of the Father? Who can refute you? Maybe that's true, and that's what Christianity believes. But I think Habermas and his spiritual successors are a little too insistent on supernatural realities being somehow more logical than naturalistic explanations when maybe naturalism tells the story of Jesus's resurrection just fine on it's own.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Why ? This is the second time you make that assertion , but you still refuse to support it. Why are natural explanations *always* better than supernatural explations?

Dont forgget to define supernatural in your justification

Supernatural events are those that would break the various laws of science.

It is rather amazing that this has to be explained to you. The events that break natural laws simply do not exist. We can see events that we do not understand very very rarely. But you would be hard pressed to find any that would break laws of science. You might find some clickbait articles that make that claim but all of them fail that I have seen.

If you had been following this conversation you would have seen that I offered a more than reasonable explanation. One supported by a peer reviewed article.

There is a reason that they are called "miracles". Today the definition has been extremely diluted since the sort of miracles in the Bible are never seen to occur.

 

[Subduction Zone]

But perhaps these naturalistic explanations of Jesus's appearances are what the apostles meant when they said he rose from the dead, and what we encounter often with many people when they pass on. There's maybe not a contradiction between the theist and atheist here, or perhaps, the super- naturalist and the naturalist. What's clear is that they saw him after he died. I don't doubt that. This actually isn't as implausible as a more supernatural explanation that he was like, I dunno, opening doors and talking to the Guinness book of world records instead of his devoted followers (if you bear with me and and imagine they were around back then). If he was, maybe someone would have called ghost busters. I know I saw (in visions) and experienced the presence of my own mother after she died. But what are we arguing here? Whether he (or she) actually rose from the dead? What does that mean exactly anyway? Surely he (and she) lives on in spirit, is that not enough? But let's say you insist he's in a specific place called heaven reigning at the right hand of the Father? Who can refute you? Maybe that's true, and that's what Christianity believes. But I think Habermas and his spiritual successors are a little too insistent on supernatural realities being somehow more logical than naturalistic explanations when maybe naturalism tells the story of Jesus's resurrection just fine on it's own.

Did they see him or did some of them just have hallucinations? The Gospels are not really a valid source for claiming factual events.

 

[Subduction Zone]

False but irrelevant

Nope true. Please, do not be so tiresome.

The truth or falsehood of other religions has no bearing on weather if jesus resurected or not.

That is false. You are not looking at the consequences of using that argument. You are trying to apply it only to your religion and you simply cannot do that. That would be a special pleading argument.

So once again, you are obviously wrong.

The claims are
1 these mínimal facts are true

So what?

2 the resurection is the best explanation for these facts.

No, it is not. There are countless better ones. The resurrection raises far more questions. It only has weak answers and since it is magical it appears to be make believe.

Whether if other religions could make a similar case is is irrelevant and have no bearing in the truth of those 2 claims.

Again, no, this is key as to why even you should see that this silly argument fails. You cannot limit it to your religion. That is saying "it only applies to Christianity because of <flap flap flap> reasons. it is a special pleading fallacy.

 

[bchalloner]

Well, my point is, whether or not they were hallucinations, they saw him in visions, and possibly in the world around them. Hallucinations imply that what they saw was false or made up in their minds, which is maybe what you believe, but I see that it's also possible that they saw his spirit. The idea of hallucinations comes from psychology, and implies falsehood. But it's also possible that these so-called hallucinations have some basis in reality. I see little is lost in believing he actually rose from the dead and talked to his followers. But what does that really mean anyway? Maybe just that they saw him, felt connected to him, and regarded his ascension to Heaven. To the observer there's no difference. Was it all a legend, or was it real? Maybe it's a legend you choose to believe in.