Book Plunge: Can Christians Prove The Resurrection?

[JimL]

Hmm . . .

Question, is the NT claim of the bodily resurrection of Jesus being the Christ a paranormal [super natural] claim?

What it is, is a hoax targeting the naive, the ignorant.

[One Bad Pig]

What it is, is a hoax targeting the naive, the ignorant.

Your uninformed opinion is duly noted.

[One Bad Pig]

But you don't have first hand information, friend. You only have SECOND information. Is it possible that your parents and brother were mistaken?

Many young children appear severely bow-legged when they begin to walk, but most of these children will grow out of it in time and walk normally. Is it possible that this was the case with your sister? Is it possible that on the night of the "healing" your parents pushed your sister to attempt to walk "correctly" which she valiantly attempted to do. Then over the following months, her legs naturally took the appropriate anatomical position that would have occurred without the visit to the church that Wednesday evening. So her "healing" wasn't immediate, it only appeared to be.

Gary, miracles are much more probable than your contorted attempts to explain them away.

[One Bad Pig]

Review of Chapter Six:

"...if a scientist or anyone else dismisses the possibility of supernatural reality, she is offering a metaphysical view and pontificating on metaphysics no less than anyone who simply assumes the contrary." ---Keener, p. 180

I agree. The metaphysical is another realm of reality.

No, the definition of metaphysical is "of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses" - Merriam Webster.

So why, Mr. Keener, are you trying so hard to prove its empirical reality using empirical evidence (eyewitness testimony)???

Mr. Keener is arguing that the metaphysical can impact what IS perceived by the senses - and therefore arguments denying the realm of the metaphysical are prima facie invalid. This is not a difficult argument to follow, Gary.

Keener, p. 186:

"History as history might not pass judgment on whether or not an occurrence (such as the Resurrection) was a miracle (a theological judgment involving philosophic questions about God's existence and activity), but it can seek to address whether or not an event literally happened. If an event happened and some evidence for that event remains, it can be subject to historical investigation."

So we are back to empiricism?

No. If historical study was based on the principles of sense perception, we could only study history through archaeology; historical writings would not count as evidence.

Keener, p. 187:

The standard epistemic method of science (demanding replicability) does not work in history; the best that one could do is exclude a class of events that lack analogy, but one may exclude miracles on these grounds only on the circular assumption that they (miracles) have never happened.

Ok. Let's use this logic for another extra-ordinary claim; a claim for which we have numerous alleged eyewitnesses, although admittedly, not as many as for miracle claims:

The standard epistemic method of science (demanding replicability) does not work in history; the best that one could do is exclude a class of events that lack analogy, but one may exclude alien abductions on these grounds only on the circular argument that alien abductions have never happened.

Sounds rather silly, doesn't it?

Yes, your imagined arguments often do. That doesn't keep you from making them. Try not ignoring key phrases like "on these grounds."

"Bandwagon": the fallacy of attempting to prove a conclusion on the grounds that all or most people think or believe it is true. Just because "hundreds of millions" of people all over the world believe something is true, does not mean that it is.

Here is Keener again pleading the case for the "bandwagon" argument: "Should we not grant greater credence to the word of a thousand eyewitnesses (even if that were all there were) than to the insistence of a hundred thousand nonwitness (scholarly) colleagues merely stating unproved assumptions?" p. 200

So much for Nick and Stein's respect for scholarship!

Can you imagine the suggestion by any scholar that we should pay more heed to the uneducated masses regarding their "eyewitness testimony" that evil spirits cause illnesses and disease, rather than heed the opinion of medical experts who state that the cause of these maladies are microbes and cell mutations?

Eyewitness testimony is not equivalent to belief. Poof, there goes your "argument."

To end the review of this chapter, I quote Keener, p. 205:

"Hundreds of millions of persons alive today state that they have witnessed or experienced miraculous healings. One might disagree with all these claims, but one cannot simply arbitrarily exclude all the claimants from the modern world. While numbers are lower in some regions, such as many parts of Europe, they are higher in some other regions, such as most of Africa and Latin America."

Why would claims of miracles be lower in Europe and higher in Africa and Latin America? Isn't that odd?

Not at all. Disbelief tends to make miracles rather less likely to occur. People who disbelieve in miracles don't want them to happen, so they don't. Even Jesus could not perform many miracles in his hometown because of this.

Keener (and Nick) do not claim that the gods of other religions have the power to perform miracles. They both claim that God (the Christian God) may perform miracles even for people who are not Christian, due to his benevolent nature. But if (the Christian) God is not responsible for the "miracle", then it was due to the other supernatural power in the world: Satan.

But let's examine that claim.

If God is performing miracles for people who worship Allah and Lord Krishna, why would he withhold miracles for agnostic Europeans? Which is worse: to not be sure if any God exists or to worship someone other than the Trinitarian God? I don't know the answer to that question, but...

...that won't stop you from speculating freely. I'm not convinced that you're accurately representing Nick and Mr. Keener's perspective here. You have a bad habit of mischaracterizing a position in order to pillory it.

And why would Satan perform miracles in Africa among the Muslims, but not in Europe among the agnostics?

It's very confusing, isn't it?

It's not in the least bit confusing. Satan doesn't want people to believe in (the Christian) God. Miracles among agnostics, forcing them to acknowledge the supernatural, would be counter-productive.

[Gary]

Gary, miracles are much more probable than your contorted attempts to explain them away.

In your metaphysical worldview, yes. In the dominant worldview of western culture, Empiricism, it fails.

[Apologiaphoenix]

Do you even know what empiricism is?

[Gary]

No, the definition of metaphysical is "of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses" - Merriam Webster.

Mr. Keener is arguing that the metaphysical can impact what IS perceived by the senses - and therefore arguments denying the realm of the metaphysical are prima facie invalid. This is not a difficult argument to follow, Gary.

No. If historical study was based on the principles of sense perception, we could only study history through archaeology; historical writings would not count as evidence.

Yes, your imagined arguments often do. That doesn't keep you from making them. Try not ignoring key phrases like "on these grounds."

Eyewitness testimony is not equivalent to belief. Poof, there goes your "argument."

Not at all. Disbelief tends to make miracles rather less likely to occur. People who disbelieve in miracles don't want them to happen, so they don't. Even Jesus could not perform many miracles in his hometown because of this.

...that won't stop you from speculating freely. I'm not convinced that you're accurately representing Nick and Mr. Keener's perspective here. You have a bad habit of mischaracterizing a position in order to pillory it.

It's not in the least bit confusing. Satan doesn't want people to believe in (the Christian) God. Miracles among agnostics, forcing them to acknowledge the supernatural, would be counter-productive.

So we know that miracles do not happen to people who don't believe in miracles based on ancient miracle stories??

That is called Begging the Question.

Isn't it possible that the reason "miracles" only happen to people who believe in miracles is because people who believe in miracles are superstitious and susceptible to emotional hysteria??

[Gary]

Do you even know what empiricism is?

The theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience. Stimulated by the rise of experimental science, it developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, expounded in particular by John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=322

[Apologiaphoenix]

Empiricism came much earlier. Aristotle was a major empiricist in response to Plato who would be considered more of a rationalist. All knowledge begins from sense experience but all knowledge is not limited to sense experience. Consider for instance triangularity. Sense experience can show you triangles of many kinds. It can show you scalene, isosceles, and equilateral. It can show you different colors and sizes of triangles. What it cannot show you is triangularity itself. You look at all triangles that you see and notice triangularity is something they have in common, but triangularity itself is not something you can take to a lab and study.

That's why empiricism doesn't rule out metaphysics. Aquinas was an empiricist.

And by the way, that bit on triangles was an example of metaphysics.

[Gary]

No, the definition of metaphysical is "of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses" - Merriam Webster.

Mr. Keener is arguing that the metaphysical can impact what IS perceived by the senses - and therefore arguments denying the realm of the metaphysical are prima facie invalid. This is not a difficult argument to follow, Gary.

No. If historical study was based on the principles of sense perception, we could only study history through archaeology; historical writings would not count as evidence.

Yes, your imagined arguments often do. That doesn't keep you from making them. Try not ignoring key phrases like "on these grounds."

Eyewitness testimony is not equivalent to belief. Poof, there goes your "argument."

Not at all. Disbelief tends to make miracles rather less likely to occur. People who disbelieve in miracles don't want them to happen, so they don't. Even Jesus could not perform many miracles in his hometown because of this.

...that won't stop you from speculating freely. I'm not convinced that you're accurately representing Nick and Mr. Keener's perspective here. You have a bad habit of mischaracterizing a position in order to pillory it.

It's not in the least bit confusing. Satan doesn't want people to believe in (the Christian) God. Miracles among agnostics, forcing them to acknowledge the supernatural, would be counter-productive.

"Mr. Keener is arguing that the metaphysical can impact what IS perceived by the senses - and therefore arguments denying the realm of the metaphysical are prima facie invalid. This is not a difficult argument to follow, Gary."

If Keener wants to claim that the metaphysical has impacted the perceived senses, then his evidence for this "impact" must meet the standards of science and medicine. Simply claiming that group of eyewitnesses in the backwaters of China watched Mrs. Chang's severed limb reattach after a prayer to the Virgin Mary is not going to cut it.

[Gary]

Empiricism came much earlier. Aristotle was a major empiricist in response to Plato who would be considered more of a rationalist. All knowledge begins from sense experience but all knowledge is not limited to sense experience. Consider for instance triangularity. Sense experience can show you triangles of many kinds. It can show you scalene, isosceles, and equilateral. It can show you different colors and sizes of triangles. What it cannot show you is triangularity itself. You look at all triangles that you see and notice triangularity is something they have in common, but triangularity itself is not something you can take to a lab and study.

That's why empiricism doesn't rule out metaphysics. Aquinas was an empiricist.

And by the way, that bit on triangles was an example of metaphysics.

I never said that I could rule out the existence of the metaphysical. Read above.

[37818]

What it is, is a hoax targeting the naive, the ignorant.

How did you come to this conclusion that the NT accounts are a hoax? Please, give the evidene and step us through the logic. Each piece at a time so there can be no doubts.

[One Bad Pig]

"Mr. Keener is arguing that the metaphysical can impact what IS perceived by the senses - and therefore arguments denying the realm of the metaphysical are prima facie invalid. This is not a difficult argument to follow, Gary."

If Keener wants to claim that the metaphysical has impacted the perceived senses, then his evidence for this "impact" must meet the standards of science and medicine. Simply claiming that group of eyewitnesses in the backwaters of China watched Mrs. Chang's severed limb reattach after a prayer to the Virgin Mary is not going to cut it.

History must meet the standards of science and medicine now?

And you really should quit your pretense that you do not deny the metaphysical realm. No one's buying it.

[Gary]

How did you come to this conclusion that the NT accounts are a hoax? Please, give the evidene and step us through the logic. Each piece at a time so there can be no doubts.

I don't believe that they were hoaxes. I believe that Jesus and his disciples were very devout, sincere men. I believe that the most probable explanation for the miracle claims attributed to him are due to the same factors that some people attribute miracle claims to "healers" today. Not all religious healers today are con artists. Many are very sincere and truly believe that they are performing miracles. The question is: are they?

That is why I am reading Keener's book. I want to see the evidence.

[Gary]

History must meet the standards of science and medicine now?

And you really should quit your pretense that you do not deny the metaphysical realm. No one's buying it.

I don't deny it. I ignore it. I ignore it because the Scientific Method has proven a much more reliable world view than "faith".