The Evidence Skeptics would like to see for the Resurrection Claim

[shunyadragon]

By whom? I am not aware of anyone anywhere presenting a serious refutation of my Thesis.
On a now defunct website a poster named "spin" opposed me, but his (rebutted) attack was on a peripheral point, as I kept trying to tell him.

The total lack of evidence for the claims when you believe the gospels are written, and the first hand witnesses would be known, calls to question your claims.

[Adam]

But you, like Doug Shaver, define "evidence" as "proof'. I have lots of evidence, but not enough to prove my case. Plenty to prove everyone else IS wrong, however, except the weakest form of the Two-Document Theory (usually cast as Marcan priority, but only in the Proto-Mark form is it tenable).
Anyway, the issue here is why is no one interested? Apart from whether I can prove it. Thus I already exempted you, Shuny, from needing to respond to me here. You were interested, we battled it out at length back in 2007 to 2009 before I had developed the full Thesis. (And no, I don't give you ANY credit for helping me sharpen my presentation. You were totally a drag. Which from your point of view was understandable. It's against your religion.

[InspectorG]

As a skeptic i have to ask:

Why would a Supernatural agent(the Christian God) use a Supernatural event in order to communicate information to humans using an event that is outside their realm of experience?

God did this knowing(omniscience) that the further from the event in the future the humans lived, or the further away spatially contemporaneous humans lived away from the event, the less humans could culturally/contextually relate to the claims of said event.

So, if i take the claims of the Resurrection at face value i have to conclude either:

God intended the information of/about the Resurrection for locals living at that time and its not relevant to humans living elsewhere/'elsewhen'.

Or

It didnt happen, was an act of stage magic, was invented by the victors for political reasons, or is a creation of the mythical/artistic/cultural narrative.

[Meh Gerbil]

As a skeptic i have to ask:
Why would a Supernatural agent(the Christian God) use a Supernatural event in order to communicate information to humans using an event that is outside their realm of experience?

I think this is an interesting chicken/egg question.
I've heard that the idea of a resurrected savior is something common to many cultures for many years before Christ's resurrection.

The chicken/egg leaves us with two options:
1: The early Christians adopted parts of pagan culture and wove it into a Jesus mythology.
2: God recognized the symbols that would be meaningful to the culture and built the salvation story in terms they'd understand.

Regarding #1: I think the skeptic position is very rational. The idea is that the resurrection story is a product of the culture in which it was developed.
Regarding #2: I think the believer position is very rational. I think the idea of God adapting His story - fitting it with a reality that was full of symbols the people would understand is one of the most beautiful examples of Grace imaginable.

[InspectorG]

I think this is an interesting chicken/egg question.
I've heard that the idea of a resurrected savior is something common to many cultures for many years before Christ's resurrection.

The chicken/egg leaves us with two options:
1: The early Christians adopted parts of pagan culture and wove it into a Jesus mythology.
2: God recognized the symbols that would be meaningful to the culture and built the salvation story in terms they'd understand.

Regarding #1: I think the skeptic position is very rational. The idea is that the resurrection story is a product of the culture in which it was developed.
Regarding #2: I think the believer position is very rational. I think the idea of God adapting His story - fitting it with a reality that was full of symbols the people would understand is one of the most beautiful examples of Grace imaginable.

I wouldnt call it an 'chicken/egg' question.

I call it an efficiency question.

As creatures that live in a symbolic representation of what our corpus senses, symbols mean different things to different people.
Highly inefficient for communicating what the Christians see as THE most important aspect of life.

[Meh Gerbil]

I wouldnt call it an 'chicken/egg' question.

I call it an efficiency question.

As creatures that live in a symbolic representation of what our corpus senses, symbols mean different things to different people.
Highly inefficient for communicating what the Christians see as THE most important aspect of life.

What would you see as more efficient system than the resurrection?

[JonathanL]

I think this is an interesting chicken/egg question.
I've heard that the idea of a resurrected savior is something common to many cultures for many years before Christ's resurrection.

The chicken/egg leaves us with two options:
1: The early Christians adopted parts of pagan culture and wove it into a Jesus mythology.
2: God recognized the symbols that would be meaningful to the culture and built the salvation story in terms they'd understand.

Regarding #1: I think the skeptic position is very rational. The idea is that the resurrection story is a product of the culture in which it was developed.
Regarding #2: I think the believer position is very rational. I think the idea of God adapting His story - fitting it with a reality that was full of symbols the people would understand is one of the most beautiful examples of Grace imaginable.

Or you avoid the issue altogether by realizing that the parallells between Jesus and purported "resurrected saviors" in pagan cultures are vastly overstated.

[shunyadragon]

Or you avoid the issue altogether by realizing that the parallels between Jesus and purported "resurrected saviors" in pagan cultures are vastly overstated.

No, there are differences, of course, but not overstated. The parallels are clear, the resurrection is indeed added to biographies of heroic figures in history to amplify their greatness in history.

[JonathanL]

No, there are differences, of course, but not overstated. The parallels are clear, the resurrection is indeed added to biographies of heroic figures in history to amplify their greatness in history.

Specifics?

[Christianbookworm]

Specifics?

What's really funny is when characters like Quetzalcoatl get utilized for a Christ Myth scenario in spite of the anachronism involved. They may as well claim that Jesus was somehow inspired by 20th century superheroes. Would it be hilarious if some far distant future christ myther claimed exactly that?

[InspectorG]

Simultaneous personal experience that all living humans(across the globe) share and that also has a built-in reference(most likely astrological for simplicity) that would indicate the re-occurrence of said event for future humans.

Example:

All humans worldwide stop what they are doing, wake up if asleep, gain full faculties if injured even if only temporarily, experience God in a way no human regardless of culture/language/set-setting could deny, then everyone goes back to what they were doing. The experience couldnt be a one-time event so it would need a message with very hard descriptors describing when the next event would happen.

Astrology/Astronomy could be used as a clock to describe when the next event occurs and it goes beyond culture or language. Plus it would be hard for humans to boondoggle the heavenly bodies into convenient positions.

Humans that were born after one such event but die before the next would experience it on their deathbed with some type of indication for the rest of the humans to know it occurred.


In short, has to be an experience that is unique, that changes your life for the better, that happens to all humans simultaneously, that has the time of the next event encoded in it an a message all could understand, and no one gets left out, and is not dependent on any particular culture or language.


Should humans try to scientifically understand it, they couldnt deny that it happens and on a more-or-less regularly basis. That it is purely beneficial. And that it happens without any interaction with the physical world(no energy exchange).

Then the possibility boils down to if this supernatural even is indeed supernatural? Or is the capacity of the human mind insufficient to describe its mechanism?

[shunyadragon]

Specifics?

IF you did not know the specifics you would not have made the first claim. I will follow up with a list, but 'so what?' that does not change anything. It still remains that it is a claim, like Virgin birth, that is attributed to famous 'lords' or rulers or manifestations of God claimed to be Divine or have Divine authority. Of course, they are different, because they are in the context of different cultures. They are not necessarily 'copy cat' claims, because it likely in the human context of the desire of immortality, which is universal.

[JonathanL]

IF you did not know the specifics you would not have made the first claim. I will follow up with a list, but that does not change anything. It still remains that it is a claim, like Virgin birth, that is attributed to famous 'lords' claimed to be Divine or have Divine authority. Of course they are different, because they are in the context of different cultures. They are not necessarily 'copy cat' claims, because it likely in the human context of the desire of immortality.

I know the specifics of many of the purported parallels. I wanted you to post examples that you thought were not 'overstated', simply because it's hard to deal with a broad, general claim of there being parallels, and I wasn't going to go on a tirade about some specific parallels only for you to state that you weren't thinking of those examples, but some other ones.

[Christianbookworm]

I know the specifics of many of the purported parallels. I wanted you to post examples that you thought were not 'overstated', simply because it's hard to deal with a broad, general claim of there being parallels, and I wasn't going to go on a tirade about some specific parallels only for you to state that you weren't thinking of those examples, but some other ones.

Would a parallel be a good guy with powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men?

[DesertBerean]

Invalid arguments aren't against decorum.

Maybe it's time to revisit that rule.