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A Scientist Explains Why He Believes in the Resurrection

My take on the women seeing the empty tomb and the others whilst on the road to some town or other, is that you need to have an understanding of Judaic law, on which the Christian bible is based. Under that ancient law, everything needed two witnesses for it to be considered verified or legally valid (as in weddings, law disputes, etc [and we still see that legal concept of needing witnesses still extant today]). So, hence, the mention of someone or other having witnessed the resurrection albeit as per the absence of the body, and they needed to be female, to show they would have been far too weak to have 'rolled away the stone' by their own weak selves. As for seeing Jesus on the road, it's a quite common phenomenon for people to 'see' someone who recently died whilst out and about but it turns out to be someone else on closer examination.



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I think if he was really resurrected and appeared in the sky before thousands of people, the Jews would have been like

"oh ◊◊◊◊, we ◊◊◊◊◊◊ up"
 
turingtest said:
It seems a little misleading (at least) to frame the Synoptic Gospels in terms that suggest that they just happen to agree in overall detail, when it's more the case that they're canon because they agree in those details, in preference to other Gospels (Peter, Thomas, etc) that are excluded because they don't. A shared verisimilitude that's required for canonical inclusion is no evidence for any truth outside that agreed-upon story. There are any number of Star Trek novels by different authors that are accepted as canon because they largely have the same in-universe detail- that's not evidence that that universe is real, only that the fanfic demands consistency.
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This reminds me of a conversation I had with my pastor years ago. Why are some writings considered the inspired word of god and other writings like the non canonical Gospels you referenced not? My pastor's answer was because those other writings are heresy.
 
acbytesla said:
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my pastor years ago. Why are some writings considered the inspired word of god and other writings like the non canonical Gospels you referenced not? My pastor's answer was because those other writings are heresy.
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Why are there no mortars in Star Wars? Because they're not cannon.
 
mikegriffith1 said:
Again, if the apostles had fabricated the resurrection, one would expect they would have ensured that the resurrection accounts were consistent in every detail, not just in the essential elements.
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arthwollipot said:
One would expect that? Why would one expect that?
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Mike,

Does that mean that since the 4 Gospels agree on other stories about Jesus, that they were fabricating those stories?
 
Wait... Does Mike think the gospels were written BY the people they were named after??

Dude, they were written by people many generations after the event, 70 to 100 years. That's the distance in time between now back to WW2, or back to WW1. The gospels would have been three or four generations removed from the actual events they relate. And they didn't have cameras or videotape back then. Given the stories would have been a mix of oral and rare writing, of course they would have been changed and embellished in that time. And it wasn't until another 200 years or so later at Nicea that the canonical versions of the stories were even chosen, and then only after some obvious rewrites.

So arguing about the veracity of the gospels is pretty much the same as arguing for the veracity of Harry Potter.
 
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Norman Alexander said:
Wait... Does Mike think the gospels were written BY the people they were named after??

Dude, they were written by people many generations after the event, 70 to 100 years. That's the distance in time between now back to WW2, or back to WW1. The gospels would have been three or four generations removed from the actual events they relate. And they didn't have cameras or videotape back then. Given the stories would have been a mix of oral and rare writing, of course they would have been changed and embellished in that time. And it wasn't until another 200 years or so later at Nicea that the canonical versions of the stories were even chosen, and then only after some obvious rewrites.

So arguing about the veracity of the gospels is pretty much the same as arguing for the veracity of Harry Potter.
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EXACTLY!

I've always thought the fact that stories of a poor Jewish almost certainly illiterate carpenter were written in Ancient Greek and not his native language troubling.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Dude, they were written by people many generations after the event, 70 to 100 years. That's the distance in time between now back to WW2, or back to WW1.
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Early Christians would have seen no reason to write anything down, they were expecting the second coming and the day of judgement to happen at any moment. It was only when they realised that Jesus had been wrong about it happening within the lifetimes of his disciples that it became obviously necessary to do so, and the Chinese whispers by that time would be bound to have produced different versions.

I'd love to know how they rationalised the failure of Jesus's only real prophecy back then. One 'explanation' I read years ago was that Mary, upon arrival in Heaven, had convinced God to change his mind, which I guess is as good as any other. Modern apocalypse cults don't seem to have any trouble continuing to believe either, despite predicted date after predicted date passing without incident.
 
Pixel42 said:
I'd love to know how they rationalised the failure of Jesus's only real prophecy back then. One 'explanation' I read years ago was that Mary, upon arrival in Heaven, had convinced God to change his mind, which I guess is as good as any other. Modern apocalypse cults don't seem to have any trouble continuing to believe either, despite predicted date after predicted date passing without incident.
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Actually it's been a few years now since I heard of anyone trying saying that the world will end on a particular date. I guess it's gone a bit out of fashion since the last few got a lot of attention in the mass media.
 
acbytesla said:
Who says the Apostles fabricated anything? It's a story.
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If the story is false, if the women and the disciples did not see the resurrected Christ, then it's a fabrication, then it's fiction.

acbytesla said:
The authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They were anonymous individuals in Greece, Turkey or Rome. These are the remaining copies of stories that were told orally for ten, twenty or 50 years.
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No, John was the Apostle John, not some later person named John, and Matthew was the Apostle Matthew, not some later person named Matthew, according to the earliest Christian records. Luke was a companion of the Apostle Paul. Mark was a companion of Paul and Peter. So Luke and Mark were not disciples of Jesus during his minister, but they came soon after Jesus's resurrection and worked with Paul and Peter.

Paul saw the resurrected Christ at least twice that we know of, and Peter was one of Christ's twelve apostles and thus could provide firsthand eyewitness accounts of Christ's ministry, including his resurrection.
 
mikegriffith1 said:
If the story is false, if the women and the disciples did not see the resurrected Christ, then it's a fabrication, then it's fiction.


No, John was the Apostle John, not some later person named John, and Matthew was the Apostle Matthew, not some later person named Matthew, according to the earliest Christian records. Luke was a companion of the Apostle Paul. Mark was a companion of Paul and Peter. So Luke and Mark were not disciples of Jesus during his minister, but they came soon after Jesus's resurrection and worked with Paul and Peter.

Paul saw the resurrected Christ at least twice that we know of, and Peter was one of Christ's twelve apostles and thus could provide firsthand eyewitness accounts of Christ's ministry, including his resurrection.
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How can you misunderstand so badly? It's almost like it is deliberate.
 
It is a particular problem for scientists, as so much of their lives revolves around the Scientific Method, yet the one thing that is central to their private life flies in the face of it.
The desire to resolve the cognitive dissonance is understandable, but unachievable.
 
mikegriffith1 said:
The resurrection accounts are virtually identical. The fact that they vary in a few details is just further proof that they were not fabricated....
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That's because the NT was written decades after the events took place, and written so that there would be not too many inconsistencies. Books and writings that contradicted too much or strayed too much from the intended message were not included. Such as the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Mary. The NT was also intentionally written to make it appear as though supposed Messianic prophecies in the OT were fulfilled.
 
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mikegriffith1 said:
If the story is false, if the women and the disciples did not see the resurrected Christ, then it's a fabrication, then it's fiction.


No, John was the Apostle John, not some later person named John, and Matthew was the Apostle Matthew, not some later person named Matthew, according to the earliest Christian records. Luke was a companion of the Apostle Paul. Mark was a companion of Paul and Peter. So Luke and Mark were not disciples of Jesus during his minister, but they came soon after Jesus's resurrection and worked with Paul and Peter.

Paul saw the resurrected Christ at least twice that we know of, and Peter was one of Christ's twelve apostles and thus could provide firsthand eyewitness accounts of Christ's ministry, including his resurrection.
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Don't you think it's just a little dishonest to frame Peter's "firsthand eyewitness accounts" as testimonial evidence for your preferred narrative when, even by your own words, we don't have anything more than a sort of "as told to Mark/Luke" secondhand account?

Of course, we do have a Gospel of Peter (Wikipedia). But then you'd have to accept a heretical account that flatly contradicts the others in having Herod Antipas instead of Pilate doing the actual condemning of Jesus. Not to mention the talking cross accompanying him out of the tomb. Oh wait, I know- "just because Bob went to a ball game with Susie and Bill and didn't mention a talking cross pitching for his team doesn't mean that didn't happen! That was supplemental information!"
 
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mikegriffith1 said:
If the story is false, if the women and the disciples did not see the resurrected Christ, then it's a fabrication, then it's fiction.


No, John was the Apostle John, not some later person named John, and Matthew was the Apostle Matthew, not some later person named Matthew, according to the earliest Christian records. Luke was a companion of the Apostle Paul. Mark was a companion of Paul and Peter. So Luke and Mark were not disciples of Jesus during his minister, but they came soon after Jesus's resurrection and worked with Paul and Peter.

Paul saw the resurrected Christ at least twice that we know of, and Peter was one of Christ's twelve apostles and thus could provide firsthand eyewitness accounts of Christ's ministry, including his resurrection.
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You're flat out wrong. All of the Gospel writers are unknown. None of the Gospels were signed. Zero. It is only Christian tradition that they are named.

As for Paul. He says he saw a resurrected Jesus. But did he? None of the people he was with on the road to Damascus saw anything. So what is most likely? That Paul had an hallucination? That Paul fabricated the story? Or that Paul had an encounter with an invisible dead man and that dead man was the creator of everything?
 
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