My Beliefs- GDR

You are thinking of more recent historical figures, think ancient, such as Alexander the Great, which was my contrasting example. We don't have anything HE wrote either, OR anything by those who actually knew him, which is a lot less than we have for Jesus.As I said, there are SIX eyewitnesses who wrote part of the New Testament, three writing a gospel or narrative history of Jesus' life, three writing letters to churches, John writing both plus Revelation. You like to think of the Bible as one piece since that's how we get it now but the original writings were all written and circulated separately in the first few hundred years, all independent witnesses.And I might add that we have the Old Testament, which is the context in which the New Testament events occurred, fulfilling prophecy after prophecy. If you discount all that it's merely out of bias against prophecy, not because there isn't sufficient witness evidence. There is TONS of witness evidence.And ALL of it has survived in faithful copies by the thousands, unlike the historical writings about other ancient figures. (You do have to consider that the more "recently discovered" manuscripts, supposedly the most ancient, are turning out to be frauds, however, either gnostic corruptions or outright forgeries. The previous manuscript collection was much more pure.But I've already answered everything you said here before.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, but nothing was claimed to be out of the ordinary about Alexander the Great, is my point. If nothing else he was a man who lead an army - maybe his name was Bob the Great, or Bob the Ok. It doesn't matter bacause no one is claiming to be the son of god or claiming to have resurrected.It's when the stories begin to describe the things we know to be fiction that it becomes suspect. Fine, six people claiming supernatural events happened 2000 years ago. That's not evidence. It's not hard to write stories to make it look as though some ancient prophecy was fulfilled. Does that really impress you?- Oni

Just as a matter of interest, Jesus didn’t actually claim to be God but claimed to act as the Father’s emissary in that He embodied God’s return to His people. The claim for His deity came later as the early Christians continued to gain understanding and to work out the meaning and ramifications of what had happened. His messianic claims were not a claim of His divinity. The messiah was to be one anointed by Yahweh which is the claim that Jesus made.Here are a couple of quotes from John.
From John 8:

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So Jesus said, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.

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...and from John 14:

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28 "You heard that I said to you, 'I go away, and I will come to you.' If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 "Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. 30 "I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; 31 but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here.

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More to the point though is I agree that there are difficulties with the accounts of the resurrection and miracles. If we start with the supposition that they can’t happen because we don’t normally observe them nor can we reproduce them, there is no discussion to be had, and they have to be rejected as fables. If however we start from a theistic point of view which essentially means that we view all life as miraculous, regardless of the process or processes that resulted in all life being here, then the resurrection is no longer impossible and the claims can be considered.As Faith points out there are several independent claims that are made and if we were discussing historical events that didn’t involve the suspension of known natural laws then we would consider the accounts as being pretty well documented. If then we consider the resurrection from a Theistic POV we can make a strong case for the Jesus’ resurrection. However, as I said, that if we start with the atheistic POV that once you are dead there is only oblivion, then the resurrection stories cannot possibly be true. He was written about by historians and the accounts are in the Bible.The resurrection was viewed by a few hundred people. There were many others, and most particularly those in power, who dismissed the story. In the end though the resurrection made no visible impact at the time. No wars were fought, no governments were overthrown and no human laws were changed. There wasn’t anything particularly notable for historians who had not been eyewitnesses and who didn’t believe those who did write about it. Jesus didn’t make any noticeable impact the way that the revolutionary messianic claimants and others had done. The Bible is evidence which we can accept or reject. How about this?Hey who painted this picture?
Nobody, it is just here
Wait, it just evolved all on its own?
Well it exists doesn’t it?
That’s the logic your using to reject the possibility of the resurrection. That is only evidence that there are natural laws. There is no evidence of how or why those laws came into existence. For that matter the fact that the laws exist at all is evidence of something that is beyond what we naturally perceive, and whether there is life on other planets or not is immaterial. Yes. Life in general, and more specifically consciousness, reason, emotions etc are far more complicated than basic elements Fish, birds and other humans involved the return to life in a form that was life as we know it and were still subject to death. However, aside from that the fact that there were various concepts of resurrection in various societies does not in any way negate the resurrection accounts of Jesus.

Bullshit we have no idea who wrote gospels. You show me some historical evidence of who these people were then you may have a point. All we have is christian tradition, no evidence.

I wouldn't call a 5.2 million square kilometer empire in the 300s BC "ordinary". Do you just as easily accept that there was a (non-supernatural) Jesus of Nazareth?I don't disagree with your main point but you seem to be putting too much of a distinction between AtG and JoN...

But you wouldn't call it supernatural or a miracle. Well there are no stories written about a non-supernatural Jesus. So there's nothing to accept. However, had there been a story of a regular guy born from two parents you tried to do good and died...yeah sure, It'd be easier to accept. That kind of thing happens a lot.- Oni

I could... legend has it that he was the son of Zeus, and that he never lost a battle even when outnumbered. It just seems a little inconsistent with these two in particular, but in general your point is not lost.

Yeah I guess if you want to believe you live in a world where the laws of physics are suspended every now and again, even without evidence and especially when that goes against your own experience of reality, you can accept miracles and the supernatural.But you can see how it would be ridiculous to think like that if instead of Jesus we were talking about unicorns that fly. It's not an atheistic point of view. This is not a religious matter. This is about your own experience of reality where you know the laws of physics have never been suspended. So why would you start off with the premise that the laws of physics can be suspended?That's piss poor logic. What historians??? Faith has provided 3 examples that are being shown to be poor examples. And none of those historians claim they saw Jesus come back from the dead. You really aren't getting this.First, that wouldn't be my answer that "it's just there" when someone asks me about a painting. What I would say is, it's probably a person who drew it since I KNOW FOR A FACT that humans exist and can paint.Same goes for life. We know FOR A FACT nature exists and has all the capabilities to evolve elements that react as chemistry and change their structure. We know of nothing outside of nature. Therefore NOTHING other than natural causes can be at work.If you believe there is something else at play, just like with the alien, you must first prove that that other thing exists before you claim it had a hand in something. We're not discussing how they came into existence. All we're discussing is after stars and solar systems and planets form, the emergence of life through chemistry from simple elements found on this planet is just another step in a natural process. This is an example of the natural laws at work, and as you can agree we know for a fact they exist. So your point is irrelevant. Why because you start with the premise that god exists already? That is piss poor logic, GDR. That's not what I asked.I asked do you think stars, solar systems and planets which form naturally are more complicated than a few elements coming together due to chemistry to form single celled organisms?Answer that specifically. Then we'll move on to humans and consciousness. You're right. But it does show how it's not unique and where the story of Jesus' resurrection originated from.- Oni

I don't get this. I'll admit I know the basics about Alexander the Great but I don't recall reading anything that claimed he was the son of a god or immortal. Why? Nothing supernatural was claimed about him. He was a king, son of a king, born of natural causes and didn't come back from the dead.- Oni

Its mentioned on wiki:

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Several legends surround Alexander's birth and childhood. According to the ancient Greek biographer Plutarch, Olympias, on the eve of the consummation of her marriage to Philip, dreamed that her womb was struck by a thunder bolt, causing a flame that spread "far and wide" before dying away. Some time after the wedding, Philip is said to have seen himself, in a dream, securing his wife's womb with a seal engraved with a lion's image. Plutarch offered a variety of interpretations of these dreams: that Olympias was pregnant before her marriage, indicated by the sealing of her womb; or that Alexander's father was Zeus.

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From another wiki:

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• His court historian Callisthenes portrayed the sea in Cilicia as drawing back from him in proskynesis.
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• Erythraean Sibyl prophesied that Alexander is the son of Zeus and Olympias. Henceforth, Alexander often referred to Zeus-Ammon as his true father after visiting also the Siwa Oasis in Egypt.
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• Alexander is also a character of Greek folklore (and other regions), as the protagonist of 'apocryphal' tales of bravery. A maritime legend says that his sister is a mermaid and asks the sailors if her brother is still alive.
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• According to Greek Alexander Romance, Queen Thalestris of the Amazons brought 300 women to Alexander the Great, hoping to breed a race of children as strong and intelligent as he.
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• A popular Greek legend talks about a mermaid who lived in the Aegean for hundreds of years who was thought to be Alexander's sister Thessalonike. The legend states that Alexander, in his quest for the Fountain of Immortality, retrieved with great exertion a flask of immortal water with which he bathed his sister's hair.

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As I have pointed out there is evidence which we can accept or reject in the Biblical accounts. As far as reality is concerned I’m not sure that is much of a guide at all. Look at modern science. Relativity and QM goes against my sense of reality and I think both of us accept those findings. Even Einstein refused for years to accept QM as it flew in the face of his experience of reality. We have had to adapt our thinking to go against our experience of reality, and to adjust our understanding of natural laws in order to accept modern science.The fact that life came from inorganic elements is not something that is part of our experience of reality. If we find a process that does that then we can still say that our experience of reality does not include life from inorganic elements without intelligent causes. Sure if you are a strict materialist. It all depends on where we are on the spectrum of beliefs between hard core atheist and theist. I hesitate to make this argument as my knowledge of physics is slim, but as I understand it the laws of physics didn't seem to apply at T=0 and to an unimaginably small fraction of a second after that. The laws had to come into existence somehow from a time where it seems that the laws weren't suspended but didn't even exist at all, or at least in the manner that we know them. If there is an external intelligence that is responsible for our existence the there really is no need to believe that the natural laws that we experience in our perception of reality can’t be suspended, or for that matter, overridden by another set of laws. The writers of the Gospels and the Epistles. We do not know that nature has the capabilities to cause simple inorganic elements to create incredibly complex living cells. You believe that on faith as it fits with your other beliefs. You presumably believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that we live in a strictly material world. That being the case then of course you believe what it is that you believe because there is no other alternative.My perception of reality is that the idea that we just happen to exist with intelligence as a result of a fortunate combination of base elements is highly improbable and that it is much more probable that life came about because of intelligent input. I guess you can make the argument that my thinking is circular but then so is yours when you start with the premise that there is no god. What part of yes don’t you understand? I don’t think you actually read my response. One other point is that Jesus’ resurrection came out of a Jewish context. Here is a short article on resurrection by N T Wright. The Resurrection of Resurrection

We have historical evidence of who his father was. Yes there are legends but that is what they are, legends. His parents were Philip II of Macedonia and his 4th wife Olympia. This we know from numerous sources.We have no historical record of Jesus or his parents.Using your argument the historicity of George Washington, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and numerous others should be questioned because there are and were legends about them.All of these people and Alexander have a historical record and left a verifiable legacy behind. We have none of that for Jesus. Just a bunch of stories that have questionable and tainted provenance

Who were they? What else did they write? Show me evidence of who they were and I might think what they wrote has some relevance.Why are those writings any more important or relevant than;
Bhagavad Gita
Koran
Talmud
Tao-te-ching
Veda

We have no idea, as you obviously know, who it was that put the Gospels together. It is clear that they used a combination of what had been handed down orally and what written accounts existed. Some scholars think that there was a document they’ve called Q that contained much of the information, but as Luke says at the beginning of his gospel:

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1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, 3 it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus ; 4 so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.

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You may think it is important to know who the precise names of those who compiled the stories of Jesus but I just don’t see it as at all relevant.The Gospels weren’t compiled for quite some time after the resurrection for various reasons. At that time it was mainly the Romans who were big on books but it wasn’t particularly common in the Hebrew culture. The disciples weren’t highly educated except for Paul that we know of, and for that matter the first Christians were expecting Christ to return in their lifetimes. When it became obvious that the disciples were all going to have died before the return of Christ it became important to have a permanent record to replace the oral tradition. I think that we should pay attention to all holy books. The reason that we should pay more attention to the Bible is the resurrection of Jesus which is God’s confirming what Jesus said and did. If the resurrection didn’t happen then the only reason that any one individual would accept the Bible as being more relevant would be because of their individual belief that the Bible more closely reflected their views of the nature of God.

Then admit that there is no historical basis for your belief. It is faith alone. Alas there is no evidence for said resurrection is there.