Are religions manmade and natural or supernaturally based?

The empty tomb.

What's "persuasive" for you isn't going to happen I guess, but the Bible was very persuasive to me, as to hundreds of millions of others down the last two millennia. Its history was made gloriously already in thousands of ways, but it can't change your world unless you are willing to open your eyes to it. You might try praying for light.

There's only one supernatural God-made religion and it's spelled out in the Bible. The rest are manmade with some help from the satanic legions.

There's one terrific piece of evidence we often overlook, and that is that it was WOMEN who first discovered the empty tomb and it was a woman who first saw the risen Jesus Himself. We think nothing of it in our time but in those days to give women any responsibility for such an important role as witnessing the resurrection of Christ was a radical contradiction to the prevailing attitude toward women. That Jesus Himlself, God Himself, entrusted mere women with this revelation must have been quite an eyeopener to the male disciples who accepted the cultural attitude that women could not even testify in court (or only under some special circumstances, sorry I'm not up on all that.)And this also has the wonderful effect of validating the scriptures as honest witness reports, since no Jew in his right mind would ever make up such a tale as that women were entrusted with this knowledge before the men knew it. It's also no doubt a big part of the reason why Thomas couldn't believe the reports he'd heard -- they came first of all from women.Anyway, you can be sure none of the writers of the gospels would have made up such a thing.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You're right, you did! Sorry, I missed it.

Only to a twisted mind.Let me put it this way. Millions of people who are far better judges of just about anything than you are have found these accounts to be good evidence both for the resurrection and for the inerrancy of scripture. I'll take their word over yours any day.What on earth could it mean to "see the actual event?" A man waking up and sitting up that you thought was dead? You'd just say it was a lie anyway, obviously he hadn't been dead or some such, anything to discredit the account.And what could it add to the evidence of seeing there was no body in the tomb that you expected to be there, since he was supposed to be dead, a body that nobody ever produced? And the actual seeing of him alive as first Mary Magdalene did and then the other disciples. You split hairs and condemn yourself.And by the way you've bought another lie: Mark was NOT the first gospel. Matthew was. That's why it's first in the canon. You prefer the revisionists who do whatever they can to twist things around to cast doubt on the scriptures. They are only leading you down the primrose path to you know where. Though you are going quite willingly aren't you?The whole Bible has a remarkable ring of truth to it, to those who have ears to hear. Strange though that GDR has ears for some parts and not for others. But you might as well be totally deaf.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yeah, Raphael, you might as well give up. PaulK's made up his mind and that's that. I think it takes a pernicious sort of obtuseness to deny the evidence of the empty tomb. Considering all the people who would have loved to prove Jesus did not rise from the dead, most of the Jewish establishment for starters, you'd think whoever supposedly stole the body would have brought it for evidence against our belief in the resurrectrion. But nobody did.And then of course the disciples saw Him risen from the dead, starting with Mary Magdalene in the garden outside the tomb, and for forty days afterward.But the perniciously obtuse deny that there's any truth at all to the Bible reports so don't bother, Raphael, trying to persuade PaulK.Maybe there are some other people here who can still recognize good evidence, however. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What you fail to grasp is that there is such a thing as no longer NEEDING to search for the truth because it's been FOUND! I certainly found it when I came to understand and believe the gospel. The searching had been done over all the early part of my life but most intensively in the few years leading up to understanding the gospel. It's delusional to think that after finding the truth, given by God Himself, I would need to consider the fallen human vaporings you trust in, that deny the God-given truth and can only lead you to perdition. The truth has been given, your job is to believe it. Boy are you confused!Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There are some who CAME to believe by recognizing the meaning of the empty tomb. All you have to believe to believe that is that the Bible is a simple truthful record by and about simple truthful people. But that is not the case with the empty tomb. Nobody is doing any hocus pocus or even trying to persuade us of the meaning of the empty tomb. It is presented as a simple factual account. The women came to the tomb in the early morning to finish anointing the body, and found the stone rolled back and the body gone. The narrative doesn't stop to tell us its import, it just goes on recounting fact after fact. If you put simple trust in the simple narrative by the simple honest people you have to give some thought to what it means that His body wasn't there. The disciples were not expecting this, they were shocked and confused at first, always slow on the uptake. You either believe the simple honest narrative by simple honest people or you don't. There is no magic involved. Something has to persuade people in the first place, we assume others can be similarly persuaded, that's really all that's going on. PaulK goes out of his way to avoid the truth, it does take a pernicious obtuseness to do what he does to avoid it. Just believe the simple honest narrative by the simple honest people and recognize the implications of the absence of the body in the tomb.ABE: You have to interfere with the narrative somehow to deny what it's saying. You have to call the writer a liar or the people he's writing about liars. Remember, again, that it would have been out of the question for a Jew to give credence to the report of women about such a momentous event unless he knew it was true; he certainly wouldn't make it up.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The way you twist the truth is horrifying. Ugly, creepy, indefensible.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene is a perfect example of a bogus writing, as are all the gnostic gospels. It is not a narrative, it's a bunch of vaporings by a gnostic, the exact sort of thing the Bible is not.

It is not a narrative. It is a bogus made-up dialogue putting words in the mouths of Biblical personalities they would never say.It puts Mary in a position not normally given to women in Jewish culture based on scripture's attitude to women, isn't that obvious?

Or I can continue to say that the fact that women were given such prominence specifically in the witnessing and reporting of Christ's resurrection, which no Jew could have made up, is evidence for the truthfulness of the gospels, and all the gnostic gospels are is bogus revisionist usurpers and copycats. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It isn't the same thing. The gnostic gospels are discredited from many angles before we even get to Mary Magdalene.

THe gnostic gospels FOLLOWED the true gospels and added their own made-up stuff to them. They USED Mary, they didn't report on anything she actually did, such as her having been chosen as witness to the resurrection. I think you are making a merely sophistical point. "Nobody would make it up" would be true only of an authentic original writing by Jewish writers. I don't get why this is such a big logical thing to you. I get your logic but in the context it doesn't compute.By your logic evidence for an authentic writing can be easily discredited by a copycat bogus writing.