Unconditional love

[Hope]

Which is fine, apart from the fact that non-belief results in damnation.

Since when?  It doesn't say that in the Bible or in Jesus' teachings (though I will agree that some branches of the Church like to teach it, like some like to teach the Prosperity Gospel).

How would you interpret John 3:18 then?

That he who does not believe would be judged - to have decided that he doesn't want to have full relationship with God.  Look at v. 16-21 to get the context - 

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

Jesus came not to judge, but to save. 

[jeremyp]

Jesus stayed dead too.

Your evidence, please.

If he's still alive, let him show himself.

Hello Jesus, wakey wakey!

This is an ex-prophet.

[jeremyp]

As there is no verifiable evidence to the contrary, it is a reasonable assumption that Jesus is a rotted corpse somewhere in the Middle East, as when one dies one stays dead!

There is documentary evidence to the contrary, Floo, so, I repeat, where is your evidence.

Corpses almost always rot.  Surely you are not disputing that.

[Hope]

So you are a universalist then?

I do not have the slightest idea how you got from my post to your response, Rhi.  I suppose you could call me a universalist, in so far as Jesus offers salvation to every human being - rather than to a particular ethnic group, tribe, nation, gender, age-group, ...  In other words, the offer is universal.

[Hope]

Corpses almost always rot.  Surely you are not disputing that.

Human Corpses always rot, unless they are dismembered, and defleshed before that can happen - but then, are we talking about a purely human body with Jesus?  You will say 'Yes, we are'; I and other Christians will say 'No, we're not'.

[Hope]

If he's still alive, let him show himself.

Hello Jesus, wakey wakey!

This is an ex-prophet.

Jesus taught that, as Christians, we are to act as his hands, feet, arms, legs ... - 'body' - here on earth.  So, assuming you know Christians, you will be meeting with Jesus on pretty much a weekly, if not a daily basis.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Now trying to be clever really doesn't work as a look for you, Hope.

But at least it looks better for me than your daftness.  I realise that you not believe that Jesus was God, and that he was simply a human being like Socrates; unfortunately, that is an assumption that has no more supporting evidence than my belief, and possibly less.

Evidence in the legal, historical and scientific senses is all naturalistic. To have the evidence you claim, would need as had been pointed out many many times a methodology. You have never provided one, despite being asked. Your point fails even to rise to the level of speciousness

Which makes me wonder why the antichristians throw a kind of cordon round the resurrection to prevent thorough historical analysis and promote philosophical explanations over it.

How do you do an historical analysis (a naturalistic methodology)of a supernatural claim? Note, no cordon, just asking once again for a methodology, which in true Mystic Meg mode, I predict you will not attempt to provide but instead indulge in mendacious evasions.

But the resurrection is also a  material event. Empirically witnessed.
Observed. Are all past events susceptible to scientific investigation? what about the unique historical event? So yep, the resurrection is susceptible to historical study. Whether it is able to conclude that the resurrection was a supernatural event, i'm not sure.

Nope, history as a study is methodologically naturalistic. Note I didn't mention science, just historical analysis.

No, I think you are actually confusing three things here, science, history, and the belief which comes from repeated results that that occurs ad infinitum.

The resurrection is posited as a supernatural event, a physical event (other wise where would our ideas of bodily resurrection come from?) and a unique historical event.

Even if history is methodologically naturalist we can use it to study
unique physical historical events.

There is no barrier to it's use. That there is a Gordon sanitaire around it for antitheists around it is due therefore to at best misunderstanding and at worst intellectual dishonesty.

[Nearly Sane]

Not confusing anything, dear Vlad. Tell me how you determine a non naturalistic event using a naturalistic methodology? Been asking it for years now, you never answer. Why is that?

[Nearly Sane]

Quite like Gordon sanitaire though. That is witty.

[Shaker]

Corpses almost always rot.  Surely you are not disputing that.

Human Corpses always rot, unless they are dismembered, and defleshed before that can happen - but then, are we talking about a purely human body with Jesus?  You will say 'Yes, we are'; I and other Christians will say 'No, we're not'.

... and the latter group have not a scrap of evidence for their belief, since that's exactly what it is and all it is - a belief.

[Hope]

... and the latter group have not a scrap of evidence for their belief, since that's exactly what it is and all it is - a belief.

Do the former group have any evidence for their belief?

[Shaker]

... and the latter group have not a scrap of evidence for their belief, since that's exactly what it is and all it is - a belief.

Do the former group have any evidence for their belief?

That the genuinely dead are, well, dead and remain so? Yes ... rather a lot of it.

[Nearly Sane]

... and the latter group have not a scrap of evidence for their belief, since that's exactly what it is and all it is - a belief.

Do the former group have any evidence for their belief?

That the genuinely dead are, well, dead and remain so? Yes ... rather a lot of it.

Rot!

[Shaker]

Precisely 

[jeremyp]

Jesus taught that, as Christians, we are to act as his hands, feet, arms, legs

You pretending to be a bit of Jesus doesn't make hm alive.

If he's alive, why doesn't he go on The One Show?

[jeremyp]

... and the latter group have not a scrap of evidence for their belief, since that's exactly what it is and all it is - a belief.

Do the former group have any evidence for their belief?

You understand you are challenging the idea that human bodies rot away?  Do you know how foolish that makes you look?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

... and the latter group have not a scrap of evidence for their belief, since that's exactly what it is and all it is - a belief.

Do the former group have any evidence for their belief?

You understand you are challenging the idea that human bodies rot away?  Do you know how foolish that makes you look?

I don't think anybody challenges that, just the idea that it is science rather than belief in repeated results and with a mind that
one challenges science provisionality by claiming impossibility.

I think it's being claimed as a miracle. A witnessed unique historical event.

[Nearly Sane]

... and the latter group have not a scrap of evidence for their belief, since that's exactly what it is and all it is - a belief.

Do the former group have any evidence for their belief?

You understand you are challenging the idea that human bodies rot away?  Do you know how foolish that makes you look?

I don't think anybody challenges that, just the idea that it is science rather than belief in repeated results and with a mind that
one challenges science provisionality by claiming impossibility.

I think it's being claimed as a miracle. A witnessed unique historical event.

And no methodology for establishing such a claim

[Walt Zingmatilder]

... and the latter group have not a scrap of evidence for their belief, since that's exactly what it is and all it is - a belief.

Do the former group have any evidence for their belief?

You understand you are challenging the idea that human bodies rot away?  Do you know how foolish that makes you look?

I don't think anybody challenges that, just the idea that it is science rather than belief in repeated results and with a mind that
one challenges science provisionality by claiming impossibility.

I think it's being claimed as a miracle. A witnessed unique historical event.

And no methodology for establishing such a claim

Resign.

[Nearly Sane]

Poor Vlad, reduced to crying.

[Rhiannon]

So you are a universalist then?

I do not have the slightest idea how you got from my post to your response, Rhi.  I suppose you could call me a universalist, in so far as Jesus offers salvation to every human being - rather than to a particular ethnic group, tribe, nation, gender, age-group, ...  In other words, the offer is universal.

Do I have to take that offer in this life?

[floo]

There is NO EVIDENCE to support your belief in a deity!  Of course you are entitled to believe in anything you wish to believe in, just as I am entitled to disbelieve.

A (dis)belief for which there is no more evidence than for mine.

As I have said before, on a good number of occasions, if the deity does exist, why does it play silly beggars and instead of making its existence a matter of faith, why not a matter of fact by revealing itself to all humans in a way which is indisputable?

Because, as I and others have equally 'said before, on a good number of occasions', he has given us brains to explore and discern, and doesn't want people to believe in him because they have no choice, preferring people who make a choice. It's called freedom of choice, or freewill.

What a daft excuse Hope that really takes the biscuit! If the deity, should it exist, being such a crazy b*stard it doesn't deserve people to believe in it!

[Hope]

What a daft excuse Hope that really takes the biscuit! If the deity, should it exist, be such a crazy b*stard it doesn't deserve people to believe in it!

Allowing people to make a choice means that one is a "crazy b*stard"?  In which case, that describes you, as you clearly allowed your children to make their own choices.

[Hope]

Do I have to take that offer in this life?

Do you have another one, as a human being?

[Hope]

You understand you are challenging the idea that human bodies rot away? 

No, I am not, challenging that fact.  What I am challenging is the assumption that some here make, that Jesus was merely/purely human.