Have you tried reading the NT in the correct order?

[Leonard James]

Sadfly enough for you, every intelligent person nowadays knows perfectly well that truly dead people have been known to come back to life, and medical records have shown this.  It even has a name - Lazurus syndrome.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_syndrome

It is clear that the criteria for declaring a person dead are faulty, and should be revised. If a person is dead, they don't come back to life.

Unless there is a God and God raises that person from the dead. QED.

Such characters only exist in fable, and fables are the only "evidence" for their existence.

[Gordon]

As explained many times before, I see it as the best explanation for the empty tomb (after Jesus was killed by crucifixion), for people as individuals and groups on about a dozen known occurrences being convinced that they met him right as ninepence in the following days and for the start of the Christian church by a bunch of previously dispirited, defeated people.

How do you know that the 'empty tomb' aspect of this story isn't pure fiction?

Because all the authorities had to do do disprove it was point people to Jesus' body in the tomb if it was not empty.

It is that simple.

You are assuming that the 'empty tomb' element was an issue at the time of the alleged resurrection: but that the tomb was empty and that the body of Jesus was there at all are claims and not facts. So, how to you know that this isn't just a later addition by Jesus supporters at the time the story was first written down decades later?

After all propaganda is a risk, and if you can't acknowledge this then you are indulging in special pleading that those early Christians/NT writers were immune from human artifice in support of their cause.

If there is a risk that it isn't true at all, and there is this risk, then your challenge to 'explain' these claims is spurious since your challenge involves assuming that claims are facts, and I'd say that such assumptions are unjustified.

It wasn't "first written down decades later". Even Dan Barker dates the resurrection appearances "creed" from 1 Corinthians 15 from about 2 years after Jesus' crucifixion, though Paul is quoting it something like 18 years or so after the resurrection. I gather people like Ludemann and Ehrman date it 2-5 years after the crucifixion.

Even so, how do you know that the empty tomb isn't a fictional element added in later?

After all is someone wanted to create a fictional narrative to 'up the ante' with regard to Jesus being divine after he was killed and inconveniently, for them, remained dead, then 'but the body disappeared from the tomb and later on he had a pint with Frank and Neil' is surely to sort of element that would the job nicely, and impress the gullible. 

As it stands the 'empty tomb' is just a claim and not a historical fact, and you are failing to recognise this when you frequently challenge people to 'explain' it. Your challenge assumes there was an empty tomb that once contained the body of Jesus - but if this aspect of the story isn't historically true and is fiction, which is a risk, then your challenge to others is worthless.

You need to get from claims to facts (since we are talking tombs and dead people here) before explanations are demanded of others - but since we are stuck at claims, and bearing in mind what this story seeks to establish (that Jesus was divine, was dead and was resurrected), then the most likely explanation is that some or all of this story is fictional propaganda. 

[Hope]

Even so, how do you know that the empty tomb isn't a fictional element added in later?

Gordon, this is a question that would appear to have been asked for centuries.  What is clear is that had it been 'a fictional element added in later' the Jewish authorities would have wanted to make sure that the story was quashed very early in its existence.  After all, it was they who had insisted on the death sentence for Jesus, and so they would not have wanted anything that questioned their decisions to become popular.

After all is someone wanted to create a fictional narrative to 'up the ante' with regard to Jesus being divine after he was killed and inconveniently, for them, remained dead, then 'but the body disappeared from the tomb and later on he had a pint with Frank and Neil' is surely to sort of element that would the job nicely, and impress the gullible. 

The problem with this is that there had been a number of 'Messiahs' over the previous 50, perhaps even 100 years, many of whom had been executed by the authorities.  None of their supporters had suggested that any of them had been resurrected - and in view of the fact that they had all been political/military power-type Messiahs, it would have made more sense for this resurrection story to have ben used for them.

As it stands the 'empty tomb' is just a claim and not a historical fact, and you are failing to recognise this when you frequently challenge people to 'explain' it. Your challenge assumes there was an empty tomb that once contained the body of Jesus - but if this aspect of the story isn't historically true and is fiction, which is a risk, then your challenge to others is worthless.

OK, its a risk, but one with such low probability because of the centuries'-worth of challenges that have been directed against it with no positive outcome for the challengers.  As such, it, and all your other challenges end up with remarkably low probabilities, suggesting that the given story has a higher probability of truth than any of the stories proposed by folk like yourself.

You need to get from claims to facts (since we are talking tombs and dead people here) before explanations are demanded of others - but since we are stuck at claims, and bearing in mind what this story seeks to establish (that Jesus was divine, was dead and was resurrected), then the most likely explanation is that some or all of this story is fictional propaganda.

See above for the refutation of your 'most likely explanation' claim.

[floo]

Just because the supporters of Jesus claimed that their version of the 'messiah' had been resurrected, doesn't mean it was true, or he had anymore credence than other 'messiahs'.

[Gordon]

Gordon, this is a question that would appear to have been asked for centuries.  What is clear is that had it been 'a fictional element added in later' the Jewish authorities would have wanted to make sure that the story was quashed very early in its existence.  After all, it was they who had insisted on the death sentence for Jesus, and so they would not have wanted anything that questioned their decisions to become popular.

The resurrection story didn't do the rounds until well after the event - the authorities at the time of the crucifixion were just, from their perspective, disposing of a troublemaker.

The problem with this is that there had been a number of 'Messiahs' over the previous 50, perhaps even 100 years, many of whom had been executed by the authorities.  None of their supporters had suggested that any of them had been resurrected - and in view of the fact that they had all been political/military power-type Messiahs, it would have made more sense for this resurrection story to have ben used for them.

A resurrection story make no 'sense' at all.

OK, its a risk, but one with such low probability because of the centuries'-worth of challenges that have been directed against it with no positive outcome for the challengers.  As such, it, and all your other challenges end up with remarkably low probabilities, suggesting that the given story has a higher probability of truth than any of the stories proposed by folk like yourself.

So, you are saying that in this specially selected case the probability of people lying in support of their cause/dead leader is lower than that of supernatural intervention - really? This sounds like special pleading to me, so perhaps you'd show us your workings out in terms of how you have determined these probabilities.

[Alien]

...You have not answered my question. Why don't you explain the whole lot?

I did - lies, misquotes, too long between events and their telling ... all far more likely than that a guy who had been dead for 72 hours returned to life!

No, you have not. You need to come up with a plausible scenario of how it all happened. If you cannot do that, you have not provided an alternative explanation. For example, you have not explained why they would lie, how long you think it was between "events" (whatever they are), who might have misquoted whom and why. Heck, man, you don't even have the correct number of hours even roughly. Jesus was dead less than 48 hours (Friday afternoon to before first light Sunday).

Edited to include link to jjohnjil's original post.

[Alien]

As explained many times before, I see it as the best explanation for the empty tomb (after Jesus was killed by crucifixion), for people as individuals and groups on about a dozen known occurrences being convinced that they met him right as ninepence in the following days and for the start of the Christian church by a bunch of previously dispirited, defeated people.

How do you know that the 'empty tomb' aspect of this story isn't pure fiction?

Because all the authorities had to do do disprove it was point people to Jesus' body in the tomb if it was not empty.

It is that simple.

So I suppose that means in opposition to that, all Jesus had to do was show himself to the authorities, proving it right?

Or his half-brother, James, who previously thought Jesus was off his head? Why did James become the leader of the Christian church in Jerusalem?

You were talking about the authorities. I was simply making a parallel with that.

Indeed. Alien comes a cropper part 2.

What do you think the authorities would have thought if they had indeed seen Jesus after his crucifixion? Do you think they would have fallen at his feet in worship, come up with some far-fetched scheme about him not really having died or something else?

No idea. All I will say, as I said before to Hope, is that if they did think he was the genuine article, then I would've expected them to make a record of it. This is all ifs and buts, though.

So which records from the Jewish authorities would it have been recorded in? Presumably you are speaking of records we have now, but they are missing any reference to Jesus appearing to people after his crucifixion.

[Alien]

OK, Len. Let's see if you can come up with a plausible explanation for the empty tomb and the alleged meetings of Jesus with individuals and groups and the start of the Christian church from a bunch of previously badly dispirited people.

Hint: sound bites do not count as an explanation.

Hint - if the empty tomb or Jesus meeting people claims aren't known to be actually true then asking others to 'explain' them is a silly and unfair challenge. You need to verify these claims first (as opposed to you believing them on a personal basis).

By the way oppressed and/or dispirited people are known to start movements but this doesn't mean that what they start is factually justified.

You misunderstand what I have written there. I spoke of "alleged meetings of Jesus with individuals and groups". There seems little doubt (to the impartial observer, I would suggest) that those people involved on those dozen or so occasions genuinely believed they had met and sometimes eaten with the risen Jesus. My request to you is to give a good explanation as to why they were so convinced.

What I'm saying, and you aren't getting, is that you are asking me to explain a claim by assuming that this claim is an explainable fact. However, if the claim is fictional propaganda - which is a risk - then a possible explanation is that these encounters didn't happen.

So, before asking me to explain you need to demonstrate these claims are facts and not lies.

So if it is "fictional propaganda", where would it have come from? Who might have produced it? When might they have produced it? Why might they have produced it? How did they manage to convince the authors of the four canonical gospels and people like Paul that it was all true?

Come on, Gordon, you are being too vague.

[Gordon]

You need to come up with a plausible scenario of how it all happened. If you cannot do that, you have not provided an alternative explanation. For example, you have not explained why they would lie, how long you think it was between "events" (whatever they are), who might have misquoted whom and why. Heck, man, you don't even have the correct number of hours even roughly. Jesus was dead less than 48 hours (Friday afternoon to before first light Sunday).

You are doing it again, Alan, in challenging people to 'to come up with a plausible scenario of how it all happened' as 'alternative explanation' - you are presuming that it 'happened' as described in the NT.

That it didn't 'happen' at all is a plausible scenario that both fits known human behaviour and neatly disposes of all the various elements of the story (empty tomb etc): in that they didn't 'happen' at all. 

[floo]

Gordon, this is a question that would appear to have been asked for centuries.  What is clear is that had it been 'a fictional element added in later' the Jewish authorities would have wanted to make sure that the story was quashed very early in its existence.  After all, it was they who had insisted on the death sentence for Jesus, and so they would not have wanted anything that questioned their decisions to become popular.

The resurrection story didn't do the rounds until well after the event - the authorities at the time of the crucifixion were just, from their perspective, disposing of a troublemaker.

The problem with this is that there had been a number of 'Messiahs' over the previous 50, perhaps even 100 years, many of whom had been executed by the authorities.  None of their supporters had suggested that any of them had been resurrected - and in view of the fact that they had all been political/military power-type Messiahs, it would have made more sense for this resurrection story to have ben used for them.

A resurrection story make no 'sense' at all.

OK, its a risk, but one with such low probability because of the centuries'-worth of challenges that have been directed against it with no positive outcome for the challengers.  As such, it, and all your other challenges end up with remarkably low probabilities, suggesting that the given story has a higher probability of truth than any of the stories proposed by folk like yourself.

So, you are saying that in this specially selected case the probability of people lying in support of their cause/dead leader is lower than that of supernatural intervention - really? This sounds like special pleading to me, so perhaps you'd show us your workings out in terms of how you have determined these probabilities.

If Jesus really did resurrect, why did he very conveniently pop back upstairs, instead of sticking around down here so no one could doubt it?

[Gordon]

So if it is "fictional propaganda", where would it have come from? Who might have produced it? When might they have produced it? Why might they have produced it? How did they manage to convince the authors of the four canonical gospels and people like Paul that it was all true?

Come on, Gordon, you are being too vague.

Easy peasy - propaganda comes from people with an agenda, Alan, in support of a cause,  other people or even themselves and their personal interests. In addition, in that place, culture and time a religious narrative laced with miracles would go down rather well.   

So, in more recent times when an American president assured us he 'did not have sex with that woman', or the UK Chancellor reassures us that the latest Budget is designed to 'benefit hard-working people' (or some similarly patronising expression), do we; a) believe them without question, or b) do we consider whether there might be another agendas at play or that perhaps mistake, lies or exaggeration may be involved.

You seem unable to countenance that early Christians were perhaps just as fallible as, say, Bill Clinton.

[jeremyp]

You need to come up with a plausible scenario of how it all happened.

This really is laughable.  Your "plausible" explanation is a dead man coming alive again.  Do you understand what the word means?

[jeremyp]

You are doing it again, Alan, in challenging people to 'to come up with a plausible scenario of how it all happened' as 'alternative explanation' - you are presuming that it 'happened' as described in the NT.

That it didn't 'happen' at all is a plausible scenario that both fits known human behaviour and neatly disposes of all the various elements of the story (empty tomb etc): in that they didn't 'happen' at all.

And let me emphasise again, Alan's own explanation - Jesus coming back to life - is itself totally implausible.  Why do we have to provide a plausible explanation when he doesn't?

[Hope]

And let me emphasise again, Alan's own explanation - Jesus coming back to life - is itself totally implausible.  Why do we have to provide a plausible explanation when he doesn't?

The plausible explanation we need you to give is why, if Jesus was God in human form, he couldn't have come back to life?  Simply saying that you don't believe that there is a God, or some such reason, isn't a plausible explanation.

[jeremyp]

And let me emphasise again, Alan's own explanation - Jesus coming back to life - is itself totally implausible.  Why do we have to provide a plausible explanation when he doesn't?

The plausible explanation we need you to give is why, if Jesus was God in human form, he couldn't have come back to life?

Wrong, we are talking about a plausible explanation for the existence of the stories in the New Testament and the alleged martyrdoms referenced in the NT and apparently elsewhere.

[Shaker]

The plausible explanation we need you to give is why, if Jesus was God in human form, he couldn't have come back to life?

I provided an answer to this not too many hours ago. Obviously you didn't see it, despite its being only on the previous page. For your benefit I'll repeat the salient part:

If you invent out of thin air a magic entity who can do magic things, then by definition it can do anything you define it to be able to do - the Tolkiens and the Rowlings of the world earned fame and in the latter case especially great fortune by doing just that. It's embarrassingly tautological - magic entity can do magic may be impeccable logically but it says nothing.

http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=10621.msg542993#msg542993

Simply saying that you don't believe that there is a God, or some such reason, isn't a plausible explanation.

It's not an explanation, it's a conclusion. If you see no reason to think that any such thing as a god exists - which is the definition of atheism - then there are no gods to go around reanimating corpses.

This is not a difficult point to follow. Usually.

[Leonard James]

And let me emphasise again, Alan's own explanation - Jesus coming back to life - is itself totally implausible.  Why do we have to provide a plausible explanation when he doesn't?

The plausible explanation we need you to give is why, if Jesus was God in human form, he couldn't have come back to life?  Simply saying that you don't believe that there is a God, or some such reason, isn't a plausible explanation.

Because if he was "God" in human form, then he had the ability to feel none of the pain and suffering a human would have felt. All he had to do was put on a good performance.

Yes, that is much more plausible.

[Hope]

You need to come up with a plausible scenario of how it all happened.

This really is laughable.  Your "plausible" explanation is a dead man coming alive again.  Do you understand what the word means?

Since when was Alien's " "plausible" explanation is a dead man coming alive again"?  You seem to miss the statement that Alien, Jim, I and many others have made - that Jesus was God in human form.  As I said in a previous post, God created the laws of nature that you so like to build your assertions on, suggesting that he can suspend them as well.

[Shaker]

Since when was Alien's " "plausible" explanation is a dead man coming alive again"?  You seem to miss the statement that Alien, Jim, I and many others have made - that Jesus was God in human form.

Bald assertion without a scrap of evidence to support it, then.

As I said in a previous post, God created the laws of nature that you so like to build your assertions on

... which is in itself yet another flat assertion without evidence.

[Leonard James]

This is not a difficult point to follow. Usually.

It is when your ability to reason is handicapped by humbug.

[Shaker]

This is not a difficult point to follow. Usually.

It is when your ability to reason is handicapped by humbug.

Yeah 

[jeremyp]

Since when was Alien's " "plausible" explanation is a dead man coming alive again"?

No, you are misunderstanding.  Alan's explanation is not plausible.

You seem to miss the statement that Alien, Jim, I and many others have made - that Jesus was God in human form.

Make that statement as much as you like. I'll treat it with the resect it deserves (which is none at all) until you provide some evidence that Jesus was God in human form.   Alan claims the resurrection is evidence, but, since the resurrection is what is in dispute here, that would be a circular argument i.e. invalid.

As I said in a previous post, God created the laws of nature that you so like to build your assertions on, suggesting that he can suspend them as well.

Again, I don't have to accept that until some evidence is provided that God created the laws of nature.

[Hope]

The plausible explanation we need you to give is why, if Jesus was God in human form, he couldn't have come back to life?

I provided an answer to this not too many hours ago. Obviously you didn't see it, despite its being only on the previous page. For your benefit I'll repeat the salient part:

No I didn't see iot - I've been out all morning and - despite skim-reading the last couple of pages, I didn't see this attempt at an answer.  I wouldn't say that it is a particularly clever answer, even though it makes use of lots of clever language. 

It's not an explanation, it's a conclusion. If you see no reason to think that any such thing as a god exists - which is the definition of atheism - then there are no gods to go around reanimating corpses.

This is not a difficult point to follow. Usually.

Its not a difficult point to follow; just a point that is open to debate, and therefore an assertion, as opposed to a definitive conclusion.

[Hope]

No, you are misunderstanding.  Alan's explanation is not plausible.

No less than all the various explanations that you and your crew seek to give.

[Shaker]

No I didn't see iot - I've been out all morning and - despite skim-reading the last couple of pages, I didn't see this attempt at an answer. I wouldn't say that it is a particularly clever answer, even though it makes use of lots of clever language.

No, not particularly clever language: just the right words to convey the information and concepts I intended to convey. Which it did, as did JeremyP's most recent reply which said essentially the same thing in different terms.