Have you tried reading the NT in the correct order?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

You say that the resurrection isn't a historical fact. The fact is that just 20 or so years after we read about communities who believe it did. These communities were established. That is the historical fact your crowd hide.

We read about them in Paul's letters.  In one case he is arguing that the resurrection did happen with a Christian community.  This suggests that the nature of the resurrection was not agreed on at the time.

Paul challenges the doubter to interview up to 500.

No he doesn't.  He asserts that 500 people saw Jesus at one time.  He asserts that some of them were still alive but he doesn't tells us who they are.  How are you supposed to interview a person whose name and address you don't know.

This is a material event.

What?  Paul writing a letter?  Well we have the letter, so it must be.  However the things he describes in it could be made up just like JK Rowling's stories.

Let's finally examine the religious roots the overwhelming opposition comes from other forms of jewish faith in which God does not come to earth incarnated, where Law and it's interpretation is the religious lynchpin and death is the end.

Your thesis that this time and place was fertile territory for a Christianity is off the mark somewhat.

Christianity didn't get much traction in Palestine.  Check out the places to which Paul wrote his letters.  So if you are saying that Judaism provided opposition to Christianity, I would agree and it appears to have been quite effective.

In terms of finding those who saw Jesus an invitation to go to where these people are still at seems reasonable to me as does Paul having an assumption without saying it that access to these people would be fairly easy.

In terms of Paul making it up what we get is a picture of a resurrection accepting/doubting/not accepting community to whom this was an issue who would in all likely hood be exposed to other lesser disciples or main disciples. I think we can say Paul is genuine in his belief.

Clearly not everybody saw the resurrection in the same way and the fact that there were debates tells us that it is probably at least not a singular invention from a singular author.....a palestinian JK Rowling if you please.

That Christianity doesn't gain much traction in Palestine contradicts Gordon's point that it was a fertile ground for it's beliefs....I would have thought. You spin it as a not much traction without really having a measure of how much traction it should have had. That is therefore mere polemic opinion on your part.

People were certainly less gullible than Gordon suggests.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I don't think we can argue that strange stories are fabricated all the time but none achieve this kind of status in such a short time.

Would you like to explain the Mormon Church?

Jesus' trip to America.

So far your response to the statement that strange stories are invented all the time has been to remind me that Christianity and Mormonism bucked the trend and achieve a certain status. That's two out of hundreds and hundreds.

The Mormon church is a Christian variant and so Mormonism I would of thought has not achieved the same status as orthodox Christianity.

[jeremyp]

In terms of finding those who saw Jesus an invitation to go to where these people are still at seems reasonable to me as does Paul having an assumption without saying it that access to these people would be fairly easy.

If I say 500 people saw me go over the Niagara Falls in a barrel, but I don't tell you who they are, would you think my clam credible or would you think I jut made up the number?

In terms of Paul making it up what we get is a picture of a resurrection accepting/doubting/not accepting community to whom this was an issue who would in all likely hood be exposed to other lesser disciples or main disciples. I think we can say Paul is genuine in his belief.

So you agree there isn't one canonical story of the resurrection at the time of Paul?

Clearly not everybody saw the resurrection in the same way and the fact that there were debates tells us that it is probably at least not a singular invention from a singular author.....

Or a real event.

That Christianity doesn't gain much traction in Palestine contradicts Gordon's point that it was a fertile ground for it's beliefs....I would have thought. You spin it as a not much traction without really having a measure of how much traction it should have had. That is therefore mere polemic opinion on your part.

I was arguing against your point which was that Christianity gained traction in spite of opposition.  I just pointed out that it didn't gain much traction in the area where opposition was strongest. 

People were certainly less gullible than Gordon suggests.

And yet some of them believed the nonsense about a dead man coming alive again.

[jeremyp]

So far your response to the statement that strange stories are invented all the time has been to remind me that Christianity and Mormonism bucked the trend and achieve a certain status. That's two out of hundreds and hundreds.

So you believe that Joseph Smith's and golden tablet story is true.

If not, you have to concede that false stories can gain momentum quickly and some people do fall for them.
[/quote]

[Walt Zingmatilder]

So far your response to the statement that strange stories are invented all the time has been to remind me that Christianity and Mormonism bucked the trend and achieve a certain status. That's two out of hundreds and hundreds.

So you believe that Joseph Smith's and golden tablet story is true.

If not, you have to concede that false stories can gain momentum quickly and some people do fall for them.

[/quote]
Your contention that we must expect Paul to have immediately, in a letter supply names and addresses is straw clutching. Such an expectation would IMHO only make sense in an Autistic context and is at least a bit thin. For example the expectation is that many of the remaining witnesses would be in a church community, which would have been a tighter affair than now. After all Paul visited Churches and then hence presumably that would have been his starting point before going out into a community.

One has to look at the coming of Mormonism in the context that the Mormons are fresh in a new country where things were very different from whence they came. Mormonism satisfies a need for relevance and to link their geographical context to an established Orthodoxy. These people experienced the weird and disorienting everyday, Gold plates and angels sound a positive walk in the park when compared with that.

In all of Mormonism the miracle of the gold plates sounds the most dispensible part of it. Having the plates manifest and then they disappear sounds a bit thin but who knows.

What is more suspect and more fatal is the discrepancy between archaeology,ethnology and the Book of Mormon.

[Gordon]

Vlad

Do you think that Joseph Smith was really visited by an angel named Moroni? 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad

Do you think that Joseph Smith was really visited by an angel named Moroni?

I don't.......ultimately because the so called message conveyed is not consistent with archaeology and ethnology nor orthodox theology....I thought I said that.

[jeremyp]

Your contention that we must expect Paul to have immediately, in a letter supply names and addresses is straw clutching.

No Vlad, we can see you are the one clutching at straws.  Paul might as well have pulled that number out of his arse without any actual names.

many of the remaining witnesses would be in a church community, which would have been a tighter affair than now.

Paul was writing to the church in Corinth.  In those days, Corinth was many days or weeks travel from Palestine.  Paul could have written anything he liked pretty much without the danger of the Corinthians coming over to check.

One has to look at the coming of Mormonism in the context that the Mormons are fresh in a new country where things were very different from whence they came. Mormonism satisfies a need for relevance and to link their geographical context to an established Orthodoxy. These people experienced the weird and disorienting everyday, Gold plates and angels sound a positive walk in the park when compared with that.

In all of Mormonism the miracle of the gold plates sounds the most dispensible part of it. Having the plates manifest and then they disappear sounds a bit thin but who knows.

What is more suspect and more fatal is the discrepancy between archaeology,ethnology and the Book of Mormon.

The point of my example is that, in spite of all those objections you raise, the story has gained currency amongst Mormons.  This means that your argument that the resurrection couldn't gain currency amongst Christians without being true is a busted flush.

[Gordon]

Vlad

Do you think that Joseph Smith was really visited by an angel named Moroni?

I don't.......ultimately because the so called message conveyed is not consistent with archaeology and ethnology nor orthodox theology....I thought I said that.

So you are being selective about which religious claims you will accept: odd grounds too since I doubt archaeology from the early 19th century is relevant compared to the religion dating from antiquity that you clearly prefer: you seem to give greater credence to ancient middle-eastern sources of religious superstition as opposed to more recent American sources: a bit like preferring Tin-Tin comics over Batman comics.

You do seem to be rejecting one set of contrived religious dogma in favour of another set of contrived religious dogma because of your confirmation bias for the ancient middle-eastern variety without stopping to consider that your grounds for dismissing Mormonism (and I agree with your here since it is quite clearly nonsense) apply equally to Christianity.

   

[Gordon]

Nope - the resurrection claims were post -hoc so the authorities at that point were simply executing someone (not an unusual occurrence back then). The claims of alleged miracles are exactly that; post-hoc claims written down years later, so how have you excluded the possibility that they are fictional lies to promote the myth of Jesus?

Actually the gospels were all written before AD 70, as can be seen from the way they are written. The generation of people who knew Jesus was still around, and would have produced evidence to disprove the apostles' claims.

Super - tons of time to concoct a story!

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Your contention that we must expect Paul to have immediately, in a letter supply names and addresses is straw clutching.

No Vlad, we can see you are the one clutching at straws.  Paul might as well have pulled that number out of his arse without any actual names.

many of the remaining witnesses would be in a church community, which would have been a tighter affair than now.

Paul was writing to the church in Corinth.  In those days, Corinth was many days or weeks travel from Palestine.  Paul could have written anything he liked pretty much without the danger of the Corinthians coming over to check.

One has to look at the coming of Mormonism in the context that the Mormons are fresh in a new country where things were very different from whence they came. Mormonism satisfies a need for relevance and to link their geographical context to an established Orthodoxy. These people experienced the weird and disorienting everyday, Gold plates and angels sound a positive walk in the park when compared with that.

In all of Mormonism the miracle of the gold plates sounds the most dispensible part of it. Having the plates manifest and then they disappear sounds a bit thin but who knows.

What is more suspect and more fatal is the discrepancy between archaeology,ethnology and the Book of Mormon.

The point of my example is that, in spite of all those objections you raise, the story has gained currency amongst Mormons.  This means that your argument that the resurrection couldn't gain currency amongst Christians without being true is a busted flush.

But you are churning out the same argument. Your belief that these things never happen. As I have said intellectual assent in a story of resurrection is not the arrival at Christian faith. No more than I would imagine intellectual assent in the story of Moroni is the arrival at Mormon faith. Where Mormonism fails I think is that there is nothing in ''the Mormon bits'' of what is after all a Christian based variant which stands up historically, archeologically or ethnologically.

Your argument is at based merely the one for philosophical materialism. These things do not happen in your scheme of things, There is a prohibition.

The Christian's encounter with Christ makes the resurrection not only possible but if you think about it the only explanation for the encounter.

You have a bad methodology then. Picking a single aspect of a religion and then classifying it as the religion itself.

A test is to imagine a philosophical materialist withessing a resurrection or a miracle. What would the reaction be? One reaction would be to accept that resurrections can happen...but then faith in God is another thing since one could extend one's philosophical materialism to include resurrection. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nope - the resurrection claims were post -hoc so the authorities at that point were simply executing someone (not an unusual occurrence back then). The claims of alleged miracles are exactly that; post-hoc claims written down years later, so how have you excluded the possibility that they are fictional lies to promote the myth of Jesus?

Actually the gospels were all written before AD 70, as can be seen from the way they are written. The generation of people who knew Jesus was still around, and would have produced evidence to disprove the apostles' claims.

Super - tons of time to concoct a story!

I would question your assertion that the NT is just another story. You seem to be saying that this is an obvious story easily concocted (for what reason I don't know). That of course is from a position of having the benefit of hindsight. What then is the story about, why is it affective?, why has it been globally affective? what is actually been concocted?. Your assertion Gord....over to you.

[Gordon]

Nope - the resurrection claims were post -hoc so the authorities at that point were simply executing someone (not an unusual occurrence back then). The claims of alleged miracles are exactly that; post-hoc claims written down years later, so how have you excluded the possibility that they are fictional lies to promote the myth of Jesus?

Actually the gospels were all written before AD 70, as can be seen from the way they are written. The generation of people who knew Jesus was still around, and would have produced evidence to disprove the apostles' claims.

Super - tons of time to concoct a story!

I would question your assertion that the NT is just another story. You seem to be saying that this is an obvious story easily concocted (for what reason I don't know). That of course is from a position of having the benefit of hindsight. What then is the story about, why is it affective?, why has it been globally affective? what is actually been concocted?. Your assertion Gord....over to you.

Several things wrapped up in this, Vlad.

Let's deal with the survivor fallacy bit first: the main reason that Christianity survived isn't because its core supernatural tenets are true (they can't be, since they are impossible) but because of the social/political role Christianity has had in western Europe since the fall of the western bit of the Roman empire, from about the 5th century onwards, until recent times where in some areas, like here in the UK, its influence is waning along with its 'membership'.

The reason that the story was 'effective' is that it was at it strongest when religiosity was a cultural norm, and especially when it had an overt role in political power: there are tons of examples of the intrusive effect of Christianity in European history: the Crusades, the treatment of early scientists (Galileo et al), Henry VIII, the Conquistadors etc etc: thankfully though the influence of Christianity has weakened, and will continue to weaken no matter how much you guys jump up and down: the recent legislation on SSM is an example of the reduced influence of Christianity.

Looking back at it today it would seem to me that the core beliefs involving the divine may well have chimed when Christianity got going: religiosity was the norm then, so no doubt all the antiquated nonsense about prophets and miracles would find a ready audience, where those who were promoting the Jesus variant could easily have 'managed the message' to ensure that a certain type of stories were included: walking on water, healing the sick and, of course, not staying dead.

It was effective propaganda, since in more credulous times Christianity did survive and gain influence, but given the passage of time and the advances in understanding and knowledge since then I'm perplexed that some people still cling to what is no more than socially organised superstition that makes nonsensical claims.     

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nope - the resurrection claims were post -hoc so the authorities at that point were simply executing someone (not an unusual occurrence back then). The claims of alleged miracles are exactly that; post-hoc claims written down years later, so how have you excluded the possibility that they are fictional lies to promote the myth of Jesus?

Actually the gospels were all written before AD 70, as can be seen from the way they are written. The generation of people who knew Jesus was still around, and would have produced evidence to disprove the apostles' claims.

Super - tons of time to concoct a story!

I would question your assertion that the NT is just another story. You seem to be saying that this is an obvious story easily concocted (for what reason I don't know). That of course is from a position of having the benefit of hindsight. What then is the story about, why is it affective?, why has it been globally affective? what is actually been concocted?. Your assertion Gord....over to you.

Several things wrapped up in this, Vlad.

Let' deal with the survivor fallacy bit first: the main reason that Christianity survived isn't because its core supernatural tenets are true (they can't be, since they are impossible) but because of the social/political role Christianity has had in western Europe since the fall of the western bit of the Roman empire, from about the 5th century onwards, until recent times where in some areas, like here in the UK, its influence is waning along with its 'membership'.

The reason that the story was 'effective' is that it was at it strongest when religiosity was a cultural norm, and especially when it had an overt role in political power: there are tons of examples of the intrusive effect of Christianity in European history: the Crusades, the treatment of early scientists (Galileo et al), Henry VIII, the Conquistadors etc etc: thankfully though the influence of Christianity has weakened, and will continue to weaken no matter how much you guys jump up and down: the recent legislation on SSM is an example of the reduced influence of Christianity.

Looking back at it today it would seem to me that the core beliefs involving the divine may well have chimed when Christianity got going: religiosity was the norm then, so no doubt all the antiquated nonsense about prophets and miracles would find a ready audience, where those who were promoting the Jesus variant could easily have 'managed the message' to ensure that a certain type of stories were included: walking on water, healing the sick and, of course, not staying dead.

It was effective propaganda, since in more credulous times Christianity did survive and gain influence, but given the passage of time and the advances in understanding and knowledge since then I'm perplexed that some people still cling to what is no more than socially organised superstition that makes nonsensical claims.   

Well, you seem to be in conflict with Jeremy P who reckons it didn't take off. If I were some sort of antitheists I might be claiming that as you are in conflict your position of disbelief is the incorrect one. But what I aim to do is to plough my own, hopefully correct, furrow,

,,,,,,,Back after the break.

[jeremyp]

But you are churning out the same argument. Your belief that these things never happen. As I have said intellectual assent in a story of resurrection is not the arrival at Christian faith. No more than I would imagine intellectual assent in the story of Moroni is the arrival at Mormon faith. Where Mormonism fails I think is that there is nothing in ''the Mormon bits'' of what is after all a Christian based variant which stands up historically, archeologically or ethnologically.

I am, at least consistent.  I think both stories are fiction.  Whereas you cut the resurrection story slack because people believed in it but you refuse to do the same for the Mormon story. 

Your argument is at based merely the one for philosophical materialism. These things do not happen in your scheme of things, There is a prohibition.

Yawn. 

Your answer to everything is "philosophic materialism".  Give it up.

The Christian's encounter with Christ makes the resurrection not only possible but if you think about it the only explanation for the encounter.

What about the Mormon's encounter with Moroni? The Muslim's encounter with Allah?

You are guilty of confirmation bias.

You have a bad methodology then. Picking a single aspect of a religion and then classifying it as the religion itself.

You are guilty of not thinking about things critically.  When you are out of your depth as you are now, you resort to big words to pretend you are clever, but you are not.

[Gordon]

Well, you seem to be in conflict with Jeremy P who reckons it didn't take off. If I were some sort of antitheists I might be claiming that as you are in conflict your position of disbelief is the incorrect one. But what I aim to do is to plough my own, hopefully correct, furrow,

,,,,,,,Back after the break.

I'm happy to hear Jeremy's comments - from Jeremy.

I note your farming analogy - make sure you don't end up stuck deep in what farmers put on fields?

[jeremyp]

Well, you seem to be in conflict with Jeremy P who reckons it didn't take off. If I were some sort of antitheists I might be claiming that as you are in conflict your position of disbelief is the incorrect one. But what I aim to do is to plough my own, hopefully correct, furrow,

,,,,,,,Back after the break.

I'm happy to hear Jeremy's comments - from Jeremy.

I note your farming analogy - make sure you don't end up stuck deep in what farmers put on fields?

He was lying btw.  I never said Christianity didn't take off, I said it didn't gain traction amongst the Jews in Palestine. He seems to have no idea of how the Christian Church was distributed and no concept of how far apart the various churches were with travel being as it was in those days.

[Gordon]

Well, you seem to be in conflict with Jeremy P who reckons it didn't take off. If I were some sort of antitheists I might be claiming that as you are in conflict your position of disbelief is the incorrect one. But what I aim to do is to plough my own, hopefully correct, furrow,

,,,,,,,Back after the break.

I'm happy to hear Jeremy's comments - from Jeremy.

I note your farming analogy - make sure you don't end up stuck deep in what farmers put on fields?

He was lying btw.  I never said Christianity didn't take off, I said it didn't gain traction amongst the Jews in Palestine. He seems to have no idea of how the Christian Church was distributed and no concept of how far apart the various churches were with travel being as it was in those days.

I know, Jeremy, since I read what you actually said earlier whereas Vlad seems to have read what he'd like you to have said.

[Shaker]

I know, Jeremy, since I read what you actually said earlier whereas Vlad seems to have read what he'd like you to have said.

Ah yes. I too am familiar with that.

[BashfulAnthony]

I know, Jeremy, since I read what you actually said earlier whereas Vlad seems to have read what he'd like you to have said.

Ah yes. I too am familiar with that.

Yes, I always thought you did the same!

[Shaker]

Then you would, as ever, be in error.

[BashfulAnthony]

Then you would, as ever, be in error.

Occasionally in error, of course. Any reasonable person will acknowledge that.  Which is why you don't ever acknowledge it.

[jeremyp]

Anyway, we are 25 pages in.  Nobody has yet answered the question "what is the correct order?"

[2Corrie]

There isn't a correct order, think how these letters started out being passed around the local churches, they would have read what they received, not sat there waiting for the whole 27 books.

[Spud]

Actually the gospels were all written before AD 70, as can be seen from the way they are written. The generation of people who knew Jesus was still around, and would have produced evidence to disprove the apostles' claims.

No Spud, nobody who has looked into the evidence in an honest way thinks the Gospels (except maybe Mark) were written before 70CE.

What do you think Matthew and Mark's purpose was in adding the phrase, 'let the reader understand' when talking about that event? The whole point of including the Olivet discourse in the gospel was to relay the information Jesus had given the disciples (about when to leave Jerusalem) to the rest of the church, so that they would be preserved.