Have you tried reading the NT in the correct order?

[Nearly Sane]

Me too. But something happened. The possibility of the sun itself dancing around is nigh on zero, but what about the possibility of God, if he exists, raising Jesus from the dead. Remember we are having to explain about a dozen separate instances, not just one (mass) viewing of (probably) some atmospheric phenomenon.

No, again with the lying and presenting claims as facts (note there are not a dozen separate claims - this point has been made many many times but you have ignored it consistently, it may be that you are too stupid to deal with it, lying to yourself or indeed just lying outright) but please stop doing this it makes any form of discourse with you pointless.

That's leaving aside that possibility is based on naturalistic methods and you have never provided any methodology for dealing with supernatural claims.

I feel dirty even engaging with your tactics so I suggest  that  you take me ignoring any posts from you from now on as simply my judgement that I do not want to besmirch myself any further.

[Alien]

I am saying that it seems reasonable to accept that Jesus did die, was buried in a known tomb, that the tomb was empty a couple of days later and that on a dozen or so occasions individuals and groups were convinced that they met, spoke and sometimes ate with Jesus. For me, the best explanation of those generally accepted facts is that Jesus really was alive.

But how have you excluded the possibility that individuals/groups weren't telling the truth? After all, people make mistakes or lie, or are you saying that these individuals/groups were immune from these risks in some way? You then say that these accounts are 'generally accepted' facts: I say you are misrepresenting the robustness of these anecdotal claims and the term 'fact'.

Can I totally exclude that possibility? No, I can't. However, if they made a mistake, then individuals and groups did so on about a dozen occasions and the authorities never came up with Jesus's body. If they lied, then who lied? All dozen individuals/groups? The gospel-writers and Paul?

I'm happy to keep on trying to answer your questions, Gordon, but please would you come up with a plausible scenario yourself for the evidence of a claim of a dozen or so meetings of individuals and groups with Jesus and the claim of the empty tomb in, at least, 4 gospels and Paul's writings?. I have pointed out some evidence pointing towards Jesus having been raised from the dead and argued that certain things are likely or not likely. If you think mistakes or lies are more probable, then please give us a plausible scenario for that. Ta.

You keep repeating that we have no method "that can be used to confirm supernatural agency", but that is incorrect. If Jesus had been killed and was indeed alive again a couple of days later, right as ninepence, then feel free to propose a naturalistic method for that happening.

I'm not saying it happened: you are! I'm suggesting that it might not have happened at all since these anecdotal claims are insufficient as evidence of the supernatural.

I appreciate that you are claiming that these "anecdotal" claims are insufficient, but why are you claiming that? You keep repeating it, saying it again and again. You don't say why.

You speak of the NT possibly being propaganda yet refuse to give any sensible motive for the production of such propaganda. Please, would you give such a motive. A means would also be interesting.

Easy - they wanted to keep their cause alive even if their main man was inconveniently dead. In that time and place a religious narrative would no doubt have more currency in a culture where religiosity was the norm.

But why would they want to keep their cause alive? Who wanted to keep their cause alive? How did they manage it? Who lied to whom?

Plausible scenario politely requested (but I'm not actually expecting to see one).

[Alien]

As has been pointed out before many, many times people do not willing die for what they know to be a lie and, unless there is good reason, they don't willingly suffer for what they know to be a lie either.

Remind me what the motive would be for NT-writers to have lied? How would they have got away with it in?

Not this old chesnut again - the whole point of propaganda is to convince the credulous and gullible, and no doubt many of these early Christians bought into the story (just as you do).

The NT writers may well have 'got away with it' since it seems that some of you still believe what they wrote, which is of course the type of thing they would write if they wanted to keep the Jesus myth going following his death.

So, I ask yet again, what was their motive? Why would they have come up with this propaganda? So that they can get other people to be persecuted and sometimes killed as well as themselves?

Give it a go and see how implausible it is, eh?

[Alien]

I am submitting the following from Alien to FSTDT.

'As for them being claims, I am saying that it seems reasonable to accept that Jesus did die, was buried in a known tomb, that the tomb was empty a couple of days later and that on a dozen or so occasions individuals and groups were convinced that they met, spoke and sometimes ate with Jesus. For me, the best explanation of those generally accepted facts is that Jesus really was alive.'

Fine by me.

[Alien]

I am submitting the following from Alien to FSTDT.

'As for them being claims, I am saying that it seems reasonable to accept that Jesus did die, was buried in a known tomb, that the tomb was empty a couple of days later and that on a dozen or so occasions individuals and groups were convinced that they met, spoke and sometimes ate with Jesus. For me, the best explanation of those generally accepted facts is that Jesus really was alive.'

Nothing wrong with that quote, only with your lack of any understanding.

In what way are they generally accepted facts?

In the way that billions generally accept them.

So a billion accept that Mohammed was the prophet, does that make it a fact?

No, but it does mean that it is generally accepted (to some extent). You seem to be mixing up "generally accepted" with "true". Perhaps it would have been better for me to say just "generally accepted." I'll try to do that next time.

[Alien]

For the hard of thinking, a fact either is or is not true. It is not made true by the number believing it. It is not falsified if no one believes it.

Eta: correction to that there are no untrue facts. There are only facts. They really don't give a fuck.

Oooh. That reminds me of the objective morality thread.

[Gordon]

I'm happy to keep on trying to answer your questions, Gordon, but please would you come up with a plausible scenario yourself for the evidence of a claim of a dozen or so meetings of individuals and groups with Jesus and the claim of the empty tomb in, at least, 4 gospels and Paul's writings?. I have pointed out some evidence pointing towards Jesus having been raised from the dead and argued that certain things are likely or not likely. If you think mistakes or lies are more probable, then please give us a plausible scenario for that. Ta.

Certainly - all of it being propaganda is highly plausible: there was no empty tomb and no post-death meetings, these are spurious claims and not evidence at all, and are exactly the sort of elements that a made-up resurrection story would contain so as to persuade the credulous and yet you repeat these claims as if they were historical facts.

Propaganda is known human behaviour and neatly disposes of all these claims without recourse to the fantastic, and since the alternative you offer is quite simply unbelievable then this much more pragmatic explanation at least has the advantage of being grounded in reality and is in line with known human experience.

You take the Bible far too seriously, Alan.

[Gordon]

So, I ask yet again, what was their motive? Why would they have come up with this propaganda? So that they can get other people to be persecuted and sometimes killed as well as themselves?

Give it a go and see how implausible it is, eh?

Keeping the dream alive, Alan, by those with a personal interest in doing so - very plausible and an explanation that is probably as old as human society.

[Spud]

But it isn't clear that anyone died because they believed in the resurrection.

I was talking primarily about the apostles and those who claimed to have met the risen Jesus. Not those to whom Tacitus refers, living in Rome.

Rather they died because they believed in something that was seen as not acceptable to authorities which on the case of Rome show no knowledge or caring about any idea of a resurrection and of those who die most would not have seen anything.

The Romans found the eucharist unacceptable- it is thought this is what Tacitus referred to as 'abominations'. Pauls letter to the Christians in Rome states from the start that the basis for his belief is the resurrection. (See also 8:11, 10:9) And for those who had not 'seen anything', he reasoned from the Jewish scriptures that Jesus was the messiah.

Further people will happily die for things they do not fully accept if they think it is an overall good, see wartime.

I think you'll find that in wartime the people you mention die fighting, in contrast to the early Christians.

Again there is no method in the article, it is a gussied up argument by incredulity.

[jeremyp]

If by "anecdote" you mean he is reporting what someone else told him (whether they were eye-witnesses or not), then that would surely depend on how reliable their information was. A statement by an eye-witness is not worth less if a copper writes it down (and gets the eye-witness to sign it off) than if the eye-witness wrote it down him/herself (assuming the eye-witness can write).

Here are the problems.  You do not know how reliable the information is because you do not know how Matthew came by it.  You do not know if an eye witness told him or wrote it down or told somebody else who wrote it down.  You do not know if the eye witness was an honest person or prone to lying.  You do not even know if there was an eye witness or if somebody just made it all up, or some combination of the two.

Even if you did know there was an eye witness, eye witness testimony can often be unreliable, especially if the eye witness is under stress.

Would you care to elaborate on the reasoning that led them to that conclusion?

I can't. What I can do is point out that they were 1900 years nearer the event than you or I though.

That means nothing.  You still don't know how they came to that conclusion.

Papias and so on.

But we don't have Papias's work and even if we did, he apparently admitted he got his information second hand, plus his description of "Matthew's gospel is blatantly  not the work we have today.

Incorrect, unless you are saying that the quotes we have today were definitely the very first ones ever written down. Papias died, what 140ADish.

I'm  saying the quotes we have today are the ones we have.  If there are earlier ones that are lost, that's bad luck for you, but we don't have to pretend evidence existed once just because you deem it unfair.

The Didache is probably late 1st century, early 2nd century.

Does it tell us who wrote the gospels?  No.

We have the first epistle of Clement from right the end of the first century.

Does it tell us who wrote the gospels?  No.

We have Paul's letters, even if we only accept 7 of them.

Do any of them (including the other six) tell us who wrote the gospels?  No.

We have Josephus and Tacitus telling us of a Jesus in Judea.

Telling us of a Christ, neither of them giving us their sources.

None of this requires us to have a belief in the inerrancy of the Scriptures to believe that the sources we have are sufficient to know that there was such a Jesus, that he was crucified and buried and that starting a couple of days later, individuals and groups of people were convinced that on about a dozen occasions (that we have recorded) they met, talked and sometimes ate with him.

This is disingenuous of you.  You have cited a number of documents that appear to support the idea that Jesus was crucified and then you conflate the crucifixion and resurrection as if these documents all support the resurrection appearances that are only described in the three gospels.

OK with that, but the NT tells us that he was put in someone else's tomb.

But are the NT accounts true?  They were all written many years after the events by persons unknown and the original source or sources are unknown.

What is needed is that the probability of it happening (on the background evidence) is higher than the probability of us having the evidence if the resurrection did not happen (as I think you and I agreed on another thread).

No, you have got that wrong.  What you need is that, given the evidence, the probability that Jesus was resurrected is higher than the probability that something else happened.  I can go into the reasoning in detail but there is no point because one of the things we need to assess along the way is the probability that Jesus was resurrected with or without evidence.  I would argue that probability is very very small which means you need extraordinarily good evidence to counter the other possibilities like delusion or lying.  You, on the other hand, claim God can increase that probability, but invoking God makes all probability calculations meaningless.

A religious cult that actively proselytises?  What more motive do you want?

A decent motive.

The one I just gave you was an excellent motive.  The fact that you do not like tells us more about your flawed thought processes than anything else.

Wanting to convert someone to a religious belief which highly prizes honesty and membership of which might well lead to persecution and, possibly, death does not seem to me to be a good reason for lying to people.

Christianity certainly prizes honesty amongst the ordinary members but its leaders have a chequered record in that department, to say the least.  The leaders of religious movements tend to accrue sizeable wealth and power in comparison to the flock.

[Spud]

You do not know how reliable the information is because you do not know how Matthew came by it.

Would you trust the information if you had the names and addresses of people who claimed to be eyewitnesses? You would have no way of verifying it, even if some were secular historians. So anecdote would be no less reliable.

[jeremyp]

You do not know how reliable the information is because you do not know how Matthew came by it.

Would you trust the information if you had the names and addresses of people who claimed to be eyewitnesses? You would have no way of verifying it, even if some were secular historians. So anecdote would be no less reliable.

I see what you did there.  Your last sentence should read "so the anecdotes would be no more reliable". 

The names and addresses would give us some evidence that the eye witnesses did, at least exist. 

[Gordon]

You do not know how reliable the information is because you do not know how Matthew came by it.

Would you trust the information if you had the names and addresses of people who claimed to be eyewitnesses? You would have no way of verifying it, even if some were secular historians. So anecdote would be no less reliable.

Given what is claimed here, then no: apart from the identification of these alleged eye-witnesses you'd still have to exclude the risks that they were mistaken or were lying, and especially the latter if they were potentially biased - so you are still stuck with the weaknesses of anecdotal evidence.

[floo]

You do not know how reliable the information is because you do not know how Matthew came by it.

Would you trust the information if you had the names and addresses of people who claimed to be eyewitnesses? You would have no way of verifying it, even if some were secular historians. So anecdote would be no less reliable.

When someone claims something less than credible has happened, it is always best to look for a logical explanation not jump on the supernatural/godwotdunit bandwagon!

[Spud]

You do not know how reliable the information is because you do not know how Matthew came by it.

Would you trust the information if you had the names and addresses of people who claimed to be eyewitnesses? You would have no way of verifying it, even if some were secular historians. So anecdote would be no less reliable.

I see what you did there.  Your last sentence should read "so the anecdotes would be no more reliable". 

The names and addresses would give us some evidence that the eye witnesses did, at least exist.

We have the names of the women, the twelve disciples and other people (parents, spouses, Jewish Sanhedrin members, people cured of disease, Simon of Cyrene etc)- maybe not their addresses (unless you count the places they are identified as coming from). Presumably if these people were made up, the gospels would have been exposed as fabrications. It seems safe to say there were eyewitnesses.

[floo]

You do not know how reliable the information is because you do not know how Matthew came by it.

Would you trust the information if you had the names and addresses of people who claimed to be eyewitnesses? You would have no way of verifying it, even if some were secular historians. So anecdote would be no less reliable.

I see what you did there.  Your last sentence should read "so the anecdotes would be no more reliable". 

The names and addresses would give us some evidence that the eye witnesses did, at least exist.

We have the names of the women, the twelve disciples and other people (parents, spouses, Jewish Sanhedrin members, people cured of disease, Simon of Cyrene etc)- maybe not their addresses (unless you count the places they are identified as coming from). Presumably if these people were made up, the gospels would have been exposed as fabrications. It seems safe to say there were eyewitnesses.

There were 'eye witnesses' who saw the Angel of Mons!

[Outrider]

We have the names of the women, the twelve disciples and other people (parents, spouses, Jewish Sanhedrin members, people cured of disease, Simon of Cyrene etc)- maybe not their addresses (unless you count the places they are identified as coming from). Presumably if these people were made up, the gospels would have been exposed as fabrications. It seems safe to say there were eyewitnesses.

Except that by the time the stories were written down any alleged witnesses would most likely have been dead. If these people, and the events they were alleged to have witnessed, were invented decades after the fact at a time when the majority of people had a life expectancy of perhaps forty-five years, who would have been around to question?

Assuming, of course, that the written accounts came to light in the same area as the people lived, given that as well as living shorter lives people rarely travelled any distance.

Given a credulous general populace exposed to any number of tales of supernatural goings-on, why would they particularly question another tall tale in that environment?

O.

[Spud]

I forgot to mention Cleopas, who is named as an eyewitness to the resurrection. Bartimaeus and Lazarus are in there as witnesses to miracles.

[Spud]

Except that by the time the stories were written down any alleged witnesses would most likely have been dead.

By the time Luke was written, many people had already undertaken to draw up an account. (Lk 1:1)

[Gordon]

Presumably if these people were made up, the gospels would have been exposed as fabrications.

A definite risk, but even if some or all of these were real people that doesn't in itself mean that what they claimed is true or credible or has been accurately recorded.

It seems safe to say there were eyewitnesses.

Not 'safe': possible perhaps, but not certain - then there is also the unknown element of the gap in time before the alleged eye-witness accounts were first recorded, which adds in the risk of transmission errors if the first accounts written down were by then 2nd/3rd hand. Since I can see no way, from this distance, of ever knowing for sure then it would be reasonable to be cautious.

Even then, as I said above, this doesn't mean that these accounts are factually true and you need to address the risks of mistakes or lies without resorting to special pleading.

[Nearly Sane]

I forgot to mention Cleopas, who is named as an eyewitness to the resurrection. Bartimaeus and Lazarus are in there as witnesses to miracles.

And once again, any evidence that either the authorities knew this or thought in the sense of treating them as modern eye witnesses? That is of course leaving aside the modern view of the unreliability of eyewitnesses.

It seems to me as if you want the authorities then to have the idea that they could disprove such things in the modern sense but then want to ignore all the known modern understandings of eye witness testimony. It is an incoherent position.

[jakswan]

I forgot to mention Cleopas, who is named as an eyewitness to the resurrection. Bartimaeus and Lazarus are in there as witnesses to miracles.

I can name all sorts of eye witnesses to all sorts of magical events, what is valued is first hand eye witness testimony.

[ippy]

I'll say it again it always sticks in my mind; loads of people have these visions of various religious figures like a christian seeing Mary, then other christians seeing a picture of Jesus on a potato etc etc, how come christians only see figures from their own beliefs, instead of seeing a vision of say Mohammed and perhaps a muslim seeing a vision of Mary?

If these visions were to jump the belief gaps and they began to see figures from each others religions it might make the whole of religious belief and associated visions idea a bit more credible.

I can't see, Get it, "can't see", this happening or anything else that is likely to make religious belief more credible.   

ippy

[Spud]

There were 'eye witnesses' who saw the Angel of Mons!

'The Bowmen' was a work of fiction, and its author, Arthur Machen, responded to readers who thought it was true by saying it was completely imaginary.

[Spud]

I forgot to mention Cleopas, who is named as an eyewitness to the resurrection. Bartimaeus and Lazarus are in there as witnesses to miracles.

I can name all sorts of eye witnesses to all sorts of magical events, what is valued is first hand eye witness testimony.

It seems that we have perfectly reasonable accounts which if they were not relating supernatural events would be acceptable to you. I doubt you would believe first hand testimony either (that is, direct from the witness to you)