And on the basis of what evidence are you making this judgment?
You’re claiming that magic stories that sprang up around a figure more quickly than magic stories sprang up around other figures are more believable?
The “dying and reborn god” is a common trope of mythology.
No, they’re completely different figures – the only similarity is that they are legends, which was the point I was making.
Virtually every scholar uses decent portions of the Gospels and Letters as a source for the Historical Jesus. A much smaller portion of KA scholars use the KA Lore which includes the “magical” parts as a source on the Historical KA - be there one.
Indeed. It gives less time for the folklore to evolve.
Indeed, perhaps the strongest argument against the resurrection is that it only follows belief in God - a very logical one, IMO, but not convincing to me, as I do believe in God.
Yes, but all of them are far too different from Jesus’ to give a historical basis for the claim that Jesus was a rip-off. In contrast, even Arthur’s name could have been borrowed from Celtic Paganism.
But the nature, historicity, and importance of the “legends” are of course all different too.
Correct.
Do not forget they are not just stories. People just like you, and probably many times more skeptical and cautious than you, saw some of these stories happen. And they did not just visit anonymous internet forums to spread the story, they visited highly hostile cities and stood up in public to tell the story, they were harried and harassed and had prices placed on their heads and were caught and put to death. They obviously gained nothing materially except the horror of a manhunt, long periods in captivity and inevitable death.
I was more responding to “I mean, you’re free to believe this kind of thing if you want, but don’t expect others to.”. You can only accept things like the Gospels if you’re open - if you take a firm stance on metaphysical naturalism, nothing will convince you. It can only follow belief, or willingness to believe.
Well, they’re legends, which means that they might have some basis in fact. It’s possible, for instance – in fact, it’s quite likely – that they were based on a real guy, a real moral teacher. But just because they might have been based on a real guy doesn’t mean that the magical parts of them happened.
You say that, but we don’t have a single eyewitness account. The Gospels are anonymous texts composed at some point in the first century – even by very conservative estimates many decades after the events. Go pick up any good scholarly version of the Bible, and it will explicitly say that no one knows who wrote the texts but that they are “attributed by tradition” to the four evangelists. Critical writing on these texts refer to “The author of Matthew,” and so on.
If you’re referring to the fate of the apostles – who would be the only people who could possibly qualify as eyewitnesses – much or all of those stories about their martyrdom and death are tradition, not confirmed by anything outside of the Church.
You’re ignoring a lot of other options here, including 1) these men (the apostles) and their fates being largely legendary, 2) these men being real and dying for the cause of the moral teachings of Jesus, later converted into a legend of their dying for supernatural beliefs 3) these men being real and dying for the cause of supernatural beliefs that they were mistaken about, etc.
But it proves they weren’t lying. They truly and sincerly believed what they believed. The “lie” hypothesis is shot down by the martydom of the apostles.
3 is a possibility, because this is only meant to refute one particular idea against the resurrection. 2 is not possible because already by that time had the supernatural aspects of Jesus’ life been written down and accepted by mainstream Christianity. 1 is not possible because not only do we have every reason to accept that the lists of the apostles in the Gospels are authentic but there is an abundance of evidence in Paul and 2nd and 3rd century Church Fathers which confirms this.
Actually, the “miracle biography” movement was very minor and a very large portion of ancient historians focused more on truth than usefulness or enjoyability. We have no reason to doubt that the Gospels were written as biographies of Jesus. They may be wrong, but a factual biography was each of their intentions. Also, Jesus’ story actually has major contrasts to the first century BC and AD Jewish Messiah expectations, making it more likely to be true due to its success nevertheless.
I’ve never once heard in my life a multiply attested alien abduction story, and I have read these. Please provide me with an example. Besides, in this context we have more reasons to doubt them.
As it turns out, a lot less.
Above, you state that even if they were eyewitnesses who saw the visions and empty tomb, that still wouldn’t be enough evidence. So now I will ask:
Well, first of all, I never claimed that anyone was “lying.” I think in this situation, the most likely explanation is that a fanatical group of “true believers” – who sincerely believed supernatural things but were simply wrong about it – were willing to die for their beliefs.
Two things:
I’m not quite sure how you could confirm that a magical event happened thousands of years ago. I know that you certainly can’t confirm it by reading a couple of stories written by anonymous people decades at the earliest after the magic supposedly occurred.
That may be ok if it was just a story in a book you were talking about and no more ever. But, those men had disciples and they had followers too and all of them were also willing to die, or at least they would not sacrifice to the emperor, during the almost continuous periods of persecution over the next 300 years or so. The story the eyewitnesses tell is interesting for another reason also. The story is very humanly written, it does not spare the blushes of those who wrote it nor do they elevate themselves to be heros. It reads as a factual account which you would, I think, have no trouble believing if not for the magical parts, as you term them.
All of which is to say: the comparison to the Heaven’s Gate Cult is utterly laughable, and Antitheist’s attempt to light on one similarity and to ignore the big picture indeed bespeaks his closed-mindedness, the purely dogmatic nature of his incredulity. Of course, we remain open to the possibility that he will recognize the silliness of his comparison and reconsider his credulously sceptical view…
So what? People, who couldn’t possibly have been eyewitnesses to the supposed events, were willing to die for a cause.
Again, the Gospels are not eyewitness accounts. We don’t know who wrote them. They might be the descendents of an oral tradition that might have begun with people who knew this moral teacher, but you cannot call the Gospels eyewitness accounts if you intend to be honest.
Yes, which is why I said that I have no trouble believing that there was a popular moral teacher. It’s the magical parts of the stories I don’t believe.
Again, we’re not talking about eyewitnesses here. But, leaving that point aside, the fact that the speakers of the text represent themselves as doubting tells us nothing about the text’s factual claims. You can’t use textual information to verify that magical things reported in the text are true.
Well, this is what I’m getting at. What is it exactly that convinces people, “personally” or not, that the magical events in the stories really happened?
I thought I mentioned that, but I will again in case I was not clear. If I imagine to myself an atheist, for want of a better example, on the cusp of converting to Catholicism; then I must see a whole slew of things happening all at once, as it were. Perhaps like St. Augustine there is a gradual de-construction of the man, for whatever reasons he finds all is falling apart and he breaks bit by bit relentlessly. Literally for St. Augustine there was no place he could turn, no escape route. No person was pursuing St. Augustine no book was pursuing him either, attempting to convince him. It is just a mystery how a man who could not believe these things ended by not being able not to believe these things.
That makes 2 of us, buddy.
And the “martyr” argument isn’t supposed to answer that objection, for the 3rd time.
They had to sincerely believe it and have not been lying, otherwise they would have fessed up when they had the chance. Also, there are multiple anti-Christian sources at the time and none of them called the early Christians insincere. The “lie” objection is, unsurprisingly, completely incompetent historically.
But they preached the supernatural part, and they died with it. A major part of what they preached - which would land them in jail and eventually kill them - was based on the supernatural part. One of the reasons they so infuriated the Pagans was their claims that Jesus’ exaltation was above any Roman Emperor, which is grounded almost completely in faith in a miracle of his.
Yes, but the obviously truly and sincerely believed the supernatural parts. If they added it in for political or apologetic reasons they would have quit when it got dangerous.
If they figured they’d hold on only because they would get executed anyway, then Paul wouldn’t have converted and preached. And that’s assuming Christianity would have the same political implications without grounding on the miracles.
It proves for a fact the couldn’t have been lying. There is no reason to doubt that the apostles weren’t martyred - it is attested by Church Fathers, early Christians actually distrusted Paul, there is obvious evidence for persecution of Christians as early as the first century, it is almost certain that the apostles were real people using only the NT as a source. Again, them dying out of mistake is an objection this argument was never meant to answer, so that’s a strawman objection.
What? You brought it up, not me. Sheesh, if you don’t want the discussion to move don’t bring up a bad allegory.
But every objection fails to the evidence there. Not the case with alien abduction.
So you’re closed-minded on the issue. That’s fine.
No, it’s open-minded to acknowledge your position can be changed. If it can’t you aren’t open minded, you’re closed-minded, pseudoskeptical, etc.
And I ask for the second time: