I know! Right?
Well, obviously, I disagree. If you have a theory which explains ALL FIVE facts better than the resurrection, lay it out for us and we can discuss it.
The Resurrection explains all five minimal facts…not just one or two.
Is that the testimony of Paul himself in his letter to the Galatians?
Well, you don’t have to believe that the Bible is reliable…until an overwhelming number of scholars (skeptics and believers alike) tell you that it is. After that, you’re just being stubborn.
Oh? And why is that? Because that’s your preference?
The question here is one of free will. Sure…God could make Himself undeniably known to you and to the whole world. However, He is infinitely more powerful than us and thus, we would not be free to choose to love and serve God if He revealed himself. We would be coerced into obeying him. That’s not real love.
The existence of suffering and pain is a stumbling block, to be sure. However, many positive things result from them, and if we did not experience pain and suffering, we would not have opportunity to grow. Paul noted this when he wrote:
Wait, what?! Do you really disagree that sometimes a situation is explained by multiple events rather than only one? This is obviously true, so I don’t see how you can disagree with it. For example, if I show up at a gas station without my wallet, without a car, and with a coffee stain on my shirt after running out of gas, tripping and spilling coffee on myself, and getting robbed walking to the gas station, then the situation is explained by these three events, and we need not (and should not!) seek only one event to account for all three details.
The theory I presented is not. Perhaps I should say that in school we learn a literary device called “the unreliable narrator”. While it is used by authors in fiction, it also can occur in historical documents, where the author is not to be trusted for some reason. For example, in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, I understand he makes a number of fact assertions that scholars say are delusional or false. So what St. Paul wrote is not true simply because he wrote it down: It is true only if it happened.
Eyewitnesses can be mistaken and misled, proof that the place existed is not proof the event occurred (see Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code for an example), and how do I know they had nothing to gain by lying? (To underscore this question, we see in the Bible that the early Christian communities were sharing property in common, so it actually appears they could gain material benefit by lying, as false prophets tend to do.)
I don’t have such a list. Indeed, the thought comes to mind that I’ve heard from skeptics on YouTube: The majority of Biblical scholars study the Bible because they are Christian. So that they report that a claim of miracle is worthy of belief is a result of their faith, not their scholarship – and their scholarship, by definition, can only comment on language (e.g. wordplay), archeology, and historical documents (what texts there are and what they say). Whether an author should be believed appears to be rather a matter of personal opinion, independent of scholarship and dependent on personal philosophy. Hence Richard Carrier, being a naturalist, doesn’t believe any miracle claim; I would guess that most Biblical scholars, being Christian, tend to believe miracle claims until given reason to disbelieve them. My points here are that I don’t see a consensus of objective opinion, nor do I see anything beyond personal philosophy determining whether a miracle story ought to be believed.
It doesn’t make me uncomfortable; to the contrary, it would bring me some comfort. Part of my discomfort is lacking this evidence, hence being required to assume it in the dearth of evidence. You tell me to ‘actually stop and examine what can be known’ with reasonable certainty, but I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Perhaps I’ll browse the thread again to check (I’ve been terribly busy so I might have forgotten), or perhaps you could summarize this knowledge. I am concerned, though, that perhaps what you are saying can be known with reasonable certainty I have in fact demonstrated to be uncertain.
It appears you misunderstood what I wrote, e.g. reading “is” where I wrote “isn’t”.
I don’t understand this argument on two fronts. First, didn’t God make Himself “undeniably known” to the Israelites via the Exodus and immediately thereafter? Yet they were free to choose to love and serve God, or to rebel. Second, I thought love was willing the good of the other (and doing what was in one’s power to help them achieve it), so it’s not related to keeping them in a state of uncertainty.
It appears to me good occurs in spite of suffering, not because of it. Indeed, often when I suffer I can do nothing until the suffering passes.
I do not think this is true, and the growth of children serves as proof by contradiction: They normally do not experience pain when their bones expand and muscles grow larger. This is proof that growth can occur without pain and suffering. If that’s too mundane, look to the Blessed Virgin: Did she not grow in motherhood without suffering childbirth? Or you can look to countless other human interactions, e.g. the marital embrace, where a couple grows in love through pleasure instead of through suffering.
This is a poor example, because perseverance is nothing more than outlasting suffering. The ability to outlive suffering is not a good reason for suffering to exist; I hope nothing more needs to be said on this point. Likewise, hope is nothing but the desire for suffering to cease. It’s not clear to me what is meant by character, and again, I think God can create character without suffering. Do you suppose the angels are all emotionless, vapid robots? Or, taking a step back (especially since I don’t know that angels haven’t suffered), I simply don’t know what is meant by “character”.
Yet, you’re neglecting Occam’s Razor: if a simpler explanation holds up, then we prefer it to a more complicated, convoluted explanation. If there’s one explanation that fits the five observations well, then we must prefer it to five explanations. In fact, we should “seek only one event to account” for our observations, if we’re able to do so. It’s disappointing that we need to explain this to you; it should be obvious. It seems like so much bickering…
Fair enough. Why do you cast Paul as an “unreliable narrator”, then? After all, you wouldn’t make that claim about any and all narrators… unless you had reason to disbelieve their narrative. With Hitler, you can make a reasonable case; without a case, though, you cannot simply throw out a narrator because other unreliable narrators exist!
Agreed. And therefore, we always make an analysis of the believability of their eyewitness accounts. Again (and it’s becoming a constant theme, it seems, with your objections): one does not throw out evidence, a priori, without examining the evidence but merely claiming that other evidence is unreliable and therefore the evidence at hand must be suspect.
Perhaps by providing a counterexample, demonstrating concretely what it is that they had to gain?
Actually, we see in the Bible that lying led to adverse consequences, not benefit. Look up “Ananias and Sapphira” for the normative example.
Poor foundation and worse logic. Here’s your counter-example: the majority of meterologists study meterology because they have a vested interest in the weather where they live. So, their reports of “a warm, sunny weekend!” are a result of their vested interest, not their scholarship.
That works pretty well, when you’re the sole arbiter of what ‘objective opinion’ is and whether 'personal philosophy determine
It really is easily refuted. You can – quite effectively – claim that one cannot simply make claims without substantiation… but your ‘demonstrations for justification’ themselves are largely ‘claims without substantiation.’ If you can’t see that, then I can understand why this discussion is tiring for you…
Can you see that your objections can be made for every event in history? Are you really claiming that no events have occurred in history, because we can’t conclude “100% factual” for any of them, or because there are variants in the descriptions? C’mon, now… you’re smarter than that, right? You know that these claims, on their own as simple bald assertions, don’t prove your point… don’t you?
Gee, do I get to reference Occam’s Razor which atheists are fond of using against me?
The Resurrection of Jesus explains:
You don’t have to type a thing. You can just read the solid material I’m presenting, if you like.
And Paul is obviously making some effort to convince us that what he is saying is true by referring to:
Sure. Now, explain in detail how this occurred so that we can evaluate the plausibility of your theory.
Did God make himself undeniably known to the Egyptians? So, both the Israelites and the Egyptians had reasons to believe in the God of Israel. Interesting, BOTH groups failed to obey Him at one time or another.
Some does, no question. But you don’t get a Maximilian Kolbe without an Auschwitz.
Obviously, I’m not speaking of physical growth.
If you’re speaking of simply waiting for a headache to go away, then sure…a low-view of perseverance like that doesn’t mean much.
My point is about what we can actually know from history. Because I do not have access to the full picture, what his opponents were saying – Acts says the Jews convinced the crowd that he was wrong on multiple occasions, but I have no knowledge of what they actually said – I cannot know that what he was saying was correct. It’s like listening to what our politicians are saying, but without hearing “the other side”, we cannot determine how accurate they are presenting the situation.
That we cannot directly observe or experience historical truth claims does limit our certainty of the past, yes. We can only hold claims of knowledge with varying probabilities. Usually we cannot know the past like we know our own experience.
For example, light was failing when they buried Jesus in the tomb, and the women, exhausted, mistook the location of the tomb. They then went to the wrong place on Sunday and found the tomb empty. It’s even possible the burial cloths lying there were clean, and placed there in storage from a different family who owned the tomb.
Matthew may have had political reasons for not returning to his job as tax collector (perhaps he couldn’t get the job back after he’d left it; perhaps he had his fill of death threats); we don’t know how successful they were as fisherman – and perhaps being a false prophet made for a more comfortable living than the sun-scorching manual labor of fishing. I’ve seen cult leaders (Protestant pastors) in Pennsylvania who seemed to make a fair living by misleading others.
You’re overstating the case for Paul in two ways: We don’t know “in every city”; indeed, sometimes he is welcomed warmly. Again, we don’t know how often he was actually beaten. Finally, this “rising star of the Sanhedrin” appears entirely based off Biblical commentary you’ve read. It’s possible for someone to have a great teacher but still be a lousy student. It’s even possible to graduate from a great school and be unable to get a job in your chosen career – at least today, and I don’t know how different then was.
I suppose you have conceded that God can reveal Himself to us without removing our free will. That is my point: I want God to actually be my Father, not some silent absent figure I pray to in vain. That means interacting with me, talking with me, comforting me, not being so far removed that it appears He’s not even there.
Responses like this make me angry with you, and make me want to stop corresponding with you, because you utterly ignore my point only to repeat platitudes. Again, you’ve just said, “You don’t get someone who suffered great evil without there being great evil.” This is a bad argument. Stop making it. “He sacrificed his own life to save someone else!” So what? His choosing to help someone else does not make reality better than it would have been if the evil wasn’t there. It was a glimmer of goodness in a pit of darkness, not something that completely overwhelmed the darkness making us grateful for it.
It means the speaker likes him. It doesn’t mean anything in particular other than that, because that expression can be applied to anyone, both Christians and anti-Christians, if the speaker likes him.
one answer is Martyrs.
The only apostle to live out his life to old age and not martyred was John. But John knew all the apostles and they knew him. Think about this, Peter was crucified on Vatican Hill under emperor Nero in ~67 a.d… Peter said he was unworthy to be crucified in the same way Jesus was crucified, so Peter was crucified upside down. The suffering of that is beyond my imagination.
the eyewitness factor of the apostles is undeniable.
I think Aquinas said it well
So did the apostles lie about seeing him resurrected?
So this is essentially saying that the Disciples lied.
That might be because you’re looking for a particular answer, and not the one that fits the data…
And yet, look at how you frame it up! Not what we ‘hear’ or ‘observe’, but what we know. In other words, despite the fact that there weren’t cameras and voice recorders blaring throughout all of history, we actually can say that we know things that happened in the past! And yet, it’s all too easy to pick those things to which we don’t want to assent, and trot out the standard retort, “but… we don’t know for sure…!”.
That doesn’t hold up to reason, either. We could equally reasonably say that his opponents were making ad hominem attacks or appealing to irrational arguments, and these were sufficient to turn the crowd. (I mean, after all, I think there’s at least one politician in the current U.S. Presidential race who does the same thing… and look at his popularity!)
Yes – precisely! And, if we required 100%, incontrovertible, unassailable proof for every proposition… then we’d all be locked in our rooms, in fetal positions, quivering, and refusing to act on any proposition. That’s not what we as humans do. Rather, we look at the best data available and reach conclusions and make decisions and take action on that ‘best data available.’ Claiming that we can’t know the truth about the Gospels because they’re ancient history seems disingenuous to me, in the face of a myriad of other contexts in life in which we draw conclusions based on incomplete data…
Fair enough… but it doesn’t hold up to reason. Eventually, someone would’ve said, “umm… ladies? He’s in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, not here. Go look there.” And, looking in the right place, they would’ve found him.
Who said “one event over multiple events”? It’s “simple explanation over complex explanation”! The resurrection – while more mind-boggling! – is simpler than “wrong tomb” + “empty tomb” + “burial cloths despite unused tomb” + “nobody follows up and discovers it was the wrong tomb”…
Oh… so you want God to be a human father to you, and do all the things that a human would do and interact in ways that humans interact? I mean, it’s a wonderful desire, but… why is that a reasonable request?
My apologies that it’s put you in a bad mood. Here’s the thing, though: my perspective is that your arguments aren’t reasonable, and so, attempting to get me “to see reason” – where I see little – probably is futile. However, the whole point of these types of fora is to exchange ideas. Will we convince each other of our opposing viewpoints? Probably not. On the other hand, we’ll each get some real live interaction, and we’ll hear from a real live person who espouses these ideas, and we’ll be less likely to caricature the arguments in the future. That doesn’t mean that I’ll agree with your views – from my perspective, I’ve been able to offer counter-arguments to what you’ve expressed here, and I haven’t seen a whole lot of reasoned refutation to those counter-arguments. Still, it’s good to have the dialogue. If that makes you angry, though…
That’s a rather odd way of looking at it. Are all our personal failures the responsibility of God and His Providence? (After all, if God really existed, surely His Providence would have caused me to win the lottery… and if He existed, He would ensure that I have a good job, and a rich supermodel wife…)
But, you yourself admit (with the ‘holes bored’ image) that there’s no way to “see the entire picture”. Does that mean that you hold all of history to be untrue? Would you hold that the Peloponnesian War didn’t take place, under the same rationale that you use for the Gospels?
This isn’t an unreasonable argument… and yet, it seems to lead you to an unreasonable conclusion. Yes, it’s true that historical evidence is almost always incomplete, or told from a particular perspective, or open to interpretation. Yet, we do – nearly always! – hold to a particular interpretation. If you wanted to say “the simplest (yet most extraordinary) explanation is ‘resurrection’, and that’s the interpretation I’ll hold to, in the absence of any other reasonable explanation to the contrary”, then that would be just fine! However, throwing out other ‘possible’ (yet outlandish) conjectures, as if they diminished the elegance of the ‘resurrection’ interpretation… well, that seems unreasonable, doesn’t it?
That’s not unreasonable. And, when we reach that conclusion, we hold it to be the truth… and so, having examined the evidence and having reached a conclusion about it, we say that we have ‘knowledge’.
Fair enough.
Let me clarify. As I said in a recent post, my understanding of history is that we have a set of hypothetical situations that might have happened, and then we must look at the historical data to see which hypothetical situations can be eliminated when trying to figure out what happened.So did the apostles lie about seeing him resurrected?
Why would they do this?
And why did no one recant?
You’re wrong to dismiss my argument. Yes we can assess its validity, but not its truthfulness or accuracy. Again, we need more detail – namely, a second perspective – to do the latter.
The point here is nuance. We require different degrees of certainty for different beliefs about reality. For example, apparently Prince has died. I will accept that headline at face value because I don’t care about him beyond the concern I have for men in general who die every day. Apparently a 2013 Eucharistic miracle was approved by the local bishop in Poland. That a Eucharistic miracle happened requires more evidence before consenting to believe because that doesn’t happen every day, so it’s less likely to be a true headline. The same nuance occurs with historical claims. Please understand this.
We certainly don’t call something ‘truth’ or ‘knowledge’ if it happens to be the best theory we can come up with. We call it ‘truth’ only if it actually matches reality, and ‘knowledge’ only if we actually saw it do so. (either physically or rationally)
This is a great point, thank you.
The problem is that we are dealing with history, not modeling an observation. Again, we have a set of hypothetical situations, and we must eliminate as many as we can given the data that we have. We cannot simply discard one possible past reality because it’s more complicated than another possible past reality. That would be committing the fallacy of assuming what we must prove (“begging the question”). Instead we’re stuck with the fact that either one of these scenarios could have given us the data that we have – until we get more data. For example, is there a historical record of what the Jews were saying in response to the Christians? If indeed they’re saying that they stole the body, then this does give preference to empty tomb. Why haven’t I seen Christian apologists cite these Jewish sources, rather than rely only on the Gospels?
Randy did, multiple times. He is confused regarding two points. First, that the Resurrection is defined to include the appearances, rather than only refer to Jesus’ coming back to life in a glorious body replacing the corpse. Second, that Ockham’s razor can be used to eliminate possible past realities that contain more events than others. Thus he thinks that the one event of the Resurrection explains the five facts he’s asserted, and that another explanation of the past must likewise be at least as simple. (Did you not read every post in this thread so far?)
Do you suppose that only men can do what I described? I described what I understand fathers do by nature. It seems to me that if a man does it, then he’s being a human father; if God does it, then He’s being a divine Father. Perhaps you can give me a better definition of fatherhood, one that makes clear what it means for God to be Father.
It’s more the fact that I’m stranded in Japan and this forum is essentially my only means of getting spiritual direction. Jesus is supposed to be the Good Shepherd; I’m supposed to have the Holy Spirit with me, etc. It doesn’t make sense for me to be doing all I can to grow in holiness and wisdom and understanding and be left utterly in the dark, adrift without help or comfort – it would suggest the Holy Spirit isn’t doing what the Holy Spirit is named for. … and I do receive comfort and consolation, at times (or I suppose I would not be here right now). I certainly cannot declare that the Holy Spirit or a guardian angel isn’t helping me. However, I will say that I’m very unhappy and want more interaction and help than I’m getting.
No, rather, I’m agnostic to whether many past events transpired as people say. As I tried to say earlier, I hold beliefs with conviction relative to my certainty. If I read about this P. war in a book, I’d say, “Okay, sure,” and if corrections were later printed, I’d shrug it off and believe them, too, because it makes no difference to my life. Extraordinary claims require extraordinarily good evidence; trivial claims require trivial evidence. (Of course I try to be scholarly about it, and at least see if the author is a historian or has cited sources.)
Distinction without difference, I think I’d reply. You discussed ‘accuracy’ in your response to my question about why Paul might be considered an ‘unreliable narrator’ (which you never answered, by the way – you’re putting Paul up against Hitler in the ‘unreliable’ category, and then pulling a ‘bait-and-switch’ by stepping back from the ‘unreliable narrator’ hypothesis and then making the weaker claim of ‘incomplete evidence’ as if it proved ‘unreliable narrator’). But, I responded ‘validity’, rather than ‘accuracy’. Let me make myself clear, then: I’m claiming that you can have ‘validity’, ‘truthfulness’, ‘accuracy’, or whatever other noun you want to use, even if you only hear one story. (You might argue that it’s difficult to ascertain that we have accuracy, but that’s a different issue. Again, though, it would come down to the illative sense: does a person, having taken in all the available evidence, come to the conclusion that sufficient evidence has been offered in order to reach a reasonable conclusion? You claim ‘no’, but that says that you’re the final arbiter of what ‘sufficient evidence’ and ‘reasonable conclusions’ are. I think that’s not reasonable…)
And I would respond that this is too broad a statement. You’re telling me that, if I tried to convince you that the moon landings were actually historically factual, that you wouldn’t be able to determine the truth of my argument unless you heard someone else argue against it? Then you’re not interested in ‘truth’ so much as ‘controversy’ (and the determination of a better argument between two that are being contested).
That’s not an argument about ‘truth’, though: that’s an argument about your personal involvement in a narrative. You seem to think you’re making an argument about ‘belief in reality’, when really, your example is just making an argument about how much a fact matters to you (i.e., when it doesn’t matter, you can blithely ignore it without consequence).
Prince dying “doesn’t happen every day”, either.
A different nuance occurs with historical claims. But, since you’re the one making the counter-argument and trying to convince me that my argument doesn’t hold, I’ll let you take another stab at it…
Yep. And so, “flat earth” was ‘truth’ (until disproven), and people believed in it (reasonably and rationally); same thing with “spontaneous generation.” Same thing with myriads of examples from history: until disproven, the best explanation to fit the available facts is held to be true… unless and until a better explanation appears. As I’ve been asserting, we don’t withhold the judgment of truth until we have a 100% bulletproof case – which is what you’re trying to claim should prevent us from believing the Gospels.
Unless I misunderstand what you’re saying here, it seems that you’re making a claim about “rationally seeing” an event? Could you elaborate what this means, and what you’re claiming here (vis-a-vis knowledge)?
But see, you’re hurting your case here: you’re adding wilder and wilder unsubstantiated claims (“not well-known”, “owner of mistaken tomb dead or jailed”, “earthquake”, “mudslide”)! By doing so, you’re creating a ‘Rube Goldberg’ explanation that gets less and less believable – and only so that you might have an alternate to an explanation that’s simpler! In other words, you really are tweaking Occam’s nose!
And yet, you’re creating hypothetical situations out of whole cloth! And then, to add insult to injury, demanding that they be considered with the same seriousness as an explanation with better attestation and provenance! No, that’s not “begging the question”: that’s wading in a pool of red herrings.
(And, in fact, ‘begging the question’ is something completely different, too. )No. Since we’re talking about “history, not modeling an observation”, we’re using the same techniques that historians use to reach their conclusions. We don’t take their conclusions “on faith”, we examine their rationale and judge its reasonableness. Some will never be convinced, and that’s ok (if irrational).
Nope. One can believe the Gospel account without a ‘personal experience of God’. Why would you suggest otherwise?