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coolduude
Guest
This is pretty much exactly what my book recomendation covers. The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. I’m like 99% sure it covers the Ressurection.
Please, check it out.
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Please, check it out.
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Randy_Carson
Guest
How to use the Catholic Answers Forum Quote Function
If you want to insert your comments into the middle of something you are quoting, you have to manually insert square brackets. Here is the original passage I want to comment on:
You don’t even need two brain cells to see how idiotic the teaching of the eucharist really is. It was so important that Peter, who wrote two epistles, overwhelms the reader with the topic of the eucharist.
In order to show you what you need to do, I have to use a different set of brackets for illustrative purposes only. I’ll use { and } instead of and ] so that you can see where the brackets should be located, and I’ll insert my comments in red text.
{quote}You don’t even need two brain cells to see how idiotic the teaching of the eucharist really is.{/quote} I’m inserting my comments here in red. {quote}It was so important that Peter, who wrote two epistles, overwhelms the reader with the topic of the eucharist.{/quote}Hope this helps.
Now, wherever you see the { or } you have to actually use a square bracket or ]. So the paragraph above comes out like this:
I’m inserting my comments here in red.
Hope this helps.
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wasmit
Guest
how do you know the possible values of the universal constants? A probability can only be calculated if you know all possible values. For all we know, there might be very few, or even only one possible value for each particular constant. This makes seeing the current outcome unremarkable.
I don’t believe it, I am saying it is a possibility at the moment, and that we cannot make a conclusion, because we don’t know.
Not necessarily, It could be shown in other ways.
yes, I agree that “for life to exist, there must be an environment for it to exist in”
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wasmit
Guest
my statements do not claim anything, they say “this thing might be possible”. that is not a faith statement.
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wasmit
Guest
so, you choose to absolutely believe in something that may be wrong because it comforts you?Hi again Wasmit,
You asked why I believe in an afterlife and I guess the only answer to that is because I choose to. I guess that’s maybe a key to the whole thing. I choose to believe in an afterlife because, for me, the alternative is horribly depressing. Believing in God gives me the opportunity to believe that there’s more to reality than what we can see or touch. Believing in God means to me that there is some order to all the chaos that there’s someone in control even when I feel so out of control. Believing in God means for me that there is an abolute truth and that truth is not relative. Believing in God means that there is someone that has made the rules to live by and that I don’t make the rules, in other words a life without rules, where anything goes, would be anarchy. In a sense reality is relative, it’s a choice, and I happened to choose Jesus Christ as my reality.
Here’s a joke I’ve heard, you may have heard of it already. Once there was an atheist running from a bear. As the bear drew close the atheist tripped and fell. Just befor the bear pounced on him the atheist cried out to God for help. At once time stood still and there was a voice from heaven. God asked the atheist, you have denied that I exsisted all your life and now at the moment of your death, you call on me, doesn’t that seem a little hypocritical. The atheist, being an honest an logical man, said yes God, I suppose it’s tooo late for me to be a Christian, but could you make the bear a Christian. God heard his prayer and immediately the bear placed his paws together and said, “thank you father for the food that I am about to receive…”
I know that was pretty lame, anyway, I hope you choose to believe in God because I know it means everything to me. Ultimately it’s your choice.
Isn’t the cognitive dissonance uncomfortable?
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Randy_Carson
Guest
Let’s take a different approach, okay? We’ll start by proving that the Bible is inspired. The following is taken from:
Proving Inspiration
catholic.com/library/Proving_Inspiration.asp
The Catholic method of proving the Bible to be inspired is this: The Bible is initially approached as any other ancient work. It is not, at first, presumed to be inspired. From textual criticism we are able to conclude that we have a text the accuracy of which is more certain than the accuracy of any other ancient work.
An Accurate Text
Sir Frederic Kenyon, in The Story of the Bible, notes that “For all the works of classical antiquity we have to depend on manuscripts written long after their original composition. The author who is the best case in this respect is Virgil, yet the earliest manuscript of Virgil that we now possess was written some 350 years after his death. For all other classical writers, the interval between the date of the author and the earliest extant manuscript of his works is much greater. For Livy it is about 500 years, for Horace 900, for most of Plato 1,300, for Euripides 1,600.” Yet no one seriously disputes that we have accurate copies of the works of these writers. However, in the case of the New Testament we have parts of manuscripts dating from the first and early second centuries, only a few decades after the works were penned.
Not only are the biblical manuscripts that we have older than those for classical authors, we have in sheer numbers far more manuscripts from which to work. Some are whole books of the Bible, others fragments of just a few words, but there are literally thousands of manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and other languages. This means that we can be sure we have an authentic text, and we can work from it with confidence.
The Bible as Historical Truth
Next we take a look at what the Bible, considered merely as a history, tells us, focusing particularly on the New Testament, and more specifically the Gospels. We examine the account contained therein of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
Using what is in the Gospels themselves and what we find in extra-biblical writings from the early centuries, together with what we know of human nature (and what we can otherwise, from natural reason alone, know of divine nature), we conclude that either Jesus was just what he claimed to be—God—or he was crazy. (The one thing we know he could not have been was merely a good man who was not God, since no merely good man would make the claims he made.)
We are able to eliminate the possibility of his being a madman not just from what he said but from what his followers did after his death. Many critics of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection claim that Christ did not truly rise, that his followers took his body from the tomb and then proclaimed him risen from the dead. According to these critics, the resurrection was nothing more than a hoax. Devising a hoax to glorify a friend and mentor is one thing, but you do not find people dying for a hoax, at least not one from which they derive no benefit. Certainly if Christ had not risen his disciples would not have died horrible deaths affirming the reality and truth of the resurrection. The result of this line of reasoning is that we must conclude that Jesus indeed rose from the dead. Consequently, his claims concerning himself—including his claim to be God—have credibility. He meant what he said and did what he said he would do.
Further, Christ said he would found a Church. Both the Bible (still taken as *merely a historical *book, not yet as an inspired one) and other ancient works attest to the fact that Christ established a Church with the rudiments of what we see in the Catholic Church today—papacy, hierarchy, priesthood, sacraments, and teaching authority.
We have thus taken the material and purely historically concluded that Jesus founded the Catholic Church. Because of his Resurrection we have reason to take seriously his claims concerning the Church, including its authority to teach in his name.
This Catholic Church tells us the Bible is inspired, and we can take the Church’s word for it precisely because the Church is infallible. Only after having been told by a properly constituted authority—that is, one established by God to assure us of the truth concerning matters of faith—that the Bible is inspired can we reasonably begin to use it as an inspired book.
(cont.)
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Randy_Carson
Guest
A Spiral Argument
Note that this is not a circular argument. We are not basing the inspiration of the Bible on the Church’s infallibility and the Church’s infallibility on the word of an inspired Bible. That indeed would be a circular argument! What we have is really a spiral argument. On the first level we argue to the reliability of the Bible insofar as it is history. From that we conclude that an infallible Church was founded. And then we take the word of that infallible Church that the Bible is inspired. This is not a circular argument because the final conclusion (the Bible is inspired) is not simply a restatement of its initial finding (the Bible is historically reliable), and its initial finding (the Bible is historically reliable) is in no way based on the final conclusion (the Bible is inspired). What we have demonstrated is that without the existence of the Church, we could never know whether the Bible is inspired.
The advantages of the Catholic approach are two: First, the inspiration is really proved, not just “felt.” Second, the main fact behind the proof—the reality of an infallible, teaching Church—leads one naturally to an answer to the problem that troubled the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:30-31): How is one to know which interpretations are correct? The same Church that authenticates the Bible, that attests to its inspiration, is the authority established by Christ to interpret his word.
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Now, to your question: we know that heaven exists because an infallible Church and an inspired text tells us that it does.
Note that this is not a circular argument. We are not basing the inspiration of the Bible on the Church’s infallibility and the Church’s infallibility on the word of an inspired Bible. That indeed would be a circular argument! What we have is really a spiral argument. On the first level we argue to the reliability of the Bible insofar as it is history. From that we conclude that an infallible Church was founded. And then we take the word of that infallible Church that the Bible is inspired. This is not a circular argument because the final conclusion (the Bible is inspired) is not simply a restatement of its initial finding (the Bible is historically reliable), and its initial finding (the Bible is historically reliable) is in no way based on the final conclusion (the Bible is inspired). What we have demonstrated is that without the existence of the Church, we could never know whether the Bible is inspired.
The advantages of the Catholic approach are two: First, the inspiration is really proved, not just “felt.” Second, the main fact behind the proof—the reality of an infallible, teaching Church—leads one naturally to an answer to the problem that troubled the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:30-31): How is one to know which interpretations are correct? The same Church that authenticates the Bible, that attests to its inspiration, is the authority established by Christ to interpret his word.
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Now, to your question: we know that heaven exists because an infallible Church and an inspired text tells us that it does.
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VociMike
Guest
Why “more likely”? By what standard? By the standard of bodies that have been claimed to be resurrected, and were not subsequently located, your statement is simply false. Offer a more likely explanation, if you want, as to why there is not one drop of historical evidence for the existence of Christ’s body, or that the body was ever found. It’s not enough just to declare one thing more likely than another. What you are really saying is “I don’t know what happened to Jesus’ body, I just know he wasn’t resurrected.” And that is nothing more than a statement of faith, something believed without proof.
Who says that is the most reasonable explanation, when plenty of witnesses claim precisely that it did “disappear”? You must in fact posit an enormous tower of liars (many of whom suffered horrible deaths - would you die for a lie of your own making?).
So there’s a question for you. Why did those who claimed direct contact with Jesus Christ allow themselves, in large numbers, to be brutally murdered? How rational is that? How likely is that?
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YourAverageJoe
Guest
faith –noun
- confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another’s ability.
- belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact./
- belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
- belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
- a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
Sounds like some faith to me.
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wasmit
Guest
A Brief History of the Bible:
The Bible descends from what was an ever-changing and expanding body of written and oral traditions dating from as early as the 12th Century B.C. The reformulations and additions continued from then all the way up until the 4th Century A.D. when, out of a large collection of candidate books, some were selected to be part of what we now call the Bible. It is important to remember that literally none of the original manuscripts of either the Old or New Testaments has survived. The Bible was passed down by individual manual copying and translation right up to the discovery of printing in the 15th Century A.D. The oldest manuscript copies date from sometime during the first 3 Centuries A.D.
The original language of the Old Testament was Hebrew followed by Aramaic translations appearing in the period following the Exile and then Greek translations following Alexander the Great. It was not until around the 2nd Century, A.D. that the contents of the Old Testament had become fixed.
The original language of the New Testament was Greek. As with the OT, no originals now exist, and the oldest of the manuscript copies dates from the 2nd Century, A.D. Before the NT was “canonized” into its current form, each of the early Christian communities apparently had a gospel of its own, in some ways redundant, in some ways in direct conflict, with the gospels of other communities. Some of these included the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Hebrews, the Gospel of the Ebionites, a Gospel of the Egyptians, an Apocalypse of Peter, an Apocalypse of Paul, and the Epistle of Barnabas, to name just a few.
What the Christians used as an “infallible” Bible was different depending on which Christian community you talked to, at least until the year A.D. 325. In that year, Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicea, which not only did the picking and choosing of the books, but also ended a power struggle in Christian circles as to the nature of Jesus. As Roman Emperor, Constantine decreed that the Trinitarian view would become Christian dogma (which is remarkable considering how weak his Christian credentials were), and this decree silenced the large Christian segment that said Jesus was only a man.
Of course, the history doesn’t end there. As the Bible was translated into Latin, Augustine ultimately complained of the “infinite variety” of Bible translations. Under the direction of Pope Damascus, Jerome attempted to standardize the Latin Bible. Drawing on Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, he completed the “Vulgate” by sometime around A.D. 405, which was ultimately recognized as the Standard Bible of the Roman Church (1546).
The first English Bible was completed in the late 1300’s by John Wyclif, an Oxford instructor in religion and philosophy. Condemned by the church, it lasted in the underground for some 150 years. Then, around 1524, William Tyndale, an Oxford and Cambridge educated linguist, who was influenced by Erasmus and Martin Luther, published a New Testament translation based on medieval Greek copies. Then Mike Coverdale’s Bible appeared (~1535) based on his translation of German and Greek translations, as well as drawing from Tyndale’s work. John Rogers and Richard Taverner also published their particular translations (~1539) drawing from and adding to each other and to Tyndale’s work. All of this was eventually edited by Coverdale into the Great Bible, which the King approved. Separately, the Roman Catholic church created its first English Bible, the Douay version, which was based directly on the Latin Vulgate (~1609).
In 1604, King James I wanted a fresh start, and pulled together Oxford and Cambridge scholars, as well as Puritan and Episcopal priests. This large group used the Catholic Douay, Luther’s German translation, the available Hebrew and Greek copies, and to a very large extent Tyndale’s work, and created the King James Version (~1611). Language, of course, is a fluid thing. Just how fluid can be seen in just a few examples: In 1611 “allege” meant “prove,” “prevent” meant “precede,” and “reprove” meant “decide.” To cope with this, the English Revised Version came out by 1885, followed shortly by the American Standard Version.
Clarifying Infallibility:
One thing this long history over the last few thousand years tells us is that the infallibility of the oldest manuscript copy (let alone a remotely descended English Bible) would require divine inspiration all along the very, very long line of manual copying and translating (remember, this is all occurring before the advent of the printing press). However, once one puts the stake the ground and says “The King James Version is infallible,” then one eliminates any appeal to “mistranslation” from the Hebrew or Greek. On the other hand, if only the original, autograph manuscripts are infallible (none of which exist), while all subsequent copies and translations are vulnerable to transcription or translation errors, then the whole line of copies from the oldest manuscript copies (like the Dead Sea Scrolls) to all of today’s descendent versions of the Bible are not infallible.
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wasmit
Guest
If Livy was inaccurate in saying, for example, that “In 238 AD the Gauls launched a surprise attack on our fortifications at Patavium. In response the Senate…”, It doesn’t really matter to anyone.
If the bible is inaccurate in saying “mary was a virgin”, it does matter to a lot of people.
Therefore, the hisorical claims in the bible must stand up to higher scrutiny than those other writers you mentioned.
Also, Livy making a claim that the Gauls attacked Patavium is a mundane, normal event.
extraordinary claims of ressurection, walking on water, etc… require a far higher quiality of evidence before they can be believed.
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wasmit
Guest
the ressurection is unproven - we don’t know if it happened or not.
you haven’t shown that the church is infallible, it is merely claimed and accepted as fact.
you haven’t shown that the church was established by a god.
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VociMike
Guest
Well, they didn’t have video cameras back then, so what would you suggest? What standard of proof would convince you? Would the blood of countless martyrs help convince you, or do you have a more likely explanation for those?
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wasmit
Guest
I am not saying that, I am saying “We don’t know what happened to Jesus’ body, It could have been a variety of things. It cannot be shown that he was resurrected (or hidden, or stolen, etc…).”
By observation, no-one has been ressurected, yet thousands of bodies have been lost, stolen, etc…
There is not enough evidence (that I know of) to conclude that a ressurection is the most likely event. If you have some, please show me!
It is irrational. How likely is what? I don’t know what you are asking. Can you be more clear?
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wasmit
Guest
heh, you got me there. I mean that “there is likely to be an abundance of life”. I do not 100%, absolutely, believe that there is.
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wasmit
Guest
Beyond resonable doubt.
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VociMike
Guest
Then what is most likely, in your opinion and given the great benefit that would have derived to the Romans and the Jews to produce the body? You keep avoiding the strong motivation that those in power would have had to produce the body, and they surely had the means to do so.
We’re not talking about people who were not claimed to have been resurrected, but those who were thus claimed. There would be vastly more interest in finding those bodies.
I did: the blood of the martyrs who claimed it happened, and who then interacted with the resurrected man (for 50 days, to be precise). Why would anybody allow themselves to be brutally murdered for a lie they themselves knew to be a lie?
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wasmit
Guest
From another site:
First, I would like to point out that Paul wrote several years before the Gospels were written, some time between 50 and 60 ce (a short 20 - 30 years after Jesus’ purported ministry). Because of this, we have to take care not to project our knowledge of what later writings (like the Gospels) say onto what Paul said earlier. Since the Gospels are clear that Jesus’ resurrection was a physical bodily resurrection, we are tempted to project that understanding back into Paul’s earlier description of the resurrection. But Paul’s own notion of the resurrection does not appear to be the same as the Gospel-writer’s notion. If you look closely at the body of Pauline epistles, you will find no clear indication that Paul considers Jesus’ resurrection to be bodily in the sense that Jesus’ dead body was resurrected. As far as we can tell from his writings, Paul seems to believe that the resurrection was spiritual - Jesus’ spirit was quickened and he now has a new heavenly body, not his corrupted human body that was buried. If he thought the resurrection was bodily and that anyone had seen Jesus resurrected body, he surely would have mentioned this important detail in his discourses about the resurrected Christ.
First, I would like to point out that Paul wrote several years before the Gospels were written, some time between 50 and 60 ce (a short 20 - 30 years after Jesus’ purported ministry). Because of this, we have to take care not to project our knowledge of what later writings (like the Gospels) say onto what Paul said earlier. Since the Gospels are clear that Jesus’ resurrection was a physical bodily resurrection, we are tempted to project that understanding back into Paul’s earlier description of the resurrection. But Paul’s own notion of the resurrection does not appear to be the same as the Gospel-writer’s notion. If you look closely at the body of Pauline epistles, you will find no clear indication that Paul considers Jesus’ resurrection to be bodily in the sense that Jesus’ dead body was resurrected. As far as we can tell from his writings, Paul seems to believe that the resurrection was spiritual - Jesus’ spirit was quickened and he now has a new heavenly body, not his corrupted human body that was buried. If he thought the resurrection was bodily and that anyone had seen Jesus resurrected body, he surely would have mentioned this important detail in his discourses about the resurrected Christ.
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VociMike
Guest
That you’ll never get. Nor will you ever get proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the atheist claims. So then what? Without proof beyond a reasonable doubt on either side, how will you address what may be the most important question of your life?
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wasmit
Guest
I don’t know what was most likely.
You haven’t shown “those in power had means to produce the body”, to be true.
If the martyrs existed (which you haven’t shown), their claims (which you haven’t shown they made), show only that they believed that jesus was resurrected. The belief of one or more persons does not provide reliable evidence that something is true.
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