Resurrection Story debunked?

  • Thread starter Thread starter redhen
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
40.png
redhen:
Chapter 2 of the CCC:

56
After the unity of the human race was shattered by sin God at once sought to save humanity part by part.The covenant with Noah after the flood gives expression to the principle of the divine economy toward the “nations,” in other words, toward men grouped "in their lands, each with [its] own LANGUAGE, by their families, in their nations."9

So I googled this and found that many racist sites used it to justify nationalist/racist concepts and to curb immigration.

vdare.com/letters/tl_123001.htm

But the idea of God creating separate cultures/langauges and nations and revealing Himself to them one at a time seems absurd.

Is God a racist?

Anyways, I digress. I have found no explantion in the CCC as to why God would prefer to reveal Himself in this limited way.

This sounds to me like the rationalization I would use to explain the gradual growth of a localized religion into other geographic areas.

I am a lapsed Catholic, trying hard to “will” myself to believe these stories even though my reason tells me it is most likely superstition on par with other religions.

I guess I am guilty of wishful thinking.
Click to expand...
If you really want to know God, pray and meditate. Don’t read. I think you’ve done just enough reading to damage your faith. You cannot will yourself to believe.

If you seek God He will come to you, but you have to be genuinely open to Him.
 
40.png
marvin:
If you really want to know God, pray and meditate. Don’t read. I think you’ve done just enough reading to damage your faith. You cannot will yourself to believe.

If you seek God He will come to you, but you have to be genuinely open to Him.
Click to expand...
I’ve tried this off and on almost all my life. I even entered a Benedictine abbey at one point. At no point did I sense that God was trying to “come to me”.

If it comes down to a matter of blind faith, then I may as well give up.

Speaking of blind faith;

apologeticspress.org/articles/1963

“The fact of the matter is that while most of the religious world deserves the epithets hurled by the “informed” academicians, those who espouse pure, New Testament Christianity do not.”

I see, Blind faith is what all other religions believe in except your own religion.
 
40.png
redhen:
Hmm, I read his arguments, and intellectually I now have my doubts that Jesus rose physically from the dead.

What’s will have to do with it?
Click to expand...
  • Every single point he makes involves historical and analytical assumptions.
  • He did not offer one piece of evidence to refute the Resurrection - he merely criticizes the existing information.
  • His analogy to the 5th century miracles is completely irrelevent. In addition, he offered nothing to disprove that the 5th century miracles were false.
  • Does he have a solid explanation why ALL of the other fables have long since died out, yet Christ remains the most relevent figure in history and contemporary society?
  • Where is the condemnation of the Christian beliefs by the jewish contemporaries? Why are they silent?
  • What piece of evidence, exaclty, could possibly exist now that would be “proof positive” of Christs physical resurrection? If someone is unable to offer an answer to this question, then the issue is no longer a question of whether the existing evidence is reasonable.
  • How interesting is it that faith is the predominant theme in the NT and that it is faith which provides the bridge in this very topic?
 
40.png
redhen:
I’ve tried this off and on almost all my life. I even entered a Benedictine abbey at one point. At no point did I sense that God was trying to “come to me”.

If it comes down to a matter of blind faith, then I may as well give up.

Speaking of blind faith;

apologeticspress.org/articles/1963

“The fact of the matter is that while most of the religious world deserves the epithets hurled by the “informed” academicians, those who espouse pure, New Testament Christianity do not.”

I see, Blind faith is what all other religions believe in except your own religion.
Click to expand...
I didn’t say anything about blind faith. But faith by definition implies trust in something for which there is no proof. I don’t really know what you expect to happen. Is God supposed show up at your door? Ain’t gonna happen.

About the article you linked: that’s not a Catholic site. I don’t think you’ll find many Catholics citing the Bible as a scientific textbook.

I’m not blind to other religions and we as Catholics also don’t believe that other religions are blind. We don’t condemn those of different faiths. Would we like to have them aboard? Of course. But we know, sorry, have faith in Jesus Christ as the true savior of the world and we are hopeful that others will see it that way too.

Nothing worth doing is easy.
 
40.png
Philthy:
  • Every single point he makes involves historical and analytical assumptions. Agreed. This is a good thing.
  • He did not offer one piece of evidence to refute the Resurrection - he merely criticizes the existing information.
    It’s hard to prove a negative.
  • His analogy to the 5th century miracles is completely irrelevent. In addition, he offered nothing to disprove that the 5th century miracles were false.
    I’ll concede this.
  • Does he have a solid explanation why ALL of the other fables have long since died out, yet Christ remains the most relevent figure in history and contemporary society?
    Bhudism which predates the NT is alive and well, so is Hinduism, Taoism, etc, even pagansim.
  • Where is the condemnation of the Christian beliefs by the jewish contemporaries? Why are they silent?
    I dunno, where is the debunking of Bhudism? Bhuda made outrageous claims, and performed several supernatural acts witnessed by many people.
  • What piece of evidence, exaclty, could possibly exist now that would be “proof positive” of Christs physical resurrection? If someone is unable to offer an answer to this question, then the issue is no longer a question of whether the existing evidence is reasonable.
    This is why I don’t understand why God would choose this method to reveal himself, reather then say huge etched letters on the moon proclaiming Jesus lives.
  • How interesting is it that faith is the predominant theme in the NT and that it is faith which provides the bridge in this very topic?
Click to expand...
ffrf.org/about/bybarker/rise.php

[blockquote]For example: “And a vision appeared [ophthe] to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, . . . And after he had seen the vision [horama], immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia . . .”[39] No one thinks the Macedonian was standing bodily in front of Paul when he “appeared” to him.

Paul includes Peter in his list of “appearances” by Christ, yet at the Transfiguration described in Matthew we find the same word used for an “appearance” to Peter that was not physical: “And after six days Jesus takes Peter, James, and John his brother, and brings them up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And behold there appeared [ophthe] Moses and Elijah talking with him.”[40] Did Moses and Elijah appear physically to Peter? Shall we start looking for their empty tombs? This is obviously some kind of spiritual appearance.[/blockquote]

The exact meaning of “opthe” can only be studied and debated by serious scholars, which leaves out most of us.

So, in the end we have to have blind faith that our translation of the NT is accurate and the documents are authentic, unchanged, and our interpretation is correct.

This is a hard pill to swallow. I would be more impressed in the phrase IHSOUS ZWN in giant letters across the moon.
 
Blind faith is when one believes largely oblivious to any difficulties in his position. It is not blind faith when one acknowledges and wrestles with those difficulties, but at the end of the day decides in favor of belief–it is informed faith.

Scott
 
Scott Waddell:
Blind faith is when one believes largely oblivious to any difficulties in his position. It is not blind faith when one acknowledges and wrestles with those difficulties, but at the end of the day decides in favor of belief–it is informed faith.

Scott
Click to expand...
So another term for “informed faith” would be “cognitive dissonance”

This is a mental condition.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

“Once two mutually-exclusive cognitions are held, the individual can be said to be in a state of “cognitive dissonance”. For instance: The individual purchases a given brand of washing machine, having been advised by a trusted co-worker that said machine is the best. Subsequent to this purchase, the buyer is exposed to another cognition, one which informs her that there is a higher quality, less expensive washing machine on the market. Moreover, the new source is even more trustworthy than the well-meaning co-worker, e.g. “Consumer Reports” or “Good Housekeeping”. Instantly, this conflicting cognition creates an imbalance (“buyer’s remorse”) between itself and the original cognition. This conflicted state of mind will, necessarily, seek to attain psychological consonance, i.e. a balance between competing cognitions.”
 
Scott Waddell:
I don’t see the comparison.
Click to expand...
I don’t either. Redhen, I think the only thing you’re succeeding at here is confusing the snot out of everyone.
 
40.png
redhen:
[blockquote]For example: “And a vision appeared [ophthe] to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, . . . And after he had seen the vision [horama], immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia . . .”[39] No one thinks the Macedonian was standing bodily in front of Paul when he “appeared” to him.
Click to expand...
And your point would be what?
40.png
redhen:
Paul includes Peter in his list of “appearances” by Christ, yet at the Transfiguration described in Matthew we find the same word used for an “appearance” to Peter that was not physical: “And after six days Jesus takes Peter, James, and John his brother, and brings them up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And behold there appeared [ophthe] Moses and Elijah talking with him.”[40] Did Moses and Elijah appear physically to Peter? Shall we start looking for their empty tombs? This is obviously some kind of spiritual appearance.
Click to expand...
A spiritual appearance does not preclude the bodily resurrection if that was your thought. The point he makes remains invalid.
40.png
redhen:
So, in the end we have to have blind faith that our translation of the NT is accurate and the documents are authentic, unchanged, and our interpretation is correct.

This is a hard pill to swallow. I would be more impressed in the phrase IHSOUS ZWN in giant letters across the moon.
Click to expand...
I don’t think God is out to impress you. This point is also invalid.
My suspicion is that those letters on the moon wouldn’t impress you into action either.
 
40.png
marvin:
I don’t either. Redhen, I think the only thing you’re succeeding at here is confusing the snot out of everyone.
Click to expand...
Type in “Cognitive dissonance christianity” into Google.

You will get several explanations as well as pages pertaining to Islam, Jehovahs Witness and even Scientology, all on the first page.

Here it is in a nutshell.

stand-alone.co.uk/forums/lofiversion/index.php?t191.html

Cognitive dissonance relies on the fact that humans have a need for their world to be orderly. They need things to make sense, and when they don’t make sense, they try to make sense out of them. For example, when we see a magician perform a trick, we sit and speculate with one another as to how this could have been accomplished. Perhaps he had extra cards up his sleeve. Perhaps he moved his hands faster than we could perceive. We need to find natural, orderly explanations for things that confuse us and do not fit into our schema as to how the world operates. Sometimes we even change our memory of real events in order that they make sense in our minds, a process called “bolstering”. The bolstering process reduces cognitive dissonance and returns us to a state of comfort and ease.
  1. In situations where we must make a free choice, once we have made our choice, the thing that we have chosen will become over-valued in our minds and the thing that we have not chosen will become devalued. This enables us to make sense of our decisions and reassures us that we have made the right choice. For example, if you have decided to buy a car and you have chosen a Toyota over a Honda, once you have taken the car home you will continue to reassure yourself that you made the right choice by reinforcing to yourself all the good properties of the Toyota while devaluing the capabilities of the Honda. This process increases in intensity with the importance of the decision that has been made.
  2. Cognitive dissonance works best when we have insufficient justification for our decisions. For example, if someone gives you $20 to lie to your mother and tell her that you enjoyed a particular movie when you really did not, you will experience cognitive dissonance at the lie, but it will not cause you to change your mind about the movie, since you had sufficient justification for telling the lie- $20. However, if someone gives you only $1 to tell the lie, you will experience cognitive dissonance at your dishonesty without sufficient justification to explain to yourself why you did it. Studies have shown that people in this situation will actually change their opinion about the movie, seeing it as more interesting than they did before they told the lie! (There was a classic study done on this called: “How much I enjoyed the experiment” but I have used a simpler, shorter analogy to illustrate the same concept.)
Actually this one is better;

geocities.com/questioningpage/mhealth6.html

"Bible believers experience cognitive dissonance and it’s associated problems when they try to believe that the things in the Bible are true, regardless of the evidence.

Examples of this can be found every day in debates on the web. Bible believers are shown errors in the Bible. It is difficult for many to admit that the Bible actually says what it does, and they struggle vainly to make it all fit together."

This is what happens every day here on these forums.
Apologetics call it “informed faith”.

p.s. “My suspicion is that those letters on the moon wouldn’t impress you into action either.”

Yes it would. This would be more in tune with an all powerful God who wishes to make known to all of mankind for all time a most important message.
 
I still don’t see an establish connection between the two. I think I’m tapped out on this thread.
 
Scott Waddell:
I still don’t see an establish connection between the two. I think I’m tapped out on this thread.
Click to expand...
From the last website quoted;

“Many Christians support the use of critical thinking. They use it in their jobs and in their personal lives, but when it comes to religion, many stop using it. They turn to authority and tradition, refusing to hear dissenting information. Some Christians do try to use critical thinking to study their beliefs, but a funny thing happens when they are shown the evidence against cherished doctrines such as biblical inerrancy or the resurrection. Suddenly, they lose interest in critical thinking, and they turn back to “faith”, in which they decide that they must surely be right, and that therefore the evidence doesn’t matter. The cognitive dissonance has become too great. And so they seek to avoid the dissonance by ignoring the new evidence.”
 
Ok, well maybe you can help me as you asked in your original post:
Can anyone help me refute this one?
Click to expand...
. You also list yourself as Catholic, so one can reasonably conclude that you want to believe in the resurrection (you do don’t you?). So, as I seem to be laboring under conginitive dissonance and have lost interest in critical thinking (although I’m still not sure why this is necessarily so), what is the way out that will allow us both to believe without cognitive dissonance?

Scott
 
40.png
redhen:
From the last website quoted;

“Many Christians support the use of critical thinking. They use it in their jobs and in their personal lives, but when it comes to religion, many stop using it. They turn to authority and tradition, refusing to hear dissenting information. Some Christians do try to use critical thinking to study their beliefs, but a funny thing happens when they are shown the evidence against cherished doctrines such as biblical inerrancy or the resurrection. Suddenly, they lose interest in critical thinking, and they turn back to “faith”, in which they decide that they must surely be right, and that therefore the evidence doesn’t matter. The cognitive dissonance has become too great. And so they seek to avoid the dissonance by ignoring the new evidence.”
Click to expand...
That would make sense if there was actual proof against the resurrection though. There isn’t any reasonable proof agaisnt the resurrection, so why should the faithful give up faith? No amount of critical thinking can be used to debunk the resurrection. It is either accepted on faith or not. It isn’t something you can prove (for lack of a better word) or disprove, or even reasonably set about to do so. To see your side we have to devoid of faith. You position holds faith is meaningless, and us as believer who have felt the power of faith will disagree with that.

Read C.S. Lewis, probably there isn’t a better modern Christian critical thinker than him. He was a former atheist and can explain the faithfuls position a lot better than I can.

C.S. Lewis, ‘Mere Christianity’, it’s a fast easy read.
 
Scott Waddell:
Ok, well maybe you can help me as you asked in your original post:

. You also list yourself as Catholic, so one can reasonably conclude that you want to believe in the resurrection (you do don’t you?). So, as I seem to be laboring under conginitive dissonance and have lost interest in critical thinking (although I’m still not sure why this is necessarily so), what is the way out that will allow us both to believe without cognitive dissonance?
Scott
Click to expand...
I would dearly love to believe that I could go to this beutiful place called heaven once I died, instead of going into oblivion. Who wouldn’t ?

I have NOT lost interest in critical thinking, and thus I see no way out except to accept what my intellect and logic leads to.
 
40.png
Mike_D30:
That would make sense if there was actual proof against the resurrection though. There isn’t any reasonable proof agaisnt the resurrection, so why should the faithful give up faith? No amount of critical thinking can be used to debunk the resurrection. It is either accepted on faith or not. It isn’t something you can prove (for lack of a better word) or disprove, or even reasonably set about to do so. To see your side we have to devoid of faith. You position holds faith is meaningless, and us as believer who have felt the power of faith will disagree with that.

Read C.S. Lewis, probably there isn’t a better modern Christian critical thinker than him. He was a former atheist and can explain the faithfuls position a lot better than I can.

C.S. Lewis, ‘Mere Christianity’, it’s a fast easy read.
Click to expand...
Yes, read his books many years ago, my favourite was The Screwtape Letters.

"There isn’t any reasonable proof agaisnt the resurrection, so why should the faithful give up faith? "

I can’t disprove that Buddha didn’t fly through the air or created a jewelled terrace in the air and walked on it. So why should Buddhists give up their beliefs?

ignca.nic.in/jatak084.htm
 
Well ok. I don’t want to be in a religion that is based on a falsehood. So what alternative do you propose? That we only accept what can be shown through empirical proof? Ok, sounds like a possibility. Now what is the empirical proof that this is how we should live our lives? If there isn’t sufficient proof, can we use faith to cover the rest? Wouldn’t that present a difficulty? If we decide to believe it anyway, is that ok or is it cognitive dissonance?

Scott
 
Scott Waddell:
Well ok. I don’t want to be in a religion that is based on a falsehood. So what alternative do you propose? That we only accept what can be shown through empirical proof? Ok, sounds like a possibility. Now what is the empirical proof that this is how we should live our lives? If there isn’t sufficient proof, can we use faith to cover the rest? Wouldn’t that present a difficulty? If we decide to believe it anyway, is that ok or is it cognitive dissonance?
Scott
Click to expand...
I’m terribly sorry, I did not intend to influence anyones beliefs. I was just trying to find answers for myself.

“If we decide to believe it anyway, is that ok or is it cognitive dissonance?”

Yes, that would be the textbook definition. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just another way of dealing with incongruities.

Again, I am not proposing any alternatives, sorry if I unsettled anyone here. Now I feel bad.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top