[...] (A Quick Question – @Parchment and Pen) [...]

Would blow my faith out of the water!

Read ALL the many old, different accounts of resurrection,

There’s a peculiarity in your phrasing there which draws my attention. What “old, different accounts” are you talking about? When you uppercase “all”, are you trying to say that we shouldn’t restrict ourselves to the ones that we believe are true, but also look at the ones we now think are pure myth? Does this mean Egyptian, Greek, Sumerian myth? If so, what you’re saying is really, really different from the rest of this conversation.

I’m going to assume that you’re only talking about the Biblical accounts, Old and New Testaments. I’m not sure why you’d say “ALL” and “different”, but let’s leave it at that.

and you see that they could all be metaphors for some kind of spiritual afterlife.

If you really wanted to believe in that, you could interpret anything or nothing in favor of some amorphous conception of it. You’d be reasoning without either data or conclusion, though: no data, because you’re assuming that every possible point of every account is literally false but means something symbolic; and no conclusion, because you don’t bother figuring out WHAT is being symbolized.

And … what if the conclusion actually matters? What if God actually wants you to display faith in Him by becoming a Jew and working to rebuild the Temple, and this “Jesus” thing was a misunderstood distraction? He even gave you the knowledge to build a time machine to prove His point, and you looked at the evidence and didn’t modify your beliefs _at all_?

Did you even believe anything in the first place? How could anyone ever tell, since nothing you see actually affects your actions?

This winds up being a most unfortunate manner of protecting one’s Christianity — by spiritualizing it to insulate it from all challenge, you wind up losing any belief in any actual point.

-Wm

Totally off topic (or is it?) …

Has anyone seen that MAD TV Terminator/Jesus parody on YouTube?

The simple answer for a tired mind:

Now we know why God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts: we hit the ceiling with just a simple conundrum!

Ergo, if a backward-in-time-moving and space-time-affecting (i.e., not simply observational with NO EFFECT at ANY level on that which is observed) time machine can be invented, it’s already been invented.

The simple answer for a tired mind:

I’d go back in time to the moment when the time machine was being invented and thwart the project, which of course I could never have done if I was successful.

Now we know why God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts: we hit the ceiling with just a simple conundrum!

I think that a form of “Christianity” would actually be more appealing to more people if the resurrection were proven false. We prefer religions that are malleable — that can be twisted to our own aims. It’s been difficult for people to turn Christianity into a very effective tool, because of the Christian rejection of gnosticism and insistence on physical evidence and multiple witness testimony.

Think about it: if you’re someone like Simon Magus, you don’t want a religion that forces you to adhere to its precepts. You want a religion that can be bent to your will, and which rewards your mental prowess in constructing impenetrable spells by which to hypnotize the masses.

If Christianity were forced to toss out this foundational physical evidence, and build instead on a cornerstone of interpretive prowess and mental gymnastics, it would lose all integrity — and would be more virulent than any of the other unfalsifiable cults out there.

I think the rise of Christianity can be explained on the basis that some people THOUGHT they saw Christ alive just as easily as it could be by a historical, physical resurrection.

No, it’s not “just as easy”. None of the proposed workarounds is as straightforward explanation of the data. Now, with that said, we could all be wrong. It’s conceivable that all the historical evidence we refer to is just wrong; those people were (perhaps) all deceived by something we didn’t think of. Who knows — if we’re being wild, perhaps that was Loki playing a VERY EFFECTIVE trick on Odin. But we don’t have any evidence for the wild speculations. We have evidence only for the simple conclusion that Christ rose physically from the dead. (I do agree that this isn’t enough to accept Christianity — after all, we could conceivably have the same evidence about Lazarus, and that wouldn’t make us believe in Lazarianity.)

That is not what he says. He says he would know his senses are being deceived because of the “witness of the Spirit.”

I haven’t read him on this, but let me admit that I don’t admire it. To me, it smacks of someone who’s utterly confident in his reason. Philosophy is good, but the longer a chain of reasoning becomes — the further from the evidence — the less certain its conclusion becomes. The physical resurrection evidence is some of the most direct evidence we could possibly have; anyone who didn’t doubt after having THAT disproven is missing the point.

Most critical scholars would say that the Bible is also not reliable although its much harder to show since its so old and BOM is much more recent.

I don’t know if you’re right about “most critical scholars”. I know many historians doubt/disbelieve the miracle stories, at least methodologically; but they tend to accept the usefulness of the Bible as historical evidence, without necessarily accepting it as infallible or inerrant. I suspect you’re outright wrong in what you’re trying to say here, but I’m not certain what you mean; perhaps by “critical” you actually mean the scholars who have a negative attitude , rather than the scholars who “examine and judge carefully.”

-Wm

Steve,

John 20:30-31 “Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”

John makes that statement directly after he makes a huge point of making it clear that Jesus body was not in the tomb and speaking about His post resurrection appearances. Since the resurrection is such a lynch pin of our faith as Paul makes it clear it is in I Cor., for the Bible to be wrong about that and then tell us this is why we are to believe, would leave it with very little credibility with me whatsoever.

Isn’t it true that if an author is wrong in his statements of the very most basic of facts on a subject, it gives you good reason to doubt the rest of what he says? It certainly makes you wonder where else he has his facts totally wrong or if he even made the whole thing up.

It is becoming obvious that your whole approach to the Bible and mine are totally different. It seems you don’t take it to be the inspired Word of God even on matters of the very basics of our faith.

I may not be able to do much commenting the rest of the day as I think my Grandaughter will be here soon and we are going to be doing Christmas projects. Grandma can’t wait!

I think Steve is closest to the truth.

Am I embarrassed by being in just 1% of the population? It could be the top 1%, after all.

Jesus affirmed having a “body” and not just a spirit; but Paul spoke after all, of a spiritual “body.”