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Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?


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25 minutes ago, TLC said:

Ah, but if there's "many gods", it seems straight forward and easy enough to think there would be unique differences (and forms of worship) for various locations and cultures around the world.   And, as the story goes (before Noah), it didn't work out so well when God was (more or less) accessible to all the world.  So, when it started going south again (insert: the tower of Babel, etc.), God apparently decided to try something different in calling out Abraham, and in separating Israel from all other nations.  

Ok, couple of things going here.

First: the existence of Yahweh would not preclude other cultures from making up their own gods.

Second: Noah.... you know that never happened, right? You read Actual Errors in Genesis? Because I'm not going to relitigate that b.s. story here.

Third: Even assuming that story to be true, it still remains that Yahweh would be perfectly capable, post-flood ESPECIALLY, of revealing himself to more than one culture. This notion that he chose Israel because no one else would listen is a little convenient, no? An Almighty God can't reveal himself to more than one culture? Everyone else said no? Must not have tried very hard.

Jehovah's Witnesses get doors slammed in their face all the time. Know what they do? Move to the next house. They're persistent that way. And the fact that a Jehovah's Witness congregation popped up in Fort Lauderdale and another congregation popped up in West Africa, with the exact same doctrine and reading the exact same Bible, is proof that there is such a thing as "Jehovah's Witnesses."

You mean to tell me Yahweh himself, THE ALMIGHTY, is less persuasive than one of the most irritating groups of people on the planet? They can spread his message to multiple cultures but HE can't? Please.

Edited by Raf
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10 minutes ago, TLC said:

So, you want everyone to believe he was just plain stupid?  I guess not.

However, you must have overlooked part of my previous post.

Here it is again (in case you missed it):

However, evidently most (or all) that have posted here think pretty much the same of it (i.e., don't believe it did happen, and thinks anyone who believes it did was either tricked or fooled into it, or simply is a fool.) 

"So, you want everyone to believe he was just plain stupid?"

I literally said the opposite of that.

I never said he was a fool. But gullible? Sure! You say that about the followers of literally every religion other than your own! You believe Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon on Golden Plates? How gullible are you? You believe Mohammad flew to heaven on a winged horse? How gullible are you? You believe Buddha did this, Confucius did that, Thor did the other thing? Oh my God. Scientologists believe WHAT? 

You have no problem dismissing the claims of every other religion except your own. 

Everyone can fall victim to gullibility (a point that was raised earlier in a post by Rocky). EVERYONE. No matter how intelligent. No matter how skeptical. No matter how discerning. It doesn't make people stupid. It makes us human. My kid still believes in Santa. He's not stupid (and he's figuring it out on his own, by the way, which I think is awesome).  My wife never told her daughters "the truth" about Santa. They're in their 20s now. They play along. But they figured it out.

There is nothing "foolish" about faith. I have never called anyone here stupid or foolish (at least not without a reprimand). I know many believers who are brilliant. That doesn't make what they believe true

Whether the specific people you mentioned actually existed or not, real people in the first century became Christians, and they weren't stupid.

You know what they were? Superstitious as f---. Seriously, how did Paul convert those very people. By appealing to the statue of the "unknown God" that they had erected, just in case they missed someone in all the statues they had erected. Huh? How gullible do you have to be to believe in the gods of Greek mythology? But they did, and they were just as smart when they believed in Zeus and Apollo as they were when they believed in Yahweh and the resurrected Y'shua.

 

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I have absolutely no doubt that there are a great many very reasonable, logically put together, and highly intelligent reasons not to believe, Raf.  In fact, aside from the one mentioned below (bold letters - obviously my emphasis), I suppose it would be rather difficult for anyone to make much of kind of sense of it (or case for it.)  So, if you want to throw out scripture in its entirety, well... seems you simply (and more honestly) have virtually nothing left to think through or ponder.  The door is shut.

 Acts 17

[11] These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
[12] Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.

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you know, i am sick and tired of your misreprentations. I did not say throw all scripture out. I said you cannot use scripture to prove itself.

That Exodus and Noah's flood did not happen are historical facts. They do not entail throwing all scripture out. David, for example, probably existed. Solomon almost certainly did. Nebuchadnezzar absolutely did.

The book of Daniel actually does record some history. Daniel himself is a fictional character.

Psalms and Proverbs make no historical claims. The Prophets contain some stories that in all likelihood actually happened (probably not Jonah, which we can explore separately if you wish).

But I never said toss out all scripture and I would seriously appreciate it if you would STOP LYING ABOUT ME.

As for the rest of your ignorant comment: i have done nothing but produce evidence for my position, which itself required me to change my mind and abandon decades of preconceived notions.

To suggest that I'm the one who has "shut the door" on examining the evidence with an open mind and heart is the height of hypocrisy. YOU are the one who has stubbornly shut the door refusing to consider evidence that conflicts with the myths you hold dear.

Edited by Raf
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By the way, why would the Bereans search the scriptures to see if the resurrection was a historical event?

Wouldn't there be, you know, evidence? I mean, what were they looking at scriptures for? They weren't looking at Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, or Acts.

So... prophecies? No one is saying there were no prophecies. But prophecies don't prove the resurrection happened [the topic of this thread].

Again, the fact that people believed Paul does not entail that the things Paul taught were true. People believe con men all the time. 

The truth of what someone teaches is independent of who is doing the teaching and whether anyone or everyone believes it.

The truth emerging from your scripture citations is that you're abandoning any pretense of argument and are instead appealing to piety as a substitute for the examination of evidence. That tactic might work if we were discussing what the Bible means. But it is pointless in a conversation where one side isn't impressed by the admonition of scripture to revere scripture because scripture said so. Scripture is not evidence of itself. It is a claim. The evidence either supports the claim, refutes it, or is neutral.

it is possible to construct a strong, evidence-based argument for the resurrection. I praised one earlier in this thread. But quoting scriptures to shame non believers for not revering scripture as the arbiter of truth would be like me accusing you of paying insufficient homage to the Q'uran while evaluating the claims of Islam.

Might work on another Muslim, but only a jackass would think it sways you at all.

 

Edited by Raf
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13 hours ago, TLC said:

I asked to see how you (or others here) might actually think of it or answer, not merely to hear or read of something elsewhere. 

Campbell goes into great detail, explaining what it is that people are seeking, as well as the whys and hows. Trying to summarize it with a few posts on this thread would do great injustice to him and his work.  Are you not at least interested enough to look at Campbell's work yourself and offer a personal observation?

 

edit: Youtube has dozens, maybe hundreds of  clips with Campbell. Some are as short as 3-4 minutes. The ones with Bill Moyer are especially good.

Edited by waysider
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Did Jesus rise from the dead?

Yes. . . .

Because that truth is hard wired in all of us.  The Jesus story/myth is one expression of that truth.  And truth that cannot be summed up in words, only in part, and therefore not in a thread.  (And that does not make it a con either.)

As I understand from Campbell.

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6 minutes ago, Bolshevik said:

Did Jesus rise from the dead?

Yes. . . .

Because that truth is hard wired in all of us.  The Jesus story/myth is one expression of that truth.  And truth that cannot be summed up in words, only in part, and therefore not in a thread.  (And that does not make it a con either.)

As I understand from Campbell.

It's the desire or need for it to be true that's hardwired in us. That's not really what this thread is looking at. This thread is considering the reality of it being an actual, historic event.

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The power of myth, the resonance of these stories, does not make them true in the historical sense. Perseus was never sent in a crate down a river anymore than Moses was, and vice versa. 

The Jesus myth is an expression of a lot of things, but historical truth is not one of them.

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On ‎4‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 8:47 PM, waysider said:

Campbell goes into great detail, explaining what it is that people are seeking, as well as the whys and hows. Trying to summarize it with a few posts on this thread would do great injustice to him and his work.  Are you not at least interested enough to look at Campbell's work yourself and offer a personal observation?

 

edit: Youtube has dozens, maybe hundreds of  clips with Campbell. Some are as short as 3-4 minutes. The ones with Bill Moyer are especially good.

Seems you missed my point.  There was no need to do much more than glance at his work to gather you (and others here) see it (the resurrection) as being nothing more than a myth.  However, I see it from a far different perspective.  (And it's not as if I'm completely ignorant of psychology.  For a time, I eyed psychiatry as a prospective career.)  

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2 hours ago, TLC said:

Seems you missed my point.  There was no need to do much more than glance at his work to gather you (and others here) see it (the resurrection) as being nothing more than a myth.  However, I see it from a far different perspective.  (And it's not as if I'm completely ignorant of psychology.  For a time, I eyed psychiatry as a prospective career.)  

I am totally in AWE of your intellectual prowess.

Nevertheless, you may have had a very hard time in fields related to psychology or psychiatry given your apparent difficulty with the communication process (i.e. listening skills).

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3 hours ago, TLC said:

Seems you missed my point.  There was no need to do much more than glance at his work to gather you (and others here) see it (the resurrection) as being nothing more than a myth.  However, I see it from a far different perspective.  (And it's not as if I'm completely ignorant of psychology.  For a time, I eyed psychiatry as a prospective career.)  

Then again, maybe it's you who missed my point. If you had taken a few minutes to look at what I suggested you would have seen that Campbell's work is not explicitly about Jesus or any other specific narrative.It's about Man's need to give meaning to the seemingly unexplainable.

Edited by waysider
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Literally not one person here used Campbell's work as the basis for the conclusion that the resurrection is a myth. Not one.

It is an event that either happened in history or did not.

If you believe the gospels and Acts preserve history, that is your prerogative. I disagree and articulated why. TLC's rebuttals called for accepting, as evidence, that which cannot be discerned from the senses. TLC also questioned my motives for disputing the gospel and scriptural accounts [ie, I just want to toss out scripture]. 

The problem with questioning my motives is, even if you are correct to do so, it does not alter the evidence. Luke is still unreliable on history and not above inventing miraculous tales [nativity, esp. its timing]. I'll cite more on request.

The problem with evidence that doesn't come by the senses is that there's no way to test it or even confirm its existence. Every single religion without exception claims some form of non-senses evidence. On what basis do you accept one religion's extrasensory claims over another's? You can't do it without engaging in circular reasoning. That is, testing it against the Bible assumes the Bible to be true, but that is what we're questioning in the first place. The thing with a falsifiable thesis is, if you assume it is NOT true, the evidence will still lead back to it.

That is how evidence works

Edited by Raf
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12 hours ago, waysider said:

Then again, maybe it's you who missed my point. If you had taken a few minutes to look at what I suggested you would have seen that Campbell's work is not explicitly about Jesus or any other specific narrative.It's about Man's need to give meaning to the seemingly unexplainable.

I did look at it, as plainly stated in my last post.

 

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On ‎4‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 6:29 PM, Raf said:

you know, i am sick and tired of your misreprentations.

and I yours...  given how you repeatedly lie about what I post, and twist what I say.  Evidently it's impossible for you (an investigative reporter ?) to see it from my perspective.  Yet, you continually get bent out of shape when I call you on it., as if you're perfect and never do the very thing you persistently accuse me of doing.

For instance, here a sampling of spin from your last exhale:

6 hours ago, Raf said:

Literally not one person here used Campbell's work as the basis for the conclusion that the resurrection is a myth. Not one.

You know I never said that.  Not that you said I did, but that is what is implied.  That's spin. Or twist.  Call it whatever you want.

6 hours ago, Raf said:

TLC's rebuttals called for accepting, as evidence, that which cannot be discerned from the senses.

That's about as close to a lie as it gets.  In fact, I said nearly the opposite.  That (possibly by design) there was no evidence for believing it, but that there were reasons.  Furthermore, I plainly stated that in spite of this lack of evidence, "This doesn't mean that there is absolutely nothing left to evaluate for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not something (i.e., the resurrection) happened."  But you set about to put your own spin on that earlier post (somewhere on page 10) to make it look like I was trying to present "non-evidence" as evidence.  So it appears that you have a difficult time comprehending the difference between what is deemed to be evidence and what all can, might, and/or does fall into the category of "reasons." 

6 hours ago, Raf said:

TLC also questioned my motives for disputing the gospel and scriptural accounts [ie, I just want to toss out scripture]. 

More spin, and an (implied) lie.  How so?  By conveniently (probably intentionally) leaving a word or two - or even the entire context - (see below, in red) out of what I actually said.

On ‎4‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 5:50 PM, TLC said:

I have absolutely no doubt that there are a great many very reasonable, logically put together, and highly intelligent reasons not to believe, Raf.  In fact, aside from the one mentioned below (bold letters - obviously my emphasis), I suppose it would be rather difficult for anyone to make much of kind of sense of it (or case for it.)  So, if you want to throw out scripture in its entirety, well... seems you simply (and more honestly) have virtually nothing left to think through or ponder.  The door is shut.

 Acts 17

[11] These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
[12] Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.

Furthermore, I actually don't care much about what does or doesn't motivate you, so the only reason I might have for questioning or doubting your motives might be if I thought you were trying to conceal or mask them.  Maybe I'm missing something from an earlier post, but quite frankly, I just don't recall that being the case anywhere in this thread, and I don't know why you're so insistent on saying I did question your motives.  To put it bluntly, they seem rather obvious. 

6 hours ago, Raf said:

The problem with evidence that doesn't come by the senses is that there's no way to test it or even confirm its existence.

Care to explain exactly what "evidence that doesn't come by the senses" it is that you think I've talked about or tried to present here as evidence? Probably not. 

So, Ignore or spin this however you want, it won't change what it actually says:

On ‎4‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 8:20 AM, TLC said:

Frankly, it was so ridiculous to me that anyone would say or might think that the "proof" (or evidence, if you prefer) they have for the resurrection is obtained by revelation (which was plainly alluded to), that I'm inclined to think your own chosen verbiage (i.e., "spiritual insight") and view of it probably isn't much different. 

Keep on playing games with what I've said and claim you don't twist or spin them into something else if you want... but don't expect me not to call you on it.

Edited by TLC
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14 hours ago, Rocky said:

I am totally in AWE of your intellectual prowess.

Nevertheless, you may have had a very hard time in fields related to psychology or psychiatry given your apparent difficulty with the communication process (i.e. listening skills).

Sarcasm gotten you far in life, has it?

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I'll let readers judge who is accurately reflecting the conversation and who's constantly distorting what other people say because he can't defend his own position using evidence.

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3 hours ago, TLC said:

 

That's about as close to a lie as it gets.  In fact, I said nearly the opposite.  That (possibly by design) there was no evidence for believing it, but that there were reasons.  Furthermore, I plainly stated that in spite of this lack of evidence, "This doesn't mean that there is absolutely nothing left to evaluate for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not something (i.e., the resurrection) happened."  But you set about to put your own spin on that earlier post (somewhere on page 10) to make it look like I was trying to present "non-evidence" as evidence.  So it appears that you have a difficult time comprehending the difference between what is deemed to be evidence and what all can, might, and/or does fall into the category of "reasons." 

More spin, and an (implied) lie.  How so?  By conveniently (probably intentionally) leaving a word or two - or even the entire context - (see below, in red) out of what I actually said.

Furthermore, I actually don't care much about what does or doesn't motivate you, so the only reason I might have for questioning or doubting your motives might be if I thought you were trying to conceal or mask them.  Maybe I'm missing something from an earlier post, but quite frankly, I just don't recall that being the case anywhere in this thread, and I don't know why you're so insistent on saying I did question your motives.  To put it bluntly, they seem rather obvious. 

Care to explain exactly what "evidence that doesn't come by the senses" it is that you think I've talked about or tried to present here as evidence? Probably not. 

So, Ignore or spin this however you want, it won't change what it actually says:

Keep on playing games with what I've said and claim you don't twist or spin them into something else if you want... but don't expect me not to call you on it.

Dude, you can make those statements, but they lack integrity. Whenever (yes, every time) anyone asks for clarification, you state they are twisting or spinning your words, as opposed to you trying to clarify so the reader might possibly come closer to understanding your intended message.

Further, when a reader responds with what s/he does understand you to have intended to mean, you jump on them for intentionally misunderstanding... or "playing games with what I've said..." (rather than, "sorry, that's not what I meant. Let me see if I can present it another way that might make more sense to you")

One seems to only be able to reasonably deduce that you are either toying with people here or are more dense than the densest diamond that's ever been found.

Edited by Rocky
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