Can a Scientist Affirm the Resurrection?

Then you are using very shoddy sources. The overwhelming scholarly consensus is that the Gospels are based on earlier written or verbal accounts which have been lost to history, and were not written by the people whose names they bear. You should probably start at a very basic source such as Wikipedia.

To cut to the chase:

Every single scrap of evidence in favour of the resurrection can be summarized as follows: Some people believe that Jesus was resurrected sometime in the century or so following his death.

Do you think people believing something happened is sufficient reason to conclude it happened? For instance, should be believe the Qanon conspiracy is true because lots of people believe it is?

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The Koran was dictated to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel. Mohammed was an eyewitness. The Book of Mormon was found on golden tablets buried on the hill called Cumoreh, and we have the writen testimony of twelve eyewitnesses that they were real.

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That looks like a blatant false bifurcation to me.

Isn’t “I don’t know if the resurrection was trickery or real; I also don’t know whether, if it was real, it was corporeal or spiritual,” a rational position?

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Shouldn’t an eyewitness account clearly state that it is an eyewitness account? None of those even make a hint of such a statement.

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Here is an exhaustive discussion of the authorship of the gospels:

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Thank you for posting a source.

So point 1 is that we lack authorship for the Gospels. I.e. that the books are written anonymously.
Firstly, the author attempts to treat this as primary evidence of it being a forgery, then later goes on to admit it is not a death blow by any means. Very contradictory, but hopefully later on the author of this ties it back somehow


So how do we know who wrote which book? This is something in which this author did not address. He insinuates there is no way to know who wrote which Gospel.

Well lets start with the ones authored by another hand. Mark was not authored by an Eye Witness, instead it was authored by Peter’s (an eye witness) disciple Mark. We know from Justin Martyr and Iraeneus that Peter is the person who’s viewpoint it was written. That Peter had Mark transcribe the events in which he remembered. This is very interesting! For the Gospel is not the Gospel according to Peter despite Peter telling the story
 Instead, it is the Gospel according to Mark. This is extremely unique and shows tremendous intellectual integrity in the Early Church.
This is were it get’s even more interesting, your source claims at no place is the authorship penned. However, in the title of the earliest manuscripts
 They say “KATA MARKON” which translates to “According to Mark”. To say there is no place the author has written their name is incorrect.
So to recap, the title and the early church both agree Mark wrote Mark. With the Early Church further elaborating that it is written by Mark but told from Peter.

The next would be Luke. Again in the earliest manuscripts we have “KATA LOUKAN” or “According to Luke”. Next Luke 1:1-4 plainly addresses this is a chronology of events for a specific person. “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.”
So already we know 2 things about Luke, the title claims it is from Luke, and it is being written for a specific person.
According to Iraeneus, Luke wrote the book “According to Luke”. Every major Early Church person is in agreeance that Luke was written by Luke there are no differences in opinions. Furthermore, there are massive writing similarities between Luke and Acts (such as what I touched upon earlier) which no secularist denies they are authored by the same person. If you wish you can then cross reference who was a disciple of both the original Apostles and Paul and you come to Luke again.
It is widely accepted that Luke is the author of Luke (and acts).

Next John.
Again we start with “KATA IWANNHN” (Greek didn’t like the copy paste) or “According to John”. John, 1-3 John, and Revelation are widely agreed to be penned by the same author due to writing styles, early church belief, and other reasons. Revelation 1:4 states John wrote revelation “John, To the seven churches in the province of Asia:
”
Furthermore, John uses unique language which often gets people all riled up. Some of this language includes “My Beloved” or “The disciple that Jesus loved”. The argument goes 1 of 2 ways. Either A John is the author and is writing at his unique experiences. Or B the author is a 3rd person who was an eyewitness speaking about another persons unique experiences. Occams Razor comes to mind never-the-less
 There is the most debate about John. I take the position of John is written by John.
Most controversy about John stems to the Gnostics in the Early Church. There was controversy over the book. Due to it conflicting with some theological view. This being said many Early Church peoples are in agreeance (despite their theological differences) that John was written by John.

Next Matthew.
Again we start with the title, “KATA MAQQAION” or “According to Matthew”. So again, Early Church is in agreeance that Matthew wrote Matthew. Where the controversy arises is Eusebius states Matthew wrote in a Hebrew Dialect. Some say Matthew could not have written Matthew because it was written in Greek not Hebrew.
This for 1 shows the authority given to early church positions. For example: You cannot discount all the evidence for the other books given by the Early Chruch. Then turn around and say the Early Church says Matthew wrote in Hebrew therefore the book of Matthew was not written by Mattew.
And 2, the counter argument is Matthew was a polyglot and known to write the Gospel in many languages. Thus because the book of Matthew was written in Greek is not evidence it is not from Matthew since we have evidence of Matthew writing the Gospel in multiple languages.
There is no doubt among anyone, the author of Matthew was extremely intellectual and familiar with formal writing. This adds likelihood that Matthew did write them.
It is unique that despite the hatred for Tax Collectors at this time period (and throughout all of history) that the Early Church would eagerly attribute Matthew’s authorship to Matthew. If we take the secularist view of the Early Church trying to create a religion from scratch: attributing Matthew as a main author and authority is political suicide.

In summary of the point that we do not know the authors
To say we do not know the authors, you must take every title as coincidence. And you must throw out early church testimonies to the fact. Furthermore: literary similarities between known authored books must also be discounted.
In other words, you have to take some of the strongest literary evidence possible
 and discount them simply because you assume it cannot be. The only book with wavering support of the early church is John. This being said, the book of John has a unique writing style that coincides with the other Johns and Revelation.

Point 2: Accusative not Genitive
So the author of this source states:
“First, even if the body of a text does not name its author, there is often still a name and title affixed to a text in our surviving manuscript traditions. These titles normally identify the traditional author. The standard naming convention for ancient literary works was to place the author’s name in the genitive case (indicating personal possession), followed by the title of the work. Classical scholar Clarence Mendell in Tacitus: The Man And His Work (pp. 295-296) notes that our earliest manuscript copies of both Tacitus’ Annals and Histories identify Tacitus as the author by placing his name in the genitive (Corneli Taciti), followed by the manuscript titles.”
“Instead, the Gospels have an abnormal title convention, where they instead use the Greek preposition Îșατα, meaning ‘according to’ or ‘handed down from,’ followed by the traditional names. For example, the Gospel of Matthew is titled Î”Ï…Î±ÎłÎłÎ”Î»ÎčÎżÎœ Îșατα ΜαΞΞαÎčÎżÎœ (‘The Gospel according to Matthew’).”
“
Gospels have been “handed down” by church traditions affixed to names of figures in the early church, rather than the author being clearly identified.[2] In the case of Tacitus, none of our surviving titles or references says that the Annals or Histories were written “according to Tacitus” or “handed down from Tacitus.” Instead, we have a clear attribution to Tacitus in one case, and only ambivalent attributions in the titles of the Gospels.”

I will summarize his argument.
He is arguing that the standard titling was to use the genitive. Therefore since the Gospels are not in the genitive but the accusative, they are not reliable

Firstly, this is a very underhanded deception. The average is not a rule. He has already admitted other ‘books’ of the day do not contain genitive titles. But then goes on to make the argument that since the Gospels are not genitive they are unreliable. This alone should change his argument from being unreliable to being unique or an outlier.

So, the question is why are the Gospels not genitive? We can see other books in the New Testament are clearly Genitive. For instance: majority of what was written by Paul. So the Gospels do stand out as unique. This point I do not contest they are very unique pieces of literature. What I contest is the notion that their uniqueness is therefore evidence of un-reliability.

We can see in Romans and Acts that the Early Church shared possessions equally amongst individuals but shared like a commune (for lack of a better term). This is further stated by others outside the Early Church such as Tacitus who writes about Christians living simple lives with limited possessions.
The existences of communes were not unique to the world, what was unique was the willingness to revert from civilization into a commune.
The Christian belief was that Christ does not belong to one man, but to the world in it’s entirety. The titles of the Gospels reflect this world view very well. They are not attributing the Gospel message to themselves but to Christ, while stating that this is their view point.
I personally find this argument to directed at people who read it in English as “The Gospel of John” and then be confronted with the Early Church not writing it as such would be a cultural shock. To me this is deceptive: the reason being is the Early Church has specific reason to write genitive about other topics such as Paul writing to a Church, but they firmly believe none can be genitive about Christ instead we can only be accusative and not take possession of Christ because Christ takes possession of us.

In summary
After reading what I have so far I see no evidence of lack of authorship. Instead I see blatant disregard of both literary and cultural accords. If there is a specific argument on that page where you believe it shows the Gospels are not reliable please direct me to the relevant information.

I understand that this is a form of hot-hand fallacy, in which I am stating: because the first two points are incorrect the whole thing must be incorrect. I am forming this based on primary and secondary evidence assuming this is the primary and secondary evidence of this page. I am also leaving myself open to more persuasive evidence if it exists. But, I find no reason to continue with the ‘evidence’ after what I have seen so far.

That is not the argument I have proposed.

My argument is if we are to take literature as evidence (which it is well established we can take literature as evidence). Then we come to two conclusions.
Conclusion 1 being Jesus was resurrected.
Conclusion 2 being People believe Jesus was resurrected but it was trickery.
One cannot hold the position that the resurrection never occurred if we use literature as evidence.

My argument is not based on popular opinion anymore than the argument that Wat Tyler existed is based on popular opinion. To insinuate overwhelming evidence is a fallacy of majority (agumentum ad populum) is a false equivalence. All overwhelming evidence falls into the fallacy of majority.
For example, majority of people believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States. Is it now incorrect to believe that George Washington is the first president due to the fallacy of majority? Or should we hold to literary evidence despite the fallacy of majority?
Likewise: because the evidence supports the resurrection and people at the time believed in the resurrection does not make it incorrect due to argumentum ad populum.

Edit changed example from cliche’ gravity to a literary example.

No. The author makes the valid point that:

In contrast, if you were to take all of the works that were attributed to Jesus’ disciples and their followers from the 1st-4th centuries CE (including works like the Gospel of Peter , the Gospel of Thomas , etc.), even apologists would agree that the vast majority were falsely attributed. And so, the canonical Gospels were attributed under circumstances that would have made false attributions far more likely. This, at the very least, means that we need to treat the Gospels with greater scrutiny than works that were attributed under circumstances in which forgery and false attribution were less present.

Or are you claiming that the Gospel of Peter , the Gospel of Thomas, and similar apocrypha were correctly attributed?

Interesting claim, as the article states:

Even Justin Martyr, writing around 150-60 CE, quotes verses from the Gospels, but does not indicate what the Gospels were named. For Justin, these books are simply known, collectively, as the “Memoirs of the Apostles.”

Do you have a citation for your Justin Martyr claim? Do you have any evidence of authors earlier than the article’s cited sources for anonymous reference (Ignatius, Epistle of Barnabas & the Didache), that reference the Gospels to their traditional authors?

As to Iraeneus, I would note that the article explicitly states:

It was about a century after the Gospels had been originally put in circulation that they were definitively named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This comes, for the first time, in the writings of the church father and heresiologist Irenaeus [Against Heresies 3.1.1], around 180-85 CE.

Also, if this is from the viewpoint of Peter, then why doesn’t anything in the way of personal viewpoint bleed through – as the article states:

Neither narrative [ Matthew or Mark] is an overt recollection of personal experiences, but rather focuses solely on the subject—Jesus Christ—with the author fading into the background, making it unclear whether the author has any personal relation to events set within the narrative at all.

Are you disputing this claim?

Citation for the claim that these are contained in the “earliest manuscripts”?

Citation for the claim that these are contained in the “earliest manuscripts”?

For whom? Certainly not Luke or Paul – neither of whom was there. Who is this “specific person”?

See above.

Or alternatively we could simply state that this is a false dichotomy – as you have in no way demonstrated that this claimed “unique language” must have a basis in real-life “unique experiences”.

So again, earlier than Ignatius, the Epistle of Barnabas & the Didache?

False. You have demonstrated no compelling correspondence between the contents of these works and what we know about the purported authors.

Yet again, earlier than Ignatius, the Epistle of Barnabas & the Didache?

A false accusation, given that your “evidence” is so weak and tenuous as to be laughable.

I would stick to quoting if I were you, as your skills at summarising are ruddy awful.

In conclusion, I find your unsubstantiated histrionics to be wholly uncompelling. I find your repeated imputations of bad faith to the article’s author to be distasteful. I suppose I should not be surprised to find such from someone who has the poor taste to take the equation of phylogeny with fallacy – a claim that is deeply ironic given the misrepresentation of scientific fact and torturing of logic that I have all too frequently found among the Creationist Apologetics community in particular, and the Christian Apologetics community in general.

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You are misunderstanding much of what you have read in that article and have clearly not read much of it. i see no point in arguing with you when you don’t engage the arguments of the source.

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I am going to lump some of your arguments together into a single retort, I feel you decided to quote multiple times to add volume and not quality.

I objectively disagree.

When did I make that claim? Please do not straw-man.

There is bleed through, to state there is not is to insinuate that a chronology of Jesus would have to incorporate a biography of Peter is incorrect.
Your argument is “Mark did not write enough about Peter when writing of Christ, therefore I believe Mark did not write the Book of Mark”.
This is a very weak argument. The subject of the book is not Peter, it is Christ.
The bleed through is in the writing style.

“The earliest reference to Matthew and Mark as authors of their respective gospels comesfrom Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis who wrote about 110-120 C.E. Eusebius in his Church History (3.39.16) quotes Papias who wrote about Matthew publishing a gospel. He states, “Butconcerning Matthew he [Papias] writes as follows: ‘So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew dialect, and every one interpreted them as he was able.’” Papias calls the Gospel ofMatthew, the “oracles” referring to his gospel as a work which records the words and deeds of Jesus. Papias definitely states that Matthew wrote a gospel. He also notes that his gospel wasoriginally written in the Hebrew dialect which would have actually referred to Aramaic. Later, aswe shall see, Eusebius indicates that it was translated into Greek by Matthew.Papias also talks about the Gospel of Mark. He is quoted by Eusebius in his Church History (3.39.15) also. Eusebius states, “Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ.For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, whoadapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote somethings as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.” Papias tells us several important things about Mark and his gospel. First, Mark was Peter’s interpreter, that is, Mark took what Peter was preaching about Jesus and wrote it down. Second,it was an accurate account. Third, since Peter did not put the words and deeds of Christ inchronological order when he preached about Christ, Mark didn’t either. Mark was careful aboutrecording Peter’s preaching so that he did not omit anything and did not falsify anything”

“Justin (Martyr) quotes Matthew 11:27 and 16:21 in his Dialogue with Trypho 100. He quotes Mark3:17 in his Dialogue with Trypho 106. He quotes Luke 22:44 in Trypho 103 and Luke 23:46 in Trypho 105 and he quotes John 3:3 in his first Apology 61. Although Justin does not specifically mention the name of any author of the gospels, he clearly shows that they were written by apostles and their close associates”
Early Church Fathers on the Authorship of the NT Gospels, Ron Jones

“Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.”
Ireaneus, Against Hereseys (included in the paper by Ron Jones)

You can read it for Luke and John as well, I hope you do.

The quote above is in reference to Luke 1:1-4

We do not know who it is in reference to.

See above from the paper.

Give me a bit to search through the artifacts, I do not know the names off the top of my head so it will take me a bit to find them.
I hope you do not equate asking for time with admittance of defeat :wink:

I would say it’s the other way around. I asked for the most compelling evidence in that paper
 You did not present anything I had not already discussed. Your arguments hinge on “you lack citation, and I think you are wrong”. I can bring forth more papers or citations if you wish (I am used to arguing with people who have an underlying knowledge on the topic, I apologize for not citing more often.)

It is not ‘bad faith’, but understanding of the subject. There are many topics in which Atheists can hold their ground fairly well. History is not one of them. (I understand you are going to become inflamed by this remark, I say it not to inflame but to explain why you are assuming bad faith when there is a lack of bad faith.)

It is always great to end your retort with an Ad-Hominem it really hammers home all your ‘evidence’. Bravo, well done my good sir.
Again if there is more persuasive evidence, please bring it forth.
In my free time I will search for 2nd century writings that contain Kata (name).

If you must know my name is a play on words and a Jab at Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny. A theory I was taught multiple times in my education. Not until I was saved did I revisit the topic to find out how outdated it was. Thus, it has always stuck with me as very intriguing. I hope you see the humor in the name now.

All your points above are addressed in the source I have linked to and you have refused to read. Is this reasonable?

Note that the writings Papias attributes to Matthew are not the gospel according to Matthew, because the former was written in Aramaic, while the latter is Greek. It can’t be a translation of Matthew’s original, and certainly not a translation by Matthew, as it quotes extensively from Mark, which was originally Greek. Nor can the writings attributed to Mark be the gospel according to Mark, because the gospel is chronological. It may be that both the works Papias mentions are lost sources of the gospels, but they can’t be the gospels themselves, and neither gospel (getting back to the original point) can be reasonably claimed to be an eyewitness account or to have been written by the people to whom they are attributed.

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I am not denying that written accounts can be taken as evidence.

Those are not all the options. I believe neither of them.

Conclusion 3: The resurrection never occurred, but sometime in the century or so following the death of Jesus, followers of the religious cult he inspired came to believe it had.

Now, show me how the evidence that exists would have to be any different than it is now if Conclusion 3 was true and Conclusion 1 not. My contention is that all the evidence we have is consistent with #3 and no further supernatural event is required to account for the existing evidence, based on the things we observe and know to happen in everyday existence.

This is an obviously false analogy, as the contemporary evidence for the details of George Washington’s life exceeds that pertaining to Jesus by many orders of magnitude. Also, there are no elements of his life that require that the laws of nature be violated. That is a consideration that cannot be ignored, much as you would like to.

And even so, there are elements of Washington’s life story that were once documented as true, but which have turned out to be false (the cherry tree story, that he had wooden teeth, etc.)

The example I return to is that of Qanon, which is helpful because it is happening right now in the present. We have examples of thousand of people believing fervently in an absurdity, some even devoting their lives to it. How could that be the case if people only held fervent beliefs if there was solid evidence to support those beliefs (as your argument requires)?

(This of course only works if you are not a Qanon supporter yourself. If you are, then feel free to substitute any other widespread conspiracy theory that you personally find absurd.)

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It’s not just “a source” that states the authorship of the Gospels is unknown. It is the overwhelming majority of scholarly consensus. No doubt you can find some minority and fringe figures who disagree. But that you initially said this scholarly consensus did not exist casts severe doubts on how knowledgeable you are about this topic, with all due respect.

As I said, you can just look at something like Wikipedia if you want confirmation. But if you think that is a biased source run by liberals, then you can read what the United States Council of Catholic Bishops has to say on the matter:

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You have provided no objective basis for this disagreement.

I did not claim that you had! Please learn the difference between a question and a statement.

Given your repeated and blatant strawmanning of the article, I find this deeply ironic.

I will note that you have completely failed to address the article’s point, and my own, that widespread misattribution of works from that period, such as the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas, raises questions as to whether the canonical gospels were correctly attributed.

So only of Matthew publishing a gospel, not necessarilly this gospel, and no quotes attributing the contents of Matthew to Matthew?

I would note that the article also already brought this up and addressed it.

Except that the scholarly consensus seems to be that Matthew was composed in Greek, rather than merely being translated into that language – which is hardly surprising, given how heavily it drew on Mark, which was written in Greek. See Hebrew Gospel hypothesis.


 in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries – so hardly responsive to me question about writings earlier than Ignatius, Epistle of Barnabas & the Didache.

I will note that this does not conflict with the article, which states that Justin Martyr quotes from the gospels, but states that he attributed the quotes to the “Memoirs of the Apostles” not to the “Gospel according to Matthew”, “Gospel according to Mark”, “Gospel according to Luke” or to the “Gospel according to John”. Lacking a contrary claim (let alone contrary evidence) on attribution, this substantiates nothing.

Already previously addressed.

I’m sorry, but nowhere does Luke 1:1-4 describe “a chronology of events for a specific person”, let alone “plainly” so. Rather it describes “things” passed down from plural “eyewitnesses” to plural listeners. The only singular persons in this passage are the author and Theophilus.

Which, as I have already addressed above, does not attribute those gospel passages to the gospels’ traditional authors.

I equate it to being unprepared, and possibly misremembering the details of your sources.

I must have missed that request. Your lack of conciseness tends to make me skim your posts.

I would suggest that this is deeply ironic, as you do not seem to have brought up any evidence that was not already addressed by the article (Justin Martyr, Ireaneus, etc).

You’ve shown little understanding of it (and that’s not just my opinion, but @John_Harshman’s as well).

What a ludicrously overly-broad generalisation! :rofl:

Not “inflamed” but rather unwilling to take seriously anything that somebody, who could say something so silly, might say.

Please let me take a moment to stop laughing sufficiently to continue 


Please learn what an argumentum ad hominem is, before you make such accusations. Whilst I make no bones about the fact that I find your manners to be atrocious as your deficient powers of composition, I did not base an argument on that observation, so it cannot be an argumentum ad hominem – or any other fallacy for that matter. It’s just me having a low opinion of you.

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I have to admit, I am flabbergasted. Plainly and simply, I am lost for words at the arguments. Not only are there a lot of them, all of them seem to further distance from the original question: “Can a scientist affirm to the Resurrection”.

There is far to much to quote and respond to individually, I would be writing a dissertation to join the ranks among Peaceful Science if I even attempted. (Joke about how many arguments to address)

I think somewhere along the lines the argument has strayed from the Resurrection to The entirety of the New Testament is unreliable. This is where my bafflement comes from, but I do believe my naivety lead to these many rabbit trails.
So let me formulate the argument from the ground up.

In the source material in which these new arguments are being formulated
( Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels » Internet Infidels ) we can see Dr. Ehrman is the primary source, being cited roughly 35 times. To give some backstory on Dr. Ehrman he is considered one of the leading NT scholars and is a former Christian , and now is a self proclaimed agnostic with atheist leanings.
I believe it is very important to point out. Dr. Ehrman does not take the position that Christ never existed. No Scholar (at least that I am well knowledgeable about) takes the position that Christ never existed. They all take the position that Christ was a real historical figure that lived from roughly 0a.d. to 33a.d.
“What ever else you want to say about Jesus, I think you can certainly say that he existed.”
“How is it possible to have so many sources (referring to the gospels only) about somebody who never existed”
“Most scholars don’t even think it’s(belief Jesus never existed) worth debating because of the overwhelming evidence” Dr. Ehrman
https://ehrmanblog.org/bart-ehrman-robert-price-debate-did-jesus-exist/
(Note, the infidels source does not quote Dr. Price once)

I mention this because I see the arguments being made by some, are in my opinion, arguing for the non-existence of Christ. Dr. Ehrman arrives to the conclusion of Christ’s existence due to some of the literature already discussed on this forum. You can watch the debate or search his blog for his entire reasoning. Or you can check out a wikipedia on one of his books. (I hope wikipedia is allowed here :wink: )

Furthermore: Since Dr. Ehrman is the established authority I will quote him on another topic being brought up fairly often. “We have four gospels written about him (Jesus). These gospels come from the very next generation after his life.” Dr. Ehrman
This does not mean that Dr. Ehrman believes the Gospels are “unproblematic”. He believes they were written within a generation of Christs’ death.
With this being said, let us find out the position that Dr. Ehrman does take on the resurrection since he is a (if not THE) leading scholar in a minority camp.

What Dr. Ehrman Believes About the Resurrection.
“I do agree that some of the followers (of Jesus) believe that Jesus appeared to them. I think that’s true
 I don’t think that Jesus (was) raised from the dead.”
“You can show historically that people claimed they saw Jesus alive afterwards, you can draw the conclusion that they probably believed it. But if you yourself agree that Jesus was raised from the dead, you are saying that was an act of God in history. What you are doing is no longer history – it’s faith.”
Dr. Ehrman

And an excerpt from a reply to one of his readers.
“Jesus’ disciples believed they saw him alive after his death, leading them to conclude he had been raised from the dead, the most important thing to stress is that there are two historical realities that simply cannot be denied. The followers of Jesus did claim that Jesus came back to life. If they had not claimed that, we would not have Christianity. So they did claim it. Moreover, they did claim that they knew he rose precisely because some of them saw him alive again afterward. No one can doubt that. It is the tradition found in Matthew, Mark, and John and it is the tradition given us by an actual eyewitness, Paul. It is multiply attested in independent traditions. And as important, nothing else is ever cited in our early sources for being any other reason for people to believe he was raised from the dead.”

So to summarize.
When I stated

This is not a Christian perspective. This is a historians perspective.

You can take the view that either the Resurrection occurred (A view that I take)
Or you can take the view that the apostles and disciples believe the Resurrection occurred, when in reality it never did. (A view that most of you take).
You can take the view of Mythisism that is to say that Jesus never existed
 I would caution against this as the vast majority of scholars find this view ignorant of the evidence. I personally believe majority of the arguments which appear to lead into mythisism are misinformed positions of the second conclusion. (Watch debate between Price and Ehrman for more information).

So I do not find it “unscientific” for a Christian to affirm to the resurrection. All literary evidence points towards a resurrection. The difference between a person who believes in the resurrection and one that does not is the difference if a person believes miracles can exist or not.

Edited mysticism into mythisism, idk why I put mysticism (probably blindly following autocorrect).

What does it mean to say you “objectively” disagree, anyway? Is that supposed to contrast with subjective disagreement somehow?

You are personally responsible for introducing all these rabbit trails. And below, the first thing you do in your “ground up” argument is go down another:

Nobody here has done so. It’s just another distraction from the actual topic.

It’s only literary evidence if you know the account is based on eye-witness testimony. Yet you can’t say who wrote the gospels or where they got their information from. And Paul’s vision is something else again.

Do you believe that the angel Gabriel dictated the Koran to Mohammed? Why or why not? Do you believe that Joseph Smith found the Book of Mormon inscribed on golden plates and buried on a hill in New York? Why or why not? Do you believe that the Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego and his uncle Juan Bernardino in 1531 in Mexico? Why or why not?

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I’m not, just to be clear. TBH, I am not sure anyone in this discussion is. Is that true, folks? If anyone here is arguing for the non-existence of Jesus, please say so. Otherwise, we can simplify this discussion considerably.

OK so far. That is all consistent with what I am saying.

Wrong. It only points to the fact that some people believed in a resurrection sometime after Jesus’s death. We don’t know how long after, it could have been many years.

By the same token, we know for a historical fact that thousands, if not millions, of Americans believe Trump won the 2020 presidential election and that there was massive fraud that gave the presidency to Biden. We also know this belief was in existence even before the ballots were officially counted in full, so it arose quite early after the purported event.

This does not make it is an historic fact that Trump would have won the election if not for fraud.

Do you follow what I am saying here? You still have not responded to this argument and, instead, seem to be spending a lot of time responding to arguments that no one is making.

(BTW, if you are among those who believe Trump won the election, then simply change my analogy to the belief that Biden won the election fair and square. It’ll still work.)

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I took @PhylogenyFallacy to be saying that Paul was an eyewitness to the existence of the tradition that Jesus had risen from the dead. That is helpful because it helps us to date when this belief arose.
Hopefully he will clarify.

I must say, I find it really inexplicable that Paul would be counted among the eyewitnesses to the risen Christ, when what he is describing is clearly a vision or hallucination of sorts, the kind of thing that is commonly reported by people in a state of religious delirium (not a clinical term, just a descriptive one).

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That’s another of his rabbit holes, then. We already agree that such a tradition existed. The question is how that tradition came about and whether we can say there is eyewitness testimony. Paul gives an early example of the tradition, but we don’t know where he got it.

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