Did anybody ever claim that all it takes to work miracles is faith in Jesus?
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Let’s recall that Joseph Smith was martyred.
Mark did, implicitly.
Yes. A flagellum is not a motor. Where ends the analogy?
Are you referring to Mark 16:17-18?
And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.
The analogy ends with mormonism being recent and Christianity being ancient. I think that covers it pretty well.
Apparitions of food sharing? Dr. Luke was quite careful to describe details that would render this theory incomprehensible. In fact, in Luke 24, Jesus was twice not recognized by them until he broke bread or greeted them.
But really, if you believe this apparition theory, you still must believe that the NT has no value whatsoever. It’s supposedly “good teaching” based upon visions and lies.
Hi @dga471, @swamidass, @Michael_Callen,
Re secular explanations for the Resurrection: have you read Kris Komarnitsky’s latest article, The Rationalization Hypothesis: Is a Vision of Jesus Necessary for the Rise of the Resurrection Belief? It is a thoughtfully argued article, which is much better in quality than most of the hypotheses put forward by skeptics, and it also exposes the deficiencies of the bereavement hypothesis. Komarnitsky makes a serious attempt to answer Wright’s argument that since the disciples were only prepared to die for Him after seeing Him resurrected, there must have been some event from outside which transformed them. See especially pages 15 to 19 of the article. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. At any rate, I must retire for the evening, as it is getting very late in my time zone. To be continued…
Ugh, would you compare Joseph Smith’s actions in his gun battle with authorities to Paul’s willingness to go to Rome to face his execution for the opportunity to speak the truth in love? When we speak of issues of science, you bring up equivocation. I always try to listen and learn. This is the shoe on the other foot. A flying teapot is not equivalent to Jesus Christ. A willingness to drink Kool Aid is not equivalent to martyrdom.
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Thank you for engaging, Vincent.
Interesting. I haven’t read the article in full, but I do observe that the author concedes the plausibility of his theory relies on lack of access to Jesus’ corpse/grave:
The second circumstance that may help explain why Jesus’ death was rationalized but not the deaths of any other ancient Jewish Messiahs has to do with access to Jesus’ corpse. Many failed Jewish Messiah movements probably had access to the corpse of their dead Messiah, perhaps on the battlefield or visually seeing their Messiah’s body on the cross as it was devoured by vultures. This would have made it difficult to rationalize the Messiah’s death in a way that included favorable actions to his body after death. However, I think it is plausible that Jesus’ followers did not have access to Jesus’ corpse. Since the vision hypothesis also requires that Jesus’ followers did not have access to Jesus’ corpse in order for them to believe that Jesus was bodily resurrected, and to prevent this article from being longer than it already is, I will not make any arguments for this here. I will only make the point that if Jesus’ followers did not have access to Jesus’ corpse, then any rationalization of Jesus’ death that entailed actions to his body would have had a much easier time emerging because nothing could be empirically checked.
He then cites Bart Ehrman on this. This is why I made sure, in my article, to mention Ehrman’s arguments about Jesus’ burial. They are not endorsed by specialists on the topic, as @Freakazoid pointed out in his helpful reference to Craig Evans.
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Actually, he was killed by a lynching party, not authorities, though he did have a gun. Didn’t Peter have a sword? Paul, you will note, had a vision; he didn’t actually see the risen Christ. Even how, distortions enter the stories.
The protasis, “if all it takes to work miracles is faith in Jesus”, is false—so such wonderment would be unfounded. (And, yes, I realize that your statement is rhetorical.) Moreover, are you sure that anyone here has made such a claim?
As to Jesus’ teaching on having “mustard seed” faith, context is essential.
Moreover, in the teachings of the New Testament, faith in Jesus is not just a lack of doubt or a sense of assurance. It is founded on a response to the will of God, not simply the will of the Christ-follower.
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And I’m not sure what that means, but I expect it’s bad.
Well of course it’s false. But it is what Mark seems to be saying.
Here we are 2 millenia removed from the purported events, and people believe a man was resurrected on the say-so of mere texts. It seems to me this all by itself proves the gullibility of religious believers.
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And before there were these “mere texts,” why did they believe?
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I did not read Mark’s post in that way—but that was because I think I understood where he was coming from theologically (and I am sympathetic to the position which he was explaining.) Thus, I can see why his statement could easily be misunderstood.
I agree we normally don’t reason as proper Bayesians. But we should. The fact that people can derive wildly different probabilities for various hypothesis is pretty much captured by GIGO. Some people are using patently irrational priors. The fact that these people can’t be convinced that they are doing this just highlights an issue with human cognitive biases, not with the logic of empirical reasoning itself.
But ANY system of reason, or estimating probabilities will be vulnerable to this problem. You can start with unwarranted and absurd assumptions and refuse to let go of them. There’s no argument where this won’t be a problem.
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