I’m not referring to the very peculiar and narrow context in which you are discussing. I am talking about how one generally approaches the task of rationally determining whether or not something is true. I am quite aware that, on this one specific issue, there are people who throw out the rules and go about it in a completely irrational manner. At least one Christian in this discussion has admitted that.
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I can’t speak for Valerie, but if it was me I’d throw you out of a plane and see what happened.
Just because I can do it doesn’t mean I always will.
How very Argentinian of you.
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But there have been many many other Christian martyrs who definitely did not see Jesus alive for themselves. Justin, for instance. Or Polycarp.
They were not the founders of the religion.
Neither are you. But you believe Jesus was resurrected.
Because I know I need grace and because the founders of the religion saw the resurrected Jesus. There isn’t another explanation that makes any sense, unless you believe miracles cannot happen so have to invoke a more complicated explanation.
I have no opinion on whether miracles happen. I am judging the claims of the “resurrection” by the same standards I judge any other claim. Those who believe in the resurrection have to engage in massive amounts of special pleading. e.g. when they discount a mass hallucination as a possibility because it is not likely according to medical evidence.
I have already described what I see as the most likely explanation. So far you have not indicated you have even understood it, never mind offered a valid response.
My apologies that I missed something you were looking for a response to. Could you point me to the right post for your explanation? I’m involved in too many threads and I found others I missed.
It’s quite simple: People involved in religious cults will often believe ridiculous things for no good reason, at times with such fervour that they will give up their lives rather than renounce their belief. There are many examples of this, one of which I have mentioned (The Heaven’s Gate cult)
We know that the Gospels are not contemporary or eyewitness accounts but, rather, are compilations of stories that had been told about Jesus and his first followers by the early Christians, which were written in the form we know them likely around AD 70 or later. As such, they are records of the beliefs of these early followers, and not necessarily of historic events that happened during Jesus’s lifetime (though undoubtedly some of these are included in the stories.)
There is nothing complicated or improbably about this. Rather, it is consistent with how we know religions and cults arise and develop in other instances.
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Unless you believe Jesus preached at another time than around 33 AD., there were people alive to dispute what the early Christians said about Jesus. So where are records of that? Why aren’t there any stories of people squashing this cult by showing them Jesus body?
Just because some people give their lives up for ridiculous things, doesn’t mean all people do. There are plenty of people who are valid heroes and risk their lives for something they believe to be important. So this goes back to motivation. If it was a hallucination again, there probably would have been someone that would have said - hey look, the body is right here, you guys are dumb.
Forty years later? I would assume that these hypothetical ‘real eye witnesses’ would have long forgotten events (if they weren’t Christians, it’d have just been another execution – which the Romans did routinely). Also, this assumes that even if they were alive, they were living in the area where the Gospels were published, and read them (or had the Gospels read to them).
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Why would anyone bother to do that? You assume Christianity was this massive organized force that the Roman Empire needed to “squash.” There is no reason to assume the authorities were even aware that some followers had come to believe Jesus had been resurrected, if the belief even had begun at that time, and no reason to assume they would have cared.
But it means that it is an indisputable fact that people will give up their lives for things that are untrue. So if some of the early Christians gave up their lives in the belief that Jesus was resurrected, this does not mean their belief was true.
Where are the records or people telling the members of the Heaven’s Gate cult “Look, you can use this telescope. See any spaceship? No, right?”
I don’t believe it was a hallucination.
If they were running around saying Jesus had come back from the dead, I’m sure there were lots of people saying “You guys are dumb.” Just as I’m sure people told the Heaven’s Gate cult they were dumb to castrate themselves and believe a spaceship was coming to take them to another world. Didn’t change their minds, though, did it?
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Do you see Heaven’s Gate cult today after people died for it? The church just kept growing after Stephen was martyred.
Only saying “40 years later” because most scholars agree that if the writers knew the temple was destroyed they would have included it in the gospels. It’s just harder to prove they were written only a few years after Jesus’ death, though there’s a theory that the gospel of Matthew was and I agree with it. Paul’s letters are considered earlier than some of the gospels.
I don’t really know how many of them are still around compared to how prominent Christians were at a similar point after the death of Jesus. If you’d watched the video, you would have seen that there is one guy who did not take part in the suicide but still believes in the faith and believes he was spared to spread the word. Maybe he is the Saul of Tarsus of the Heaven’s Gate, who know?
In any event, it is not clear what argument, if any, you are trying to make. That Christianity continued to spread does not mean it is true. Islam is currently spreading faster than Christianity, not to mention other cults that have spread rapidly in recent years such as Scientology.
No, “most writers” do not agree with that. Just some Christian apologists.
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This is false. John 21:20-25 explicitly tells us who wrote the gospel of John. So it is written in the Bible that the apostle John wrote the book of John.
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This passage makes no mention of the name “John”. (That the author of the Gospel attributed to John styled themselves “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is not in dispute.)
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I missed this comment. But I can’t remember if I shared this video already. @Michelle you’d probably like it. This hypothesis makes a ton of sense - much more than Mark being the earliest gospel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuQ7dza1NVY&t=85s Best listen to a theologian who can read all the church fathers in their original languages using the original texts, rather than the Catholic bishops.