I wouldn't think frequency would come into play. Demons and ghosts are said to be everywhere and supernatural by many Christians. Prayers and God presence in them is supernatural? And if i could think better and not sick or was a lot smarter could name natural things which are infrequent. Life on other planets...


But arent you are kind of going in the direction of MB with this? Basically whats measurable is natural.

I'm just making the point that it isn't inconsistent for theists to believe in the order of nature and that it can be examined and understood. The ones who didn't believe in that order were the Greeks and Romans who thought gods caused everything they didn't understand and were random and arbitrary, and so why investigate the natural world, or eastern religions who think nature is just an illusion and so can't be investigated. The science you love so much is indebted to the fact that theists can distinguish between the Creator and the creature.

Right, if we try to reason out what a god could possibly be or in what sense it might be real, or how people could know this, or specifically how people who claim to know this claim to know it, we're getting dangerously close to straw man arguments. Remember, atheists are strident and closed-minded.

If you want to stay on point, remember that there are other ways of knowing things besides the natural ways (i.e. "that which happens regularly, can be predicted, for which we propose laws such as the law of gravity"), there is also feeling God in your heart, or for example refusing to clarify your specific faith position, but pointing out that no one else can refute anything that is falsifiable by design.

On and on we go. Take it away, Aaron!

The Romans and Greeks had a lot of inventions that came from the investigation of nature for having that philosophy.
Science to me is just knowledge or knowledge about the earth/universe. It has been gathered by man before the Gods or theists, id guess.


Idk it seems like everything should be supernatural if its created by a supernatural being. If not ok.

But if God can dabble in the natural it means to me your certainty in distinguishing them is misplaced. How would anyone know if someone with the knowledge of the universe used supernatural or natural means to turn water into wine or raise the dead...

If we can't explain it, inexplicable seems like a suitable label. No need for "supernatural".

Took the challenge. Still an atheist.

No, you believe, you just love your sin/hate God/don't want to submit to a higher authority, so you deny the God you know. WLC says so, and he can beat anybody in a high-school format-debate. Anyone.

huh?

Aren't there a number of other "resurrections" in the Acts of the Apostles? Certainly Christian tradition does not fix the number of humans resurrected at one.

As far as I can tell, when the new testament authors speak of resurrection they don't consider those events to be instances of it in the same way as Jesus.

For example when Paul writes that Jesus is the firstborn from the dead, even though the gospels say that Jesus had raised several people from the dead prior to that. I believe Paul's view can partially be explained by understanding the term in relation to existing Jewish belief about the resurrection not being person by person but a final resurrection of all the dead at the day of judgement, of which Jesus' resurrection in the present is the inauguration of a new age that will not come to completion until that future event.

In any case, even if you admit them it doesn't really change NotReady's argument very much, with regard to the applicability of prior probability of a natural resurrection.

That's pretty much it.

In addition, I distinguish between resuscitation and resurrection. Lazarus, for instance, was a resuscitation - we have no reason to think he didn't later die a natural death. At any rate, none of the "raisings" were ever denoted in the Bible as anything but connected with the power of God - no hint that the Bible authors thought there was anything normal or repeatable about them, or that they happened through natural means.

That's a completely phony distinction, though, because it moves the goal posts.

Remember, the original argument was "6 billion people and none have come back from the dead, therefore it's improbable that Jesus was resurrected". The response was "Christians only claim that one person was brought back from the dead".

Note that this response doesn't depend on the theological MECHANISM for bringing someone back from the dead. Nobody who is dead has come back to be alive again. Except Jesus.

Except it turns out it ISN'T just Jesus. You see, the people who propagated your religion and wrote its holy books claimed that lots of people were coming back from the dead. (And by the way, they don't claim they were "resuscitated", like they were given CPR or something. They claim they were dead. You think the author of Acts is too stupid to know what it means to be dead, or that he was a liar?)

Responding "well, that's different" is not a response. To believe the claims of Christianity is to believe that there was this one era when LOTS of people died and then came back to life, and that it started at the time of Jesus and ended before Acts was written. And since then, we went back to the status quo ante of "when you are dead you are dead".

The theological category doesn't matter at all. That's what your religion teaches. And thus, you can't say about Jesus "well it's only this one person who came back to life after being dead". It isn't this one person.

I did make a mistake about the number of raisings - there have been a few others. However, it's already been explained to you why that doesn't change the probability argument.

Edit: I should point out I was responding to Ehrman's probability argument - it was him that said 6 billion, only 1 resurrection. Do you think if there have been 20, all attributed to the power of God, that would get him to change his argument?

Also I believe many people were raised from the dead at the same time Jesus was raised from the dead.

I'm curious why you used the term 'firstborn'. Is there a distinguishing from others being raised from the dead and Jesus being 'firstborn'?

I was just quoting Paul, in Colossians. For him the distinction has to do with his understanding of Jesus' Divinity and importance:

I was only using it as an example of how in Paul's discussion of the resurrection his usage of the word is obviously particular in a way where he doesn't have in mind (for example) Lazarus.

Oh weak - just like that the notion of reconsidering my opinion of Paul is squashed.

Thanks WN.

LOL at the thread title.

Bart Ehrman Crucifies Christian Beliefs With This One Simple Trick! Doctors Christians Hate Him!