That's fine, but that is not really the subject at hand.

As I've said before, the Resurrection is an infinitely modest claim, taken in the context of the rest of Jesus' alleged resume. Remember, Christians believe Jesus caused the Big Bang and can/will destroy the entire universe.



What does coming back to life have to do with the seriously ambitious claims?

I mean, although I don't believe the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected, I think that's trivial to believe compared to believing that a Being occupying His body caused the big bang and will destroy the universe. This is VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY hard to believe.

In particular, I don't think Jesus believed it.

Ok good that's what I thought.

Sort of. Let me clarify.

Take the level of evidence for the resurrection (a higher level indicates a stronger probability that the event actually occurred). Presumably this level is somewhere between the level you'd give to the evidence for Mormonism and the level you'd give to the evidence that American astronauts landed on the moon.

Now assume for a minute that the resurrection did not happen. There are certainly events that could transpire that would leave a trail of evidence that points toward a resurrection occurring. People are sometimes convicted of crimes they didn't commit because of this sort of thing. So my question is, how likely is it that there could be evidence as strong or stronger than the current evidence for the resurrection, given that the resurrection didn't happen?

A poker example would be if you were in a home game and you lost with four aces three hands in a row. Obviously you'd conclude you were being cheated. But I could still ask you, what are the chances that you could lose with four aces three times in a row if you weren't being cheated? In this case it'd be fairly easy to calculate, but I'm just asking for a guesstimate on the resurrection question.

There was no Jesus of Nazareth, let alone one who survived his own death.

I'm glad you brought up Sai Baba again. I can only presume that most christians assume he's a fraud. We have someone in modern times making very similar claims to that of Jesus, with more contemporaneous followers than Jesus ever had while he was alive. How can this story not serve as an important parrallel to the Jesus story. There are people today who would swear to their graves that Sai Baba performs miracles on a regular basis. He preaches. He has followers. Is this not a cautionary tale for every christian? Isn't he the Jesus who was never crucified? This is going on right now! How can he not give theists tremendous pause for reflection?

theist: "I dunno Sai Baba, I just know Jesus." *sticks head back in ground*

I guess i'm just not getting my point across.

there is no correlation between parlour tricks and spirituality. even if uri geller were "the real deal" it would have no bearing on christ or anything spiritual, because the two things are completely different. only in the eyes of someone who has zero understanding of spirituality can the two things even be mentioned in the same sentence, i have to assume that you and others in this thread who are pushing this line fall into that category.

the spiritual process is an internal one, it does not happen "out there" in the physical world, it happens within. the miracles of jesus christ were statements of spiritual authority over the physical world, demonstrating spiritual laws, regardless of if they happened or not they are simply not what true spirituality or true christianity for that matter are about. uri geller bending spoons and guessing what shape is in a sealed envelope are about as spiritually relevant as me cooking pasta on a tv cookery programme. the argument that if one can be verified the other can be too is betraying a complete lack of spiritual wisdom or knowledge.

that sounds assy but it's all the way true. take it or leave it. you guys are barking up the wrong tree, in the wrong forest, probably in the wrong country, that's how way off the mark you are.

lolz honestly? whats more likely a guy did miracles or parlor tricks? if you say "it wasn't just a guy" you don't know this. that's a bare assertion on faith and the question still holds. (as a separate related issue, "how do you know it's the son of Yahweh?" "because he did miracles" so that circle doesn't quite work err)

edit: but honestly. we have very good evidence especially thanks to modern technology that seems to suggest a pattern: every time someone claims he/she is doing magic or miracles or something of the like they are fos and tricking people into thinking they are doing magic or miracles or something of the like. I am honestly and I believe rightly convinced that if anyone tells me they can do a miracle or a genuine magic (no trickery or slight of hand etc, but i mean like.. idk black magic? not trickery but actually maaaagic stuff) I don't even have to look into it -- they are fos.

*sigh*

it doesn't matter what is "more likely", you're also completely missing the point, and bringing up a bunch of irrelevant new ones. we are talking about miracles, they are physically impossible by their very nature, you either accept them on faith or you do not, what is "more likely" has nothing to do with it. there is no room for the midle ground that people are attempting to occupy by bringing in comparisons with uri geller, sai baba, maths, etc.

the real flesh and blood of the teachings of jesus christ did not concern itself with miracles, parlour tricks, or anything else. it was about an internal process which you have either experienced or you have not. if you have not, it means nothing to you, you are a non-believer, you look for evidence in places you will never find it, and you make misguided posts like the one above.

just be happy being a non-believer and leave it at that. don't try to understand what's actually going on cos you're so way off the mark your time and energy would be better spent elsewhere. that's not meant as an insult, that's honest advice. to even begin to understand what something like the resurrection actually means and the implications it has to your life would take more dedication than any atheist would ever be willing to offer, a given being that they don't believe in such things.

there is no middle ground. there is no such thing as a non-believer who "gets it", cos if they got it, they would realise what it was actually all about, and they would believe.

edit to address your edit: magic tricks have nothing to do with spirituality. NOM

Sam Harris on Christianity, miracles, the bible, Sai Baba

Sums it up rather eloquently, imo.

Jib, are you suggesting that we assume the Gospels were written by the actual apostles, or that you believe this to be the case?

If you believe it, you see if you don't then forget about it.

It's like the kid who told the tallest stories back when you were little. Now, I don't doubt a fair degree of observer bias exists in any venue of life - but honestly this argument just plain blows.

It is very convenient I guess. You can never be proven false. You can disregard any disagreement. You can trust your belief completely. It's like a big fluffy reason never to question anything.

Believers are the ones who bring up the resurrection to non believers as proof of Jesus' divinity. They ask us to look at the evidence. Then you tell us the evidence will never convince us... seems unfair.

To me you are new age Pletho, you have taken the self-centeredness one step further though, where he has a book, you are simply, in your own mind, the final authority on "spiritual matters", whatever that is.
You have not made a single argument, everything you say boils down to a claim of magical knowledge that no one else can understand.
You alone have the wisdom, and anyone who disagrees is just not enlightened enough, so you get to patronizingly brush off their viewpoint.
I am not impressed.

Ok, I see what you are saying. And yes this is a very important question and goes into the over all "reliability" of the Gospels. This is obviously a very extensive subject. As far as your question, I think that the probability is very low that this could have happened without the resurrection. Because of the timeline (not enough time for a legend), the environment (one that was not conducive to legends), and the culture (one that was adamantly against what the Apostles claimed.)

The answer is very simple. Text alone will never suffice as convincing evidence for believing that the naturally impossible occurred. David's replies in this thread sum it up quite well - given that we know that these things do not occur on their own, that Jesus actually rose from the dead is a huge underdog to a variety of more reasonable explanations. Who recorded it and with what accuracy is really not an issue. In the end it comes down to the fact that the number of explanations which are known to occur are enormously more probable than a single explanation that is known to not occur. In fact, let us remove the timeline issue from it: if you saw somebody killed and then saw that person walking around a few days later, are you honestly going to tell me that the most likely explanation is that that person was resurrected? When you get to the meat of it, that is precisely what you are saying here.

Neither do I understand Craig's oft quoted argument that there weren't enough time for legends, or that the environement wasn't conducive to legends. Would you say that our environemnt today is conducive to legends? How much time did L. Ron Hubbard need to foster legends about himself and spread the legends in Scientology to get millions (? maybe around a million?) of followers? You've conveniently ignored the posts about Sai Baba: how much time did he need to create legends? And he's still alive.

Saying that there wasn't enough time for legends is just saying: "Oh no, those folks were too smart to accept all this if it wasn't true." We know from history that people are prepared to accept all sorts of things. From the first humans to the present.

And talk about a culture that was against what the apostles claimed? How is that convincing of anything? Any new belief system often goes against the previous belief system. There will always be early adopters, and conservative laggards. The early Christians were a small group who preached a message that was attractive to their recipients. Again: look at scientology: its filled with nonsense that goes completely against the "culture" and yet it has tons of followers. As I understand it there were thousands of so called "mystery religions" circulating in those days, each with their merry band of followers. Christianity had a great marketing campaign and thus was more successful in spreading.

These arguments seem like clever wordplay. Pseudo-scientific argumemts filled with smoke and mirrors.

I agree that a spiritual process happens within. We "feel in our heart" a certain way, we have a "connection" with our loved ones. But the OP concerns whether the resurrection actually happened, and that physical event is not a matter of feel or spirituality.

If Uri Geller were the real deal, it would have a major impact on the validity of the claims of Christianity. Christians believe that Jesus was the son of God and that he was resurrected. Non-believers believe that resurrection did not occur because every other supposedly supernatural event--such as Geller bending spoons with his mind--has proven to be bogus. There are far more likely explanations for these events than supernatural ones. But if Geller truly has supernatural powers, it increases the odds that Jesus did by a lot.

It is not untypical, after the appearance of a meteor in the sky, for the public authorities to receive phone calls from people claiming to have seen faces peering out of the portholes of the UFO. These people might be liars, they might be delusional, they might have hallucinated, they might have "wanted" to believe it was a UFO, they might have been mistaken. We can come up with a long list of possible reasons why they claimed to have seen this. But the least likely explanation is that there actually were faces peering out of portholes on a UFO.

However, if one time there actually was a UFO, then the odds of them being correct go up exponentially.

The fact is that much spirituality, much official religion, is based on parlor tricks. Most people require their God to have great powers, that's why he's God. More than half of Americans believe they have guardian angels, 20% say God has spoken to them personally, 25% say they've seen miraculous healings. Four in five believe in miracles.

If you want to talk about something that occurs within your heart, that is a realm that nobody else can address. But if we're talking about the likelihood of a physical event having occurred, that indeed can be addressed.

IDK if theres any value in a whole thread about my experience w Sai Baba, but I am a Christian, and I spent a month at his ashram in Bangalore India in 2004.

this is a really good point.

the problem is that jib is going to say its not just the resurrection, but everything else that came along with it. every unverified miracle is used to bolster the legitemacy of every other unverified miracle.

do you think sai baba is performing miracles?

If I take what I saw firsthand over a month there, absolutley not. In fact he was wheel chair bound because of a broken foot.

HOWEVER I cant tell you how many "personal" accounts I got from people who swear they have seen him produce rings spit up gold etc etc etc. 100's.

One of the more interesting accounts was from one of my roomates, who said he was doing some "spiritual seeking" back home in South Africa, never heard of or saw Sai Baba in his life, and he tells me Sai Baba came to him in a dream and told him to come out to the Ashram and follow him etc etc. This guy is a level headed father of 3 working in the import export business in SA, incredibly normal, and swears by that experience. I dont know if he had it or not, but there is certainly a "phenomenom" occuring surrounding Sai Baba, but from me perspective it just ammounted to legend and fairytale.

Certainly made me question a ton about how what I belive is any different though.

Also, from my experience with Sai Babas followers, I would say that it is far less likely that people who followed Jesus lied about anything if the stories are not true about him but instead, stemming from hope and deep belief in Christ saw things that maybe didnt happen. Again this is a Christian perspective, and I believe in Christ, BUT there was a strange energy and hopeful belief in Sai Babas followers that made everything they saw "magical" know what I mean? Sun shines its all of a sudden a "miracle from swami". I remember one night there was a crescent moon with a star just at the bottom tip, it was actually admittedly a very cool thing to see, something I havent seen before or since, but within 10 minutes youve got 400 people hanging out the balconies looking up at the moon thanking Swami for doing this, then breakfast comes around and people are still talking about it and accepting it was a miracle etc etc etc. No malicious intent, not trying to mislead, just how they saw it. And to me it was just "special". 4 years later the roomate still sends me emails talking about that night.

Of course religion forces us into some very speculative psychology. To be Christians, we really need credulity to be inversely related to proximity to Christian belief.

Viz.---Jews are less likely to be deluded than Muslims, but Muslims tend to be wiser than Hindus, who still (by recognizing the supernatural) are clearly much harder to deceive than the National Academy of Science, which is overwhelmingly atheist.

On the other end of the spectrum, credibility crescendos up through the ages until it reaches the authors of the Gospel, who for all practical purposes were impossible to deceive. (And completely immune to normal human self-deception. Goes without saying.)