fwiw, i dont think most atheists think the followers of christ were lying. i personally do not. but mistaken, yes.

also, this deserves more attention. this is in a day and age where people should know better. how hard would it have been for heartfelt believers from 2,000 years ago to be somewhat confused or mistaken?

it should do more than give you pause about the miracles of christ.

Dat's my point! Jib?

My faith says yes. But I cant prove it. To me the strongest "evidence" is that of the 12 guys who were closest to him, all but two went on to die as martyrs for His cause. This in and of itself proves nothing obv, but it is suggestive that those most likely to know for sure-- believed it enough to die for it.

Has this been confirmed by anything other than church lore?

there are certainly historians who recorded these deaths but as the most detailed historys are from Roman Christians you will probably assume bias (rightfully so I suppose)

Not me. I have clearly stated evidence or lack thereof is not part of the equation. aside from the fact there is none, evidence is not what it's about, faith is.


This is a totally fair point, i can see how it must have come across, hence the apology in the previous post for sounding like an ass.

i can't put it any other way though.

spiritually awakened people will "get it", spiritually unawakened people won't. guess which side of the argument each of those two types of people will chip in on? and there we have it, neither side getting through to the other.

you can only "get it" in a spiritual sense, you will never "get it" in an intellectual, academic, evidence/science-based sense, because this is not what it's about.

non-believers are asking for something that doesn't exist, and too often, believers are attempting to provide it instead of being blunt and admitting the only "evidence" a person will ever have is a spiritual understanding, which you can only have once you have become spiritually awakened, which no atheist is by default, and so each person is either in one camp or the other.

i am not talking about a wishy-washy viewpoint on the world, i am talking about a very real process that occurs within a person, and it has either occured within you or it has not. if it has, you know about it, and you are forever on a spiritual path; if it hasn't, you are simply not able to comprehend the nature of true spirituality and this is betrayed by your every word. you seek in the wrong places, you try to fit spiritual things into reductionist containers that they simply will not go into. this is why these "debates" never go anywhere. it is so much more honest, productive, practical and effective to simply say "I don't believe in that bullsh*t. end of story" i will forever accept and understand that stance more than I will someone who doesn't believe in that bullsh*t trying to mold it into some sort of vaguely workable hypothesis that they can tally with their own non-spiritual perspective. it simply doesn't go into one; you either cross over into believer territory, or you reject it out of hand: you don't try to drag it kicking and screaming across that divide, because it will not go.

i'm not trying to talk down to you or act like a bigshot, i am trying to offer an honest explanation wrt these types of conflicts which forever occur on forums like rgt. you need to be a spiritual person to understand the first spiritual thing, you cannot fit that understanding into an intellectual container. spiritual thoughts are not made of the same material as intellectual ones, i can't put it any better than that.

take it or leave it, but believe me you will never get anywhere looking for evidence of, for example, the resurrection of jesus christ.

no one doubts their sincerity.

I'm not expressing an opinion here because I simply have no information, but there is always the very real possibility that these guys did know that they were making stuff up and were trying to stir up a movement. They could have all sorts of motives to do so. Also, the actual authors of the NT (assuming they weren't the initial apostles) could also have been deliberately making stuff up to manipulate people for various ends.

I'm not saying that's what happened. And their reasons may have been good: for example, The book of Daniel was almost certainly made up, but it was done to galvanize the people.

Just saying, they may have been sincere, they may not have been. Or they may have been trying to do go by being a little hyperbollic let's just say, with the truth.

ya, true.

what i should have said is...even with absolute sincerity, we dont have any good reason to accept their astonishingly unlikely claims. you can be 100% sincere, and 100% wrong. it happens all the time, with far more plainer claims.

i was once very spiritual. so ive seen spirituality from the inside as a heartfelt believer and practitioner, as well as from the outside as a skeptic and an atheist. only someone who once was spiritual and then dropped it can understand spirituality fully, from both sides. im sorry i cant explain it any better than that. its just the way it is.

i was a born and raised thoroughbred atheist from day 0 to year 20. only once my spiritual eyes were opened outside of the confines of the brain-washing cults that many claim as their highly suspect yet apparently unbiased experience of spirituality did I start to understand what the human spirit actually is, and how it relates to personal spirituality on the one hand, world religions on the other, and a whole host of other issues on the other.

but you wouldn't understand, that's just the way it is etc.

well i was unspiritual for a long time too. and then i became spiritual as you are right now. and my spiritual eyes were opened. but ive taken the next step and have once again become unspiritual. so ive seen spirituality from another angel that you havent.

but you couldnt understand that.

lol this is getting good.

i await the next step to restore my atheism, by which time you will be spiritual again, and we can come on here and have it the other way around.

until the next time...

either way, ill always be one step ahead, and hence can condescendingly tell you that you cant understand my position until you get here.

spiritually awakened then spiritually deadened people will get it, spiritually awakened people wont. not trying to talk down to you or anything though. its just an honest explanation.

Fair enough. If you say "I dont believe in baby jesus because there is evidence or reason to do so but because of faith. Because mommy and daddy told me it was what I should believe so I believe it" Then thats fine. As long as you don't think your belief is anything more than faith, ie, believing in something without evidence or contrary to evidence, cool.

Ok thats fine for you.

But then i look forwarded to you criticizing believers who use the bible and its stories as evidence of its God. Because the resurrection story might be one of the most common stories used to prove its God in my experience.

If a believer is going to say hey look God is real because of Jesus resurrection story. Then they are bringing up the evidence.

One of the strongest evidence in favour of Islam is the amount of young men willing to sacrifice their lives in the name of the holy war.
This in and of itself proves nothing obv, but since they believe in a cause enough to give their life for it it is suggestive to the amount of truth in the teachings.

sooo true. no one would ever die for a false cause imo.

I can't get back to this thread all that often so I hope you'll excuse me if my responses end up being 40 posts later. Also thanks for bearing with me, I promise I'll get to my point next post if you humor me on this one.

Can I ask you to be a little more specific about your answer above? I don't need you to say 1 in 9 billion or something, just give me a reasonable idea of what "very low probability" means to you. It might be useful to compare it to other events we have evidence for. Once you've answered that, what would you say the prior probability that someone coming back to life after dying is?

Really what I'm looking for is a comparison of likelihoods. What is the likelihood a random person would somehow leave evidence that they came back to life even though they didn't, verse the likelihood that a random person would actually come back to life?

To answer a possible objection you might have, it's valid to use a random person here even though you might say that the Son of God is not a random person. To see this just imagine instead of asking what's the likelihood that a random person will come back to life, just ask what's the likelihood that a random person is the Son of God.

By church lore you mean historically reliable documents, yes.

This is the type of thing that makes me believe that so many atheists are so bias that nothing could convince them.

If you want to use someone like Sai Babas as an example it would first have to be analogous to what we are talking about. Replace spitting in a cloth and producing a trinket with rising from the dead after a public execution by his "enemies". And replace Indians with hardcore evangelical christians. Then it would be analogous and worthy of pause.

The last time this came up I looked into it a bit and could find no source other than church lore. I don't really feel like doing it again right now, but it seemed like every source was quoting the same source, and I could find no independent verification. Do you have other information on that?

FTR those involved in the story i was mentioning were not Indians (IDK why that even matters). The indians all live outside the ashram in the city, the ashram is full of mostly westerners who come live there for different periods of time . And I dont think hes talking about the trinkets, i think hes talking about the phenomenon where people see something like a crecent moon and a star and suddenly crowd goes wiiiiiiild.