Bible: Word of God or Not

It would not seem odd to you if you had included the rest of what I said in your quote. I clearly differentiated the apostles account from the follower of Mohammed's account.In both cases, the followers of Christ and Mohammed are claiming a specific truth. We know the apostles were in a position to know whether Christ truly rose from the dead or not (without yet addressing the idea that He may not have been truly dead, but just seemed to be dead). I don't know whether their are supposed to have been any eyewitnesses to Mohammed's ascension (that's all I meant to indicate by my lack of knowledge of the Koran).But let's suppose for comparison sake that there truly were eyewitnesses of Mohammed's ascension (according to the Koran). Now, both groups are making adamant claims about specific truths. How do we evaluate their claims? We could give both groups free lunches, and take them at face value. But we're not inclined to do that because the nature of their claims is extraordinary, outside of the norm. So our default mode is to doubt them. If anything, they might just be some poor, underprivileged individuals looking to gain ten minutes in the spotlight, or some other form of gain. But none of that is the case when their adherence to their claims results in their death. Now we're inclined to look a lot closer at their claims because their supported by the wheight of their convictions - not at trivial cost but at the expense of their very lives...That is unreconcilable with the notion that not one but many of Christ's followers would give their lives for what they knew to be untrue.... I'm sorry, even a glance at the evidence plainly shows that to be impossible.1. Prior to his crucifixion, Jesus was flogged severely by Pilate. Historians are well aware that such floggings in and of themselves were often enough to kill a man.2. Even though the Romans traditionally made their victims carry their own crosses, Jesus was so weak from the flogging that the Romans allowed Jesus' cross to be carried by another.3. The soldier that crucified Christ were Romans - the most experienced and professional soldiers in the world. Roman Crucifixion was the ancient equivalent of the French Guillotine; They knew what they were doing when it came to this form of execution.4. The Romans broke the legs of the other prisoners to speed up their deaths. When they got to Jesus they found that he was already dead. Again, they were experienced, they knew death. But to make sure, they plunged a spear into his side and blood and water came flowing out. I'm not sure what that means to you. It seems apparent (and I've heard this theory collaborated by other doctors) that the water was a fluid build-up in the lungs, common to crucifixees because of the protrusion of the diaphragm into the thoracic cavity, caused by being suspended from the arms.5. Following Jesus' death at 3 pm, his body was left on the cross until dusk. Joseph of Arimathea wanted to bury Jesus, but Pilate, wanting to assure that He was truly dead, did not give Joseph the body until Pilate's Centurion had confirmed that he was truly dead. Joesph then proceeded to dress and anoint the body for burial. This was no quick burial in a time of war.... but rather a drawn out, deliberate process in which there remains no possibility of a false death....6. Finally, Pilate placed a large boulder in the entrance of the tomb, sealed the boulder, and placed a guard. Now if Jesus wasn't truly dead when he was buried, how did he get out of the tomb? for it was found empty. Jesus was brutally flogged, too weak to carry his own cross, crucified, stabbed in the side with a spear so that blood and water flowed, and he would have not eaten or drank in some days. And yet in that condition he is supposed to have woken up in the grave, moved the stone by himself, somehow sneaked past the guards (or rendered them unconscious or bribed them or whatever yarn you want to spin) and then showed himself to the apostles and more than 500 of his followers for a short while before disappearing from the face of the earth. How strange is it that if Jesus did was not resurrected and then Ascended into heaven, then he remained on earth, yet avoided the intense persecution that plagued his followers throughout the Roman world for following HIM. Edited by mjfloresta, : No reason given.

No, MJ, we don't know that.They were in a position to know what they believed about it. That's all one can reasonably say.You have no trouble making this distinction when you talk about martyrs from other faiths. It is when the subject turns to early Christians that the lights go off. You want to claim special privileges for your favorite religion in the absence of special evidence.You have yet to cite credible evidence for your premise: that all of the disciples went on to assert Christ had been raised and to die martyrs' deaths.The Scriptures say the disciples went into hiding after Jesus was arrested. They are referred to collectively after that, but only briefly, and the subsequent life stories of most of these 'eyewitnesses' are absent even from the Scriptures. How then are we supposed to know so much about what they did or didn't say later or about how they died?You assert. You do not demonstrate.And you have ignored a possibility I raised. Here it is again:

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What if the disciples' experience of the resurrection had the character of a mystical experience? There would be no denying its reality from their point of view. The experience would be akin to Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus or Arjuna's encounter with Krishna... and the experiences devout people in Taiwan have every day with Buddha, Guan Yin, and Matsu. The disciples would be convinced of Christ's ongoing power and existence. They would know--but theirs would not be empirical knowledge. They would experience it as truth, not fact.

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Evidence suggests we cannot rule out mystical experience as the source of resurrection beliefs. Consider:
-- the peculiarly non-corporeal nature of Jesus' appearances after his supposedly corporeal resurrection (vanishing acts, inability to be recognized);
-- the awkward fit these narratives make with others offering details about nail scars (wouldn't they have healed?) and eating fish;
-- the emotional investment already made by resurrection witnesses (already believers);
-- the departure of the risen Christ without appearing to larger crowds (Why not make one more triumphal entry into Jerusalem and ascend from there, rather than leave it to the disciples to offer second-hand testimony ten days later?);
-- the diverging nature of the Gospel accounts of this crucial event;
-- the succinct nature of the earliest narrative (short ending of Mark) that makes no claims beyond the ongoing existence and power of Christ.

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(reformatted for clarity)

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

I hate clarifying something when I've already done so at twice, maybe three times, when the confusion stems from the fact that you're clearly not reading what i'm writing.Once again, allow me to say that I make no preferential distinction between the martyrs of Islam or Christianity or Judaism.. Any claim, religious, political, or otherwise has to be wheighed against the cost.If you tell me you've got a million bucks, it's a nice story but highly irrelevant. I may believe you. Someone else may not. It doesn't really affect anything whether you're actually telling the truth or not. But if I happen to meet you in real life, and you're living out of a cardboard box, and working two jobs to make ends meet, I'm suddenly going to be very skeptical about your claim to have a million dollars.Anyone can make religious claims, they're cheap. But when someone (many someones) dies for what he either knows to be true or knows to be untrue, their claim has to be evaluated in a much more credible light. You may be able to find one person willing to die for a lie.I challenge you to find an entire group of people willing to die defending a claim that they knew to be untrue.As to your idea of an extra-corporeal appearance, I'll address that after when I return from class...

I read your entire post several times; quoting it entire would have made it seem no less odd.As to your numbered points: you are asserting the recorded beliefs of others as matters of fact to support a belief you claim to be fact.No matter how many boards you nail together, scaffolds are not foundations.

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Belief is cheap.Millions have died because they believed a lie. Magical armors against bullets have failed Chinese, Native American, and African believers, among others--all, interestingly, desperately fighting losing battles against invaders. Desperation is one breeding ground of belief.A willingness to die lends no credence to the prompting belief. People die for foolish reasons and mistaken beliefs every day.Oceans of blood--heroic, martyred, or foolish blood--do not establish even one drop of fact. It's just blood.

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Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time, madam, is all that distinguishes us from the other animals.-Pierre De Beaumarchais (1732-1799) Save lives! Click here!
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For the umpteenth time, I'm not talking about dying for something that you believe to be true, but rather for something you have experienced or you haven't.The apostles were not told of the resurrection and then they had to believe it or not. That would be taking something on faith. That's the situation that subsequent generations of believers/slash martyrs are in. The apostles were not second hand witnesses but eyewitnesses. They either saw Jesus after his death, or they didn't. Not an issue of faith at all. Jesus either appeared to them after the crucifixion, or they stole his body or in some other way it disappeared from the grave.Now, of all the possible things that could've happened to account for the absence of the body in the grave, only one aligns with the apostles story. Every other one is in contradiction to the apostles' claims. If they stole his body, they would not have died claiming he rose. If his body somehow was removed from the grave (independent of the apostles intervention) they might be confused, but still probably not willing to go to the grave on such tenuous grounds. The only scenario, under which they would have been willing to go the grave, is if their story was true...Let me use a modern anecdote since there seems to be difficulty grasping the difference between believing something and knowing something.Let's suppose you say that you've got a million bucks. Do I believe you? If you're generally a trustworthy guy, then yeah, maybe I do. If you're a known liar, or I don't really know you, then I'm more inclined to doubt you. In either case, do I really know whether you actually have a million bucks? Of course not...But then you open up your briefcase, show me the million bucks, and even let me count it to prove that it's all you said it was. Now, you're reputation doesn't matter. You may be honest as 'Abe or the Father of Lies; It doesn't really matter. It's no longer a matter of belief, but of proof.Do I know whether Jesus was alive after his death? I believe it, based on credible testimony. But I don't know in the sense that I didn't see Christ after his death, I didn't touch his flesh after his death, I didn't drink and eat with him after his death. I don't know in that sense.It's entirely different for those to whom Christ appeared post-crucifixion. They saw Christ, they touched Christ, they ate with Christ (if they're telling the truth, of course). The point is, their knowledge (insofar as their claim is true) of Christ's being alive after he died is based on fact, not rationality or reason or trust. They were first hand witnesses of the things they claimed. The test for the validity of their claims is that they died in defense of them.Your own words prove my point: Millions have died because they believed a lie. This is true. This is also the exact opposite of the Apostle's situation. They died either knowing that they were telling the truth or a lie. They did not "believe a lie". If Christ was not resurrected, then I, today, believe a lie. I wasn't there. That's not a possibility for the apostles, any more than you could believe a lie if you told me you had a million bucks and you didn't. You know you're lying. How does one even believe a lie when it's of one's own telling? Talk about oxymoron... I think we've covered this ground sufficiently by now...you're confusing belief with knowledge...

No, you continue to embrace a Christian exceptionalism that mistakes belief for knowledge.Many innocent men have gone to prison because witnesses swore, in good faith and quite persuasively, that they saw those man commit a crime. Those people were wrong. Eyewitnesses are intensely persuasive; eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. You may have seen the studies demonstrating this fact. If not, I'll locate references for you.The apostles believed they saw the risen Christ--perhaps they did. Or perhaps, like Dickens' Scrooge, it was just a bit of bad meat or an intense desire that provided their vision. Their certainty about what they saw is not evidence; even your evidence for their certainty is several times removed from the apostles themselves.Let me rephrase things for you. Millions have died--or lived--totally convinced of the truth of an error. You can repeat your claim of an epistemic exceptionalism for the apostles an umpteen times, but it is as hollow the umpteenth time as the first. Mr. Gullible, meet Mr. Inkjet.

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I don't believe that's true. As Paul said, if the resurrection didn't happen, then our faith is in vain. It is a central enough tenet of Christianity to say that if the apostles died for their faith, they died for a belief in the resurrection of Christ.

I think mjfloresta's point is that the apostles would have had first-hand knowledge of the events, rather than rely on eyewitness accounts themselves, therefore their death wouldn't have been founded on their belief in other people's words, but rather on their own conviction derived from their experiences.This is a valid point, however it is based on two huge assumptions:1) that the gospels are the first-hand testimonies of the apostles
2) that the apostles died martyrs' deaths.With respect to (1) there are tons of evidence, the debating of which is probably OT here, that suggest that the gospels were not written by the apostles, some of them not even by Jews.As far as (2) goes, there are no historical accounts that testify to any of the apostles dying in defense of their beliefs.Therefore, I don't know why either of you keep debating this. It's totally irrelevant; a moot point.Edited by Legend, : No reason given.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

I understood his point perfectly well. What made you suppose that I had not? His epistemic assumptions, contradictions, and exceptionalism are actually much larger; for example, consider the enormous conradiction between his certainty about the apostles' certainty and his readiness to recognize that his own consequent beliefs could be mistaken. Thus, in a debate of this sort, just who is confusing knowing and believing is acutely germane. Then I cannot imagine why you felt the need to comment. My interest in this debate concerns the relationship between knowing and believing, a matter near the heart of "Bible: Word of God or Not."The matter of martyrdom was a device of mjfloresta's choice to illustrate his view. Having seen a great deal of blood, I find the device totally irrelevant, moot, and morally hazardous. Given the relevance of knowing and belief to this thread, and the fact that mj continues to disagree and to offer new arguments, why wouldn't I continue to reply?I'm sure he sees it the same way, and rightfully so. After all, we are at a debate forum.

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Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time, madam, is all that distinguishes us from the other animals.-Pierre De Beaumarchais (1732-1799) Save lives! Click here!
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If it is simple, why not?

Lost me there. Why not what?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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I don't believe that's true. As Paul said, if the resurrection didn't happen, then our faith is in vain.

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Of course we can't tell if any of the other Disciples believed it. More importantly we don't know what their beliefs about the resurrection were. We can't say, for instance, that the Empty Tomb story was part of it. And James' execution seems to have been because a new High Priest - a Pharisee - decided to have a crack-down on less-strict sects and picked on the Christians. I reallty doesn't see that entitles us to assume that James had first hand knowledge of the full resurrection story as we have it now, and knew it to be true.

The resurection!"Some people probably think of the Resurrection as a desperate last moment expedient to save the Hero from a situation which had got out of the Author's control."
(C.S. Lewis Miracles)

ok. who's resurrection? how do you know about it?

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