The Ultimate Conundrum.

[Abdullah the Butcher]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2213257/Really-REALLY-fast--Thats-quickly-universe-expanding-according-accurate-estimate-science.html

 

Scientists have given the most accurate estimate yet of how fast the universe is expanding.

 

A team of astronomers used Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope to clock the expansion of the cosmos at a phenomenal 46 miles per second per megaparsec.

 

You'd have to be going pretty damn fast to reach the edges of the universe, in about 6 billion years other stars won't even be visible in the sky from Earth, which will be obliterated out of existence when the Milky Way galaxy collides with the Andromeda galaxy. Our Sun might have gone supernova by that time already in which case Earth would already be destroyed. Hopefully Raptor Jesus steps in and teleports Earth to safety.

[strigori]

 

I guess the basic question on Christianity is this.

 

To you, did Jesus rise from the grave or not?

 

I have said this before in a topic somewhere else but I'll type it out again. Jesus, and his followers existed that can't be refuted. Jesus' closest disciples that were with him the night he was arrested were absolutely TERRIFIED of being associated with Jesus in fear of what would happen to them. 3 days later Christ is believed to have risen, and appeared to them, and proved to them that he was in fact ALIVE! So they went out to preach until they were killed for doing so while never wavering in their proclamations that Jesus IS Lord.

 

People don't just go from being terrified from association to be willing to get martyred for that same association and what they saw as truth and believed.

 

So did Jesus rise from the grave or not?

 

I think he did, but, thats just me. Everyone is free to make their own choice.

Yeah, even people who don't believe in God or Jesus would have to admit that something significant happened at about the time of Jesus' crucifixion to bolster the disciples. They went from being afraid to admit they knew Jesus for fear of persecution, to fully devoting their lives to spreading Christianity up to the time of their rather violent deaths.

 

People spend their time spreading Scientology. A religion dreamed up by a sci-fi author who actually said that to attain immortality, invent a religion. Every other religion when getting off the ground had rabid fanatics who spent their lives spreading the word. It does not equate to proof.

[Husker_x]

I guess the basic question on Christianity is this.

 

To you, did Jesus rise from the grave or not?

 

I have said this before in a topic somewhere else but I'll type it out again. Jesus, and his followers existed that can't be refuted. Jesus' closest disciples that were with him the night he was arrested were absolutely TERRIFIED of being associated with Jesus in fear of what would happen to them. 3 days later Christ is believed to have risen, and appeared to them, and proved to them that he was in fact ALIVE! So they went out to preach until they were killed for doing so while never wavering in their proclamations that Jesus IS Lord.

 

People don't just go from being terrified from association to be willing to get martyred for that same association and what they saw as truth and believed.

 

So did Jesus rise from the grave or not?

 

I think he did, but, thats just me. Everyone is free to make their own choice.

 

I'll try to be brief but you've made several specious claims that spring from the way you frame the choice. The argument you have presented is a version of a common apologetic. "Why would _____ die for a lie?" The problem really rests in the first bolded assertion. Technically you're right, the existence of Jesus cannot be refuted. Nor can the existence of God or unicorns, for that matter. The problem is, as a matter of history, it cannot be confirmed either. The gospels are anonymous propaganda tracts written many decades after the events they describe. They are not eye witness testimony, but even if they were, it would change little. There is no good reason at all to think what they claim as history corresponds with reality.

 

As to what Jesus's followers did after his death (assuming happened--and it is an assumption, nothing more), the evidence that the disciples existed, or that did said or did anything, is as lacking as it is for Jesus himself, including the stories about some of them getting killed for what they did, said, or were claimed to have believed. All of this, every bit--the whole story, back to front--is nothing but third-hand hearsay at best.

 

I'll take a point from Bart Ehrman to make my view a little clearer. History is the study of what most probably happened in the past. Because a miracle is by definition the least likely explanation of any event, the claim that Jesus rose from the dead cannot be a historical claim. It is a dogmatic claim. The fact that I can't refute or disprove Jesus's existence or his resurrection does not pose a problem for me. There's a lot of crazy ideas from history I can't "refute." But I can't prove it did happen, either, and that's far more important. In fact I can't even bring the smallest shred of evidence to bear on the case. And neither can anyone else. Add to this a couple of stories of people like Joseph Smith getting blown away for their faith and I don't really have a difficult time resolving this supposed paradox.

[Landlord]

x, don't disagree with anything you said, but i was hoping you would touch on this and you didn't.

 

 

 

say the crucifixion and the disciples' actions following his death were fabricated. a compelling argument to the reliability that they aren't fabricated is that the movement took hold period. but not only did it take hold, it took hold quickly amongst religiously zealous jews that were essentially declaring treason on their faith and tradition by embracing the movement. That would be something akin to a bunch of midwestern white kids suddenly converting to Islam - there would have to be, if not a true reason, then at least a very compelling reason for something like that to happen.

[tschu]

Gods were invented in the yonder days when we humans had no understanding, nor even the framework to understand things like seasons, weather, climate, the sun and stars, the earth, and what life actually is. So our pathetic brains came up with the explanation of a god or set of gods - there have been thousands - that created the universe and control it. Over time that view became accepted and ingrained, passed down, written down, and turned into a whole system of beliefs and establishments larger than itself.

 

We understand our world now. We do not need to take the lazy route anymore and blame/credit things to a magical deity.

[sd'sker]

x, don't disagree with anything you said, but i was hoping you would touch on this and you didn't.

 

 

 

say the crucifixion and the disciples' actions following his death were fabricated. a compelling argument to the reliability that they aren't fabricated is that the movement took hold period. but not only did it take hold, it took hold quickly amongst religiously zealous jews that were essentially declaring treason on their faith and tradition by embracing the movement. That would be something akin to a bunch of midwestern white kids suddenly converting to Islam - there would have to be, if not a true reason, then at least a very compelling reason for something like that to happen.

how quickly did it take hold?

 

scientology could be the predominant religion 2000 years from now and people will be having a similar conversation.

[Landlord]

how quickly did it take hold?

 

scientology could be the predominant religion 2000 years from now and people will be having a similar conversation.

 

 

 

Well, assuming (without too much of a stretch) the reliability of Paul's letters actually being real letters written by Paul or someone to different churches around the area, soon enough that he referenced the eye witnesses of the resurrection and encouraged people to go talk to them as they were still alive.

 

 

Which is kind of what I'm getting at - it's not like the first believers were thousands of years removed from it like we are. They were people that witnessed it, or people that knew others who witnessed it/claimed to have witnessed it and the immediacy of the movement combined with the friction it caused with the jews and the roman government contribute to the legitimacy of the story if you ask me, because it would have been significantly easier to refute and also did not offer much in the way of incentive to those who believed.

[Husker_x]

x, don't disagree with anything you said, but i was hoping you would touch on this and you didn't.

 

 

 

say the crucifixion and the disciples' actions following his death were fabricated. a compelling argument to the reliability that they aren't fabricated is that the movement took hold period. but not only did it take hold, it took hold quickly amongst religiously zealous jews that were essentially declaring treason on their faith and tradition by embracing the movement. That would be something akin to a bunch of midwestern white kids suddenly converting to Islam - there would have to be, if not a true reason, then at least a very compelling reason for something like that to happen.

 

Hey Landlord,

 

I think it's a fair point. And right there, that last line, is absolutely true. The only thing I might change is the noun "reason" from singular to plural. When you look at the spread of any religion in its historical context, you have to try to recreate a model of the conditions in which the meme spreads. This isn't always easy, but it's necessary, because whether you believe in a higher power or not, it's clearly a fact religions begin, spread, and go extinct.

 

I know I've talked a few ears off about this already, but take Buddhism (or Islam or anything, really) as a comparison. Siddhartha Goutama was, like Jesus, probably a real person. A lot more needs to be explained by saying he never lived than the core of his teaching survived time's onslaught with a lot of window dressing. I don't know that we face the binary of truth vs. fabrication in either case; more probably it is something in between. Siddhartha lived in a time of religious upheaval and confusion. He lived in northern India, what is now Nepal, at a time where asceticism and renunciation were common practice but neither the ascetics nor the traditional Hindu priests were responding to the needs of the time. His teaching of the "Middle Way" provided a better alternative than what anyone else was selling. Siddhartha didn't invent Nirvana, or Enlightenment, or contemplation (our more specialized word "meditation" does not have a counterpart in the original language), but nevertheless his movement contains all these things and grew popular largely as a reaction against the behavior of the priestly caste of his day. In fact, like Jesus, the Buddha did away with the caste system as well as gender differentiation altogether.

 

The New Testament paints a similar kind of picture. You find sectarianism everywhere. You have the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Zealots––all different, all contradictory, and to hear Jesus or Paul tell it, they weren't exactly model citizens of the Kingdom. The idea that a new sect of Judaism could emerge and take root in the area it started is not strange to me. I think the novelty of the story in Christianity––the character and social ideas of Jesus himself––were the main draw. Especially when compared against its historical background. The "You have heard it said . . . but I say unto you" sentence structure Jesus often uses seems to indicate Jesus was probably addressing an audience looking for something they didn't already have. They saw the mainstream religion of their time and place as corrupt, and the new faith as the antidote, not a form of treason. Let's not forget Christianity was not one coherent thing, either. Paul spends half his breath trying to combat heresy in the first century alone, and we have plenty of historical evidence of 'false' gospels and letters, pseudepigrapha, and competing sectarian theologies.

 

Another problem is numbers. Namely, how do we know how fast the Christian church spread? The biblical figures are a bit unreliable for several reasons. The estimates I've seen are around a few thousand Jewish Christians in the first couple decades after Jesus, and then that number rises drastically when you throw in the gentiles 30-50 years after the crucifixion. It explodes when it becomes fashionable (and eventually legal) in Rome a few centuries later. The New Testament shows glimpses of feuding and persecution between Jews and Christians (and Jews and Jews, and Christians and Christians). It wasn't like a wholesale conversion. The "blood drinkers" with their "love feasts" were a controversial group, but they survived, adapted, and continued on. All religions I know of follow this pattern.

 

A little rambly here, but my point is I don't really see the "needs miraculous explanation" part of the story. Especially because the whole sequence of events outlined in the gospels is just a big black question mark. The truth is we don't know exactly what happened to make Christianity spread, but I'm sure historians could present multiple tenable hypotheses. Remember we are talking about the first century Roman Empire, where every imaginable kind of religion existed and was practiced. In American prisons today, Islam spreads rapidly. Does Islam have to be true for this to be the case? Of course not. But something is happening indeed. History is filled with little implausible twists of fate. Should we be surprised by them? We are talking about humans and their deepest wishes and fears, after all.

[Scratchtown]

 

I guess the basic question on Christianity is this.

 

To you, did Jesus rise from the grave or not?

 

I have said this before in a topic somewhere else but I'll type it out again. Jesus, and his followers existed that can't be refuted. Jesus' closest disciples that were with him the night he was arrested were absolutely TERRIFIED of being associated with Jesus in fear of what would happen to them. 3 days later Christ is believed to have risen, and appeared to them, and proved to them that he was in fact ALIVE! So they went out to preach until they were killed for doing so while never wavering in their proclamations that Jesus IS Lord.

 

People don't just go from being terrified from association to be willing to get martyred for that same association and what they saw as truth and believed.

 

So did Jesus rise from the grave or not?

 

I think he did, but, thats just me. Everyone is free to make their own choice.

 

Technically you're right, the existence of Jesus cannot be refuted. Nor can the existence of God or unicorns, for that matter. The problem is, as a matter of history, it cannot be confirmed either. The gospels are anonymous propaganda tracts written many decades after the events they describe. They are not eye witness testimony, but even if they were, it would change little. There is no good reason at all to think what they claim as history corresponds with reality.

 

Ok, to make this an easy comparison, lets take the internet completely out of the equation. Lets say I started to copy the story and history of Nebraska football through the many years it has been around. I get all of the information from the eye witness "official" records. Then all the official records get destroyed with none to be found.

 

2000 years later, my book is the only thing that has record and account of Nebraska football that depicts the lost information. Even though I copied it directly from the official records (original copy) etc...Does it become discredited over time too?

 

I'm sure you get my point.

 

How do we know anything longer than our lifetimes ever happened? Before the invention of the camera/ability to film and take pictures, we really can't technically know if what we hear is true because it comes from "third party accounts". But, we would argue about how these other things in history really happened, and existed...why? Because we have FAITH, faith in the person that told us, faith in the book that we read, faith on the credibility of said things.

 

Again, my point is that the Bible is quickly undermined in being discredited, but do we do that on the history of Alexander the Great? (Pry a poor example but it helps make the point).

 

 

[carlfense]

 

Again, my point is that the Bible is quickly undermined in being discredited, but do we do that on the history of Alexander the Great? (Pry a poor example but it helps make the point).

Yes, actually.

[EbylHusker]

Many of the "historical" aspects of the Bible are shouded in uncertainty, to say the least. Scholarly uncertainty. Much more so than some other things. All records of events from ancient periods are examined with healthy skepticism. The difference is that many people around the world simply accept the Bible as pretty close to historical fact - and that's where the criticism comes from.

[HUSKER FREAK]

And it always points back to the Bible

[knapplc]

And it always points back to the Bible

No, it doesn't. This is the biggest problem facing rational conversation - the uninformed fall back on a specific position, using the circular logic of "the bible says the bible is true and infallible," and there's nothing more to be said.

 

The bible is not a historical document, and was never intended to be. It's a collection of stories about a group of people who believe something. It's not a textbook, it's not verified, and it's not proof of anything.

[HUSKER FREAK]

Yes...And talking circles is just talking circles and not proving a damn thing.

[NUance]

 

And it always points back to the Bible

No, it doesn't. This is the biggest problem facing rational conversation - the uninformed fall back on a specific position, using the circular logic of "the bible says the bible is true and infallible," and there's nothing more to be said.

 

The bible is not a historical document, and was never intended to be. It's a collection of stories about a group of people who believe something. It's not a textbook, it's not verified, and it's not proof of anything.