Does (The Christian) God have Limited Power?

[_random_]

@random: is that 500 people?

After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

Yes. St. Paul is specifically addressing those who denied the Resurrection and suggesting that they turn to eyewitnesses.

 

[GhostWriter16]

@Brian- I know for a fact Socrates was an agnostic (He only denied the Greek gods, not God in general), which wouldn't qualify as atheism unless he had serious doubt of a God and said so, and Thomas Jefferson was a deist so he still believed in God.

I have no doubt there were some early Atheists, but very, very few.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

True, but people claimed they SAW HIM RISE and then they died for that belief.

http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/josh2.html

Actually none of the bibles were written by actual witnesses, so they could have being, you know, lying. Or creatively telling a myth to try and differentiate their messiah from the one actually prophesised in the Torah, so as to make themselves special, seeing as messiahs were like busses back then, none coming for centuries then loads at the same go.

Or they could have been fusing their own religious myths with those of the heathen pagans they were trying to convert in order to make it easier, just like the Church did with the majority of feast days.

And why are you qouting from an obviously biased source?

 

[Ajidica]

Yes. St. Paul is specifically addressing those who denied the Resurrection and suggesting that they turn to eyewitnesses.

Can you give me some context for that quote? How can their be eyewitnesses if nobody actualy witnessed Christs ressurection (not ascention).

@Brian- I know for a fact Socrates was an agnostic (He only denied the Greek gods, not God in general), which wouldn't qualify as atheism unless he had serious doubt of a God and said so, and Thomas Jefferson was a deist so he still believed in God.

I have no doubt there were some early Atheists, but very, very few.

There are very few Classical Hellenists now, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist. If people went around in ancient times announcing they were athiests, they likely would have been killed or ostracised.

 

[Rashiminos]

True, but people claimed they SAW HIM RISE and then they died for that belief.

Jesus Christ, the comatose vegetable?

 

[Perfection]

@Seon- Are you really trying to tell me 500 people hallucinated the same thing at the same time? Seriously?

They could have been tricked.

 

[Cu Chulainn]

Clearly no one would die for something that wasn't true! Oh, wait...

 

[_random_]

Can you give me some context for that quote? How can their be eyewitnesses if nobody actualy witnessed Christs ressurection (not ascention).

Sure. Nobody actually witnessed Christ bursting from the spiced tomb, but many people saw Christ walking around quite healthily having been crucified within the last 40 days.

 

[Cu Chulainn]

Sure. Nobody actually witnessed Christ bursting from the spiced tomb, but many people saw Christ walking around quite healthily having been crucified within the last 40 days.

Or at least the biblical author says they did. Unconfirmable hearsay is solid evidence!

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

People claimed to have seen Christ rise from the Dead, 500 people to be precise, and many of these people died for that belief. Died. Would you die for an idea you knew to be false?

So let me get this straight. The basis for your argument, and presumably your belief, is that a guy told another guy that a bunch of people said they saw something happen, and that guy, who wasn't alive when any of this was going on, wrote it down and it was summarily re-written by hand over and over again, translated through three different languages, twenty-one hundred years ago? And that's worthy of being called a fact?

 

[Cu Chulainn]

Come on, cheezy, no one ever lies about things in religious books. Just look at Scientology! I mean, Xenu must be real. Someone wrote about him! In a book!

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Creation itself testifies to a Creator. To deny one, you must convince yourself. Thus Atheism is unnatural. Thus it is wrong.

What a load of horsepuppies

@Seon- Are you really trying to tell me 500 people hallucinated the same thing at the same time? Seriously?

Wow. 500 people. There must be documentation of such a stunning event in many historical books. Is there any source outside the Bible that speaks of this amazing event?

You know ... I have this other amazing event where two little persons with great stamina and determination take a ring to a volcano and destroy an evil overlord entity. More than 500 people died to make that little person drop that ring into that volcano. And I think it's documented in the same number of similar books.

So I guess it must have really happened.

 

[Dachs]

Wow. 500 people. There must be documentation of such a stunning event in many historical books. Is there any source outside the Bible that speaks of this amazing event?

I caution you

this is not how a real historian addresses this sort of thing

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I caution you

this is not how a real historian addresses this sort of thing

Well, I'm not a real historian, so that figures. If you want an animation in a gambling machine of 500 people seeing a dead man walking, I'm your man.

How should I address it oh yee of knowing many things from the past?

 

[schlaufuchs]

@Brian- I know for a fact Socrates was an agnostic (He only denied the Greek gods, not God in general).

Ummm...you might want to go back and re-read Apology...

 

[Dachs]

Well, I'm not a real historian, so that figures. If you want an animation in a gambling machine of 500 people seeing a dead man walking, I'm your man.

How should I address it oh yee of knowing many things from the past?

single-source isn't the relevant criticism in this case, otherwise we'd have to throw out, ah, the overwhelming majority of written history...like 99% of it

the relevant criticism is that it's prima facie absurd; this is not objective obviously (and does you no good in a debate) but it's really the only legit way to say "bible testimony sucks"

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

single-source isn't the relevant criticism in this case, otherwise we'd have to throw out, ah, the overwhelming majority of written history...like 99% of it

Ok, that's a fair point. But still ... doesn't it figure that an event of this magnitude would be expected to appear in more written sources than just the Bible?

the relevant criticism is that it's prima facie absurd; this is not objective obviously (and does you no good in a debate) but it's really the only legit way to say "bible testimony sucks"

Surely there are other such events written in other documents in that time which boggle the mind. So maybe the way to go about this would be to ask if those who do take the bible testimony seriously, whether they also would take other kinds of similar absurd testimonies as fact. And if not, why not?

 

[Cu Chulainn]

There's a huge difference between someone claiming that, say, Caesar conquered Gaul and suggesting that a Jewish carpenter who was his own father had magical powers culminating with rising from the dead.

 

[Dachs]

Ok, that's a fair point. But still ... doesn't it figure that an event of this magnitude would be expected to appear in more written sources than just the Bible?

Not necessarily. We know of the existence of entire kingdoms through nothing but coins and broken buildings. Having any textual source would be heaven to some scholars.

And you have to realize, you know, assuming that Jesus was in fact resurrected, he's still just one dude in an out of the way corner of the Roman Empire who didn't even hang around all that long afterward. The Bible itself alludes to similar prophet types, contemporaries of Jesus, whose names - let alone their stories - are totally lost to history. (Of course, those men weren't the Son of God. Or the Son of Man, as it were.) There are mentions of a figure possibly corresponding to Jesus in some semi-contemporary sources (Josephus being the most notable one), but it seems as though the consensus there is that that's either a later interpolation or not a particularly reliable account independent from the Bible on the grounds that Josephus seems to have learned about this guy from, uh, Christians. Doesn't really make him a corroborating independent authority.

But this is ground Plotinus has already trod a bazillion times over in a bazillion threads. Point is, an event's supposed import (or indeed, its apparently miraculousness) does not mean there will be multiple corroborating accounts about it. That the documentation for the life of Jesus is roughly the same as that for the Battle of Salamis is perfectly plausible.

Surely there are other such events written in other documents in that time which boggle the mind. So maybe the way to go about this would be to ask if those who do take the bible testimony seriously, whether they also would take other kinds of similar absurd testimonies as fact. And if not, why not?

Indeed! I in fact posed a similar question in a very similar thread (then again, I think most of these religion threads are similar) and the general consensus amongst lolatheist types seemed to be 'if it seems miraculous, I want moar evidence than just the Bible if I'm going to believe it'. Going back to the Salamis-Jesus thing: the existence of Jesus would presumably not be disputed, but his divinity and miracles would be; the existence of the Battle of Salamis would presumably not be disputed, but the role of the gods in the fighting as described by Herodotos would be.

How much evidence, of course, was an open question, as was the quality of same. It's a personal thing, anyway. There's no set standard of evidence for this sort of thing. "IF you want to claim to have enacted a miracle, you MUST have X number of independent corroborating accounts in your favor, all of Y quality..." ain't in the journals.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Makes sense