Why do you believe that Jesus was physically Resurrected?

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

This thread is partially prompted by some exchanges in this Pit thread started by badchad. I’m not really interested in Chads attempted pitting of tomndebb in that thread but I do think that he and a guest poster named hr_realist have raised a legitimate question (albeit couched in extremely undiplomatic language by Chad) which has been little more than sneered at in that thread. Here are some of the questions and responses I’m referring to:

@badchad

Believing a 3 day dead, exsanguinated, and room temperature carcass rose from the dead simply because you read it in a book wrought with errors, or because your mommy, daddy, and preacher taught you to do so, is highly irrational and completely indefensible. That’s a fact.

@Malacandra

Oh my! The scales have fallen from my eyes. Yes, at last I see. All this time I’ve been believing in the resurrection of Jesus on the basis that dead bodies get up and walk around of their own accord all the time, and now badchad has vouchsafed to me some secret knowledge that the benighted first-century Middle Easterners were no more aware of than I was.

So now I know the truth. Ah, the wonders of 21st-century science!

goes his way rejoicing

@hr_realist

From what I understand, wasn’t it a realtively small group of people that are vouching for the resurrection of Jesus. Taking out the eyewitness accounts (I will address soon), what evidence is there that Jesus was actually resurrected?

Looking at the eyewitness accounts, assuming my understanding is correct and the number is small, why do you believe them? As an example, if a group of ostensibly trustworthy people told you they saw a flying pig, would you believe them and wait for the price of pork to go up, or would you look for further evidence?

The reason I ask is that in my job I regularly have to create and explain motivations, reasons and events post fact, and this has no more relevance to actual events than it is what I create. What is to say the bible wasn’t written in a similar style, building on verifiable events with pure fiction?

Why should the eyewitnesses be belived - could they not have been collaborating to achieve their own ends?

@Malacandra

I’ll refrain from answering that here and now, lest badchad rebuke me for hijacking the thread and demand that I be warned for it or cite the lack thereof as further evidence that tomndebb is picking on him. GD’s a better forum for the debate, and if you front up the fifteen bucks you’ll likely be able to search for a few prior discussions on the subject.

For now I’m content merely to roll my eyes at the OP’s apparent belief that the faithful are unaware of the fact that in general dead bodies do not get up and walk around all of their own accord. Either Jesus did not rise from the dead, or he rose through the agency of God. That he merely rose from the dead for no reason - that dead bodies might well do so at any time - is not a viewpoint seriously advanced by anyone AFAIK.

@hr_realist

If Badchad wants to be a literalist and ignore the possibility of a higher power, why not simply ignore him? FTR, I don’t believe that Jesus was resurrected, but a lot of intelligent and rational people do, so I would like to know, based on what evidence - if your reply is simply “becasue I believe” fine, I have nothing to say, if the belief is fact based - I also wanna know

@Malacandra

hr_realist, you surely do not believe that I am in possession of any more factual evidence of the Resurrection than you are? :dubious:

Ok, to me this looks like a pretty fair question: Why do you believe in a literal, physical resurrection of Christ in the absence of any evidence and contrary to everything we know about physical laws?"

Malacandra’s answers seem non-responsive, even evasive to me.

Hr_realist mentions a scarcity of eyewitnesses accounts of the resurrection and, in fact, they are scarcer than he/she knows. The number is very low indeed, zero to be exact. We do not have a single eyewitness account for any part of Jesus’ life. We do not have a single primary claim for a physical resurrection. We actually have no proof at all that any of the disciples or associates of Jesus ever claimed he had been physically raised from the dead.

Paul, who ostensibly knew some disciples (though he never met Jesus), does not say that Jesus was physically resurrected and does not mention an empty tomb but only says that Jesus “appeared” to the disciples and to himself after the crucifixion. He does not give any details about the nature of these appearance but he does say elesewhere that physical bodies cannot be resurrected and that resurrected individuals receive spiritual bodies instead.

There is no known claim of an empty tomb until Mark’s Gospel (c. 70 CE) and the first claims of physical appearances don’t occur until Matthew’s Gospel (c. 80 CE). These Gospels were written ~40 and ~50 years after the crucifixion respectively and they were not written by witnesses, nor (most probably) did the authors ever speak to any witnesses.

In addition to the dubious nature of the documentary evidence there is also the obvious fact that dead bodies can’t climb out of tombs after three days. Now Malacandra has belittled this simple statement of known fact with a rebuttal (of sorts) that Christians KNOW dead bodies can’t get up ORDINARILY but this is a case where Goddidit. This strikes me as begging the question and no real answer at all. If you’re going to contend that something magical occured, it doesn’t really matter who you think the wizard was, it’s still kind of a non-answer. It’s a statement of WHAT you believe but not WHY.

After all that, I’d like to reterate the question here in a less loaded forum and thread. To wit: To the believers in the audence: WHY do you believe in the physical resurrection of Christ with no evidence and in contradiction to known physical laws? What has convinced you that the story is true.

Please note, I’m not asking you to PROVE it. I’m just asking What convinced YOU.

[John_DiFool]

Haven’t there been documented cases of seemingly dead people who spontaneously revive when
in the morgue or somewhere? Just pointing that out (most are likely urban legends true).

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@John DiFool

Haven’t there been documented cases of seemingly dead people who spontaneously revive when
in the morgue or somewhere? Just pointing that out (most are likely urban legends true).

Yes, but for a true believer, Jesus really had to have been dead (and his chances of physical survival after scourging and crucifixion would have been virtually non-existent anyway).

[nameless]

@John DiFool

Haven’t there been documented cases of seemingly dead people who spontaneously revive when
in the morgue or somewhere? Just pointing that out (most are likely urban legends true).

Yeah, I mean people come out of comas and the like sometimes (and perhaps these individuals used to be pronounced dead before hand–probably a more common occurence before the widespread use of EEGs and heart rate monitors), but we’re talking about a body that was nailed to the cross through all four limbs (possibly disrupting the radial artery in one or both arms?) and punctured in the side.

Supposedly there are accounts of people surviving crucifixion. But if you’re down for three days after crucifixion, I’d say the odds are pretty long that you’re coming back from it.

[BobLibDem]

For me, the account of Thomas doubting what he was seeing but then putting his hand in Jesus’ side was the clincher. Whether Jesus physically resurrected or some apparition isn’t a dealbreaker for me. It doesn’t bother me that it is in opposition to known physical laws. As true God from true God, Jesus made the laws of physics and could violate them as he pleased.

[FriarTed]

Because I hold your assertions about the Gospels having no connection to the "eyewitnesses’ (1st generation of the Jesus circle), the late invention of the
“empty tomb”, and the supposed discrepancy between Paul’s “spiritual resurrection” belief & the Gospel accounts of a physical resurrection are all erroneous. How & why did such a belief arise & gain popularity if it was not part of the original Jesus movement? What did the first followers of Jesus experience that convinced them that he was the risen Lord, to the point that they stood against the Jewish & Roman establishments at the cost of their lives?

Also, because as compelling as this Jesus character is, if he is NOT raised from the dead, not Lord, not God’s Right-hand Man/Logos/Son/Avatar, he has no more authority to tell us how to live than do Buddha, Mohammed, Nietzsche or Ayn Rand, perhaps even less.

[Revenant_Threshold]

I’m not a believer myself, but I got an answer to this once which I thought was actually a pretty good one.

My friend argued that, yes, there was no direct evidence that Jesus rose from the dead; but there was evidence enough to convince her that the Christian God existed. And since she believes God exists, and the Bible as the work of God says Jesus rose, then that’s what he did. So it’s less a direct “here’s why I believe it” and more “I believe in and trust God, and he says it happened”.

[Malacandra]

I’ll just attend to this question:

@Diogenes the Cynic

WHY do you believe in the physical resurrection of Christ with no evidence and in contradiction to known physical laws? What has convinced you that the story is true.

and say, once again, that the contradiction of the known physical laws isn’t the issue. My belief system allows for the existence of miracles worked, in the main, directly by God (we can get around to cases if you really want), and a miracle by definition would necessarily be in contradiction of physical laws. As I alluded to in the linked thread, no-one would call anything a “miracle” that was known to occur for perfectly natural reasons.

It’s not a question of belittling the scientific fact that categorically dead bodies do not get out of tombs so much as the mindset that insists on talking as though this is new information. Water does not turn to wine upon command. Men cannot tread beetle-like upon the surface of a storm-tossed lake. Five loaves and two small fish provide a sketchy picnic lunch for twelve, not a feast to satiety for five thousand famished men and their wives and children. I know this as well as you. All believers know it. In accepting the historicity of the Resurrection we know that we are giving credence to an occurrence that would ordinarily be impossible.

But in context the story of the Resurrection, and of other Biblical miracles, carries to me the ring of truth in the way that, say, the story of Thor lifting up the world-serpent until its arched back touches the sky does not. If there were solid evidence then a man of your intellectual gifts, Diogenes, would know it already: your knowledge of the Bible and of the history of the times puts mine to shame.

And I’ll see your belittling of scientific fact and offer you “Goddidit” as a less than respectful rendering of a simple three-word phrase. If the Resurrection happened then God did it. If God did not do it then the Resurrection did not happen. But “A resurrection is a scientific impossibility, therefore God did not do it” is not a valid argument.

[ralph124c]

@Diogenes the Cynic

This thread is partially prompted by some exchanges in this Pit thread started by badchad. I’m not really interested in Chads attempted pitting of tomndebb in that thread but I do think that he and a guest poster named hr_realist have raised a legitimate question (albeit couched in extremely undiplomatic language by Chad) which has been little more than sneered at in that thread. Here are some of the questions and responses I’m referring to:

Ok, to me this looks like a pretty fair question: Why do you believe in a literal, physical resurrection of Christ in the absence of any evidence and contrary to everything we know about physical laws?"

Malacandra’s answers seem non-responsive, even evasive to me.

Hr_realist mentions a scarcity of eyewitnesses accounts of the resurrection and, in fact, they are scarcer than he/she knows. The number is very low indeed, zero to be exact. We do not have a single eyewitness account for any part of Jesus’ life. We do not have a single primary claim for a physical resurrection. We actually have no proof at all that any of the disciples or associates of Jesus ever claimed he had been physically raised from the dead.

Paul, who ostensibly knew some disciples (though he never met Jesus), does not say that Jesus was physically resurrected and does not mention an empty tomb but only says that Jesus “appeared” to the disciples and to himself after the crucifixion. He does not give any details about the nature of these appearance but he does say elesewhere that physical bodies cannot be resurrected and that resurrected individuals receive spiritual bodies instead.

There is no known claim of an empty tomb until Mark’s Gospel (c. 70 CE) and the first claims of physical appearances don’t occur until Matthew’s Gospel (c. 80 CE). These Gospels were written ~40 and ~50 years after the crucifixion respectively and they were not written by witnesses, nor (most probably) did the authors ever speak to any witnesses.

In addition to the dubious nature of the documentary evidence there is also the obvious fact that dead bodies can’t climb out of tombs after three days. Now Malacandra has belittled this simple statement of known fact with a rebuttal (of sorts) that Christians KNOW dead bodies can’t get up ORDINARILY but this is a case where Goddidit. This strikes me as begging the question and no real answer at all. If you’re going to contend that something magical occured, it doesn’t really matter who you think the wizard was, it’s still kind of a non-answer. It’s a statement of WHAT you believe but not WHY.

After all that, I’d like to reterate the question here in a less loaded forum and thread. To wit: To the believers in the audence: WHY do you believe in the physical resurrection of Christ with no evidence and in contradiction to known physical laws? What has convinced you that the story is true.

Please note, I’m not asking you to PROVE it. I’m just asking What convinced YOU.

Well, in Paul’s own words …“if Christ be NOT risen, our faith is in vain”

So there you have it: the whole Christian religion rests upon this issue: there is NO point in believing any of the precepts of Christianity, if Christ did not conquer death.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@nameless

Yeah, I mean people come out of comas and the like sometimes (and perhaps these individuals used to be pronounced dead before hand–probably a more common occurence before the widespread use of EEGs and heart rate monitors), but we’re talking about a body that was nailed to the cross through all four limbs (possibly disrupting the radial artery in one or both arms?) and punctured in the side.

Supposedly there are accounts of people surviving crucifixion. But if you’re down for three days after crucifixion, I’d say the odds are pretty long that you’re coming back from it.

Josephus actually tells a story of one person suriving a crucifixion in his book, Life of Josephus:

And when I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealins, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered. (Life 75)

These guys were still visibly alive, though, and even with immediate medical care, two of the three died. The odds of a victim recovering after lying on a cold slab for three days with no medical care, or even any food or water, approach absolute zero. Josephus’ story is an extraordinary exception and (as far as I know) is the only reported example of anyone surviving a crucifixion.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Diogenes the Cynic

In addition to the dubious nature of the documentary evidence there is also the obvious fact that dead bodies can’t climb out of tombs after three days. Now Malacandra has belittled this simple statement of known fact with a rebuttal (of sorts) that Christians KNOW dead bodies can’t get up ORDINARILY but this is a case where Goddidit. This strikes me as begging the question and no real answer at all. If you’re going to contend that something magical occured, it doesn’t really matter who you think the wizard was, it’s still kind of a non-answer. It’s a statement of WHAT you believe but not WHY.

But this is the heart of the matter right here. You don’t believe in God, so of course you don’t believe in God-caused miracles. But to someone who believes in a God who can, and at least once in a great while does, do things that go against ordinary physical laws, the fact that dead bodies can’t climb out of tombs after three days (without God causing them to) is irrelevant.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@BobLibDem

For me, the account of Thomas doubting what he was seeing but then putting his hand in Jesus’ side was the clincher. Whether Jesus physically resurrected or some apparition isn’t a dealbreaker for me. It doesn’t bother me that it is in opposition to known physical laws. As true God from true God, Jesus made the laws of physics and could violate them as he pleased.

Does it bother you that the “Doubting Thomas” story is found only in a single account (the Gospel of John) which is of unknown provenance, which is not written by a witness, and which was written 60-70 years after the crucifixion?

[XT]

@ralph124c

So there you have it: the whole Christian religion rests upon this issue: there is NO point in believing any of the precepts of Christianity, if Christ did not conquer death.

Pretty much says it all here. Its a matter of faith. I’m not a believer (anymore) myself, but I can still understand that people believe because, well, they believe. That its physically impossible (for us) to even entertain the possibility of a dead body ressurecting after 3 days (with all that entails wrt the death process as we now understand it) means nothing if we take a step back and entertain the possibility that supernatural forces or miricles or whathave you are possible. After all, we are talking about the (supposed) god of the universe…the god who in fact purportedly CREATED the universe and everything in it. If god could create fish and such out of nothing, surely he could bring one man (who wasn’t really fully a man) back to life…right?

Sure, I don’t believe that…thats why I’m not a Catholic anymore or a Christian for that matter. However, I can respect someone else’s stance that they take these things on faith…and I can even follow the logic, such as it is, that leads them to conclude their stance. Lack of evidence? Lack of witnesses? The sheer impossibility from our scientific standpoint of such a resurrection? While these matter to ME, I can certainly see why they wouldn’t matter or even factor in to someone who is basing their stance on faith. As long as they respect MY stance, I am perfectly happy to leave them to their own. I’m a live and let live kind of guy after all…

-XT

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@FriarTed

What did the first followers of Jesus experience that convinced them that he was the risen Lord, to the point that they stood against the Jewish & Roman establishments at the cost of their lives?

What is your evidence that they were martyred for their beliefs? Putting aside the issues of Gospel provenance, the alleged martyrdoms of the apostles are not even found in the Gospels but in 2nd century patristic tradition.

[Malacandra]

@Diogenes the Cynic

Josephus actually tells a story of one person suriving a crucifixion in his book, Life of Josephus:

These guys were still visibly alive, though, and even with immediate medical care, two of the three died. The odds of a victim recovering after lying on a cold slab for three days with no medical care, or even any food or water, approach absolute zero. Josephus’ story is an extraordinary exception and (as far as I know) is the only reported example of anyone surviving a crucifixion.

Agreed. I can understand someone declaring that there is no truth in the notion that Christ was crucified and buried. I can understand someone declaring that he was crucified, dead and buried, and stayed that way, and all the rest is made up. And for my own part I go along with the next part of the Creed. But you and I alike, Diogenes, find it the inch too much to suppose that He was up and out of his tomb on the third day, entirely unassisted, simply by natural causes.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Diogenes the Cynic

Does it bother you that the “Doubting Thomas” story is found only in a single account (the Gospel of John) which is of unknown provenance, which is not written by a witness, and which was written 60-70 years after the crucifixion?

None of this is inconsistent with the story being true. It’s just incredibly weak as historical evidence for it being true.

Diogenes, you’re coming at the whole issue strictly from a historian’s point of view, which I think accounts for the big gap between how you see the matter and how believers approach it.

[Voyager]

@Malacandra

But in context the story of the Resurrection, and of other Biblical miracles, carries to me the ring of truth in the way that, say, the story of Thor lifting up the world-serpent until its arched back touches the sky does not. If there were solid evidence then a man of your intellectual gifts, Diogenes, would know it already: your knowledge of the Bible and of the history of the times puts mine to shame.

Perhaps the “ring of truth” is a function of your early environment? I was never indoctrinated with Christianity, and it sounds like a fable to me - while I have to resist my feeling that the story of the Exodus and of David have the ring of truth, since that is what I grew up with.
Diogenes point, I think, that given the scientific impossibliity of the story a believer needs a bit more evidence for the resurrection than that it sounds plausible. No one is saying that we need strong evidence that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on an ass, after all.

Is there a better reason to believe this than believing that Washington threw a dollar across the Potomac?
For Friar Ted
At a low level the followers of Jesus kept going for a while, but they faced nowhere near the hardships the followers of Joseph Smith faced. Isn’t it possible that the early Christians remained followers based on what he said, and that the resurrection story came afterwards? They considered themselves Jews, and this is consistent with believing Jesus was the Messiah, but not with believing that he was the Son of God.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Malacandra

I’ll just attend to this question:
and say, once again, that the contradiction of the known physical laws isn’t the issue. My belief system allows for the existence of miracles worked, in the main, directly by God (we can get around to cases if you really want), and a miracle by definition would necessarily be in contradiction of physical laws. As I alluded to in the linked thread, no-one would call anything a “miracle” that was known to occur for perfectly natural reasons.

It’s not a question of belittling the scientific fact that categorically dead bodies do not get out of tombs so much as the mindset that insists on talking as though this is new information. Water does not turn to wine upon command. Men cannot tread beetle-like upon the surface of a storm-tossed lake. Five loaves and two small fish provide a sketchy picnic lunch for twelve, not a feast to satiety for five thousand famished men and their wives and children. I know this as well as you. All believers know it. In accepting the historicity of the Resurrection we know that we are giving credence to an occurrence that would ordinarily be impossible.

I was trying to say that i think this answer is non-responsive to th question of WHY you believe X happened. It’s a statement of WHAT and it’s a statement of HOW, it’s not an explanation of WHY. I also think that from a logical standpoint, positing an entity who can violate physical laws to explain how physical laws could be broken posits one “impossible” thing to explain another. That is, (from my standpoint), if the laws of physics can’t be broken, then it logically follows that no entity can exist who can violate them. It seems to me that “God” is a circular answer to the question of how the “impossible” can be possible.

But in context the story of the Resurrection, and of other Biblical miracles, carries to me the ring of truth in the way that, say, the story of Thor lifting up the world-serpent until its arched back touches the sky does not. If there were solid evidence then a man of your intellectual gifts, Diogenes, would know it already: your knowledge of the Bible and of the history of the times puts mine to shame.

This answers the question of “why.” It’s utterly subjective (which is fine), but thank you for your answer.

And I’ll see your belittling of scientific fact and offer you “Goddidit” as a less than respectful rendering of a simple three-word phrase.

It’s used commonly enough around here in evolution discussions. If it bothers you, I’ll put the spaces in next time.

If the Resurrection happened then God did it. If God did not do it then the Resurrection did not happen. But “A resurrection is a scientific impossibility, therefore God did not do it” is not a valid argument.

My response is that “God” has no more scientific plausibility than spontaneous resurrections themselves. I see all magic as equally implausible, therefore so are magicians.

[Diletante]

@Thudlow Boink

Diogenes, you’re coming at the whole issue strictly from a historian’s point of view, which I think accounts for the big gap between how you see the matter and how believers approach it.

What bothers me, and maybe Diogenes, is the general claim made by many believers that a dispassionate review of the available evidence will lead to a reasonable person, apart from any appeal to faith, to accept the resurrection as a reliable historical event.

I don’t think the historic support for the resurrection is strong at all. But, of course, that doesn’t matter so much. Believers needn’t approach this issue from a historian’s point of view, it’s a matter of faith. That’s fine, I’ve got no argument against that. I don’t really understand it, but it’s hard to disagree.

However, many believers talk about their faith as though it is largely or entirely supported by empirical evidence. That’s something I’d argue against (except for the fact DtC does it better than I do, so I just watch).

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Voyager

For Friar Ted
At a low level the followers of Jesus kept going for a while, but they faced nowhere near the hardships the followers of Joseph Smith faced. Isn’t it possible that the early Christians remained followers based on what he said, and that the resurrection story came afterwards? They considered themselves Jews, and this is consistent with believing Jesus was the Messiah, but not with believing that he was the Son of God.

Or what if they believed in a spiritual resurrection based on experiences similar to the visionary experiences of Paul? This hypothesis would not be inconsistent with Paul’s own letters.