Does that reasoning hold for the other sets of beliefs? That is, is the best explanation for belief sets A and B that they were derived from a different sort of actual resurrection?
OK.
But of course we know that there is no evidence other than belief that the Gospels have recorded things accurately.
Watch out. ITR might accuse you of insulting him.
Perhaps not to you; it does to me.
I think we all know by now that that’s your favorite Bible factoid, but, to state the obvious, it’s irrelevant to this thread.
Paul does mention the grave [1 Cor 15:55], your claim that Paul got information “from the voices in his head” is incorrect, your statement that Paul is an “admitted psychotic” is a figment of your imagination, and your claim that Paul said that physical resurrections are impossible has been debunked both in the articles I’ve linked to and in numerous previous threads.
Paul makes it clear that it’s the same body in two different conditions, not one body vanishing and another taking its place. He likens it to sowing seeds, which proves the point because there’s continuity from the seed to the plant, likewise in Paul’s vision there’s continuity from the original to the heavenly body.
I was wondering how long it would be before you gave up on pretending that you had any facts on your side and just started bashing any source that disagreed with you. Now I know.
In every thread where the two of us spar, I ask you to provide cites to back up your claims. You never do so, except that in a few cases you link to Wikipedia articles. Try this: if you want me to believe that Paul denied the possibility of a physical resurrection, then provide a citation to a credible source which makes that case. Given that you always attack any source who doesn’t have a Ph.D. in exactly the right specialty or isn’t writing in a peer-reviewed journal or doesn’t have his hair parted in exactly the right way, it goes without saying that you should be able to provide a source that meets those same criteria.
Dr. Wright’s article has several instances of the data that you claim no one has, and his book has a great many more.
The facts he has on his side are that resurrection is a physical impossibility and always has been, and there is no evidence to the contrary anybody but a Christian apologist would accept as valid.
The only possible ways to prove it are to either prove the existence of god, or actually resurrect somebody. You don’t really have any proof; you have a bunch of people writing about it 2000 years ago, at a time when they thought good medical practice was to bleed people, and translated so many times into so many different languages that it’s very difficult to know what the original meaning is. Even if you’re right about Paul, it proves nothing.
You said you could produce “intellectual arguments.” If all you can do is cite your own faith, that’s not an intellectual argument.
It’s central to the thread since I’m asking to see evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus. The fact that this claim cannot be found in Paul’s writings (or in Q or in Mark or in Thomas) is very relevant indeed. It means that the physical resurrection is a claim that can’t be traced before Matthew’s Gospel in 80 CE.
I don’t know what part of the page you linked to is supposed to refute me, but Paul did, in fact, say that he hot hsi Gospel entirely from Jesus (i.e. “the voices in his head”) and “not from any man.” he os adamant on this point. That he was not taught it, but got it from Jesus.
Paul claimed to have experienced hallucinations of Jesus. Either he was lying, or he was, by definition, claiming to have had psychotic experiences (it is immaterial whether Paul himself understood that these experiences were psychotic).
It hasn’t been debunked at all, actually. I provided the passages. I understand the Greek.
No, Paul says that what goes into the ground rots away and is transformed into a “spiritual body.”
You were the one trying to hide behind an appeal to authority. I merely pointed out that your authority is not an authority.
This is bullshit, of course,
I already did. The words of Paul himself.
Name one.
In case it hasn’t been brought up already - (i didn’t read the whole thread for fear of losing my thought)
1 Corinthians 15:12-17
*12 Now if Christ is being preached that he has been raised up from the dead, how is it some among YOU say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If, indeed, there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised up. 14But if Christ has not been raised up, our preaching is certainly in vain, and our faith is in vain. 15Moreover, we are also found false witnesses of God, because we have borne witness against God that he raised up the Christ, but whom he did not raise up if the dead are really not to be raised up. 16For if the dead are not to be raised up, neither has Christ been raised up. 17Further, if Christ has not been raised up, YOUR faith is useless; YOU are yet in YOUR sins.
I expect better of you, Dio. Thought you knew your Bible pretty good.
BTW - I have nothing to offer for the specific request of the OP. No “physical evidence” of an event older than anything modern people can reasonably relate to. And if there were legitimate physical evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, it would be the most obvious and well publicized thing on the planet, negating the need for not only this thread, but the mental processes which lead you to open it. Since that is obviously not the case, then you must realize that you will never find what you seek - and the lack of it will do NOTHING to diminish the faith of those who do believe.
Or do you not yet understand this? The only evidence you will ever get is the presence of the throngs of congregations professing faith in this event which none of them will ever receive physical evidence of. If that isn’t good enough to convince you, then just carry on with your life. Live and let live, or don’t. This type of intellectual masturbation benefits nobody but yourself and those who share your views.
Criminy this horse has got to be hamburger by now.
I do. I’m not sure what you think this refutes. Paul believed resurrections were spiritual, not physical. he never said Jesus walked out of a tomb in a physical body, only that he “appeared” to people in some fashion.
I uderstand it perfectly, but when a guy claims he can make a compelling intellectual argument for it, then I’ve got to hear it.
Well it might come back to life, right?
Really? Where did he use the word “hallucination”?
Actually it’s quite material. You say that Paul was an “admitted psychotic”. By definition of the word “admitted”, this can only be true if you can provide a quote where Paul uses the word psychotic, or some synonym thereof, to describe himself. Otherwise you may accuse him of having been a psychotic, but your claim that he was “an admitted psychotic” is factually wrong.
Here you are going back to your usual tactics: calling the facts “bullshit” because you don’t have any response to them, pretending that you’ve proved things which you haven’t proved, and insisting that you’re right because you say that you’re right. From my perspective you’re just an anonymous internet user, and not one with the SDMB’s greatest reputation either. Calling everything you disagree with “bullshit” merely suggests desperation on your part. Obviously we have a dispute about what the passage in Paul meant, so if you want to convince me or anyone else you’ll have to stop the I’m-right-cause-I-say-so business are start providing cites.
First you provide the cite I asked for.
My apologies. I was unaware that you were hung up on the semantics of it all.
Sheesh. I stand by my previous statements. You are seeking something which you know can’t exist. “Evidence”. Like I said man, if it were there in the form you wanted, it would be big enough to negate the need for this thread…for this mindset.
As it happens, that is not the case. You will not find an acceptable answer to your request. To me, that appears as evidence of intellectual masturbation on your part. Talking for the joy of your own voice (or typing for the joy of the keys clicking). Trying to tear down someone else’s faith to justify your complacence with a lack thereof.
I really do think you must have some massive hole in your life…some major need to fill that drives you to enter into these pointless debates time after time, thread after thread. You are not fighting ignorance with your endeavors. You are fighting faith. It’s a fine line between faith and insanity, you know this, yet you keep trying to define it with different words. I think you could probably accomplish quite a bit if you dedicated these brain-cycles to something you truly enjoyed that held at least the potential of personal gain. (outside of the aforementioned intellectual masturbation)
Or maybe you just have OCD and can’t help yourself. If that’s the case, bummer dude.
Because I don’t want to fully shit up your thread, I’ll leave now, and wait for you to maybe pit me or something for being such an irreverent little snot.
Good luck and all. And if you get the “evidence”, please share with the class. 
Doubtful…though if it were the donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem on, it might have a chance. 
Paul said a dead guy appeared to him and spoke to him. That is, by definition, a hallucination and a psychotic experience.
I already did. The words of Paul. What else do you need?
You’re making a very strange demand here, I point out that “Paul said X,” and cite the chapter and verse, and then you ask for a cite that Paul said X.
Dude, this thread only came about because another dude said he could make the case. It came at his own invitation. I wouldn’t have started it if he hadn’t made that claim and said he would address it in a new thread.
- Why are you ignoring the long term success of many other states, cultures, and religions which are equally impressive?
- Why does success indicate divine intervention? Did Genghis Khan conquer a large mass of land because of magic, or because he discovered some tactics for war and diplomacy that were a few levels above everyone else at the time? If I look back at all of the species that have ever lived on the Earth, 99.9999% of them are extinct. Does that mean that the other 0.0001% survived through due to magic, or is it the same as if I took a billion balls of hard mud and hit them together two at a time: One will win through as the survivor for no reason than that one must.
This boggles me. The first does not require the last.
This is exactly the same as saying that, since at one point in history, England pretty-near conquered the globe, and still has a vast influence on the world historically through language, literature, etc, therefore Queen Victoria is God.
This is in no way evidence that Jesus is God, let alone evidence of a literal, physical resurrection, which is the subject of the OP.
ITR, I don’t participate much in religion threads, but I’m making an exception in this case because I have to point out that the Wright essay you link doesn’t make as strong a case as you think. All he may be said to establish, and I don’t think this is controversial, is that one version of Christianity - the one which ultimately became orthodoxy - presumes a physical resurrection. Whether this view flowed from the facts or the other way around is the question. In this regard, it’s important to remember that Paul’s letters and the Gospels were composed at some distance, both physical and temporal, from the events. The early hearers and readers of this Gospel were in no position to judge its historical veracity. They accepted it (or not) based on whether they found the theology appealing. Their acceptance (or not) tells us nothing about the historical facts.
TLDR: “Assume the chance of someone not telling the truth is zero, therefore if someone says Jesus was resurrected, Jesus was resurrected”.
Proof-
Proof is to cause belief by fact… but I precieve that your mind is made up and you don’t want to be confused by any fact’s.
Your answer is to be found in your own conversion by the application of something intangible called Faith. Faith can be proven to be fact and fact is truth. Since truth is not a lie then true faith is not a lie and, this also can be proven and thus becomes a fact.
Since neither true faith nor fact are viable without tangible evidence of support, your fact’s have no more weight than true faith.
Now… you have your decisions by fact only and true faith has been ignored as a factor. How can you think to have reached any conclusions when a factor has been left out of the equasion?
Your conversion by the omitted factor of true faith will open your eyes by the Holy Spirit to recieve your answer.
In conclusion I must say that your use of facts alone has pushed you into a corner and so you have to turn outside yourself to seek answers from others. I have appealed to your logic, common sense and your heart that you might break free from this dilemma. You are stalled out because it is your move and you are either not aware or don’t care enough to press on into the area of true faith. I hope that you prevail here.
This matter is closed to debate.
Tom W.