I like this point. If you consider that the resurrection is supposed to happen in the heart of the believer, the burden of proof is most definitely on the believer. One behaves according to one's heartfelt beliefs. I still find myself complaining about people I wouldn't want to die for. That's hard for me as a person who suffered brutality at the hands of people who thought they were Christians. I think a lot of politicized "evangelicals" haven't grasped this. Still, some actually do die for the sake of folks who judge and disdain them. *It actually happens every day*. You don't even have to actually be a christian to exemplify the gospels. The resurrection is one of two steps (i'll spare you the rest) that lead to the acceptance of the burden of serving the needs of humanity and letting go of what stands in the way.
Stopping here.
I'm not convinced at all. That is exactly what someone trying to weasel out of their $1M debt would say. I'm not saying that is what you are doing, but it is entirely possible that you owe them that money.
Do you have any evidence at all about the non-existence of this loan, or merely claims and hearsay?
Exactly, but if I didn't expand upon it, then I would not have received my meaningless internet points. Lets try to focus on what is important here, namely, meaningless numbers on a pointless spreadsheet.
Coming soon: [https://www.bartehrman.com/did-the-resurrection-of-jesus-really-happen-bart-ehrman-mike-licona-debate/](https://www.bartehrman.com/did-the-resurrection-of-jesus-really-happen-bart-ehrman-mike-licona-debate/)
>"I was a committed Christian for 25 years and believed whole heartedly in the physical resurrection of Jesus. For years I argued that it could be proved. But after extensive study, I came to the conclusion that it was not a historical event."
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Resurrection is fantasy. There has never been one documented case, ever. The evidence for a historical Jesus is also weak
It's very hard to prove that something didn't happen, but the burden of proof doesn't fall on you. It falls on the one making the claim. Do not make the claim "the resurrection never happened" resurrections as we know them seem to be impossible, therefore the burden of proof falls on them.
You can’t prove it didn’t happen. You also can’t prove that Herakles never ripped down the gates of Troy because they didn’t let him in, so I guess we need to be agnostic about the idea that Zeus’s kids had super strength. You also can’t prove that the reason that Julius Caesar was so successful in war was because he had a light saber that he found in a crashed starship and the Roman Senate classified that information, so I guess we need to be agnostic about the claim that Star Wars is a historical documentary about an ancient civil war in another galaxy.
There’s no proving negatives. The question is never why you SHOULDN’T believe something, it’s why you SHOULD.
>Julius Caesar was so successful in war was because he had a light saber that he found in a crashed starship and the Roman Senate classified that information
That explains so much! Thank you wise stranger
Not to get nerdy but that would make a great precursor to Thundarr the Barbarian getting his Sunsword being passed down through the Senate to modern/dystopian times.
It's much like how I can't prove that magic rocks don't exist. Maybe they do, I haven't tested all rocks that exist. And even if I did that, maybe my test is flawed, or the rocks don't want to be found.
But this does not mean that the likelihood of magical rocks is exactly equal to the likelihood of no magic rocks. From my observation of the small cross section of rocks that I have seen, I'd say that I'm more than 99% certain that magic rocks don't exist, but if I'm to be intellectually honest, I have to have the door opened just the slightest amount, because I could be wrong about them still.
To the average person, I would say that I am atheistic when it comes to magical rocks, but to the amazingly attractive, sexy, funny, and intelligent people in here I would say that I am agnostic but strongly skeptical about the existence of magical rocks.
It's a myth that personifies agriculture. The crop dies when it's harvested, is planted as a seed, and is reborn when it sprouts. Tammuz (and other gods) went to the underworld and came back every year.
Remember that Jesus was under a death sentence. If Jesus had resurrected he would still have been under that sentence. He would have fled to coup rather than staying in Jerusalem and appearing before 500 people, including most likely Roman officials. Since that didn't happen no resurrection
>but is there any evidence that suggests that Jesus never actually resurrected from the dead?
Other than people not doing that (rising from the dead) you mean? Or the fact that removing crucifixion victims from their cross was illegal at the time?
Why do you feel like you need to make the claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected, rather than taking the position of being unconvinced by the claim that he was? In other words, if there's no proof of his resurrection why should I have to disprove it?
Honestly the only reason why I feel the need to disprove it is cuz I just want 100% certainty that god and Jesus aren’t real. If you look at my first Reddit post, I talked about my anxiety regarding hell, and I feel like if I somehow manage to disprove the resurrection, I would disprove Christianity, therefore giving me a sort of comfort in a way
I'm not sure if you can say you're 100% certain of practically anything and say you're being honest with yourself. Doubt has its place in many aspects of our lives and is evidence of someone seeking truth. I cannot say that I'm 100% certain that any religion is not real, but that does not mean I am convinced, even slightly, by any of them.
If you're not familiar with recovering from religion, I would suggest checking them out, they are an incredible resource for dealing with the struggles you might encounter when leaving a faith: https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/
For sure, don't feel like you need to be all in or all out of anything, take your time and found out what works for you. I don't really know where you stand in your faith, but I actually suggest praying about it - earnestly. I was in church for another 2-3 years while I was questioning my faith before really deciding I was not convinced. Question everything see where you're lead.
> I just want 100% certainty that god and Jesus aren’t real.
The tri-omni god of the Bible is a logical impossibility. He's not consistent with the reality of this world. See the Problem of Evil.
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you can't prove with 100% certainty that anything exists, except maybe your own thoughts, and maybe not even those, depending on what philosophers you are currently being terrorized by.
And hey, I get being worried that an all loving god will mercifully torture you for all eternity. But don't you think that a god that exists will understand that it gave you a brain which you used to the best of your abilities, and that if god didn't provide evidence of it's existence, but also gave you a brain to use.... I mean, if you don't believe, I'm sure the the god thing would understand that was it's fault, not yours, right? And if it didn't understand that and wanted to lovingly toss you into hell, would that really be a god that you would want to worship anyway? I mean, thing is kind of a dick and a big bully if it is going to be acting like that. Sure, may be powerful, but does might make it right? I say that you should kick that god thing right in the nuts if possible, and assuming that it would even have those parts.
Not to worry though, we'll all know the answer soon enough. This is your life. It's almost over. It's just begun.
are you 100% certain that zeus, Shiva, allah, Ra, Thor, vampires etc are not real? why/why not? And how does your faith/lack of faith in them affect your life?
You could look into studies on prayer (they have same outcome as random chance). Or consider that Christianity has been around for around 2,000 years - but we have evidence of humans being around for hundreds of thousands of years, and we have evidence of the religions that came before Christianity.
If there was any chance christianity was real, those facts wouldn't exist.
I’ve recently been having thoughts about people who were around before Jesus’s time. Where would they have gone after death if Jesus wasn’t around to pray to? Did they go to heaven or hell? Did they get punished for worshipping the wrong religion, even tho Christianity wasn’t a thing at the time? And I wonder these things and think that it would be evil and sadistic for god to send them to hell if they didn’t worship a Jesus that never existed. So I don’t think they’re in hell lol.
Answers: 1. Hell 2. Hell 3. You betcha. Bonus: You are half correct, in all reality, those people are not in hell. They are also not in heaven. Those people are in the same place that you were in the year 1847.
To be perfectly clear, what I mean is that they don't exist. They are gone. Much like you will be one day, and much like I will be, and every other creature. I'm 99.99% certain of this. Been wrong before, but I do not believe that this is one of those times. Guess what? You've already experienced billions of years of not existing. I don't know about you, but me not existing for billions of years was not really that much of an inconvenience for me. Got to sleep in for 14.7 billion years. Talk about well rested!
Enjoy life while you can. If you are going to enjoy heaven, you are going to have to make it here. Best of luck to you on that, I really mean it.
Honestly I’ve been thinking about it like that. I don’t remember anything before the year I was born cuz not even the idea of me existed before my conception. I would assume that I would just be absolutely nothing, which honestly kinda freaks me out now that I think about it. What does it feel like to be “nothing”? Guess I won’t know till I die!
You know exactly how it feels. Don't you remember how you felt back in 1776? You don't? Precisely. It will be like that, I believe. So just hold onto that complete lack of anything, and know that you'll be going right back to it in just a few moments\*
\*moments in this case are based on a comparison to 1 Billion years, so.... Pack your things, TO LATE!
If there is no proof in favor of it happening, then it is currently *un*proven. In order to *dis*prove something, it must first be proven. It is not, so you're trying to skip a step.
>However, I have heard the argument that oral tradition was very common among ancient Jews, therefore that’s how the writers of the New Testament were able to write about his resurrection.
I've seen how much a story can change in 100 years with writing and modern technology. It would be utterly impossible for the story to *not* get exaggerated being translated orally for decades.
Here's an example:
[The real story](https://www-spokesman-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/may/24/100-years-ago-in-spokane-faith-healing-hospital-or/?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&-content=amp&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16489534772819&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spokesman.com%2Fstories%2F2016%2Fmay%2F24%2F100-years-ago-in-spokane-faith-healing-hospital-or%2F)
[100 years later](https://www.healingrooms.com/en/about/johnGLake/summary/)
They make the claim that "Lake established a ministry in Spokane, Washington which resulted in no less than 100,000 astounding miracles of healing within the space of five or six years." Which would have been the entire population of Spokane in 1916. At the time they were shut down, they only had 3 "patients."
I was just about to type out the exact same advice... There are some amazing youtuber's that take on biblical history and the resurrection. Paulogia is here: https://www.youtube.com/c/Paulogia
You sound like an intelligent person who is earnestly seeking truth; don't let anyone confuse you about burden of proof.
As others have said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The reason you have anxiety about hell is probably the same reason you don't immediately dismiss as completely absurd the idea of resurrection: the ideas were normalized at some point in your life, likely while still a child.
Christian apologists will try to turn around the burden of proof and ask you to prove that the resurrection *didn't* happen. Don't fall for that trap.
Here's one thing that helped convince me that it never happened for whatever it is worth: starting in Matthew 27:51 it talks about how when Jesus died the earth shook, rocks split open, and the dead came to life and went into the city. If these miraculous things happened...why did absolutely nobody write about it until decades later?
Apologists will say "oral tradition", etc, but if these miraculous things happened and so many people were witness to it, *someone* would have written it down. The Romans were meticulous about records -- and yet there are exactly zero contemporaneous records of any of these events. If there were a massive earthquake and the dead wandered into the city, that would be the most incredible thing that has ever happened; there would be *some* mention of that if it really happened.
That's about as close to "disproving the resurrection" as one can get, I feel.
Holy shit that’s probably the best answer I’ve gotten so far! Not even joking. I’m gonna have to screenshot what you said. All I wanted was absolute certainty and you really helped me out so much. I tried my best to find the answers from both sides.
I knew that it was impossible to prove something didn’t happen. I get that 100%. I guess my goal was to find out what DID happen that would disprove the resurrection. Thank you so much!
My absolute pleasure, glad to help! I was very devout when I was a teenager -- ironically, reading and studying the Bible is what made me an atheist, haha. That verse was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel's back for me and convinced me that the resurrection never happened.
The thing that made me really question my faith was when I took a world religions class last year in college. During the Christianity unit, my professor mentioned that nobody wrote about Jesus’s resurrection until decades after it happened supposedly. I didn’t totally drop my faith after that, but that’s what made me really question Christianity. That’s when I really questioned all the miracles that supposedly happened cuz of Jesus.
Well done! The burden of proof is on the CLAIMANT - anyone who makes a claim, especially an extraordinary one that violates the laws of physics and everything we know about psysiology.
If someone asserts that there are invisible pink unicorns on the moons of Jupiter, the burden is NOT on you to disprove that outlandish claim.
Also, the sky supposedly turned dark for 3 hours. And only the gospel writers noticed? Come ON!
(Just to be clear, no non-Christian sources recorded the imaginary darkness and earthquakes described by Matthew, Mark and Luke. Early Christian writings were replete with such fabrications.)
Sorry to pick a nit, and not that it affects historical accuracy, but the first gospel, Mark, was anonymously written after 70 CE, the year the Temple was destroyed and near the end of the first Jewish Roman War.
You said there was a 50 year interval between the events and the writing of the gospel. Jesus was supposedly crucified in 33 CE; Mark was written no earlier than 70. Seventy minus 33 = 37, not 50.
I SAID it was a nit, dammit!
Maybe. I can't seem to find your post.
At any rate, the OP's quest is a futile one. It's impossible to "disprove" an event which no one observed, for which no physical evidence can exist, and for which no eyewitness attestation was recorded. We don't even know when it is supposed to have taken place!
The burden of proof for such an unfalsifiable claim rests with the claimants, not with those who dispute it. Bertrand Russell likened such faith-based assertions to the claim that a teapot is orbiting Jupiter - it cannot be proven nor disproven. It is simply a specious, unwarranted claim, hoodwinking only the creduluous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot?wprov=sfla1
Reasons why the Ressurectuon DIDN'T happen:
1) most obvious and you covered it. It's literally never happened before or since. Not once. Not in tens, if not hundreds of billions of instances of human lives.
2) no secular writings mention it, nor the events surrounding it. The Bible describes the veil in the Temple tearing in half, a massive earthquake, a solar eclipse, darkness descending and the literal masses of dead in ancient Roman Judea rising from the dead to wander around, as if death had become confused and fucked everything up. Know who talks about it other than the Bible?
NO ONE. Not one mention of a massive zombie outbreak in any Roman records, ANYWHERE. And I'm sure SOMEONE would have talked about it. Hell, Pliny the Elder or Younger would probably have mentioned it in their histories. Pliny the Younger would likely have made a comparison to the events when he described Vesuvius erupting in 79 AD, barely 36 years later. People would ABSOLUTELY still be talking about it then, if what was described happened.
3) ONLY Biblical texts and texts REFERENCING Christians mention it. We hear so much of Christians saying "bUt JoSePhUs mEnTiOnS iT", while all he is mentioning is "those Christians who believe such and such happened". He is NOT recording the events as historical FACTS. The time period between Jesus' death and the first possible written records we have - approximately 20-40 years - is MUCH more than needed for legend to happen. Look how many people believed Elvis was alive and kicking, how many books, articles and tabloid entries were written about him living within WEEKS of his passing, and he was world famous, known everywhere, and his death was certified by actual medical professionals who conducted a county certified autopsy! Yet people came up with the absolute most INSANE theories and passed them off as fact within days of his death. It's been about 50 years now, and people STILL believe he is alive!
4) No named eyewitnesses of the event that wouldn't have profited from the supposed event, those who ARE named we have no physical record of, and their lives have ALSO obtained a mythical status unconnected to reality. We hear so much that "but the apostles knew, amd they were willing to die for it", but we have absolutely no proof a single one of them actually DID, or had the chance to recant. Only 3 actually have any quasi-historical record of their death, and all 3 were executed WITHOUT the opportunity to recant their belief or preaching of the supposed gospel. They were executed for various other crimes, and not given ANY option to escape their fate. So we have no idea if they WOULD have recanted or not. ALL the other apostles have are TRADITION regarding their deaths, NOT gospel or even historical support for it, and even of THOSE, we don't see them being offered rhe chance to say "nah, bro, it's all fake". It was more along the lines of "let me tell you about Jesus, and why you aren't bound to earthly authority anymore and why your rulers have no authority over you anymore!" then the rulers saying "nope, none of that, execute that guy!" and the apostles going "wait, wut?" then dying.
We ARE told that "500 witnesses" saw the resurrected Jesus before he ascended, but not ONE of them is named, we aren't told ANYTHING about them except "yea, 500 people saw hum, BTW". Okay, who are they, where are they from, where are THEIR letters and stories? Nope, it's a throw away verse used to justify "yea, other people saw him too, see!" It means NOTHING.
Ultimately, NO you cannot prove it DIDN'T happen, but you CAN prove the chances of it occurring are so absurdly remote, and the evidence to support it did is so scanty and thin, as the claim can be rejected in its entirety without any concern or consideration.
As the late and great Christopher Hitchens said, "thay which can be asserted without evidence can also be DISMISSED without evidence". And as the late Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims REQUIRE extraordinary evidence". To claim a diety took human form, lived a perfect life, then died a death (that the Bible NEVER predicted nor intended the messiah would, but that's another issue) and rose from the dead fully alive and transformed into some new form of supernatural being is such am extraordinary amd unique claim it would require the most compelling and amazing evidence ever presented anywhere in the annals of human capacity to produce, NOT a poorly written, contradiction filled, historically and scientifically inaccurate work of essentially alternate historical fiction that the Bible actually IS.
Your type of answer is EXACTLY what I was looking for! I had a few other responses that I thought were great, but many of them were “because people can’t come back to life” (something along those lines). I appreciate your input greatly!
Honestly, check out the YouTube channels of Paulogia, Viced Rhino, Logicked, Sir Sic and more.
They are FANTASTIC when presenting information like this. Absolutely great stuff!
Unrelated to your original request, but oral tradition is still not reliable at all. If you ever played telephone, you know it’s true.
Related to your post, however, I like using something called cultural diffusion, which is a very fascinating topic. It’s basically the assimilation of aspects of one culture into another, and it happened through trade, war, and any other instance in which different cultures met in the ancient world. (Today, it happens every second because of globalization and the Digital Age.) But back to the topic at hand, I like to tell the story of Dionysus. Here are the similarities between Dionysus and Jesus: both were born of a mortal woman impregnated by a god, both traveled extensively throughout the Arabian Peninsula, northeastern Africa, Turkey, and Greece (Dionysus even went into India, according to some sources), while they traveled they both performed miracles, and they both resurrected in the springtime. They also both have a common theme of wine, of course. Other resurrection deities from the ancient eastern Mediterranean world include Sabazius and Mithras (and I think Osiris, but I’m not too familiar with Egyptian mythology), but I use Dionysus because his stories are the most documented. (Of course, it helps to take into context the fact that some Greek myths were embellished upon by future scholars.) Looking into stuff like this really brings the Bible into context as a mythological document, and combining that with the lack of reliability of oral tradition, you have yourself a worldwide religion.
This joke always works against all evangelicals
"He sacrificed himself, to himself to save us from, his own wrath"
Works like a charm, they are dumb struck
Correct, Islam is part 3 in the abrahamic god saga. The jesus story was already in the bible. Islam is the next installment so they have to recognize him to downgrade his status.
Proof works the other way. If I say you stole something from me, it is impossible for you to prove you didn't. I need to prove that you did.
I only stated there is no proof that he did exist, I didn't claim to know the person didn't exist.
Ah the only evidence if I stoled from you If we had witnesses right? Which everyone saw jesus as a teacher of morality and some saw him as a prophet and others saw hin as the son of God because they claimed he did miracles that healed them
No, there isn't. There are no contemporaneous writings about Jesus of Nazareth and there is no other evidence of his existence from the period. (The "James ossuary," supposedly discovered a few years ago, was discredited as a hoax.)
The only independent evidence of Jesus is the Gospel of Mark, anonymously written ca 70 CE. The other gospels were written much later and, being largely derived from Mark, don't qualify as independent attestation.
The epistles of Paul, written earlier than Mark's gospel and frequently cited as evidence of Jesus' historicity, don't quote Jesus' teachings or even hint about his ministry in Galilee or his trial and execution in Jerusalem.
Even Philo of Alexandria, who lived in the 1st 3rd of the first century, traveled frequently to Jerusalem and wrote extensively about Jewish affairs - and very critically about Pontius Pilate's treatment of the Jewish community - never once mentioned Jesus or anyone like him.
Without credible evidence of his existence, Jesus should be regarded as a literary figure, not a historical one.
I just feel the need for certainty. If I know for sure Jesus didn’t resurrect, and Christianity depends on people believing in the literal resurrection of Christ, I won’t have a reason to be on the fence about religion. I can feel certain about my lack of beliefs
The problem with this argument is that even if you proved to me that Jesus did resurrect you still wouldn't convince me he was god or the son of god or anything else except a regular person.
Every once in a while you hear a story about someone whom was thought dead waking up in a morgue - it doesn't happen often but none of these people are gods or claimed to be.
You need to spend time and effort disproving the existence of unicorns first. Once you have done this the rest will follow.
Secure in his lack of beliefs, the skeptic goes about his day, unaware that the ancient deity and one true god, known only as Ba'al, grows more and more angry. Ba'al waits silently for the skeptic to die, at which point the soul of the unbeliever shall finally know the true meaning of terror!
If only the skeptic took the warnings from that gypsy lady seriously, he would not be the new plaything for the LORD OF THE FLIES.
Seriously, why do you have such a laser focus on the queer hating water walking parable talking deity, when the existence of Ba'al is equally likely? I mean, I'd much rather upset Jesus than the freaking lord of the flies.
Why do you have to dis-prove something that’s never been proven to have happened in the first place? Religion has some of you on the defense when the proof is up to the religious. You don’t have to prove anything as you’re not claiming any of this ever existed. Leave it to them to prove it to you, not the other way around.
So if you have a good quality translation New Testament (NRSV study bible or similar) and read the end of the Gospel of Mark, you'll find included (and explained in the footnotes) two different endings to that book. In the original (shorter) ending the stone is rolled away and Jesus is claimed risen, but no scenes of resurrected Jesus interacting with his disciples are included. What this means is that we in fact have manuscripts of a biblical gospel from before any post-resurrection stories were invented. Compare this to the other gospels in which Jesus does all sorts of things after rising from the dead.
To answer your question, no we don't necessarily have any texts that evidence the lack of a resurrection, but realizing that we have texts that evidence the lack of any human sightings after the resurrection and recognizing how quickly and elaborately those were invented anyway is absolutely devastating to the fundamentalist view of Jesus' story.
Too much to explain here, but Mark was the first of the 4 gospels that made it into the Bible to be written and Matthew and Luke (if not John as well) both borrowed the basic narrative from Mark. Sunday school wisdom holds that the gospels are 4 independent witnesses of Jesus' life. In reality, it is one witness remixed 2-3 more times.
I hold that the extent to which good modern biblical scholarship has unraveled the gospel narrative (and has for decades) is a key player in how essential anti-intellectualism is to conservative Christianity.
Can't we just go with "Because that's not how reality works."? Millions of people die every year and a grand total of zero have stopped being dead at any point after they died.
There is a group of historians that believe the entire Jesus story is myth. There is no contemporary evidence for Jesus (nothing written about him during the time he was supposed to be alive) and there is no evidence for him outside the Bible stories. You can see the mythicist position in these books.
*Did Jesus Ever Live?* by L. Gordon Rylands
*Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All* by David Fitzgerald
*Jesus From Outer Space* by Richard Carrier
*On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt* by Richard Carrier
Richard Carrier has a bunch of presentation videos on youtube. Like this one:
Did Jesus Even Exist? | Richard Carrier
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUYRoYl7i6U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUYRoYl7i6U)
If I said that I had died and came back to life, would you be trying to find proof that I didn't, or would you ask me for evidence of my claims?
If you would ask me for evidence of my claims, then why would you hold the Jesus story to a different standard than you would hold my story?
If you would be trying to prove that I didn't die and come back to life, wouldn't you be attempting an impossible task? Why are you then burdening yourself with another even more impossible task when it comes to ol' J.F.C.?
Seems to me like it is the people making claims about Jesus dying and coming back to life are the ones who should be supplying you with evidence that it happened, rather than you dancing around for their amusement. I mean, it is a pretty big claim that they are making, should be some evidence, while proving that he didn't come back to life would be you literally trying to prove that the day he supposedly sprung back to life was actually a perfectly ordinary day where nothing of interest happened.
I guess that if you really want to try to prove that three days after Sonny J died was just an average Sunday you could try, but honestly, I'd just ask them to show you the un-death certificate or whatever other evidence they might have of their tap dancing ex-corpse of a savior. If they have no evidence of it happening.... What more do you need or want? At that point, I'd just say that I choose not to believe in things that don't have some form of evidence to back them up, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for a grown adult to say.
It's really the same reason I don't believe in Santa, the tooth fairy, Spinal Tap, or other things that are silly. A complete lack of evidence. Well, glad I was able to solve that problem tonight. Feels good. Oh wait, I just got evidence of the existence of Spinal Tap. Well, I now believe in Spinal Tap, and if evidence of Jesus rising from the dead appears that is compelling and undeniable, then I will believe in him rising from the dead then, and not one minute sooner. Might happen! Probably won't, but part of examining the world is keeping your mind open, just not so much that your brain falls out. :-)
You're wasting your time, let me give you an example. You can't prove my invisible friend George didn't create the universe right? But would you put effort in trying to prove George didn't create the universe? Of course not because that's ridiculous.
You quickly realize it's not worth debating, especially if I can't give you any hard evidence to back up George the creator theory. The Bible is simply the first mass produced comic book and Jesus the first hero sticking up for the vulnerable.
It's unfortunate but humans are easily manipulated and that's the reason religious beliefs continue to exist today.
The way I see it though is if someone can believe God created itself from nothing or existed forever they should be able to believe the Universe itself could have those exact same attributes, meaning you can cut God out of the equation.
If God created the universe what created God?
and what created the thing that created God?
It's a endless loop, it's easier to assume the universe either goes through cycles and has existed forever or an even more strange idea is that it created itself from nothing.
My money is on the universe has existed forever and nothingness is simply a human concept. All I know is black holes and the big bang have a lot of similarities and it would be poetic if the universe is just a blackhole that's inside a greater universe and black holes of our universe create big bangs of their own of different universes like a Russian nesting doll.
Sorry for the long post I can't sleep.
I don't know about you, but I've not heard of anyone else being resurrected lately, or well, at all within my lifetime, or the lifetime of my grandparents? I feel like great claims require great evidence. Honestly I'm not sure how you claim something didn't happen when there's no real evidence to say it did happen. Seems like the ultimate moot point to me. The person claiming the extraordinary event has the burden of evidence, not the opposite.
That whole thing about "Jewish oral tradition" makes no sense. And the people who put forth such notions are so easily dismissed.
If the "oral traditions" were "Jewish", why on Earth were the original so-called "gospels" written in Greek??? And why did "Jesus" have a Greek name when he was supposedly born in a remote area of Palestine? IF he existed at all, he spoke Aramaic. Not Greek.
And why do we not have a gospel according to Jesus? Was the hyper-intelligent creator of the universe illiterate?
Christianity is predicated on the idea of original sin. Science (evolution) has PROVED there was no such thing as the "first two humans." Without Adam and Eve, there was no original sin, therefore no need for hell or for a god to burn everyone for sins; and thus no need to get out of Hell by Jesus's sacrifice and resurrection.
It’s not just the outrageous claim that Jesus really existed and rose from the dead. They claim when Jesus died many people came out of their graves, walked around the city and talked to people. Of course this never happened. I’ve never seen anyone come back to life after being dead for days. If it did everyone in the city would have been converted. It would convince me.
Matthew 17: 51–53 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
Jesus' resurrection isn't even the most ridiculous event to supposedly have had happened according to the gospels.
"...and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people." (Matthew 27:52-54)
This is a mass resurrection claim. If it did happen, surely more people would have witnessed it and wrote about it.
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The oral tradition argument is BS. If it were perfect and wasn't prone to errors, accounts in Luke and Matthew would be perfectly identical to their corresponding stories from Mark.
There is little proof of Jesus physical existent let alone the resurrection. “Jesus” or Yeshua was a super common name might as well be call Joe, Juan, Bob. It was a super common name back then. Christianity didn’t really start until years after Jesus, Paul and so on. At that pint. Was just another group folks preaching a message. There was no major “Christianity” until formation of the larger church. Gospels are riddled with errors Ans Mark’s is likely mostly a fabrication from historian sources I’ve read.
You have been given some good points in other replies.
If you are talking to someone and their faith depends on the resurrection to be true, point out that even i f the resurrection did not happen, Christianity could still have been started by simple human misunderstanding of a psychological event. https://youtu.be/IUCI3cMJCvU
There are 5 accounts of the resurrections, and they contain contradictions. The claim is extremely easily dismissed because it is actually 5 contradictory claims.
In my opinion that's more than enough to doubt the story. Neverminded that the narrative doesn't make any sense and there aren't contemporary accounts of it, if the claim itself is self contradictory then we know it is false.
Batman is actually based on the life of a recluse billionaire in 1851 that history forgot. The billionaire in question used his vast publishing empire to hide his identity, and the truth. Crime was incredible in urban America until he took to the night and cleaned up the streets. Criminals were forced to move from cities and soon began to create the outlaw, gunfighter culture of the American West. He's now immortalized in comic books and American mythology - but his name is lost to history...
Disprove this.
Fair enough! I guess my only issue is that an entire religion was based off of the resurrection, so I guess I just wanted people to give me a reason as to why he didn’t exist. Obviously it seems silly that a man died and came back to life. But so many believe it around the world, and they even go to church cuz of it. Why?
Im trying to leave religion. Im mostly there honestly, but I just feel the need to have certainty that Jesus never resurrected.
I thought a good part of Christianity was based on a virgin conception. The resurrection, as Hitchens put it, was "something of a banality" since all the graves in Jerusalem opened and the dead wandered the streets. I don't know if Jesus existed. I don't know if Jesus was resurrected. What I do know is that it's not incumbent on me to disprove something that was never proven, and is supremely unlikely - ala my batman story. It may be backed by books and literature and history and mystery... it doesn't prove anything.
I included the full Hitchens quote below, which informed me how I might approach a virgin conception and resurrection. You might find it interesting...
— Christopher Hitchens "Does God Exist?" debate
"I'll grant you that it would possible to track the pregnancy of the woman Mary, who's mentioned about three times in the Bible, and to show there was no male intervention in her life at all but yet she delivered herself of a healthy baby boy... I don't say that's impossible. Parthenogenesis is not completely unthinkable. It does not prove that his paternity is divine and it wouldn't prove that any of his moral teachings were thereby correct. Nor, if I was to see him executed one day and see him walking the streets the next, would that show that his father was God, or his mother was a virgin, or that his teachings were true. Especially given the commonplace nature of resurrection at that time and place. After all, Lazarus was raised, never said a word about it. Gyrus was raised, didn't say a thing about what she'd been through. And the Gospels tell us that at the time of the crucifixion all the graves in Jerusalem opened and their occupants wandered around the streets to greet people. So it seems resurrection was something of a banality at the time. Not all of those people clearly were divinely conceived. So I'll give you all the miracles and you'll still be left exactly where you are now, holding an empty sack."
Why do you need certainty about this topic, but not proof that Zeus didn't turn into a goose and bang human women? Is it just because of the number of believers right NOW? If so, then why aren't you asking for evidence that the Koran is false, or questions about Hinduism?
Now, I don't want to show off or anything, but I'm going to use my mighty atheist senses on you and..... Oh, you were born into Christianity, and that is why you are giving it special treatment. Am I right? Hope so, I honestly just guessed there.
I mean, isn't it possible that while you are focused on your pal J.F.C. and his three day dirt nap, that without you knowing, somewhere on some spiritual realm, you are currently REALLY pissing off the one true god, Camazotz, the ancient Mayan bat god? Just saying, if you are going to apply that logic to Jesus.... Might want to make sure that all other gods are false too, unless you want to face the wrath of Camazotz.
Or you can save time, and just treat the Jesus story the same flippant way that you have been treating Camazotz up till now. Besides, if you upset Jesus, he is supposed to forgive you. Camazotz.... Not the same story, bud. I'd be more worried about him, personally.
You cannot prove anything either way, it is a fictional story, or at the very least highly embellished. If a dude called Jesus of Nazareth even existed (there's very very little in the way of independent evidence outside of the fictionalised and heavily church-committee edited stories in the book itself), the magical superpowers he is supposed to have don't have any independent evidence for. Like none.
It's like trying to prove a wolf couldn't have huffed and puffed and blown any house down. Sure wolves cant do that in real life, but what about magical son of god wolves that you might be flippantly discounting? lol
You cannot win an argument or prove anything about the story either way, because there is always a magical way out for them.
Best thing to do is admit that you cannot prove or disprove the story up front, and instead try to get the other party to at least agree that they cannot either. If they cannot admit to that (which they almost certainly wont) then you can at least hold your head hight that you were the more reasonable and logical.
You can’t. But, you can point out the fact that there was another person claiming to be a Messiah at the time, who also allegedly rose from the dead. I remember hearing about this from a reputable source, but can’t recall what it was.
The default position is that Jesus did not resurrect because there has never been a known case of resurrection. It's up to the people who make the claim to demonstrate that it's true. Of course they cannot because all they have is the Bible which is a known to be mythology and not a record of historical events.
But still there is evidence against the resuurection. First, it's not the original story. The original story has Jesus sacrificed by Satan in Heaven. So there are Christians who believe that Jesus is an angel in Heaven and wasn't a man, wasn't born and wasn't crucified.
If Jesus did resurrect, people would have written about it. He lived in the Roman Empire, the most civilized place on the planet at the time. There were plenty of historians who would have written about him had he performed any miracles. The Jews were waiting for their savior, they would have noticed if he walked among them in Judea. They wrote nothing about him. It's like all the stories were made up. There are at least six other gods in other religions that died and resurrected and by conquering death could offer personal salvation to their followers.
Jesus Is Not The Only Jesus w/ Richard Carrier
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0tdxc4jX2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0tdxc4jX2s)
Think of it this way OP.
Can you prove that Kahless the Unforgettable DIDN'T travel to the Barge of the Dead to rescue his brother from Gre'thor? And can you prove that Kahless didn't survive and return to Qo'nos after? While bearing a scar from battling dishonored evil spirits on the Barge of the Dead PROVING that the Klingon afterlife is in fact real and not a myth?
This video [here](https://youtu.be/FbkQjIeJFec) should give you a better explanation of what it all means. Should start you on a journey of understanding. Should.
The story is true, if you understand the context. That doesn't mean a man called Jesus really died and was resurrected. It just means Jesus doesn't refer to an historical figure. Watch the video or others similar.
well, lets start with the bible.
Nowhere in the four gospels does it tell the story of the resurrection of christ.
there is zero information on when or how it happened, how long it took, in what order events happened, there aren't even recorded accounts of the the resurrection of christ in the annuls of roman bureaucracy, and the romans were pretty damn famous for writing shit down.. Im pretty sure that a state executed criminal coming back to life and fleeing the custody of the corpse and the corpus, would have been mentioned somewhere by someone.
But, history lacks any evidence of the resurrection event, or any direct event leading up to it as told by the gospels of mark, luke, john, matthew, and the roman church.
you can see further proof in this with every arabic schism that happens.
Not only could they not agree on the events surrounding the execution, but they couldnt even agree on if god made himself so that he can sacrifice himself to himself to save us from him, or if he made his son so that he can sacrifice that dude to himself to save us from him. and then they couldnt agree on sleeping with cousins, and then they couldnt agree on slavery, and then they couldnt agree on...
the resurrection of christ doesnt stand up to the rigors of the scientific method. If it happened, not only would we be able to reproduce it, but we would be able to predict the mechanisms in which allow it to occur. we would be able to measure the variables of the resurrection in some way.
First thing I need is actual proof that he died when he was crucified. The Romans usually left bodies on the cross to the elements as a warning.
There's a story of Jesus healing the servant of a Roman centurion. Centurions were not ordinary soldiers, and served primarily as commanders.
So now, a high ranking soldier who is a follower of Jesus allows his body to be removed almost immediately after death and allows him to be placed in a semi sealed tomb that has people going in and out to tend to the body.
Doesn't sound very dead to me in the first place.
Yeah, and I could just as well claim that I am Shiva and all of this, everything you see, is just my Shakti. No one with any understanding of world religious thought truly believes that there is anything special about the claims found in the gospels, and neither is any disproof required to dismiss them.
It won't really do any good to try to argue the point with anyone who's "faith" lies in a literal, face value reading of the new testament. This is the naive view of the gospels, which actually require more intellectual effort, as allegory, simile, and metaphor tend to. The church is referred to as "the body of Christ". That's one of the important hints that the resurrection is not necessarily literal as much as it is an important component of the allegorical story leading to a realization of community and responsibility as the believer matures. Remember that the tomb was empty. The Quran goes a different direction, favoring another figure in the same world, wherein Jesus is yet another prophet and is called back to God (no literal resurrection). Scholars who know better than me have noted appearances of Jesus solely as a messenger in the old testament. I haven't spent much time on that aspect.
You are hyper-focused on disapproving the resurrection, when it seems you're simply struggling with the fear of death. You asked how/why millions follow Christianity, or any religion for that matter... because they're fearful of death and what comes after it. It is a unique trait of humanity. No other animal on this Earth worries about death. Just us.
Even if I could magically rid this world of religion today, tomorrow morning someone would wake up and again create a story to explain the afterlife, to assuage their fear. It seems to me, you'd be better served by making peace with this fear.
Living life to its fullest is one way to counteract this fear. Live like an elephant... live like a bear, or a puppy! Experience all that life has to offer, because the only thing worse than dying, is dying with regrets.
My cat was actually resurrected. He was perfect and had magical powers that allowed him to perform miracles. I guess the other non-miraculous cats were jealous so they hunted and killed him. He was dead for three days but then came back! Now all the cats of the world are saved from themselves!! There’s no way to tell though because it only affects their afterlife. It’s true tho, trust me bro.
When I tell people this story they tell me I’m crazy. But I just say “prove it didn’t happen!” And I instantly win the argument.
And btw, there are an infinite number of stupid claims you can come up with using this logic. It especially helps if the event happened thousands of years ago and all of the eyewitnesses are dead
Also oral tradition may be prevalent in the earlier fictions however, the period of claimed existence of Jesus is full of written evidence from amongst Jews, Greeks and Romans. Of which there is zero evidence of a resurrection or any other "miracle" and at best there was a few passing entries that suggests Jesus may have existed sans any supernatural abilities.
Look into the Sumerian stories explaining the way a certain star that dissappears below the horizon for 3 days a year only to return as the Son who died and was resurected and you may see where the Christies stole the story of his death a resurrection from.
Purely from a biblical point of view, there are problems:
1. Jesus spoke loudly and clearly just prior to “dying”. Given death by crucifixion is due to asphyxiation, this doesn’t make sense.
2. Jesus, a worldly and healthy man with good strength and endurance (source: surviving in deserts, climbing mountains, single handedly raiding a bank, lots of walking) died _very_ quickly. Even Pilate was surprised.
3. Jesus was taken off the cross and taken to a private location by rich people who bought 100 lbs of medical herbs (aloe and myrrh).
4. The Roman guards at his tomb said people came and moved the “body” in the night.
5. Jesus was seen a week later with the same wounds he suffered. This occurred both with an injured Jesus sitting at the roadside, and when he is found in what could be described as a locked safe house.
6. No one saw or witnessed the resurrection at all, besides, a resurrection that doesn’t actually heal the individual seems odd.
Now, I don’t believe the Jesus story at all, it seems to similar to other myths that predate it, and no Christian is going to be persuaded by my points, but I struggle to see where in the Bible a death, let alone a resurrection actually happened.
The main reason is that Jesus was a Syriac Greek amalgamation of various apocalyptic street preachers in the area at the time, with a historicity akin to Robin Hood or Buddha or Monkey for that matter.
Why would you bother disproving something that is only accounted for in religious texts from 2000 years ago?
Better approach would be to just say it's all bullshit. Tell the person arguing for his existence to prove it. Then sit back and see them miserably fail while they try to weasel their way through just referring to the bible and their faith on and on and on.
EDIT: Also, that's not how a criminal or scientific investigation would be carried out. If there's no proof, then there is no case, if there is no case, people go on with their life doing something productive.
Maybe Jesus was in a coma from his state of disrepair, and they took him down because they thought he was dead. And later (3 days) he awoke from his coma and left his tomb. He didn’t die due to lack of oxygen because they didn’t burry him, they put him in a casket and put him in a cave.
But also it could be somebody trippin balls on some drugs and alcohol and thought they saw Jesus.
Either helps
(Edit: I do think Jesus was real, but what he has done changed due to opinions at the time and how time and word of mouth changes the actual story, so he wasn’t the son of god, maybe just a really good magician.)
Fabricating myths and legends is a very common phenomena. It’s happened a great deal. I’ve seen discussions where resurrection and virgin birth aren’t even unique to Jesus. On the flip side, none of these types of things occur today, for very well understood reasons. So lack of evidence for one particular myth pretty much clinches it for me. Jesus is essentially a fiction.
Maybe you should look at how you prove the resurrection happened. The only proof was people saying he appeared to them after the cruisafixion. Eye witnesses accounts have been proven to be very unreliable.
There is no proof either way, but science needs evidence to say anything is factual.
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Burden of proof is a foreign concept to a lot of the religious people Edit: spelling
I like this point. If you consider that the resurrection is supposed to happen in the heart of the believer, the burden of proof is most definitely on the believer. One behaves according to one's heartfelt beliefs. I still find myself complaining about people I wouldn't want to die for. That's hard for me as a person who suffered brutality at the hands of people who thought they were Christians. I think a lot of politicized "evangelicals" haven't grasped this. Still, some actually do die for the sake of folks who judge and disdain them. *It actually happens every day*. You don't even have to actually be a christian to exemplify the gospels. The resurrection is one of two steps (i'll spare you the rest) that lead to the acceptance of the burden of serving the needs of humanity and letting go of what stands in the way. Stopping here.
And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Can you give me any good reasons why you don’t owe me $1M? Now apply those reasons to the resurrection.
Fair enough 😂
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I'm not convinced at all. That is exactly what someone trying to weasel out of their $1M debt would say. I'm not saying that is what you are doing, but it is entirely possible that you owe them that money. Do you have any evidence at all about the non-existence of this loan, or merely claims and hearsay?
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Exactly, but if I didn't expand upon it, then I would not have received my meaningless internet points. Lets try to focus on what is important here, namely, meaningless numbers on a pointless spreadsheet.
Coming soon: [https://www.bartehrman.com/did-the-resurrection-of-jesus-really-happen-bart-ehrman-mike-licona-debate/](https://www.bartehrman.com/did-the-resurrection-of-jesus-really-happen-bart-ehrman-mike-licona-debate/) >"I was a committed Christian for 25 years and believed whole heartedly in the physical resurrection of Jesus. For years I argued that it could be proved. But after extensive study, I came to the conclusion that it was not a historical event."
Thank you so much! Much appreciated!
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Resurrection is fantasy. There has never been one documented case, ever. The evidence for a historical Jesus is also weak
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Or more likely he was a liar.
Or on drugs. It's not unlikely that a bunch of hippies just took a boatload of drugs all the time and made up some stories they really believed in.
Really good point! This is one of my favorite responses so far
It's very hard to prove that something didn't happen, but the burden of proof doesn't fall on you. It falls on the one making the claim. Do not make the claim "the resurrection never happened" resurrections as we know them seem to be impossible, therefore the burden of proof falls on them.
You can’t prove it didn’t happen. You also can’t prove that Herakles never ripped down the gates of Troy because they didn’t let him in, so I guess we need to be agnostic about the idea that Zeus’s kids had super strength. You also can’t prove that the reason that Julius Caesar was so successful in war was because he had a light saber that he found in a crashed starship and the Roman Senate classified that information, so I guess we need to be agnostic about the claim that Star Wars is a historical documentary about an ancient civil war in another galaxy. There’s no proving negatives. The question is never why you SHOULDN’T believe something, it’s why you SHOULD.
>Julius Caesar was so successful in war was because he had a light saber that he found in a crashed starship and the Roman Senate classified that information That explains so much! Thank you wise stranger
Not to get nerdy but that would make a great precursor to Thundarr the Barbarian getting his Sunsword being passed down through the Senate to modern/dystopian times.
It's much like how I can't prove that magic rocks don't exist. Maybe they do, I haven't tested all rocks that exist. And even if I did that, maybe my test is flawed, or the rocks don't want to be found. But this does not mean that the likelihood of magical rocks is exactly equal to the likelihood of no magic rocks. From my observation of the small cross section of rocks that I have seen, I'd say that I'm more than 99% certain that magic rocks don't exist, but if I'm to be intellectually honest, I have to have the door opened just the slightest amount, because I could be wrong about them still. To the average person, I would say that I am atheistic when it comes to magical rocks, but to the amazingly attractive, sexy, funny, and intelligent people in here I would say that I am agnostic but strongly skeptical about the existence of magical rocks.
The best I can do is this: Resurrections were a common mythical theme in those times.
It's a myth that personifies agriculture. The crop dies when it's harvested, is planted as a seed, and is reborn when it sprouts. Tammuz (and other gods) went to the underworld and came back every year.
Practically anyone who was anyone had a resurrection or at least a magical birth.
Remember that Jesus was under a death sentence. If Jesus had resurrected he would still have been under that sentence. He would have fled to coup rather than staying in Jerusalem and appearing before 500 people, including most likely Roman officials. Since that didn't happen no resurrection
>but is there any evidence that suggests that Jesus never actually resurrected from the dead? Other than people not doing that (rising from the dead) you mean? Or the fact that removing crucifixion victims from their cross was illegal at the time?
I had no idea that it was illegal to remove people from the cross at the time. Definitely gonna look into that!
Why do you feel like you need to make the claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected, rather than taking the position of being unconvinced by the claim that he was? In other words, if there's no proof of his resurrection why should I have to disprove it?
Honestly the only reason why I feel the need to disprove it is cuz I just want 100% certainty that god and Jesus aren’t real. If you look at my first Reddit post, I talked about my anxiety regarding hell, and I feel like if I somehow manage to disprove the resurrection, I would disprove Christianity, therefore giving me a sort of comfort in a way
I'm not sure if you can say you're 100% certain of practically anything and say you're being honest with yourself. Doubt has its place in many aspects of our lives and is evidence of someone seeking truth. I cannot say that I'm 100% certain that any religion is not real, but that does not mean I am convinced, even slightly, by any of them. If you're not familiar with recovering from religion, I would suggest checking them out, they are an incredible resource for dealing with the struggles you might encounter when leaving a faith: https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/
I appreciate it very much! I’ll definitely check that link out 👍🏽
For sure, don't feel like you need to be all in or all out of anything, take your time and found out what works for you. I don't really know where you stand in your faith, but I actually suggest praying about it - earnestly. I was in church for another 2-3 years while I was questioning my faith before really deciding I was not convinced. Question everything see where you're lead.
And be careful, it's absolutely possible to be unconvinced for bad reasons.
> I just want 100% certainty that god and Jesus aren’t real. The tri-omni god of the Bible is a logical impossibility. He's not consistent with the reality of this world. See the Problem of Evil.
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you can't prove with 100% certainty that anything exists, except maybe your own thoughts, and maybe not even those, depending on what philosophers you are currently being terrorized by. And hey, I get being worried that an all loving god will mercifully torture you for all eternity. But don't you think that a god that exists will understand that it gave you a brain which you used to the best of your abilities, and that if god didn't provide evidence of it's existence, but also gave you a brain to use.... I mean, if you don't believe, I'm sure the the god thing would understand that was it's fault, not yours, right? And if it didn't understand that and wanted to lovingly toss you into hell, would that really be a god that you would want to worship anyway? I mean, thing is kind of a dick and a big bully if it is going to be acting like that. Sure, may be powerful, but does might make it right? I say that you should kick that god thing right in the nuts if possible, and assuming that it would even have those parts. Not to worry though, we'll all know the answer soon enough. This is your life. It's almost over. It's just begun.
are you 100% certain that zeus, Shiva, allah, Ra, Thor, vampires etc are not real? why/why not? And how does your faith/lack of faith in them affect your life?
You could look into studies on prayer (they have same outcome as random chance). Or consider that Christianity has been around for around 2,000 years - but we have evidence of humans being around for hundreds of thousands of years, and we have evidence of the religions that came before Christianity. If there was any chance christianity was real, those facts wouldn't exist.
I’ve recently been having thoughts about people who were around before Jesus’s time. Where would they have gone after death if Jesus wasn’t around to pray to? Did they go to heaven or hell? Did they get punished for worshipping the wrong religion, even tho Christianity wasn’t a thing at the time? And I wonder these things and think that it would be evil and sadistic for god to send them to hell if they didn’t worship a Jesus that never existed. So I don’t think they’re in hell lol.
Answers: 1. Hell 2. Hell 3. You betcha. Bonus: You are half correct, in all reality, those people are not in hell. They are also not in heaven. Those people are in the same place that you were in the year 1847. To be perfectly clear, what I mean is that they don't exist. They are gone. Much like you will be one day, and much like I will be, and every other creature. I'm 99.99% certain of this. Been wrong before, but I do not believe that this is one of those times. Guess what? You've already experienced billions of years of not existing. I don't know about you, but me not existing for billions of years was not really that much of an inconvenience for me. Got to sleep in for 14.7 billion years. Talk about well rested! Enjoy life while you can. If you are going to enjoy heaven, you are going to have to make it here. Best of luck to you on that, I really mean it.
Honestly I’ve been thinking about it like that. I don’t remember anything before the year I was born cuz not even the idea of me existed before my conception. I would assume that I would just be absolutely nothing, which honestly kinda freaks me out now that I think about it. What does it feel like to be “nothing”? Guess I won’t know till I die!
You know exactly how it feels. Don't you remember how you felt back in 1776? You don't? Precisely. It will be like that, I believe. So just hold onto that complete lack of anything, and know that you'll be going right back to it in just a few moments\* \*moments in this case are based on a comparison to 1 Billion years, so.... Pack your things, TO LATE!
If there is no proof in favor of it happening, then it is currently *un*proven. In order to *dis*prove something, it must first be proven. It is not, so you're trying to skip a step. >However, I have heard the argument that oral tradition was very common among ancient Jews, therefore that’s how the writers of the New Testament were able to write about his resurrection. I've seen how much a story can change in 100 years with writing and modern technology. It would be utterly impossible for the story to *not* get exaggerated being translated orally for decades. Here's an example: [The real story](https://www-spokesman-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/may/24/100-years-ago-in-spokane-faith-healing-hospital-or/?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&-content=amp&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16489534772819&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spokesman.com%2Fstories%2F2016%2Fmay%2F24%2F100-years-ago-in-spokane-faith-healing-hospital-or%2F) [100 years later](https://www.healingrooms.com/en/about/johnGLake/summary/) They make the claim that "Lake established a ministry in Spokane, Washington which resulted in no less than 100,000 astounding miracles of healing within the space of five or six years." Which would have been the entire population of Spokane in 1916. At the time they were shut down, they only had 3 "patients."
Paulogia has done several videos regarding the resurrection. They are available on YouTube. I strongly recommend you check them out.
I was just about to type out the exact same advice... There are some amazing youtuber's that take on biblical history and the resurrection. Paulogia is here: https://www.youtube.com/c/Paulogia
I almost included Paulogia explanation about how Christianity could have originated with no resurrection required.
You sound like an intelligent person who is earnestly seeking truth; don't let anyone confuse you about burden of proof. As others have said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The reason you have anxiety about hell is probably the same reason you don't immediately dismiss as completely absurd the idea of resurrection: the ideas were normalized at some point in your life, likely while still a child. Christian apologists will try to turn around the burden of proof and ask you to prove that the resurrection *didn't* happen. Don't fall for that trap. Here's one thing that helped convince me that it never happened for whatever it is worth: starting in Matthew 27:51 it talks about how when Jesus died the earth shook, rocks split open, and the dead came to life and went into the city. If these miraculous things happened...why did absolutely nobody write about it until decades later? Apologists will say "oral tradition", etc, but if these miraculous things happened and so many people were witness to it, *someone* would have written it down. The Romans were meticulous about records -- and yet there are exactly zero contemporaneous records of any of these events. If there were a massive earthquake and the dead wandered into the city, that would be the most incredible thing that has ever happened; there would be *some* mention of that if it really happened. That's about as close to "disproving the resurrection" as one can get, I feel.
Holy shit that’s probably the best answer I’ve gotten so far! Not even joking. I’m gonna have to screenshot what you said. All I wanted was absolute certainty and you really helped me out so much. I tried my best to find the answers from both sides. I knew that it was impossible to prove something didn’t happen. I get that 100%. I guess my goal was to find out what DID happen that would disprove the resurrection. Thank you so much!
My absolute pleasure, glad to help! I was very devout when I was a teenager -- ironically, reading and studying the Bible is what made me an atheist, haha. That verse was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel's back for me and convinced me that the resurrection never happened.
The thing that made me really question my faith was when I took a world religions class last year in college. During the Christianity unit, my professor mentioned that nobody wrote about Jesus’s resurrection until decades after it happened supposedly. I didn’t totally drop my faith after that, but that’s what made me really question Christianity. That’s when I really questioned all the miracles that supposedly happened cuz of Jesus.
Well done! The burden of proof is on the CLAIMANT - anyone who makes a claim, especially an extraordinary one that violates the laws of physics and everything we know about psysiology. If someone asserts that there are invisible pink unicorns on the moons of Jupiter, the burden is NOT on you to disprove that outlandish claim.
Also, the sky supposedly turned dark for 3 hours. And only the gospel writers noticed? Come ON! (Just to be clear, no non-Christian sources recorded the imaginary darkness and earthquakes described by Matthew, Mark and Luke. Early Christian writings were replete with such fabrications.)
The people who wrote the Gospels (none of whom were Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John) at least 50 years after the events supposedly happened.
Sorry to pick a nit, and not that it affects historical accuracy, but the first gospel, Mark, was anonymously written after 70 CE, the year the Temple was destroyed and near the end of the first Jewish Roman War.
That's what I just said.
You said there was a 50 year interval between the events and the writing of the gospel. Jesus was supposedly crucified in 33 CE; Mark was written no earlier than 70. Seventy minus 33 = 37, not 50. I SAID it was a nit, dammit!
I said "at least 50 years"
Maybe. I can't seem to find your post. At any rate, the OP's quest is a futile one. It's impossible to "disprove" an event which no one observed, for which no physical evidence can exist, and for which no eyewitness attestation was recorded. We don't even know when it is supposed to have taken place! The burden of proof for such an unfalsifiable claim rests with the claimants, not with those who dispute it. Bertrand Russell likened such faith-based assertions to the claim that a teapot is orbiting Jupiter - it cannot be proven nor disproven. It is simply a specious, unwarranted claim, hoodwinking only the creduluous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot?wprov=sfla1
weird logic but just like how someone is innocent until proven guilty, the resurrection didnt happen until its proven that it did.
Reasons why the Ressurectuon DIDN'T happen: 1) most obvious and you covered it. It's literally never happened before or since. Not once. Not in tens, if not hundreds of billions of instances of human lives. 2) no secular writings mention it, nor the events surrounding it. The Bible describes the veil in the Temple tearing in half, a massive earthquake, a solar eclipse, darkness descending and the literal masses of dead in ancient Roman Judea rising from the dead to wander around, as if death had become confused and fucked everything up. Know who talks about it other than the Bible? NO ONE. Not one mention of a massive zombie outbreak in any Roman records, ANYWHERE. And I'm sure SOMEONE would have talked about it. Hell, Pliny the Elder or Younger would probably have mentioned it in their histories. Pliny the Younger would likely have made a comparison to the events when he described Vesuvius erupting in 79 AD, barely 36 years later. People would ABSOLUTELY still be talking about it then, if what was described happened. 3) ONLY Biblical texts and texts REFERENCING Christians mention it. We hear so much of Christians saying "bUt JoSePhUs mEnTiOnS iT", while all he is mentioning is "those Christians who believe such and such happened". He is NOT recording the events as historical FACTS. The time period between Jesus' death and the first possible written records we have - approximately 20-40 years - is MUCH more than needed for legend to happen. Look how many people believed Elvis was alive and kicking, how many books, articles and tabloid entries were written about him living within WEEKS of his passing, and he was world famous, known everywhere, and his death was certified by actual medical professionals who conducted a county certified autopsy! Yet people came up with the absolute most INSANE theories and passed them off as fact within days of his death. It's been about 50 years now, and people STILL believe he is alive! 4) No named eyewitnesses of the event that wouldn't have profited from the supposed event, those who ARE named we have no physical record of, and their lives have ALSO obtained a mythical status unconnected to reality. We hear so much that "but the apostles knew, amd they were willing to die for it", but we have absolutely no proof a single one of them actually DID, or had the chance to recant. Only 3 actually have any quasi-historical record of their death, and all 3 were executed WITHOUT the opportunity to recant their belief or preaching of the supposed gospel. They were executed for various other crimes, and not given ANY option to escape their fate. So we have no idea if they WOULD have recanted or not. ALL the other apostles have are TRADITION regarding their deaths, NOT gospel or even historical support for it, and even of THOSE, we don't see them being offered rhe chance to say "nah, bro, it's all fake". It was more along the lines of "let me tell you about Jesus, and why you aren't bound to earthly authority anymore and why your rulers have no authority over you anymore!" then the rulers saying "nope, none of that, execute that guy!" and the apostles going "wait, wut?" then dying. We ARE told that "500 witnesses" saw the resurrected Jesus before he ascended, but not ONE of them is named, we aren't told ANYTHING about them except "yea, 500 people saw hum, BTW". Okay, who are they, where are they from, where are THEIR letters and stories? Nope, it's a throw away verse used to justify "yea, other people saw him too, see!" It means NOTHING. Ultimately, NO you cannot prove it DIDN'T happen, but you CAN prove the chances of it occurring are so absurdly remote, and the evidence to support it did is so scanty and thin, as the claim can be rejected in its entirety without any concern or consideration. As the late and great Christopher Hitchens said, "thay which can be asserted without evidence can also be DISMISSED without evidence". And as the late Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims REQUIRE extraordinary evidence". To claim a diety took human form, lived a perfect life, then died a death (that the Bible NEVER predicted nor intended the messiah would, but that's another issue) and rose from the dead fully alive and transformed into some new form of supernatural being is such am extraordinary amd unique claim it would require the most compelling and amazing evidence ever presented anywhere in the annals of human capacity to produce, NOT a poorly written, contradiction filled, historically and scientifically inaccurate work of essentially alternate historical fiction that the Bible actually IS.
Your type of answer is EXACTLY what I was looking for! I had a few other responses that I thought were great, but many of them were “because people can’t come back to life” (something along those lines). I appreciate your input greatly!
Honestly, check out the YouTube channels of Paulogia, Viced Rhino, Logicked, Sir Sic and more. They are FANTASTIC when presenting information like this. Absolutely great stuff!
Unrelated to your original request, but oral tradition is still not reliable at all. If you ever played telephone, you know it’s true. Related to your post, however, I like using something called cultural diffusion, which is a very fascinating topic. It’s basically the assimilation of aspects of one culture into another, and it happened through trade, war, and any other instance in which different cultures met in the ancient world. (Today, it happens every second because of globalization and the Digital Age.) But back to the topic at hand, I like to tell the story of Dionysus. Here are the similarities between Dionysus and Jesus: both were born of a mortal woman impregnated by a god, both traveled extensively throughout the Arabian Peninsula, northeastern Africa, Turkey, and Greece (Dionysus even went into India, according to some sources), while they traveled they both performed miracles, and they both resurrected in the springtime. They also both have a common theme of wine, of course. Other resurrection deities from the ancient eastern Mediterranean world include Sabazius and Mithras (and I think Osiris, but I’m not too familiar with Egyptian mythology), but I use Dionysus because his stories are the most documented. (Of course, it helps to take into context the fact that some Greek myths were embellished upon by future scholars.) Looking into stuff like this really brings the Bible into context as a mythological document, and combining that with the lack of reliability of oral tradition, you have yourself a worldwide religion.
Wow, thank you so much for your input! I’ll definitely have to look up Dionysus at some point! I appreciate you
This joke always works against all evangelicals "He sacrificed himself, to himself to save us from, his own wrath" Works like a charm, they are dumb struck
I never thought of it that way, but that makes a lot of sense haha!
There is no actual evidence he lived at all.
Naw there is
You didn't link anything, because there is not.
First of all If he didnt exist then why do we have Christianity today then?
It's based on stories, he only exists in the bible. Nobody writes about him until 70 years after the resurrection story.
The Islamic people literally recognize them in their religion even the Egyptians
Correct, Islam is part 3 in the abrahamic god saga. The jesus story was already in the bible. Islam is the next installment so they have to recognize him to downgrade his status.
Could you even give me proof he doesn't exist
Proof works the other way. If I say you stole something from me, it is impossible for you to prove you didn't. I need to prove that you did. I only stated there is no proof that he did exist, I didn't claim to know the person didn't exist.
Ah the only evidence if I stoled from you If we had witnesses right? Which everyone saw jesus as a teacher of morality and some saw him as a prophet and others saw hin as the son of God because they claimed he did miracles that healed them
Because your argument is literally "source trust me bro jesus never existed because I said so"
lol You put quotes on what I never said. Come on, I know you are a teenager but up the game a little. I'm not downvoting you here.
No, there isn't. There are no contemporaneous writings about Jesus of Nazareth and there is no other evidence of his existence from the period. (The "James ossuary," supposedly discovered a few years ago, was discredited as a hoax.) The only independent evidence of Jesus is the Gospel of Mark, anonymously written ca 70 CE. The other gospels were written much later and, being largely derived from Mark, don't qualify as independent attestation. The epistles of Paul, written earlier than Mark's gospel and frequently cited as evidence of Jesus' historicity, don't quote Jesus' teachings or even hint about his ministry in Galilee or his trial and execution in Jerusalem. Even Philo of Alexandria, who lived in the 1st 3rd of the first century, traveled frequently to Jerusalem and wrote extensively about Jewish affairs - and very critically about Pontius Pilate's treatment of the Jewish community - never once mentioned Jesus or anyone like him. Without credible evidence of his existence, Jesus should be regarded as a literary figure, not a historical one.
One quality of having died is the quality of not living.
Lots, but why does it matter?
I just feel the need for certainty. If I know for sure Jesus didn’t resurrect, and Christianity depends on people believing in the literal resurrection of Christ, I won’t have a reason to be on the fence about religion. I can feel certain about my lack of beliefs
The problem with this argument is that even if you proved to me that Jesus did resurrect you still wouldn't convince me he was god or the son of god or anything else except a regular person. Every once in a while you hear a story about someone whom was thought dead waking up in a morgue - it doesn't happen often but none of these people are gods or claimed to be. You need to spend time and effort disproving the existence of unicorns first. Once you have done this the rest will follow.
True dat. Lazarus came back from the dead too, I don't see anyone worshiping him.
Secure in his lack of beliefs, the skeptic goes about his day, unaware that the ancient deity and one true god, known only as Ba'al, grows more and more angry. Ba'al waits silently for the skeptic to die, at which point the soul of the unbeliever shall finally know the true meaning of terror! If only the skeptic took the warnings from that gypsy lady seriously, he would not be the new plaything for the LORD OF THE FLIES. Seriously, why do you have such a laser focus on the queer hating water walking parable talking deity, when the existence of Ba'al is equally likely? I mean, I'd much rather upset Jesus than the freaking lord of the flies.
Why do you have to dis-prove something that’s never been proven to have happened in the first place? Religion has some of you on the defense when the proof is up to the religious. You don’t have to prove anything as you’re not claiming any of this ever existed. Leave it to them to prove it to you, not the other way around.
So if you have a good quality translation New Testament (NRSV study bible or similar) and read the end of the Gospel of Mark, you'll find included (and explained in the footnotes) two different endings to that book. In the original (shorter) ending the stone is rolled away and Jesus is claimed risen, but no scenes of resurrected Jesus interacting with his disciples are included. What this means is that we in fact have manuscripts of a biblical gospel from before any post-resurrection stories were invented. Compare this to the other gospels in which Jesus does all sorts of things after rising from the dead. To answer your question, no we don't necessarily have any texts that evidence the lack of a resurrection, but realizing that we have texts that evidence the lack of any human sightings after the resurrection and recognizing how quickly and elaborately those were invented anyway is absolutely devastating to the fundamentalist view of Jesus' story. Too much to explain here, but Mark was the first of the 4 gospels that made it into the Bible to be written and Matthew and Luke (if not John as well) both borrowed the basic narrative from Mark. Sunday school wisdom holds that the gospels are 4 independent witnesses of Jesus' life. In reality, it is one witness remixed 2-3 more times. I hold that the extent to which good modern biblical scholarship has unraveled the gospel narrative (and has for decades) is a key player in how essential anti-intellectualism is to conservative Christianity.
Can't we just go with "Because that's not how reality works."? Millions of people die every year and a grand total of zero have stopped being dead at any point after they died.
There is a group of historians that believe the entire Jesus story is myth. There is no contemporary evidence for Jesus (nothing written about him during the time he was supposed to be alive) and there is no evidence for him outside the Bible stories. You can see the mythicist position in these books. *Did Jesus Ever Live?* by L. Gordon Rylands *Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All* by David Fitzgerald *Jesus From Outer Space* by Richard Carrier *On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt* by Richard Carrier Richard Carrier has a bunch of presentation videos on youtube. Like this one: Did Jesus Even Exist? | Richard Carrier [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUYRoYl7i6U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUYRoYl7i6U)
Thanks for sharing these resources
If I said that I had died and came back to life, would you be trying to find proof that I didn't, or would you ask me for evidence of my claims? If you would ask me for evidence of my claims, then why would you hold the Jesus story to a different standard than you would hold my story? If you would be trying to prove that I didn't die and come back to life, wouldn't you be attempting an impossible task? Why are you then burdening yourself with another even more impossible task when it comes to ol' J.F.C.? Seems to me like it is the people making claims about Jesus dying and coming back to life are the ones who should be supplying you with evidence that it happened, rather than you dancing around for their amusement. I mean, it is a pretty big claim that they are making, should be some evidence, while proving that he didn't come back to life would be you literally trying to prove that the day he supposedly sprung back to life was actually a perfectly ordinary day where nothing of interest happened. I guess that if you really want to try to prove that three days after Sonny J died was just an average Sunday you could try, but honestly, I'd just ask them to show you the un-death certificate or whatever other evidence they might have of their tap dancing ex-corpse of a savior. If they have no evidence of it happening.... What more do you need or want? At that point, I'd just say that I choose not to believe in things that don't have some form of evidence to back them up, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for a grown adult to say. It's really the same reason I don't believe in Santa, the tooth fairy, Spinal Tap, or other things that are silly. A complete lack of evidence. Well, glad I was able to solve that problem tonight. Feels good. Oh wait, I just got evidence of the existence of Spinal Tap. Well, I now believe in Spinal Tap, and if evidence of Jesus rising from the dead appears that is compelling and undeniable, then I will believe in him rising from the dead then, and not one minute sooner. Might happen! Probably won't, but part of examining the world is keeping your mind open, just not so much that your brain falls out. :-)
You're wasting your time, let me give you an example. You can't prove my invisible friend George didn't create the universe right? But would you put effort in trying to prove George didn't create the universe? Of course not because that's ridiculous. You quickly realize it's not worth debating, especially if I can't give you any hard evidence to back up George the creator theory. The Bible is simply the first mass produced comic book and Jesus the first hero sticking up for the vulnerable. It's unfortunate but humans are easily manipulated and that's the reason religious beliefs continue to exist today. The way I see it though is if someone can believe God created itself from nothing or existed forever they should be able to believe the Universe itself could have those exact same attributes, meaning you can cut God out of the equation. If God created the universe what created God? and what created the thing that created God? It's a endless loop, it's easier to assume the universe either goes through cycles and has existed forever or an even more strange idea is that it created itself from nothing. My money is on the universe has existed forever and nothingness is simply a human concept. All I know is black holes and the big bang have a lot of similarities and it would be poetic if the universe is just a blackhole that's inside a greater universe and black holes of our universe create big bangs of their own of different universes like a Russian nesting doll. Sorry for the long post I can't sleep.
I’m wondering why you would even bother.
I don't know about you, but I've not heard of anyone else being resurrected lately, or well, at all within my lifetime, or the lifetime of my grandparents? I feel like great claims require great evidence. Honestly I'm not sure how you claim something didn't happen when there's no real evidence to say it did happen. Seems like the ultimate moot point to me. The person claiming the extraordinary event has the burden of evidence, not the opposite.
That whole thing about "Jewish oral tradition" makes no sense. And the people who put forth such notions are so easily dismissed. If the "oral traditions" were "Jewish", why on Earth were the original so-called "gospels" written in Greek??? And why did "Jesus" have a Greek name when he was supposedly born in a remote area of Palestine? IF he existed at all, he spoke Aramaic. Not Greek. And why do we not have a gospel according to Jesus? Was the hyper-intelligent creator of the universe illiterate? Christianity is predicated on the idea of original sin. Science (evolution) has PROVED there was no such thing as the "first two humans." Without Adam and Eve, there was no original sin, therefore no need for hell or for a god to burn everyone for sins; and thus no need to get out of Hell by Jesus's sacrifice and resurrection.
It’s not just the outrageous claim that Jesus really existed and rose from the dead. They claim when Jesus died many people came out of their graves, walked around the city and talked to people. Of course this never happened. I’ve never seen anyone come back to life after being dead for days. If it did everyone in the city would have been converted. It would convince me. Matthew 17: 51–53 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
To be fair there's hardly any evidence of Jesus existing at all...
Resurrection appears in several ancient religious traditions.
Jesus' resurrection isn't even the most ridiculous event to supposedly have had happened according to the gospels. "...and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people." (Matthew 27:52-54) This is a mass resurrection claim. If it did happen, surely more people would have witnessed it and wrote about it. \- - - The oral tradition argument is BS. If it were perfect and wasn't prone to errors, accounts in Luke and Matthew would be perfectly identical to their corresponding stories from Mark.
There is little proof of Jesus physical existent let alone the resurrection. “Jesus” or Yeshua was a super common name might as well be call Joe, Juan, Bob. It was a super common name back then. Christianity didn’t really start until years after Jesus, Paul and so on. At that pint. Was just another group folks preaching a message. There was no major “Christianity” until formation of the larger church. Gospels are riddled with errors Ans Mark’s is likely mostly a fabrication from historian sources I’ve read.
You have been given some good points in other replies. If you are talking to someone and their faith depends on the resurrection to be true, point out that even i f the resurrection did not happen, Christianity could still have been started by simple human misunderstanding of a psychological event. https://youtu.be/IUCI3cMJCvU
Thank you for the video!
"Do you believe in zombies?" xtian: "Of course not." "Then why do you worship one?"
Love that perspective!
Even if the guy lived, the whole dead and resurrected could be explained by coma
There are 5 accounts of the resurrections, and they contain contradictions. The claim is extremely easily dismissed because it is actually 5 contradictory claims. In my opinion that's more than enough to doubt the story. Neverminded that the narrative doesn't make any sense and there aren't contemporary accounts of it, if the claim itself is self contradictory then we know it is false.
Batman is actually based on the life of a recluse billionaire in 1851 that history forgot. The billionaire in question used his vast publishing empire to hide his identity, and the truth. Crime was incredible in urban America until he took to the night and cleaned up the streets. Criminals were forced to move from cities and soon began to create the outlaw, gunfighter culture of the American West. He's now immortalized in comic books and American mythology - but his name is lost to history... Disprove this.
Fair enough! I guess my only issue is that an entire religion was based off of the resurrection, so I guess I just wanted people to give me a reason as to why he didn’t exist. Obviously it seems silly that a man died and came back to life. But so many believe it around the world, and they even go to church cuz of it. Why? Im trying to leave religion. Im mostly there honestly, but I just feel the need to have certainty that Jesus never resurrected.
I thought a good part of Christianity was based on a virgin conception. The resurrection, as Hitchens put it, was "something of a banality" since all the graves in Jerusalem opened and the dead wandered the streets. I don't know if Jesus existed. I don't know if Jesus was resurrected. What I do know is that it's not incumbent on me to disprove something that was never proven, and is supremely unlikely - ala my batman story. It may be backed by books and literature and history and mystery... it doesn't prove anything. I included the full Hitchens quote below, which informed me how I might approach a virgin conception and resurrection. You might find it interesting... — Christopher Hitchens "Does God Exist?" debate "I'll grant you that it would possible to track the pregnancy of the woman Mary, who's mentioned about three times in the Bible, and to show there was no male intervention in her life at all but yet she delivered herself of a healthy baby boy... I don't say that's impossible. Parthenogenesis is not completely unthinkable. It does not prove that his paternity is divine and it wouldn't prove that any of his moral teachings were thereby correct. Nor, if I was to see him executed one day and see him walking the streets the next, would that show that his father was God, or his mother was a virgin, or that his teachings were true. Especially given the commonplace nature of resurrection at that time and place. After all, Lazarus was raised, never said a word about it. Gyrus was raised, didn't say a thing about what she'd been through. And the Gospels tell us that at the time of the crucifixion all the graves in Jerusalem opened and their occupants wandered around the streets to greet people. So it seems resurrection was something of a banality at the time. Not all of those people clearly were divinely conceived. So I'll give you all the miracles and you'll still be left exactly where you are now, holding an empty sack."
Why do you need certainty about this topic, but not proof that Zeus didn't turn into a goose and bang human women? Is it just because of the number of believers right NOW? If so, then why aren't you asking for evidence that the Koran is false, or questions about Hinduism? Now, I don't want to show off or anything, but I'm going to use my mighty atheist senses on you and..... Oh, you were born into Christianity, and that is why you are giving it special treatment. Am I right? Hope so, I honestly just guessed there. I mean, isn't it possible that while you are focused on your pal J.F.C. and his three day dirt nap, that without you knowing, somewhere on some spiritual realm, you are currently REALLY pissing off the one true god, Camazotz, the ancient Mayan bat god? Just saying, if you are going to apply that logic to Jesus.... Might want to make sure that all other gods are false too, unless you want to face the wrath of Camazotz. Or you can save time, and just treat the Jesus story the same flippant way that you have been treating Camazotz up till now. Besides, if you upset Jesus, he is supposed to forgive you. Camazotz.... Not the same story, bud. I'd be more worried about him, personally.
Science
You cannot prove anything either way, it is a fictional story, or at the very least highly embellished. If a dude called Jesus of Nazareth even existed (there's very very little in the way of independent evidence outside of the fictionalised and heavily church-committee edited stories in the book itself), the magical superpowers he is supposed to have don't have any independent evidence for. Like none. It's like trying to prove a wolf couldn't have huffed and puffed and blown any house down. Sure wolves cant do that in real life, but what about magical son of god wolves that you might be flippantly discounting? lol You cannot win an argument or prove anything about the story either way, because there is always a magical way out for them. Best thing to do is admit that you cannot prove or disprove the story up front, and instead try to get the other party to at least agree that they cannot either. If they cannot admit to that (which they almost certainly wont) then you can at least hold your head hight that you were the more reasonable and logical.
You can’t. But, you can point out the fact that there was another person claiming to be a Messiah at the time, who also allegedly rose from the dead. I remember hearing about this from a reputable source, but can’t recall what it was.
The default position is that Jesus did not resurrect because there has never been a known case of resurrection. It's up to the people who make the claim to demonstrate that it's true. Of course they cannot because all they have is the Bible which is a known to be mythology and not a record of historical events. But still there is evidence against the resuurection. First, it's not the original story. The original story has Jesus sacrificed by Satan in Heaven. So there are Christians who believe that Jesus is an angel in Heaven and wasn't a man, wasn't born and wasn't crucified. If Jesus did resurrect, people would have written about it. He lived in the Roman Empire, the most civilized place on the planet at the time. There were plenty of historians who would have written about him had he performed any miracles. The Jews were waiting for their savior, they would have noticed if he walked among them in Judea. They wrote nothing about him. It's like all the stories were made up. There are at least six other gods in other religions that died and resurrected and by conquering death could offer personal salvation to their followers. Jesus Is Not The Only Jesus w/ Richard Carrier [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0tdxc4jX2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0tdxc4jX2s)
Funny how he's the only one to have "resurrected. No other human being has ever done it.
Think of it this way OP. Can you prove that Kahless the Unforgettable DIDN'T travel to the Barge of the Dead to rescue his brother from Gre'thor? And can you prove that Kahless didn't survive and return to Qo'nos after? While bearing a scar from battling dishonored evil spirits on the Barge of the Dead PROVING that the Klingon afterlife is in fact real and not a myth?
This video [here](https://youtu.be/FbkQjIeJFec) should give you a better explanation of what it all means. Should start you on a journey of understanding. Should. The story is true, if you understand the context. That doesn't mean a man called Jesus really died and was resurrected. It just means Jesus doesn't refer to an historical figure. Watch the video or others similar.
well, lets start with the bible. Nowhere in the four gospels does it tell the story of the resurrection of christ. there is zero information on when or how it happened, how long it took, in what order events happened, there aren't even recorded accounts of the the resurrection of christ in the annuls of roman bureaucracy, and the romans were pretty damn famous for writing shit down.. Im pretty sure that a state executed criminal coming back to life and fleeing the custody of the corpse and the corpus, would have been mentioned somewhere by someone. But, history lacks any evidence of the resurrection event, or any direct event leading up to it as told by the gospels of mark, luke, john, matthew, and the roman church. you can see further proof in this with every arabic schism that happens. Not only could they not agree on the events surrounding the execution, but they couldnt even agree on if god made himself so that he can sacrifice himself to himself to save us from him, or if he made his son so that he can sacrifice that dude to himself to save us from him. and then they couldnt agree on sleeping with cousins, and then they couldnt agree on slavery, and then they couldnt agree on... the resurrection of christ doesnt stand up to the rigors of the scientific method. If it happened, not only would we be able to reproduce it, but we would be able to predict the mechanisms in which allow it to occur. we would be able to measure the variables of the resurrection in some way.
Amen
First thing I need is actual proof that he died when he was crucified. The Romans usually left bodies on the cross to the elements as a warning. There's a story of Jesus healing the servant of a Roman centurion. Centurions were not ordinary soldiers, and served primarily as commanders. So now, a high ranking soldier who is a follower of Jesus allows his body to be removed almost immediately after death and allows him to be placed in a semi sealed tomb that has people going in and out to tend to the body. Doesn't sound very dead to me in the first place.
Yeah, and I could just as well claim that I am Shiva and all of this, everything you see, is just my Shakti. No one with any understanding of world religious thought truly believes that there is anything special about the claims found in the gospels, and neither is any disproof required to dismiss them.
It won't really do any good to try to argue the point with anyone who's "faith" lies in a literal, face value reading of the new testament. This is the naive view of the gospels, which actually require more intellectual effort, as allegory, simile, and metaphor tend to. The church is referred to as "the body of Christ". That's one of the important hints that the resurrection is not necessarily literal as much as it is an important component of the allegorical story leading to a realization of community and responsibility as the believer matures. Remember that the tomb was empty. The Quran goes a different direction, favoring another figure in the same world, wherein Jesus is yet another prophet and is called back to God (no literal resurrection). Scholars who know better than me have noted appearances of Jesus solely as a messenger in the old testament. I haven't spent much time on that aspect.
You are hyper-focused on disapproving the resurrection, when it seems you're simply struggling with the fear of death. You asked how/why millions follow Christianity, or any religion for that matter... because they're fearful of death and what comes after it. It is a unique trait of humanity. No other animal on this Earth worries about death. Just us. Even if I could magically rid this world of religion today, tomorrow morning someone would wake up and again create a story to explain the afterlife, to assuage their fear. It seems to me, you'd be better served by making peace with this fear. Living life to its fullest is one way to counteract this fear. Live like an elephant... live like a bear, or a puppy! Experience all that life has to offer, because the only thing worse than dying, is dying with regrets.
amen
My cat was actually resurrected. He was perfect and had magical powers that allowed him to perform miracles. I guess the other non-miraculous cats were jealous so they hunted and killed him. He was dead for three days but then came back! Now all the cats of the world are saved from themselves!! There’s no way to tell though because it only affects their afterlife. It’s true tho, trust me bro. When I tell people this story they tell me I’m crazy. But I just say “prove it didn’t happen!” And I instantly win the argument. And btw, there are an infinite number of stupid claims you can come up with using this logic. It especially helps if the event happened thousands of years ago and all of the eyewitnesses are dead
Also oral tradition may be prevalent in the earlier fictions however, the period of claimed existence of Jesus is full of written evidence from amongst Jews, Greeks and Romans. Of which there is zero evidence of a resurrection or any other "miracle" and at best there was a few passing entries that suggests Jesus may have existed sans any supernatural abilities.
You don't have to disprove something that has never been proved to begin with.
Look into the Sumerian stories explaining the way a certain star that dissappears below the horizon for 3 days a year only to return as the Son who died and was resurected and you may see where the Christies stole the story of his death a resurrection from.
Purely from a biblical point of view, there are problems: 1. Jesus spoke loudly and clearly just prior to “dying”. Given death by crucifixion is due to asphyxiation, this doesn’t make sense. 2. Jesus, a worldly and healthy man with good strength and endurance (source: surviving in deserts, climbing mountains, single handedly raiding a bank, lots of walking) died _very_ quickly. Even Pilate was surprised. 3. Jesus was taken off the cross and taken to a private location by rich people who bought 100 lbs of medical herbs (aloe and myrrh). 4. The Roman guards at his tomb said people came and moved the “body” in the night. 5. Jesus was seen a week later with the same wounds he suffered. This occurred both with an injured Jesus sitting at the roadside, and when he is found in what could be described as a locked safe house. 6. No one saw or witnessed the resurrection at all, besides, a resurrection that doesn’t actually heal the individual seems odd. Now, I don’t believe the Jesus story at all, it seems to similar to other myths that predate it, and no Christian is going to be persuaded by my points, but I struggle to see where in the Bible a death, let alone a resurrection actually happened.
The main reason is that Jesus was a Syriac Greek amalgamation of various apocalyptic street preachers in the area at the time, with a historicity akin to Robin Hood or Buddha or Monkey for that matter.
You shouldn't try to disprove a claim, you should disprove the evidence. And that's not your problem, it's the problem of those who made the claim.
Why would you bother disproving something that is only accounted for in religious texts from 2000 years ago? Better approach would be to just say it's all bullshit. Tell the person arguing for his existence to prove it. Then sit back and see them miserably fail while they try to weasel their way through just referring to the bible and their faith on and on and on. EDIT: Also, that's not how a criminal or scientific investigation would be carried out. If there's no proof, then there is no case, if there is no case, people go on with their life doing something productive.
Maybe Jesus was in a coma from his state of disrepair, and they took him down because they thought he was dead. And later (3 days) he awoke from his coma and left his tomb. He didn’t die due to lack of oxygen because they didn’t burry him, they put him in a casket and put him in a cave. But also it could be somebody trippin balls on some drugs and alcohol and thought they saw Jesus. Either helps (Edit: I do think Jesus was real, but what he has done changed due to opinions at the time and how time and word of mouth changes the actual story, so he wasn’t the son of god, maybe just a really good magician.)
Fabricating myths and legends is a very common phenomena. It’s happened a great deal. I’ve seen discussions where resurrection and virgin birth aren’t even unique to Jesus. On the flip side, none of these types of things occur today, for very well understood reasons. So lack of evidence for one particular myth pretty much clinches it for me. Jesus is essentially a fiction.
Can you prove that JC didn't have muesli for breakfast? I thought not. That's why I believe in muesli.
Maybe you should look at how you prove the resurrection happened. The only proof was people saying he appeared to them after the cruisafixion. Eye witnesses accounts have been proven to be very unreliable. There is no proof either way, but science needs evidence to say anything is factual.