: : : But the resurection is a historical event that can be proved. Refute it. I'm ready for some apologetics.
: : Floyd: Easy: : : [snip]
: : 3) The only people who claim to have had personal contact with Christ after the alleged resurection all stood to benefit considerably from claiming that it happened. They therefore had a strong motive to lie.
: : This is not conclusive evidence that the event did not occurr, but it is a powerful circumstantial case, IMHO. Point #2 is, of course, the most important agrument. If you can provide independent evidence of the resurrection, please do so.
: : -Floyd
: : Piper: I have always found it hard to conceptualise the claim that those who had personal contact with christ would have consciously lied so as to promote their cause. Such actions would have left them as hypocrytes and surely led them to the spiritual void (you cast your response in terms of motivation, so i take it that you mean it to be a conscious decision).
: : As to independent evidence, well, aside from a questionable passage in Josephus (Taking my cue from Voltaire: "The Christians, by one of those frauds called pious grossly falsified a passage in Josephus. they attribute to this Jew, so obstinate in his religion, four ridiculously interpolated lines; and at the end of this passage they added: He was the Christ. Come now! if Josephus had heard people talk about so many events against nature, he would not have limited himself to four lines about them in the history of his country!..." etc), i have to agree there is little (But then is that not often the case with history?).
: : Nevertheless can not personal experience be used to count as evidence that stands independeant from the facts alleged in the bible. If i claim that the existance of god is self-evident upon reflexion does that not constitute a form of evidencce?
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: How can you say that those who contacted Christ after His resurrection benefitted from it if He had not really risen? All but one of the remaining 11 apostles died as martyrs, and that one was sentenced to exile on an island. Christians "had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews 11:36-38)
: That doesn't sound like anything we'd call personal benefit. What benefit is it to be beaten and killed for something you know is faked? Why would so many have been willing to undergo that type of torture if the resurrection had not really happened?
Piper: I suspect that passages in the bible suggesting that christians were subject to mass slaughters are an exageration.
In his debate with Celsus (whose anti heretical works were destroyed by christians- there goes any evidence that might conflict!), Origen, as late as A. D. 240-250:
"For in order to remind others, that by seeing a few engaged in a struggle for their religion, they also might be better fitted to despise death, some, on special occasions, and these individuals who can be easily numbered, have endured death for the sake of Christianity (Contra Celsum, Book 3, Chapter 8)."
So here we have one of the fathers of the christian church stating that those who were martred were in fact 'few' and could be 'easily numbered'. Contra biblical accounts he actually denies that christians were subject to mass slaughter for their beliefs.
As regards the fate of the apostles, exctly waht became of them is unclear (See 'The Search for the Twelve Apostles', Dr. William Steuart McBirnie). As such it is not possible to conclude as a matter of historical fact that they were martyred in the ways the christian church suggests.
None.
