Easter Is Coming in 8 Weeks

Quote: Evenbob

It's interesting Paul never mentions Jesus having
been resurrected in the flesh. He never mentions
empty tombs, or any of the physical appearances.
He never mentions or quotes any of the gospels.
It's almost like the resurrection stories were not
being told when Paul was alive, which would have
been very very odd if they were true. He would
have mentioned the physical resurrection all the
time, it's what the religion was based on. And
he blatantly did not because he obviously had
never heard of it. How could that be if it was true.

Um...Do you really want me to answer this? St. Paul all the way through his writings from the first to the last mentions the reality of the Resurrection as his constant theme. You can literally pick up the Bible and read any of his letters to hear about the Resurrection. However, maybe his classic and longest treatise on the subject of the Resurrection is chapter 15 of Frist Corinthians. Here is a link if you'd like to read it and retract your post.

1 Corinthians 15

Quote: FrGamble

How do you experiment or observe something before there was anything?

By recreating the conditions. How else?

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However, you can use our experiences of the universe to help us point to a solution. We have ample experiences and the use of logic that consistently shows us that things that begin to exist have a cause.

Deduction can only take you so far. Before I remind you we don't know whether the universe began at the big bang or whether it was a phase in the universe's existence, lets' try something concrete:

Deduction tells you things are made of smaller things, which are made of even smaller things, which are made up of tinier even smaller things, etc. It will not tell you whether you can keep finding ever smaller things without end, or whether there is a limit and a bunch of elementary teeny tiny particles making up everything. This you need to find out by observation and/or experimentation. In particular you need observations to determine what these fundamental particles are.

Now, we don't know whether the universe began at the big bang, or whether that was a phase in the universe's existence.

But let's suppose the universe begins at the big bang and there was a creator. We still don't know who or what the creator is. That would also require observation.

Quote: Dalex64

Occam's razor does not say the simplest explination IS the correct one, but that it is most likely correct. It does not preclude a more improbable explaination from being correct.

Thank you:

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Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate

If there are two theories, with equal predictive power, the less complex one is better to be used.

Quote: FrGamble

In fact they even documented what they thought were love orgies and cannibalism in the life of the early Christians,

So these were accurate?

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From before Claudius and then on to Nero and beyond people knew about Christians and roughly what they believed, especially the Resurrection.

Any sources other than Jesus' fans documenting the resurrection yet?

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Let's remember what the Roman's thought of Judea and Jerusalem at the time. This was a way station and a frontier outpost, more valuable for its strategic location than anything else.

It was also a big headache of frequent revolt

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The news of Jesus was big news in that area and among the local Romans and certainly the Jews there. However, its impact on the rest of the Roman Empire and the Emperor was not something that would be considered big news.

The rest of the Roman Empire includes areas like Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia which traded with Judea all the time, and who shipped trade goods through Judea for delivery elsewhere. They would have noticed a big commotion right next door.

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However, Jesus Christ was the true Messiah and truly God and had been truly Resurrected so this news didn't burn out it.

According to every Jewish authority I know, this is not so.

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The comparison falls apart first in its content. The fate and supposed Resurrection of another Jewish Messiah wouldn't have even trended on an ancient Roman version of Twitter if they had it.

It would have I the Jewish community. You forget people really did believe in their religions back then, unlike today (and thank God for that <w>). Jews learning the Messiah had been resurrected wouldn't wait 15 years to make up their minds about it.

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What about poor fishermen and ordinary folk whom Jesus attracted to Himself.

Yeah, like the poor are so content with poverty they never want anything to change.

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This is the worst explanation yet. One or two people could not possibly have made up this idea and then convinced the rest of the group to not only believe it but to lay down their lives for it.

You seem to think all this happened in an instant. Those developments took years, as you so aptly made evidently clear.

I'd like you to explain the violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

A creator violates the first law of thermodynamics.

A big crunch would seemingly violate the laws of thermodynamics. It might recreate the conditions prior to the big bang. Entropy reset button.

We already know that our laws break down close to the big bang, and there is a gap in our theories between dealing with the very large and the very small.

The lack of a science based explaination for events is not proof of a supernatural one.

You have chosen to accept matters of faith and philosophy as fact. I won't do that.

Quote: FrGamble

1 Corinthians 15

Paul is obviously talking about a SPIRITUAL
resurrection, not a physical one. There are
volumes of material to back this up. There
are whole sects of Christianity that believe
it was spiritual, all based on what Paul says
about it.

Quote: Nareed

Any sources other than Jesus' fans documenting the resurrection yet?

As Bill O'Reilly points out in his book 'Killing
Jesus', there were lots of outside sources
that Jesus was indeed crucified. That's a
documented historical fact.

The physical resurrection is not. And why not.
Here's a lengthy detailed lecture on why the
resurrection never happened. Makes sense
to me.

"So this is where we end up. We have no trustworthy evidence of a physical resurrection, no reliable witnesses. It is among the most poorly attested of historical events. The earliest evidence, from the letters of Paul, does not appear to be of a physical resurrection, but a spiritual one. And we have at least one plausible reason available to us as to why and how the legend grew into something else. Finally, the original accounts of a resurrection of a flesh-and-blood corpse show obvious signs of legendary embellishment over time, and were written in an age of little education and even less science, a time overflowing with superstition and credulity."

http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html

Quote: Evenbob

Quote: FrGamble

1 Corinthians 15

Paul is obviously talking about a SPIRITUAL
resurrection, not a physical one. There are
volumes of material to back this up. There
are whole sects of Christianity that believe
it was spiritual, all based on what Paul says
about it.

Um...again you couldn't be more wrong about this. You might want to read the chapter again or point to something other than some splinter sect, most likely Gnostic that believed material things were evil and therefore interpreted Paul's words the way they wanted to.

Quote: FrGamble

Um...again you couldn't be more wrong about this. .

Holy Moly! I had no idea what a huge deal
this is. The spiritual VS physical resurrection.
There are tons of arguments for a spiritual
rising, so much so that there are whole
churches that believe it. I had no idea.

"Paul knows nothing of the bodily resurrection elaborated in the four gospels some 40 to 70 years after Jesus' death. That is to say, no women discovering an empty tomb, no angelic messengers, no appearance of the risen Lord to Mary Magdalene, no postmortem Jesus dining with the disciples, or Jesus magically passing through walls into a locked room, or having Thomas examine the wounds in Jesus' hands and side. For Paul, the resurrection appearance was a spiritual one."

http://www.religioustolerance.org/symes01.htm

"Many liberal and some mainline Christian leaders believe that Jesus died during the crucifixion, did not resurrect himself, and was not bodily resurrected by God...They also believe that Paul regarded the resurrection to be an act of God in which Jesus was a passive recipient of God's power. Paul did not mention the empty tomb, the visit by a woman or women, the stone, the angel/angels/man/men at the tomb, and reunion of Jesus with his followers in his resuscitated body. Rather, he believed that Jesus was taken up into heaven in a spirit body."

http://www.religioustolerance.org/resur_lt.htm

The evidence is overwhelming, if you follow the
timeline of when things were written, that the
story of Jesus physical resurrection was a legend
that evolved over the years. It's obvious when
you read the NT in the order that the pages
were written, and not how they're arranged.

I'm tempted to let you stay with the idea that Jesus was spiritually resurrected and chalk it up as a movement in the right direction. This argument as I've mentioned at least recognizes the historical fact that the Paul and the early disciples had a real experience of Jesus that galvanized them to spread the Good News throughout the world. I could also take solace in the recognition of Bob that in this argument the spiritual exists. Like acknowledging that the universe had a cause or force, even if one does not recognize this cause as a being, is a step in the right direction. I'm tempted to rest in the acknowledgement of a spiritual resurrection as a step in the right direction. Alas, my conscience will not let me do so because this idea of Paul's experience of the Resurrected Christ differing so radically from the Gospel accounts is non Biblical.

The misconception of the nature of Jesus' Resurrection can be traced to an early heresy called Docetism that claimed that Jesus Himself was not fully human, but more of a spiritual reality even when He walked the earth. This means that He never really died and He never was physically Resurrected because there was no true physicality to Him in the first place. This heresy was rejected explicitly in the Council of Nicea in 325AD. It was resurrected in the 19th and 20th century in an attempt to reconcile the Resurrection to what modern philosophy and thinking would find more acceptable. Dr. Craig writes this:

"So although many theologians try to play off the 'massiven Realismus' of the gospels against a Pauline doctrine of a spiritual resurrection body, such reasoning rests on a fundamental and drastic misunderstanding of Paul's doctrine. One cannot but suspect that the real reason for scholarly scepticism concerning the historicity of the gospel appearances is that, as Bultmann openly stated, this is offensive to 'modern man,' and that Paul has been made an unwilling accomplice in critics' attempts to find reasons to support a conclusion already dictated by a priori philosophical assumptions. But Paul will not allow himself to be put to this use; a careful exegesis of Pauline doctrine fully supports a physical resurrection body. And, it must be said, this was how first century Christians apparently understood him, for the letters of Clement and Ignatius prove early wide acceptance of the doctrine of physical resurrection in first century churches, including the very churches where Paul himself had taught. The ground is thus cut from beneath those scholars who object to the historicity of the gospel resurrection narratives because of their physicalism."

Paul's Meaning of Resurrection

This quote also mentions and I alluded to it in referencing the Council of Nicea that using Paul against the Gospels is a modern invention that the early Christians would find as ridiculous as we do when we truly look at it in the perspective of the early Church. A key point is to remember that Paul, who was a Pharisee content on persecuting Christians precisely because of their claims about the Resurrection of Jesus had a conversion experience. Immediately afterwards He received instruction from the disciples and went to Jerusalem to meet with Peter. There he received his nihil obstat if you will, to begin his missionary journeys. Luke and Mark where both his companions on these journeys. He was obviously in complete agreement concerning the most important fact of Christianity, namely the real physical Resurrection of Jesus before heading out to evangelize the world with the blessings of the first Pope and the community.

Paul being a Pharisee had a very real physical understanding of what was meant by resurrection. He appealed to his fellow Pharisees in this regard when at trial in Acts 23:6. The Pharisees took resurrection so literally as to claim that the very bones of the deceased, which remained after the flesh was gone, was part of the resurrection. I mention this only to point out the radical physical nature of the resurrection that was deeply ingrained in Paul and the Jewish leaders of the time. Without going to much into the ancient understanding of soma, which Paul uses to describe the resurrection. Suffice it to say for now that this concept for Paul meant body, form, and substance. While it is clear in Paul's teaching and that of the early Church that the Resurrection of Jesus was a glorified body, very different than the "flesh and blood" we have right now, it was without a doubt a real physical resurrection in line with his Pharisic background and the understanding of orthodox Christianity at the time.