Simple question?

I wonder if Pilate heard anything about the resurrection. I never thought about it.

Quote: pew

I wonder if Pilate heard anything about the resurrection. I never thought about it.

Was he still alive, or in Judea, by the time the followers of Jesus thought about it?

Quote: Nareed

Was he still alive, or in Judea, by the time the followers of Jesus thought about it?

Got me I figerd you'd know

Quote: pew

Got me I figerd you'd know

He didn't govern Judea at a time when anything important took place. His rule ended in 36 CE shortly after he put down a rebellion in Samaria, which wasn't noteworthy enough in that era. He arrived back in Rome around the time Tiberius died (or was murdered; with that family one never knows).

I don't know when the story of the resurrection started circulating, and I suspect no one really knows either. But if it was after 36 CE, then Pilate probably didn't hear of it, unless he kept in touch through contacts in Judea. But a story told years afterwards is not news.

One could start the story of Jimmy Hoffa rising from the dead today, and I think it would have similar authentication.

His body also disappeared.

Quote: rxwine

One could start the story of Jimmy Hoffa rising from the dead today, and I think it would have similar authentication.

His body also disappeared.

Do we know he died or did he just disappear and is assumed dead?

Quote: rxwine

One could start the story of Jimmy Hoffa rising from the dead today, and I think it would have similar authentication.

His body also disappeared.

Yes, but he's not that popular, though he's famous, and most people now have only a faint idea of who he was. I'd say most people remember him because he disappeared. I've only a faint idea of who he was.

Now, if Elvis(*) had disappeared...





(*) Or, according to the MIB, if he hadn't gone home...

Quote: Nareed

Right. there is no compelling theory in philosophy to make creation ex-nihilo something to be taken seriously.

There is no philosophy that points to anything but creation ex-nihilo or at least an unmoved mover. This is simple logic and reason. Something cannot create itself, something cannot come from nothing, and nothing moves itself without a cause.

Quote:

"Higher knowledge" is religious double-talk for "crap we really would like to real but which we can't prove because we made it up ourselves."

No higher knowledge refers to what we get when we apply what we have learned from observational science to logic and reason. It is utilizing more than just our senses, it is using all of our intellect.

Quote:

The knowledge that energy equal mass times the square of the speed of light is no "higher" than the knowledge that the sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle are equal to the square of the hypotenuse, and that ranks no "higher" than the knowledge of, say, the Egyptian word for "beauty," or how to reduce a wine-based sauce, or how to hide clues in plain sight in a novel, or any of a literal myriad other things I can think of right off the top of my head. I guarantee you the full equations of General Relativity won't be very useful for cooking dinner, while a detailed account of how corn starch molecules make water a non-Newtonian fluid won't help you steer Juno to a precise rendezvous with Jupiter.

Cooking might be a good example of higher knowledge. It is taking what we know of who corn starch molecules work to create something new and delicious that nature itself would never give us. It is applying more than just our knowledge of the material world. It takes what we know of elevates it to something that we believe will truly beneficial to us.

Quote:

So when you pray to a saint deity to influence the god deity begging him to help the evil atheists "see the light," you are actually NOT expecting any action on the part of the god deity at all? You're just wasting your time and/or making yourself feel better?

Not only do you not understand eternity or prayer, but you also don't understand saints. However, leaving that to the side for now the true object of prayer is not some superstitious control of God but rather to allow God's will to be done in us. It is the opposite of a waste of time. What would be a waste of time is to try to pretend we are in control and to do only our will. Prayer is the antidote to this destructive thought.

Quote:

No. if he is as he has always been and always will be, he has no free will at all.

This is close to one of most nonsensical things you have ever said.

Quote:

Pure logic detached from facts and observations is useless and will net you any fallacy you want.

This is true. My question is why do you ignore both logic and the facts and observations we have discovered.

Quote:

that's not the point. the point is the governor was already involved in the fiasco. he had agreed to have Jesus executed. If then this man resurrected, he'd have had a major development well above his pay grade in hand. He couldn't just let it blow over. First, if he were rational and reasonable, he'd have a physician, such as they were then, look the walking dead man over,...

If he found the Jesus healthy as a horse, he wouldn't just write it down, he'd send missives to Tiberius in Rome and likely to the governors and legates of the neighboring provinces and kingdoms to give them a heads up that support might be required. He'd issue orders to his garrisons or legions, too. The news would have spread, in written form, far and wide, and something of it might have survived to this day.

So you think Pilate would have sent news to Rome to Cesar that it turns out he is not divine that there is a true God and all the other Roman Gods were no longer to be followed? Do you think he would do this? How do you think this news would be received? The ancient world was full of competing gods and would be Messiahs. Why wouldn't he follow the normal way of dealing with these things - persecution, killing, torture, and denial. Oh wait, that is what he, the empire, and the people in power did to Christians.

Quote:

Romans put a lot of stock and importance in portents. We have scraps of such announcements for that reason, things like deformed newborns, two-headed snakes, conjoined twins, oddly shaped trees, and more. You think a portent like an actual resurrection would go unnoticed by a Roman citizen, especially a highly educated one like a provincial governor?

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Quote: Nareed

Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving deity offer someone a drink they are allergic to in the first place?

He is NOT the one offering the drink we are allergic to.

Quote:

My question is why do you ignore both logic and the facts and observations we have discovered.

What facts and observations. In religion there
are no facts. It's a fact that 100K+ people
were crucified by the Romans, but so far there
is no proof or facts that one of them was
the Jewish messiah. The Jews themselves
certainly don't think so, and they ought to
know. If you mean facts and observations
about god existing, please don't make us
go down that road again for the 40th time.