Simple question?

Quote: FrGamble

No it was the preaching of the eyewitnesses of His Resurrection that led to many people like Paul and others all the way up to today having a real personal experience of the love of the Risen Lord Jesus.

I thought Paul required a personal visit by the dead man himself.

Maybe that's in some conflicting account. There are so many after all.

Quote: FrGamble

No it was the preaching of the eyewitnesses of His Resurrection .

No, it was the people who heard second hand
and forth hand and twenty forth hand that
preached about it, after the story had been
embellished to death. Jesus is a legend, and
that's how all legends start. All societies have
legends that are told around the communal
campfire, Jesus is just another story. That you
want to believe it's all true and live that way
is your burden and folly, not mine. You think
it's significant because greedy men took the
story and used it to control people and that
was some kind of great accomplishment. It
was, but not in the way you think.

Quote: Nareed

In any case, there are like six different versions of events, which argues poorly on behalf of your notion.

In every version the central event is the Resurrection. This argues strongly on behalf of my notion. When you have various and different accounts you can find the common thread the fundamental truth that everyone agrees on and this is important. You can then discover embellishments or additions when you understand the culture, who the person is addressing, what is their purpose, etc.

Every legend as Evenbob likes to say the story of Jesus is begins with an event or a story. Those that are kind of local lore and circulate a little bit here and there are built on an event without much significance. Then you have other legends that are more universal but don't have a specific event that caused them but rather various stories that lead to the same strong moral message but have very different origins and characters; so you get St. Nicholas, Santa Clause, Buffana the Epiphany Witch, Jolly Old St. Nick, Kris Kringle, etc. Can you imagine the power of an event so real and true and significant that it is actually based on a real event happening in a backwater province of the Roman Empire that now has universal appeal and that everyone around the world knows this person as Jesus Christ and no one else?

Quote: Nareed

I thought Paul required a personal visit by the dead man himself.

Paul experienced the Risen Lord in a personal visit.

The central event in believing the Loch Ness monster would be SUPRISE, the Loch Ness Monster.

Why is the fact Jesus is risen anymore special because it's the central event of the story?

Quote: FrGamble

backwater province of the Roman Empire that now has universal appeal and that everyone around the world knows this person as Jesus Christ and no one else?

You're still not getting it. It's not the
story of Jesus that made the religion
powerful, resurrection stories were
common in those days. It's what
the Church did after Constantine
made Christianity the religion of
the Roman Empire. If it hadn't been
for that, we would know the Jesus
story only as an old fable.

The Church bulldozed it's way across
Europe, routing out the pagan
religions, stealing their land and
buildings, and forcibly converting
them. You act like the spread of
Christianity was some wonderful
miracle, and the opposite was true.
The Church was a monster that ate
up everything in it's path. How do
you think they became the wealthiest
organization in the world, by peasants
putting coins in the plate? The got
their wealth by confiscating land
and personal property whenever they
could.

I tried to get you to read a long a
scholarly article on how the Church
got it's wealth and you never read it,
or you did and it was so damning you
wouldn't respond. What we see in the
Church today is a shadow of what
they once were, the wealth and power
has faded to the point that they're barely
holding on.

Quote: FrGamble

In every version the central event is the Resurrection.

That no one saw happening. And then Jesús looked different. Hm.... Seems legit.

Quote: FrGamble

Paul experienced the Risen Lord in a personal visit.

Pics or it didn't happen.

What do you know, social media is good for something :)

Anyway, this shoots down your theory claim Paul being overcome by the testimony of the early Christians.

Now, if your gods are all-powerful, and a visit by even one of them is a sure-fire means for conversion, why don't they do it any more?

Quote: FrGamble

Paul experienced the Risen Lord in a personal visit.

The more we talk about this religion, the
stupider it gets. If I had to talk face to
face with a person who believed all
this claptrap, it would be all I could do
not to break out laughing every 30
seconds.

'One mans religion is another mans belly laugh.' Robert Heinlein

Quote: Evenbob

You're still not getting it. It's not the
story of Jesus that made the religion
powerful, resurrection stories were
common in those days. It's what
the Church did after Constantine
made Christianity the religion of
the Roman Empire.

If resurrection stories were indeed as commonplace as you suggest they were (I'd like some proof of that), then why is Jesus' Resurrection so world altering different? What you still don't get is that the even of the Resurrection took place over 300 years before Constantine converted. What supplied the lasting power of Jesus' Resurrection story, especially since it involved Him being denied by all of His disciples, condemned by both the Jewish leaders and Roman rulers, crucified like one of the worst criminals, and the immediate persecution of His followers. If you can find other contemporary stories of someone claiming to be resurrected from the dead compare their circumstances and story to that of Jesus. How could Jesus of Nazareth's story of the Resurrection, which had everything going against it outlast all these other stories for over 300 years until it toppled the greatest Empire in the world at that time and is now the largest religion spread over all the world?