What Do We Know about the Resurrection of Jesus?

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_Philo Sofee
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Re: What Do We Know about the Resurrection of Jesus?

Post by _Philo Sofee »

KevinSim
I guess I'm just curious whether anybody has anything else to tell me about whether or not someone can know that Jesus rose from the dead. I don't want that to get drowned under all the other discussion.


As I see it is we literally have no way to verify this. So there is no real knowledge about whether it happened or not. However we have never seen anyone ever in the history of the world so far; and that is tens of billions of people, who have been dead for 3 days and come back to life. We have never seen a genuine dead person ever come back to life. So the probability based on the actual evidence we now possess is that Jesus didn't either. So follow the evidence. With this idea that if new evidence comes about the very vanishingly low probability that Jesus rose from the dead can be overturned, but it must be very solid real evidence. And we don't have anything like that yet.
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_I have a question
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Re: What Do We Know about the Resurrection of Jesus?

Post by _I have a question »

Philo Sofee wrote:
KevinSim
I guess I'm just curious whether anybody has anything else to tell me about whether or not someone can know that Jesus rose from the dead. I don't want that to get drowned under all the other discussion.


As I see it is we literally have no way to verify this. So there is no real knowledge about whether it happened or not. However we have never seen anyone ever in the history of the world so far; and that is tens of billions of people, who have been dead for 3 days and come back to life. We have never seen a genuine dead person ever come back to life. So the probability based on the actual evidence we now possess is that Jesus didn't either. So follow the evidence. With this idea that if new evidence comes about the very vanishingly low probability that Jesus rose from the dead can be overturned, but it must be very solid real evidence. And we don't have anything like that yet.


Here's the best I can come up with:
Over the course of history there have been examples of incidents where people have been presumed dead but who later turned out to have been alive. Bodies "coming back to life" on the morticians table etc. So Christ could have been crucified, presumed dead, entombed and then, because he wasn't actually dead, "came back to life".
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
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Re: What Do We Know about the Resurrection of Jesus?

Post by _Fence Sitter »

KevinSim wrote:Someone is only obligated to define what a term means if the people listening to her/him don't already understand what the term means. We wouldn't even be having this discussion if you, me, and everybody else on this forum didn't think that open, honest discussion was a good thing. People say that what good is needs to be defined, but it really doesn't. After all, saying that the term good needs to be defined is nothing more than saying that it would be a good thing if that term were defined. Does any serious poster respond to something a troll posts? What is a troll, other than someone who is not working toward the good of everyone else? On the other hand, if someone is a genuine poster, people are glad to post in response to the things s/he says. So are you really going to assert that you don't know what the term good means, and you need me to define it?


We have been down this path too many times. Good is such a relative term, that while we all have some general concept of what it means, when it is inserted into your phrase "preserve good things forever", it becomes meaningless. You cannot define what that term means or why anyone else should accept what you mean by it.

For example, do you believe God is going to preserve the imbalance between men and women forever? Many within the church see that as a good imbalance while many do not? Is it good or is it not.

Is God going to preserve polygamy forever? If yes, is it a good thing or not?

Is God going to preserve one's sexual orientation forever? Why or why not, and which ever way you answer there are those who do not see that as a good thing.

Is God going to preserve the ban on 1/3 of the condemned hosts of heaven to outer darkness forever?

There are no answers to these questions and a myriad of others like them in which "good" is universally acknowledged or understood by all. In the end "good things" are defined by you. So when claim a "God who preserves good things forever" you are claiming a belief in a God who preserves things you deem to be good which may or may not be thought to be good by others.

Really your phrase is just a meaningless rhetorical slogan similar to "Families are Forever", a term like yours that holds no real meaning but is designed to put others at a disadvantage in a conversation.

"Are you telling me you are against "Families living Forever together?"

It's simply a loaded question. Like "good things forever", it holds no common meaning that everyone understands the same and in fact most people don't even stop to consider just what living together as a family forever actually entails, but we better make sure that we spend out entire lives sacrificing to a corporation masquerading as a church just to make sure we don't loose out on what ever it means to be an eternal family, now shouldn't we?
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
_KevinSim
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Re: What Do We Know about the Resurrection of Jesus?

Post by _KevinSim »

I have a question wrote:
KevinSim wrote:Then by all means, believe in that leprechaun.

The leprechaun says he would find it easier to achieve if you paid ten percent of your income to his helpers here on earth (I.e. Me).

Well then, pay yourself ten percent of your income. I'm not going to stop you. I don't personally know that God even is a leprechaun, let alone whether he wants me to pay you ten percent of my income, so you won't be getting a check from me any time soon.

DoubtingThomas wrote:
KevinSim wrote:If you believe in God, you can spend time praying with the hope that God will inspire you in the actions you take. I find that that kind of prayer really adds to my life. If you believe in the Matrix, do you get anything beneficial from that belief at all? If you believe in the Matrix, does that imply that you can get any help from the people that produced the Matrix? It just seems like belief in the Matrix is a dead end, while belief in God has the potential to transform your life for good.

why not believe in cryonics and transhumanism instead?

Do cryonics and transhumanism preserve forever some good things?

DoubtingThomas wrote:Do you really need to believe in gods to hope for a better future?

No, you definitely do not need a belief "in gods to hope for a better future." But all God is for me is someone who knows how to preserve forever some good things, so if our goal is to preserve forever some good things, we do need my type of God.

DoubtingThomas wrote:
KevinSim wrote:I'm convinced I have free will, which means I'm non-deterministic, and I don't see how a totally deterministic universe can produce non-deterministic people like the people who live on Earth.

In physics there is something called the uncertainty principle. Living physicists don't believe our universe is deterministic. Einstein believed in a deterministic universe, but he was wrong. If we rewind time to the Big Bang things won't be the same.

I knew I wasn't deterministic! Thanks for this information.

I have a question wrote:
KevinSim wrote:If you believe in God, you can spend time praying with the hope that God will inspire you in the actions you take. I find that that kind of prayer really adds to my life. If you believe in the Matrix, do you get anything beneficial from that belief at all? If you believe in the Matrix, does that imply that you can get any help from the people that produced the Matrix? It just seems like belief in the Matrix is a dead end, while belief in God has the potential to transform your life for good.


If you believe in the makers of The Matrix, you can spend time praying with the hope that the makers of The Matrix will inspire you in the actions you take. I find that that kind of prayer really adds to my life. If you believe in God, do you get anything beneficial from that belief at all? If you believe in God, does that imply that you can get any help from the people that produced God? It just seems like belief in God is a dead end, while belief in the makers of The Matrix has the potential to transform your life for good.

IHAQ, why do you think that belief in God is any more of a dead end than belief in the makers of the Matrix? I know why I think belief in the Matrix makers is more of a dead end than belief in God. It's because God as I understand Her/Him is that being that preserves forever some good things. So it follows that God might be interested in bringing good things into some people's (perhaps my) life. Do we have any reason to believe the makers of the Matrix want to bring good things into anyone's life?

I have a question wrote:The demonstration above cannot be any clearer in making my point.

Your "point" was based on my inability to respond to that paragraph. I have responded to it.
KevinSim

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_DoubtingThomas
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Re: What Do We Know about the Resurrection of Jesus?

Post by _DoubtingThomas »

KevinSim wrote:Do cryonics and transhumanism preserve forever some good things?


that is what transhumanists dream about, many transhumanists want immortality and a scientific utopia. So tell me, why is believing in God better than believing in transhumanism? Like I said, both are unproven wishful-thinking beliefs or hopes.

Bytheway, many religious groups committed atrocities, I am not aware of a single secular humanist group that committed an atrocity. Does belief in God really improve our world?

KevinSim wrote:I knew I wasn't deterministic! Thanks for this information.


Most atheists agree the uncertainty principle makes our universe nondeterministic, at least on a small scale. The free will debate is not a physics question, it's a neuroscience question.
_I have a question
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Re: What Do We Know about the Resurrection of Jesus?

Post by _I have a question »

KevinSim wrote:
I have a question wrote:The leprechaun says he would find it easier to achieve if you paid ten percent of your income to his helpers here on earth (I.e. Me).

Well then, pay yourself ten percent of your income. I'm not going to stop you. I don't personally know that God even is a leprechaun, let alone whether he wants me to pay you ten percent of my income, so you won't be getting a check from me any time soon.

I don't understand.
You willingly hand over ten percent of your income to other people making the exact same claim, why not me?

KevinSim wrote:IHAQ, why do you think that belief in God is any more of a dead end than belief in the makers of the Matrix? I know why I think belief in the Matrix makers is more of a dead end than belief in God. It's because God as I understand Her/Him is that being that preserves forever some good things. So it follows that God might be interested in bringing good things into some people's (perhaps my) life. Do we have any reason to believe the makers of the Matrix want to bring good things into anyone's life?

Kevin, why do you think that belief in the maker of The Matrix is any more of a dead end than belief in God? I know why I think belief in God is more of a dead end than belief in the maker of The Matrix. It's because the maker of The Matrix as I understand Her/Him is that being that preserves forever some good things. So it follows that the maker of The Matrix might be interested in bringing good things into some people's (perhaps my) life. Do we have any more reason to believe God wants to bring good things into anyone's life?
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
_KevinSim
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Re: What Do We Know about the Resurrection of Jesus?

Post by _KevinSim »

Fence Sitter wrote:
KevinSim wrote:Someone is only obligated to define what a term means if the people listening to her/him don't already understand what the term means. We wouldn't even be having this discussion if you, me, and everybody else on this forum didn't think that open, honest discussion was a good thing. People say that what good is needs to be defined, but it really doesn't. After all, saying that the term good needs to be defined is nothing more than saying that it would be a good thing if that term were defined. Does any serious poster respond to something a troll posts? What is a troll, other than someone who is not working toward the good of everyone else? On the other hand, if someone is a genuine poster, people are glad to post in response to the things s/he says. So are you really going to assert that you don't know what the term good means, and you need me to define it?

We have been down this path too many times. Good is such a relative term, that while we all have some general concept of what it means, when it is inserted into your phrase "preserve good things forever", it becomes meaningless. You cannot define what that term means or why anyone else should accept what you mean by it.

For example, do you believe God is going to preserve the imbalance between men and women forever? Many within the church see that as a good imbalance while many do not? Is it good or is it not.

Is God going to preserve polygamy forever? If yes, is it a good thing or not?

Is God going to preserve one's sexual orientation forever? Why or why not, and which ever way you answer there are those who do not see that as a good thing.

This is a good argument for state's rights. By this logic, gay marriage should be legal in Colorado but illegal in Utah, since, as you say, good is such a relative term, and people in Colorado (let's assume) think gay marriage is good, while people in Utah think gay marriage is not good. But that's no way to run a nation like the United States of America. Its constitution provides a way for people in any state to have certain rights, and I think that's a good thing (no pun intended).

Fence Sitter, your post seems to show a disregard for history, from ancient to more recent. While Bill Clinton was president, a majority of citizens of the United States thought gay marriage (just one example) was not good, but during Obama's presidency a majority started thinking it was a good thing. The idea of what is good evolves with time, and I see no reason to be pessimistic about the direction it's evolving; I would hazard the guess that the idea of what is good generally evolves in the right direction.

Sure there's still a lot of disagreement about what is good and what is not. My wife (and many others with similar views) thinks legalizing gay marriage is a bad thing because, noting it is legal now, she thinks many more youths now are going to experiment with homosexuality, and she sees that as a bad thing. If there was that direct link, from legalizing gay marriage to those youths experimenting with their sexuality, then you'd have a point; there might never be a way to disentangle what is good from what is not, because classification of the act of those youths experimenting as good or not is just as controversial as calling legalizing gay marriage good is. But I think the evidence indicates that legalizing gay marriage doesn't result in those youths experimenting. If the evidence continues to bear that out, then we may very probably have made significant progress in determining whether or not legalizing gay marriage is a good thing.

What I'm trying to say is the idea that we will never have a general consensus about what is good and what is not, is a gross simplification of the subject, and I don't think it's borne out by the facts. People who say item X is evil usually have a reason for believing X is evil; perhaps they say item Y will result from that. That might last for a thousand years, but in a progressive society someone is eventually going to try item X and then we'll all find out whether Y really does result from it or not. If it does or it doesn't, either way we've learned something, and we've made progress towards learning what is good and what is not. It certainly is not clear to me that we're going to spend the rest of eternity with the idea of good being as relative as it now seems to be.

I also object to your statement that "while we all have some general concept of what it means, when it is inserted into your phrase "preserve good things forever", it becomes meaningless." I already gave you an example where we all agree in at least one specific case that it's not meaningless at all. I said if we didn't all agree that open and honest discussion was a good thing, then we wouldn't even be having this conversation. There probably was a time when open and honest discussion wasn't considered a good thing. So we've made progress. I really don't see any compelling reason to believe that we won't make more progress in the future.

Fence Sitter wrote:There are no answers to these questions and a myriad of others like them in which "good" is universally acknowledged or understood by all. In the end "good things" are defined by you. So when claim a "God who preserves good things forever" you are claiming a belief in a God who preserves things you deem to be good which may or may not be thought to be good by others.

When have I ever said anything that indicated that what I meant by good were those things that I personally thought were good?

I have a question wrote:
KevinSim wrote:I started off this thread stating that I believed in God and that I was still a devout Latter-day Saint, because I didn't want to give anybody a false impression by my questions about how solid the evidence was that Jesus of Nazareth had actually risen from the dead. I did not intend to argue that anyone should believe in God or that that God had inspired the LDS Church. (I could do that, but that was not the intent of this thread.) All I wanted to do was get some kind of perspective on what we know about what happened in Jersusalem in the First Century.

Thanks to a lot of you, I have gotten precisely what I needed on that subject. But, contrary to my wishes, this thread has turned into a pretty serious discussion on the subject of whether or not someone can know that God exists and, to a lesser extent, whether or not someone can know that that God has inspired the LDS Church.

I guess I'm just curious whether anybody has anything else to tell me about whether or not someone can know that Jesus rose from the dead. I don't want that to get drowned under all the other discussion.

The question about Jesus rising from the dead and the one about Gods existence are fundamentally the same. You believe both, there's no objective evidence for either, so now what?

Now what? Now I go back to the man who's telling me I should believe in traditional Christianity because of the evidence Jesus rose from the dead, and tell him that I'm not convinced that evidence makes the resurrection even likely, let alone decisively proven. Perhaps I will tell him why I think it makes sense to believe in God, even without any scientific proof that there is a God, and I will talk to him about LDS ideas for finding out whether Jesus rose from the dead, based on faith that God lives.
KevinSim

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Re: What Do We Know about the Resurrection of Jesus?

Post by _I have a question »

KevinSim wrote:Now what? Now I go back to the man who's telling me I should believe in traditional Christianity because of the evidence Jesus rose from the dead, and tell him that I'm not convinced that evidence makes the resurrection even likely, let alone decisively proven.


Perhaps I will tell him why I think it makes sense to believe in God, even without any scientific proof that there is a God, and I will talk to him about LDS ideas for finding out whether Jesus rose from the dead, based on faith that God lives.


Perhaps his reply will be along the lines of - How come you believe in God without proof, but won't believe
Jesus rose from the dead on the same basis?
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
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Re: What Do We Know about the Resurrection of Jesus?

Post by _KevinSim »

DoubtingThomas wrote:
KevinSim wrote:Do cryonics and transhumanism preserve forever some good things?

that is what transhumanists dream about, many transhumanists want immortality and a scientific utopia. So tell me, why is believing in God better than believing in transhumanism? Like I said, both are unproven wishful-thinking beliefs or hopes.

What kind of immortality are they talking about? Do they really think their plans will result in them living forever forever, or are they just planning on living for a very long period of time? I confess I'm not too familiar with what transhumanists are actually thinking of doing.

DoubtingThomas wrote:Bytheway, many religious groups committed atrocities, I am not aware of a single secular humanist group that committed an atrocity. Does belief in God really improve our world?

I'm open to considering the possibility that belief in God may not have improved our world in the past. As I understand it, that's a controversial subject. But pointing to atrocities committed by past religious groups and wondering if that means belief in God might actually not improve our world, is like pointing to atrocities committed by past political systems and wondering if that means government itself might actually not improve our world. Religious mistakes in the past shouldn't be any more reason to take us to John Lennon's world without religion, than political mistakes in the past should be a reason to take us to anarchy.

I have a question wrote:
I have a question wrote:The leprechaun says he would find it easier to achieve if you paid ten percent of your income to his helpers here on earth (I.e. Me).

KevinSim wrote:Well then, pay yourself ten percent of your income. I'm not going to stop you. I don't personally know that God even is a leprechaun, let alone whether he wants me to pay you ten percent of my income, so you won't be getting a check from me any time soon.

I don't understand.
You willingly hand over ten percent of your income to other people making the exact same claim, why not me?

IHAQ, I'm not sure that's quite accurate. I'm not aware that the people you're talking about have made the claim that it would be easier to achieve their goals if I paid them ten percent of my income, and even if they had, I wouldn't believe them. The claim that they've made was that if I asked God if He wanted me to support the LDS Church, God would tell me whether He wanted me to or not. That's the claim they've made that I've believed.

I have a question wrote:
KevinSim wrote:IHAQ, why do you think that belief in God is any more of a dead end than belief in the makers of the Matrix? I know why I think belief in the Matrix makers is more of a dead end than belief in God. It's because God as I understand Her/Him is that being that preserves forever some good things. So it follows that God might be interested in bringing good things into some people's (perhaps my) life. Do we have any reason to believe the makers of the Matrix want to bring good things into anyone's life?

Kevin, why do you think that belief in the maker of The Matrix is any more of a dead end than belief in God? I know why I think belief in God is more of a dead end than belief in the maker of The Matrix. It's because the maker of The Matrix as I understand Her/Him is that being that preserves forever some good things. So it follows that the maker of The Matrix might be interested in bringing good things into some people's (perhaps my) life. Do we have any more reason to believe God wants to bring good things into anyone's life?

Ah, now see, I didn't know that the makers of the Matrix were interested in preserving forever some good things. If they are, then by my definition of God, the makers of the Matrix are God. So go on believing in those makers as much as you want.

I have a question wrote:
KevinSim wrote:Now what? Now I go back to the man who's telling me I should believe in traditional Christianity because of the evidence Jesus rose from the dead, and tell him that I'm not convinced that evidence makes the resurrection even likely, let alone decisively proven.


Perhaps I will tell him why I think it makes sense to believe in God, even without any scientific proof that there is a God, and I will talk to him about LDS ideas for finding out whether Jesus rose from the dead, based on faith that God lives.


Perhaps his reply will be along the lines of - How come you believe in God without proof, but won't believe
Jesus rose from the dead on the same basis?

I've kind of explained this in other posts. My conscience requires me to work toward the preservation, forever, of some good things. That means there needs to be a God (or at least that being that I call God). It's clearly beyond me to produce such a God, so I won't expend my energies in that direction. But there still needs to be a God. So I've decided to go on the faith that there already is a God, and have lived my life trying to get input from that God so that I can do my share of the job of preserving forever some good things.

Jesus rising from the dead is not as inherently necessary to preserve forever some good things as the existence of God is. Although I kind of do "believe Jesus rose from the dead on the same basis." I believe Jesus rose from the dead because I believe God told me the LDS Church is true, and the LDS Church teaches that Jesus rose from the dead.
KevinSim

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Re: What Do We Know about the Resurrection of Jesus?

Post by _DoubtingThomas »

KevinSim wrote:What kind of immortality are they talking about? Do they really think their plans will result in them living forever forever


Yes, that is what they hope for.

See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STsTUEOqP-g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhLTy6AKAxg

KevinSim wrote:I'm open to considering the possibility that belief in God may not have improved our world in the past. As I understand it, that's a controversial subject. But pointing to atrocities committed by past religious groups and wondering if that means belief in God might actually not improve our world, is like pointing to atrocities committed by past political systems and wondering if that means government itself might actually not improve our world. Religious mistakes in the past shouldn't be any more reason to take us to John Lennon's world without religion, than political mistakes in the past should be a reason to take us to anarchy.


Some governments do a lot of good, where is the evidence that religion is good for humanity? In fact, the least corrupt governments are mostly secular and non-authoritarian.
See
http://www.transparency.org/news/featur ... index_2016
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