Unfortunately, That's the claim, that this miraculous thing happened to this incredible charismatic character of Jesus and everybody who saw it became believers and started writing the bible.
You, as well as everyone else here, knows the people who supposedly saw all that miraculous stuff could not read or write. Neither could the vast majority (90% or so) of their friends and neighbors.
In any event, when a miraculous thing is claimed by anyone in the world, at any time, is it smarter to assume the miraculous happened, or smarter to assume it didn't? For example...
If I said my grandfather died and rose again 3 days later, is it smarter to assume that really happened, or to look for evidence to back it up? And what if I convinced 50 people that it really DID happen, and those people started to spread the idea around to other people, just like in the bible... would it still meet the standards required for someone to actually believe it happened? Hardly. So which is more likely... The people who wrote the gospel accounts were getting their information second, third, maybe 4th hand from someone who said they knew someone who saw the events and lied about it? Or that a man died on the cross, and rose from the dead 3 days later? I'm sorry man. We know people lie. We know people make stuff up. It's been happening in religion for thousands of years. It is possible that an apocalyptic preacher named Jesus lived during that time and was all nutty claiming the world as going to end, and being charismatic, people bought his story when they heard it from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone. After all, apocalyptic Jewish preachers were a dime a dozen back then. But to say there is reasonable reason to believe that the resurrection actually happened? With the sheer lack of hard evidence? I don't get that at all.
As a result of that being the claim I can't provide you with any critical contemporary sources. That's what you asked for. I freely admit I don't have it. I don't have the beef.
So what you are saying is... you have no evidence. But that would mean you believe on faith, wouldn't it? I mean the only way to believe without evidence... is faith. I thought you didn't believe in faith?
However, because that is the claim, if I had any critical contemporary source, it would actually disprove the claim that it happened the way the bible says it did, so we can't ask for that, it would be... whatever the opposite of begging the question is.. unbegging the unquestion...
Nice mental gymnastics. I give it an 8.5. Couldn't the other more obvious reason be that it never really happened to begin with?
So now we need to ask the question, as critical historians who don't believe the bible is the word of god, how would we determine whether or not this claim is true.
Reasonable doubt. Very simple. We have a miraculous claim which is, by in large, the lynchpin of the entire Christian faith. A man named Jesus rose from the dead 3 days after he died. Based on the evidence for, and against, there is more than enough reason to reject the idea, and no compelling reason to accept it.
Let's look at the facts.
A. There is no mention of Jesus by contemporary writers. Not for at least 100 years after the fact.
B. Nobody, NOBODY saw Jesus rise from the dead.
C. The tomb was empty. Could it be empty for any natural reason? OF COURSE. Someone could have moved the body to a special Jewish burial plot. I am not saying that IS what happened, but it is a vastly more likely scenario than Jesus's true form was normally an invisible sky man who poofed his own body back to life.
D. The gospel writers were NOT the eyewitnesses. They were getting their information decades after the supposed events took place.
E. People LIE all the time. For thousands of years, religious people have been making things up and lying for their religions.
F. Saul of Tarsus had a vision. Do we normally accept "visions" as documented evidence of truth? I don't care if he hated Christians before the event. It doesn't matter. He had an experience he couldn't understand, and he thought it was from Jesus. Could it simply have been that he was sick in some way? Some have suggested epilepsy. If you had epileptic seizure in 50 A.D. would you have understood it as a naturally occurring disease process, or would you likely think it some sort of majestic sign? It's a no brainer.
G. We have no original copies of any of the biblical writings. And the copies we do have are copies of copies of copies of copies. Suffice to say, we have nothing of what they originally said. Not only that, but we don't even know who wrote a good many of them.
H. Humans don't rise from the dead. Period. If you are going to seriously suggest that someone did, then you better back it up with serious evidence, or you are just being a gullible fool. If you believe that story, then you should have no problem believing me when I tell you I once jumped from the ground and touched the top of the Empire State building and landed back on the ground safely. I can't prove it to you, but I did. Nobody saw it, but it happened. I told some people about it, and they wrote about it. That should be enough to convince you.
I. The vast, VAST majority of Jews who heard the Jesus story rejected it. Christianity in its early forms was a no name, weak ass religion that only a few people believed in. It was a religion that had a lot of appeal for poor, illiterate people because it held claims that those people would be exalted in heaven. If you were poor and illiterate and someone came along saying "hey, if you believe in Jesus, after you die you will go to a super nice place and be better off than rich people" what would you do? You would buy that shit no doubt. The movement took on a life of it's own, spreading far and wide to poor people who were looking for reasons to think they were poor. Then Christianity adopted a bunch of the pagan customs to bring in more of them, and it spread slowly for years until Constantine. Then it exploded.
J. During early Christianity, there were a ton of different manifestations of the religion. From the Ebionites, Marcionites, Gnostics, orthodox, etc. They all had different beliefs about Jesus's divinity. There were several other gospels that people wholeheartedly believed in. But I guess they were all wrong too.
L. There is no evidence, anywhere, that the story actually happened. In fact, outside of the bible, there is no contemporary evidence that a man named Jesus ever existed. While I believe someone did, that doesn't mean I am right. I could be wrong about it.
There are more reasons to discount the story as true, but it doesn't matter. Those are more than enough to make the case for reasonable doubt.
Your entire line of thought here regarding your theology is based on a premise that God is real. You use your theology and philosophy to defend a position that is EASILY defensible, because of the nature of your fake God. He can do anything he wants. You can define him however you wish. Just like the other thread about God's culpability. You played the "He's Fucking GOD, he can do what he wants" card. Oh joy. That's a great way to add a fake notion of God into a reality that doesn't HAVE one. Do you see that? In a reality without God, bad and good things would still happen, and they would happen EXACTLY like they currently do in our universe. In other words, you do not need to presuppose God to explain a single thing in our universe at this point. You just don't. There are gaps in knowledge, but that is all they are. They are things we do not YET understand. Will we ever understand everything? No, I doubt it. But that doesn't mean we CAN'T understand everything, or that we should stop trying to understand everything.
There is nothing you can't "explain away" because every part of the belief rests on things you can't prove and therefore we can't DISprove it. This is how all religion works. Every religion is theologically defensible if you wrestle your mind around it enough, because nobody can disprove it. Thinking people SEE that. Thinking people KNOW that. Thinking people ask for MORE. So should you.
Bottom line. You have been fed Christian stuff from a very young age. A lot of us here have too. Millions of people believe in God. Millions of people reject it. One side is RIGHT, the other side is WRONG. So you must admit, it is possible that your side is wrong. I openly admit my side could be wrong. To a man, I don't think there is a single atheist on this site that would be unwilling to accept evidence that your God is real. If you have it, bring it. We have been here a long time, and nobody... NOBODY from the theist side has brought anything useful to the table. Until there is ample evidence to believe otherwise, then it is entirely possible that your entire religion, and all the people who taught you are 100% wrong. 100%
wrong. 100%
wrong.
But your faith is strong. None of us will convince you. That is the hallmark of faith... belief in something when there is no real good reason to do so. You said you don't believe in faith, but for someone who doesn't believe in it, you sure practice the hell out of it. The only way you can claim not to have faith, is if you had evidence. All you have are theological positions, philosophy, and logic that you use in reverse (you have concluded that God is real and use logic to cram that idea into reality, instead of letting logic lead you to conclusions). Those are poor, poor substitutes for evidence.
If this entire thread is nothing more than letting us know what you think, then that's fine. But please, PLEASE don't try to pass any of your theology off as some sort of truth. It's not. It's foolishness. All of it. Embarrassingly foolish. In fact, I am really starting to think religion is a form of mental illness. In that respect, Christianity is like going full retard. As Sgt. Lincoln Osiris would tell you, "You never go full retard".
It frustrates me to no end. What a massive waste of your life, UP. Honestly. You could be doing something good and useful with your life. You seem like an otherwise smart person. Humanity needs those types of people. But people like you who hold on to these false beliefs just hold humanity back. How can we progress if we keep believing in the same lies our forefathers believed in? We have to accept the truth if we are ever going to make our world the best it can be. Religion is dying. We aren't ignorant fools anymore.
God doesn't exist. That is a FACT. We need to look back at the last few thousand years and say, "Never again", not "More of the same".
