Saturday, April 4, 2009

The Argument of the Resurrection of Jesus

Dr. Craig notes that there are at least three established facts held by the majority of New Testament scholars
  1. The tomb was found empty by the women followers of Jesus three days after his crucufixion.
  2. The disciples of Jesus held that they saw the risen Jesus after his crucifixion
  3. The original disciples help strongly to the belief that Jesus really did rise for the dead - so much so that they were willing to die for their faith.
These three facts have no reasonable explanation other than Jesus really did rise from the dead - which is by all standards a miracle and therefore which must entail the existence of God.

6 comments:

  1. Besides the three established facts of Jesus' resurrection, how well established is the fact of Jesus' death, as far as any of you know?

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  2. "three established facts"

    3 assertions you mean...

    On the first point - the bible cannot agree.

    On the next two points - who cares what people believe or maintain? There are hundreds of people alive today that maintain they have been taken by aliens and had weird experiments done to their bottoms. Does this mean this is a fact?

    No...

    So this isn’t a good argument from WLC

    Lee

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  3. Lee...

    He's not appealing to a 'majority vote' he's only establishing that the majority of EXPERTS in this particular field are in agreement. What else would you have him do? That makes it no longer an assertion but an expert opinion in the given field.

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  4. Lee...
    the point is that they believed they saw Jesus risen from the grave. Sure, it could have been their imaginations, but what are the chances? He apperaed to many of them at the same time....

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  5. Hi jhalchak

    He's not appealing to a 'majority vote' he's only establishing that the majority of EXPERTS in this particular field are in agreement.

    EXPERTS? Don’t you mean the majority of Christianity believers?

    Not sure how useful this information is – the majority of alien abductees believe in aliens… isn’t that interesting?

    Hi mattbechard

    the point is that they believed they saw Jesus risen from the grave.

    …and the abductees believe what they believe – what’s your point?

    Besides, you only have a 2,000 year old book that was written years after the event.

    Now, how many independent historical sources do you have for the crucifixion ‘events’ mentioned in the bible. You know, several hours of darkness, dead men waking up in their tombs and making themselves known – oh, and earthquakes… surely this would have been noticed by others?

    Nope – nothing. Why is that?

    Sure, it could have been their imaginations, but what are the chances?

    Pretty good that it was imagination, or it didn’t happen at all. After all, people today and saying similar things as I pointed out already. Do you believe them as well?

    Lee

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  6. Lee,

    It should be pointed out that 2 and 3 are good arguments given the context in which the events happened. Sadly, the format of this blog doesn't allow for a fuller explanation of the arguments that Craig would have given in this debate, but you can find a very nicely fleshed out version here:
    http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5351

    I *think* it'll let you read that without registering.... but if it doesn't registration is free.

    As for the no other sources thing, this is really common when dealing with historicity of past events based on ancient texts. Often there's only one document describing the event and that was written 300 years or whatever after the event.
    What we have to ask ourselves is why would we disbelieve that account with the skies darkening and earthquake. Many of the onlookers probably were illiterate, and even if they did write things down, what chance would there be that we had a copy? It could be argued that indeed there is a written account, I mean, how did you even know that that alledgedly happened for you to claim it didn't on this blog here? If you assume that it didn't on account that such things don't naturally happen, then you do so because you first assume naturalism, which is the very thing your proving. So, you're asserting naturalism by assuming naturalism... You have to first prove naturalism. You see my point?

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