It bugs me incredibly when theists try to use science and logic to support the Bible. It's stupid stuff like "logically, women saw the empty tomb, so Jesus must have risen from the dead!" that makes me want to stab something.

The biggest problem I see with the whole "but why would they make it up?" line of theistic attack is that they didn't 'make it up', just as more modern Kool-aid drinkers don't 'make up' stories of salvation via UFO, etc. Those early Kool-aid drinkers actually believed this story that they were telling, in one way or another (that is, more or less literally than theists usually give them credit for). And, if human nature does hold when people start coming back to life only to disapparate somewhere heavenly (purple turnip jugglers be damned), then the motives of someone who is about to drink Kool-aid but sincerely believes that the UFO is coming soon are drastically different from those of someone who is lying about it.

Seth -- the argument is not "logically, women saw the empty tomb, so Jesus must have risen from the dead!", as you have stated. The argument is this: if the disciples were going to make up a story about a resurrection they would not have written women in as the witnesses to the empty tomb because people would be less likely to believe their testimony.

You statement is an obvious leap in logic but you are putting words in the mouths of Christians when you attribute that to them. Christians are merely saying that the narrative is strengthened (not proven) as historically accurate because of this fact.

LOL so according to Frank, claiming that a three day dead-and-decomposed body rose up a-la "night of the living dead" is more likely to be believed if it is claimed to be witnessed by women, who at the time were not trusted as witneses?

Actually Frank, all it does is cast more doubt on the WHOLE DAMN STORY! These people back then were obviously SEXIST, and didnt trust women simply because they were women (not exactly a sign of cultural intelligence). So is it so suprising that these tribal idiots were gullible enough to believe in a zombie story?

Frank, are you aware that virgin-birth and resurrection stories were actually VERY COMMON back in those days? Brian Flemmings documentary "The God Who Wasnt There" (Why do I get the feeling you havent seen it?) lists numerous virgin-birth and resurrected characters whose stories are almost identical to Jesus' story. It was a popular trendy type of superstition back then.

Finally, you said "Christians are merely saying that the narrative is strengthened (not proven) as historically accurate because of this fact."

But of course you are WRONG. The gender of the witnesses objectively has no bearing on the truth claims of said witnesses. Only an ignorant tribe of boogeymen-believers would think that gender would affect the truth of a witnesses testimony.

But considering the prevalence of believing bullshit stories back then, I would say the cultural mindset at the time makes the narrative LESS RELIABLE.

And the fact that because back then women were considered less reliable, but the people believed the story anyway, only counts AGAINST the intellectual integrity and ctirical thinking skills of the people at the time. It seems that, in reality, all you had to do back then was frantically hold fast to some incredible claim, and the people would believe you because of their propensity for believing fantastic stories. Like the way any modern day adult can tell a 4 year old child a tale about Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy, or a parting ocean, or a talking snake, and the child will believe it.

Give up your silly superstition Frank. You steadfastly believe in one particular superstitious tale of magical silliness out of a literal OCEAN of very similar, even almost identical, stories.

leave frank alone and let him believe whatever he wants. as long as he's not hurting anyone or trying to impose his beliefs on us, we shouldn't rally against him to think as we do. that's not the atheist way. it's the cowboy way :P

AK -- My gosh did YOU ever miss the whole point of my post. All that rambling about things that had, really, nothing to do with my point.

Go back and re-read it, AK. See if you can "get it" this time. I'll give you a hint: My point really had nothing to do with the witnesses at all (psst, it had to do with the theory of disciples making up a story about a resurrection and how one might go about doing that).

Try again. Good luck this time.

I guess we'll never know what really happened. The gospels were all written long after the events they are supposed to be about and not by eye-witnesses. They can' t even agree on key details of these supposedly extraordinary happenings - read the different crucifixion/resurrection/post-death Jesus appearances/ascension accounts in the gospels and Acts to see just how incoherant it all is. IF Jesus existed and was not just a myth (not proven) it is hard to know what become of the body - did the disciples steal it? Was it cremated? Did Jospeph of A steal it? Who knows. I think it's possible the disciples believed in some sense that Jesus had survived death, perhaps they had some kind of visions (like Paul, who compares his own visions of Jesus to the sightings by the apostles)? Again, who knows? Or WAS it all a con trick by them?? If you believe in the literal resurrection then what on Earth is that ascension to Heaven stuff all about?? Did Jesus really just fly into the air and disapear into a cloud as recounted by Acts?

Oliver

Frank, the problem with logic and the Bible is that when looking past the hazy generalizations and into the actual details of the writing, one sees it was only Mary Magdalene who came upon the empty and open tomb where there was apparently no one about (John), or it was Mary Magdalene and "the other" Mary who came to the tomb where the angel of the Lord opened it and revealed it empty (Matthew), or it was Mary Magdalene and also Mary and possibly Salome (or perhaps a whole a group - "the women") who came to the open and empty tomb where they were accosted by either one (or two men) in shining (or just white) garments who told them what was up (Mark, Luke). So, which story is the correct one? They all cannot be, right?

Once it's figured out which story is the *true* and accurate one, I expect the intellectual honesty of the various Christian hierarchies will give them no option but to edit the other gospels for the next print run. Or perhaps they'll just expunge them to avoid any stain on the accuracy of the Work as a whole. I look forward to those corrections.

Alas, let's keep in mind that God is (was?) omnipotent, which means He would have already known at some time in the future the concern over using a woman (or women, depending on which gospel gets it right) as witness would not hold the same difficulties in regards to accepting their testimony. Then again, perhaps you still hold to that view?

Yeah, I was generalizing. I'm too lazy to actually go into detail today....such a dreary day.

The gist of what I meant is that I dlislike Christians using science to support their religious claims.

ocmpoma: are you willing to respect Occam's razor or not? Please be consistent.

As to the original post's reference to "self-interested parties," I heard Chuck Colson once speak of what it takes to hold a conspiracy together. His summary, in a nutshell, is that if someone's head is on the block it's going to fall apart. Every single follower of Christ had his/her head on the block for claiming he rose from the dead, yet the story held together. People don't maintain conspiracies unto death when they know the whole thing is a farce. It leads me to conclude it was not a farce but reality.

As to the reports being written "decades later," how long does it take to forget that someone rose from the dead? The "decades," according to the best scholarship, are no more than about 20 years for the earliest reports.

And as to the women's testimony, Frank (following W. L. Craig) did a good job of explaining its significance if you would just read it for what they said. The point is not whether women were trustworthy witnesses. In the end, there were five hundred witnesses. The point is that if the story were made up after the fact, it's extremely unlikely to the point of unbelievability that the legend would have arisen that way; it would have taken a different form, with the men in the lead, for it was a sexist society as was so colorfully pointed out above.

C. S. Lewis came (reluctantly, he says) to a firm faith in Christ on the basis of the evidence. He was a scholar extraordinaire in the field of legend and myth. One of the things that convinced him of the veracity of the New Testament is that it quite simply has none of the characteristics of legend or myth. He and G. K. Chesterton both quite handily dismantled the theory that Jesus was one of many virgin birth/death/resurrection stories: none of the other purported incidents has much at all in common with this one, especially its strictly monotheistic Jewish milieu.

And if you find any reputable historians who put any stock at all in the belief that Jesus never existed (a la the film, "The God Who Wasn't There"), you've done an amazing thing.

Tom, making a leap from "Jesus existed" to "Jesus is Lord" based strictly on what a book tells you is accomplishing a far, far more amazing thing when compared with the concern that what evidence there is of his existence is ephemeral, at best.

Anyone who claims there are no precedents for any elements of the Christ in preceding religious myths does not know his religious mythology and history very well. Look at the Egyptians and Ankhenaton, who was king (aren't there allusion to Christ as king in Christianity?), accepted faith only in the "one god," and was (metaphorically) crucified for his beliefs by his own people and the priesthood who feared him. Any of this sounding familiar? And it's not even a myth! Egyptians also believed their king became a god after death. Ahem.

I will give you this: the New Testament does not *read* like myth. Instead, it reads like the testimony of numerous (and far too often contradictory) witnesses who we've discovered were no where near the scene of the crime.

Frank,

Sure... I missed the point of your post. Actually, I think I got it just fine. You think that the fact that women were cited as witnesses strengthens the resurrection story because if the storytellers were liars, citing women wouldnt have helped their cause. Your point was about the logic of storytellers and whether or not they were liars.

Actually, you missed the point of MY post. Now that Ive re-read your post, go re-read mine. One of the things I did was attack your faulty logic. My post wasnt about witnesses anymore than yours was. My post was about your logic and the trustworthiness of the storytellers (which you claim is also the point of your post), as well as the ridiculousness of your superstitious beliefs.

Look at what you wrote Frank: "if the disciples were going to make up a story about a resurrection they would not have written women in as the witnesses to the empty tomb because people would be less likely to believe their testimony."

I got a fun idea: what if the storytellers deliberately included women as witnessess because they saw the same logic that you saw: where YOU think that including women as witnessess makes the story more believable, maybe the storytellers thought the same thing you did? Like in a bit of clever reverse psychology?

Who says the disciples made it up? Why couldn't it have been the Greeks adopting the tales of a Jewish cult with their own mythology?

jahrta,

I disagree completely with you. Ideas and beliefs should be able to stand on their own two feet, and should be evaluated for their merits. No believe should be exempt from analysis or criticism, regardless of how nice the person holding the said belief is.

If you care about your fellow humans, and want to see them all prosper and progress, then you should do what you can in terms of dialogue and debate and analysis in order to find as much truth as you can in reality, because the more your fellow man is grounded in reality, the better off they will be and the better decisions they will make for themselves. And we all DO depend on eachother to make good decisions for ourselves, because every persons prosperity in life is linked to everyone elses in some way.

A society that politely believes in stupid fairy tales and never pushes their beliefs on others is still a society in need of help, and is still a society that will make poor decisions for themselves because they dont understand truths of reality.

Adam, good point.

Thats exactly what I was alluding to when I mentioned Brian Flemmings documentary earlier. The Jesus virgin birth and resurrection story is NOT the first story of its kind to surface. It is most likely adapted from NUMEROUS very-similar stories that predate the Jesus events by quite a long time.

I know, AK, but you have to know how to pick your battles. for example, the only place i would really risk meeting a religious zealot (not that i group frank amongst the zealous, per se - he has displayed a modicum of reasoning abilities, if sometimes flawed) would be at work or through my wife's family. I'm not about to get ensnared in an awkward and potentially inflammatory debate with my coworkers, and i've reached the limitations of what i can say to my wife's relatives without risking a fist fight. At the end of the day, no one ever switched the paradigm by which they live their lives based upon something someone said if that "someone" is pre-judged as belonging to a group of individuals who hold beliefs that are in either in direct contrast to your own or somehow "scandalous." If religious people make the shift to thinking for themselves and abandoning their comforting bedtime stories of religion (or stop living in fear of eternal damnation) it will only be because they made a decision to do so for themselves. You won't get anywhere by shouting your viewpoints at people, unless you're dealing with children. it doesn't make a difference that you're right.

The problem that arises when a Christian begins to dialogue with an atheist is that the Christian's only concern is to show that their faith does not violate reason while the atheist's only concern is to show how improbable the Christian's faith is. No Christian has ever denied that God becoming man isn't the most improbable of all ideas. It is the MOST improbable of ideas. What could be more unexpected? It is therefore not the business of Christians to go around proving scientifically that Christ has risen from the dead or Moses spoke to a burning bush. That is a matter of faith. Mock it or not, it is faith.
The business of the Christian is simply to defend the faith from people who argue not that it is not understood by reason, but even worse, that it is against reason. If an atheist asks a Christian how it is possible that God became man, the Christian can only reply that it is a mystery. The event is beyond reason. Should someone argue that God becoming man violates reason, on the other hand, then the Christian can make an argument.
If this distinction seems strange to you, I'm not surprised, but it is the distinction that Christians have been forced to repeat since the beginning. It is the most basic of logical distinctions, moreover, and is not limited to Christian thought. Something may in fact be impossible and yet not violate reason. Is it impossible that pigs should fly on their own? Yes. Does it violate reason to imagine pigs flying? No. On the other side, is it impossible that a circle should be a square? Yes. Does it violate reason to imagine a square circle? Yes, because it cannot be a circle and square at the same time.

AK -- actually, in considering the possibility that the disciples made up the story, I have mulled over the notion that, perhaps, they would have utilized the same logic that we do (using women instead of men as a means of lending credibility to the story). However, this falls apart on some key points. 1. As you've pointed out, theirs was a very sexist world. Having a woman as a witness was pretty much the same as having no witness at all. If they were making up the story they were doing so in order to influence their contemporaries, right? Using women as witnesses would not accomplish that. 2. They would have no way of knowing that their writings would be canonized by future generations of Christians, nor that women would ever be held in a higher regard than they were used to. So writing the accounts would serve no future purpose. 3. If they were making it all up why in the world would they even care what future generations thought, they'd be long gone.

No, the "make-up-the-story" theory just doesn't hold water. And THAT is the only point I was trying to make. With regard to what really happened to the body of Jesus there are a number of theories. We can reasonable eliminate the "made-up-a-story" theory. When we do that all remaining possibilities are strengthened. Since one of those remaining possibilities is that Jesus really did raise from the dead (according to the biblical account) it, too, is strengthened.

I do not maintain that the elimination of any possiblity PROVES the authenticity of the biblical claim. Each possibility needs to be examined on it's own merits. When they have each been eliminated (based on their merits) any remaining possibility looks pretty good.

>>If religious people make the shift to thinking for themselves and abandoning their comforting bedtime stories of religion (or stop living in fear of eternal damnation) it will only be because they made a decision to do so for themselves.

What if the religion in question places great demands and calls for serious sacrifice and selflessness on the part of the believer? What I there is little ‘comfort’ from it, but only trial and suffering, and yet they still hold to it because they believe it to be true? What if the motivation has little to do with concerns of the afterlife (positive or negative), but because they find it to be true when lived in this life based on their reason and experience? You may find this shocking but many, many believers come to faith because they find it MORE reasoned than atheism. You can attack the reasoning capacity, the logical steps they take in getting there, and the premises they hold, without necessarily assuming that their belief is a childish bedtime story.

Okay, Tom, where exactly do I reveal an inconsistency? And I most certainly do use the razor.

do you use the razor on your pits and legs? nothing is worse than occam's razor burn.

"What if the religion in question places great demands and calls for serious sacrifice and selflessness on the part of the believer? What I there is little ‘comfort’ from it, but only trial and suffering, and yet they still hold to it because they believe it to be true? What if the motivation has little to do with concerns of the afterlife (positive or negative), but because they find it to be true when lived in this life based on their reason and experience? You may find this shocking but many, many believers come to faith because they find it MORE reasoned than atheism."

As an atheist I take umbrage to the notion that one has to have religion in one's life to feel or act like this. The way I see things, life itself places great demands and calls for serious sacrifice: if I want to live comfortably and enjoy my time on earth I need to work hard in order to further my career and bring home a good paycheck. Suffering? sure. Selflessness? Not so much, at least not from that example alone. I doubt I could call myself "selfless," and I think a great many people who would are just fishing for compliments and/or completely full of shit. This much is true, however - i try to help people whenver I see someone in need, whether I know them or not. I don't ignore injustices committed by any member of any community when I am in a position to oppose that injustice, be it large or small. I try to live a good and honest life and do the right thing in general. I don't need religion or god to tell me that that makes sense. I am able to see that for myself because of my upbringing. As far as religion being more reasoned than atheism, I could bring up hundreds if not thousands of ways in which religion is the antithesis of reason but this has been done ad nauseum. Religion is myth and superstition. It has been at odds with science at every step, seeking to destroy or pervert its findings in order to force it to confirm the ridiculous claims it makes. If science is a candle in the darkness, religion IS the darkness.

>>As an atheist I take umbrage to the notion that one has to have religion in one's life to feel or act like this.

You are importing that onto my comments. I never claimed religious exclusivity in this. I was only trying to counter the notion that it’s only because religion makes us feel good that keeps us from ‘thinking for ourselves.’

>>I doubt I could call myself "selfless," and I think a great many people who would are just fishing for compliments and/or completely full of shit.

I certainly wouldn’t call myself selfless either, though that’s what I am striving for. So again, I am not claiming superiority. My point is similar to your own. We will all face these things in life and religion gives us no out. It’s just an ugly caricature that our ‘fairy tales’ somehow give us immunity and that’s why we hold them.

>>As far as religion being more reasoned than atheism, I could bring up hundreds if not thousands of ways in which religion is the antithesis of reason but this has been done ad nauseum.

Look, I know I am not going to convince you here. I am just trying to bring some reality to the discussion and suggest that many of those who do believe, do so on much more reasoned grounds than you might suppose. Fundamentally, we are coming from such different starting points that down the chain each of us might no longer be able to see the reason behind the others view, but that doesn’t mean it’s all based on thoughtless or childish wishes.

If I fundamentally start by believing that the Big Bang was caused by some outside force (I know, I know, you don’t accept that, fairy tale and all), my entire premise allows me to make conclusions that are rational and logical that you simply can’t make and might not be able to fathom. If I turn out to be wrong, that doesn’t mean that the reasoning is absent, or even flawed, rather that the fundamental premise is wrong. If I make a mistake at the beginning of a math problem, my answer will certainly be wrong, but it doesn’t mean that the rest of the ‘operations’ I perform throughout my solution are also individually incorrect. Make any sense.

Nice argument, Steve G. ... perfect sense.

"If I make a mistake at the beginning of a math problem, my answer will certainly be wrong, but it doesn’t mean that the rest of the ‘operations’ I perform throughout my solution are also individually incorrect. Make any sense."

-Yes

"Religion is myth and superstition. It has been at odds with science at every step, seeking to destroy or pervert its findings in order to force it to confirm the ridiculous claims it makes. If science is a candle in the darkness, religion IS the darkness."

-Does this also make sense?

I don't have a problem with you, Steve. You're more rational than the average religious follower who comes here. The only thing I have an issue with is the institution of religion. Even if there was a god, he/she/it would have no need for religion or our worship. what would an all-powerful being need from us that it could not provide for itself? I guess that's not your point though - you believe what you do because it gives you a sense of purpose. Ok. I get that and i don't expect you to change your viewpoint just because of anything I - or anyone else here, for that matter - said to you. In truth I'd have much less respect for you if you simply decided to abandon your faith after a few posts on a blog site. What I don't get is why you would come here to try to convince us of why you're a believer. It begs the question 'who are you trying to convince?'

"Religion is myth and superstition. It has been at odds with science at every step, seeking to destroy or pervert its findings in order to force it to confirm the ridiculous claims it makes. If science is a candle in the darkness, religion IS the darkness."
-Does this also make sense?
It makes sense if I look at it from your perspective, of course. It’s a perspective I once held, so I certainly know where you are coming from. Though I think it’s somewhat factually inaccurate.
Even if there was a god, he/she/it would have no need for religion or our worship. what would an all-powerful being need from us that it could not provide for itself?
Again, please hear this from my perspective. I am just trying to answer, not evangelize. I would say that God doesn’t need me, but it is I that need God. It is I that needs to learn to be more selfless as I’ve said before. As a Catholic, that’s the message of the cross. It’s life through giving, sacrifice, and selflessness. I find that truth to be transforming in a very powerful way (I am rushing here cause I have to leave, so not sure if this will make any sense).
>>What I don't get is why you would come here to try to convince us of why you're a believer. It begs the question 'who are you trying to convince?'
I’ll be happy take off if folks don’t want me here. I actually stumbled on this blog through another blog that RA has been guest posting on. I found it interesting and am confident that I’ll convince noone here. If you look at my comments thus far, the only thing I’ve commented on is to attempt to clear up what I thought were misstatements, or false polemics directed at believers. I haven’t bothered getting into the issues of the historicity of Jesus, the roots in Egyptian mythology, etc. because I know those discussions would be utterly meaningless in this context. If I am unwelcome, please let me know and I’ll not pester anyone here any longer.

Tom: "As to the reports being written "decades later," how long does it take to forget that someone rose from the dead? The "decades," according to the best scholarship, are no more than about 20 years for the earliest reports."

It takes less time to create a myth than it does to forget an event. The time gets even shorter of a group actively works for the acceptance of the story. It also doesn't matter much how long it takes to forget because, whether it happened or not, everyone but the eye-witnesses are getting only hearsay evidence (and soaking it up as holy testimony).

I notice that no-one on this particular topic mentioned the resurrecction of Lazarus and others. It wasn't that unusual thanks to Jesus himself. Sample ancient dialog across a stone fence:"Did you hear, Jesus got himself resurrected sometime over the weekend? No, really? Another dead guy coming back to life. What did he do, then, go back to carpentry or is he still on that itinerant guru schtick?"

Tom: "As to the reports being written "decades later," how long does it take to forget that someone rose from the dead? The "decades," according to the best scholarship, are no more than about 20 years for the earliest reports."

It takes less time to create a myth than it does to forget an event. The time gets even shorter of a group actively works for the acceptance of the story. It also doesn't matter much how long it takes to forget because, whether it happened or not, everyone but the eye-witnesses are getting only hearsay evidence (and soaking it up as holy testimony).

I notice that no-one on this particular topic mentioned the resurrecction of Lazarus and others. It wasn't that unusual thanks to Jesus himself. Sample ancient dialog across a stone fence:"Did you hear, Jesus got himself resurrected sometime over the weekend? No, really? Another dead guy coming back to life. What did he do, then, go back to carpentry or is he still on that itinerant guru schtick?"

I never meant to imply you weren't welcome here. I can't speak for anyone else but i think they'd be with me in saying we would welcome anyone who is capable of examining these questions of faith (from all angles) with an open mind. Atheists here, by and large, aren't trying to indoctrinate anyone into the fold, and you don't seem to be doing that either, which is why we can coexist on this blog without yelling at each other.

The only people here that i wish would leave would be trolls like LucyMuff who continue to post even after it becomes abundantly clear that they're not what they claim to be.

My point in asking why you come here to blog was not a plee for you to leave. It was meant to draw out your true motives for coming to a site that you have every reason to view as being hostile to your belief system - or at the very least contradictory. I'm sorry if you thought I was being overtly hostile to you.

Steve G. - Don't take it too hard if people on here make you feel unwelcome from time to time. Several bloggers here have made me feel unwelcome, and I'm an atheist. I'm still here because i enjoy the posts and the topics raised. for me it's like a clearinghouse of atheist news - stuff I wouldn't get elsewhere, or stuff that would get to me after being filtered through a religious seive. I NEVER would have heard about "The God Who Wasn't There" if not for this site.

If you derive pleasure from visiting the site, and continue to post intelligent comments while respecting the subject material and other bloggers' rights to disagree, i see no reason you should consider leaving.

Steve G. -- I've been coming here for some time now and have found this blog to be an excellent place for a mental workout. As a Christian I knew coming in my views would be challenged (it's why I came). For the most part the atheists with whom I've debated have been quite cordial (I don't let the few exceptions bother me). Many of them seem like the kind of folks I would enjoy having coffee with. On occasion our debates have become spirited but that's to be expected. However, I don't recall ever being invited to leave. In fact, despite my clear differences with most here, I've been made to feel quite welcome. I would imagine a different view makes for a more interesting blog. As a clear minority on this blog I hope you hang around. As jahrta pointed out, you do engage in a more reasoned debate than most religious people who post here. It's quite refreshing.

Jahrta: "Several bloggers here have made me feel unwelcome, and I'm an atheist."

No matter what I've said to you, you shouldn't take it as a message that I consider you "unwelcome." In the first place, it's not my business to decide who is, or is not, welcome here. In the second place, RA, to his great credit, does not censor this blog, and he welcomes everybody. And finally, no matter what kind of disagreements we have had, I still have the impression that you are fundamentally a decent guy, who sometimes just gets carried away with the rhetoric.

The earliest full account of the resurrection story (ie Mark), according to reputable scholars, was NOT about '20 years' after the alleged death of Jesus (c.50ad) but about 70ad. The earliest reference to Jesus being risen however is in Paul, probably written about 60ad or so. Paul refers to his experience of hearing Jesus' voice in a mystical experience and compares it, like-to-like with appearances he says he has heard of to the disciples and to an unnamed '500 people at once' that he claims Jesus appeared to (and which is always mentioned by Christians). We have only his word for any of this. Also he seems most probably to be referring to visions, akin to his own, not that a physically resurrected Jesus was walking around chatting to all these people (although even this would be surprising for '500' at once, though I believe there are examples of - 'mass hysteria?' - where a crowd is said to have experienced a similar hallucination at the same time).

The gospel accounts themselves were written down by people among the gentile Christians of Paul's nascent Christian church (rejecting Jewish rules and regulations and having faith in jesus as a saviour), most likely following the near demolition of Jewish Christianity in the Roman/Jewish war. They were getting down in writing various hearsay legends about the founding of their religion. How can we rely on them? Especially as they are so contradictory? For example-

In the original early ending of Mark the gospel finishes with the women told to relay to the disciples the message jesus is risen and is going ahead of them to Galilee (remember Jesus and his follwers were from galillee and had gone to Jerusalem for Passover), where they are to meet him. In the longer version we are told Jesus appeared to Mary M, then two disciples on a country walk, then to all 11 while they were having a meal (presumably in Jerusalem). The same day he was taken up to Heaven.

In Matthew the women are told J is risen and is going ahead of them to Gallilee. Then J appears to them and gives the same mnessage - the disciples are to go to galillee to meet him. The disciples go to a mountain in Galillee where J meets them and he tells them to go and convert people of all nations.

In luke - It is Mary M and some other women who are told by the angel J has risen. They relay it to the disciples and then Peter goes and checks for himself. Then J appears to 2 disciples in the countryside. These two are looking depressed and explain to Jesus (who they don;t recognise) their master, Jesus , has been executed and they had hoped he would be the one to liberate the Jews from the Romans. Even so they add some women found his tomb was empty and had an angelic visitation (but still they are depressed!?). Eventually when he accompanies them home and breaks bread at a meal, they see who he is?? and he vanishes. They go and tell the other apostles. Immediately J appears among them again. He then takes them to the outskirts of Jerusalem and ascends to Heaven.

In John (which purports, unconvincingly, according to scholars, to be written by the apostle of that name) Mary M finds the empty tomb - no angels and runs to find Peter and John himself ('the disciple Jesus loved') the men rush to the tomb but John gets there first. After they leave Mary is met by 2 angels and by jesus himself, who she first think sis the gardener. Jesus says she should go and tell the others he is ascending to God. Later that day J appears through a locked door to meet the disciples at their lodgings. On a later day we are told J helps them make a good catch of fish and eats breakfast with them by the lakeside.

In Acts (traditionally by the author of Luke) we are told Jesus contunied to make appearances for 40 days. The disciples are still in Jerusalem (not Galillee). jesus explains they must stay in Jeusalem where they will get the gift of the Holy Spirit. Then as they are standing on the Mt of Olives he flies into the air and is hidden by a cloud.

Where in all this do we find the historical facts????

>>My point in asking why you come here to blog was not a plee for you to leave. It was meant to draw out your true motives for coming to a site that you have every reason to view as being hostile to your belief system - or at the very least contradictory.

No nefarious motive other than an interest in honest, thoughtful discussion wherever I encounter it or stumble upon it. I certainly have no motive of evangelization. I’ve been around long enough to know that evangelization of the sort fundamentalists, Jehovah’s Witness, and folks coming to an atheist blog spoiling for a fight, engage in is about the most useless waste of time I can imagine. Such confrontational forums are simply not the way people change their views on things.

>>If you derive pleasure from visiting the site, and continue to post intelligent comments while respecting the subject material and other bloggers' rights to disagree, i see no reason you should consider leaving.

Good to hear. This is first time I’ve ever seen RA’s blog so I’ll keep my options open ;-) ,but I’ll be checking things out for sure and probably occasionally comment if I think I have anything useful to add to the discussion.

Steve G. : "Fundamentally, we are coming from such different starting points that down the chain each of us might no longer be able to see the reason behind the others view, but that doesn’t mean it’s all based on thoughtless or childish wishes."

Many of us, if not all, consider atheism to be the default position. All babies are born without a belief in God (or anything). Concepts like God must be inculcated in them by those around them. Unless such education (many here call it brainwashing) occurs, the child does not spontaneously acquire a notion or belief in God and so remains an atheist.

If that is true for all people, we do indeed have a fundamental starting point for discussion. We know why we don't believe in God and wish to explore why you do.

The RA blog, I have found is an incredibly wide and rich lode of information and viewpoints on pretty much all of religion (though, naturally favoring the more familiar ones with the best vivisection). I hope you explore a lot and share your observations in good fellowship (sorry ladies) as the spirit moves you.

sternwallow -- If, as you say, atheism is the "default position" because "all babies are born without a belief in God (or anything)," and "concepts like God must be inculcated in them by those around them" because a "child does not spontaneously acquire a notion or belief in God and so remains an atheist" then my question is this: Where did the notion of God come from in the first place? Why are not all people atheists?

I mean, if all people had to have someone "brainwash" them into believing in God, then who was the first person to do the brainwashing? It couldn't be a human, because all humans are, by default, atheists and remain so unless influenced by some outside force (that is your point, right?).

Since the idea of God could not have come from people, where did the original concept of God come from?

Frank's question:
"Since the idea of God could not have come from people, where did the original concept of God come from?"

Quick answer Frank: God and all concepts of one person's righteousness over another's stem from the former's desire to control the latter. What could be more natural than that?
That brings us to a rational rebuttal of your argument:
No individual would come up with religion. Only a group could inspire an individual to create a way to control the group. The default position is atheism, but people learn quickly how to take advantage of new indiviuals and their lack of knowledge by feeding them lies that control them.
That's how they got you.

As to welcomeness, if Lucy Muff is welcome then everyone must be welcome. I reason that only RA really has the authority to tell anyone to leave his web site. I've never seen it happen and I doubt I ever will.

God and all concepts of one person's righteousness over another's stem from the former's desire to control the latter. What could be more natural than that?

You are begging the question. You are assuming that religious belief necessarily involves asserting one person's righteousness over another. If that is not true of any or all religious systems, then the rebuttal fails in regards to at least those religious systems for which it's untrue.

In addition, even for those systems that do espouse rightesousness of one person over another, you've offered no evidence that indeed it stems from a desire to control the other as oppossed to some other motivation?

P.S. who the heck is this Lucy Muff I keep hearing about and what's the deal with her? Just curioius.

A religious belief almost always contains prescribed behaviors and, more importantly for my argument, proscribed behaviors. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this. If you believe that your behavior is more in line with your god's wishes than my behavior, you already consider yourself better than me, no? This is especially true when you throw in an eternal afterlife, because the price for my lack of belief becomes whatever eternal punishment your god threatens us with. You believe your adherence makes you privy to an elite group and conversely, I am not as good.
Name some religious systems that don't require righteous (from the believer's perspective) behavior of some kind from their adherents.
What "other motivation" could there possibly be for telling someone that you already know how god wants them to behave?
Regarding Lucy Muff, he/she seems to be what's called a troll, someone who haunts discussion boards with one goal in mind which is to incite some reactionary posts, whether they use low-grade sophistry or simply rant incoherently and/or copy and paste repeatedly. It's similar to an infant crying or a child acting up. It's a funny insight into the workings of an inferior mind.

Vernichten said, "If you believe that your behavior is more in line with your god's wishes than my behavior, you already consider yourself better than me, no?" ... No.

This is the fundamental difference between Christianity and all other religions. The Bible teaches that we haven't the ability to behave good enough to earn God's favor. We may engage in varying degrees of sinful behavior but we are all guilty before God and none of us please Him on our own.

The Bible is clear, the righteousness of any Christian is an imputed righteousness. It is God's righteousness imputed to us. I can no more take credit for any righteous behavior than I can for creation. The righteous behavior of a Christian is owed to God and God alone.

So, no, Vernichten, while I may exhibit behavior that God would deem "righteous" it is not of my own volition. It is God's doing. I am a Christian and I make no claim, whatsoever, of being "better than you" by virtue of my actions.

So there's a problem. Either everyone is favored by god or you and others like you are chosen based on some factor. If you accept that the selection is arbitrary then you must accept that your god is not forgiving or even rational. If you accept that there is some knowable reason, then what exactly is the reason? If it's acceptance of the good news then I have some more news for you: acceptance is an act. If you are chosen by god and I am not, then you are claiming superiority by virtue of either being chosen arbitrarily or through an act or virtue of your own doing.
By the way, I am going to use some of our discourse for a paper regarding argument and dialog. I hope no one minds.

Frank and others:

As far as the "make-up-the-story" hypothesis goes, I agree with you that it is absurd and should be rejected. Then again, I've never found an atheist who argued that the story of Jesus' resurrection was a contrived, cynical ploy by his first followers. It seems obvious to me that the first Christians genuinely did believe that Jesus had been resurrected - in one way or another. Whether we can make an inference from that belief to the conclusion that such an event happened in reality is far less certain.

Regarding the women at the tomb, there's an interesting point that hasn't yet been mentioned. As Earl Doherty has pointed out, the women in Mark's gospel, the earliest, do not recount their experience to anyone. They flee in terror without saying a word, despite the angel's instructions. They behave just as women were expected to behave in first-century Palestine. However, they do witness to Jesus' resurrection within the context of the story; that is, they serve as witnesses to the reader. Jumping from that point to the conclusion that these events must be historical hinges on certain precarious assumptions about why Mark's gospel was originally written. If it was never intended as anything more than parable or allegory, this supposed proof simply evaporates. Furthermore, if the women truly were the first witnesses to the resurrection, then why are they completely omitted from the actual creed given in 1 Corinthians 15? Does not this omission there suggest that their presence at the tomb was an invention by Mark?

Finally, as far as C.S. Lewis, I'm amazed that anyone would think he could furnish a convincing argument for Christianity. The most charitable way to characterize his thinking would be "shallow". Here, in full, is his account of the factors that led him to convert:

"When we set out [for the zoo] I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion." (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/docs/2004/11/29/)

Lewis' sole argument, as far as I know, for the Bible's historical reliability is that there is one scene in the Gospel of John where Jesus stoops down and scribbles in the dust with a finger, and that since no writer of fiction would have included such a meaningless detail, therefore the entire story must be true from start to finish. This argument would be ridiculous even if we did not know that the section of text in which it appears is a later interpolation. This has been commonly known among New Testament scholars for centuries, in fact, which makes it even less excusable that Lewis himself was apparently ignorant of it. Lewis may have been a good writer of children's books, but to call him a "scholar extraordinaire" is absurd.

>>A religious belief almost always contains prescribed behaviors and, more importantly for my argument, proscribed behaviors. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this. If you believe that your behavior is more in line with your god's wishes than my behavior, you already consider yourself better than me, no?

I don’t think this is an accurate characterization (at least of the Catholic understanding). The value of the person is not dependent on their behavior. Your intrinsic value is no less than mine. I might consider myself more correct than you; I might consider my behavior objectively better, but not my inherent worth as an individual. For example, if one of my two sons is better behaved than the other, that speaks nothing to the worth or value I place on each of them as my children. It only describes my opinion about their behavior, but speaks nothing to the love I feel for them respectively.

Flatly stated, I certainly do not consider myself better than you in any shape or form.

>>This is especially true when you throw in an eternal afterlife, because the price for my lack of belief becomes whatever eternal punishment your god threatens us with.

Again, I’d say that this is not accurate (and again, I can only speak for the belief system I adhere to and none other). The judgment of your eternal destiny is absolutely indiscernible by me or anyone else. C.S. Lewis describes it well I think. I’ll paraphrase from memory his discussion in hopes of clarifying….

With regard to the judgment, the subjective circumstances will be taken into account. For example, I might be a person who’s had a wonderful upbringing, stable home life, stellar education, and every advantage handed to me, and by all accounts, I might seem quite a good person to the outside observer. Yet all this ‘goodness’ might be quite effortless to me and too little credit with regards to my internal disposition. Now, the homeless person, addicted to drugs, who had a rotten life from the get go, and faced every obstacle, and may even have committed objectively evil wrongs, might in fact be doing far more given their circumstances than I am despite outward appearances. Without knowing all those multitude of factors that affect our ability to live according to correct morality, we as observers can not judge rightly. If God really is omniscient, and just as we believe, it would stand that God however will be able to account for all those unknowns (to us) and strip down to the essence of the person and know their true disposition. Lewis concludes his own somewhat different example by saying ‘there will be many surprises.’

…It’s very clear in Catholic teaching at least that those outside the Catholic Church (even atheists), in ways unbeknownst to us can attain the eternal reward as it were. This is not to say that everyone WILL, but that we need not exclude the possibility.

>>You believe your adherence makes you privy to an elite group and conversely, I am not as good.

I hope and work and pray that I may be part of that group, but I make no presumptions that I am, and you are not.

>>Name some religious systems that don't require righteous (from the believer's perspective) behavior of some kind from their adherents.

It depends on how we define require. Do they say that you should be doing X, Y & Z in order to be in full conformity? Of course that’s true, but it’s not like anyone is being compelled at gunpoint, and it’s an absolute given that failure to live 100% in accordance is taken for granted (the righteous man falls 7 times a day it says in the OT). But is that any different than any other group who chose to associate with a particular institution?

>>What "other motivation" could there possibly be for telling someone that you already know how god wants them to behave?

Could it be a simple as genuine belief? Why am I educating (brainwashing) my children in my faith? Is it purely out of a desire to control them? No. It’s because I actually think it’s true, have found it powerfully, and positively transforming in my own life, and I think it will benefit them. Now, it’s possible, I am entirely wrong, but that fact doesn’t change my motivation.

>>It's similar to an infant crying or a child acting up. It's a funny insight into the workings of an inferior mind.

Crap! If being an inferior mind makes one a troll, I am in deep trouble. 