Jenesis on 25/4/2006 at 23:44
Quote Posted by Nicker
OK - present your evidence for the existence of God.
Alright then, brace yourself, this will be long. I've done this before on TTLG, but it was some time ago, so I'll give it another airing.
Given that I'm arguing from a Christian perspective, the question 'does God exist' becomes 'so, this Jesus chap - what was he about?' Jesus Christ is the centre of Christianity - it's even named after him - so it seems the best place to start. All of the OT leads up to his arrival, and the NT after the gospels explains what his coming, death, and resurrection mean.
My line of argument will narrow the question even further, to 'did Jesus rise from the dead?' If I can establish that, then my claim is that if someone is going around resurrecting people, that person is God, since resurrection is physically impossible in the normal way of things.
If you're thinking 'hang on, don't Christians think Jesus
is/was God?' --- yes, we do, but the point I'm trying to make here is that God the Father, who raised Jesus, exists.
OK, so...
That Jesus existed, and was crucified, is not generally disputed. That his body went missing a couple of days later is also not disputed. They say that if you want to know about someone, see what his enemies* say about him. The Jewish authorities, who really didn't want a resurrection cult starting up around Jesus, admitted that the body was missing, although they had a different official explanation (that the disciples stole the body - I'll come to this in a bit). This official explanation is adhered to to this day. If Jesus' body didn't disappear, why is there an official Jewish explanation for what happened to it? This, I think, is strong evidence that
something happened to the body.
Some background - Jesus was buried in a common type of 1st century tomb, a cave with a stone across the entrance, donated by a guy called Joseph of Arimathea. You put the body in the cave, knocked the wedge holding the stone out of the way, and let that roll into place to seal the tomb. The Jewish authorities sealed the tomb, which is to say that they stretched ropes across it, held together by a big embossed wax seal in the middle, such that any tampering would be noticed. They also placed Roman soldiers, with Pilate's permission, guarding the tomb, so that the disciples couldn't come and take it and make it look as though Jesus had risen when he actually hadn't. For the Biblical account of this and the following events, see (
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matt%2027:57-28:15&version=31) Matt 27:57 - 28:15.
(And yes, I freely admit that I'm quoting the Bible here, which you probably don't regard as an unbiased source, which is fair enough. But as I noted before, look at what the Jews say happened - they corroborate an awful lot of this stuff. Also, in terms of whether the Bible we have today is what was written; I know you've brought this up before. I'll just say that the evidence that the versions of the text we have today is what was originally written is stronger for the Bible than any other ancient text. fett is for better qualified than me to discuss this in detail, though.)
This happened on the Friday. On Sunday, Jesus body was gone, the tomb open, the guards bewildered, having fainted in terror during the proceedings. (Again, check out the link above for the account, from Matthew 28. Note that when it says 'There was a violent earthquake', the sense is 'now there had been' - i.e. it happened before they got there.) Two women saw Jesus alive, and a few of the guards went to the Jewish authorities to tell them what had happened, as best they could. The leaders decided on a cover-up, bribed the guards to say that they fell asleep and that the disciples came and took the body, and promised that if Pilate heard this they'd protect them. After this Jesus was repeatedly seen alive, in one case by 500 people at once ((
”http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=53&chapter=15&verse=6&version=31&context=verse”) 1 Corinthians 15:6).
That's pretty much it for the narrative. The best thing to do, mind you, is to read the gospel accounts of this yourself. (Note - as any Bible you pick up will tell you, the very end of Mark is likely a later addition, and Mark probably originally left the discovery of the empty tomb as a kind of cliffhanger. One might suggest that this throws doubt on the accuracy of transmission of the Bible, but as fett will tell you, we have so many copies of texts that we know about things like this, so it's not really a problem.)
It has been postulated that there weren't any guards in actual fact, especially since they're only mentioned in one of the gospels (Matthew). However, note that Matthew's gospel is the only one written specifically for Jewish readership, and they are the ones who would have heard about the official Jewish version of events, and would have wanted certain questions answered. It's also been suggested that they weren't Roman soldiers, and hence less likely to be effective. Note, however, that during the ensuing cover-up, the Jewish authorities promised that if their official story, which involved the guards falling asleep, was heard by Pilate, that they'd get them off the hook. If they weren't Roman soldiers, why was this an issue? And, assuming then that they were trained Romans, and knew that the Jews were worried the disciples might come to steal the body, and knew that if they fell asleep they'd be up for the chop, it seems unlikely they'd fall asleep.
So, what happened to the body? The argument is essentially a Sherlock Holmesian 'once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'. There is one supernatural explanation for what happened - Jesus rose from the dead. There are several mundane explanations too, but, being physical, they run afoul of physical difficulties. There are four of them---I've yet to hear one that wasn't a variation on any of these four. I'll start with the ones easier to disprove and work my way up.
1) Jesus wasn't actually dead. People often point out in particular, that Jesus seemed to die particularly quickly when crucified, so maybe he wasn't dead at all, and just claimed he had been when he turned up later.
There are various problems with this one. First, before he was crucified, Jesus was scourged - a particularly brutal form of whipping. It wasn't unheard of for this to kill people before they even got to the crucifixion part, so it's not that odd that Jesus expired relatively quickly. Also, the Roman soldiers carrying out the execution knew that if they bungled it, they themselves would be executed, so they'd make sure he was dead before they declared him so. To make sure, they thrust a spear in his side to see if he gave any reaction. When this happened, it was reported that it brought 'a sudden flow of blood and water' (John 20:43) which, with a bit of modern medical knowledge, appears to be evidence that Jesus' blood had already separated into clot and plasma, the latter presumably looking like off-colour water to the untrained eye. This means that his heart must have stopped some time before.
So, it seems fairly clear that Jesus was dead. The 'he wasn't dead' explanation also needs to explain how he got out of the tomb afterwards, which I'll come to in a sec.
2) Graverobbers stole the body. Graverobbing wasn't unheard of in those days, but the robbers didn't steal bodies, they stole the expensive linen cloths they were wrapped in. If the Biblical accounts are to be believed, the wrappings were still there once the body had disappeared. In any case, we're talking about what was presumably the only guarded tomb for some distance, if not the whole of Palestine, making it an unlikely target for robbers.
3) The Jewish leaders took the body so the disciples couldn't. Well, okay, nothing to stop them doing that - getting the 2-tonne rock back out of the way would have been tough (they were wedged into ramps before being rolled into place, so you'd have to roll it back uphill), but doable with considerable effort, I guess. (Even with a lot of manpower, you've got the problem of getting them all in a position where they can help. As was noted above, graverobbers existed, so you wanted to make getting into the tomb tough.) If they did take it, though, then why, when people starting claiming Jesus had risen from the dead, didn't they just say 'no he didn't, look, here's the body'? And again, this explanation seems unlikely given the official Jewish story, which would have been unnecessary had they had the body.
4) The disciples did, in fact, steal the body. The problems with this are largely the same as the others - how did they deal with the guards? Certainly they didn't kill them, and they don't appear to have been injured either - otherwise it would presumably have been a simple matter to get the disciples into deep trouble for assaulting Roman soldiers. The Pharisees were worried they'd come, and so would surely have placed enough guards to make this impossible for them in any case, and any helpers they might gather. Again, there's the two-tonne rock, which would be extremely difficult for them to move without serious help, and wouldn't have been easy to do quietly had they somehow got right up to the tomb without the soldiers noticing.
You may have noticed that between the burial of Jesus and the setting of the guard, some hours pass. However, if the Jewish leaders were this worried about the disciples taking the body, it seems unlikely that they'd have left that possibility to chance, either taking a look inside the tomb, or making sure they could account for the movements of the disciples the night before, or both.
That exhausts all the physical, mundane explanations I've heard or can come up with. Only the supernatural one, which requires God's existence, remains.
So, that's kinda long, but, I hope, fairly complete. If I think of anything I've missed, I'll let you know. There are a few other things I could mention. (For example, if the Biblical accounts are made up, someone did a pretty poor job; the first two people to see Jesus alive are women, which, at the time, made their accounts unreliable. And so on.) However, that's enough for now, I think.
*I'm absolutely not trying to say anything along the lines of 'all Jews are evil' or anything like that. It's pretty clear, however, that some particular Jews weren't keen on Jesus.
