The Holy Church of Charles Darwin.

Apostolus on 26/4/2006 at 00:40

Ok, thats it. The author apologizes for preying on a pervasive community foible just to get a cheap laugh. Please put this thread out of its misery.

Edit: And props to Jenesis for lone-wolfing this subject again to such a cynical crowd. Good post. Why you do it is beyond me though.

Agent Monkeysee on 26/4/2006 at 01:44

Quote Posted by Jenesis

Given that I'm arguing from a Christian perspective, the question 'does God exist' becomes 'so, this Jesus chap - what was he about?'

This was really all you needed to post.

Deep Qantas on 26/4/2006 at 07:48

Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man

They don't worship Haile Selassie any more than Christians worship Jesus.

How do you quantify worship and what if the they worshipped really hard to counteract the numbers of the Christian horde?

Quote:

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.

So how do you prove the guards themselves weren't involved with the theft of the body?

Besides, if Sherlock Holmes wasn't such a hack I'd take you quoting him right before some enormous leaps of logic as an insult against him. :P

Ooh, I found a bug on the forums. When you quick-edit your post its color resets to blue even tho it's meant to be white.

OrbWeaver on 26/4/2006 at 09:28

Quote Posted by Jenesis

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.

Your historical analysis is certainly interesting, however the above conclusion is entirely fallacious.

1) There may be other "mundane" explanations beyond the ones you have considered. In particular, the veracity of any of the gospels cannot be established with a high degree of confidence (perhaps they made it up, or copied it off someone else). In legal terms this would be considered "hearsay" which is inadmissible as evidence in many jurisdictions.
2) The assumption that there are several mundane explanations but only ONE supernatural explanation seems pretty bizarre - if you allow a single supernatural explanation you must allow all others, for example, perhaps the entire world is fictitious (like the Matrix) and the resurrection was a coding bug, or perhaps Jesus was not the son of God but a superhero who was able to feign death but not actually die, even when crucified.

In logical terms this conclusion would be known as the fallacy of "lack of imagination", in other words - I have no idea how this could happen without God's intervention, therefore God must have intervened.

st.patrick on 26/4/2006 at 09:53

Quote Posted by Jenesis

I freely admit that I'm quoting the Bible here

Consider the alternative that Jesus actually wasn't buried in that tomb at all.

However logical and well-worded your post might seem, it really doesn't do justice to the cause. As you've admitted, you're quoting the Bible: a source you can either trust or not, but you can hardly use it as an evidence. It's a loose collection of interpretations and second-hand stories. The principal parts of the NT were compiled some 70-100 years after this event had happened, I seriously doubt that'd be considered as 'credible source' from the Holmesian POV. A majority of the descriptions was lately denominated as apocryphal and pretty much omitted in the contextual reconstruction of said event. Imagine a similar situation: today's police trying to construct a hundred year old case of MPD on the evidence of somebody's notes and memories that were compiled thirty years ago. Whether they would believe it happened as described or not is not substantial to the cause; what really matters is the factual credibility of the source.
If you encounter any logical faults in this post, it's my insufficient vocabulary, not sense of logic, that caused them.
Dammit I'm late, OrbWeaver said it before. Did it really take me 35 minutes to compile this?

SD on 26/4/2006 at 10:10

Quote Posted by Jenesis

That Jesus existed, and was crucified, is not generally disputed.

Well, it pretty much is disputed - by Muslims, for example. Their belief is that someone else died on the cross. I can't say that's something I have an opinion on one way or another, but purely from an Occam's Razor perspective, it would seem to be a far more plausible explanation.

Convict on 26/4/2006 at 10:32

Wait a minute StD - the Koran was written about 600 years later so on what basis are they stating that someone else was crucified in place of Jesus? On the other hand the Bible, written much closer to the event, is claiming witnesses identifying Jesus as being crucified. Purely from a historical and scientific perspective, the Bible would seem to be a far more plausible explanation. ;)

st.patrick on 26/4/2006 at 11:13

Given that the difference in time is 3-4 generations for the Bible and some 25 generations for Koran, I'd say that both sources can't be considered as plausible and/or reliable.
As I've said before, this is a matter of trust, not evidence.

Scots Taffer on 26/4/2006 at 11:18

And who trusts those crazy darkies, am I right?

st.patrick on 26/4/2006 at 11:26

Quote Posted by Scots_Taffer

And who trusts those crazy darkies, am I right?

omg TEH FUNNEH
Who exactly, may I ask, would you include in "those crazy darkies"?