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Ok, I'll put the amoral monster response as a direct reply and keep this branch about the tomb. The location of the tomb was well known to three different grou

by m1n1 2y ago

Ok, I'll put the amoral monster response as a direct reply and keep this branch about the tomb. The location of the tomb was well known to three different groups. One -- Jesus' followers: It was Joseph of Arimathea's tomb. Joseph and Nicodemus prepared his body for burial. In addition to moving the body, they had forty pounds of spices. (The amount of physical effort involved probably made their destination more memorable) And some women saw him placed in the tomb (Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee). That women are listed as witnesses is notable because in that culture, the testimony of women was not acceptable. This was messy reality, not a clean fiction. Two -- The Jewish religious leaders did not want Jesus' followers to stage his resurrection. So they asked the Romans to guard the tomb. "The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate, [63] and said, “Sir, we remember that when He was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I am to rise again.’ [64] Therefore, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day, otherwise His disciples may come and steal Him away and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.” [65] Pilate said to them, “You have a guard; go, make it as secure as you know how.” [66] And they went and made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone." Three -- The Romans knew where the tomb was because they guarded it. Roman guards knew any security failure could be penalized by death ordered by their superior officer. The Romans were also the ones approached by Joseph of Arimathea so there's a second reason they'd know where Jesus' body was. They set a seal on the stone as well, and the penalty for violating the seal was death. The Jews and the Romans were motivated to keep the status quo. But Christianity and copies of his followers' writings sprang up like wildfire within the lifetime of eyewitness. The Romans could not squash the new movement. One thing would have helped: if they could just produce the rotting corpse from the correct tomb. But they couldn't. Neither could the Jews ask the Romans to do so (it being forbidden in Jewish custom to touch a corpse). Because the tomb's location and emptiness was well-known. Besides, his eleven remaining disciples and other close followers said they interacted with the risen Jesus for a period of 40 days (including being served fish by his hands, touching him, his appearing to over 500 people, and many other convincing proofs). And these eyewitness refused to recant on pain of torture and horrible death (or exile in the case of John). This is very unlike their former manner, which was cowardly. (Another hallmark of a reliable record -- it didn't protect the disciples from appearing as stupid as they were, fighting over who'd be the greatest or misunderstanding Jesus at times) Such a change in courage is consistent with seeing that their leader really was God the Son come back to life, in the flesh. It's not consistent with the idea they mis-remembered or lied deliberately at the cost of their own lives.

scotty79 2y ago
> It's not consistent with the idea they mis-remembered or lied deliberately at the cost of their own lives. It's perfectly consistent with misremembering or lying or making stuff up for dramatic purpose or creating hoaxes. And we even have many modern examples of this. Thousands of people "independently" provide at least as accurate and at least as consistent descriptions of UFO encounters. You can only imagine how bad it was in a world where stuff got written down only after decades or centuries after it supposedly happened. And written down by very limited number of people because almost no one could read or write. You could have made up pretty much anything in that environments if you had an advantage of being able to write. And people did.
- m1n1 2y ago
  There are two kinds of conversations we could be having. (A) Where one person tries to change the other person's mind (B) Where one person explains how a rational person can hold a position ... This is different from showing how the position is the only one a rational person can hold Let's agree not to attempt (A) Are you willing to try (B)? The root of this thread was someone else saying "I honestly don’t understand how anyone who has been proximate to childbirth can believe in intelligent design" I explained how: It's one Consequence imposed by the Governor. He would have been completely justified if he imposed the Punishment immediately instead. The root question didn't ask about goodness or mercy, only intelligent design. The question (yours) now is: can a rational person reconcile the claim that God is good with the reality that a baby could die of cancer. And on this particular branch of the discussion we're comparing explanations for Jesus' empty tomb. It's entirely rational to consult Simon Greenleaf who was one of the foremost experts in judicial evaluation of evidence (he wrote a classic textbook on it used in many law schools). There are rules about judging documents as evidence in the court of law: where were the documents found, in what manner, in what condition, how do they compare with other known examples. There are guidelines for comparing copies, tracing and evaluating differences, and dating documents. And there is Jewish and Roman history. It is rational to accept the evidence as indicating that things were as I described in GP. Which is that Jesus' disciples maintained they interacted with the risen Christ _to their deaths_ and this happened _during_ the eyewitness generation. And the written documents are very numerous (thousands) and many are legitimately dated within the same generation. It is rational to think this explanation is more credible than a hoax or deliberate deception. We're free to weigh things differently, but I'm just showing it is quite a rational option. The hoax approach is opposed by the evidence. I'm sure some will object that it's irrational to believe in miracles. But: One-- that is not in the spirit of the supposition "Assume omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God." (I chatted with a co-worker once who simply could not suppose for the sake of conversation even though he was a software engineer and should have easily been able to pretend Jesus had what we computer folks call write permissions or root privileges. Actually I don't think his difficulty was intellectual so much as emotional.) Two-- I have personal experience: a complete stranger performed a miracle on my leg. Before he did, I was shown a bone defect on an X-ray by someone else. Then, without knowing this, the stranger told me about the defect, and then he fixed me. I was sitting on the floor straight legged and actually felt my leg moving against the floor as the fix took place. Then I got another X-ray from Kaiser Permanente and it showed the defect was gone, even though I specifically told them what to look for (meaning they took exactly the correct X-ray to show it).

by m1n1 2y ago

scotty79 2y ago

> It's not consistent with the idea they mis-remembered or lied deliberately at the cost of their own lives. It's perfectly consistent with misremembering or lying or making stuff up for dramatic purpose or creating hoaxes. And we even have many modern examples of this. Thousands of people "independently" provide at least as accurate and at least as consistent descriptions of UFO encounters. You can only imagine how bad it was in a world where stuff got written down only after decades or centuries after it supposedly happened. And written down by very limited number of people because almost no one could read or write. You could have made up pretty much anything in that environments if you had an advantage of being able to write. And people did.

m1n1 2y ago
There are two kinds of conversations we could be having. (A) Where one person tries to change the other person's mind (B) Where one person explains how a rational person can hold a position ... This is different from showing how the position is the only one a rational person can hold Let's agree not to attempt (A) Are you willing to try (B)? The root of this thread was someone else saying "I honestly don’t understand how anyone who has been proximate to childbirth can believe in intelligent design" I explained how: It's one Consequence imposed by the Governor. He would have been completely justified if he imposed the Punishment immediately instead. The root question didn't ask about goodness or mercy, only intelligent design. The question (yours) now is: can a rational person reconcile the claim that God is good with the reality that a baby could die of cancer. And on this particular branch of the discussion we're comparing explanations for Jesus' empty tomb. It's entirely rational to consult Simon Greenleaf who was one of the foremost experts in judicial evaluation of evidence (he wrote a classic textbook on it used in many law schools). There are rules about judging documents as evidence in the court of law: where were the documents found, in what manner, in what condition, how do they compare with other known examples. There are guidelines for comparing copies, tracing and evaluating differences, and dating documents. And there is Jewish and Roman history. It is rational to accept the evidence as indicating that things were as I described in GP. Which is that Jesus' disciples maintained they interacted with the risen Christ _to their deaths_ and this happened _during_ the eyewitness generation. And the written documents are very numerous (thousands) and many are legitimately dated within the same generation. It is rational to think this explanation is more credible than a hoax or deliberate deception. We're free to weigh things differently, but I'm just showing it is quite a rational option. The hoax approach is opposed by the evidence. I'm sure some will object that it's irrational to believe in miracles. But: One-- that is not in the spirit of the supposition "Assume omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God." (I chatted with a co-worker once who simply could not suppose for the sake of conversation even though he was a software engineer and should have easily been able to pretend Jesus had what we computer folks call write permissions or root privileges. Actually I don't think his difficulty was intellectual so much as emotional.) Two-- I have personal experience: a complete stranger performed a miracle on my leg. Before he did, I was shown a bone defect on an X-ray by someone else. Then, without knowing this, the stranger told me about the defect, and then he fixed me. I was sitting on the floor straight legged and actually felt my leg moving against the floor as the fix took place. Then I got another X-ray from Kaiser Permanente and it showed the defect was gone, even though I specifically told them what to look for (meaning they took exactly the correct X-ray to show it).