Saturday, May 16, 2009

Habermas on the resurrection appearances of Jesus

12 comments:

Steven Carr said...

I have a debate on the resurrection at Debate Who were these 500+ brethren who had gathered together in the short time between Jesus walking through the rock at the tomb and Jesus taking off into the sky on his way to Heaven?

That is a lot of Christians to bring together at one time for a movement supposedly crushed by the death of its leader.

No wonder not one single person in history has ever recalled meeting even one of these alleged 500+ people.

Steven Carr said...

HABERMAS
They (the disciples) were willing to die specifically for their resurrection belief.

CARR
Habermas is making things up.

Guess what? He is a Christian. It is his job to make things up.

Gil Sanders said...

Habermas is making things up.

Guess what? He is a Christian. It is his job to make things up.
I heard it was your job to claim Christians are making things up. But we all know that atheists are the liars here.

No wonder not one single person in history has ever recalled meeting even one of these alleged 500+ people.I wonder who that person was... who you know, recorded the event? Oh right, he/she was making things up! How could I be so forgetful!

Steven Carr said...

So MacGuy admits that not one person in history ever claimed to have met any of these alleged 500+ people.

Paul doesn't claim to have met them.

And MacGuy can't tell us the names of a single one of them, or tell us why 500+ Christians gathered together in the short time between Jesus walking through the rock at the tomb and Jesus taking off into the sky on his way to Heaven?

Or what these alleged people saw.

Or when.

Or where.

They never existed. Nobody claims to have ever met one of them, and 500+ brethren could not have gathered together in a movement allegedly crushed by the death of Jesus.

Not one person in history named himself as ever having seen Lazarus, Judas, Thomas, Mary Magdalene, Barabbas, Nicodemus, the other Mary, Joanna, Salome, Joseph of Arimathea, Simon of Cyrene, his sons, these 500+ anonymous brethren etc etc.

As soon as there is a public church in Acts 2, with the possibility of public records, all these Gospel characters vanish into thin air like the Angel Moroni and the Golden Plates did.

They even disappear from church history.

Even Arimathea disappears, let alone Joseph of Arimathea.

Steven Carr said...

CARR
They (the disciples) were willing to die specifically for their resurrection belief.


I see MacGuy just never bothered producing a shred of evidence that these 11 disciples were willing to die *specifically* for their resurrection belief.

They would never have got as far as being killed for their resurrection belief.

As soon as they tried to claim that Jews should worship a recently executed criminal who was the Jewish God, they would have been stoned to death as blaspheming idolators before you can say 'historical anachronism'

Paul, who was there, says Christians were persecuted on the issue of circumcision and could avoid persecution by compromising their beliefs on the issue of circumcision.

Galatians 6
Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ.

Circumcision was the issue Christians were persecuted on.

Paul, a primary source, says so.

He was not repeating gossip, as he was in this extraordinary claim that Christians gathered in groups of 500+ between the alleged resurrection and the alleged ascenscion into the sky.

Anonymous said...

Steven,
please read Josephus:
http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/josephus.html

When you are done, answer me this:
How dumb does it sound asking "WHo said so? Who's the witness to this? Their names please?" every single time he reports something.

Maybe it will help you understand why people don't take you seriously.

Steven Carr said...

Matthew ducks the challenge of proving Habermas was right when he said 'They (the disciples) were willing to die specifically for their resurrection belief.'

And please name a single one of these 500 plus brethren, or a single person who claimed to have met any of them.

Matthew claims it is dumb to ask who the witnesses were.

Matthew claims it is dumb to ask 'Names, please'.

No wonder Christian apologetics has such a reputation when its defenders think it dumb to supply names of witnesses to alleged miracles.

Who were these 500+? What brought together such a vast number of Christians in the weeks between Jesus leaving his clothes behind in the tomb and ascending into the sky on his way to Heaven?

Gil Sanders said...

So MacGuy admits that not one person in history ever claimed to have met any of these alleged 500+ people.

I said no such thing. To be intellectually honest, I'm not by any means an informed biblical scholar or one who has any considerable knowledge. Much of what I say in regards to historical apologetics should be taken as someone with mere curiosity in discussion. What you said, however, seemed quite unwarranted.

First, to sloganize all Christians as deceiving individuals is rather naive. The point of my response was simply to point out that such reasoning can be used both ways. Therefore it is pointless to make such a statement unless you had some other intentions in mind.

Second, the article was only an outline. It wasn't intended to provide a thorough historical rundown of every claim in the article. You can read his material if you are indeed a truth seeker.

Lastly, the 500+ was recorded by the writer or at least asked of other people as historical witnesses. The disciples and all the other followers would've been happy to confirm this. Besides, it wasn't even mentioned in the article so I'm not sure what you are drifting on about.

To be frank, you have not even begun to rudimentarily address the article's claims to a inquiring (or challenging) degree. Not to mention that you don't seem to have a good reputation here.

Steven Carr said...

MACGUY
The disciples and all the other followers would've been happy to confirm this.

CARR
Really?

And I am willing to bet that if you asked early Mormons to confirm the existence of the Golden Plates, they would have been happy to confirm this.

Evidence please that these 500+ people existed.

Name one of them.

Name one person who claimed to have met them.

Tell me the occasion that brought 500+ Christians together in the time between Jesus leaving his clothes behind in the tomb and then appearing to Mary Magdalene, and Jesus taking off into the sky on his way to Heaven.

And if 500+ people saw a flesh and blood resurrected Jesus, why were Christian converts in Corinth scoffing at the idea of their god choosing to raise corpses?

And why does Paul write to them saying Jesus became a spirit, and then write a second letter to them explaining that the earthly 'tent' is destroyed?

Almost as though he did not believe the earthly tent was saved...

Steven Carr said...

HABERMAS
It is almost always acknowledged that during Jesus' ministry, His brother James was a skeptic (see John 7:5). He was probably one of the family members in Mark 3:21-35 who thought that Jesus was insane!

CARR
I imagine if your brother was born of a virgin and was the only person you knew who never committed a single sin, you would think him insane as well.

Not committing a single sin in all the time that you knew your brother? No wonder you were skeptical.

James knew Jesus a lot better than Habermas ever will, so why should we believe Jesus was born of a virgin when his own brother thought that was 'insane'?

Habermas believes it all because he has read an old book, yet thinks it reasonable that the people who knew Jesus best of all would be skeptics, even though his family must surely have known that Jesus was their Lord and Saviour.

Hadn't Jesus family read the Gospels and learned about all the amazing things that had happened when Jesus was born?

I know they were probably illiterate but surely somebody could have read out those birth stories to Jesusn family, so they would have known just how special Jesus was.

Anonymous said...

Steven doesn't have a good reputation anywhere. Which is just as well, since he'll even go to people's livejournals to do his little zealot schtick. ;)

But you keep on truckin', Steve, you trooper! You have that splendid atheist social autism that's all the rage.

"I want evidence Christ was resurrected!"

'Well, here are the New Testament writings. Here are the descriptions from Josephus, from Tacitus, etc.'

"I want witnesses!"

'Well, we have these documents which refer to 500+ witnesses still living who the audience is encouraged to interact with, we have the martyrdoms, we have the interaction with claimed witnesses, we have the earliest counter-apologetics being "that guy was a magician or it was devil work"..'

"I want first-hand original claims of witnessing the resurrected Christ written personally by one of the witnesses and..."

And then what, Steven? We all know what comes next. "He was lying! Look at him, he was a Christian, he had a vested interest in deceiving!" or "We can never know!" or...

There's a God. Get used to it. It may not be the Christian God (I happen to think it is) but atheism is incorrect. Accept it and move on with your life.

Gordon Knight said...

SC: I think the point was thatJames was skeptic before Jesus died, and a believer after

The question is: why?

The points you bring up are irrelevant.