It strikes me as strange that in a debate centered on history, Tim has devoted so much of his time to psychology. His main argument seems to go something like this:
- Lots of people believe lots of things that never happened
- Lots of people believe the resurrection happened
- The resurrection must have never happened
Even though I am slightly lampooning it, this still is not a particularly good or relevant argument. As such, I am going to deal with the more pertinent points Tim raised.
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Vocab’s Opening Statement
1A: It’s Good Friday today, a suitably meaningful day to be debating the death and resurrection of Jesus. Incidentally, it’s also April Fool’s day today. There is something interesting to learn about April Fool’s day. Even in 2010, in an age of almost unlimited source material and fact-checking capabilities, millions upon millions of people are taken in by phony news reports, even if they read them on the internet where a new tab in Firefox would allow them to fact-check.
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“The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion.
It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity.” – Antony Flew [1]
::: Can the Resurrection of Jesus be historically substantiated? Yes, and every other explanation fails.
The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is quite solid on historical grounds. Even though I will be mainly focusing on the historical evidence supporting the claim that God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, I have noticed even solid historical evidence has a tough time overpowering people’s philosophical objections to the resurrection. These I cannot address here, since we are mainly looking at the historical – and not the philosophical – validity of the resurrection.
How can we know the resurrection of Jesus has any historical validity? I offer three considerations:
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Was Jesus resurrected from the dead? I say no.
Of course, I have no way of being absolutely sure. All I can really say is that I have insufficient evidence to accept the claim. However, what is the reasonable position when you don’t have evidence enough? Is it to say "well, it’s 50-50, I have no way of assigning a truth value either way"? I don’t think so, at least not always. If the claim is extraordinary, the evidence needs to be strong enough to support it. An extraordinary claim with weak evidence earns a rating of "it seems highly unlikely, so I will not accept that claim until further evidence presents itself". This, in shorthand, becomes my "no" of the title.
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Preface: This debate is being posted on a Christian site as well as here, and these rules are copied directly from the same source, and have been agreed on by the participants.
That said, while we encourage everyone to be civil and reasonable, and to refrain from using excessively “foul language”, we trust you to use good judgement in what you post and we do not intend to censor you.
Enjoy the debate, and please participate!
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