"I know I have a lot of scientists and engineers among my friends, and to someone who is used to mathematical proofs and experimental evidence, standards of 'proof' that are accepted in the field of history are generally pretty weak. So even if there was a compelling historical case for 'Jesus appeared to people acting very much like he was alive after he had been very much confirmed to be dead', it wouldn't necessarily meet the standard of proof that they would accept.
After all, most 'historical facts' just aren't that important to most people; it's one thing to accept that someone lived here and said these things and died there, it's another thing to accept that someone went around exhibiting signs of life after being very dead, without a plausible biological mechanism. And many things which are widely accepted as 'historical fact' on the same amount of evidence are almost as widely known to be simplifications or subsequently proven to be just outright false."
This touches on what I was alluding to above. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You can't really live your entire life requiring the most rigorous proofs for everything, so one reasonable response is to scale up the amount of proof you require to accept a particular claim based on how it fits in to the rest of your worldview. Interestingly, this is also confirmation bias in its own way; the difference is that people would a) seek out dissenting information and b) change their minds or moderate their views if and when they find it.
So how much evidence do we need for the messianic prophet's existence? Not a whole lot. People lived there, many of them were Jewish, and the Jews of that time and place had a whole load of messianic prophets wandering around. It seems reasonable that the events of the New Testament might well be based on one of these people. How much do we need for his resurrection? Well, quite a lot more. As you've already pointed out, it's basically a biological impossibility, unless you spend quite some time twisting circumstances to fit the story. What's more likely - someone rose from the dead, or that a grief-stricken person hallucinated the cult leader who they adored? I mean, people still see Elvis, and no-one claims that Elvis was resurrected, right? Or any number of other possibilities - all assuming that the events related in the gospels are based on truth, which we haven't really even properly established either.
And that's about where it stands as far as I'm concerned. I've never seen any credible evidence for a historical resurrection, so why would I believe, especially since the consequences of that belief are a whole lot more absurd?
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Date: 2012-01-15 05:21 pm (UTC)From:After all, most 'historical facts' just aren't that important to most people; it's one thing to accept that someone lived here and said these things and died there, it's another thing to accept that someone went around exhibiting signs of life after being very dead, without a plausible biological mechanism. And many things which are widely accepted as 'historical fact' on the same amount of evidence are almost as widely known to be simplifications or subsequently proven to be just outright false."
This touches on what I was alluding to above. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You can't really live your entire life requiring the most rigorous proofs for everything, so one reasonable response is to scale up the amount of proof you require to accept a particular claim based on how it fits in to the rest of your worldview. Interestingly, this is also confirmation bias in its own way; the difference is that people would a) seek out dissenting information and b) change their minds or moderate their views if and when they find it.
So how much evidence do we need for the messianic prophet's existence? Not a whole lot. People lived there, many of them were Jewish, and the Jews of that time and place had a whole load of messianic prophets wandering around. It seems reasonable that the events of the New Testament might well be based on one of these people. How much do we need for his resurrection? Well, quite a lot more. As you've already pointed out, it's basically a biological impossibility, unless you spend quite some time twisting circumstances to fit the story. What's more likely - someone rose from the dead, or that a grief-stricken person hallucinated the cult leader who they adored? I mean, people still see Elvis, and no-one claims that Elvis was resurrected, right? Or any number of other possibilities - all assuming that the events related in the gospels are based on truth, which we haven't really even properly established either.
And that's about where it stands as far as I'm concerned. I've never seen any credible evidence for a historical resurrection, so why would I believe, especially since the consequences of that belief are a whole lot more absurd?
(part 2 of 2)