On 1) I haven't really gone digging into the academic-history perspective on this, mostly because I don't see why I should bother; when I hear people sermonising about it they tend to rely over-heavily on the Bible texts, and since I think the Bible was written down much later by people heavily invested believing the things written in it... yeah, not the best source. So if I was writing a sermon intend to persuade people who DON'T already believe I'd have to take care to not circularly use the Bible as "proof" of its own truth. Further my prior probability for the existence of God is very low; so you have to go a lot further to convince than you would to convince me of something I already think is quite likely.
On 2) This is also relevant; but I think a bit less so.
On 3) My thinking doesn't really get that far; because I don't accept the "fact" of the resurrection. So I'm not really interested in what (if anything) it means. I think it is useful to remember when writing sermons that not all people who accept the existence of supernatural powers that sometimes act to change the world go on the accept that Christianity is the correct lens with which to view/worship/etc them/it.
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Date: 2012-01-16 10:12 am (UTC)From:I haven't really gone digging into the academic-history perspective on this, mostly because I don't see why I should bother; when I hear people sermonising about it they tend to rely over-heavily on the Bible texts, and since I think the Bible was written down much later by people heavily invested believing the things written in it... yeah, not the best source. So if I was writing a sermon intend to persuade people who DON'T already believe I'd have to take care to not circularly use the Bible as "proof" of its own truth. Further my prior probability for the existence of God is very low; so you have to go a lot further to convince than you would to convince me of something I already think is quite likely.
On 2)
This is also relevant; but I think a bit less so.
On 3)
My thinking doesn't really get that far; because I don't accept the "fact" of the resurrection. So I'm not really interested in what (if anything) it means. I think it is useful to remember when writing sermons that not all people who accept the existence of supernatural powers that sometimes act to change the world go on the accept that Christianity is the correct lens with which to view/worship/etc them/it.