Resurrection is irrelevant, even if it happened.

Stealth, still haven’t found my detailed notes – but I think that gist of my argument will make sense standing alone.

1.  What the "disciples"  said and did (and even exactly who they were) in and around the time of Jesus’ death is inconclusively verifiable.

2.  Assuming we can know what they said and did (which is the only possible thing that historical records could actually provide evidence for along these lines) – what they believed is completely unverifiable.

3.  Assuming that we do know what they said and what they did and what they believed (and that they 100% believed that Jesus died and resurrected) – whether Jesus actually died, came back from the dead a few days later is completely unverifiable. (Note that even somehow knowing that the disciples believed 100%, that does nothing to show THAT it is the case that it happened.)

4.  Assuming that we know what the disciples said, did, and believed (that Jesus died and resurrected), and that we could somehow KNOW that Jesus actually did die and resurrect – you’re really in trouble.

5.  Assuming that we know what the disciples said, did, believed, and that we know that Jesus did in fact die and come back to life several days later – we are now, apparently, dealing with an "entirely foreign and alien event/being." This means we’re at a dilemma.

The horn of the dilemma at this point becomes the following: Either Jesus was supernatural and his death/resurrection were something that has never happened before, or since, and that Jesus must have some kind of power/ability that is not accessible to "ordinary humans" – or not.

If you think not, then you’re not likely a traditional Christian.

If so, then, by invoking the supernatural, all claims become much more difficult to pin down.  By what standard do we judge, trust, compare him to? How can we make even the most outrageous probabilistic claims about him?

For example, no one could persuasively argue, "Well, clearly, Jesus is a good person/being, that is to be trusted because during his life he didn’t sin and he preached a good moral code." Because you can’t continue with, "Because in all my dealings with beings that have this kind of power, and inhabit a human body for this stretch of time, they’ve treated me well."

With nothing to compare these experiences and events with, one has NO BASIS for choosing:

Jesus is God-incarnate, died and rose on the 3rd day

over

Jesus was the manifestation of the mischevious God that created the universe to see how many people he could fool with a neat trick.

or, over

Jesus was a human body that was possessed by a spirit who is mostly bad, but over this spirit’s life-span of 10,000 years, acting good in a human body for 33 years is an easy trick, plus, convincing people that your host body died and resurrected is child’s play.  Hell, the disciples could have been possessed as well, and they just had to play convinced that Jesus came back.

 

In other words, I don’t think we have a good idea of anything that happened during Jesus’ time on earth – especially not things we don’t have any reference to.

So, we don’t have a good idea of who the disciples were, or what they said, or did, and that even if we did have a good idea, that doesn’t helpe us at all determine what happened with Jesus. That is the main thrust of my argument against Stealth’s paper – he did a fairly good job of showing that sure, the disciples most likely believed that Jesus resurrected from the dead. My problem comes in, ok, sure, say we knew it – say we had video taped testimony while they were hooked up to a lie-detector. What does that tell us? Nothing substantial, really.

Having the sworn testimony of a group of people who believe that a miracle occurred does not make the miracle’s occurance any more likely.

And the problem goes beyond that, even if I let you have it all the way through, sure, the miracle that supposedly happened, happened. And we’re certain of that.  What is the reasonable course of action once a person KNOWS that Jesus rose from the dead? Most people, even atheists I’d waged would say, "to believe in Jesus" – but that doesn’t follow.  There is no reasonable course of action because we’re dealing with a completely incomparable situation.