Resurrection = Son of God? Not at all…

The red writing comes from "A Thinking Christian" (ATC, not to be confused with ATB) and his entry concerning the connection between resurrection and belief in Jesus being God.

So the claim to be the son of god was the biggest and most radical claim that he made (aside from being the messiah and king of the Jews).

Claim to be son of god was not a claim to be god. Read your Old Testament, many people were called "Son(s) of God" without any notion of their being divine (or the divine incarnate) – but rather it usually meant that they were on a special mission, or were specially blessed by God. 

Now, I agree with you, to claim to BE God is a very different and much more upsetting claim.

And, of course, you want to say that Jesus did claim to BE God; which I would respond by saying, "No he didn’t, not even if you take the Gospel accounts as actual transcriptions."  But I’m not interested in arguing this point. Take it for the sake of argument, he called himself God.

Jesus had a large following in his day (big enough to make the Romans know and worry the priests).

Come now – he and all his followers could meet in a single room for dinner – Last Supper anyone?  So his following (if the Gospels are any indication) was probably 12-15ish, right?

Why would the head of the temple and the Romans know about him? Come on, he walked into Jerusalem during Passover (when security is TIGHT for fears of riots, etc.), and walks into the main temple and starts destroying stuff.  Of course he’ll be noticed, and deemed a threat to the peace of the city – you don’t need vast numbers for this at all.

When Jesus was killed, that pretty much crushed every hope in their savior. However, when Jesus rose from the dead, that meant that he was not your typical "go down claiming to be the messiah", because he certainly wasn’t the first or last. For Jesus to have come back from the dead, means that there must be something behind his claims. (I think that predicting your own death and ressurection, and then both of them happening is a pretty good resume booster)

All right, so here we get to the meat of the argument.  Previously, I have said, "look, even if it were well-attested that Jesus rose from the dead; that proves that Jesus is some kind of creature that has powers that we have never before encountered. This makes it impossible to try and conclude something meaningful about whatever it is that this Jesus character is."

Giving you, again, the part where he allegedly predicts his own death and resurrection (which I contest outside of this argument), I am willing to concede that there is *something* behind his claims.

That Jesus would be something really and truly foreign to us. 

Jesus made a set of claims that could not be made and fulfilled by any other person. Furthermore, Jesus validated his claims with his life, teachings, miracles, death, and ressurection. It is from this validation that Christians accept the claims of Jesus to be true, even the claim to be the son of god.

No, this is what you need to prove, you cannot just conclude these statements. Where is the progression that gets us here?

First of all, I’ll have to grant you still more (which I’m willing to do) – that Jesus made a set of claims that could not be made and fulfilled by any other person. OK.

Second, Jesus validated SOME of his claims with his life, teachings, death and resurrection (namely, the parts we are now, for the sake of argument, assuming).  He does not validate any claim that you say he makes about him being God.  He does not validate in any way his power over where anyone’s soul goes after death. He does not conclusively validate his moral goodness (what can we know about this creature called Jesus that looks like a human but clearly is something different/more powerful?)

I understand that Christians accept the claims of Jesus and by Jesus as true because they think that things like the resurrection TELLS the Christians something useful.  But this is EXACTLY what I’m saying does not follow!

Let me be as clear as possible:

Granting that Jesus existed, made claims about being good, God, dying and resurrecting; doing miracles like walking on water, healing the sick. Jesus clearly is something we have never experienced before.

Given that – what the hell makes you think that Jesus is God? Or that He’s Good? Or almost any other characteristic that you think Jesus has?

Are you going to say that, "in my experience, people who spend 3 years teaching about morals, walking on water, dying and coming back to life should be trusted"?

I doubt it. 

If you want to claim that Jesus was human, and didn’t have any special powers, and in his life he taught morals and lived a generally good life. Sure, I’ll buy that.  In your and my experience, people who seem good an decent people in all my encounters with them are good and decent people as far as I can tell.

If you want to claim that Jesus was something more than human, something supernatural as well, then good luck trying to conclude anything at all – much less concluding something with conviction.

I’d almost be satisfied if Christians said something like, "well, I believe that Jesus was probably Good."