Seraph wrote:bippy123 wrote:How are you as far as believing in the resurrection of Christ?
Do you believe that the apostles made it up and then died for that lie?
Do you believe that the apostles were sincere in what they wrote about seeing the risen Christ?
As william Lane Craig has said many times Christianity rises and falls on one event, the resurrection of Christ
Many people died for David Koresh but that doesn't mean that his claims were true, know what I mean?
If I knew that Jesus raised from the dead, I would say he is almost certainly God and all of his claims were true.
However I wasn't there, I don't know. People claimed to see Muhammad rise to heaven, or see Buddha go decades without nourishment in a state of meditiation. People make unreliable outstanding claims about others quite a lot.
http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/cr ... ngaway.htm
You bring up some good points but you forgot about one thing. The criterion of embarressment.
This is what seperates Christianity's claims from the claims of all other religions.
Who was it that discovered the tomb empty first, who was it that saw the risen Christ first?
The answer to both of these questions was THE WOMEN.
What was the testimony of women worth in first century Jerusalem?
Lower then dirt and this is what makes almost all new testament historians (whether atheist, agnostic mainstream Christian or liberal theology) believe that the apostles were not lying , and in fact were being sincere about seeing the risen Christ. The only thing that seperates these historians are their willingness or unwillingness to believe in the supernatural. There is no question about the apostles honesty because of the criterion of embarressment. If they wanted to lie about the empty tomb or seeing the risen Christ they certainly wouldnt have wrote that the women saw the tomb empty first or saw the risen Christ first.
Once you have established the honesty and sincerity of what the apostles saw the next question would be how reliable is the eye witness testimony of the apostles.
Could they have been having a mass delusion? Remember before we critique the delusion theory we have to remember that in the bible it states that the risen Christ was seen by over 500 people, many of them non believers. I dont think that anyone outside of david Koresh's brainwashed sheep saw david do any miracles or eat and sleep with unbelievers after his death. David Koresh is dead and he has stayed dead.
Lets turn to the resurrection man himself Gary Habermas to see how the hallucination theory holds up
While the recent surge of hallucination theses reveal some differences, there are more similarities. We need to weigh the hypothesis as a whole. But we will begin by evaluating two important side issues: the possibility of group hallucinations and the status of the conversion disorder thesis proposed by Kent and Goulder.
Collective Hallucinations. One of the central issues in this entire discussion concerns whether a group of people can witness the same hallucination. Most psychologists dispute the reality of such occurrences, as pointed out below. A rare attempt suggesting that collective hallucinations are possible, without any application to Jesus' resurrection, is made by Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones. They point to phenomena such as claimed sightings of the virgin Mary and other accompanying reports from groups of people. In cases like these, "expectation" and "emotional excitement" are "a prerequisite for collective hallucinations." In such groups we see the "emotional contagion that so often takes place in crowds moved by strong emotions .
But favoring collective hallucinations is highly problematic, and on several grounds. (1) To begin, the chief examples of "collective hallucinations" provided by Zusne and Jones were group religious experiences such as Marion apparitions. But these citations simply beg the question regarding whether such experiences could possibly be objective, or even supernatural, at least in some sense. In other words, why must a naturalistic, subjective explanation be assumed? [xxvi] This seems to rule them out in an a priori manner, before the data are considered.
(2) Further, the collective hallucination thesis is unfalsifiable. It could be applied to purely natural, group sightings, simply calling them group hallucinations, too. On this thesis, crucial epistemic criteria seem to be missing. How do we determine normal occurrences from group hallucinations?
(3) Even if it could be established that groups of people witnessed hallucinations, it is critical to note that it does not at all follow that these experiences were therefore collective. If, as most psychologists assert, hallucinations are private, individual events, then how could groups share exactly the same subjective visual perception? Rather, it is much more likely that the phenomena in question are either illusions--perceptual misinterpretations of actual realities [xxvii] -- or individual hallucinations.
Moreover, the largest series of problems results from comparing this thesis to the New Testament accounts of Jesus' resurrection appearances. And here, the explanatory power of this hypothesis is severely challenged, since much of the data not only differs from, but actually contradicts, the necessary conditions for "collective hallucinations." One of these issues will be mentioned here, with others following below.
(4) For instance, Zusne and Jones argue that "expectation" and "emotional excitement" are "prerequisites" before such group experiences will occur. In fact, expectation "plays the coordinating role." [xxviii] But this scenario contradicts the emotional state of the early witnesses of Jesus' resurrection appearances. Even psychologically, the early believers were confronted face-to-face with the utter realism of the recent and unexpected death of their best friend, whom they had hoped would rescue Israel. As those recent events unfolded in a whirlwind of Jesus' physical beatings, crucifixion, and seeming abandonment, the normal response would be fear, disillusionment, and depression. To suppose that these believers would exhibit "expectation" and "emotional excitement" in the face of these stark circumstances would require of them responses that would scarcely be exhibited at a funeral! All indications are that Jesus' disciples would exhibition the very opposite emotions from what Zusne and Jones convey as the necessary requirement.
By comparison, the disciples' experience is totally unlike those in the other cases above where pilgrims expressly traveled long distances, exuberantly gathering with the explicit desire to see something special. There would seem to be very meager grounds of comparison here with Jesus' disciples. [xxix]
Many other crucial problems also plague the thesis of group hallucinations, and we will pursue several more below. But for now we will repeat that Zusne and Jones never attempt to apply their approach to Jesus' resurrection. Rather, they even rather incredibly close their examination with the admission that group hallucinations have a "dubious status" because it is not possible to ascertain whether these individuals were actually even hallucinating! [xxx]
The hallucination theory just doesnt fit the psychological profile of the apostles. Not just this but you also have skeptics who converted after seeing the risen Christ. Remember the apostle james?
He was the family skeptic during Christ's ministry and even said that he thought that Jesus was crazy for what he claimed to be (the son of God)
after the resurrection and after personally seeing Christ risen he not only believed in Christ's claims but he was one of the most zealous apostles willing to die for what he sincerely saw. You simply dont have anything close to this in any other religion Seraph.
nothing comes even close
By the way seraph, what is your take on the shroud of turin?
the evidence seems pretty strong to me
Also thank you for explaining the different types of deism to me, it helped to clear up a misconception I had
