Yes, godless atheism is a natural breeding ground for conspiracy theories. Not! Actually, studies have found the very opposite. Check it out: here
I suggest the good senator educate himself on the subject before scape-goating atheists and other secularists.
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I saw this on another atheist’s site and had to repost it. Too funny!
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The resurrection of Jesus is an historical fact. There is better evidence for the resurrection than most other events in ancient history. Approximately eight different authors in antiquity reference this event. If skeptic X (fill in the name) had received better theological training and education he (or she) would then see and understand the complicated historical and theological nuances of Holy Scripture. To the properly trained, the Bible is clear, coherent, and incredibly accurate. The comments of skeptic X clearly indicate that this level of training and education is lacking. He reads Holy Scripture as would a typical fundamentalist. No wonder he deconverted from the faith…if he was ever a true believer to begin with. No one on the internet should take him seriously until he is better informed about the subject he is criticizing.
Gary: This is the new defense/attack strategy of Christian apologists. No matter how much training and experience in Christian theology a skeptic has, you just do not have enough to know what you are talking about. I’ve seen them pull this with Bart Ehrman. It is a very clever tactic.
Dear fellow skeptics: You do not need to know one single principle of Christian theology or philosophy to reject supernatural claims. A high school science class is sufficient.
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Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
33 So also, when you see all these things, you know that he[g] is near, at the very gates. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
–Jesus of Nazareth
“What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.
–Saul/Paul of Tarsus
Gary: Both of these statements were made 2,000 years ago! Jesus is dead. He isn’t coming back, Christians. Move on. Abandon your first century superstition. Embrace science, reason, and rational thinking.
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For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve…
–Paul of Tarsus
That same hour they [the two disciples on the Emmaus Road] got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34 They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
–author of the Gospel of Luke
This post is the twelfth and final post in the series, Twelve Reasons Why No One Should Believe in the Resurrection.
Think about it: The appearances of the resurrected Jesus, if true, would be incredibly strong evidence that Jesus was who he said he was: the Son of God! So if these resurrection appearances are so important, wouldn’t you think that the authors of the Gospels, who according to conservative Christians were the very disciples of Jesus or at least close associates of the disciples of Jesus, would tell us all the details about the very first appearance of Jesus?
Well, they don’t. The authors of the Gospels tell us nothing about Jesus’ first (alleged) resurrection appearance except that it was to Jesus’ chief disciple, Simon Peter. That’s it! They tell us about Jesus making a special appearance to a minor disciple, Thomas. They tell us about Jesus making a special appearance to a former prostitute, Mary Magdalene. But they tell us nothing about Jesus’ first appearance to Simon Peter!
Why???
I’m sure Christian apologists have long ago fabricated several clever explanations for the absence of this tale in the Gospels (or anywhere else in the New Testament), but isn’t it obvious, dear readers? The earliest Christians were embarrassed about this particular resurrection appearance story! Was Peter hallucinating? Was Peter experiencing another of his “trances” (seeing lions, tigers, and bears riding on a floating sheet)? Was he drunk and in a delusional stupor when he “saw” Jesus??
The fact that not one single author of the Christian Scriptures describes Jesus’ (alleged) first post-death resurrection appearance is strong evidence that the Resurrection of Jesus Story is a big, fat, tall tale. It is entirely possible that all subsequent appearance claims were triggered by the first, and if the first appearance was too embarrassing to discuss, why should any modern, educated person today believe that the other appearance tales are true?
No modern, educated person should believe in the Resurrection! The end.
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Christians apologists would have us believe that the disciples of Jesus carefully preserved the sayings and deeds of Jesus and then forty years later sat down with the four evangelists to dictate word for word the historically accurate details of Jesus’ life.
This is yet another assumption in the long list of assumptions that holds together the Christian supernatural tall tale.
The Gospels authors are considered by modern experts to have been skilled, professional writers. For all we know, they just wanted to sell a good book! And to sell a good book, you have to make it interesting. And to make most stories interesting, you have to add some fictional details, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. No one informed the four evangelists that a few centuries later their writings would be pronounced the very Word of God by a council of Catholic bishops!
So even if the four gospel authors did interview eyewitnesses for their books, that is no guarantee that they wrote down exactly what the eyewitnesses described. Imagine this scenario:
The evangelists sit down with a few of the original disciples and hear the details of Jesus’ first resurrection appearance, to Simon Peter:
Disciples: Well, Peter was pretty depressed. Jesus was dead and Peter felt awful about his betrayal. So he started drinking. He REALLY started drinking. We found him one morning half-naked, lying in his own vomit, in a real stupor. He kept mumbling: “Jesus just appeared to me. Jesus just appeared to me. Jesus just appeared to me.” We threw him in a cold shower to sober him up, but he kept mumbling: “Jesus just appeared to me. Jesus just appeared to me.” For the rest of his life, Peter believed that Jesus had appeared to him there in that room.
Gospel authors: Uh. Well. That won’t do. Let’s make some revisions.
Author of Mark: I’m just going to have some guy at the tomb tell the women that Jesus will appear to the disciples in Galilee at some unspecified time in the future. I’m going to skip the appearance to Peter.
Author of Matthew: I’m going to have Jesus first appear to the women in the Garden and then to the male disciples sometime later in Galilee. I’m going to omit any mention of an appearance to Peter altogether. Books about hallucinating drunks do not sell.
Author of Luke: Well, I promised my publisher, Theophilus, that my book will be mostly historical, so I’ll briefly mention that Jesus’ first appearance was to Peter, but I’m not going to give any details. I’ll have Jesus appear to Peter with the other ten disciples that evening when he’s sober.
Author of John: Yea, I think I’ll skip the first appearance too. I’ll wait to discuss Jesus appearing to Peter until a fishing expedition in Galilee. There I’ll clean up Peter’s reputation by claiming that Jesus stated that Peter will be the rock upon which he will build his church. We don’t want our readers thinking Peter, the chief apostle, was a delusional drunk.
Dear Readers: The Gospel authors were not writing history textbooks. They had no idea that their books would later be considered the inerrant words of God in heaven. They were writing books. And most authors just want their books to sell, and to sell, good authors know that their stories must be interesting. Bottom line: We have no idea how much of the stories in their books is fact and how much is literary fiction.
No modern, educated person should believe in the Resurrection.
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For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. –Saul/Paul of Tarsus
Jewish scholars say there is no such prophecy anywhere in Old Testament scriptures! And even Christian scholars admit that one must tie multiple OT passages together to come to the conclusion that the Jewish Bible prophesies that the messiah will die and then be resurrected.
Read: here
Christians have done a masterful job of shoehorning Jesus into many of the Old Testament’s Jewish messiah prophecies, but they haven’t yet found a clear, unambiguous, undisputed Old Testament prophecy that the future Jewish messiah/king of Israel will be a resurrected-from-the-dead messiah. Of course, that hasn’t stopped them from trying.
The resurrected messiah claim was in all likelihood nothing more than the consequence of the massive cognitive dissonance experienced by Jesus’ shocked and crest-fallen disciples after his sudden arrest and brutal execution.
No modern, educated person should believe in resurrected messiahs or resurrected bodies, period! Jesus is still dead.
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Imagine if Chinese experts announced that George Washington really did cut down his father’s cherry tree. Even though the overwhelming majority of the American people and American historians believe it is a legend, Chinese experts assert that Americans are wrong and that the reason why Americans refuse to recognize the truth about George Washington is because they are willfully and stubbornly ignoring the evidence.
Pretty ridiculous, right?
Well, that is exactly what Gentile Christians do to millions of Jews and to thousands of Jewish scholars who believe that the resurrection of Jesus claim is a silly legend. And what’s more, to explain away this overwhelming Jewish rejection of the Resurrection claim, Gentile Christians accuse Jews of willfully ignoring the evidence. They accuse Jews of being stubborn and hard-hearted.
FYI: When the overwhelming majority of people in the very culture in which a fantastical story develops dismiss it as nonsense, there is a very high probability that it is nonsense.
Jews reject the Resurrection claim because it is silly and preposterous. Eyewitness claims from a few wild-eyed peasants and one mentally ill rabbi do not change that fact.
No modern, educated person should believe in the Resurrection.
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I will bet that most Christians have never read the Gospels in parallel. Most Christians read the Gospels piecemeal, depending on the particular Bible study guide they are following. Others read the Gospels in the order they find them in their Bibles: starting with Matthew, then Mark, then Luke, and then John. I challenge every Christian to read the Gospels in parallel. They will be shocked by what they discover.
As mentioned in the previous post, one of the first things readers of the Gospels in parallel will notice is the blatant, massive plagiarism by at least two Gospel authors (and 50% of Bible scholars believe by the fourth also) of the first Gospel written, Mark. Why would eyewitnesses plagiarize the work of an author whom even Christians agree was not an eyewitness??
The next thing they will see is how when it comes to the four very different stories of the Empty Tomb and Resurrection Appearances a brief supernatural tale grows into a WHOPPER of a tall tale.
In the first Gospel, Mark, the women find the tomb empty on Sunday morning and see a “young man” sitting in the tomb. He tells them that Jesus is risen and to tell the “brethren” to meet Jesus in Galilee. The women run away in great fear…and tell no one!
In the next Gospel, Matthew, the tale expands massively. The women come to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his body—knowing full well that Roman guards are guarding the tomb for the very reason of keeping anyone from opening the stone door! Were they dense?? And now there is an angel in brilliant garments who descends out of the sky, rolls back the stone, and sits on it, right in front of the womens’ very eyes! Roman soldiers are lying on the ground, unconscious due to fear induced by the sight of this “bright-as-lightning” alien. At the same time, there is a great earthquake. In this version, the women immediately tell everyone! Jesus appears to his male disciples in Galilee and gives them the Great Commission. But wait…NOT ENOUGH FANTASTICAL EMBELLISHMENTS, you say? The author of Matthew decides to thrown in a story that the aforementioned earthquake was so strong that it shook dead people out of their graves to walk the streets of Jerusalem, chatting up old friends and family members!
In the next Gospel, Luke, there are now two angels, not one. And Jesus doesn’t wait to appear to the male disciples in Galilee, he appears to them that same day in Jerusalem. He eats a broiled fish sandwich just to prove he is not a ghost.
Then we get to the last Gospel, John. In this Gospel, Jesus is appearing all over the place, Jerusalem and Galilee! He doesn’t just eat broiled fish—he cooks it! And to really prove that he is not a ghost, as the critics of Christianity were probably claiming, he tells his disciples to poke their fingers into his wounds!
Blatant embellishments!
No one should believe this embellished tall tale!
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Think about this: At a local trial the alleged four eyewitnesses to a crime are asked to submit written statements of what they saw and heard in regards to the event in question. The statements are later published in the local newspaper.
The public is shocked to see that the statements of eyewitness #2 and #3 contain entire paragraphs copied word for word from that of eyewitness #1. In fact, over 50% of both “eyewitness” statements are plagiarized from the written statement of eyewitness #1.
When examining the written statement of eyewitness #4, 50% of experts believe that he too based much of his statement on that of one or more of the other three eyewitnesses.
When placed on the witness stand, eyewitness #1 admits that he too was not an eyewitness, but he assures the court that he obtained his information from a reliable eyewitness source…but he declines to state the identity of this person.
Court officials carry out an investigation into the procedures used to obtain the eyewitness statements and discover that “eyewitnesses” #2 and #3 were given access to the statement of “eyewitness” #1 prior to writing their own statements. In addition, it was discovered that “eyewitness” #4 had access to all three statements of “eyewitnesses” #1, #2, and #3 prior to writing his statement!
The case is summarily thrown out of court.
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