Geneviev wrote:Lower Nubia wrote:
I never said it was individually evidence, but that the commune of all of those questions certainly does lead to a powerful evidence. Your first objection:
Why does it not? Unlike Jones-town, Christ made specific, observable checklist: That he would be executed, raised again three days later and that the temple would be trampled under foot as his vindication. Jonestown made spiritual claims confirmed only in the heart, in faith, but Christ's vindication was proven in what must be observable. Therefore if Christ failed, why would the apostles sacrifice themselves for what they could see to be a lie? Martyrdom is not a proof per se, many have martyred themselves for many false causes, but Christianity offers a curious divergence: the fact He made such ridiculous claims, antithetical to the very mind of the Jew's and gentile of the time, and that such ridiculous claims were not made about things which could not be truly known, but could be seen with your own eyes and touched by your bare hands. Martyrdom also eliminates claims to glory or power, people who crave such things are prideful and egotistical, it would be illogical to give their lives up to gain these things. Only claims of madness or delusion, but on such a wide scope and with their works being read by us today with such clarity. It is unlikely they were mad. It eliminates counter points, such as mass delusion or insanity.
Then we should cancel all testimony in courts. What authority do you need to be a witness to a murder? A degree? A high social rank? Or eyeballs and then a general consistency with other eyewitnesses? The Gospels and Church testimony and even Secular records conform to these parameters and the ones surrounding Christ's life, death and therefore why should we trust in claims of Resurrection to simply be blown off by "lacking authority to be a witness"? The works of the apostles clearly illustrate them to be very competent and for some, well educated, why can I not trust their testimony?
This assumes the validity of your previous points, which aren't true. Yet I did not give individual qualities, but the whole scenario (or some percentage of that whole, at least) and its total power to demonstrate clear plausibility in the Resurrection. If you want to say it is not bold, answer my previous posts question, you'll find a general air of lucky, tenuous and somewhat ridiculous events have to take place to accommodate all of those factors. Yet one cannot present lucky, tenuous, and somewhat ridiculous events as being the actual history without presenting something more than general hypotheses.
An excellent question, how about I propose an equally valid question: How do we know Hannibal crossed the Alps? That the Pelopponesian war took place? That Caesar crossed the Rubicon? Or that the Roman Empire offered her soldiers payslips? All of these things were recorded by eyewitnesses in the form of manuscripts, who wrote it down and we have inherited the copies, or originals of those manuscripts.
Yet manuscripts for Hannibal crossing the Alps number only 2, 100-250 years after the event. Did Hannibal cross the alps? Yes. The Roman Empire employed 100's of thousands of people into her army, but we only have 9 pay slips. So why do the 24,000 manuscript copies of the New Testament, with many being written within just 50-100 years after the event, somehow count as unconvincing of Christ's testimony? If you want to say: "How can we trust Christ's words?" Well if we can't trust Christ's we really can't trust most of ancient history. We can present an a priori against them because they contain the divine, but what evidence in history before the last 1,900 years would therefore be count as evidence if we assumed such things? The 24,000 manuscripts for a Galilean carpenter who had all of those social issues my original post asked is very, very impressive. Some would say remarkable, others? Divine.
Martyrdom made them famous thousands of years later - it could have been egotistical. That is, admittedly, a stretch. Mass delusion is still a possibility, though. If I were convinced that my friend and teacher (and someone I believed to be God) was still alive and watching me, I would die for Him as well. Even if He was truly dead and I had merely convinced myself otherwise.
The Gospels and Epistles were not written by the women who saw the Resurrection. The men who wrote the Gospels were well-educated, of course. They could write in Greek. That does not mean that a group of grieving women are a reliable source of fact. It had only been three days since Jesus had died. Three days after your closest friend dies, you do not have a full grasp on reality.
This is not about trusting Christ's words - God only knows how avidly I follow what Jesus said - but the concept that He perhaps did not want to be considered God. Mark 10:18 definitely is Jesus saying that He is separate from God. John 17:3 saying "the only true God and Jesus Christ" which is again differentiating between Jesus and God. Perhaps Jesus was sent by God as a powerful prophet and the Messiah, but He was not God.
How does anyone know that Christianity is true, above other religions?
Your're grasping at straws here. We will never meet your criteria for evidence because your criteria excludes all forms of historical evidence.
