I am not a Christian, and I am very opposed to the religion, but a human body passing through rock is NOT physically impossible (theoretically). It's extremely unlikely, but not impossible. You'd have to wait longer than the age of the universe to see it happen, but if you've got the time, help yourself and walk into limestone walls repeatedly.
I think Arif Ahmed made a very good point on this very subject: Let's say that this is correct - how do you know that it wasn't a MIRACULOUS group hallucination? Why should an explanation involving a miraculous Resurrection be preferred to a miraculous hallucination?
Surfxeo: Ahmed specifically mentioned "Saint John" in connection with this. He's likely referring to the post resurrection story (John 20) where Jesus miraculously shows up in room where the doors are all shut. There's also Matthew 28 where the women visit Jesus' tomb and an angel descends from heaven, rolls away the stone from the doorway to Jesus' stone tomb, announces Jesus is risen, & shows them the tomb is empty. So Jesus somehow escaped the stone tomb, bodily.
That’s an interesting take. My own reading of the debate is this: Dr Ahmed, trained in mathematics, employs arguments that overtly and unapologetically embrace philosophy. Indeed, a great deal of Dr Ahmed’s arguments are philosophically concentrated. Prof Gary, on the other hand, is trained in history. Consequently his arguments have a more historical flavour to them. Prof Gary is at pains to emphasise the historical evidence. This necessarily suggests that Prof Gary’s arguments must employ logic if they are to be valid also. It would be unfair to Dr Ahmed to say he doesn’t use history as a basis for his argument; he does. But it was a joy to hear Prof Gary, the worlds foremost authority on the history of the Resurrection, wrestle with these issues. I would suggest people read Prof Richard Swinburne, a Christian Philosopher, argue that the Resurrection was a probable event as opposed to an improbable event.
@@misterbean5010 Garys opinions would have more weight if there were more historians who agreed with his extremely biased conclusions. It’s great that most historians agree with his minimal facts… but his argument falls apart when you realize that there are barely any credible historians who would make the outlandish claim that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation for those facts… because they care about their reputation.😂 It’s more like the minimal facts for the existence of Aliens. -We have reports and even video footage of unidentified flying objects. -We have reports of people who believe that they were abducted by Aliens. So we have a few mundane facts that pretty much everyone agrees on… and someone like Gary would conclude that the best explanation is that we are in the middle of an Alien Invasion.😂
@@davidsmith1139 But pretty much NO ONE agrees with his ridiculous conclusion that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the most likely historical explanation for those facts, including the vast majority of Christian historians.🤦♂️
I think the deciding factor on how one will see this debate is this: If one allows for supernatural events, they will side with Habermas. If they do not allow for supernatural events, they will side with Ahmed. So really, before watching this debate, people in there own mind, need to come to a conclusion if supernatural/non-material things exist. Otherwise this debate won't do much for either side.
+Soul-Winning Students The supernatural is not even a thing. It is only a label we put on lazy placeholders for actual explanations. When something is explained, when something is found, when something is observed, it always ceases to be supernatural immediately and becomes natural.
Really? So when you believe in the supernatural then 10.0000 goddesses and gods exist. If you believe only in one god then you believe in the dogma some people made up for you to believe in. So it all comes down to do you want to believe in stories of others.
Also, the group hallucination is completely unnecessary. That could very well just be a legend, in fact I think it almost certainly is as it was just a story circulated by word of mouth for decades and then recorded later.
@@luisguti7472 explain yourself further? If you are saying that no one will die for a legend, you are wrong. Suicide bombers do. If you are saying there is sound historical evidence that the twelve were martyred, again, you would be wrong. Please, elaborate if you will.
I find it amazing how often I hear the argument that if we just allow for a god, then miracles are far more probable. Yes, the miracle becomes far more probable.... AFTER adding an even greater improbability to the equation.
If we accept the idea of magic and magic users so that the miracles become a show of force of magic. Sure we can accept anything to explain something which appears just to exist in stories and films. This is indeed a ridiculous idea to start with.
metermanx You think you are clever with this retort but you are simply demonstrating your ignorance on the subjects of evolution, cosmology and, most of all, philosophy. This is not meant as an insult but a matter-of-fact observation. The theories you are trivializing are based on years of observations, successful predictions and, in the case of the big bang, fit rigorous mathematical models. You don't seem to understand the explanatory power of these theories. They fit in so many ways (explaining observations, being fully consistent with theories from other fields, building explanations from more simple ones, etc). On the other hand, we have God. The best explanation for... anything. Literally anything. If the world was nothing but slime, God could explain that. If we had a heavenly world, God explains that, think of LITERALLY ANYTHING and God can explain it, and therein lies the philosophical problem with God as an explanation, is that in explaining anything and everything, it ends up explaining nothing. Then, one must explain why they jump to such an explanation before the nearly infinite simpler explanations for any given thing. You see, the problem with God is that there is no good reason to even postulate his existence, much less try to prove or justify it. The task is nearly (if not completely) impossible. To give you an example from the real world, theoretical physics currently has a similar problem with M-Theory (better known as string theory). While it shows promise, it also has the flaw that it, like God, can explain anything. Since we can't derive this particular world and its laws from string theory, it is almost completely useless, at least until such time as it makes some testable prediction for this world. But the theory is not complete. The full ramifications on the mathematics of the quantum field theory and General Relativity of particles as finite lengths of vibrating strings has yet to be worked out.
Shiloh2rtn Before I answer your question, let me clear up some confusion. I answerwd the previous poster with an observation of THEM based off their pithy comment. Please don't confuse that with anything else just because the words 'evolution' and 'observe' appear together in one comment. To answer your question, "we" do observe evolution. Not in real time, of course, but it happens. We've witnessed speciation in our lifetime. Dogs are a perfect example of evolution in action (by way of human selection). However, I am not a biologist and the best places to start looking for that kind of evidence is on biology websites, textbooks and from biologists. The information is there if you want it, and I highly suggest you look at more than just Answers in Genesis. Try Talk Origins.
If anyone produced a body from the grave, Christians would deny it was Jesus's body. And how strange that nobody was interested in the location of the grave until Constantine - could it be that no one knew where Jesus was buried, until Gosmark wrote his story?
Habermas was flailing, usually he is much more composed. Maybe it's because Cambridge is so secular or that his Ahmed is so calm himself but I was slightly surprised.
As for Socrates, we have three ancient authors were were contemporary Athenians who knew Socrates: Plato, Aristophanes, and Xenophon. We guardedly and provisionally accept the mundane, non-fantastical claims they make about Socrates (eg: his marital status, military service, his interest in philosophy, manner of death), but historians rightly reject the extravagant the fantastical tales told about him. Hagiography was a common fact of ancient biography and literature which we cannot ignore.
Osmosis, the commandment is properly translated "You must not murder". Murder is a narrower activity than mere killing. And, in fact, there are specific laws which deal with killing to defend yourself (e.g. Exodus 22:2).
Oners82 You talk about "Biblical context" but you fail to actually use that context. In the context of the rest of the Law, there were many cases of authorized killings, thus making it clear that the case of "ratsakh" in the Decalogue was referring to unauthorized killing (aka, "murder").
Right you are. Further, nowhere in Paul's epistles does he distinguish between the visionary experiences he himself had and "appearances" he says the others experienced. The problem is that when people read the New Testament, they read the gospels first, before reading the Pauline epistles, even though the gospels - with their post-resurrection stories - were written after Paul lived. So people read those later gospel accounts of bodily post-resurrection encounters INTO Paul's words.
"he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all...he appeared also to me. " 1 Cor 15:4-7 Can anyone point out where the eye-witness testimony is in there? At most Paul's own vision, which is just that--a vision.
@@isLife-nn5yl We've received an excellent answer to that question lately. Look at all the lunatics who have died of Covid whose last breath was devoted to asking what was wrong with them because they "knew" that Covid isn't real. The conspiracy theory believed in by the early Christians was no more crazy.
@@isLife-nn5yl What enjoyment do you get from this tired old game? He wants me to say, No I wouldn't, and then he will say, neither would the apostles so they must have known definitely that Jesus rose from the dead. The problem with this tactic is that no on one knows that any of the apostles were martyred. The only one we know died of violence is Jesus' brother James. He was killed by the temple authorities because the was a leader of a subversive group (the Jerusalem church). I doubt they were very interested in what he believed. There is no evidence that Paul and Peter and the rest of them didn't die peacefully in their sleep. It is also very probable that someone like Peter would have believed Jesus rose from the dead because he saw him in a dream. You'll notice the oldest Gospel doesn't say anything about Peter seeing a physically resurrected Jesus, or Peter seeing the resurrection at all; that was all added later.
@@helenaconstantine ok do you have sources to validate your argument? I can easily change my mind, I just need hard evidence that you are correct and all of Christianity is not. I do appreciate this incredibly civil debate.
The big error Arif Ahmed makes is focusing on the alleged resurrection event itself. What really counts is the way the story was churned for a century before being written down. What actually happened originally is almost irrelevant. There may well have been no event at all.
+Roedy Green Dr Ahmed doesn't err in his approach, he simply chose to point out that even if most of what is argue for is granted, there is still an underlying fallacy. This is like when Hitchens granted the entirety of the Kalam Cosmological Argument to Craig saying that even after that, "all your work is ahead of you to get from that to the God of the bible."
The stories of Robin Hood we are familiar with have him with a sword, bow and arrows, but earliest accounts back around 1200's I think it was his name was spelled different and he used no sword, no bow, and no arrows according to what I have read on wikipedia.
WRONG. The resurrection i.e. bodily resurrection can be traced to within a few years of the supposed event. Scholars agree that 1 Cor is an early hymn see Bart Ehrman on this. LOL. Hence the resurrection claim is very early. Do better.
Hjominbonrun Honestly I don't think Ahmed had very good points. Someone in the comments made a very good point in saying its awkward when a historian goes against a philosopher because the methodologies are so different. I've researched history in this area and Islam greatly, and based on the research this is what we have. Philosophy however is more of a game where you come up with scenarios to prove a point. Not only that, one complaint I do have about Habermas whose work is very good, is that he isn't a philosopher. Philosophers are very well trained to set up arguments that follow very well, that are concise, and are easily understood. Habermas is a historian who simply isn't as good at that, and wasn't able to explain his arguments in an easily understandable way. I did like some of Habermas' points, but that atheist who asked a question in the audience went down his throat because he wasn't understanding Habermas' response, because some were hard to follow. I understood them, he didn't. To get out of philosophy the game, and into history, we see extremely early documentation, more than 20 thousand manuscripts showing the reliability and preservation of the bible as a text, and many eye witness accounts, where the witnesses act in ways that we'd expect real humans to react. We can't say group hallucination for this reason. Hallucinations as I think was mentioned in the debate between Mike Licona and Shabir Ally, occur when someone is sad that they lost someone they loved greatly. That might have been Nabeel Qureshi vs Shabir Ally. Either way you won't be wasting any time listening to both, they're wonderful debates. These are hallucinations, not group hallucinations involved with someone dying who someone loved greatly. A lot of people loved Jesus. Some of those people could have been subject to hallucinations. Not all. But lets grant that all the people who loved Jesus had group hallucinations. That doesn't account for Paul and James who did not like Jesus, however Paul says that he saw Jesus directly. The counter argument is to say Paul is lying. That would discard history however. Paul was killing Christians before he saw Jesus and converted to being a believer in Jesus, and he died for spreading the word of Jesus. One group hallucination in all of history is unlikely. It never happening again as a natural phenomena in all of history, makes it a lot harder to believe. The fact that people who didn't love Jesus at the time had hallucinations goes against the protocol for said hallucinations. Therefore group hallucinations should be discarded. The next thing to address is did the apostles and disciples make it up? I like the point that mentions, people who don't actually have a real belief in something, make bad martyrs. Yet all the apostles except for John were killed, and John didn't give up on his faith in Jesus before he died. Paul is included in this, especially as one who did not like Christians, saying Paul made it up when he was killing Christians doesn't logically follow with history, unless Paul is completely made up as well, but again, people who don't hold a true belief make bad martyrs. If Jesus was still in the tomb and they stole it somehow, they would know Jesus didn't resurrect, therefore there's no reason to die for the cause of Jesus, and this goes across the board for any possible scenarios. They need to see Jesus raise from the dead to believe he was resurrected, so that they can be willing to die for their belief in Jesus. Again this includes Paul. It also includes Tacticus and Josephus because they also have this in their writings. So if this didn't actually happen, in some imagined scenarios other then the disciples knocking out the two guards and taking the body without the guards knowing what happened, Tacticus and Josephus wouldn't be writing about this rumor of Jesus rising from the dead, because the Romans would have taken out the corps and proven Jesus was dead, but they couldn't do that. Now Ahmed made a point that what if there was a supernatural group hallucination. That would require God to exist. Now as a philosopher, he's trying to say because we have other possibilities of what God could do, he perhaps did a group hallucination, instead of a resurrection. In fact when you add a God who can do anything, literally any conceivable possibility could become a reality. That's a philosophy argument all the way, against simple logic trying to win the game, and I hope that doesn't sound offensive, but again I used to do a lot of philosophy, and I used to try to win the game and that's a terrible hindrance to truth, and one reason I'd rather study actual events than try to be a good philosopher, though philosophy did help me express opinions in a logical, understandable manner. If God is intelligent, then he's very likely going to do things with a purpose. Even in the world, nothing happens at random. It wasn't built to be random, everything has a cause and a reason. What is the reason for God to do group hallucinations, instead of just actually resurrect Jesus? He has the capability to do both, but one makes more logical sense to accomplish the goal of glorifying God through the Son of Man (a title given to Jesus explained in Daniel 7). His argument doesn't make sense from a common sense stand point, because there's no logical reason to make a group hallucination. That'd simply be messing with people. Forgive me for this long post but there's more, I hope you find it interesting. Ahmed also presented a point in which he said there have been many other religions that have spread as quickly as Christianity, like Islam, Hinduism or what have you. Where is he deriving that logic? First of all Christianity is the biggest movement in all of world history bar none. It has historical reliability, it is a non-self-referencing book, and contradictions that are found in the book can be dealt with, with an understanding of the book as a whole, and an understanding of the history, and languages surrounding the book, and the maps of the area as well. Islam is the second runner up. Poorly preserved history, unreliable Hadith, even the reliable ones around 100% reliable, huge amounts of contractions to the point Muhammad need to create scripture called the doctrine of abrogation, that cancel out earlier scripture, so that the contradictions wouldn't be contradictions anymore. It's not as big a movement as Christianity, it has blood origins and low reliability, it doesn't contend with how well the Bible spread without using any violence. He also mentioned other religions, I don't think that statement should be justified by even bringing them up, the bronze medal doesn't stand up at all to Christianity and Islam. So I think that was an ignorant statement he made to push his agenda. I think the best take home here is that historians deal with facts and reliability. Ahmed dealt with what ifs and tried to win a philosophy game based on low probability events. The response to that is, "wait you're saying the resurrection isn't a low probability event?" Yes actually. Based on incredible documentation, lack of refuting evidence (which isn't an argument from silence considering the historical evidence supports this proposition), lack of a logical means to show difficulties in how the apostles reacted which includes Paul, there's more likelihood based on history to say that Jesus died, then some strange thing happened that explains all of history away. The truth, unlike philosophy, isn't a game. The history shows us from Biblical and non-Biblical sources that these events took place which includes the life, death, and resurrection, Ahmed's only way of disproving it is with fanciful arguments that try to disprove extremely well documented history, and in light of truth and not philosophy, Christianity has a very very strong case, and shouldn't be judged false, because Ahmed can turn a phrase well, and Habermas isn't as well trained in philosophy as he is, therefore he finds trouble with arguing, and not his actual arguments. Again, sorry for the long post, however; I do like discussing these things, and I hope you read the entire post because that would mean I didn't waste my time, making me wake up groggy in the morning due to staying up way past what an intelligent person would consider healthy.
Naoocotzo Please don't apologise for a considered response. A historian wouldn't ever contemplate a debate with a philosopher concerning evidence for the veracity of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's 1914 assassination having actually happened. The fact that no one would seriously dispute it's evidential truth given the catalogue of empirical evidence; together with the factors of causation and effect, would not prevent a philosopher from having the right to exercise her/his expertise on the subject as a metaphysical intellectual exercise. The question would, however, naturally boil down to whether it served a constructive purpose. Would one ever entertain asking a philosophy professor to investigate a homicide? S/he may well have some subject related knowledge, but it would take ill-considered arrogance on his/her part, and irresponsible stupidity on the part of the investigation team to allow it.
1515327E The question at hand appears to be a medical, and scientific one as much as historical. If one approaches the question from a point of sceptical empiricism, not necessarily of a wholly material kind, then I think a philosopher is perhaps best placed to deal with the question more holistically than a medic, or physicist would be, by not being confined to merely material arguments. Hjominbonrun Agreed. Haberma's arguments rest on the premises as farcical as near death experiences. Arif so churned him I really must question whether this debate was in fact staged by atheist infiltrators within the Christian society.
+Naoocotzo When a historians discusses with a philosopher if a historical evidence happened in a public forum then the historian must be well aware that his claim is weak to non existent. Historians do not argue about historical facts with philosophers as they do neither use the historical critical method nor can add anything of substance. So Habermas is aware he has no case. Not to mention that historians deal not in guys walking over water, dead people walking through the streets of Jerusalem or turning water into wine.
Naoocotzo I’m sorry, but I have to correct you. You are completely wrong about the early manuscripts. Insofar as I recall Habermass is on record conceding this point. The material you refer to was generated many centuries after the event, some from fragments of documents themselves that were not original. The fact there are many copies in no way adds a single jot of weight to the veracity off the claims made. There are no independent contemporary eyewitness testimonies of people seeing Jesus following the resurrection, not even Paul, who only saw an apparition. As someone who studies history and historical methods you should know that historians cannot evidence supernatural claims as no such evidence exists. Insofar as eyewitness testimony is concerned you seem to assume without question the very issue that Ahmed disputes, with his primary evidence source; namely that eyewitness testimony is proven unreliable weeks after the event, even using modern aids to help memory (photographs) let alone after 30yrs after the event with no such memory aids. The gospels were also written in Greek hundreds of miles away from the place where the events are claimed to have taken place. We also know from the texts themselves that the authors get details wrong that they would not get wrong if they in fact lived in the areas they claimed to be writing about. This fact speaks poorly of both the authors and those they are claiming to obtain eyewitness testimony from. Also recall that 30 was the average life expectancy at that time in that part of the world and so on that basis alone the chances of any eyewitnesses being alive so long after the event is not only low, but maybe even practically non existent in the illiterate peasants population whose lives tended to be shockingly short and brutal. Finally, I agree that IF these accounts are correct, then naturalistic explanations seem harder to accept as they seem less plausible (though I’d argue still infinitely more plausible than Jesus surviving death). However, there is a far more plausible explanation that requires no such mental gymnastics on either proponents part; namely that we are reading a story that although based on some real events, has nevertheless been manufactured and embellished for religious, political or other unknown purposes that are no longer transparent or obvious to us today. Explaining such a story would require no more incredulity than explaining any other book of fiction that uses real events as the kernel for generating a plausible fictitious world. And let’s not forget that superstition was rife then and so you have the perfect setting in which stories would be generated, embellished and perpetuated. And here we are, 20 centuries later, in a world where we treat and regard evidence in a totally different way that would be alien to many ancient writers acting as if we can believe every word written verbatim as if it was written by people using the same standards to determine veracity and accuracy as we use today (and even given that we know to be flawed). I appreciate that you are trying to be fair, but in expounding your exegesis you have made certain unjustified assumptions right at the get go that we know to be wrong.
It's awkward to have someone trained as a historian to debate against someone trained as a philosopher. The methodologies used in the two fields to collect and interpret data are completely different, thus leaving the two to compete for the best approach. To ask, "Historically, was Jesus raised from the dead?" is vastly different than asking, "Philosophically, was Jesus raised from the dead?" For that reason, I wish debates would take place in the form of historian versus historian, and philosopher versus philosopher.
No. To ask if the resurrection happened is to ask for empirical evidence which a philosopher can help us assess whether or not meets inductive standards of reliability and reliable deductive standards of any subsequent argumentation based upon the historical evidence.
then why didn't Habermas provide any historical evidence for a jewish itinerant preacher being raised from the dead by his gods? why did he only give philosophical arguments and nonsense, unproven claims of NDEs?
In response to Dr. Ahmed's first point 1) Habermas minimal fact approach is based only on what facts about Jesus life are agreed on by Christian, atheist, and agnostic New Testament scholars alike. 2) But, he contends that even those facts of Jesus' life are enough to infer that the Resurrection was a real historical event. This actually renders the question of whether Habermas believes the Bible to be inerrant a mute point because these facts are what scholars agree happened despite biased writers, contradictions, discrepancies, late dates or whatever else atheists like to use to discredit them as historical sources. Third yes, Ahmed is biased just as Habermas is. Bias does not prove one side or the other wrong. To dismiss someone because they hold to atheism or Christianity is the genetic fallacy (dismissing an argument because of its source). The argument must be conceded or accepted on its own merits. As for his contention that we have never seen bodies comes back to life in the way described in the Bible or that bodies pass through solid surfaces, it is true that we have never seen that happen naturally. But we are not claiming that Christ came back to life or walked through walls naturally. And the only way to say that the natural can't happen is to prove that a miracle has never occurred. David Humes arguement that it is the uniform experience of everyone at all times that miracles do not happen is inaccurate. It may be true that some miracles have not occured and it may be true that not everyone has experienced a miracle. But he has not shown that every miracle that has been claimed is false and that no one has experienced a miracle. As Habermas and Michael Licona wrote, "The Resurrection occurred in an interconnected religio-historical context that includes Jesus' claims to divinity, his deeds that appeared miraculous, and his predictions concerning his resurrection. In other words, Jesus' life and claims provide a suitable context for his resurrection." (Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. MI: Kregel Publications, 2004), 235.) Again, whether eyewitness testimony is always trustworthy is a red herring hear. Based on historical method and research, there are facts that scholars believe we can known about Jesus life. When taken together, they point to the Resurrection as the best inference. It's also more then the fact that it is unlikely that Jesus would have survived crucifixion. It does not explain all the minimal facts. It accounts for the crucifixion, it accounts for his empty tomb. However, it he had shown up in the same state that he'd been buried in, its very unlikely that anyone would have suspected a miracle would have occurred. They would have thought he needed a doctor. And it does not explain why skeptics like James and the church persecutor Paul came to believe in him as a result of appearances to them. Also there is no reason to just a priori assume a natural explanation, especially "when both evidence and a religio historical context is present, and no plausible naturalistic explanation exists." (Habermas and Licona, The Case, 235) We are not disagreeing whether there are laws of nature. We are disagreeing about whether or not a God exists who put those laws in place and can override them as he wishes. There are examples in the Bible where God overturned the laws of nature in a miraculous way. Ahmed is actually just engaging in circular arguementation because he's already assumed a naturalistic stance.
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Habermas is seriously sitting there in Cambridge University telling people that near death experience is a real thing? On how many is that a dumb idea? NDE's have nothing to do with Christianity, they're in the same category as alien abduction. He expects intelligent students to buy that? ...
suppress anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, coupled with the hope of perfection we instinctively know exists, confirmed by the fact that on enough occasions in life we literally see perfection! And so, we don't just take our own lives before God has a chance to reach in to our hearts and reveal to us that He's had it all under control all along, but wanted us to see enough of the good and the evil, the benefits of both, that we would make the choice to deny evil and go the opposite direction.
It is really silly when the Atheist starts saying that he doesn't believe in supernatural, because nobody can not say that doesn't exist the supernatural as a fact.
So you went to temples, churches, etc., took classes, and weren't sold. Very good. I went to church for 20 years, studied theology in college with the intention of becoming a priest, and became unsold. One reason among many I stopped believing was from discovering how historically unverified (and in fact, contrived) the scriptures were. By your indicated standards, I was at least as open-minded to christianity as you claim to have been to non-christian religions. Any complaints?
Actually, there are three undisputed historical facts about Jesus. He was crucified. The tomb was empty early the third morning. And He was sighted by numerous people, including His disciples, but not restricted to His disciples. As many as 500 eyewitnesses willing to testify in the face of execution for something they could not deny. A hoax would have died instantly. While some might die for a false religious story? No one would die for some story they knew was a lie. Just out of curiosity----
lederereddy The book claims 500 witnesses, which is most definitely not a fact in the sense you'd like it to be. That is, its not the same as there being 500 witnesses See also Arifs analogy. What we see here us a classic case of a failure to reason critically and honestly.
Habermas also breaks his promise of not blindly appealing to authority, which he in fact does repeatedly by citing this or that 'skeptic' or 'atheist' who agrees with him on a certain point. Which is irrelevant unless and until Habermas or the person he's supposedly citing, can demonstrate the truth of their mutual position.
@@andrewoverholser491 False. It is up to the person who claims to present something as evidence or a sound argument, to demonstrate that what he uses actually IS evidence or a sound argument. Saying person X agrees with me, does not prove anything. Only that someone agrees with you. Not that they or you are actually justified in holding your shared conclusion.
What would be needed for a body passing through a wall? What prevents this is the electrostatic force. That same force holds our body up against gravity, and also holds up the wall. So if electrostatics is suspended to let the body pass, the body would collapse, and so would the wall.
+Tullius Agrippa If you are allowing for the argument that god does exists, then how can you not allow that the creator of all things couldn't do whatever he willed to happen. I'm saying that if your willing to allow gods existence then how could you, who have little known knowledge compared to all knowledge possible, decide what can or cannot be allowed or what can or cannot happen.
vesogry No, no no. That's what you believe. You really are confused, aren't you? It is your book that says that man was made from rock and that the universe sprang into existence from nothing.
Tullius Agrippa You believe that you came from micro molecules, which came from primordial soup, which came from rain that was falling on rocks. So you believe that your great .... great grand father was a rock. And you believe such absurdity because somebody told you that if you believe this it will make you smart.
I found a video based on your search terms titled "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist". Does this video actually address the sources for the apostles dying for what they saw? I'd like to know that before subjecting myself to 60+ minutes of Turek.
+Woltato . In any case he disappeared again very soon. (I think it's because the difficulty of withstanding a serious inquiry. A similar case are Joseph Smith's gold plates.)
@Osmosis let's take another "though shall not covet your neighbors property" this is far from dumb because it leads to jealousy, malice, hate, which in return can lead to breaking some of the other commandments like stealing, killing and adultery. What about "honor thy father and mother" you think this is a bad thing to respect your parents? If you actually read the Bible you'll see it depicts a love story of Jesus dying for us, even though He did nothing wrong. Christianity is a great thing.
I really like the way arif debates... I wonder how many more there are... that being said this is my all time favorite debate because of how the theists side so to speak attacked this debate... really good one :D
How did Habermas end up speaking at Cambridge? Didn't they do any research on Liberty University? Just because something is called a University in the USA doesn't mean that it actually is an accredited institution of higher education and research.
Actually the figurative Jesus in NT is a Messianic wildcard of Davidic liberation from hatred Roman oppression, turned upside down by Non-Jewish (pro-)Romans. We know a handful of these Davidic Messiases, and of their lawgiving priestly counterparts as well. At least one you know too - the figurative John the Baptist, Rabbi Akiba (ca.40-ca.137 CE) was just another one, though the last.
As an atheist my position is solely on the existence of gods. As far as Jesus and Lazarus go, people don't come back from the dead after three days. As far as Jesus goes, the Bible text indicates that he would only have been dead for ~36 hours or ~1.5 days; died Friday night and came back very early Sunday morning.
Habermas was addressing the subject and the issues surrounding the subject. It seems Ahmed couldn't understand until quite later that Habermas was simply asking, what would be a good enough reason or WHAT EVIDENCE WOULD CONVINCE YOU(Ahmed) of the resurrection. Ahmed finally decides to answer and would place his trust in the scholarly consensus. My question would be, why, if they are not firsthand witnesses and how would he know if they're not hallucinating the evidence?!
What evidence is there that 500 people saw post-crucifixion Jesus? I liked Arif’s approach- grant all Habermas’s claims, and critique the inference from the premises to the supernatural conclusion that Jesus resurrected
And what if St Paul is a delusional false witness? Passing on hearsay, or worse, passing on what he thinks must have happened when he interprets the Hebrew scripture, in their translated Greek form ("according to the scriptures") a message he thinks was told to him by "the Lord".
The court of law analogy for the alleged eyewitness testimony is flawed - big time. In courts the witness can be cross examined and thus tested to assess reliability - no hearsay allowed.
It is very obvious a resurrection involved divine intervention. No one disputes that and we aren't trying to prove a resurrection occurred by natural means. We are merely trying to show the resurrection occurred.
The BVG theorem does not prove any such thing. Please don't make arguments you don't understand, based on science you don't understand. (I doubt you've quoted Hawking correctly, but it doesn't really matter.) I don't know what the terms "absolute infinite" and "potential infinite" mean (are we still talking about aleph-0?) but you seem to be a referring to an argument I've read that boils down to "there can't be an infinite series of events because we can't imagine it".
When a judge and jury sentence someone to death how is that right? When people have to go to war because of oil, land and money and the millions killed in wars, is that justified? If a human being can decide who lives and dies why is God the Creator powerless? Wouldn't that be a contradiction to His power? Nevertheless you can't look at Old Testament and say forget about the new which is what most atheist argue, the Bible is a total book, taking a part out to try and prove a point is pointless.
Wring. The Bible is at least 66 books, depending on the version you read, with almost as many authors. If the Bible contradicts itself it's because the people who wrote it's stories do this, most probably because they are unaware of making the contradiction due to not having either an encyclopedic knowledge of what was written before or they simply did not know or have access to prior versions or even the ’right’ one. Your conceptions of how this book was written are profoundly naive and I'll considered to say the least
You're making accusations you are absolutely wrong about, yet they're your assertions entire basis. I'm nobody's fool. I have checked both sides out. While I don't claim to understand just how God's innocence can be reconciled to some of the things written in scripture, I know enough about humanity, including my own to know with absolute authority, God's to be trusted before we are. His sovereignty, His eternal, absolute full knowledge of all the details, His undeniable patients with our sin----
I don't really get how the intellectuals get so called destroyed in any of these debates. religion requires great leaps of faith. Apologists try to close the gap with circular talk, and a book that has so many contradictions and holes in it so why can it have any reliability. why is the USA in particular still so entrenched in bronze age belief? apologists are so damaging to freedom of the mind. it could be said there careers rely on this belief. prob have never done anything else
One case:two bodies(cadaver) of different background men, embalmed about 30 years ago for research. Both men have no living cells but still grow every single hair in their bodies as beard, arms, legs, scalp. An old(90y.o.) man felt as dead several times and arose until its last time. Colin, life is a mystery in its context. Yes. The inertia of the matter depends on the soul to ignites it.
A creator-of-the-universe doesn't violate logic, which is why I don't presuppose it doesn't exist! The reason I don't believe in it, is for of lack of evidence. I will believe in it when evidence is presented. If you disagree, show me where I display this "presupposition". I didn't read your "You are not interested in discourse"-comment until now. When writing more than one comment, the 2nd should be a reply to the 1st - not to mine. Post your first one, then click "Reply" on your own comment.
Once you declare the living for dead (for what you call truth) because they still don't know or even reject your teachings, the very first that follows your teaching is "resurrected from the dead". Actually we're dealing with Jewish initiation rites at the end of the 2nd Temple period... white linen carried by novices, for example in the garden Gethsemane, remember?
Did Habermas say you'd have to go a long way to find any 1st century Christians who doubted the resurrection? ereee, what about 16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Matt Ch 28 and these, according to the story, are not people who were merely told about the resurrection, but people who had SEEN the resurrected Jesus (and it appears to be some of the eleven disciples who doubted, i.e. people who might know what Jesus looked like).
...all things are possible for an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent god...well, all things except the ability to compose a clear, concise holy book and the ability to provide empirical evidence for his or her existence.
Yes, this god really is horrible on his choice of ghost writers and editors. Either this is a very incompetent omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent god or the stories about him are made up be humans.
TorianTammas ...maybe this god is so busy giving babies cancer and not answering prayers that he just can't find the time to write his own book. Or maybe he doesn't have a pen.
James Soltis I am sure god helps finding someone his car key while babies die and mothers pray. Would the mother not understand it that god was busy and had better things to do?
TorianTammas ...for a very entertaining and very musical illustration of your last point, I suggest you watch a video called 'Thank you god - Tim Minchin'. Cheers, my friend...
1. That a particular belief is adopted out of ignorance (not meant as a disparaging term, but just referring to the lack of knowledge with which we begin) does not mean necessarily it is false, but if the belief grows incompatible with a growing body of evidence (e.g., flat-earth or geocentricity), its truthfulness must be reconsidered. 2. Yes, or we would not have evolved eyes. Not sure what your point is. 3. I don't claim to be super-educated; I do claim the default position. Not silly.
The body is the house of the soul. The spirit is not dependable on matter, but the body depends on the soul to arouse because it's life in there, but sometimes is not. The soul can return to its house even if there is no sign of life for us to recognize as in inertia of the matter(sleeping) as the girl Jesus woke up(and she arose). Death is the end, but not for some.Life is not just walk around alive;it's beyond this world existence.Do you feel your body when sleeping?
Even if Christ did not raise from the dead, atheism would still be false. But Christ was crucified. His disciples were scattered. And against any possible means, His body was not in that tomb and those scared little men who just a few days earlier were scattered, saw Christ risen and turned the world upside down with a simple but profound statement, "He is risen!" 2000 yrs later, we are still being saved!
the deal is, science 'discovers' things. science doesn't create things, or give us a purpose for anything. so the concept that b/c we've measured this or that aspect of reality, doesn't mean we've explained away the cause. the best mechanical understanding of a car, doesn't mean the car wasn't designed, or that the mechanic could make one from scratch. in fact, if the mechanic's entire world was only what he could see and touch, the car's existence would be miraculous.
Electrical device and CPR are used to revive someone who's breathing and sometimes even heart stopped. Heart transplant patient for a short period of time has no heart and comes back from the dead after he gets his new heart. He was dead because he had no heart which is way deader than the story of Jesus that might have only been in a coma, he said about Lazarus that they thought was dead that he sleeps or in other words could have been in a coma resembling death. Only one of the gospels said they stabbed him and blood and water came out the others did not say that so could have been added later. Pilate was surprised that he was already dead as crucifixions generally took longer.
+idiotproofdalek Absolutely! Dr Ahmed first got my attention in his debate with Copson against Craig and Williams. He didn't disappoint in his solo debate against Craig in which I got to witness one of just two debates where the legendary Craig was soundly and unequivocally defeated (the other being against Sean Carroll). He is, at this moment, my favorite debater and philosopher.
Based on what do you claim the gospel writers saw jesus? The earliest gospel is Mark, which dates to after the letters of Paul, who of course never saw jesus. Furthermore, on what evidence do you claim that gospel writers died for what they saw?
The statement "some people will simply never believe" is of course useful to someone who has no reasonable justification for his outlandish beliefs. Once again, the mormon/muslim/hindu who fails to persuade you could retreat behind the same shallow statement.
There are no claims of an empty tomb until after the destruction of Jerusalem. In Acts 26, Agrippa poses the question to Paul about God raising the dead. Paul uses the Jews as character witnesses but doesn't say they could attest to an empty tomb. In Mark, the women see Jesus but were afraid to tell. Matt and Luke add to that and the last 12 verses of Mk 16 were added later.
Not sure why you would insinuate that I'm not open-minded. Being open-minded to the possibility I might be wrong is why I am no longer a believing christian. Now you know what's coming: How open-minded are you to the claims of your mormon/muslim/hindu brethren?
Perhaps I was mistaken in my previous explanation; in which verses do we read of these visions of the apostles? I do not have presuppositions against anything that doesn't violate the laws of logic. I will beileve in supernatural beings, items or forces any day that someone presents *evidence* for it. Many people have alleged that they could present evidence for gods, or the like, but in my experience, these evidences can all be explained naturalistically; the supernatural seems... superfluous.
Josephus, etc is not a Christian he was making fun of Christians. "The so-called Christ" is what he said in the Antiquities. Did you even read his writings?
...the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, a Roman Gaurd was assigned to His tomb and on the 3rd and consecutive days to follow, Christ's body was only seen by those who witnessed His resurrected body, Christianity flourished even against the threat of death and torture, because they could not deny the fact that Christ had literally rose from the dead. Which, btw, why is that so hard for atheists to believe? The parts are there. Life spontaneously occur. Why not then, if it happened on abiogenesis day?
I usually don't use the term supernatural. I used it here for the sake of argument. In this case you could define it as involving god or gods or forces not observed in our everyday physical world.
@@matijabandic 49? No. Near death experiences have nothing to do with possibility resurrection, reversal of cells death. Studies up to 2022 did not confirmed existance of possibly verifiable elements such as detachment from the body or seeing their physical body during an out-of-body experience (OBE). during expiriencing this reported fenomenon (near death). As to the rest, what people's oxygen deprived brain dream about means nothing. Out of body expirience can also occur during episodes of fainting or extreme physical exhaustion such as hiking at high altitude. The elements of near death experiences can be reproduced with anesthetics. Studies suggests that the common factor in all these experiences is reduced oxygen supply to the brain, which shuts down region by region in such circumstances to conserve energy. When the oxygen supply to the temporoparietal lobe is cut off, this would trigger an out-of-body experience. This question at 49 is a red hearing.
@@JarekKrawczyk everyone can check your claims by reading published online NDE studies. Review of the 287 OBEs found that 280 (97.6%) of the OBE descriptions were entirely realistic and lacked any content that seemed unreal. The high percentage of accurate out-of-body observations during near-death experiences does not seem explainable by any possible physical brain function as it is currently known. Reference: Near-Death Experiences Evidence for Their Reality by Jeffrey Long, MD
@@matijabandic Hm. I did as you have ask. Took me a while. I am not impressed. What I read from the data provided is as follow: Among the common characteristic features observed in NDEs, such as passing into or through a tunnel, encountering a mystical light, intense and generally positive emotions, a review of part or all of their prior life experiences, encountering deceased loved ones, and a choice to return to their earthly life , as well as a perception of seeing and hearing apart from the physical body, only the last one (out of body experiences) can be objectively investigated. All the rest are subjective thouhgts 17% of people near death may experience, which proves nothing byond that people near death may continue to expirience some more or less specific thoughts, or perhaps that all people near death expirience thoughts but 83% simply does not remember them. Incidentally, today 17% of perfecly normal people expirience seeing and hearing deceased that they were emotionally attached to while they are still greaving their loss, yet you mentioning seeing once Elvis after he died, will be confronted by thinly veiled laugher. In regard to the design of this study from the scientific point of view - the methodology that could give valid result as to expirience of OBE confirming existance of supranatural raum - being retrospective - makes it a suspect. Furthermore it analyzes data from the database where anybody can submit an entry, and they are not even everyfied againt the factual existance of event where parson was supposed near death I could have created a valid evtry in minutes . Furthermore the people submiting the questionaire are primed with the knowledge (as to what the valid experiences constitute) by the website itself Therefore the statement from that study :"Review of the 287 OBEs found that 280 (97.6%) of the OBE descriptions were entirely realistic and lacked any content that seemed unreal." - is completely meaningless And continued : "In this group of 287 NDErs with OBEs, there were 65 (23%) who personally investigated the accuracy of their own OBE observations after recovering from their life-threatening event. Based on these later investigations, none of these 65 OBErs found any inaccuracy in their own OBE observations." - made me choke on my coffee nearly to death myself, when bursting into laughter. Show me 1 study where the subjects od NDE have experienced OBE, where they saw let's say a large number placed on purpose above or/and not in their field of vision while in OR/ER, and reported acurately that number to investigators, and then we will have the reason to talk further. As it is, the NDE is a natural fenomenon. This days simmilar experiences can be noticed during specific localized brain lesions as well as during administration of certain psychodelic drugs. Nothing supernatural there, nothing supporting dualizm. Best Regards.
Both men did a poor job with their case. The problem with Arif's argument is that it exhibits an irrational degree of skepticism. An event like the resurrection of Jesus cannot be scrutinized based on logic alone without taking into account the historical data. When Arif asks why it can't be a supernatural hallucination instead of a supernatural resurrection he is trying to make a logical counter case. However his case lacks any historical support even from the opponents of first century Christianity, whereas the historical fact that the immediate followers of Jesus did believe in the bodily resurrection provides historical support to the case of bodily resurrection. That Arif's argument lacks any historical supports makes it look immature and heavily biased. Habermas' arguments are disorganized and lacks the clarity in presenting his case convincingly.
+George Samuel Raju _'_[...] _whereas the historical fact that the immediate followers of Jesus did believe in the bodily resurrection provides historical support to the case of bodily resurrection.'_ In a nutshell: No, it doesn't. It only provides an example of *belief*, i.e. that we can document that Christians did believe in the resurrection, not that this *belief* is an accurate depiction of historical events. A parallel: We also have no evidence that Adam's Bridge were not created by Ram's apelike Vanara as described in the Ramayana and believed by countless Hindus, but our general experience with geology makes an explanation based off that branch of science far more plausible than an ad hoc "explanation" based on nothing more than religious scripture and the beliefs of their adherents. The problem is that even Habermas himself do not use the same approach (a supernatural claim made at some point in history and no historical counter claim makes the supernatural claim true by default) when evaluating religious claims from outside his preferred branch of faith, which is the very definition of ad hoc and special pleading. That's why Arif Ahmed's explanation (or any of a host of other explanations that don't involve supernatural hand waving) remains more plausible (and thus preferable) when it comes to evaluating the information from the perspective of professional, academic history - not to mention philosophy.
+George Samuel Raju Do you accept the existence of 10.000 goddesses and gods? Why not? You are hyper sceptical and irrational. Why would you accept one god and not all the other? Is it because someone told you so? Is it because you grew up in a certain culture? So if your dismissed them as non real why do you expect anyone to accept your claim?
the New Testament has far greater support and manuscripts than any other book from antiquity. And its not even close. Yet do you question George Washington existed or the battle at Thermopolis or the Battle of Yamama? Christians don't accept 10,000 goddeses and gods, mainly because in addition to it being anti-biblical, there isn't any historical records in abundance accepted over different geographies. Christianity is not based on myth, its real history that lines up with real history. Anytime you study any history you have to have some faith.
Dion Krause _'Anytime you study any history you have to have some faith.'_ As a historian, and depending on what you mean by _'faith'_, I'd say you're either making a trivial point about not being a solipsist and adhering to a minimal correspondence between our sensory inputs and the world around us or you're just plain wrong. And no, the bible is not _'real history that lines up with real history'_ and you really can't compare mundane historical occrences such as Washington or this or that historical battle existing with unverified claims about angels, virgin births, demons and sundry miracles.
I agree with you on virgin births, demons etc. I believe they actually happened but I can't prove it from history. But that is different than when the bible speaks about history. Real kings, with real dates mentioned real events, i.e. Babylon defeating judah and Jesus was alive during the time of Rome with mention of who pilate was and antiapas, etc. this is real history that lines up with real history. this is not a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
not that who wrote them matters. if the apostles (who may or may not be the writers of the gospels?) died for something they saw, then it's impossible they died for a false belief. see the first comment.
Excellent debate. Something I'd like to know is whether any scholars have seriously considered the natural explanation that Jesus had a twin brother (who was perhaps much less famous and saw an opportunity to get some attention)
It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't explain the empty tomb, it doesn't explain that mary, the mother of them both being among the earliest christians. And most importantly: James, his brother!! would've known that he had another brother...
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Here's an argument that drives me to drink: "Almost all biblical/theological scholars agree that Jesus existed / died on the cross / was resurrected / etc. Perhaps such an argument carries some weight - that's not what grinds my gears (as the other St Peter says), The problem I have is that practically all biblical/theological scholars are presuppositional christians. Who would devote their principle learning effort, indeed their lives to a myth that they didn't believe in?
Earl Minime So any scholar of Greco-Roman mythology, we must assume they actually believe in Jupiter and the whole pantheon? Or ditto for Egyptian, Babylonian, scholars, etc?
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jdw99 Yes, not all. Richard Carrier jumps to mind as a counter example.I've edited my original comment accordingly. But the sentiment of my argument stands. The vast majority of apologists do have skin in the game so every time we hear a proposition starting with "Most people who have studied The Bible believe that..." we have to be very careful with whatever follows whereas with any other subject the opposite is true. Apologists have a vested interest in coming up with a specific set of conclusions. Greco-Roman scholars have a vested interest in discovering facts regardless of what they are or mean.
+jdw99 The question is what evidence can they present and this is all. It does not matter how many believe in anything. It matters if you can prove it to be factual or not.
Bodily resurrection can be explained in so many different ways, some natural and some supernatural. Just considering that there are infinite possible gods sort of renders the whole thing moot. As Ahmed said, the resurrection could even be considered as the doing of the devil. I realise that for many people, notably most so-called Christians, the resurrection of Jesus is a central tenet of their religion. But in truth, it need not have anything to do with spirituality at all.
At 39:30, Habermass doesn't make himself look good by lying about ancient sources. While the earliest extant full account of Alexander is about 250 years after his death, but it refers to and quotes form other book about Alexander that were as early as during his lifetime And Aristotle already mentions him in extant texts. In the case of Caesar we have his own writings. then there is epigraphic evidence.
Habermas is not the best public speaker, which is unfortunate since he is very bright and insightful. I think his general response to Ahmed's first two arguments is right on. It's a very general and uncontroversial principal of probability theory which I know Ahmed is familiar with. So I was shocked when he said the existence of God, taken as background evidence, doesn't increase the probability of the resurrection at all.
so you're seriously saying that an event that we can't explain using natural causes, on the level of universe creation, has no bearing on a debate about whether or not there are supernatural events? your insults (i'm assuming that's what your lengthy description of a guy you could just call... jesus, was) don't make the first point seem smarter.
That’s not his argument. If you accept a supernatural explanation like a resurrection caused by your god... then you can no longer reject a million of other supernatural explanations that don’t have anything to do with your god.
The gospel writers died for what they saw? Are you not aware that the writers of the gospels were not eye witnesses? The gospels were written decades later and the writers were not the apostles.
Again: Based on what are you claiming that the apostles died for what they supposedly saw? Not that it saves your argument; the possibility is greater that someone would die for a false belief than a physically possible event occurred. However, it appears you're simply assuming the apostles died for their what they saw -- unless you'd care to provide sources to corroborate that claim.
If you're talking about Frank Turek, I'm familiar with the debate, and familiar ad nauseam with Craig, as he reads the exact same script in each of his debates. Less familiar with Z, but the little I've heard from him lends no confidence. If all you have is to copy their words, there's little point. Perhaps you would care to resume the Thomas issue with something more robust than "some will never believe", or your sources for apostles dying for what they saw, which I've repeatedly asked for.
Proof and evidence of so-called supernatural phenomena, or paranormal phenomena, or metaphysical phenomena, or spiritual phenomena, is not the issue here. So-called science is not the issue here either. I was talking about explanation on the basis of possibility, not evidence. Anything is possible. It is possible to explain the alleged resurrection of Jesus using the traditional Christian way, and it is possible to explain it in many other ways too. That was my only point. Peace.
And yet again: Is your continuing silence on references for your claim that the apostles died for what they saw an acknowledgement that you in fact have no references?
There is definitely not enough evidence for the physical resurrection of anybody. Would the apologetic arguments be accepted in a court case? Why is not everybody convinced by these arguments. Is it stupidity? Is it malice? Is it rebellion? What else could it be? Why are some Christians (some believe it's symbolic) convinced of the physical resurrection? Is it reasoning? Is it wishful thinking? Would they accept a similar claim in an other religion?
Well, no one has come forward as yet. For some reason only a bunch of sad fishermen in Judea 2000 years ago that had no prior belief system in physical resurrection came up with the idea. One of them did not even wanted to believe the others when they made the claim. Even one of them that started persecuting them started believing this. In short, all of them were a Arif Ahmed until something happened. These things need answers. It's either what proclaimed (a physical risen Jesus) or they were nuts or they had an ulterior motive. You call it.
+ZS IFK . I think from a psychological neurological sociological historical biological point of view there is enough evidence, how different myths emerge in different cultures and what their purpose might be in the struggle for life.
You might think so, but name one example that was not recorded originally as a fable. As far as the Bible is concerned, it was never written as a fable/myth. And be careful about what you consider myth. It seems that since we have no one from a time period as witnesses, we consider everything a fable/myth. We may be very wrong.
+ZS IFK . There are numerous examples where an unbiased mind immediately sees literary forgery at work. By the way that was the spirit of the time. There was no "fact based" data collection like in todays scientific thinking. Every story had a purpose. The whole Bible is mostly propaganda for faith in the Judeo-Christian god. Just two of many examples. 1. The story of Jesus protecting an adulteress from being stoned was verifiably added to the gospel of John rather late. It is lacking In a series of earlier copies. But it answers (tries to answer) the (unsolved) discrepancy between the mosaic laws and Jesus's teachings of forgiveness, which I think is still an unsolved problem. 2. Jesus's birth in Bethlehem is very obviously forged to fulfill the prophecy that the Messiah would be born in the town of David. The census never happened and it is very unnecessary and unfeasible to send everyone to "his fathers" town. It is almost idiotic to believe that. Let alone the myths of the old testament, Adam and Eve, Noahs arch etc. etc. And last but not least look at the emergence of modern myths. The patterns are equal everywhere. It's because we humans react in predictable ways.
Wassily Kandinsky - We tend to accept more easily what people close to us tell us as true. Children at an early age accept nearly everything what parents tell them. Every time something is repeated people tend to believe it a bit more. Not to mention that you often get benefits for believing things like privileges. Example: promise to belong to an "elite", "promise to get something later "eternal life", promise that others get punished but you will not. All these promises make it more attractive to accept certain things. Most Christians do not look into the details it is more about some fuzzy feeling and this is it.
Well, we wont get far if you don't understand why lack of belief is the default position. So just consider: Were you born believing in god? It is unreasonable to adopt beliefs for which there is not sufficient evidence. If the evidence for a particular claim is insufficient, it is reasonable to reject that claim and remain at the default position. Beliefs that one discovers he has previously adopted without good reason should be rejected, with a return to the default position.
the gospel writers dying for what they saw is not the same as martyrs who've never seen what they believe they're dying for. nobody dies for something they've seen is false. sometimes people die for something they hope is true. if you think about that, it shows how much more trustworthy the eyewitness testimonies were.
Neither the writings of Josephus nor Tacitus support the gospel accounts of Jesus. At best they repeat a few claims made by Christians about Jesus. Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, and every other pagan source which apologists cite, were not even contemporary with Jesus (the earliest of these - Josephus - being born after Jesus died), and so they are not witnesses to any event in the life of Jesus and so cannot constitute independent corroboration of any gospel story.
And also his need to be worshiped, which is pretty sick. I'm sure you don't have any problem putting the worship demanded by the dictators of North Korea in its proper context--assuming Yahweh were real, how would his demand to be worship different? How long would you stay with a romantic partner who was constantly demanding to be worshiped and backing the demands up with threats?
2. The big bang is a theory to explain a body of actual evidence, while your faith-based belief -- as your reticence attests -- rests on no evidence at all. This means that the big bang is subject to revision or even falsification should new evidence come to light; by not relying on evidence, you have already decided the resurrection cannot be disproven
I am not a Christian, and I am very opposed to the religion,
but a human body passing through rock is NOT physically impossible (theoretically).
It's extremely unlikely, but not impossible.
You'd have to wait longer than the age of the universe to see it happen, but if you've got the time, help yourself and walk into limestone walls repeatedly.
I think Arif Ahmed made a very good point on this very subject: Let's say that this is correct - how do you know that it wasn't a MIRACULOUS group hallucination? Why should an explanation involving a miraculous Resurrection be preferred to a miraculous hallucination?
Surfxeo:
Ahmed specifically mentioned "Saint John" in connection with this. He's likely referring to the post resurrection story (John 20) where Jesus miraculously shows up in room where the doors are all shut.
There's also Matthew 28 where the women visit Jesus' tomb and an angel descends from heaven, rolls away the stone from the doorway to Jesus' stone tomb, announces Jesus is risen, & shows them the tomb is empty. So Jesus somehow escaped the stone tomb, bodily.
I love how he keeps saying "data" to make it sound like legitimate evidence
Ahmed gave his own versions of the Hitchslap to Habermas, a joy to listen to whom I hope to listen or read later.
The debate was effectively over by the time Arif Ahmed finished his opening statement.
That’s an interesting take. My own reading of the debate is this: Dr Ahmed, trained in mathematics, employs arguments that overtly and unapologetically embrace philosophy. Indeed, a great deal of Dr Ahmed’s arguments are philosophically concentrated.
Prof Gary, on the other hand, is trained in history. Consequently his arguments have a more historical flavour to them. Prof Gary is at pains to emphasise the historical evidence. This necessarily suggests that Prof Gary’s arguments must employ logic if they are to be valid also.
It would be unfair to Dr Ahmed to say he doesn’t use history as a basis for his argument; he does.
But it was a joy to hear Prof Gary, the worlds foremost authority on the history of the Resurrection, wrestle with these issues. I would suggest people read Prof Richard Swinburne, a Christian Philosopher, argue that the Resurrection was a probable event as opposed to an improbable event.
@@misterbean5010
Garys opinions would have more weight if there were more historians who agreed with his extremely biased conclusions.
It’s great that most historians agree with his minimal facts… but his argument falls apart when you realize that there are barely any credible historians who would make the outlandish claim that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation for those facts… because they care about their reputation.😂
It’s more like the minimal facts for the existence of Aliens.
-We have reports and even video footage of unidentified flying objects.
-We have reports of people who believe that they were abducted by Aliens.
So we have a few mundane facts that pretty much everyone agrees on… and someone like Gary would conclude that the best explanation is that we are in the middle of an Alien Invasion.😂
@@ramigilneas9274 the minimal facts are facts accepted by vast majority of critical scholars 🤦🏻♂️
@@davidsmith1139
But pretty much NO ONE agrees with his ridiculous conclusion that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the most likely historical explanation for those facts, including the vast majority of Christian historians.🤦♂️
I think the deciding factor on how one will see this debate is this: If one allows for supernatural events, they will side with Habermas. If they do not allow for supernatural events, they will side with Ahmed. So really, before watching this debate, people in there own mind, need to come to a conclusion if supernatural/non-material things exist. Otherwise this debate won't do much for either side.
+Soul-Winning Students The supernatural is not even a thing. It is only a label we put on lazy placeholders for actual explanations. When something is explained, when something is found, when something is observed, it always ceases to be supernatural immediately and becomes natural.
+Taxtro Great response, and one I would expect more atheists to task the religious with.
Really? So when you believe in the supernatural then 10.0000 goddesses and gods exist. If you believe only in one god then you believe in the dogma some people made up for you to believe in. So it all comes down to do you want to believe in stories of others.
Not when it's something that cannot be done or occur naturally. LOL.
Also, the group hallucination is completely unnecessary. That could very well just be a legend, in fact I think it almost certainly is as it was just a story circulated by word of mouth for decades and then recorded later.
No one die cause of a legend , ignorant at least propose a onother hypothesis.😊
@@luisguti7472 explain yourself further? If you are saying that no one will die for a legend, you are wrong. Suicide bombers do. If you are saying there is sound historical evidence that the twelve were martyred, again, you would be wrong. Please, elaborate if you will.
I find it amazing how often I hear the argument that if we just allow for a god, then miracles are far more probable. Yes, the miracle becomes far more probable.... AFTER adding an even greater improbability to the equation.
If we accept the idea of magic and magic users so that the miracles become a show of force of magic. Sure we can accept anything to explain something which appears just to exist in stories and films. This is indeed a ridiculous idea to start with.
Kind of like the theory of evolution and the big bang, I see what you mean.
metermanx You think you are clever with this retort but you are simply demonstrating your ignorance on the subjects of evolution, cosmology and, most of all, philosophy. This is not meant as an insult but a matter-of-fact observation.
The theories you are trivializing are based on years of observations, successful predictions and, in the case of the big bang, fit rigorous mathematical models. You don't seem to understand the explanatory power of these theories. They fit in so many ways (explaining observations, being fully consistent with theories from other fields, building explanations from more simple ones, etc).
On the other hand, we have God. The best explanation for... anything. Literally anything. If the world was nothing but slime, God could explain that. If we had a heavenly world, God explains that, think of LITERALLY ANYTHING and God can explain it, and therein lies the philosophical problem with God as an explanation, is that in explaining anything and everything, it ends up explaining nothing.
Then, one must explain why they jump to such an explanation before the nearly infinite simpler explanations for any given thing. You see, the problem with God is that there is no good reason to even postulate his existence, much less try to prove or justify it. The task is nearly (if not completely) impossible.
To give you an example from the real world, theoretical physics currently has a similar problem with M-Theory (better known as string theory). While it shows promise, it also has the flaw that it, like God, can explain anything. Since we can't derive this particular world and its laws from string theory, it is almost completely useless, at least until such time as it makes some testable prediction for this world. But the theory is not complete. The full ramifications on the mathematics of the quantum field theory and General Relativity of particles as finite lengths of vibrating strings has yet to be worked out.
jemmerx: Are you saying we can actually OBSERVE evolution?
Shiloh2rtn Before I answer your question, let me clear up some confusion. I answerwd the previous poster with an observation of THEM based off their pithy comment. Please don't confuse that with anything else just because the words 'evolution' and 'observe' appear together in one comment.
To answer your question, "we" do observe evolution. Not in real time, of course, but it happens. We've witnessed speciation in our lifetime. Dogs are a perfect example of evolution in action (by way of human selection). However, I am not a biologist and the best places to start looking for that kind of evidence is on biology websites, textbooks and from biologists.
The information is there if you want it, and I highly suggest you look at more than just Answers in Genesis. Try Talk Origins.
If anyone produced a body from the grave, Christians would deny it was Jesus's body. And how strange that nobody was interested in the location of the grave until Constantine - could it be that no one knew where Jesus was buried, until Gosmark wrote his story?
Habermas was flailing, usually he is much more composed. Maybe it's because Cambridge is so secular or that his Ahmed is so calm himself but I was slightly surprised.
As for Socrates, we have three ancient authors were were contemporary Athenians who knew Socrates: Plato, Aristophanes, and Xenophon. We guardedly and provisionally accept the mundane, non-fantastical claims they make about Socrates (eg: his marital status, military service, his interest in philosophy, manner of death), but historians rightly reject the extravagant the fantastical tales told about him.
Hagiography was a common fact of ancient biography and literature which we cannot ignore.
Osmosis, the commandment is properly translated "You must not murder". Murder is a narrower activity than mere killing. And, in fact, there are specific laws which deal with killing to defend yourself (e.g. Exodus 22:2).
Oners82
You talk about "Biblical context" but you fail to actually use that context. In the context of the rest of the Law, there were many cases of authorized killings, thus making it clear that the case of "ratsakh" in the Decalogue was referring to unauthorized killing (aka, "murder").
@@Mentat1231 The other guy made the better argument.
Right you are. Further, nowhere in Paul's epistles does he distinguish between the visionary experiences he himself had and "appearances" he says the others experienced.
The problem is that when people read the New Testament, they read the gospels first, before reading the Pauline epistles, even though the gospels - with their post-resurrection stories - were written after Paul lived. So people read those later gospel accounts of bodily post-resurrection encounters INTO Paul's words.
Great debate. Good speakers, good points on both sides, no condescension or vitriol... thanks for posting this!
Most if not all Christian religions don't view killing in self defense as violating that commandment. Wrong again sir.
"he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all...he appeared also to me. " 1 Cor 15:4-7
Can anyone point out where the eye-witness testimony is in there? At most Paul's own vision, which is just that--a vision.
Would you die for a lie?
@@isLife-nn5yl We've received an excellent answer to that question lately. Look at all the lunatics who have died of Covid whose last breath was devoted to asking what was wrong with them because they "knew" that Covid isn't real. The conspiracy theory believed in by the early Christians was no more crazy.
@@helenaconstantine that was not a yes or no. Just answer, would you die for a lie?
@@isLife-nn5yl What enjoyment do you get from this tired old game?
He wants me to say, No I wouldn't, and then he will say, neither would the apostles so they must have known definitely that Jesus rose from the dead.
The problem with this tactic is that no on one knows that any of the apostles were martyred. The only one we know died of violence is Jesus' brother James. He was killed by the temple authorities because the was a leader of a subversive group (the Jerusalem church). I doubt they were very interested in what he believed. There is no evidence that Paul and Peter and the rest of them didn't die peacefully in their sleep.
It is also very probable that someone like Peter would have believed Jesus rose from the dead because he saw him in a dream. You'll notice the oldest Gospel doesn't say anything about Peter seeing a physically resurrected Jesus, or Peter seeing the resurrection at all; that was all added later.
@@helenaconstantine ok do you have sources to validate your argument? I can easily change my mind, I just need hard evidence that you are correct and all of Christianity is not. I do appreciate this incredibly civil debate.
The big error Arif Ahmed makes is focusing on the alleged resurrection event itself. What really counts is the way the story was churned for a century before being written down. What actually happened originally is almost irrelevant. There may well have been no event at all.
+Roedy Green Dr Ahmed doesn't err in his approach, he simply chose to point out that even if most of what is argue for is granted, there is still an underlying fallacy. This is like when Hitchens granted the entirety of the Kalam Cosmological Argument to Craig saying that even after that, "all your work is ahead of you to get from that to the God of the bible."
The stories of Robin Hood we are familiar with have him with a sword, bow and arrows, but earliest accounts back around 1200's I think it was his name was spelled different and he used no sword, no bow, and no arrows according to what I have read on wikipedia.
WRONG. The resurrection i.e. bodily resurrection can be traced to within a few years of the supposed event. Scholars agree that 1 Cor is an early hymn see Bart Ehrman on this. LOL. Hence the resurrection claim is very early. Do better.
Was Habermas just fed to Ahmed as fodder?
Hjominbonrun Honestly I don't think Ahmed had very good points. Someone in the comments made a very good point in saying its awkward when a historian goes against a philosopher because the methodologies are so different. I've researched history in this area and Islam greatly, and based on the research this is what we have. Philosophy however is more of a game where you come up with scenarios to prove a point. Not only that, one complaint I do have about Habermas whose work is very good, is that he isn't a philosopher. Philosophers are very well trained to set up arguments that follow very well, that are concise, and are easily understood. Habermas is a historian who simply isn't as good at that, and wasn't able to explain his arguments in an easily understandable way. I did like some of Habermas' points, but that atheist who asked a question in the audience went down his throat because he wasn't understanding Habermas' response, because some were hard to follow. I understood them, he didn't.
To get out of philosophy the game, and into history, we see extremely early documentation, more than 20 thousand manuscripts showing the reliability and preservation of the bible as a text, and many eye witness accounts, where the witnesses act in ways that we'd expect real humans to react. We can't say group hallucination for this reason. Hallucinations as I think was mentioned in the debate between Mike Licona and Shabir Ally, occur when someone is sad that they lost someone they loved greatly. That might have been Nabeel Qureshi vs Shabir Ally. Either way you won't be wasting any time listening to both, they're wonderful debates. These are hallucinations, not group hallucinations involved with someone dying who someone loved greatly. A lot of people loved Jesus. Some of those people could have been subject to hallucinations. Not all. But lets grant that all the people who loved Jesus had group hallucinations. That doesn't account for Paul and James who did not like Jesus, however Paul says that he saw Jesus directly. The counter argument is to say Paul is lying. That would discard history however. Paul was killing Christians before he saw Jesus and converted to being a believer in Jesus, and he died for spreading the word of Jesus. One group hallucination in all of history is unlikely. It never happening again as a natural phenomena in all of history, makes it a lot harder to believe. The fact that people who didn't love Jesus at the time had hallucinations goes against the protocol for said hallucinations. Therefore group hallucinations should be discarded.
The next thing to address is did the apostles and disciples make it up? I like the point that mentions, people who don't actually have a real belief in something, make bad martyrs. Yet all the apostles except for John were killed, and John didn't give up on his faith in Jesus before he died. Paul is included in this, especially as one who did not like Christians, saying Paul made it up when he was killing Christians doesn't logically follow with history, unless Paul is completely made up as well, but again, people who don't hold a true belief make bad martyrs. If Jesus was still in the tomb and they stole it somehow, they would know Jesus didn't resurrect, therefore there's no reason to die for the cause of Jesus, and this goes across the board for any possible scenarios. They need to see Jesus raise from the dead to believe he was resurrected, so that they can be willing to die for their belief in Jesus. Again this includes Paul. It also includes Tacticus and Josephus because they also have this in their writings. So if this didn't actually happen, in some imagined scenarios other then the disciples knocking out the two guards and taking the body without the guards knowing what happened, Tacticus and Josephus wouldn't be writing about this rumor of Jesus rising from the dead, because the Romans would have taken out the corps and proven Jesus was dead, but they couldn't do that.
Now Ahmed made a point that what if there was a supernatural group hallucination. That would require God to exist. Now as a philosopher, he's trying to say because we have other possibilities of what God could do, he perhaps did a group hallucination, instead of a resurrection. In fact when you add a God who can do anything, literally any conceivable possibility could become a reality. That's a philosophy argument all the way, against simple logic trying to win the game, and I hope that doesn't sound offensive, but again I used to do a lot of philosophy, and I used to try to win the game and that's a terrible hindrance to truth, and one reason I'd rather study actual events than try to be a good philosopher, though philosophy did help me express opinions in a logical, understandable manner.
If God is intelligent, then he's very likely going to do things with a purpose. Even in the world, nothing happens at random. It wasn't built to be random, everything has a cause and a reason. What is the reason for God to do group hallucinations, instead of just actually resurrect Jesus? He has the capability to do both, but one makes more logical sense to accomplish the goal of glorifying God through the Son of Man (a title given to Jesus explained in Daniel 7). His argument doesn't make sense from a common sense stand point, because there's no logical reason to make a group hallucination. That'd simply be messing with people.
Forgive me for this long post but there's more, I hope you find it interesting. Ahmed also presented a point in which he said there have been many other religions that have spread as quickly as Christianity, like Islam, Hinduism or what have you. Where is he deriving that logic? First of all Christianity is the biggest movement in all of world history bar none. It has historical reliability, it is a non-self-referencing book, and contradictions that are found in the book can be dealt with, with an understanding of the book as a whole, and an understanding of the history, and languages surrounding the book, and the maps of the area as well. Islam is the second runner up. Poorly preserved history, unreliable Hadith, even the reliable ones around 100% reliable, huge amounts of contractions to the point Muhammad need to create scripture called the doctrine of abrogation, that cancel out earlier scripture, so that the contradictions wouldn't be contradictions anymore. It's not as big a movement as Christianity, it has blood origins and low reliability, it doesn't contend with how well the Bible spread without using any violence. He also mentioned other religions, I don't think that statement should be justified by even bringing them up, the bronze medal doesn't stand up at all to Christianity and Islam. So I think that was an ignorant statement he made to push his agenda.
I think the best take home here is that historians deal with facts and reliability. Ahmed dealt with what ifs and tried to win a philosophy game based on low probability events. The response to that is, "wait you're saying the resurrection isn't a low probability event?" Yes actually. Based on incredible documentation, lack of refuting evidence (which isn't an argument from silence considering the historical evidence supports this proposition), lack of a logical means to show difficulties in how the apostles reacted which includes Paul, there's more likelihood based on history to say that Jesus died, then some strange thing happened that explains all of history away. The truth, unlike philosophy, isn't a game. The history shows us from Biblical and non-Biblical sources that these events took place which includes the life, death, and resurrection, Ahmed's only way of disproving it is with fanciful arguments that try to disprove extremely well documented history, and in light of truth and not philosophy, Christianity has a very very strong case, and shouldn't be judged false, because Ahmed can turn a phrase well, and Habermas isn't as well trained in philosophy as he is, therefore he finds trouble with arguing, and not his actual arguments.
Again, sorry for the long post, however; I do like discussing these things, and I hope you read the entire post because that would mean I didn't waste my time, making me wake up groggy in the morning due to staying up way past what an intelligent person would consider healthy.
Naoocotzo Please don't apologise for a considered response. A historian wouldn't ever contemplate a debate with a philosopher concerning evidence for the veracity of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's 1914 assassination having actually happened. The fact that no one would seriously dispute it's evidential truth given the catalogue of empirical evidence; together with the factors of causation and effect, would not prevent a philosopher from having the right to exercise her/his expertise on the subject as a metaphysical intellectual exercise. The question would, however, naturally boil down to whether it served a constructive purpose. Would one ever entertain asking a philosophy professor to investigate a homicide? S/he may well have some subject related knowledge, but it would take ill-considered arrogance on his/her part, and irresponsible stupidity on the part of the investigation team to allow it.
1515327E The question at hand appears to be a medical, and scientific one as much as historical. If one approaches the question from a point of sceptical empiricism, not necessarily of a wholly material kind, then I think a philosopher is perhaps best placed to deal with the question more holistically than a medic, or physicist would be, by not being confined to merely material arguments.
Hjominbonrun Agreed. Haberma's arguments rest on the premises as farcical as near death experiences. Arif so churned him I really must question whether this debate was in fact staged by atheist infiltrators within the Christian society.
+Naoocotzo When a historians discusses with a philosopher if a historical evidence happened in a public forum then the historian must be well aware that his claim is weak to non existent. Historians do not argue about historical facts with philosophers as they do neither use the historical critical method nor can add anything of substance. So Habermas is aware he has no case. Not to mention that historians deal not in guys walking over water, dead people walking through the streets of Jerusalem or turning water into wine.
Naoocotzo I’m sorry, but I have to correct you. You are completely wrong about the early manuscripts. Insofar as I recall Habermass is on record conceding this point. The material you refer to was generated many centuries after the event, some from fragments of documents themselves that were not original. The fact there are many copies in no way adds a single jot of weight to the veracity off the claims made.
There are no independent contemporary eyewitness testimonies of people seeing Jesus following the resurrection, not even Paul, who only saw an apparition.
As someone who studies history and historical methods you should know that historians cannot evidence supernatural claims as no such evidence exists.
Insofar as eyewitness testimony is concerned you seem to assume without question the very issue that Ahmed disputes, with his primary evidence source; namely that eyewitness testimony is proven unreliable weeks after the event, even using modern aids to help memory (photographs) let alone after 30yrs after the event with no such memory aids.
The gospels were also written in Greek hundreds of miles away from the place where the events are claimed to have taken place. We also know from the texts themselves that the authors get details wrong that they would not get wrong if they in fact lived in the areas they claimed to be writing about. This fact speaks poorly of both the authors and those they are claiming to obtain eyewitness testimony from.
Also recall that 30 was the average life expectancy at that time in that part of the world and so on that basis alone the chances of any eyewitnesses being alive so long after the event is not only low, but maybe even practically non existent in the illiterate peasants population whose lives tended to be shockingly short and brutal.
Finally, I agree that IF these accounts are correct, then naturalistic explanations seem harder to accept as they seem less plausible (though I’d argue still infinitely more plausible than Jesus surviving death). However, there is a far more plausible explanation that requires no such mental gymnastics on either proponents part; namely that we are reading a story that although based on some real events, has nevertheless been manufactured and embellished for religious, political or other unknown purposes that are no longer transparent or obvious to us today. Explaining such a story would require no more incredulity than explaining any other book of fiction that uses real events as the kernel for generating a plausible fictitious world.
And let’s not forget that superstition was rife then and so you have the perfect setting in which stories would be generated, embellished and perpetuated.
And here we are, 20 centuries later, in a world where we treat and regard evidence in a totally different way that would be alien to many ancient writers acting as if we can believe every word written verbatim as if it was written by people using the same standards to determine veracity and accuracy as we use today (and even given that we know to be flawed).
I appreciate that you are trying to be fair, but in expounding your exegesis you have made certain unjustified assumptions right at the get go that we know to be wrong.
I would totally watch Arif's youtube channel if he had one. He did a brilliant job here and has a lovely voice.
It's awkward to have someone trained as a historian to debate against someone trained as a philosopher. The methodologies used in the two fields to collect and interpret data are completely different, thus leaving the two to compete for the best approach. To ask, "Historically, was Jesus raised from the dead?" is vastly different than asking, "Philosophically, was Jesus raised from the dead?" For that reason, I wish debates would take place in the form of historian versus historian, and philosopher versus philosopher.
No. To ask if the resurrection happened is to ask for empirical evidence which a philosopher can help us assess whether or not meets inductive standards of reliability and reliable deductive standards of any subsequent argumentation based upon the historical evidence.
then why didn't Habermas provide any historical evidence for a jewish itinerant preacher being raised from the dead by his gods? why did he only give philosophical arguments and nonsense, unproven claims of NDEs?
what the fuck?
In response to Dr. Ahmed's first point 1) Habermas minimal fact approach is based only on what facts about Jesus life are agreed on by Christian, atheist, and agnostic New Testament scholars alike. 2) But, he contends that even those facts of Jesus' life are enough to infer that the Resurrection was a real historical event. This actually renders the question of whether Habermas believes the Bible to be inerrant a mute point because these facts are what scholars agree happened despite biased writers, contradictions, discrepancies, late dates or whatever else atheists like to use to discredit them as historical sources. Third yes, Ahmed is biased just as Habermas is. Bias does not prove one side or the other wrong. To dismiss someone because they hold to atheism or Christianity is the genetic fallacy (dismissing an argument because of its source). The argument must be conceded or accepted on its own merits. As for his contention that we have never seen bodies comes back to life in the way described in the Bible or that bodies pass through solid surfaces, it is true that we have never seen that happen naturally. But we are not claiming that Christ came back to life or walked through walls naturally. And the only way to say that the natural can't happen is to prove that a miracle has never occurred. David Humes arguement that it is the uniform experience of everyone at all times that miracles do not happen is inaccurate. It may be true that some miracles have not occured and it may be true that not everyone has experienced a miracle. But he has not shown that every miracle that has been claimed is false and that no one has experienced a miracle. As Habermas and Michael Licona wrote, "The Resurrection occurred in an interconnected religio-historical context that includes Jesus' claims to divinity, his deeds that appeared miraculous, and his predictions concerning his resurrection. In other words, Jesus' life and claims provide a suitable context for his resurrection." (Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. MI: Kregel Publications, 2004), 235.) Again, whether eyewitness testimony is always trustworthy is a red herring hear. Based on historical method and research, there are facts that scholars believe we can known about Jesus life. When taken together, they point to the Resurrection as the best inference. It's also more then the fact that it is unlikely that Jesus would have survived crucifixion. It does not explain all the minimal facts. It accounts for the crucifixion, it accounts for his empty tomb. However, it he had shown up in the same state that he'd been buried in, its very unlikely that anyone would have suspected a miracle would have occurred. They would have thought he needed a doctor. And it does not explain why skeptics like James and the church persecutor Paul came to believe in him as a result of appearances to them. Also there is no reason to just a priori assume a natural explanation, especially "when both evidence and a religio historical context is present, and no plausible naturalistic explanation exists." (Habermas and Licona, The Case, 235) We are not disagreeing whether there are laws of nature. We are disagreeing about whether or not a God exists who put those laws in place and can override them as he wishes. There are examples in the Bible where God overturned the laws of nature in a miraculous way. Ahmed is actually just engaging in circular arguementation because he's already assumed a naturalistic stance.
Habermas is seriously sitting there in Cambridge University telling people that near death experience is a real thing? On how many is that a dumb idea? NDE's have nothing to do with Christianity, they're in the same category as alien abduction. He expects intelligent students to buy that? ...
He debunk you.Habermas is tge best
suppress anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, coupled with the hope of perfection we instinctively know exists, confirmed by the fact that on enough occasions in life we literally see perfection!
And so, we don't just take our own lives before God has a chance to reach in to our hearts and reveal to us that He's had it all under control all along, but wanted us to see enough of the good and the evil, the benefits of both, that we would make the choice to deny evil and go the opposite direction.
It is really silly when the Atheist starts saying that he doesn't believe in supernatural, because nobody can not say that doesn't exist the supernatural as a fact.
All biblical apologetics is based on this premise: if it's true, it's true. But it's only true "if" it's true.
+ken thomas lol
"X sounds improbable, but if God exist, then X is highly probable." Its the theist's get out of jail card.
Reason over Dogma I laugh until I cry which makes me laugh until I cry.....
Refreshing to see a genuinely honest, and informed, theist.
So you went to temples, churches, etc., took classes, and weren't sold. Very good. I went to church for 20 years, studied theology in college with the intention of becoming a priest, and became unsold. One reason among many I stopped believing was from discovering how historically unverified (and in fact, contrived) the scriptures were. By your indicated standards, I was at least as open-minded to christianity as you claim to have been to non-christian religions. Any complaints?
wow they argued about harry potter the entire debate
Actually, there are three undisputed historical facts about Jesus. He was crucified. The tomb was empty early the third morning. And He was sighted by numerous people, including His disciples, but not restricted to His disciples. As many as 500 eyewitnesses willing to testify in the face of execution for something they could not deny.
A hoax would have died instantly. While some might die for a false religious story? No one would die for some story they knew was a lie.
Just out of curiosity----
lederereddy The book claims 500 witnesses, which is most definitely not a fact in the sense you'd like it to be. That is, its not the same as there being 500 witnesses See also Arifs analogy.
What we see here us a classic case of a failure to reason critically and honestly.
Habermas also breaks his promise of not blindly appealing to authority, which he in fact does repeatedly by citing this or that 'skeptic' or 'atheist' who agrees with him on a certain point. Which is irrelevant unless and until Habermas or the person he's supposedly citing, can demonstrate the truth of their mutual position.
He cites them so it’s incumbent upon you to fact check.
@@andrewoverholser491 False. It is up to the person who claims to present something as evidence or a sound argument, to demonstrate that what he uses actually IS evidence or a sound argument. Saying person X agrees with me, does not prove anything. Only that someone agrees with you. Not that they or you are actually justified in holding your shared conclusion.
@@VolrinSeth false.
@@andrewoverholser491 Failure to refute the points being made, noted.
@@VolrinSeth 👍
What would be needed for a body passing through a wall? What prevents this is the electrostatic force. That same force holds our body up against gravity, and also holds up the wall. So if electrostatics is suspended to let the body pass, the body would collapse, and so would the wall.
+Tullius Agrippa If you are allowing for the argument that god does exists, then how can you not allow that the creator of all things couldn't do whatever he willed to happen. I'm saying that if your willing to allow gods existence then how could you, who have little known knowledge compared to all knowledge possible, decide what can or cannot be allowed or what can or cannot happen.
Matt Cali Aaah. So now you want me to believe in magic? Better and better.
+Tullius Agrippa But you do. Don't you believe that universe came from nothing?
vesogry No, no no. That's what you believe. You really are confused, aren't you? It is your book that says that man was made from rock and that the universe sprang into existence from nothing.
Tullius Agrippa You believe that you came from micro molecules, which came from primordial soup, which came from rain that was falling on rocks. So you believe that your great .... great grand father was a rock. And you believe such absurdity because somebody told you that if you believe this it will make you smart.
I found a video based on your search terms titled "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist". Does this video actually address the sources for the apostles dying for what they saw? I'd like to know that before subjecting myself to 60+ minutes of Turek.
"Did Jesus Rise Bodily from the Dead?"
No, obviously not.
Maybe he didn't so much as 'rise' as roll over and say 'uggggghhhhh'
+Woltato . In any case he disappeared again very soon. (I think it's because the difficulty of withstanding a serious inquiry. A similar case are Joseph Smith's gold plates.)
Yes he was as real as the gold plates of Joseph Smith.
guess argument for resurrection does boil down to presupposing theism and magic after all
ed denz
No.
It happens to be the best explanation of the given data.
@Osmosis let's take another "though shall not covet your neighbors property" this is far from dumb because it leads to jealousy, malice, hate, which in return can lead to breaking some of the other commandments like stealing, killing and adultery. What about "honor thy father and mother" you think this is a bad thing to respect your parents? If you actually read the Bible you'll see it depicts a love story of Jesus dying for us, even though He did nothing wrong. Christianity is a great thing.
It's rather sad commentary, but Liberty University is, in fact, a fully accredited university.
I really like the way arif debates... I wonder how many more there are... that being said this is my all time favorite debate because of how the theists side so to speak attacked this debate... really good one :D
How did Habermas end up speaking at Cambridge? Didn't they do any research on Liberty University? Just because something is called a University in the USA doesn't mean that it actually is an accredited institution of higher education and research.
A historian arguing about historical evidences is in a debate against a philosopher. And people are surprised they are talking past each other?
Actually the figurative Jesus in NT is a Messianic wildcard of Davidic liberation from hatred Roman oppression, turned upside down by Non-Jewish (pro-)Romans. We know a handful of these Davidic Messiases, and of their lawgiving priestly counterparts as well. At least one you know too - the figurative John the Baptist, Rabbi Akiba (ca.40-ca.137 CE) was just another one, though the last.
I'm sorry to see our conversation broke down. I guess TH-cam is not the best instance of forum around. Thanks, anyways.
As an atheist my position is solely on the existence of gods. As far as Jesus and Lazarus go, people don't come back from the dead after three days. As far as Jesus goes, the Bible text indicates that he would only have been dead for ~36 hours or ~1.5 days; died Friday night and came back very early Sunday morning.
Habermas was addressing the subject and the issues surrounding the subject. It seems Ahmed couldn't understand until quite later that Habermas was simply asking, what would be a good enough reason or WHAT EVIDENCE WOULD CONVINCE YOU(Ahmed) of the resurrection. Ahmed finally decides to answer and would place his trust in the scholarly consensus. My question would be, why, if they are not firsthand witnesses and how would he know if they're not hallucinating the evidence?!
What evidence is there that 500 people saw post-crucifixion Jesus?
I liked Arif’s approach- grant all Habermas’s claims, and critique the inference from the premises to the supernatural conclusion that Jesus resurrected
If Jesus is God, How can it rise from the dead if it can’t die? What a waste a time talking about something that is so obvious a contradiction.
And what if St Paul is a delusional false witness? Passing on hearsay, or worse, passing on what he thinks must have happened when he interprets the Hebrew scripture, in their translated Greek form ("according to the scriptures") a message he thinks was told to him by "the Lord".
The court of law analogy for the alleged eyewitness testimony is flawed - big time. In courts the witness can be cross examined and thus tested to assess reliability - no hearsay allowed.
It is very obvious a resurrection involved divine intervention. No one disputes that and we aren't trying to prove a resurrection occurred by natural means. We are merely trying to show the resurrection occurred.
The BVG theorem does not prove any such thing. Please don't make arguments you don't understand, based on science you don't understand. (I doubt you've quoted Hawking correctly, but it doesn't really matter.) I don't know what the terms "absolute infinite" and "potential infinite" mean (are we still talking about aleph-0?) but you seem to be a referring to an argument I've read that boils down to "there can't be an infinite series of events because we can't imagine it".
Habermas won. wow!
1 peter 3:18 made it clear that he resurrected in the spirit not in the flesh.
When a judge and jury sentence someone to death how is that right? When people have to go to war because of oil, land and money and the millions killed in wars, is that justified? If a human being can decide who lives and dies why is God the Creator powerless? Wouldn't that be a contradiction to His power? Nevertheless you can't look at Old Testament and say forget about the new which is what most atheist argue, the Bible is a total book, taking a part out to try and prove a point is pointless.
Wring. The Bible is at least 66 books, depending on the version you read, with almost as many authors.
If the Bible contradicts itself it's because the people who wrote it's stories do this, most probably because they are unaware of making the contradiction due to not having either an encyclopedic knowledge of what was written before or they simply did not know or have access to prior versions or even the ’right’ one.
Your conceptions of how this book was written are profoundly naive and I'll considered to say the least
You're making accusations you are absolutely wrong about, yet they're your assertions entire basis.
I'm nobody's fool. I have checked both sides out. While I don't claim to understand just how God's innocence can be reconciled to some of the things written in scripture, I know enough about humanity, including my own to know with absolute authority, God's to be trusted before we are.
His sovereignty, His eternal, absolute full knowledge of all the details, His undeniable patients with our sin----
lederereddy You don't know anything at all about god. Stop lying. Why are you people so dishonest?
Plastic Vision We aren’t lying. You can know God too. But it would take being humble and honest to yourself.
I don't really get how the intellectuals get so called destroyed in any of these debates. religion requires great leaps of faith. Apologists try to close the gap with circular talk, and a book that has so many contradictions and holes in it so why can it have any reliability. why is the USA in particular still so entrenched in bronze age belief? apologists are so damaging to freedom of the mind. it could be said there careers rely on this belief. prob have never done anything else
Do they have debates like this at Liberty University?
One case:two bodies(cadaver) of different background men, embalmed about 30 years ago for research. Both men have no living cells but still grow every single hair in their bodies as beard, arms, legs, scalp. An old(90y.o.) man felt as dead several times and arose until its last time. Colin, life is a mystery in its context. Yes. The inertia of the matter depends on the soul to ignites it.
A creator-of-the-universe doesn't violate logic, which is why I don't presuppose it doesn't exist! The reason I don't believe in it, is for of lack of evidence. I will believe in it when evidence is presented.
If you disagree, show me where I display this "presupposition".
I didn't read your "You are not interested in discourse"-comment until now. When writing more than one comment, the 2nd should be a reply to the 1st - not to mine. Post your first one, then click "Reply" on your own comment.
Once you declare the living for dead (for what you call truth) because they still don't know or even reject your teachings, the very first that follows your teaching is "resurrected from the dead". Actually we're dealing with Jewish initiation rites at the end of the 2nd Temple period... white linen carried by novices, for example in the garden Gethsemane, remember?
I asked: Where is the tomb? Is it still around for observation? If not, what happened to it?
Did Habermas say you'd have to go a long way to find any 1st century Christians who doubted the resurrection? ereee, what about
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Matt Ch 28
and these, according to the story, are not people who were merely told about the resurrection, but people who had SEEN the resurrected Jesus (and it appears to be some of the eleven disciples who doubted, i.e. people who might know what Jesus looked like).
...all things are possible for an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent god...well, all things except the ability to compose a clear, concise holy book and the ability to provide empirical evidence for his or her existence.
Yes, this god really is horrible on his choice of ghost writers and editors. Either this is a very incompetent omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent god or the stories about him are made up be humans.
TorianTammas ...maybe this god is so busy giving babies cancer and not answering prayers that he just can't find the time to write his own book. Or maybe he doesn't have a pen.
James Soltis I am sure god helps finding someone his car key while babies die and mothers pray. Would the mother not understand it that god was busy and had better things to do?
TorianTammas ...for a very entertaining and very musical illustration of your last point, I suggest you watch a video called 'Thank you god - Tim Minchin'.
Cheers, my friend...
James Soltis Thanks a lot! This is great: "Love without evidence is stalking". So when god loves us he and we refuse it then he is a stalker
I am 10 minutes into Habermas's response and I have not heard a coherent thought yet. Genuinely, I have no clue what he is talking about.
1. That a particular belief is adopted out of ignorance (not meant as a disparaging term, but just referring to the lack of knowledge with which we begin) does not mean necessarily it is false, but if the belief grows incompatible with a growing body of evidence (e.g., flat-earth or geocentricity), its truthfulness must be reconsidered. 2. Yes, or we would not have evolved eyes. Not sure what your point is. 3. I don't claim to be super-educated; I do claim the default position. Not silly.
The body is the house of the soul. The spirit is not dependable on matter, but the body depends on the soul to arouse because it's life in there, but sometimes is not. The soul can return to its house even if there is no sign of life for us to recognize as in inertia of the matter(sleeping) as the girl Jesus woke up(and she arose). Death is the end, but not for some.Life is not just walk around alive;it's beyond this world existence.Do you feel your body when sleeping?
Even if Christ did not raise from the dead, atheism would still be false. But Christ was crucified. His disciples were scattered. And against any possible means, His body was not in that tomb and those scared little men who just a few days earlier were scattered, saw Christ risen and turned the world upside down with a simple but profound statement, "He is risen!" 2000 yrs later, we are still being saved!
the deal is, science 'discovers' things. science doesn't create things, or give us a purpose for anything. so the concept that b/c we've measured this or that aspect of reality, doesn't mean we've explained away the cause. the best mechanical understanding of a car, doesn't mean the car wasn't designed, or that the mechanic could make one from scratch. in fact, if the mechanic's entire world was only what he could see and touch, the car's existence would be miraculous.
no one rises from the dead,dead means brain dead and the heart had stopped working.
Electrical device and CPR are used to revive someone who's breathing and sometimes even heart stopped. Heart transplant patient for a short period of time has no heart and comes back from the dead after he gets his new heart. He was dead because he had no heart which is way deader than the story of Jesus that might have only been in a coma, he said about Lazarus that they thought was dead that he sleeps or in other words could have been in a coma resembling death. Only one of the gospels said they stabbed him and blood and water came out the others did not say that so could have been added later. Pilate was surprised that he was already dead as crucifixions generally took longer.
This is a wonderful massacre by Ahmed.
+idiotproofdalek Absolutely! Dr Ahmed first got my attention in his debate with Copson against Craig and Williams. He didn't disappoint in his solo debate against Craig in which I got to witness one of just two debates where the legendary Craig was soundly and unequivocally defeated (the other being against Sean Carroll). He is, at this moment, my favorite debater and philosopher.
Have you got a link for that one?
I saw that same debate, Craig didn't lose. LOL.
Wkwwk, its was clear it is Ahmed who have been massacared. Wkwkw...
Based on what do you claim the gospel writers saw jesus? The earliest gospel is Mark, which dates to after the letters of Paul, who of course never saw jesus.
Furthermore, on what evidence do you claim that gospel writers died for what they saw?
great video !
The statement "some people will simply never believe" is of course useful to someone who has no reasonable justification for his outlandish beliefs. Once again, the mormon/muslim/hindu who fails to persuade you could retreat behind the same shallow statement.
Gary ripped Arif to pieces. Arif tries to defend his ignorance and fails. Afif basically says, "I'm ignorant, I'm ignorant."
Your confirmation biasness is hilarious.... learn your fallacies
Ah, that's not confirmation bias. YOU need to learn what a confirmation bias is. LOL.
There are no claims of an empty tomb until after the destruction of Jerusalem. In Acts 26, Agrippa poses the question to Paul about God raising the dead. Paul uses the Jews as character witnesses but doesn't say they could attest to an empty tomb. In Mark, the women see Jesus but were afraid to tell. Matt and Luke add to that and the last 12 verses of Mk 16 were added later.
Not sure why you would insinuate that I'm not open-minded. Being open-minded to the possibility I might be wrong is why I am no longer a believing christian. Now you know what's coming: How open-minded are you to the claims of your mormon/muslim/hindu brethren?
Perhaps I was mistaken in my previous explanation; in which verses
do we read of these visions of the apostles?
I do not have presuppositions against anything that doesn't violate the laws of logic. I will beileve in supernatural beings, items or forces any day that someone presents *evidence* for it.
Many people have alleged that they could present evidence for gods, or the like, but in my experience, these evidences can all be explained naturalistically; the supernatural seems... superfluous.
Josephus, etc is not a Christian he was making fun of Christians. "The so-called Christ" is what he said in the Antiquities. Did you even read his writings?
...the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, a Roman Gaurd was assigned to His tomb and on the 3rd and consecutive days to follow, Christ's body was only seen by those who witnessed His resurrected body, Christianity flourished even against the threat of death and torture, because they could not deny the fact that Christ had literally rose from the dead. Which, btw, why is that so hard for atheists to believe? The parts are there. Life spontaneously occur. Why not then, if it happened on abiogenesis day?
I usually don't use the term supernatural. I used it here for the sake of argument. In this case you could define it as involving god or gods or forces not observed in our everyday physical world.
Dr. Arif Ahmed constantly creates straw-mans and doesn't deal with argument.
Maybe you just don’t understand what a strawman is.😂
@@ramigilneas9274 Listened it again: I've taken times where Dr. Arif Ahmed dodges to answer 49:00, 59:00 and 1:19:00.
@@matijabandic 49? No.
Near death experiences have nothing to do with possibility resurrection, reversal of cells death.
Studies up to 2022 did not confirmed existance of possibly verifiable elements such as detachment from the body or seeing their physical body during an out-of-body experience (OBE).
during expiriencing this reported fenomenon (near death). As to the rest,
what people's oxygen deprived brain dream about means nothing. Out of body expirience can also occur during episodes of fainting or extreme physical exhaustion such as hiking at high altitude. The elements of near death experiences can be reproduced with anesthetics. Studies suggests that the common factor in all these experiences is reduced oxygen supply to the brain, which shuts down region by region in such circumstances to conserve energy. When the oxygen supply to the temporoparietal lobe is cut off, this would trigger an out-of-body experience.
This question at 49 is a red hearing.
@@JarekKrawczyk everyone can check your claims by reading published online NDE studies. Review of the 287 OBEs found that 280 (97.6%) of the OBE descriptions were entirely realistic and lacked any content that seemed unreal.
The high percentage of accurate out-of-body observations during near-death experiences does not seem explainable by any possible physical brain function as it is currently known.
Reference: Near-Death Experiences Evidence for Their Reality by Jeffrey Long, MD
@@matijabandic Hm. I did as you have ask. Took me a while. I am not impressed. What I read from the data provided is as follow:
Among the common characteristic features observed in NDEs, such as passing into or through a tunnel, encountering a mystical light, intense and generally positive emotions, a review of part or all of their prior life experiences, encountering deceased loved ones, and a choice to return to their earthly life , as well as a perception of seeing and hearing apart from the physical body, only the last one (out of body experiences) can be objectively investigated. All the rest are subjective thouhgts 17% of people near death may experience, which proves nothing byond that people near death may continue to expirience some more or less specific thoughts, or perhaps that all people near death expirience thoughts but 83% simply does not remember them. Incidentally, today 17% of perfecly normal people expirience seeing and hearing deceased that they were emotionally attached to while they are still greaving their loss, yet you mentioning seeing once Elvis after he died, will be confronted by thinly veiled laugher.
In regard to the design of this study from the scientific point of view - the methodology that could give valid result as to expirience of OBE confirming existance of supranatural raum - being retrospective - makes it a suspect. Furthermore it analyzes data from the database where anybody can submit an entry, and they are not even everyfied againt the factual existance of event where parson was supposed near death I could have created a valid evtry in minutes . Furthermore the people submiting the questionaire are primed with the knowledge (as to what the valid experiences constitute) by the website itself
Therefore the statement from that study :"Review of the 287 OBEs found that 280 (97.6%) of the OBE descriptions were entirely realistic and lacked any content that seemed unreal." - is completely meaningless
And continued : "In this group of 287 NDErs with OBEs, there were 65 (23%) who personally investigated the accuracy of their own OBE observations after recovering from their life-threatening event. Based on these later investigations, none of these 65 OBErs found any inaccuracy in their own OBE observations."
- made me choke on my coffee nearly to death myself, when bursting into laughter.
Show me 1 study where the subjects od NDE have experienced OBE, where they saw let's say a large number placed on purpose above or/and not in their field of vision while in OR/ER, and reported acurately that number to investigators, and then we will have the reason to talk further.
As it is, the NDE is a natural fenomenon. This days simmilar experiences can be noticed during specific localized brain lesions as well as during administration of certain psychodelic drugs. Nothing supernatural there, nothing supporting dualizm.
Best Regards.
Both men did a poor job with their case. The problem with Arif's argument is that it exhibits an irrational degree of skepticism. An event like the resurrection of Jesus cannot be scrutinized based on logic alone without taking into account the historical data. When Arif asks why it can't be a supernatural hallucination instead of a supernatural resurrection he is trying to make a logical counter case. However his case lacks any historical support even from the opponents of first century Christianity, whereas the historical fact that the immediate followers of Jesus did believe in the bodily resurrection provides historical support to the case of bodily resurrection. That Arif's argument lacks any historical supports makes it look immature and heavily biased. Habermas' arguments are disorganized and lacks the clarity in presenting his case convincingly.
+George Samuel Raju _'_[...] _whereas the historical fact that the immediate followers of Jesus did believe in the bodily resurrection provides historical support to the case of bodily resurrection.'_
In a nutshell: No, it doesn't. It only provides an example of *belief*, i.e. that we can document that Christians did believe in the resurrection, not that this *belief* is an accurate depiction of historical events.
A parallel: We also have no evidence that Adam's Bridge were not created by Ram's apelike Vanara as described in the Ramayana and believed by countless Hindus, but our general experience with geology makes an explanation based off that branch of science far more plausible than an ad hoc "explanation" based on nothing more than religious scripture and the beliefs of their adherents.
The problem is that even Habermas himself do not use the same approach (a supernatural claim made at some point in history and no historical counter claim makes the supernatural claim true by default) when evaluating religious claims from outside his preferred branch of faith, which is the very definition of ad hoc and special pleading.
That's why Arif Ahmed's explanation (or any of a host of other explanations that don't involve supernatural hand waving) remains more plausible (and thus preferable) when it comes to evaluating the information from the perspective of professional, academic history - not to mention philosophy.
+George Samuel Raju Do you accept the existence of 10.000 goddesses and gods? Why not? You are hyper sceptical and irrational. Why would you accept one god and not all the other? Is it because someone told you so? Is it because you grew up in a certain culture? So if your dismissed them as non real why do you expect anyone to accept your claim?
the New Testament has far greater support and manuscripts than any other book from antiquity. And its not even close. Yet do you question George Washington existed or the battle at Thermopolis or the Battle of Yamama? Christians don't accept 10,000 goddeses and gods, mainly because in addition to it being anti-biblical, there isn't any historical records in abundance accepted over different geographies. Christianity is not based on myth, its real history that lines up with real history. Anytime you study any history you have to have some faith.
Dion Krause _'Anytime you study any history you have to have some faith.'_ As a historian, and depending on what you mean by _'faith'_, I'd say you're either making a trivial point about not being a solipsist and adhering to a minimal correspondence between our sensory inputs and the world around us or you're just plain wrong. And no, the bible is not _'real history that lines up with real history'_ and you really can't compare mundane historical occrences such as Washington or this or that historical battle existing with unverified claims about angels, virgin births, demons and sundry miracles.
I agree with you on virgin births, demons etc. I believe they actually happened but I can't prove it from history. But that is different than when the bible speaks about history. Real kings, with real dates mentioned real events, i.e. Babylon defeating judah and Jesus was alive during the time of Rome with mention of who pilate was and antiapas, etc. this is real history that lines up with real history. this is not a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
not that who wrote them matters. if the apostles (who may or may not be the writers of the gospels?) died for something they saw, then it's impossible they died for a false belief. see the first comment.
Excellent debate. Something I'd like to know is whether any scholars have seriously considered the natural explanation that Jesus had a twin brother (who was perhaps much less famous and saw an opportunity to get some attention)
It just doesn't make sense.
It doesn't explain the empty tomb, it doesn't explain that mary, the mother of them both being among the earliest christians.
And most importantly: James, his brother!! would've known that he had another brother...
Here's an argument that drives me to drink: "Almost all biblical/theological scholars agree that Jesus existed / died on the cross / was resurrected / etc.
Perhaps such an argument carries some weight - that's not what grinds my gears (as the other St Peter says), The problem I have is that practically all biblical/theological scholars are presuppositional christians. Who would devote their principle learning effort, indeed their lives to a myth that they didn't believe in?
Earl Minime So any scholar of Greco-Roman mythology, we must assume they actually believe in Jupiter and the whole pantheon? Or ditto for Egyptian, Babylonian, scholars, etc?
jdw99 Yes, not all. Richard Carrier jumps to mind as a counter example.I've edited my original comment accordingly.
But the sentiment of my argument stands. The vast majority of apologists do have skin in the game so every time we hear a proposition starting with "Most people who have studied The Bible believe that..." we have to be very careful with whatever follows whereas with any other subject the opposite is true.
Apologists have a vested interest in coming up with a specific set of conclusions. Greco-Roman scholars have a vested interest in discovering facts regardless of what they are or mean.
+jdw99 The question is what evidence can they present and this is all. It does not matter how many believe in anything. It matters if you can prove it to be factual or not.
Bodily resurrection can be explained in so many different ways, some natural and some supernatural. Just considering that there are infinite possible gods sort of renders the whole thing moot. As Ahmed said, the resurrection could even be considered as the doing of the devil.
I realise that for many people, notably most so-called Christians, the resurrection of Jesus is a central tenet of their religion. But in truth, it need not have anything to do with spirituality at all.
At 39:30, Habermass doesn't make himself look good by lying about ancient sources. While the earliest extant full account of Alexander is about 250 years after his death, but it refers to and quotes form other book about Alexander that were as early as during his lifetime And Aristotle already mentions him in extant texts. In the case of Caesar we have his own writings. then there is epigraphic evidence.
Habermas is not the best public speaker, which is unfortunate since he is very bright and insightful. I think his general response to Ahmed's first two arguments is right on. It's a very general and uncontroversial principal of probability theory which I know Ahmed is familiar with. So I was shocked when he said the existence of God, taken as background evidence, doesn't increase the probability of the resurrection at all.
so you're seriously saying that an event that we can't explain using natural causes, on the level of universe creation, has no bearing on a debate about whether or not there are supernatural events? your insults (i'm assuming that's what your lengthy description of a guy you could just call... jesus, was) don't make the first point seem smarter.
Pointless as debating if Dante has ever been to hell or Ulisses has ever goon into de Ade and came back.
If you are arguing that God produced a supernatural hallucination why can he not produce an actually resurrection?
That’s not his argument.
If you accept a supernatural explanation like a resurrection caused by your god... then you can no longer reject a million of other supernatural explanations that don’t have anything to do with your god.
The gospel writers died for what they saw? Are you not aware that the writers of the gospels were not eye witnesses? The gospels were written decades later and the writers were not the apostles.
Again: Based on what are you claiming that the apostles died for what they supposedly saw?
Not that it saves your argument; the possibility is greater that someone would die for a false belief than a physically possible event occurred. However, it appears you're simply assuming the apostles died for their what they saw -- unless you'd care to provide sources to corroborate that claim.
If you're talking about Frank Turek, I'm familiar with the debate, and familiar ad nauseam with Craig, as he reads the exact same script in each of his debates. Less familiar with Z, but the little I've heard from him lends no confidence. If all you have is to copy their words, there's little point. Perhaps you would care to resume the Thomas issue with something more robust than "some will never believe", or your sources for apostles dying for what they saw, which I've repeatedly asked for.
Proof and evidence of so-called supernatural phenomena, or paranormal phenomena, or metaphysical phenomena, or spiritual phenomena, is not the issue here. So-called science is not the issue here either. I was talking about explanation on the basis of possibility, not evidence. Anything is possible. It is possible to explain the alleged resurrection of Jesus using the traditional Christian way, and it is possible to explain it in many other ways too. That was my only point. Peace.
And yet again: Is your continuing silence on references for your claim that the apostles died for what they saw an acknowledgement that you in fact have no references?
There is definitely not enough evidence for the physical resurrection of anybody. Would the apologetic arguments be accepted in a court case? Why is not everybody convinced by these arguments. Is it stupidity? Is it malice? Is it rebellion? What else could it be?
Why are some Christians (some believe it's symbolic) convinced of the physical resurrection? Is it reasoning? Is it wishful thinking? Would they accept a similar claim in an other religion?
Well, no one has come forward as yet. For some reason only a bunch of sad fishermen in Judea 2000 years ago that had no prior belief system in physical resurrection came up with the idea. One of them did not even wanted to believe the others when they made the claim. Even one of them that started persecuting them started believing this. In short, all of them were a Arif Ahmed until something happened. These things need answers. It's either what proclaimed (a physical risen Jesus) or they were nuts or they had an ulterior motive. You call it.
+ZS IFK . I think from a psychological neurological sociological historical biological point of view there is enough evidence, how different myths emerge in different cultures and what their purpose might be in the struggle for life.
You might think so, but name one example that was not recorded originally as a fable. As far as the Bible is concerned, it was never written as a fable/myth. And be careful about what you consider myth. It seems that since we have no one from a time period as witnesses, we consider everything a fable/myth. We may be very wrong.
+ZS IFK . There are numerous examples where an unbiased mind immediately sees literary forgery at work. By the way that was the spirit of the time. There was no "fact based" data collection like in todays scientific thinking. Every story had a purpose. The whole Bible is mostly propaganda for faith in the Judeo-Christian god. Just two of many examples. 1. The story of Jesus protecting an adulteress from being stoned was verifiably added to the gospel of John rather late. It is lacking In a series of earlier copies. But it answers (tries to answer) the (unsolved) discrepancy between the mosaic laws and Jesus's teachings of forgiveness, which I think is still an unsolved problem. 2. Jesus's birth in Bethlehem is very obviously forged to fulfill the prophecy that the Messiah would be born in the town of David. The census never happened and it is very unnecessary and unfeasible to send everyone to "his fathers" town. It is almost idiotic to believe that.
Let alone the myths of the old testament, Adam and Eve, Noahs arch etc. etc.
And last but not least look at the emergence of modern myths. The patterns are equal everywhere. It's because we humans react in predictable ways.
Wassily Kandinsky - We tend to accept more easily what people close to us tell us as true. Children at an early age accept nearly everything what parents tell them. Every time something is repeated people tend to believe it a bit more. Not to mention that you often get benefits for believing things like privileges. Example: promise to belong to an "elite", "promise to get something later "eternal life", promise that others get punished but you will not. All these promises make it more attractive to accept certain things. Most Christians do not look into the details it is more about some fuzzy feeling and this is it.
Well, we wont get far if you don't understand why lack of belief is the default position. So just consider: Were you born believing in god?
It is unreasonable to adopt beliefs for which there is not sufficient evidence. If the evidence for a particular claim is insufficient, it is reasonable to reject that claim and remain at the default position. Beliefs that one discovers he has previously adopted without good reason should be rejected, with a return to the default position.
the gospel writers dying for what they saw is not the same as martyrs who've never seen what they believe they're dying for. nobody dies for something they've seen is false. sometimes people die for something they hope is true. if you think about that, it shows how much more trustworthy the eyewitness testimonies were.
Neither the writings of Josephus nor Tacitus support the gospel accounts of Jesus. At best they repeat a few claims made by Christians about Jesus. Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, and every other pagan source which apologists cite, were not even contemporary with Jesus (the earliest of these - Josephus - being born after Jesus died), and so they are not witnesses to any event in the life of Jesus and so cannot constitute independent corroboration of any gospel story.
And also his need to be worshiped, which is pretty sick. I'm sure you don't have any problem putting the worship demanded by the dictators of North Korea in its proper context--assuming Yahweh were real, how would his demand to be worship different? How long would you stay with a romantic partner who was constantly demanding to be worshiped and backing the demands up with threats?
2. The big bang is a theory to explain a body of actual evidence, while your faith-based belief -- as your reticence attests -- rests on no evidence at all. This means that the big bang is subject to revision or even falsification should new evidence come to light; by not relying on evidence, you have already decided the resurrection cannot be disproven