Topic: Christianity is it a religion, a lie, or simply the truth?
Nubby's photo
Sat 01/17/09 07:14 PM
We have multiple attestation from eye witnesses, who claimed to have seen the risen Jesus, many of whom went and suffered martyrdom because they would not recant their beliefs.

iamgeorgiagirl's photo
Sat 01/17/09 07:23 PM

We have multiple attestation from eye witnesses, who claimed to have seen the risen Jesus, many of whom went and suffered martyrdom because they would not recant their beliefs.

Who would've thought a dead person to still be alive after such a horrific death, or any form of death for that matter?




Nubby's photo
Sat 01/17/09 07:25 PM
Guess who said this.


"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

Seamonster's photo
Sat 01/17/09 07:27 PM

I am not trying to be mean seamonster, but that man is not a scholar, I do not know of any scholar or theologian that would agree with Him. Even if the time lines did not add up, although they do, it still does not disprove the ressurection.


disprove the resarrection?

No-one has to disprove it.

Your the one makeing the claim that this event happend.

And as far as the video you have shown no proof that what he said was wrong.
And how do you know he is not a theologian or a scholar, have you seen his credentials?
Show me that everything he said in that video is not accurate.

Nubby's photo
Sat 01/17/09 07:38 PM
Edited by Nubby on Sat 01/17/09 07:39 PM


I am not trying to be mean seamonster, but that man is not a scholar, I do not know of any scholar or theologian that would agree with Him. Even if the time lines did not add up, although they do, it still does not disprove the ressurection.


disprove the resarrection?

No-one has to disprove it.

Your the one makeing the claim that this event happend.

And as far as the video you have shown no proof that what he said was wrong.
And how do you know he is not a theologian or a scholar, have you seen his credentials?
Show me that everything he said in that video is not accurate.


I Presented four facts that the majority of liberal and conservative scholarship agree on. Those four facts give ample evidence that, the Christian is more than justified in believing that Christ rose from the dead.

Nubby's photo
Sat 01/17/09 07:40 PM
I could give a much longer case for the existence of Jesus if you want to read it.

Seamonster's photo
Sat 01/17/09 07:40 PM
and I gave facts to the contrary.

Nubby's photo
Sat 01/17/09 07:46 PM
"Jesus’s Miracles.Even the most sceptical critics cannot deny that the historical Jesus carried out a ministry of miracle-working and exorcism. Rudolf Bultmann, one of the most sceptical scholars this century has seen, wrote back in 1926:

Most of the miracle stories contained in the gospels are legendary or at least are dressed up with legends. But there can be no doubt that Jesus did such deeds, which were, in his and his contemporaries’ understanding, miracles, that is, deeds that were the result of supernatural, divine causality. Doubtless he healed the sick and cast out demons.{9}
Back in Bultmann’s day the miracle stories were thought to be influenced by stories of mythological heroes and, hence, at least in part legendary. But today it is recognized that the hypothesis of mythological influence was historically incorrect. Craig Evans, a well-known Jesus scholar, says that "the older notion" that the miracle stories were the product of mythological divine man ideas "has been largely abandoned."{ He says, "It is no longer seriously contested" "that miracles played a role in Jesus’s ministry." The only reason left for denying that Jesus performed literal miracles is the presupposition of anti-supernaturalism, which is simply unjustified."

Nubby's photo
Sat 01/17/09 07:50 PM
" According to the gospels Jesus was condemned by the Jewish high court on the charge of blasphemy and then delivered to the Romans for execution for the treasonous act of setting himself up as King of the Jews. Not only are these facts confirmed by independent biblical sources like Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, but they are also confirmed by extra-biblical sources. From Josephus and Tacitus, we learn that Jesus was crucified by Roman authority under the sentence of Pontius Pilate. From Josephus and Mara bar Serapion we learn that the Jewish leaders made a formal accusation against Jesus and participated in events leading up to his crucifixion. And from the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a, we learn that Jewish involvement in the trial was explained as a proper undertaking against a heretic. According to Johnson, "The support for the mode of his death, its agents, and perhaps its coagents, is overwhelming: Jesus faced a trial before his death, was condemned and executed by crucifixion."{11} The crucifixion of Jesus is recognized even by the Jesus Seminar as "one indisputable fact.""

Nubby's photo
Sat 01/17/09 07:53 PM

"The historical facts concerning the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The historical person Jesus of Nazareth was a remarkable individual. New Testament critics have reached something of a consensus that the historical Jesus came on the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority, the authority to stand and speak in God's place. He claimed that in himself the Kingdom of God had come, and as visible demonstrations of this fact he carried out a ministry of miracles and exorcisms. But the supreme confirmation of his claim was his resurrection from the dead. If Jesus did rise from the dead, then it would seem that we have a divine miracle on our hands and, thus, evidence for the existence of God.

Now most people would probably think that the resurrection of Jesus is something you just accept on faith or not. But there are actually three established facts, recognized by the majority of New Testament historians today, which I believe are best explained by the resurrection of Jesus.

Fact #1: On the Sunday following his crucifixion, Jesus' tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers. According to Jacob Kremer, an Austrian scholar who has specialized in the study of the resurrection, "By far most scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb."{13} According to D. H. Van Daalen, it is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.{14}

Fact #2: On separate occasions different individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death. According to the prominent New Testament critic of Vanderbilt University Gerd Lüdemann, "It may be taken as historically certain that . . . the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the Risen Christ.{15} These appearances were witnessed not only by believers, but also by unbelievers, skeptics, and even enemies.

Fact #3: The original disciples suddenly came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite having every predisposition to the contrary. Jews had no belief in a dying, much less rising, Messiah, and Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone's rising from the dead before the end of the world. Nevertheless, the original disciples came to believe so strongly that God had raised Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief. Luke Johnson, a New Testament scholar from Emory University, muses, "Some sort of powerful, transformative experience is required to generate the sort of movement earliest Christianity was . . . ."{16} N. T. Wright, an eminent British scholar, concludes, "That is why, as a historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him."{17}

Attempts to explain away these three great facts--like the disciples stole the body or Jesus wasn't really dead--have been universally rejected by contemporary scholarship. The simple fact is that there just is no plausible, naturalistic explanation of these facts. Therefore, it seems to me, the Christian is amply justified in believing that Jesus rose from the dead and was who he claimed to be. But that entails that God exists."



"Any responsible historian, then, who seeks to give an account of the matter, must deal with these four independently established facts: the honorable burial of Jesus, the discovery of his empty tomb, his appearances alive after his death, and the very origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection and, hence, of Christianity itself. I want to emphasize that these four facts represent, not the conclusions of conservative scholars, nor have I quoted conservative scholars, but represent rather the majority view of New Testament scholarship today. The question is: how do you best explain these facts?

Now this puts the sceptical critic in a somewhat desperate situation. For example, some time ago I had a debate with a professor at the University of California, Irvine, on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. He had written his doctoral dissertation on the subject and was thoroughly familiar with the evidence. He could not deny the facts of Jesus’s honorable burial, his empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection. Therefore, his only recourse was to come up with some alternative explanation of these facts. And so he argued that Jesus had an unknown identical twin brother who was separated from him at birth, came back to Jerusalem just at the time of the crucifixion, stole Jesus’s body out of the grave, and presented himself to the disciples, who mistakenly inferred that Jesus was risen from the dead! Now I won’t go into how I went about refuting his theory, but I think that this theory is instructive because it shows to what desperate lengths skepticism must go in order to deny the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, the evidence is so powerful that one of today’s leading Jewish theologians Pinchas Lapide has declared himself convinced on the basis of the evidence that the God of Israel raised Jesus from the dead!"

Nubby's photo
Sat 01/17/09 08:00 PM
"John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the
burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus." If you want to know why He says this please let me know.

Seamonster's photo
Sat 01/17/09 08:13 PM
and yet that one little video shows facts that contradict all of that.

I can cut and past many many scholars that will contradict everything you just put there.
And show evidence for it.

There is no evidence for a reserrection what so ever.

You still have not responded to the facts in my video. And yes they are facts, and they are from your bible.

no photo
Sat 01/17/09 08:15 PM
Edited by Jeanniebean on Sat 01/17/09 08:20 PM

I am not trying to be mean seamonster, but that man is not a scholar, I do not know of any scholar or theologian that would agree with Him. Even if the time lines did not add up, although they do, it still does not disprove the ressurection.



So as Skyhook has said many times, it appears that "truth" depends upon agreement.. and now, according to you, you seek and sight those who agree with your assertion.

I don't agree with your assertions. I don't believe there is any proof that Jesus was anything other than a fictional character.

Even if a real man existed whose life was vaguely similar to the description of the character Jesus, the claim that he was crucified for the reasons stated, the claim that he was born of a virgin, the claim that he actually died and was resurrected cannot by the wildest stretch of the imagination be proven or verified.

The story is representational of many myths that came prior to Christianity that were the basis of different religious beliefs about the life giving sun in the sky above our heads, and the pagan sun worshipers.

It is silly to challenge someone to "disprove" the resurrection. It is the people who claim that this fictional myth is true who have the burden of proving it.

Yes, it was written, but that does not make it anything but a story. That it was written does not make it true.

Stories and myths and legends have been told over and over, until they began to be written down on paper. The act of writing it did not make it true. It is still just a fictional tale, not history until you can actually prove every aspect of the story.

If you want to admit that it is held to be true on faith alone I will accept that, but do not claim proof. You do not have it.

The resurrection has to do with the sun, not a real person.





Abracadabra's photo
Sat 01/17/09 08:54 PM

Guess who said this.


"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."


This sounds like the idioticy of C. S. Lewis. It it wasn't him, he has certainly voiced similar asinine opinions.

And yes, this is an asinine opinion because we have no clue what Jesus might have actually said.

The statement above comes from people who can't think outside of the BOX that the Bible is the inspired word of God.

You see, once you get outside of that BOX you realize that the words that were shoved into the dead Jesus' mouth most likely never came out of his mouth in the first place.

Most reputable scholars agree that the gospels weren't actually written for several decades after Jesus had died.

In fact, history suggests that there are many different rumors going on about who Jesus was and what he stood for.

Once you realize that the text that we call the "gospels" today was most likely written by authoritarians who were attempting to use Jesus to prop up their version of their religion, then it becomes clear that many of things things that were attributed to Jesus he most likely never said. Or he said something else and it was twisted for the purpose of these men who were trying to re-establish their Church.

So the idea that the words in the Bible were the verbatim words of Jesus is actually highly unlikely.

In fact, the only way that they could be believed to be a verbatim account would be if they were indeed the inspired word of God.

Once that has been put aside, and he is viewed as a mortal man then all of that vanishes.

If Jesus was a mortal man who protested against the ways of the Old Testament then only a fool would call him a lunatic.

So whoever's quote that was that you quoted is clearly a fool, becasue he's suggesting that if Jesus was just a man that the words would still stick.

But they wouldn't.

So it's faulty logic.

no photo
Sat 01/17/09 09:22 PM
Good luck guys, I am staying out of this one. Looks like Nubby going to keep at this until he/she's got one of you.. grin!

AmericanMade's photo
Sat 01/17/09 09:37 PM
Believe what you want. I don't understand why people fight the life and resurrection so much. If people don't believe in it, leave it alone. I think evolution and the big bang theory is a huge joke...therefore, i have nothing to do with it. If you don't believe Jesus exsisted, or in this case, was resurrected, leave it alone. We'll all find out one day....regardless of what scholars, scientists, professors, or any of you have to say.

Thank you and Gob bless

davidben1's photo
Sat 01/17/09 09:39 PM
jesus words......ye are all SONS and DAUGHTERS of god?

yea, jesus was the SON of god, just as HE ALSO SAID, all others were AS HIMSELF......

how in the world any religion can make ONE man a diety, when the man himself said "i have "felt" in ALL WAYS as ALL MAN???????

ALL WAYS AS ALL MAN???????

ALL WAYS?????

NOT SOME?

all ways?

BORN THE SAME, THINK THE SAME, LIVE FOR THE SAME PURPOSE........

only the PURPOSE of ALL HUMAN EXISTENCE would be a larger picture, that leave all the graven images behind......

children thinking like children bragging on one they wish they were, therefore disegarding it's own adulthood and destiny.....

only wanting to hear what is WISHED TO BE HEARD.....

no photo
Sat 01/17/09 09:44 PM
for me: christianity is a religion like any other

no photo
Sun 01/18/09 12:55 AM
Edited by MorningSong on Sun 01/18/09 12:56 AM
Proof of Jesus's Ressurection?

When Jesus Came to Live in My Heart.

And when he Comes to Live in Your Heart,

That Will Be All the Proof You Need, Too.

flowerforyou:heart:flowerforyou

Quikstepper's photo
Sun 01/18/09 05:09 AM
The TRUTH... but anyone can find that out by reading & testing it for themselves. :smile: