One Christian Thought

 "The death of a martyr can indeed cause admiration and emulation, but it never has had a religious meaning in itself--least of all in Judaism which puts such a positive value on life and has never glorified suffering or death." (1) That came from Pinchas Lapide, the expert Jewish scholar who came to believe in the resurrection (although not Christianity). I think there is a small yet considerable chink in my resurrection argument, and that is if even the Disciples had interpreted Jesus as the Christ before His death. If not, then there seems to be, to say the least, a lot more room for feeling guilty about betraying Him and hallucinating. I mentioned in the post responding to the Disciples hallucinating that Ehrman didn't think Jesus saw Himself as the highest person coming from God. He prophesied the Son of Man, but didn't consider Himself to be as much.  That is why I used the example I did, Matthew 19:28. Ehrman expands on it: "And who would rule over them? ...

You can see the suggested reading plan here . I remember someone (I think America's leading skeptic Michael Shermer) saying (I paraphrase), "You come across people who say, 'Well, I don't really believe in that stuff of the Bible [other miracles], I only believe the main story [the resurrection].' But that's the stupidest part!" Is it really? If it's so stupid, why is the evidence so robust even a majority of skeptical scholars have accepted claims in favor of His coming back to life? I wrote in my post on the possibility of miracles that someone reasonably could believe in Jesus solely because of proof of His resurrection, and then learn about more evidence. The resurrection could prove the Bible inside out, not have to be worked toward by answering other objections. Bart Ehrman included that people in cultures that accept a certain belief (like people surviving death), and feeling guilty, can definitely lead to guilt-induced hallucinations. But he h...

In my four-part blog project titled "Where Does Jesus Get His Authority?" one subject was why God doesn't make a big announcement to the world convincing everyone. Part 2 specifically touched on that, with this shorter post adding on to it, and the conclusion quoting Scripture supporting the idea below. I have defined being an "intellectual" as someone who believes in what they can know, not what they don't. This really considers subjective experience, as what is going on in someone's head isn't necessarily the easiest to tell, if it even can be figured out, and someone isn't putting on a false front.  See, you could get honest, nice, very down-to-earth and intelligent people telling me they had experiences where they knew God had a plan for their life, but I wouldn't take this as proof. Since they are speaking of a personal experience they still could be lying, or subconsciously overinterpreted something because they want to believe it in...

I've mentioned multiple times in this blog that I know no Jew was expecting the Messiah to be crucified, and He would never have been invented this way, because famous agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman reported as much. Yet I thought of a couple arguments against this. One is perhaps Ehrman was overstating the facts in Did Jesus Exist? , because he was responding to mythicists whom he disagrees with. The first answer is he had written about that long before his 2012 book on the subject(1), and the others go along with the next argument. Then is the challenge that Ehrman is one of Christianity's biggest critics, who claims the Old Testament doesn't prophecy Jesus. Yet if they were expecting a crucified Savior, why would that be? His chapter "Two Key Data for the Historicity of Jesus" isn't solely Ehrman's conclusion on this subject, though. (By the way, the other powerful proof is Paul knowing James His brother and Peter his close friend. Hard to i...

The argument for Mark's story being accurate is here . Bart Ehrman has mentioned (as other skeptical scholars have argued) that the empty tomb was invented because it has to be. Since Jesus became to be interpreted as being physically resurrected, He would of course leave an empty tomb behind. This is why there is growing legend with Mark first only having that, and then Matthew, Luke, and John have Jesus being touched and maybe eating. However, if the empty tomb was invented to emphasize a physical body, certainly a legend writer would have included more details (like being touched). As a growing legend it doesn't make sense to leave out because it's just something they'd think of anyway. Being able to be touched is an important part of having a physical body, and makes it more explicit.  Moreover, even if that did make sense, there still is a lack of embellishment in how Jesus's empty grave was found.  I mentioned in the original post it could be argued that if Ma...

Jesus's honorable burial The original post is here . What I realized around the time of finishing it up is just this paragraph below, which draws all the main points together: Why would a legend writer stick so faithfully to the facts, the embarrassing ones, despite an early church that had disdain for the Jewish leaders, and people would know about a specific member Joseph of Arimathea even into the second generation? The closest argument I can imagine is because it fits Mark's theology, but why bother with just this one thing? But here, the fact that Mark's Gospel has Pontius Pilate and the two men crucified with Him not developed shows that Mark definitely didn't need a bad-guy-turned-good-guy to bury Jesus.  That idea is so... arbitrary.  I haven't really said this explicitly before, but it goes right along with my arguments for Mark as the true lost Gospel of Peter: Mark was recording primarily a history, making the facts fit a theological motive but working in...

The nature of the God of Christianity "Where does Jesus get His Authority? Where do His Followers get Theirs?" was the title of my four-part blog project responding to a philosophy textbook that critiqued the idea that we should look to God for morality. One objection was it is morally undesirable to do good things to earn rewards. I have a story to go with that. I once liked a girl who had younger siblings. I started to be conscience of being nice to them to look attractive. I ended up feeling bad, because when I would try to help them I would have her in mind. So, I reasoned with myself (oh thank God for the power of reason). I had been just as nice to them before. My feelings had overridden my mind.  (Not only is the power of a crush -- infatuation -- unbelievably swaying for a teenager,  my feelings and mind often didn't, and still don't, match up with each other anyway. I think it had something to do with starting to learn about all this as a teenager, being thro...