After my last thread "Can one disprove Jesus' resurrection?" ended in a debate over whether it is possible to disprove things, I wish to ask a different question:
What are the three most direct pieces of evidence against Jesus' transfigured resurrection?
By the "transfigured" resurrection, I mean the belief that his body basically transformed so that he could go through walls or Ascend 40 days after the Resurrection, as opposed to undergoing simple resuscitation?
I am not looking for broad general principles, like whether God's own sacrifice as a human could or could not take away humans' guilt. Nor do I simply mean the fact that resurrections are extremely rare (and even in those cases it isn't clear if the person was totally dead). Are there certain facts that show that the Resurrection did not happen?
Then, after giving your reasons, mention what would be the best counterargument to support the resurrection.
I'll start.
(1) In Mark 16, it says of the resurrected Jesus:
- 15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature...
- 17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; ...
- 18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them
It doesn't seem like Christians have any better rate at being unharmed by poison.
Counterargument: Maybe Jesus was just talking about the time of the apostles to whom he was speaking, rather than setting a rule for all time.
Or maybe Christians have a marginally better survival rate at drinking poison, because of their faith and mentality. It could work like the "placebo" effect, where a person's body heals itself better because of its confidence. Thus, this healing or immunity is a sign that follows Christians, even though not most of them individually.
Quote:
"There are a few churches that actually take Jesus at his word and handle poisonous rattlesnakes and drink small amounts of poison as a demonstration of faith. A surprising number actually survive the experience, even multiple times, while a few took the challenge and lost."
"The Complete Idiot's Guide to Biblical Mysteries", By Donald P. Ryan
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(2) In Mark 14 and Matthew 26, Jesus tells the Sanhedrin: "And you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God's right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven."
As in Stephen's vision of Jesus in the clouds, this appears to refer to Jesus being seen by the Sanhedrin members in the clouds. But the canonical gospels don't record them seeing this.
Counterargument:
The Sanhedrin members could have seen it later, but regarded it as a delusion. Or this could be a prediction about them seeing Jesus in the clouds in the afterlife.
3. In Revelations, Jesus appears to John and dictates seven well-written letters to seven churches to him, after which John has 18 chapters of extreme End Times visions.
Besides how rare such visions are in real life (a prolonged trance, perhaps?), how did John remember the letters' contents when he transcribed them? Was he sitting near a pen and wrote it down while it was dictated to him? Couldn't one find some kind of purely logical impossibility in this? If so, and if John intentionally composed Revelations, doesn't that mean that the apostles' visions of Jesus could have been made up too?
Counterargument: Yes, John could have been sitting with a pen and transcribed Jesus' dictation. Or a friend - in this case one "Procleus" - could have been near John and John told Procleus what visions he was having and what Jesus was telling him to write.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1Xasebn
