Inevitably when asking about evidence that Christianity, Christians will bring up, what they think is convincing historical evidence for Jesus resurrection. The most popular method nowadays is an inference to the best explanation. They often contend that, these 4 “historical facts” are best explained by Jesus resurrection:
- Jesus was crucified
- there was an empty tomb
- there were post resurrection appearances
- the birth of Christianity itself
I personally remain unconvinced of fact #2 and #3 but what Christians fail to realize is, that even if the resurrection is the best explanation of the 4 facts (I don’t think it is) and even if it did happen, that in and of itself is not sufficient proof for Christianity.
As far as I’m concerned, Christianity is also dependent on Adam and Eve. If Adam and Eve did not exist (or didn’t exist in the way the Bible describes them), then there is no such thing as sin and Jesus just died and resurrected for whatever reason, not for the reason the Bible explicitly describes.
But I go even further than that: Jesus resurrection does not in any way, shape or form prove the divinity of Jesus. In order to prove, that Jesus was the son of the Christian God Yahweh at least the following points need to be established beyond reasonable doubt:
- the existence of a god. In order to propose, that Jesus was divine and the son of God, the existence of a deity would first have to be demonstrated
- the god is a personal theistic god. It does nothing for Christianity to prove a prime mover who set the Big Bang in place and then just sits back and watches it unfold. Unless God is interested in human affairs and interferes in nature, Jesus divinity, let alone the truth of Christianity cannot be reasonably established and needs to be taken on faith
- God is capable of reversing biological death. A theistic God who might be interested in humans and might even be able to grow back a limb or heal cancer is good and fine. In order to prove Christianity though, God is required to reverse biological death. He needs to have the power and ability to bring back a person from death.
- God is interested in resurrecting a human. Having the ability to raise a man doesn’t necessitate the willingness to do so after all.
- There is nothing besides God that can perform the act of reversing biological death. If say, extraterrestrials had the ability to perform actions like that, we would have a competing hypothesis and Christianity would be in doubt.
I, as an Atheist not only claim, that the resurrection hasn’t been established at all, I also claim, that the existence of Adam and Eve as described in the Bible hasn’t been demonstrated (and that we have good reasons to be skeptical of their existence). Furthermore as far as I know none of the 5 points above have been demonstrated and 4 out of those 5 barely get addressed, if they get addressed at all.
Therefore the truth of Christianity as far as I’m concerned has yet to be proven and needs to be taken on faith.
Goodbye from yours truly,
Rene von Boenninghausen @Renevelation
Tarsier Renevelations 
Myths are by definition non-literal, metaphorical iterations of spiritual truths. It follows, then, that Christianity, which is the repository of the dominant myths underlying western civilization, is true–not literally true , let me say again, but metaphorically true. Any approach to the stories other than a metaphorical approach perverts their truth, diminishes their power. Just because we have for so long misread the myths doesn’t make them less true. It just means we’re too dim to get them.
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1. The Bible states scientific facts
A) In an era where they thought the world was flat and carried by large animals/a man
B) without any sort of equipment to actually find out.
The Bible is not a science textbook, it is accurate when it mentions matters of science, though. Consider some examples showing that science and the Bible agree and that the Bible contains scientific facts that differed greatly from the beliefs of many people living at the time it was written.
The universe had a beginning. (Genesis 1:1) In contrast, many ancient myths describe the universe, not as being created, but as being organized from existing chaos. The Babylonians believed that the gods that gave birth to the universe came from two oceans. Other legends say that the universe came from a giant egg.
The universe is governed day-to-day by rational natural laws, not by the whims of deities. (Job 38:33; Jeremiah 33:25) Myths from around the world teach that humans are helpless before the unpredictable and sometimes merciless acts of the gods.
The earth is suspended in empty space. (Job 26:7) Many ancient peoples believed that the world was a flat disk supported by a giant or an animal, such as a buffalo or a turtle.
Rivers and springs are fed by water that has evaporated from the oceans and other sources and then has fallen back to earth as rain, snow, or hail. (Job 36:27, 28; Ecclesiastes 1:7; Isaiah 55:10; Amos 9:6) The ancient Greeks thought that rivers were fed by underground ocean water, and this idea persisted into the 18th century.
The mountains rise and fall, and today’s mountains were once under the ocean. (Psalm 104:6, 8) In contrast, several myths say that the mountains were created in their current form by the gods.
Sanitary practices protect health. The Law given to the nation of Israel included regulations for washing after touching a dead body, quarantining those with infectious disease, and disposing of human waste safely. (Leviticus 11:28; 13:1-5; Deuteronomy 23:13) By contrast, one of the Egyptian remedies in use when these commands were given called for applying to an open wound a mixture that included human excrement.
2. Jesus died on a stake.
Most Bible translations say Christ was “crucified” rather than “impaled.” This is because of the common belief that the torture instrument upon which he was hung was a “cross” made of two pieces of wood instead of a single pale, or stake. Tradition, not the Scriptures, also says that the condemned man carried only the crossbeam of the cross, called the patibulum, or antenna, instead of both parts. In this way some try to avoid the predicament of having too much weight for one man to drag or carry to Golgotha.
Yet, what did the Bible writers themselves say about these matters? They used the Greek noun stau·rosʹ 27 times and the verbs stau·roʹo 46 times, syn·stau·roʹo (the prefix syn, meaning “with”) 5 times, and a·na·stau·roʹo (a·naʹ, meaning “again”) once. They also used the Greek word xyʹlon, meaning “wood,” 5 times to refer to the torture instrument upon which Jesus was nailed.
Stau·rosʹ in both the classical Greek and Koine carries no thought of a “cross” made of two timbers. It means only an upright stake, pale, pile, or pole, as might be used for a fence, stockade, or palisade. Says Douglas’ New Bible Dictionary of 1985 under “Cross,” page 253: “The Gk. word for ‘cross’ (stauros; verb stauroo . . . ) means primarily an upright stake or beam, and secondarily a stake used as an instrument for punishment and execution.”
The fact that Luke, Peter, and Paul also used xyʹlon as a synonym for stau·rosʹ gives added evidence that Jesus was impaled on an upright stake without a crossbeam, for that is what xyʹlon in this special sense means. (Ac 5:30; 10:39; 13:29; Ga 3:13; 1Pe 2:24) Xyʹlon also occurs in the Greek Septuagint at Ezra 6:11, where it speaks of a single beam or timber on which a lawbreaker was to be impaled.
The New World Translation, therefore, faithfully conveys to the reader this basic idea of the Greek text by rendering stau·rosʹ as “torture stake,” and the verb stau·roʹo as “impale,” that is, to fasten on a stake, or pole. In this way there is no confusion of stau·rosʹ with the traditional ecclesiastical crosses. (See TORTURE STAKE.) The matter of one man like Simon of Cyrene bearing a torture stake, as the Scriptures say, is perfectly reasonable, for if it was 15 cm (6 in.) in diameter and 3.5 m (11 ft) long, it probably weighed little more than 45 kg (100 lb).—Mr 15:21.
Note what W. E. Vine says on this subject: “STAUROS (σταυρός) denotes, primarily, an upright pale or stake. On such malefactors were nailed for execution. Both the noun and the verb stauroo, to fasten to a stake or pale, are originally to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a two beamed cross.” Greek scholar Vine then mentions the Chaldean origin of the two-piece cross and how it was adopted from the pagans by Christendom in the third century C.E. as a symbol of Christ’s impalement.—Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 1981, Vol. 1, p. 256.
Significant is this comment in the book The Cross in Ritual, Architecture, and Art: “It is strange, yet unquestionably a fact, that in ages long before the birth of Christ, and since then in lands untouched by the teaching of the Church, the Cross has been used as a sacred symbol. . . . The Greek Bacchus, the Tyrian Tammuz, the Chaldean Bel, and the Norse Odin, were all symbolised to their votaries by a cruciform device.”—By G. S. Tyack, London, 1900, p. 1.
The book The Non-Christian Cross, by J. D. Parsons (London, 1896), adds: “There is not a single sentence in any of the numerous writings forming the New Testament, which, in the original Greek, bears even indirect evidence to the effect that the stauros used in the case of Jesus was other than an ordinary stauros; much less to the effect that it consisted, not of one piece of timber, but of two pieces nailed together in the form of a cross. . . . It is not a little misleading upon the part of our teachers to translate the word stauros as ‘cross’ when rendering the Greek documents of the Church into our native tongue, and to support that action by putting ‘cross’ in our lexicons as the meaning of stauros without carefully explaining that that was at any rate not the primary meaning of the word in the days of the Apostles, did not become its primary signification till long afterwards, and became so then, if at all, only because, despite the absence of corroborative evidence, it was for some reason or other assumed that the particular stauros upon which Jesus was executed had that particular shape.”—Pp. 23, 24; see also The Companion Bible, 1974, Appendix No. 162.
3. A) everything we need is on earth
B) We have functional bodies that require love and positivity and don’t usually react well towards negativity
C) The earth is at the perfect distance from the sun and is going at the perfect speed.
Everything I just listed CANNOT just be made by pure accident. If it were that easy to replicate life by a mere explosion other organisms should of popped up from nowhere by now by the hands of humans, yet that hasn’t happened and I don’t think it ever will to be honest. Also the main reason why living is a hassle is because of humans. Life itself is fine. It’s humanity that destroys it.
4. Um, if Adam and Eve didn’t exist or were different, than yeah it would be different. That isn’t really an argument since the only reason why Jesus did what he did was for us and being infected by sin. If none of what were living though happened than there would be no need.
5. A) God thinks ahead and knows what’s best. If he were to just keep us alive we wouldn’t have the chance to see how bad at ruling ourselves we are.
B) He wants everyone to know the truth. Believe it or not, but not many people know of the truth. Churches pretty much hide and lie about several things the bible said. I’ll give examples at the end.
C) Angels need to see why Satan and humans are dysfunctional as well, they aren’t all knowing like either and a lot of people look over that fact.
Epilougue!
HE’LL IS FALSE.
Many religions teach that the wicked will go to a fiery hell and be tormented forever. Is this teaching logical and Scriptural? The human life span is limited to 70 or 80 years. Even if someone was guilty of extreme wickedness all his life, would everlasting torment be a just punishment? No. It would be grossly unjust to torment a man forever for the sins that he committed in a short lifetime.
Only God can reveal what happens after people die, and he has done so in his written Word, the Bible. This is what the Bible says: “As the [beast] dies, so the [man] dies; and they all have but one spirit . . . All are going to one place. They have all come to be from the dust, and they are all returning to the dust.” (Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20) There is no mention here of a fiery hell. Humans return to dust—to nonexistence—when they die.
In order to be tormented, a person has to be conscious. Are the dead conscious? Once again, the Bible gives the answer: “The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten.” (Ecclesiastes 9:5) It is impossible for the dead, who are “conscious of nothing at all,” to experience agony anywhere.
ONLY THE 144,000 GO TO HEAVEN
EVERYONE ELSE STAYS ON PARADISE
EARTH.
One aspect of that secret involved Jehovah’s selecting a “little flock” of 144,000 humans to be associated with his Son as part of the seed, to reign with him in heaven.—Luke 12:32; Revelation 14:1, 4.
13 Since humans were created to live on earth, “a new creation” by Jehovah was required in order for some humans to go to heaven. (2 Corinthians 5:17) Speaking as one of those chosen to share this exceptional heavenly hope, the apostle Peter wrote: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for according to his great mercy he gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an incorruptible and undefiled and unfading inheritance. It is reserved in the heavens for you.”—1 Peter 1:3, 4.
14. (a) How were non-Jews involved in “the sacred secret of the kingdom of God”? (b) Why are we able to understand these “deep things of God”?
14 Another part of the sacred secret with regard to the future Kingdom government was God’s will to include non-Jews among the small number of humans who would be called to reign with Christ in heaven. Paul explained this facet of Jehovah’s “administration,” or way of managing the fulfillment of his purpose: “In other generations this secret was not made known to the sons of men as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by spirit, namely, that people of the nations should be joint heirs and fellow members of the body and partakers with us of the promise in union with Christ Jesus through the good news.” (Ephesians 3:5, 6) The comprehension of this part of the sacred secret was revealed to the “holy apostles.” Similarly today, if it were not for the help of the holy spirit, we would not understand these “deep things of God.”—1 Corinthians 2:10; 4:1; Colossians 1:26, 27.
15, 16. Why did Jehovah select Christ’s associate rulers from among mankind?
15 “The hundred and forty-four thousand” seen standing with “the Lamb” on heavenly Mount Zion are said to have been “bought from the earth,” “bought from among mankind as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb,” Christ Jesus. (Revelation 14:1-4) Jehovah chose the first of his heavenly sons to become the primary part of the seed promised in Eden, but why did he select Christ’s associates from among mankind? The apostle Paul explains that this limited number was “called according to his [Jehovah’s] purpose,” “according to the good pleasure of his will.”—Romans 8:17, 28-30; Ephesians 1:5, 11; 2 Timothy 1:9.
16 Jehovah’s purpose is to sanctify his great and holy name and vindicate his universal sovereignty. By his incomparably wise “administration,” or way of managing things, Jehovah sent his firstborn Son to earth, where he was tested to the limit. Furthermore, Jehovah determined that the Messianic Kingdom government of his Son would include humans who had also upheld His sovereignty until death.—Ephesians 1:8-12; Revelation 2:10, 11.
17. Why can we be glad that Christ and his associate rulers once lived as humans?
17 Jehovah showed his great love for Adam’s descendants by having his Son come to the earth and by selecting from among mankind those who would be the Son’s joint heirs in the Kingdom government. How could that benefit others who have proved faithful to Jehovah, from Abel onward? Born slaves to sin and death, imperfect humans would need to be spiritually and physically healed and brought to perfection, in line with Jehovah’s original purpose for mankind. (Romans 5:12) How comforting it is for all of those who look forward to everlasting life on earth to know that their King will show them love and kind understanding just as he did to his disciples during his earthly ministry! (Matthew 11:28, 29; Hebrews 2:17, 18; 4:15; 7:25, 26) And how reassuring it is for them to realize that Christ’s associate king-priests in heaven were once men and women of faith who themselves contended with personal weaknesses and experienced life’s challenges as we do!—Romans 7:21-25.
CHURCHES
The frank explanation for the vast diversity of beliefs and practices among professed Christians today is that they have not adhered to Jesus’ teachings. One writer observed: “As in the past, today’s new Christians tend to take from the Bible whatever fits their needs—and ignore whatever fails to resonate with their own native religious traditions.” This is exactly what Jesus and his apostles predicted would happen.
For instance, under inspiration the apostle Paul wrote to his fellow overseer Timothy: “There will be a period of time when they will not put up with the healthful teaching, but, in accord with their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, whereas they will be turned aside to false stories.”
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Aside from my suspicion that u just copy and pasted you didn’t address what I brought up at all. You cannot say that some verses are accurate therefore we should accept the rest. To do so would commit the bandwagon fallacy.
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