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Religion Ask a Christian - Continued in Part 2
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What is a non pure faith?
Vdubs
Hall of Famer
What do you know about cults?If it said 1+1=3 in the bible you’d die for that belief!
That’s how your cult rolls!
I know nothing. No interest at all.
If you have no interest or need for God in your life, why do you frequent this thread with your negative comments and derogatory questions.
You come across as bitter and angry.
You can not blame God or Christ for whatever has produced that in you.
It's like labelling all Aussies as loud mouthed yobbos because a few idiots misbehave on a plane and wreak havoc.
Vdubs
Hall of Famer
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I didn't understand it when I had faith.
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He comes across as intelligent, well-spoken, and passionate to me.
Vdubs
Hall of Famer
You did not have faith. Never. Nothing to be at issue with.
Vdubs
Hall of Famer
Of course.
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I appreciate the compliment. I know it's difficult to accept, but I wasn't always this logically minded.
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I'm glad you agree. I share your biased view of Carlton supporters, but we need to be tolerant towards those less fortunate than ourselves.
Shersh . What difference?
Vdubs
Hall of Famer
Easy enough to go through the motions with others, but not having that deep personal relationship with Christ.
Had you believed in the Trinity at any stage of your life, there would not be a question that you'd had faith.
I can not explain the Trinity, but is is as basic as it is defined - God is Father, Son and Spirit.
The difficulty for all of us is understanding it. But accepting it is not so difficult in my case.
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The trinity .. to understand is to be human.
Your system(christianity) is a cult, since it’s very inception.
You can preach and posture and pout all you like, but at it’s very core, it displays and acts and behaves as a cult.
“There are no religions”, the word is a head pat for a belief system built upon and spread across my planet by imperialism.
Similar to how Gates cornered the market in home computing, I expect your cult will eventually dissolve much like the guys in expensive suits tried to take on Microsoft, or how MySpace believed it would remain relevant in the coming years.
I still fear we haven’t seen the end of wars raged in Islam, but, with Pence and the likes of evangelical America, I am heartily impressed with my American cousins that we see the light at the end of the tunnel with our mutual assured destruction(eventually) with your blood, flesh, sacrifice, death cult.
The Universe is a naturally occurring event, most likely reoccurring, most definitely infinite, without cause, without need, without desire and concious intervention, a universe that at every point, aims to destroy life in 99.9999999999999999999999 repeated parts of its existence, it doesn’t require you to know it exists, it doesn’t care, it despises you unconsciously, unconditionally, without fear, as it expands faster than the speed of light in every direction from every point of its existence.
It’s the most alluring, beautiful, sublime, awe inspiring magnificence just to be lucky enough to be unconsciously put together from atoms from dead stars to be able to witness.
I’m lucky enough that those atoms lasted long enough through no fault of their own and through sheer luck to enable me to impregnate a woman to gift me and my family and friends the children I now get to show a path of zero religious poison and guide them to fight the likes of you and your progeny at every level of society.
You and yours are my enemy and I will continue to fight and rail against your cult until we not only reach the stars, but colonise the entire universe without your insipid culty cancerous nonsense.
Long story short, your cult is in its death throes and we want to return to the stars that make up the very fabric of our bodily form.
Your cult is a shit story, it’s boring, it’s plagiarism, it’s dull, it’s hideous, full of death, hate, sexism, racism, fear, stupidity, dumbness and needs to be destroyed.
Have a great Christmas month and enjoy your family and friends, because your god is a stupid myth, grow the **** up and do your kids a favour if you cherish them and life on our planet.
I don’t think I can add any more to this thread, so I bid all of you adieu and farewell, have a cracker of a holiday period, stay safe and pray(lol) the sciences nail a vaccine to this campaignering virus so we can reboot the world!(sans █████ and those ****ing ingrates of neo liberal environmental destructors!
Peace
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Vdubs
Hall of Famer
Well, I can't say "you took the words right out of my mouth".
Totally agree with the highlighted.
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I believed that I had a relationship with god. If it wasn't genuine, it was enough to convince both myself and the hierarchy of several churches I attended.
The other thing I struggled with most was the idea that a loving god would send anyone to Hell.
Truth finds it's way in if you let it find a foot in your life. The problem with religious people is that they see the truth and call it the devil.
Vdubs
Hall of Famer
Same for all of us.
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You don't find it just a little disingenuous to switch between logical deduction and faith to suit every argument?
The lack of falsifiability built in to every religion is a clue.
Christianity is built on apostolic faith. That hasn’t changed for 2000 years. It just took 650 years too basically articulate that apostolic faith.
You have an argument?
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I thought I’d made my point, in my last post, but because I kinda like you, I’ll deal with it.
There was no “beginning”, Zero, doesn’t exist, nothing, doesn’t exist,
There never was nothing, nothing isn’t a concept we can evaluate because it can’t be.
“There is always something!”. FULL ****ing STOP!(without end or beginning).
As for Abiogenesis, we don’t quite know yet, but given the parameters of an endless universe and endless resources and endless energy, LIFE IS A GIVEN, it isn’t anomalous.
The Big Bang wasn’t a BANG, it was an expansion, into what?
We don’t know, we are working on it.
For ****s sake, we evolved in the trees and jungles of Africa and were forced out onto the Savannah’s and at one point reached critical mass annhililation and extinction much like 98.9% of every species on our planet, yet we ****ing did it and you campaigners want to squabble over the bloodlines of David in a shit part of our planet!
Good luck mate!
Australian First Nations people’s pfft at your stupidity and laugh at your willingness to destroy their Mother.
campaigners is all you are!
As much as I expected from one of the worst purveyors of apology of the christian cult I’ve encountered on the net.
You seem like a nice chap and all, but a mind destroyed and poisoned like yours, all I can hope for is that you haven’t done the same to your kids.
Your entire belief system is the desire to bring about mutual assured destruction of this planet and my aim is to thwart that.
As much as you pray and mentally masturbate about the apocalypse and End Times, rest assured that we now outnumber the likes of you and will continue to evolve, search, reason, logic and reach for the stars that we come from.
The only “nothing” that exists in this universe, is the evidence you have for your “creator”.
Lololololol
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No amount of logic and evidence can challenge strong faith. If any religion had sufficient evidence to justify acceptance of its tenents, there would be no need for faith.
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Pfft. Goddidit.I thought I’d made my point, in my last post, but because I kinda like you, I’ll deal with it.
There was no “beginning”, Zero, doesn’t exist, nothing, doesn’t exist,
There never was nothing, nothing isn’t a concept we can evaluate because it can’t be.
“There is always something!”. FULL ******* STOP!(without end or beginning).
As for Abiogenesis, we don’t quite know yet, but given the parameters of an endless universe and endless resources and endless energy, LIFE IS A GIVEN, it isn’t anomalous.
The Big Bang wasn’t a BANG, it was an expansion, into what?
We don’t know, we are working on it.
For fu**s sake, we evolved in the trees and jungles of Africa and were forced out onto the Savannah’s and at one point reached critical mass annhililation and extinction much like 98.9% of every species on our planet, yet we ******* did it and you campaigners want to squabble over the bloodlines of David in a sh*t part of our planet!
Good luck mate!
Australian First Nations people’s pfft at your stupidity and laugh at your willingness to destroy their Mother.
campaigners is all you are!
Vdubs
Hall of Famer
Possibly the most complimentary thing you've said to me on this thread.As much as I expected from one of the worst purveyors of apology of the christian cult I’ve encountered on the net.
You seem like a nice chap and all, but a mind destroyed and poisoned like yours, all I can hope for is that you haven’t done the same to your kids.
3.Your entire belief system is the desire to bring about mutual assured destruction of this planet and my aim is to thwart that.
As much as you pray and mentally masturbate about the apocalypse and End Times, rest assured that we now outnumber the likes of you and will continue to evolve, search, reason, logic and reach for the stars that we come from.
The only “nothing” that exists in this universe, is the evidence you have for your “creator”.
Lololololol
Our 3 adult kids sadly still have not seen our light- they are in our prayers at times.
But where do your stars come from?
Your third line- could you please explain?
- Moderator
- #9,050
What you presented Vdubs is an opinion piece by S. Joshua Swamidass from the The Veritas Forum. This is the same scientist that attempts to argue that "A de novo-created Adam and Eve could very well be universal human ancestors who lived in the Middle East in the last 6,000-10,000 years’, despite providing limited evidence in support and couching his theory in a way where it is unfalsifiable.
Still at least he acknowledges the “undeniable scientific truth” that the human population evolved from ancestor ape species and shares common descent with all living things.
Natalie Angier, an American nonfiction writer and a science journalist for The New York Times, once wrote somewhat incredulously.
"I admit I'm surprised whenever I encounter a religious scientist. How can a bench-hazed Ph.D, who might in an afternoon deftly puree a colleague's PowerPoint presentation on the nematode genome into so much fish chow, then go home, read in a two-thousand-year-old chronicle, riddled with internal contradictions, of a meta-Nobel discovery like "Resurrection from the Dead," and say, gee, that sounds convincing? Doesn't the good doctor wonder what the control group looked like?”
Recorded history? Where is the resurrection mentioned in anything other than Gospels, which are written not as history but as theological works?
The Gospels were clearly written to show how Jesus was the Messiah and his coming fulfilled ancient Jewish scripture. Jesus' followers were expecting him to be the messiah, and part of that role involved surviving long enough to be the messiah! As most devout religious sects do when their expectations fail, the disciples sought an explanation, and they found one in the idea of resurrection. If anything, it looks more like they would've had every predisposition not to face reality, if their messiah died.
In an essay titled, "When Prophecy Fails and Faith Persists" social psychologist Lorne L. Dawson explained the various ways in which religious groups deal with prophetic failure. If the group is large enough and willing to retain a sense of community, there is a great chance of stemming off disappointment. If the leaders act quickly to provide some rationalization or explanation of the failure, labeling it as a "test of faith", elaborating that the event really did happen on a spiritual and unseen level, or chalking it up to human error, there is an even stronger chance that the group will survive. Quoting two other social psychologists, Dawson writes that, "Beliefs may withstand the pressure of disconfirming events not because of the effectiveness of dissonance-reducing strategies, but because disconfirming evidence may simply go unacknowledged".
In other words, deeply invested believers may be known to count the hits and just ignore the misses.
What happened in a cave on Mount Hira near Mecca so many years ago that reframed all human history? Muhammad also had an enormous influence on world history, as his followers later spread Islam through much of the world through their conquests
No they don’t. Which “prophecies”? The Gospels and Acts were manufactured so that the followers of Jesus could claim him to be the messiah, to grow their following because he supposedly fulfilled prophecy.
If you pick up any of the four Gospels and read them at random, it will not be long before you learn that such and such an action or saying, attributed to Jesus, was done so that an ancient ‘prophecy’ should come true. If it should seem odd that an action should be deliberately performed in order that a foretelling be vindicated, that is because it is odd. And it is necessarily odd because, just like the Old Testament, the "New" one is also a work of crude carpentry, hammered together long after its purported events, and full of improvised attempts to make things come out right.
No they didn’t, Crucifixion was known to the Persians, Carthaginians, Greeks and Macedonians before the Romans used it as a common form of punishment.
That is disputed by many Biblical scholars as well as Jewish scholars who suggest that Isaiah's "servant" rather represents the nation of Israel, not Jesus as the messiah.
Certainly by the time the Gospels came to be written, the writers of the Gospels took pains to interpret Jesus through the Jewish scriptures: indeed they presented Jesus as the fulfilment of Jewish scriptures. In the opening verse, Mark wrote: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it in written in the prophets."
That is not confirmed. The only report of “blood and water” comes from the Gospel of John. The other Synoptic Gospels do not mention it.
An examination of the Gospels themselves indicate that the “Resurrection” story was embellished over a very short time in history. Even between them there are contradictions. For example in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus' followers wait far from the cross and Jesus never talks to them. In John, they wait right by the cross, and Jesus talks to both a disciple and his mother.
There are only four resurrection accounts and their reliability is in question. None were eyewitness accounts. The overwhelming majority of scholars believe that Mark 16:9–20, (a later ending of Mark) with accounts of the resurrected Jesus, the commissioning of the disciples to proclaim the gospel, and Christ's ascension was possibly written in the early 2nd century and added later in the same century.
Authors such as Raymond Brown point out that the Gospels contradict each other in various important respects and on various important details. Biblical scholars W.D. Davies and E.P. Sanders state that: "on many points, especially about Jesus' early life, the evangelists were ignorant … they simply did not know and, guided by rumour, hope or supposition, did the best they could”
See above.
None of the Gospels or Epistles mention anyone dying for their belief in the "physical" resurrection of Jesus. The only martyrdoms recorded in the New Testament are, first, the stoning of Stephen in the Book of Acts. But Stephen was not a witness. He was a later convert. So if he died for anything, he died for hearsay alone. But even in Acts the story has it that he was not killed for what he believed, but for some trumped up false charge, and by a mob, whom he could not have escaped even if he had recanted. So his death does not prove anything in that respect. Moreover, in his last breaths, we are told, he says nothing about dying for any belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus, but mentions only his belief that Jesus was the messiah, and was at that moment in heaven. And then he sees Jesus - yet no one else does, so this was clearly a vision, not a physical appearance, and there is no good reason to believe earlier appearances were any different.
The second and only other "martyr" recorded in Acts is the execution of the Apostle James, but we are not told anything about why he was killed or whether recanting would have saved him, or what he thought he died for.
In fact, we have one independent account in the Jewish history of Josephus, of the stoning of a certain "James the brother of Jesus" in 62 A.D., possibly but not necessarily the very same James, and in that account he is stoned for breaking the Jewish law, which recanting would not escape, and in the account of the late 2nd century Christian hagiographer Hegesippus, as reported by Eusebius, he dies not for his belief in a physical resurrection, but, just like Stephen, solely for proclaiming Jesus the messiah, who was at that moment in heaven.
That is the last record of any Christian martyrdom we have until the 2nd century. Then we start to hear about some unnamed Christians burned for arson by Nero in 64 A.D. but we do not know if any eye-witnesses were included in that group and even if we did it would not matter, for they were killed on a false charge of arson, not for refusing to deny belief in a physical resurrection or any of their other beliefs. So even if they had recanted, it would not have saved them, and therefore their deaths also do not prove anything, especially since such persecution was so rare and unpredictable in that century. We also do not even know what it was they believed - after all, Stephen and James did not appear to regard the physical resurrection as an essential component of their belief. It's not what they died for.
We therefore have to look outside the bible for the familiar stories of the early Christian martyrs, which come primarily from the 2nd and 3rd century authors Hippolytus and Eusebius. Written over a hundred years after the disciples supposedly met their various ends, these accounts can only be chalked up to tradition, and the authors did not disclose their sources. However, Hippolytus reports natural deaths for four of the twelve disciples (John, Matthew, Thaddeus, and Simon the Zealot), which means that, along with Judas/Matthias, nearly half of the disciples were not martyred under any tradition.
When we turn to the gospels we also see that their traditional authors Matthew and John died of natural causes, and Mark and Luke were not among the twelve disciples or among those who witnessed the resurrection. Mark and Luke, even if they had died for their faith, were not present at the tomb or the ascension and so would not likely have known their beliefs to be misplaced. Paul, who purportedly authored almost half the New Testament, was also not present during the resurrection, only seeing Jesus in a vision sometime later.
Traditions of martyrdom for figures like Thomas and Philip don't come until approximately 100-150 years after their deaths. This should be enough to raise suspicion as to the authenticity of such martyrdom legends, and it is also worth noting that people have been made into martyrs after the fact by their followers, when they may have been killed without any chance to recant their faith.
No. Why should it be?
There’s little indication that this refers to Jesus, irrespective of when it was written.
Especially as the miracle of the physical resurrection of Jesus never happened.
Here’s some more naturalistic explanations that fit the so-called “historical facts” far more plausibly than the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Jesus is hastily buried in a tomb because of the Sabbath. Two of Jesus’ family members are upset that an unknown Jewish leader has buried the body. In the dead of night, these two family members raid the tomb, taking the body off to bury it for themselves. But Roman soldiers on the lookout see them carrying the shrouded corpse through the streets, they confront them, and they kill them on the spot. They throw all three bodies into a common burial plot, where within three days these bodies are decomposed beyond recognition. The tomb then is empty. People go to the tomb, they find it empty, they come to think that Jesus was raised from the dead, and they start thinking they’ve seen him because they know he’s been raised because his tomb is empty.
This may be an unlikely scenario not supported by specific evidence, but you can’t object that it’s impossible to have happened because it’s not impossible at all. People did raid tombs. Soldiers did kill civilians on the least pretext. People were buried in common graves, left to rot. It’s not likely and we have no real evidence that it ever happened, but it’s FAR more likely than the miracle of bodily resurrection, which is so unlikely, that you have to appeal to supernatural intervention to make it work. The alternative explanation above is at least plausible, and it’s historical, as opposed to the idea that Jesus physically rose from the dead, which is not historical. In fact, bodily resurrection from being literally dead, is the LEAST likely explanation for the “facts”.
Still at least he acknowledges the “undeniable scientific truth” that the human population evolved from ancestor ape species and shares common descent with all living things.
Natalie Angier, an American nonfiction writer and a science journalist for The New York Times, once wrote somewhat incredulously.
"I admit I'm surprised whenever I encounter a religious scientist. How can a bench-hazed Ph.D, who might in an afternoon deftly puree a colleague's PowerPoint presentation on the nematode genome into so much fish chow, then go home, read in a two-thousand-year-old chronicle, riddled with internal contradictions, of a meta-Nobel discovery like "Resurrection from the Dead," and say, gee, that sounds convincing? Doesn't the good doctor wonder what the control group looked like?”
Recorded history? Where is the resurrection mentioned in anything other than Gospels, which are written not as history but as theological works?
The Gospels were clearly written to show how Jesus was the Messiah and his coming fulfilled ancient Jewish scripture. Jesus' followers were expecting him to be the messiah, and part of that role involved surviving long enough to be the messiah! As most devout religious sects do when their expectations fail, the disciples sought an explanation, and they found one in the idea of resurrection. If anything, it looks more like they would've had every predisposition not to face reality, if their messiah died.
In an essay titled, "When Prophecy Fails and Faith Persists" social psychologist Lorne L. Dawson explained the various ways in which religious groups deal with prophetic failure. If the group is large enough and willing to retain a sense of community, there is a great chance of stemming off disappointment. If the leaders act quickly to provide some rationalization or explanation of the failure, labeling it as a "test of faith", elaborating that the event really did happen on a spiritual and unseen level, or chalking it up to human error, there is an even stronger chance that the group will survive. Quoting two other social psychologists, Dawson writes that, "Beliefs may withstand the pressure of disconfirming events not because of the effectiveness of dissonance-reducing strategies, but because disconfirming evidence may simply go unacknowledged".
In other words, deeply invested believers may be known to count the hits and just ignore the misses.
What happened in a cave on Mount Hira near Mecca so many years ago that reframed all human history? Muhammad also had an enormous influence on world history, as his followers later spread Islam through much of the world through their conquests
No they don’t. Which “prophecies”? The Gospels and Acts were manufactured so that the followers of Jesus could claim him to be the messiah, to grow their following because he supposedly fulfilled prophecy.
If you pick up any of the four Gospels and read them at random, it will not be long before you learn that such and such an action or saying, attributed to Jesus, was done so that an ancient ‘prophecy’ should come true. If it should seem odd that an action should be deliberately performed in order that a foretelling be vindicated, that is because it is odd. And it is necessarily odd because, just like the Old Testament, the "New" one is also a work of crude carpentry, hammered together long after its purported events, and full of improvised attempts to make things come out right.
No they didn’t, Crucifixion was known to the Persians, Carthaginians, Greeks and Macedonians before the Romans used it as a common form of punishment.
That is disputed by many Biblical scholars as well as Jewish scholars who suggest that Isaiah's "servant" rather represents the nation of Israel, not Jesus as the messiah.
Certainly by the time the Gospels came to be written, the writers of the Gospels took pains to interpret Jesus through the Jewish scriptures: indeed they presented Jesus as the fulfilment of Jewish scriptures. In the opening verse, Mark wrote: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it in written in the prophets."
That is not confirmed. The only report of “blood and water” comes from the Gospel of John. The other Synoptic Gospels do not mention it.
An examination of the Gospels themselves indicate that the “Resurrection” story was embellished over a very short time in history. Even between them there are contradictions. For example in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus' followers wait far from the cross and Jesus never talks to them. In John, they wait right by the cross, and Jesus talks to both a disciple and his mother.
There are only four resurrection accounts and their reliability is in question. None were eyewitness accounts. The overwhelming majority of scholars believe that Mark 16:9–20, (a later ending of Mark) with accounts of the resurrected Jesus, the commissioning of the disciples to proclaim the gospel, and Christ's ascension was possibly written in the early 2nd century and added later in the same century.
Authors such as Raymond Brown point out that the Gospels contradict each other in various important respects and on various important details. Biblical scholars W.D. Davies and E.P. Sanders state that: "on many points, especially about Jesus' early life, the evangelists were ignorant … they simply did not know and, guided by rumour, hope or supposition, did the best they could”
See above.
None of the Gospels or Epistles mention anyone dying for their belief in the "physical" resurrection of Jesus. The only martyrdoms recorded in the New Testament are, first, the stoning of Stephen in the Book of Acts. But Stephen was not a witness. He was a later convert. So if he died for anything, he died for hearsay alone. But even in Acts the story has it that he was not killed for what he believed, but for some trumped up false charge, and by a mob, whom he could not have escaped even if he had recanted. So his death does not prove anything in that respect. Moreover, in his last breaths, we are told, he says nothing about dying for any belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus, but mentions only his belief that Jesus was the messiah, and was at that moment in heaven. And then he sees Jesus - yet no one else does, so this was clearly a vision, not a physical appearance, and there is no good reason to believe earlier appearances were any different.
The second and only other "martyr" recorded in Acts is the execution of the Apostle James, but we are not told anything about why he was killed or whether recanting would have saved him, or what he thought he died for.
In fact, we have one independent account in the Jewish history of Josephus, of the stoning of a certain "James the brother of Jesus" in 62 A.D., possibly but not necessarily the very same James, and in that account he is stoned for breaking the Jewish law, which recanting would not escape, and in the account of the late 2nd century Christian hagiographer Hegesippus, as reported by Eusebius, he dies not for his belief in a physical resurrection, but, just like Stephen, solely for proclaiming Jesus the messiah, who was at that moment in heaven.
That is the last record of any Christian martyrdom we have until the 2nd century. Then we start to hear about some unnamed Christians burned for arson by Nero in 64 A.D. but we do not know if any eye-witnesses were included in that group and even if we did it would not matter, for they were killed on a false charge of arson, not for refusing to deny belief in a physical resurrection or any of their other beliefs. So even if they had recanted, it would not have saved them, and therefore their deaths also do not prove anything, especially since such persecution was so rare and unpredictable in that century. We also do not even know what it was they believed - after all, Stephen and James did not appear to regard the physical resurrection as an essential component of their belief. It's not what they died for.
We therefore have to look outside the bible for the familiar stories of the early Christian martyrs, which come primarily from the 2nd and 3rd century authors Hippolytus and Eusebius. Written over a hundred years after the disciples supposedly met their various ends, these accounts can only be chalked up to tradition, and the authors did not disclose their sources. However, Hippolytus reports natural deaths for four of the twelve disciples (John, Matthew, Thaddeus, and Simon the Zealot), which means that, along with Judas/Matthias, nearly half of the disciples were not martyred under any tradition.
When we turn to the gospels we also see that their traditional authors Matthew and John died of natural causes, and Mark and Luke were not among the twelve disciples or among those who witnessed the resurrection. Mark and Luke, even if they had died for their faith, were not present at the tomb or the ascension and so would not likely have known their beliefs to be misplaced. Paul, who purportedly authored almost half the New Testament, was also not present during the resurrection, only seeing Jesus in a vision sometime later.
Traditions of martyrdom for figures like Thomas and Philip don't come until approximately 100-150 years after their deaths. This should be enough to raise suspicion as to the authenticity of such martyrdom legends, and it is also worth noting that people have been made into martyrs after the fact by their followers, when they may have been killed without any chance to recant their faith.
No. Why should it be?
There’s little indication that this refers to Jesus, irrespective of when it was written.
Especially as the miracle of the physical resurrection of Jesus never happened.
Here’s some more naturalistic explanations that fit the so-called “historical facts” far more plausibly than the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Jesus is hastily buried in a tomb because of the Sabbath. Two of Jesus’ family members are upset that an unknown Jewish leader has buried the body. In the dead of night, these two family members raid the tomb, taking the body off to bury it for themselves. But Roman soldiers on the lookout see them carrying the shrouded corpse through the streets, they confront them, and they kill them on the spot. They throw all three bodies into a common burial plot, where within three days these bodies are decomposed beyond recognition. The tomb then is empty. People go to the tomb, they find it empty, they come to think that Jesus was raised from the dead, and they start thinking they’ve seen him because they know he’s been raised because his tomb is empty.
This may be an unlikely scenario not supported by specific evidence, but you can’t object that it’s impossible to have happened because it’s not impossible at all. People did raid tombs. Soldiers did kill civilians on the least pretext. People were buried in common graves, left to rot. It’s not likely and we have no real evidence that it ever happened, but it’s FAR more likely than the miracle of bodily resurrection, which is so unlikely, that you have to appeal to supernatural intervention to make it work. The alternative explanation above is at least plausible, and it’s historical, as opposed to the idea that Jesus physically rose from the dead, which is not historical. In fact, bodily resurrection from being literally dead, is the LEAST likely explanation for the “facts”.
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