Religion Ask a Christian - Continued in Part 2

[Chief]

Continued in Part Two:

https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/ask-a-christian-part-2.1295001/unread

 

[Rosscoe]

Yet another claim made without any supporting evidence. I see no evidence in support of that claim that the resurrection was an actual historical event. Could you provide some? Please move beyond the theological works of the Gospels.

You should re-read your post. It was in reference to that.

 

[Roylion]

You should re-read your post. It was in reference to that.

Yeah, but it's still another claim to resurrection made without any supporting evidence. Could you provide some? Any? Please move beyond the theological works of the Gospels.

 

[Tyberious Funk]

The short answer is yes.

Recent research suggests the Earth was once covered by a global ocean with very little visible land.

Constraining the Volume of Earth's Early Oceans With a Temperature-Dependent Mantle Water Storage Capacity Model
Junjie Dong, Rebecca A. Fischer, Lars P. Stixrude, Carolina R. Lithgow-Bertelloni

The problem with the paper you cite is that it's hypothesis is based on the Earth as it was a billion years ago. I'm pretty sure Noah didn't live in the Precambian era.

 

[Number37]

The problem with the paper you cite is that it's hypothesis is based on the Earth as it was a billion years ago. I'm pretty sure Noah didn't live in the Precambian era.

How can there be a problem with the paper cited when neither I, nor it, even mentioned Noah?

 

[Roylion]

The problem with the paper you cite is that it's hypothesis is based on the Earth as it was a billion years ago. I'm pretty sure Noah didn't live in the Precambian era.

And a study by Benjamin W. Johnson and Boswell also suggest that the world was essentially an ocean 3 billion years ago. This was long befpre the formation of the continents. Even then they hypothesise that "micro-continents" may well have been in that ocean.

That's not a global flood event either.

 

[Tyberious Funk]

bringing someone back from the dead, days after their funeral; is the single greatest miracle there ever was.

Meh. Osiris did it before Jesus. Twice in fact.

Odin did it too. Several Greek gods were resurrected, as were several Hindu gods. The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl did it as well.

As far as party tricks go, it's pretty mundane.

 

[Rosscoe]

Yeah, but it's still another claim to resurrection made without any supporting evidence. Could you provide some? Any? Please move beyond the theological works of the Gospels.

You were talking about Old Testament miracles and how Jesus miracles were minor in comparison.

 

[Rosscoe]

Meh. Osiris did it before Jesus. Twice in fact.

Odin did it too. Several Greek gods were resurrected, as were several Hindu gods. The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl did it as well.

As far as party tricks go, it's pretty mundane.

So did Superman in the latest justice league movie.

 

[Roylion]

You were talking about Old Testament miracles and how Jesus miracles were minor in comparison.

They were. Run of the mill really. Resurrections were just copies of older stories.

 

[Roylion]

So did Superman in the latest justice league movie.

About as true as all the others.

 

[Boston tiger]

Yet another claim made without any supporting evidence. I see no evidence in support of that claim that the resurrection was an actual historical event. Could you provide some? Please move beyond the theological works of the Gospels.

The old blip in history. It should be so easy to tear apart but it just doesn’t go away. Everything that has happened since the resurrection has said yep .. it’s legit.

Check the body out . It should still be in the tomb. Bawahhaa.

You can look for evidence of a resurrection other than what people wrote but it was 2000 years ago Roy . The only evidence left is written evidence. Everyone is dead except for you know who.

It’s too late Roy you are stuck with it. It’s that empty tomb Roy the empty tomb.

No wonder you promote the kooky Jesus didn’t exist piffle because you know the Jesus story is so tight . Yes that’s right Roy tight .

 

[Total Power]

The short answer is yes.

Recent research suggests the Earth was once covered by a global ocean with very little visible land.

Constraining the Volume of Earth's Early Oceans With a Temperature-Dependent Mantle Water Storage Capacity Model
Junjie Dong, Rebecca A. Fischer, Lars P. Stixrude, Carolina R. Lithgow-Bertelloni

True, but was millions of years ago before homo sapiens appeared. The flood narrative presented in the Bible is a copy of the Babylonian myth and talks about 'humans' be wiped out cause of that. the ice age didn't end in an instant. It took thousands of years for different ice sheets to melt, and they didn't all melt at the same time. For example, ice cover reached a peak over Europe around 20,000 years ago, a period known as the last glacial maximum, but ice sheets over west Siberia didn't reach peak until about 15,000 years ago, a time when the European ice sheets had already significantly melted

This is an important feature of climate change though, although global temperature as a whole may rise or fall, it doesn't mean that ALL parts of the Earth are getting warmer or cooler.

I mean Man needs water to live. ALL civilisations create homes near bodies of water. Bodies of water tend to flood from time to time, some of them quite catastrophically.

But the epic of Gilgamesh (and Genesis which copied pretty much everything from that) does reference rain as being the cause of a flood. If I were to think of the bible as an independent record, this would, to me, imply that the region might at some point in time suffer from a large period of flooding and heavy rains.

The logic of how early flood stories come to be is fairly self explanatory. The defense of Biblical flood myth (and other flood myths that pre-dates Genesis) is purely pseudo science and wishful thinking. If someone wants to believe he can, but it isn't scientific and the evidence is quite clear on this.

The Fatal Flaws of Flood Geology | National Center for Science Education

The flood geology theory teaches essentially that the Biblical Flood of Noah buried all the fossils within a year's time, several thousand years ago.

ncse.ngo

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

That’s the point: you had it drummed into you. The bible is not meant to be taught like that.

So the bible's a good person, he's just misunderstood?

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

I honestly doubt you would believe a miracle even if you saw one.

Genuine question: how does one "believe" a miracle?

 

[Roylion]

The old blip in history.

There was no blip in history.

It should be so easy to tear apart but it just doesn’t go away.

It is easy to tear apart. Resurrection is by far the most far fetched unlikely explanation for the so called 'facts'.

Everything that has happened since the resurrection has said yep .. it’s legit.

No it hasn't.

Check the body out . It should still be in the tomb. Bawahhaa.

Stood in plenty of empty tombs in Jerusalem. Were they all resurrected?

Jesus' earthly remains lie mouldering somewhere under the city of Jerusalem. Miracles, resurrection, ascension, angels at birth and so on are fictional elaborations made by later authors.

You can look for evidence of a resurrection other than what people wrote but it was 2000 years ago Roy . The only evidence left is written evidence.

Theological works. Nowhere near anything resembling historical works.

Everyone is dead except for you know who.

His remains lie mouldering somewhere under Jerusalem. I may have even walked over them.

It’s that empty tomb Roy the empty tomb.

Many scholars reject the so called empty tomb.

Robert M. Price. “That the Empty Tomb story is Mark’s own creation is evident from the fact that he knows about the young man, his message, and the women’s refusal to tell anyone about this encounter. If they told no one, how does Mark know? He is ‘the omniscient narrator’—of fiction!”

John Shelby Spong: “The angels of the empty tomb, the tomb itself with its massive stone and its female visitors, to say nothing of the entire burial tradition, must be dismissed as not factual. These parts of the tradition were quite simply the myths and legends that arose later in a Jerusalem setting.”

Dale B. Martin: “If the empty tomb stories were historically true, [one] would strongly expect that the tomb would have become a place of veneration among early Christians. If they knew where it was, why didn’t they go back? It was very popular in the ancient world for people to have picnics around tombs. The family and the loved ones would get together on the anniversary of the death and they would actually celebrate the person’s memory with a picnic. If they knew the tomb where Jesus had been raised from, why did it take over 200 years for Christians to start venerating the tomb? And then they had to pick one that doesn’t seem to fit the archaeology of the Biblical narratives! It took basically Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine, to go back and choose period traditions about where the tomb might have been. [And] she said, ‘OK, this is the tomb, build the church of the sepulchure here!’ That’s in the 4th century! If [earlier Christians] knew where the tomb was, why didn’t they use it as a place to pray, as a place to hold Easter worship services? There’s no evidence that early Christians knew where the tomb was until too late to count as historical evidence.”

Gerd Lüdemann: “Investigation into the burial of Jesus [suggests] that his followers did not even know where their leader had been buried […] Either the Jews entrusted Joseph of Arimathea with putting the body of Jesus in a tomb or Jews unknown to us ‘buried’ the corpse in a place which can no longer be identified […] None of the [empty tomb narratives] come from eyewitnesses; they have passed through the hand of the community and/or a theologically trained figure. So the historical yield is unsatisfactory.”

Peter Kiirby: “The empty tomb narrative is a fiction. It is the invention of the author of Mark, from which all other reports are dependent on. There are signs of fictional creation in the narrative, and it contains several improbabilities. There are several plausible alternate reconstructions of the events that exclude the discovery of an empty tomb.”

Michael Goulder: “Romans almost always left the bodies of crucified criminals on the cross, where unburied and a prey to birds, they would be a horror and a warning to passers-by […]. We should assume that Jesus’ fate followed [this] normal pattern and that his body was left hanging for perhaps forty-eight hours. For the Jerusalem view of resurrection all that was necessary was that Jesus should have been seen. […] The trouble [of the empty tomb story] is that at so many points it is implausible, and even contradictory. If Jesus’ body is to be found missing, it will have to be buried in the tomb of a wealthy sympathizer. Joseph of Arimathaea supplies this need: he is an honorable councilor and has been expecting the kingdom of God. But then surely this is what Jesus has spent the week proclaiming in the temple; and if he is a councilor, presumably that means a member of the Sanhedrin, and he will have been present at the recent meeting, and so have been part of the unanimous vote condemning Jesus for blasphemy. A group of women goes out to anoint Jesus’ body “exceedingly early,” not knowing who is to roll away the enormous stone covering the tomb: although they are part of a community of tough men, some of them their relations, they would rather take a chance on meeting a gardener, or some such person, who happened to be around at 4 a.m. The point of the angel’s message is to have the disciples directed to Galilee, but the women say nothing to anyone in their fear, so the whole tale is pointless. The thought must arise that it is a late development of the Markan church, and that the women’s silence is an explanation of why it has not been heard before. In a divided church, those who thought physical resurrection an absurdity would not take kindly to a brand new story that Jesus’ body was buried in a stranger’s tomb, and had left it in the night. They would inevitably ask, “Why have we never heard this before?” “Ah,” replies the wily evangelist, “the women said nothing to anyone; for they were afraid.”

Randel Helms: “Paul did not know the Gospel resurrection stories, for the simple reason that they had not yet been invented, and the four evangelists, who wrote twenty to fifty years after Paul, either did not know his list of appearances or chose to ignore it. Perhaps most surprisingly of all the differences is Paul’s failure to mention the legend of the empty tomb, which was, for the writer of the earliest Gospel, the only public, visible evidence for the resurrection… Indeed, [Paul] had probably never heard of it; it was a legend that grew up in Christian communities different from his own.”

Robert W. Funk: “[I take the position that] the empty-tomb story found in the last chapter of the Gospel of Mark is a late legend, introduced into the tradition for the first time by Mark. It was unknown to Paul. It was also unknown to the Sayings Gospel Q and the Gospel of Thomas. Evidently the empty-tomb story and the reports of appearances did not come to play a central part in the Jesus tradition until several decades after Jesus’ death.”

and

"....the empty tomb story was actually created by Mark 40 years or so after Jesus died and probably had nothing to do with the original experience,"

Christopher F. Evans: “The status of [the empty tomb story] in Mark is not easy to discern. The empty tomb does not seem to have belonged to the earliest kerygma of the resurrection, and should probably not be read out of either the references to the burial (1 Cor. 15.4; Rom. 6.4; Col. 2.12) […] Attempts to establish an historical kernel of [Mark’s] empty tomb story are not very convincing […]. It is in itself the proclamation of the resurrection, and is made so by the non-naturalistic elements, i.e the contradiction in the women setting out with the question, ‘Who will roll away the stone?’, and the presence of the interpreting angel, who, in place of the Lord, utters the vital statements. It is difficult to see what historical nucleus would be left if these were removed. And The very basis of the narrative, a visit for a delayed embalming of a body already buried, is itself improbable, and is dropped by Matthew and John.”

James Crossley: “The earliest evidence for the empty tomb has no genuine eyewitness support (in contrast to the resurrection appearances) and Mk 16.8 suggests that the story was not well known. The first resurrection appearances are more likely to be visionary experiences interpreted as a bodily raised figure, which meant that the early accounts of Paul and Mark could assume an empty tomb even if historically this was not the case.”

No wonder you promote the kooky Jesus didn’t exist piffle because you know the Jesus story is so tight . Yes that’s right Roy tight .

The Jesus of the Gospels is a literary construct. Miracles, resurrection, ascension, angels at birth and so on are fictional elaborations made by later authors.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

bringing someone back from the dead, days after their funeral; is the single greatest miracle there ever was.

Well I don't know about you, but I'd conclude that person wasn't dead.

My definition of "dead" is , um, y'know... dead.

What's your definition of "dead"?

 

[Total Power]

The old blip in history. It should be so easy to tear apart but it just doesn’t go away. Everything that has happened since the resurrection has said yep .. it’s legit.

Check the body out . It should still be in the tomb. Bawahhaa.

You can look for evidence of a resurrection other than what people wrote but it was 2000 years ago Roy . The only evidence left is written evidence. Everyone is dead except for you know who.

It’s too late Roy you are stuck with it. It’s that empty tomb Roy the empty tomb.

No wonder you promote the kooky Jesus didn’t exist piffle because you know the Jesus story is so tight . Yes that’s right Roy tight .

Why don't you ask yourself this question first, how come someone accused of blasphemy and crucified by the Roman King was given a 'tomb' first. Romans were brutal in their practice. he ancient sources are unanimous that the victims were left on the cross to rot. Secondly, the story of ressuraction evolved from Mark to John, as time went by.

Your argument is bogus on 3 counts:

FIRST: It was hardly a 'normal event'. A dead man woke up from his grave, went into the town and partied with his disciples as a proof of his divinity. Hardly a normal 'funeral moment'. How come the apostles or disciples didn't note anything down? How come, nothing was written about his physical presence in Mark or Jesus deciding to appear in front of his disciples?

SECOND: Paul claims there were 500 witnesses to the resurrection, but these witnesses are not named, don't write their own accounts, or are in any way corroborated. Eyewitness testimony is extremely unreliable, even today. especially when it’s thousands of years old. I wouldn’t call it evidence. Do you think Mohammed split the moon? they have first hand evidence for it, not an astral travel experience from a fraud posing to be an Apostle. Which one would you value more? Paul right? lol...so predictable.

THIRD: Jesus was not the only one resurrected. Youd think they would have mentioned the sky going black, an earthquake, and the dead walking out of their graves to talk to their relatives in Jerusalem. Those signs are kinda hard to miss. How come no one during that wrote about it? It's the same about a normal death and funeral?

I will leave you with this:

"Neither the evangelists nor their first readers engaged in historical analysis. Their aim was to confirm Christian faith (Lk. 1.4; Jn. 20.31). Scholars generally agree that the Gospels were written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus. They thus do not present eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings." - Oxford Annotated Bible, 4th ed, pg. 1744


The story was clearly made up to turn Jesus into God, same way Josephus quote was manipulated to make sure people believe Jesus was not human. Euselbius admitted it himself he said 'we must go to any length to prove this, even falsehood'.

But don't let me rattle your cage.

 

[Total Power]

Genuine question: how does one "believe" a miracle?

Ask if they believe in Mohammed's miracle, or Sai Baba's ressuraction? they don't, despite we have eyewitness' on video here, far stronger than Jesus' .It always about 'my religion'. Why is it that miracles in other religions are always bogus hey Boston tiger but yours is always right? is it 2 billion people or is it cause of something else?

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Ask if they believe in Mohammed's miracle, or Sai Baba's ressuraction? they don't, despite we have eyewitness' on video here, far stronger than Jesus' .It always about 'my religion'. Why is it that miracles in other religions are always bogus hey Boston tiger but yours is always right? is it 2 billion people or is it cause of something else?

True, but in this case I'm not trying to disprove miracles (even though I'm sure you'd know I think they're horseschitte), I'm trying to come at it more from the question of religion's role in society - why do people need to believe in miracles, and what are the principles in play when they say they "believe" a miracle; what do these putative miracles mean to them?

Same as for my question a few times on here about prophecies - what sort of person has a need to believe that someone can tell the future? What does that tell us about the human species and how we go about life on earth?

 

[Total Power]

True, but in this case I'm not trying to disprove miracles (even though I'm sure you'd know I think they're horseschitte), I'm trying to come at it more from the question of religion's role in society - why do people need to believe in miracles, and what are the principles in play when they say they "believe" a miracle; what do these putative miracles mean to them?

Same as for my question a few times on here about prophecies - what sort of person has a need to believe that someone can tell the future? What does that tell us about the human species and how we go about life on earth?

when you fail at your own prophecies:


“For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds. Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.“ (Matthew 16: 27, 28)


Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.“ (Matthew 24: 25-34)

Predictions and claims for the Second Coming - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I will also add the claims of miracles wasn't uncommon back in those days, mostly because in old age Judea, the literacy rate was below 10%. Go to places like Africa/India/South East Asia, you will see claims of miracles all the time. I have lived in India for an extended period of time and claims of supernatural is pretty much an everyday affair. Why do you think this is the case and why so little or less in first world countries?

Not to mention the story of Jesus waking up from dead was a complete fabrication, but even if it was true, eyewitness accounts are extremely unreliable, not like Paul mentions any eyewitness'. Regardless...

 

[Osho]

So did Superman in the latest justice league movie.

I think Dionysus did it drunk and whilst copulating with several nymphettes. I think that places him up the MVP table.

 

[Rosscoe]

Genuine question: how does one "believe" a miracle?

You see something that is in contradiction to the laws of nature and you ‘believe’ it to be a miracle not an anomaly ie you believe it to be from god.

 

[Rosscoe]

There was no blip in history.



It is easy to tear apart. Resurrection is by far the most far fetched unlikely explanation for the so called 'facts'.



No it hasn't.



Stood in plenty of empty tombs in Jerusalem. Were they all resurrected?

Jesus' earthly remains lie mouldering somewhere under the city of Jerusalem. Miracles, resurrection, ascension, angels at birth and so on are fictional elaborations made by later authors.



Theological works. Nowhere near anything resembling historical works.



His remains lie mouldering somewhere under Jerusalem. I may have even walked over them.



Many scholars reject the so called empty tomb.

Robert M. Price. “That the Empty Tomb story is Mark’s own creation is evident from the fact that he knows about the young man, his message, and the women’s refusal to tell anyone about this encounter. If they told no one, how does Mark know? He is ‘the omniscient narrator’—of fiction!”

John Shelby Spong: “The angels of the empty tomb, the tomb itself with its massive stone and its female visitors, to say nothing of the entire burial tradition, must be dismissed as not factual. These parts of the tradition were quite simply the myths and legends that arose later in a Jerusalem setting.”

Dale B. Martin: “If the empty tomb stories were historically true, [one] would strongly expect that the tomb would have become a place of veneration among early Christians. If they knew where it was, why didn’t they go back? It was very popular in the ancient world for people to have picnics around tombs. The family and the loved ones would get together on the anniversary of the death and they would actually celebrate the person’s memory with a picnic. If they knew the tomb where Jesus had been raised from, why did it take over 200 years for Christians to start venerating the tomb? And then they had to pick one that doesn’t seem to fit the archaeology of the Biblical narratives! It took basically Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine, to go back and choose period traditions about where the tomb might have been. [And] she said, ‘OK, this is the tomb, build the church of the sepulchure here!’ That’s in the 4th century! If [earlier Christians] knew where the tomb was, why didn’t they use it as a place to pray, as a place to hold Easter worship services? There’s no evidence that early Christians knew where the tomb was until too late to count as historical evidence.”

Gerd Lüdemann: “Investigation into the burial of Jesus [suggests] that his followers did not even know where their leader had been buried […] Either the Jews entrusted Joseph of Arimathea with putting the body of Jesus in a tomb or Jews unknown to us ‘buried’ the corpse in a place which can no longer be identified […] None of the [empty tomb narratives] come from eyewitnesses; they have passed through the hand of the community and/or a theologically trained figure. So the historical yield is unsatisfactory.”

Peter Kiirby: “The empty tomb narrative is a fiction. It is the invention of the author of Mark, from which all other reports are dependent on. There are signs of fictional creation in the narrative, and it contains several improbabilities. There are several plausible alternate reconstructions of the events that exclude the discovery of an empty tomb.”

Michael Goulder: “Romans almost always left the bodies of crucified criminals on the cross, where unburied and a prey to birds, they would be a horror and a warning to passers-by […]. We should assume that Jesus’ fate followed [this] normal pattern and that his body was left hanging for perhaps forty-eight hours. For the Jerusalem view of resurrection all that was necessary was that Jesus should have been seen. […] The trouble [of the empty tomb story] is that at so many points it is implausible, and even contradictory. If Jesus’ body is to be found missing, it will have to be buried in the tomb of a wealthy sympathizer. Joseph of Arimathaea supplies this need: he is an honorable councilor and has been expecting the kingdom of God. But then surely this is what Jesus has spent the week proclaiming in the temple; and if he is a councilor, presumably that means a member of the Sanhedrin, and he will have been present at the recent meeting, and so have been part of the unanimous vote condemning Jesus for blasphemy. A group of women goes out to anoint Jesus’ body “exceedingly early,” not knowing who is to roll away the enormous stone covering the tomb: although they are part of a community of tough men, some of them their relations, they would rather take a chance on meeting a gardener, or some such person, who happened to be around at 4 a.m. The point of the angel’s message is to have the disciples directed to Galilee, but the women say nothing to anyone in their fear, so the whole tale is pointless. The thought must arise that it is a late development of the Markan church, and that the women’s silence is an explanation of why it has not been heard before. In a divided church, those who thought physical resurrection an absurdity would not take kindly to a brand new story that Jesus’ body was buried in a stranger’s tomb, and had left it in the night. They would inevitably ask, “Why have we never heard this before?” “Ah,” replies the wily evangelist, “the women said nothing to anyone; for they were afraid.”

Randel Helms: “Paul did not know the Gospel resurrection stories, for the simple reason that they had not yet been invented, and the four evangelists, who wrote twenty to fifty years after Paul, either did not know his list of appearances or chose to ignore it. Perhaps most surprisingly of all the differences is Paul’s failure to mention the legend of the empty tomb, which was, for the writer of the earliest Gospel, the only public, visible evidence for the resurrection… Indeed, [Paul] had probably never heard of it; it was a legend that grew up in Christian communities different from his own.”

Robert W. Funk: “[I take the position that] the empty-tomb story found in the last chapter of the Gospel of Mark is a late legend, introduced into the tradition for the first time by Mark. It was unknown to Paul. It was also unknown to the Sayings Gospel Q and the Gospel of Thomas. Evidently the empty-tomb story and the reports of appearances did not come to play a central part in the Jesus tradition until several decades after Jesus’ death.”

and

"....the empty tomb story was actually created by Mark 40 years or so after Jesus died and probably had nothing to do with the original experience,"

Christopher F. Evans: “The status of [the empty tomb story] in Mark is not easy to discern. The empty tomb does not seem to have belonged to the earliest kerygma of the resurrection, and should probably not be read out of either the references to the burial (1 Cor. 15.4; Rom. 6.4; Col. 2.12) […] Attempts to establish an historical kernel of [Mark’s] empty tomb story are not very convincing […]. It is in itself the proclamation of the resurrection, and is made so by the non-naturalistic elements, i.e the contradiction in the women setting out with the question, ‘Who will roll away the stone?’, and the presence of the interpreting angel, who, in place of the Lord, utters the vital statements. It is difficult to see what historical nucleus would be left if these were removed. And The very basis of the narrative, a visit for a delayed embalming of a body already buried, is itself improbable, and is dropped by Matthew and John.”

James Crossley: “The earliest evidence for the empty tomb has no genuine eyewitness support (in contrast to the resurrection appearances) and Mk 16.8 suggests that the story was not well known. The first resurrection appearances are more likely to be visionary experiences interpreted as a bodily raised figure, which meant that the early accounts of Paul and Mark could assume an empty tomb even if historically this was not the case.”




The Jesus of the Gospels is a literary construct. Miracles, resurrection, ascension, angels at birth and so on are fictional elaborations made by later authors.

Dale b Martin: why didn’t Christians have a picnic outside Jesus tomb? FMD these opinions are worse than tweets; so uninformed they do not warrant a response. How ridiculous.

 

[Rosscoe]

I think Dionysus did it drunk and whilst copulating with several nymphettes. I think that places him up the MVP table.

Flash Gordon produced an incredible amount of energy that jolted Superman back into action. He gets top marks for effort.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

You see something that is in contradiction to the laws of nature and you ‘believe’ it to be a miracle not an anomaly ie you believe it to be from god.

See, my response as a rational grownup would be to say "Ooh, that's odd. Wonder what caused that?"

If I'm of a scientific bent, I'd investigate it further, to see if there is something at play that we had overlooked, or, (gasp!) something that completely changes what we previously understood to be the case.

If the former, I'll be a legend among scientists; the latter, I'll be famous to all humankind.

If I'm not of a scientific bent (and I'm not), I go "hmm, I guess that's one of those things that science can't currently explain".

What's with this need to attribute something we can't explain, to a god - something we can't even prove?