Lumpenproletariat
Veteran Member
- Joined
- May 9, 2014
- Messages
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- Basic Beliefs
- ---- "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts."
No, the examples you named were religions which did not contain a resurrection story in which a person was said to have died and then rose again. Just because someone attaches the word "resurrection" to a legend does not mean the character died and then rose again back to life.
Further, I named 2 major religions which were started ("they wanted to start") which never contained any resurrection story. I.e., the Qumran religion (the "Dead Sea Scrolls") and Islam. These are at least two religions someone started and which contained no resurrection story.
If you really could give an example, you would quote from the ancient literature which includes the story of a person who died and then returned to life. There are no such cases other than 3 or 4 minor resuscitation stories where a victim is revived as a very insignificant event of little importance in the story. Such resuscitation stories are no different than some examples documented in modern times, of a "near-death" experience where someone appeared to be dead but was revived an hour or 2 later. Some odd cases of this are documented, even where it's several hours before the "dead" one revives. That's not the same as someone seen by witnesses to be killed and buried but then reappearing alive a few days later, also seen by those same witnesses. There are no such pre-Christian stories among the pagan or Jewish legends. You cannot give an example and quote the text source claiming any such resurrection happened.
(Having said the above, I will "shift the goalpost" slightly and acknowledge that perhaps one can find a genuine "resurrection" story or two among the many Hindu legends. Maybe they're really post-Christian, but perhaps something even pre-Christian. These would be cases where a dead person is brought back to life several days later, not just a few hours. Maybe you can find it if you search far enough, as there are thousands of Hindu miracle stories about everything imaginable. If so, they are of very minor importance in Hinduism, about very minor characters having no special significance within the vast sea of Hindu miracles among the vast pages of that literature far in excess of the Judeo-Christian writings. Incidentally, "shifting the goal post" is perfectly legitimate and is not a logical flaw in any way, but is part of the truth-seeking process.)
If there were such "other religions" having a resurrection legend, you would quote from the ancient source of that time which tells of the person who died and then allegedly came back to life the next day or a few days later. You're not offering any such quote because there is no such source in all the ancient literature, no matter how many times you repeat falsely this claim which you heard from your modern Jesus-debunker propaganda guru and which is not based on anything in ancient sources telling of such a person dying and then coming back to life.
Our knowledge of those ancient religions and what they believed is based on the ancient writings, from those who lived at that time, not from the 20th- and 21st-century propagandists you're relying on to confirm your prejudice that the Jesus resurrection could not have happened. Where is your ancient source? or why can't your guru provide it? You must stop confusing with fact the propaganda preached at you by your guru on a crusade to corroborate your wish that the Jesus resurrection cannot have happened or that it's in the same category as dozens of other beliefs in the ancient legends. This might be fact if he can provide the ancient source for this, but not if the only source is your guru's propaganda.
Ignorant of what? There has to be a source (from that ancient time) saying it in order for it to be true and for someone to be ignorant of it. "Ignorance" has to mean ignorant of some fact, which you're not giving. Just because you can toss out a laundry list of ancient religions or legends doesn't mean someone there died and then came back to life.
Just because a hero figure is memorialized later does not mean that historical person came back to life after being killed.
People today remember a past hero, like Daniel Boone or Babe Ruth etc., or, someone killed, like Lincoln or JFK or Martin Luther King --- etc., but just because they "live on" in people's memory does not mean they came back to life after being killed. That's all your examples are, at best, as a past legendary hero is memorialized and brought to "life" in stories and symbols for later generations. But there is no written account from that person's time in history which says he died and then rose back to life a few days later, overcoming death.
It's not "ignorance" to disbelieve your false claim that there were such cases. Skepticism and doubting you and asking for evidence is not "ignorance."
You mean like the moon-landing story, which you know was "made up"?
Why do you demand that everyone believe YOUR made-up story? if you won't give any reason or evidence, but just keep repeating your made-up story that something else was made-up, why must we believe you? We have 5 1st-century sources which say this happened, not contradicted by any other source, and no "religion" fabricated these 1st-century writings. You could deny any historical event by just saying religions made it up. You could just as well say that the moon-landing story is made up. "Made up" has to mean that there is no evidence for it like there is for the other stories which are NOT "made up" but are true.
Your simplistic dogma that it just can't happen is not sufficient to establish that it's "made up" rather than true.
How do we critically examine a claim that someone who was killed came back to life a few days later? How else but to consider where the claim comes from? and how many sources there are which make this claim? and when and where the claim originated?
For you to say we must dismiss all sources for the belief and reject the belief because a debunker-guru preaches that it has to be false, regardless of any evidence, is not to "critically examine" it. Don't preach to others that they must "critically examine" the belief if you refuse to consider evidence but only dismiss it dogmatically as you were instructed by your guru-debunker-crusader.
This event is reported in written accounts of the time, like all other historical events are reported. These accounts are facts, documented by scholars and experts who know of the time and of other documents from the period. To "critically examine" the claim requires checking each of the sources, the writings, where the claim is made, and asking all the questions possible about what was seen, or what each source is saying about the reported event, and also considering whether it's contradicted by any other source.
But to demand that all the written accounts of the time have to be dismissed is the opposite of what "critically examine" means. To demand that all the evidence must be ignored, or that certain selected evidence you don't like must be excluded, and overruled by a dogma that all such claims had to have been "made up" regardless of any facts or evidence is the same as a cover-up and a book-burning to destroy the evidence and run away from critical inquiry. As long as you continue to overrule the facts and evidence as off limits, you make meaningless your slogan to "critically examine" this belief. Such a belief, if it's false, can be debunked by looking back at the ancient written accounts claiming to report what happened. But your refusal to look back at those writings, and banning them from consideration, is the opposite of what "critically examine" means.
To "critically examine" it requires looking at all the written accounts which say this happened, and also to look at any other written accounts which say anything similar happened, indicating any pattern, or fad of such claims. It also means looking at other claims about miracles, or possible deceptions, suggesting any pattern of charlatans, or demagogues or fraud being perpetrated.
There are some facts about this in the ancient writings -- e.g. mention of charlatans and hoax miracles, but if you refuse to rely on any such ancient source, you are attesting to the fact that the Jesus resurrection is not in this category, even though there are other claims of something miraculous which can be debunked, by reference to the ancient evidence (or lack of evidence). Why is the Jesus resurrection an exception to this pattern? Why is this the only case for which we do have evidence which holds up against critical examination, while all the other cases are lacking in evidence, and some debunked in writings from the time?
Also, there are in history cases of something unexplained and which are baffling to our known science. In all claims of such events, the only resolution is to look at the facts carefully -- the reports of what happened -- and seek an explanation, or propose a theory. Maybe a reasonable answer can be found. Each case is unique. You cannot slop them all together into one category and brand them all as "made up" because you dislike what is claimed. If you can't find an explanation, then all you can say is that we don't know, and though you can choose to put it in the "made up" category as most likely, someone else could just as reasonably believe it even though the explanation is not known. There's plenty of truth, or facts, for which we don't have the explanation.
Believing that it happened does not include the explanation HOW it happened. If there's evidence that it happened, reported by those near to the event, then it might be true, i.e., the explanation is that it did happen, and yet we don't know how it happened. Because not knowing HOW something happened does not REFUTE the claim that it happened.
And you and your 21st-century guru-debunker-authority will not critically examine your beliefs, such as your claim that there are "resurrection" stories in the ancient religions, for which you can produce no written sources from that time which say someone died and then came back to life.