Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

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> And we can rule out one of the two, because we have no evidence of anything supernatural and no indication that people can come back from the dead.

At this point, you seem to be saying "coming back from the dead is impossible, therefore it didn't happen". I think that's the wrong mindset. I think it's more correct to say, "coming back from the dead is impossible, but did it happen?"

See, if God exists, if He's really there, how would we know? Well, a historical instance of the impossible happening might be pretty good evidence that He's actually there. And the resurrection of Jesus is the big, flashing neon sign that says "Look over here. God actually did something."

So the question is, how good is the evidence for the resurrection? Well, there's an account of him appearing in a roomful of his followers (who at that time didn't believe in his resurrection), telling one of them "Look, here's the holes from the nails from when they crucified me. You can stick your finger in them. It's really me." This was written down for us by a guy who was in the room when it happened. That's... pretty good evidence.

To not believe it, you have to believe that it wasn't written by who it says it was, or that he lied about what happened, or that he was mistaken.

If you think the evidence indicates that one of those options is true, fine. But I suspect it's more likely that your position is really going to boil down to "God doesn't exist, therefore the resurrection didn't happen, therefore the story has to be mistaken." That is, your presupposition is determining how you view the evidence. I think it's more rational to give the evidence an honest look, even if the conclusions destroy your presupposition.

"That's... pretty good evidence." No it is not. It is extremely weak evidence. Written by people who clearly had alternative motives.

"This was written down for us by a guy who was in the room when it happened." It is extremely unlikely the author was in the room that day.

Again, why did Stephen not even attempt to convince the Sanhedrin? "flashing neon sign" ... apparently it was not back in those days, let alone today. Imagine if early christians had such good evidence, how much faster and more broadly would it have spread if the Sanhedrin would adopt Jesus his views. Muhammad would have been devout christian.

"[..] That is, your presupposition is determining how you view the evidence."

That is true. But it is called the null hypothesis. Innocent until proven guilty. It is the number one "invention" that launched humanity into modernity. But that should not be misunderstood as not giving alternative hypothesis an honest look.

But the claim of something supernatural is quite a strong one, it should come with an equally strong signal before it becomes credible. As things stand today, the conclusion is, god is unlikely and unprovable. Moreover, belief in invisible unknowable things does not do the world any favors.

For the bible or christianity to exist, we do not need a supernatural explanation, it falls well within normal human behaviour.

You keep coming back to Stephen. You're so sure that he would have chosen the line of argument that you expect, that you're using that one data point to prove that all of it is false.

But people choose different lines of argument for different reasons. Stephen clearly touched a nerve with the Sanhedrin; it's hard to say that his approach was ineffective (unless you define "effective" as "they agreed" instead of "it hit them where they lived").

"It is extremely unlikely the author was in the room that day."

A bare negation is a pretty weak argument. Do you have evidence, or just a presumption?

Acts was written in greek, 50 years after those events, and that is being generous. This is the common understanding even by christian scholars, right?

Even if the bible is the most coherent book ever, makes sense at ever line and grand plot. And says to be an eye witness account of supernatural things. Still that would not count as proof of the supernatural. If it made testable predictions, or has information truly unknowable to those who wrote it, that would warrant further investigation.

So no, I do not talk about proof. However if "roman soldiers at the grave got scared" is the "evidence", then this is a nice contrast. If you cherry pick, put everything in the best possible light, and ignore other important things and contexts, then maybe it can come out looking this way.

Biased people writing a biased account of things long ago is a very likely explanation. As an exercise, write down why there were roman soldiers guarding the grave in the first place? Write it down twice, once in the best possible light from the christian perspective, and once in the best possible light from the other perspective.

The bible does make testable predictions, I wrote a few at the start of this thread, but may I suggest we put Mark 16:17-18 to the test. Are you volunteering? ("And these signs will accompany those who believe:[..] and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all [..]")

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