<1. Show me where I said I don't think God can create Adam and Eve or create a worldwide flood and lead Noah and the animals onto the ark.

If you don't show where I said this, then this becomes a new dead end for you.>

Your response,

<Colonel Mortimer: <Big Pawn:> do you believe the stories of Adam & Eve and Noah's Ark are true?>

You failed to meet my challenge and post what you said I said.

Point #1 is now refuted.

Let's move on to point #2 now - both a and b.

This is called shifting, and it is usually taken as a sign of defeat in an argument.>

Now you're simply lying, here's the original topic as per my first post..

<Colonel Mortimer: <Ohio>'s point still stands. I might not agree with his world view or his religion, but his point remains uncontested. If one feels that certain miracles in the Bible are uncontroversial, what is it about other miracles that they are so unbelievable? What is the rational process to decide the difference between them?

If it's unscientific to believe in Noah's ark, why is it scientific to believe that a dead man became alive again?

It's a very simple point made many times by <Ohio> - yet folks on this page keep running away from it.>

Colonel, why do you continue to insist that for the Resurrection to be true, Noah's Ark must be true?

What is your rationale for insisting that all miracles in the Bible stand or fall together?

I've already made clear that is not a criterion for a proper understanding and interpretation of the Bible.

There is no prerequisite that one is conditional upon the other.

We know that Noah's Ark & the worldwide Flood as described in Genesis cannot be a literal event because of the indisputable scientific evidence pertaining to geology, archaeology, genetics, evolution etc.

Yet this in no way adversely affects the plausibility of the Resurrection or many other events described in the Bible.

By comparison, unlike the Flood, nobody can definitively state that the Resurrection of Christ did not happen.

Evidence disproving resurrection as a general rule can of course be made based on verifiable cases of any number of dead people not coming back to life, but no such refutation can be made regarding the one specific case of Jesus of Nazareth 2,000 years ago.

Now if you maintain that - like Noah's Ark - it cannot be true simply because it is unscientific, I would point out:-

1) that being unscientific does not preclude the intervention of God specifically in the Resurrection (unless it could be proved that God does not exist); or

2) the Resurrection may actually not be contrary to science, but an indicator that science does not (yet?) describe the full expanse of reality (see the link in my forum for further reference).

Whichever way you look at this, your feeble attempts to refute the Resurrection based upon a factual (or otherwise) Noah's Ark are mendacious, defective and irrelevant to the argument.

Whether or not certain miracles in the Bible are controversial or uncontroversial is immaterial to this discussion.

Whether they are believable or unbelievable is beside the point.

<BP: You misunderstand. I am not objecting to your point of view at all. I'm not saying that the bible isn't the revealed Word of God. >

I'm sure that's very interesting but the question I asked was "Why does Jesus expect people to believe in the resurrection?"

<<ohio>, when we discuss the bible with people that don't believe in God, they don't accept that the scriptures are holy. It becomes circular to discuss it with them because we don't share the same assumptions. You and I and <optimal> can talk about the bible and all understand that we agree that the texts are scripture, but that's among us. >

As time and knowledge accumulates, the amount of things that his followers belief he did becomes smaller and smaller. With the advent of the scientific revolution, this process began accelerating exponentially.

Nowadays, the few diehards with some intelligence (the rest are called the fundies) can use only the things for which there's no complete logical or scientific understanding (in many cases there is logical understanding but they still don't get it because, well, in involves logic)

We don't know what happened before the Big Bang,...God must have jump started it all!

We don't have a clear picture of how consciousness happens in the brain,...it's God and the soul he gave us.

We don't have impartial or dispassionate testimonies of what went on after Jesus was lowered to the ground,...he resurrected!

Since the dawn of time the thousands of Gods created by men have been nothing but a place holder for future explanations. Like caulk filling in holes or cracks until a repair or full replacement is found,... in the form of a testable scientific theory.

What do you mean I'm sure that's interesting? What makes your question relevant to my discussion with <mort>? I should have said to you about your question "that's interesting. What's that got to do with my debate?"

I'm not sure Jesus expected people to believe he was risen so easily. One of the disciples had to put his finger in his wound because seeing wasn't even believing - and that was a disciple.

It could be argued that the Holy Spirit would guide people to the Truth. As I explained to you earlier, people experience God in their lives and this is how most people come to know God.

Either way, this has nothing to do with the argument I presented to <mort>, so I don't see how this is relevant.

This is an incoherent sentence. There is no "before" the Big Bang. Time itself came into existence at the point of singularity, along with space (space-time) and matter.

<clemens>, we had a debate to start but it seems like you've just skipped over my last response to you about this debate and now you are here posting away.

Considering that in the infancy of religions everything was an act of God, we can certainly say that in this day and age every argument presents itself showing a good dose of the God of the Gaps explanation>

Those are your straw man arguments.

I didn't present those arguments.

I never discuss with fellow Christians the contentious topics of Genesis as I feel it is not central to salvation and can only serve to cause friction in the Church. I have my own opinions on all of this but won't share them with other Christians if all it will do is cause problems.

I think it happens to be wiser to focus on the atonement, the resurrection and the life of Jesus because that is was is central to the issue of salvation, and it's where there is common ground.

Why should Christians fight about non central issues? All it can do is undermine the faith of the Christian you are talking to, even if it's just by accident. I wouldn't want to do that.

The resurrection has absolutely nothing to do with any story in Genesis, yet it holds the key of Life.

<mort> plays you guys for fools, getting you all riled up against one another. Do you really think <mort> cares about anything else besides causing strife among Christians, who he resents?

I won't be his fool!

I defend basically two arguments:

1. God exists

and

2. Jesus was raised from the dead by God.

What happened before the Big Bang is definitely an open question as its shown by competent models by cosmologists like Steinhardt, Vilenkin, Turok, Linde, etc.

Perhaps nothing
Perhaps another universe
Perhaps a sea of universes
Perhaps a different version of our own universe

< I didn't present those arguments>

I never said you did. I was only showing the pattern that characterize the theistic strategy as it gets cornered by the advances in human understanding.

<please go back and read my response to you about debating theism and atheism>

please go back and read my response to you.... I clearly stated that "I'm not here to debate". What is it with you and your obsession with debates? For what I gather, you are clearly bad at it, you show little or no respect for the other posters, no matter what happens you declare yourself the winner, and judging by the selections and comments of the "debates on video" on your user profile page above, you appear to be deaf, shortsighted and with as much objectivity as a cinder block.

<SugarDom's Noah's Ark is a literal event. The belief system would fall if it wasn't>

The belief system has fallen... into disrepute. If you cherry pick the word of the Almighty you are a cheater ( and you will spend your life arguing with those who cherry pick different than you, see link bellow *) and if you take it all literally you are left looking like a fool with a bunch of ridiculous mythologies.

No, it's an incoherent question. Time came into being at the moment of the big bang.

I never said you did. I was only showing the pattern that characterize the theistic strategy as it gets cornered by the advances in human understanding.>

Why?

Those arguments aren't made here.

You need to deal with the arguments I give, not the arguments you are used to dealing with; that you like to deal with.

Deal with my arguments.

<<please go back and read my response to you about debating theism and atheism>

please go back and read my response to you.... I clearly stated that "I'm not here to debate".>

You're not here to debate?

There is no "before" the big bang.>

How do you know, when it's something you can't possibly know?>

Science.

Actually it's the other way around. I was making sensible points and he went around them to give a speech about some arguments that weren't given here.

He tried to drag the debate off course into Genesis but that didn't fly here. We stayed on topic and because of that the debate ended nicely and neatly.

<Clemens> came here to debate but then backed out. I understand his decision. No one really wants to defend the proposition "God does not exist".

Now it's time to get back to the resurrection and the historical case for it. How does the historical evidence for Jesus stack up against other ancient figures?

Why is it that there are almost no historians that say Jesus did not exist?

Do most historians agree that Jesus died on the cross?

Do most historians agree that Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Aramathea?

Do most historians agree that people experienced visions and discourse with Jesus after his death?

How do these points explain the desciples belief that Jesus had risen, such that they would die for that belief?

Do these points explain the rise of Christianity?

How did the New Testament texts come to be gathered together and canonized?

Lots to discuss.

<RESPECTED SCIENTIST SAYS HE FOUND PROOF GOD EXISTS>

http://www.breakingchristiannews.co...

This "revelation" will be most distressing to our resident atheists, <Colonel Mortimer> & <Clemens Scheitz>!

<According to the Geophilosophical Association of Anthropological and Cultural Studies, scientist Michio Kaku, who is known as one of the developers of the revolutionary String Theory, stated, “I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence.”

“To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance,” he stated.>

CM & CS prefer to think of themselves simply as biological organisms randomly birthed into a meaningless universe.

Always happy to discuss the truth of Christ's Resurrection among believers, but not argue about it, and especially not "debate" it with non-believers, since we just end up talking at cross-purposes.

Anyway, from the questions you raised, only one, "Do most historians agree that Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Aramathea?" remains contentious among historians.

It's strange that one would say "outside the gospels". The gospels were collected together precisely because they were the most reliable sources, as I suspect you know already.

The gospel accounts were just documents floating around here and there in the first century. They were historical in style and were scattered about. First and second century historians compared them with other texts and figured out which ones were genuine and which ones were fakes.

Some people have the notion that a group of disciples got together and decided to write the new testament, in order to perpetuate a myth about Jesus. Nothing could be further from the truth.

These accounts were written independently of one another and provide independent attestations to the events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth.

Still, another way to look at this is that the narrative of Jesus being buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea is not challenged in any other historical text.

Joseph was a member of the Jewish court that convicted Jesus. There was a lot of resentment from the Christians toward these people, making the story of Jesus receiving an honorable burial by one of the members unlikely to be a Christian invention.

Most New Testament critics agree that Jesus was in fact buried in a tomb by Joseph:

<the majority of New Testament critics concur that Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea. According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”>

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-...