My reply to R. L. Solberg on Jesus' resurrection

 I posted the following in reply to R. L. Solberg's comments about his debate with Rabbi Tovia Singer:  See here:

I don't understand why you find Jesus' resurrection significant.  I can tell from modern Christianity and from the NT that if I become interested in Jesus, there is a greater than 51% chance that I will get suckered into a "cult".  Doesn't it make more sense for skeptics to limit their sins to just the sin of unbelief, and to avoid adding "heresy" to their account?

Sure, you can say God will surely reveal doctrinal truth to his sincere followers, but that logically requires a presupposition that all Christians who end up interpreting the bible differently than you do, were therefore not sincere.

If you refuse to say most of today's Christians are insincere, then how DO you explain the fact that millions of equally sincere seekers of Christ disagree on how to interpret a bible verse?

In other words, how do YOU explain the fact that another Christian who is equally as sincere and saved as you, disagrees with your interpretation of a bible verse?

You won't like the hypothesis that God has different strokes for different folks, but aside from that, I'm not seeing what's so unreasonable with that hypothesis.  If you reject it, it would seem you are forced to either admit God may want certain sincere Christ-seekers to interpret the bible incorrectly....or you are forced to insist that those Christ seekers who adopt what you consider to be "heresy" were never sincere toward God in the first place.

The last hypothesis makes sense enough, but it's also horrifically bigoted and makes your own interpretations of the bible a judge on whether some other Christ-seeker is sincere or insincere.

Can skeptics be reasonable to conclude that after 2,000 years, the NT's message is locked in fatal ambiguity, a thing that would justify today's skeptic to characterize the whole business as unprofitably convoluted and not worth one's time in taking seriously?

My reply to Brendon Naicker on Paul's apostleship

 When I downloaded Mr. Naicker's pdf "Apostles" from Academia, I sent him the following message:

Hello,
I have two criticisms of your paper:
You say of Paul in your pdf page 12:

He did not fulfil the qualifications of Acts 1:21, but the Damascus Road experience was a resurrection appearance (1 Cor. 15:8), and he could claim to have “seen the Lord” (1 Cor. 9:1); he was thus a witness of the resurrection. 

I don't understand why you would believe Paul's claim to have "seen" the Lord, as Acts 9 and 22 make clear, Paul was blinded by the light, and nothing in those stories ever expresses or implies that Paul physically saw a risen Christ.

The second criticism is:  you admit on the same page that Paul

"...did not fulfil the qualifications of Acts 1:21...."

That is correct, but I don't understand why you felt that Paul's alleged experience on the road to Damascus qualified him anyway.  The original apostles in Acts 1:21 made it a criteria of apostolic office that the person in question must have accompanied Jesus "from the beginning".

If you admit Paul didn't fulfill that criteria, then what makes you think his alleged "seeing" the risen Christ on the road to Damascus was a sufficient substitute?

The criterion in Acts 1:21 does not express or imply any exceptions.   You either accompanied Jesus and the apostles "since the beginning", or you don't become an apostle, period.

Worse, if you think Paul's "seeing" the risen Christ was a sufficient substitute, then do you say the 500 who saw the risen Christ at the same time (1st Cor. 15:6), means there were 500 "apostles" while Paul was still alive?  If their seeing the risen Christ didn't suddenly make them apostles, then why do you make an exception for Paul? 

In short, can skeptics be "reasonable" even if not infallible, to insist Paul was a false apostle?