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?

Cold Case Christianity: Yes, the resurrection is possibly a late legend

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Quarantine Questionnaire: Is the Resurrection Account a Late Legend?

J. Warner April 3, 2020

Two answers from an atheist:

No, and the rumor about Paul, held by "thousands" of Jewish Christians, that he flouted Mosaic law, also wasn't a late legend.  Acts 21:18-24.  As long as you say that rumor was false, you agree that falsity can exist in the early church, without being "legend" or "late".

Yes...it is reasonable to say the resurrection appearance stories in the gospels are late legends for two reasons:  a) it is reasonable to agree with most Christian scholars that Mark is the earliest published gospel, and b) it is reaosnable to agree with most Christian scholars that the long ending of Mark was a later interpolation.  If both premises are reasonable, then it is reasonable to draw the inference that the earliest form of the resurrectin story was limited to the women hearing about Jesus' resurrection solely from some unidentified man at the suspiciously opened tomb.

Certain dickhead apologists will scream that Mark's resurrection appearance ending would have been necessarily implied due to the oral preaching behind that gospel, is foolish:  the other three gospel authors give plenty of resurrection appearance detail, so it is far from obvious that the reason a gospel author leaves out a detail is because he is expecting the originally intended reader to rely on the oral preaching to fill in the blanks left by the written account.

And now a point by point reply to Wallace:

How can we be sure that the story of Jesus wasn’t changed over time?

You can't:  reconstructing history from ancient sources only supplies probabilities, especially in cases where the ancient assertions are by no means "obvious" and not corroborated by other verifiable details. No, you aren't proving John's resurrection testimony reliable by nothing that archaeologists have found the Pool of Siloam.  What are you?  6?  What are you gonna say next?  Mommy loves you because she took you to McDonalds? Grow the fuck up and quit committing the fallacy of hasty generalization.

How do we know that the virgin conception, the miracles and the Resurrection weren’t added to the story late?

First, your question is irrelevant.  Jesus made clear that christian discipleship depended on generations of Christian leaders passing on for posterity all the things which he had taught the original apostles (see the part of the Great Commission nost people miss, Matthew 28:20).  Not only did Jesus never say one damn thing about his virgin birth, he castigated another person who's comment to him had created the perfect justification for him to mention it (Luke 11:27-28).

Second, given that most Christian scholars agree Mark's gospel is the earliest and lacks the virgin birth narrative despite how its content would have strongly supported Mark's "Son of God" theme, it's reasonable to infer either a) Mark never heard of the VB (justifying the inference it was late) or b) Mark knew of it but considered it fiction (justifying the inference that it is fiction).  The third option screamed about by apologists, c) Mark knew the VB story was true but "chose to exclude" it for his own reasons, cannot be demonstrated with any degree of probability.  Since the inference that Mark never heard of the VB or had rejected it as fiction does rest upon a probability argument, the skeptic has a probability and the apologist has only possibility.  So skeptics are reasonable to draw the negative inference even if there's always that trifling "possibility" that the VB was true.

Similar arguments could be made on the basis of John the latest gospel.  He too doesn't mention the virgin birth, despite how it would have strongly supported his high Christology.  That makes the skeptical hypothesis reasonable, and our reasonableness therein doesn't require that we bat out of the ballpark every stupid trifle any apologist could possibly conjure up. 

Beasley-Murray refuses to decide the matter:

The external evidence for the pl. is overwhelming, and most adopt it without hesitation…The decision is more difficult than is generally acknowledged, and we leave it open.

Beasley-Murray, G. R. (2002). Vol. 36: Word Biblical Commentary : John.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page 2). Dallas: Word, Incorporated

Inerrantist Christian scholar Borchert does not understand why some scholars, despite knowing the plural is the correct reading, still insist the passage is about the virgin birth:

Some scholars have argued that the verse is describing the virginal conception of Jesus, and they have chosen to read the singular form instead of the plural (haimatōn) “bloods.” But the textual evidence for such a reading is virtually nonexistent, and the logic of the text definitely argues against such a view. 

No Greek MSS support the singular reading, yet M. Ē. Boismard, in St. John’s Prologue (Westminster: Newman, 1957), s.v., and others have argued for such a view. Cf. D. M. Crossan, “Mary’s Virginity in St. John—An Exegetical Study,” Marianum 19.1 (1957): 115–26, and “Mary and the Church in John 1:13, ” Bible Today 1.20 (1965): 1318–24. Beasley-Murray (John, 13) relying on E. C. Hoskyns and F. N. Davey (The Fourth Gospel [London: Faber & Faber, 1947], 164–65), thinks that even though the plural is clearly the correct reading and even though the virgin birth may not be in mind, the incarnation could have been in view here. I find this argument difficult to accept.

Borchert, G. L. (2001, c1996). Vol. 25A: John 1-11 (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 118). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Bruce Metzger, otherwise considered by conservative Christian apologists to be the last word on NT textual variation, dashes cold water on the hopes of those fools who insist John 1:13 is talking about Jesus' virgin birth:

Although a number of modern scholars (including Zahn, Resch, Blass, Loisy, R. Seeburg, Burney, Büchsel, Boismard, Dupont, and F. M. Braun)³ have argued for the originality of the singular number, it appeared to the Committee that, on the basis of the overwhelming consensus of all Greek manuscripts, the plural must be adopted, a reading, moreover, that is in accord with the characteristic teaching of John. The singular number may have arisen either from a desire to make the Fourth Gospel allude explicitly to the virgin birth or from the influence of the singular number of the immediately preceding auvtou/.
--------Metzger, Textual Commentary, Page 169

Furthermore, most English translations don't use the singular, they use the plural, so that 1:13 is referring to Christians, not Jesus:

 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,
 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NAU) 

 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,
 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NRS) 

 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--
 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NIV) 

 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:
 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NKJ)

But no, I'm sure that because fundie Chrstianity is dogmatic by nature, fundies who are frightened at the prospect of not being able to harmonize all NT statements with all NT statements, will insist skeptics are "dumb" or "morons" for adopting the plural in harmony with many conservative evangelical Christian scholars.

I wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night, shivering with fear, wondering whether my above-cited arguments are sound.  I'm also a millionaire.

Furthermore, given that out of 27 NT books, only two even mention the virgin birth, it is perfectly reasonable to infer that the earliest Christians did not think that part of Jesus' life was too important. 

Why would Paul think the resurrection proved Jesus to be the Son of God, but the VB wasn't worth discussing?  If we are to presume Paul was a modern-day inerrantist who trusted Joseph's and Mary's stories about portents during her pregnancy as necessarily true, wouldn't it follow that Paul would find the VB story equally as supportive of his view of Christ as the resurrection?  And given that Christianity had major obstacles to getting started, wouldn't shameless promoter like Paul insist on using ALL of his guns?

And don't forget, Paul asserted that Jesus' flesh came from David's "seed" (Romans 1:3, neither genealogy of Jesus makes Mary a descendant of David, but they specify Joseph was a descendant of David, Luke 2:4), and further, that Jesus' divine sonship was declared due to his rising from the dead (v. 4).  Had Paul approved of the VB stories, he would likely would have cited the VB and not just Jesus' resurrection as the basis for Jesus' divine sonship.  That naturalistic problem looms large also in Acts 13:33, Jesus was divinely begotten at his resurrection...how many times was he begotten? Another sign that the speaker (Paul) did not think Jesus recieved such divine titles any earlier.

I'm quite aware of the stupid trifles of internet apologists concerning Mark 6:3 and have answered them here.  Since Christians themselves cannot even agree on whether the VB story is true, or if so, whether it qualifies as essential or non-essential doctrine, the skeptic is certainly reasonable to consider it nothing more than trifling about the details of fairy tales.  You don't know the credibililty of Matthew or Luke, you have no fucking clue how they gained thier material.  Your hypothesis that they asked eyewitnesses is no less conjectural than the skeptic's theory that many gospel stories are just made up

Attacking the Historical Reliability of John's gospel: the Christian scholars who help the cause

Agnostic New Testament scholar and historian Bart Ehrman caused a storm of controversy in publishing How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee (HarperCollins, 2014).  Therein he essentially argues that the higher Christology in the gospels did not exist in the earliest strata, citing John, which all acknowledge to be the latest of the 4, as having the highest Christology.

Conservatives were not slow to provide scholarly response, see How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature-A Response to Bart Ehrman, Michael F. Bird, Dr. Craig A. Evans, Simon Gathercole, Charles E. Hill, Chris Tilling (Zondervan Academic; 2014).

Michael Bird's chapter includes a revealing admission, given that he is trying to defend the historical reliability of the gospel of John from scholarly attack:  From pp. 67-68

Bird is admitting that what we get in John's gospel are traditions that have been "truly interpreted through a pronounced theological lens".  Notice the underlined portion too.

Bird makes a similar but slightly more revealing claim at Patheos:

The Johannine Gospel yields a creative blend of memory, mystery, and midrash.

See here.

Exactly where does the skeptic become "unreasonable" in arguing that conservative Christian scholars, while in the process of defending John's historical reliability from scholarly attack, would never made such admissions about John unless they felt the typical fundamentalist "gospels = videotape" viewpoint was false?

What did we skeptics miss?  Maybe Michael Bird doesn't know what he's talking about, or is just a liberal wolf among conservative sheep?  No, you can get his bio and more from the video wherein he debates Bart Ehrman on the subject "How Jesus Became God". See here.  Wikipedia refers to Eternity Magazine calling him a "heavy-hitter" and says Bird is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, Society of Biblical Literature, and Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.  Clearly he has no other interest except to serve the devil.

This post does not pretend to delve into the myriad scholarly justifications for tossing John's resurrection testimony in the trash, it is simply to correct a profound misunderstanding that most Christians have, namely, that you can never be "reasonable" to believe position X merely because your opponent admits it is true.

In a court of law, this is called "admission of party opponent" and is particularly devastating where admissible, as common sense says your opponent would never admit to any truth-claim you also believe in, unless they seriously thought the claim had a lot of merit.

I'm not saying Bird admitted Jesus didn't rise from the dead.  I'm merely saying Bird's admissions about the non-historical elements in John justify the skeptic to conclude that not even "accepting Jesus" , becoming "born again", and obtaining one's Ph.d in a gospel-related field, will do anything to help keep alive the simpleminded fundie view that Jesus actually spoke every statement placed in his mouth by John.

If a skeptic is an amateur, they are reasonable to simply accept such concessions from the likes of Bird, Evans, etc, and conclude personally that John's gospel offers nearly nothing of serious historical value to help in the problem of Jesus' resurrection.

That would not be sufficient for the skeptic who knows their bible very well and goes around making scholarly claims in opposition to Christianity...like me.  We know about the more detailed arguments conservatives make in the effort to make John's gospel appear as much like a verbatim transcript of a video as possible.  Skeptics like us would a greater duty than the amateur skeptic to answer such arguments.  I have, but I haven't posted most online because I disagree with other authors who make their book content available for free in various posts online.

You would figure that if the historical reliability of John and his Christ-sayings were such an obvious fact of reality, we wouldn't be finding conservative evangelical Christian scholars making the opposite claim as they go about defending John's historical reliability from Ehman's attacks.

Why Triablogue's endlessly trifling bullshit cannot possibly matter

Triablogue's Jason Engwer puts a shitload of effort into trying to prove that the Enfield Poltergeist was real.

He does this so that he can then prove atheism wrong.

But as I've noted before, my skepticism of Jesus' resurrection renders the alleged wrongness of atheism irrelevant.

Even supposing atheism is wrong, that doesn't mean "atheist is in trouble with the Christian god".

All it means is that a god exists.

Since 

a) the apostle Paul said Jesus' failure to rise from the dead would turn Christians into false witnesses who are still in their sins (1st Cor. 15:15), and

b) I continue beating down the way Engwer, Hays, Licona, Habermas and W.L. Craig interpret the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, 

it really doesn't matter if a god exists, the fact that I am reasonable to deduce this god is not the Christian god creates the stark possibility that the Christians are in just as much trouble with this god for misrepresenting him, as they think atheists are for denying his basic existence.

Before you can leap from "you are wrong" to "you are unreasonable", you have to show that the being wrong is more likely to lead to some type of disaster.  But if the evidence for Jesus' resurrection is as unpersuasive and weak as I claim, the best the apologists could possibly be left with is that there is some "god" out there, so that atheists remain wrong even if it be reasonable to deny Jesus rose from the dead.

At that point, whether that god even cares whether anybody misrepresents him or denies him, would be forever open to blind speculation, except for trifling Christians who would automatically default to the OT god upon discovery that the NT is bullshit.

But according to Deut. 13, even when the prophet does a real miracle, he STILL might be leading people into error, and therefore, such miracle-worker would STILL suffer the wrath of this god.  

That is, according to the OT principle, Jesus' miracle of rising from the dead does NOT end the discussion of whether the OT god approves of him.  But I have yet to see any Christian argument that the OT YHWH approves of Jesus, they rather think his resurrection miracle is the end of the debate.

They also blindly insist that because Jesus uses the divine title, he IS YHWH, a contention that has kept the church divided since even before the Council of Nicaea.

Therefore, the Christians are getting precisely nowhere by wasting such enormous amounts of time trying to prove atheism wrong, or that a spiritual dimension exists, or that physicalism is false.  Atheists don't start becoming unreasonable unless their being in the wrong can be proven to have likely disastrous consequences.  Sure, I might be wrong to say Japan is located in Australia, but unless you could show that this wrongness will likely lead to harmful effects on myself, you are never going to "prove" that I "should" care about being wrong.  

I'm pretty sure that Bigfoot is a hoax and was never anything more than a fairy tale and a man in a monkey suit...but why should I care if that is wrong and the creature is a genuine cryptid?    Does Bigfoot denial have a history of causing skeptics to get the flu more often than the average person?

Because the evidence for Jesus' resurrection is poor, and because the NT doctrine of eternal conscious torment in the afterworld contradicts the OT concept of god's justice, the atheist has no reason to 'worry' about atheism being 'wrong', at worst they will experience nothing more than permanent extinction of consciousness, a fate they already accept.  Pissing off god is about as fearful as pissing off a puppy.

Therefore, trying to prove atheism is wrong is a fruitlessly and purely academic waste of time (i.e., has no serious application to anybody's actual life beyond mere idle intellectual curiosity, and is equal to trying to prove somebody else wrong about whether the Trojan War ever happened).

There's a possibility that angry space aliens will zap you...but how much effort should an atheist put into protecting herself from such disaster?  Maybe always wear a radar-deflecting hat?

There's a possibility that a wild animal will kill the atheist after they walk in the front door of their house, but how much effort should the atheist put into protecting herself from such possible disaster?  Maybe peek in every window before going in the house, or installing motion detectors?  FUCK YOU.

There's a possibility some "god" will roast atheists alive in hell forever, but how much effort should the atheist put into protecting herself from such disaster?  Maybe spend the next 50 years trying to figure out which view of God is correct so they don't end up joining the wrong cult and end up making things worse for themselves by adding the sin of heresy to their existing sin of unbelief?  FUCK YOU.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  in light of god's hiddenness on the one hand, and the Christian apologist's mouthiness on the other, it appears Christian apologists love atheists more than their own god does.  Irony never sucked quite as much as that.