As I was being raised Christian, I was led to believe that the eyewitness apostles willfully died for their testimony and refused the opportunity to recant and go free. This is very powerful testimony, much more powerful than that of the 9/11 hijackers because those hijackers never professed first-hand knowledge of Islam.
I then discovered that this is a complete lie. There is no actual documented claim - whether in the Bible, in noncanonized texts, in Christian tradition, or even in secular history - which claims that the disciples were actually given the opportunity to go free if only they recanted their faith. We have no dialogue, and barely even any details of what actually happened.
I always imagined a Roman saying, "Recant your faith or you will be tortured and executed," but the line of questioning could've just as easily been something along the lines of, "You were preaching the gospel, weren't you? Deny this, and you'll be tortured until you admit to it. You will be executed at the end regardless of what you say." In either case, it would be recorded that the disciple "died for his faith."
So really we do not have the "Why die for a lie?" argument. The actual claim does not even exist, aside from being a pulpit invention, so belief in it is entirely unwarranted even if one is Christian. What evidence do we have then for the resurrection? Most like to say eyewitness testimony and the empty tomb. But claiming that a man rose from the dead necessitates that his grave is empty merely as a basic element of the claim itself, and no one external to the eyewitnesses verified that the grave was actually empty, so the empty grave does not count as additional evidence.
All we have is eyewitness testimony and the transformation of the disciples' lives. Quite literally nothing else. But consider that their eyewitness testimony is given to us second-hand, and is decades old by the time it appears in print. In today's world there are eyewitnesses who claim to have seen Elvis after his death; these testimonies are first-hand and given immediately, making them categorically better than the testimony of the disciples, and yet we dismiss Elvis sightings without even a shrug.
So my simple question is this:
Is there a method of logical scrutiny that we can apply which will result in reasonably accepting the resurrection as plausible while simultaneously deeming Elvis sightings, alien abductions, Big Foot, etc as implausible?
I then discovered that this is a complete lie. There is no actual documented claim - whether in the Bible, in noncanonized texts, in Christian tradition, or even in secular history - which claims that the disciples were actually given the opportunity to go free if only they recanted their faith. We have no dialogue, and barely even any details of what actually happened.
I always imagined a Roman saying, "Recant your faith or you will be tortured and executed," but the line of questioning could've just as easily been something along the lines of, "You were preaching the gospel, weren't you? Deny this, and you'll be tortured until you admit to it. You will be executed at the end regardless of what you say." In either case, it would be recorded that the disciple "died for his faith."
So really we do not have the "Why die for a lie?" argument. The actual claim does not even exist, aside from being a pulpit invention, so belief in it is entirely unwarranted even if one is Christian. What evidence do we have then for the resurrection? Most like to say eyewitness testimony and the empty tomb. But claiming that a man rose from the dead necessitates that his grave is empty merely as a basic element of the claim itself, and no one external to the eyewitnesses verified that the grave was actually empty, so the empty grave does not count as additional evidence.
All we have is eyewitness testimony and the transformation of the disciples' lives. Quite literally nothing else. But consider that their eyewitness testimony is given to us second-hand, and is decades old by the time it appears in print. In today's world there are eyewitnesses who claim to have seen Elvis after his death; these testimonies are first-hand and given immediately, making them categorically better than the testimony of the disciples, and yet we dismiss Elvis sightings without even a shrug.
So my simple question is this:
Is there a method of logical scrutiny that we can apply which will result in reasonably accepting the resurrection as plausible while simultaneously deeming Elvis sightings, alien abductions, Big Foot, etc as implausible?
