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Hookflash said:
The point is anyone can say anything about who God is and who Jesus is but christians believe that the word of God is true,that God is our Father ,that Jesus is our Saviour and yes a lot of it is faith but faith that has stood the test of time. Christians have heard it all before remember "God was an astronaut" or Jesus was part of the "mushroom cult" etc etc!..... John:16,v 13..Howbeit when He,the Spirit of truth,is come,He will guide you into all truth:for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear,that shall He speak: and He will show you things to come.Hookflash said:Well, my point was: where's the evidence that God was responsible for the resurrection of Christ? It could be that Jesus was an alien with special powers who wanted to fulfill the OT prophecies as part of a vast social experiment. As intuitively implausible as this sounds (mostly because we've been inculcated with Judeo-Christian assumptions), how is it more implausible than the traditional view? I want to see a strong inductive argument that answers this question.
Just as you can posit a God capable of violating the laws of nature, so could a proponent of the "alien theory" posit an advanced alien civilization that has discovered an efficient means of intergalactic travel. After all, we don't know all there is to know about physics, do we? I guess you could call my faux theory "alien of the gaps."
My friend, that is merely evidence that they believed Jesus was who he said he was. Many people have died for many individuals you would call "false prophets."
By this logic, shouldn't we expect there to be no evidence for the existence of God? Are you saying all arguments for the existence of God fail? If so, I agree.
Well, bear in mind that we don't have access to the subjective experiences of others now, much less in the past. In other words, it could've been an act. Perhaps Jesus-the-alien is able to turn off his pain receptors at will; or, perhaps he doesn't have pain receptors, since he's able to use his powers to heal himself (and even to raise himself from the dead!). Of course, I don't believe Jesus was an alien (I hope I didn't give you guys the impression that this is what I believe). The point I'm really driving at is that the traditional Christian God hypothesis, as an explanation of the resurrection, is only one amongst a large number of equally plausible (or implausible, if you will) alternative hypotheses, so the resurrection by itself can't really be used as an argument for the existence of Yahweh.
I appreciate you guys' responses, but can I just say: I really want to be able to post in General Apologetics. I'm not looking for start fights or to offend people. I just want to have some rousing discussions with theists who enjoy a good intellectual tussle.
I am glad you have a good opinion of this place...simple put, the life, ministry, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus the Messiah is similiar in style of the jewish rabbis of first century but not like anyone else. Through Christ, Judaism was reworked to be assemblied around his vocation that brought a end of the exile and restore of humanity into God's Kingdom. If you have to interject a alien conspiracy through out the whole development of humanity...it would have a large leap of faith to still manage all of the signs, wonders, direct time, and develp of all the cultural development of the past...simple the assumption of alien envolvment because hard and hard because of they would still be finite being doing finite things. I would say it take less faith to believe in God than aliens...And, if you were are serious about resurrection of Jesus check out N. T. Wright's book on the resurrection: Resurrection of the Son of God. In that book you will get a more detailed statement about the resurrection that you could get from this website.Hookflash said:Just so you guys know I'm not some sort of hit & run poster, I have been reading your responses. I don't necessarily think any of them have managed to refute my general argument, but that's ok. The fact that you guys are willing to dialogue with an atheist is a good thing, imo. Many of the Christians I've encountered in the past have been overtly hostile towards atheists. Anyways, I think I'll stick around here for a while.
You don't understand what that means. "The path to God is narrow" means that you can only get to God through Christ. Christ is the"narrow path".Exist said:
