Don’t lift a finger, stay right where you are. That’s the beauty of free will, graciously given to all. Whether you call it God or the conscious quantum field, as Roger Penrose and Brian Greene have suggested, the choice remains yours.
Maybe you’ve simply hit the limits of your own bandwidth, the mountain feels too high to climb, the task too big to take on. Maybe there’s no room left in your framework to discover something truly new. But remember: treasures aren’t laid out on a silver platter. That’s the mindset of today’s culture, wanting revelation without pursuit.
You’ll spend thousands of hours watching memes, shorts, and headlines to form conclusions, but the details you search for only seem to serve one purpose: to reinforce your faith in randomness and evolution. That’s the algorithm you’ve built, and the echo chamber that follows you faithfully.
Free will is the ad hoc excuse invented by theists to blame human beings for the world’s horrific suffering. If your god exists, dear theist, free will was for his benefit: his entertainment!
A perfect being does not wake up one day and decide to create little mini-hims with free will…unless he is bored or malevolent.
That’s a very hopeless message, Gary… and yet, you’re free to feel that way.
I see the world tearing itself apart too. But you blame God, if He exists, when in truth it’s our own doing. The U.S. has worked tirelessly to remove God from the public sphere, and this is the result. When we strip away our anchors of morality, we drift.
God has endured humanity’s futility since the beginning. He doesn’t chain us to His will; He allows us freedom, while stepping in just enough to keep us from destroying ourselves entirely. Every empire that rose through pride, cruelty, and destruction eventually fell. Every single one.
How could such consistency exist unless there’s something greater guiding the balance of it all?
Actually, countries with high rates of atheism and other forms of non-theism have lower crime rates and higher social cohesion and happiness! If atheism and agnosticism lead to crime our jails and prisons should be full of atheists and agnostics. They are not.
Oh yeah… let’s talk about China! How long before that system devours itself from within? A society built on social credit scores will eventually enslave its own people. Sounds a lot like Pharaoh’s Egypt, doesn’t it? I wonder, when the weight becomes unbearable, will they cry out to God for deliverance too? … by the way, China may have a saving grace in its vast Christian underground network
Be careful what systems you glorify; one day, they might be standing at your own doorstep.
And who’s next? The Europeans? I lived among them for five years; mostly Catholic and Lutheran nations. Yet as unbelief grows, so too do their rates of depression and suicide. Look at Sweden: the highest levels in decades.
But go ahead, name a country, any country, and I’ll trace for you its current trajectory and historical patterns. I’ve lived in many parts of the world; there’s little you can tell me that I haven’t already seen or lived through.
Yet the most defining experience was growing up Christian in a country that wanted to take your head for it. From ’68 to ’77 I lived under Bakr, and then under Saddam Hussein. You just don’t know what you’re talking about. You probably have a smidge of life experience… you need to live more and grow your experience. And if you keep your eyes wide open, truly open… you might just see the face of God above all our chaos.
This seems to rest on a misunderstanding of what ancient images were meant as. Nowhere in the ANE were they understood as being gods, they were an interface with gods.
Amen!
Yourself.
I find love by reading it, not from any projection. Indeed it wasn’t until i found it in the scriptures that I came to actually believe there really was anything deserving the name “love”.
Maybe it was like being stuck in first grade because you weren’t moving on from its lessons.
Well stated.
Absolutely.
Freedom of the will, in a reality with laws it runs by, necessarily turns life into a multiple choice test.
FWIW, the largest number of sequential heads flipped known in history is eight.
[Personally, I once flipped five in a row while flipping a coin 1,000 times for a high school class.]
Statistics says no such thing as it is incapable of detecting violations of the laws of physics. The determination is made via presuppositions made by observers.
I would never believe such a thing by blind faith – but I do believe it because of the evidence.
We can debate the first point in saying this. The instinct towards something greater was with us always. To find meaning, people needed a grounding anchor. A security blanket, so long it was under their control… stone, wood carving, statues. That is raw humanity… perhaps embedded into our psyche to seek Him out… that didnt work out well…. He intervened to steer this ship away from the fall. That’s how it’s been revealed to me.
(a) Superb, meaningless, rhetoric. How so? If I knew that Love were the ground of being, what could I possibly have to fear? What should I live in fear of? In, of myself?
(b) That is projection, that is seeing what you want to see, your greatest desire, your greatest need. In a story whose writers did the same. Whose central character, did the same.
The most beautifully human creation. Dated, flawed and all. Such is archaeology.
It’s rare to see some-one admit that the gospels were not eyewitness accounts, so points for that.
I’ve never understood how anyone can claim that Mark saying that women were the first witnesses supports historicity.
The argument seems to be that a propagandist would not invent a story with women as witnesses, because testimony from women was not used in court, therefore the story becomes more convincing.
The big problem here is that Mark would have known this. If Mark was inventing a story, and wanted it to be more convincing, he could have said that women were the witnesses because that would make it seem genuine. I can imagine Mark eavesdropping on some-one talking about his story, some-one who was confidently saying that having women as witnesses made the story more reliable (just as modern apologists do), and Mark is rubbing his hands in glee because his ruse has worked.
Everything is debated in Biblical studies. Consensus is extremely rare. Please show me the polling data for how many scholars accept the tomb story and how it breaks them down by religious belief or lack thereof? I don’t even think what you are saying is true. I think it’s it blatant misinformation. Crossan and Ehrman and a few others have suggested this but it seems to be more popular from amateurs on the internet who have latched onto this idea as opposed to credentialed scholars. Their arguments are very weak and based on a lot of moving parts and I think you are confusing skepticism you see on the internet with what actual scholars believe. I don’t think the tomb story is entirely factual as it stands but I consider it highly probably Jesus was buried in a tomb, possibly with other criminals, or possibly as the account says and women went there. I would recommend
John Granger Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World.
*Goodacre, M. (2021). How Empty Was the Tomb? Journal for the Study of the New Testament , 44 (1), 134-148.
*Dale Allison, The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History
I respect Ehrman as a Bible scholar (even though textual criticism was his main area of study) but he is a popular writer that absolutely abused the word “consensus” to the point of spreading misinformation. I enjoyed reading his scholarly works (e.g. Forgery and Counterforgery…)
I am not saying the whole tomb story is true, just that I find it highly likely Jesus was buried. There is nothing miraculous about an empty tomb. You are simply trying to forestall the next step of some apologetical argument by being overly skeptical. You could just say maybe magicians stole the body of a holy man to use its powers and be done with it. Even if you had ten witnesses to the tomb being empty after Jesus was out in you are not going to believe Jesus rose from the dead so what is the point?
As for Paul not mentioning the tomb, you offer amateur soundbites.
Earliest Evidence: The Apostle Paul and Burial (1 Cor 15:3-8)
The brunt of Paul’s Letters come the 50s and were written before any of our New Testement Gospels. Any historical informaton they relay is of particular value because it is earlier, Paul must have known something about the movement he persecuted and most importantly, Paul has known assocoiations with some of Jesus’s original followers based on his own autobiographical testimony. In Galatians 1:18-19 he speaks of spending 15 days with Cephas and metting James, the brother of the Lord in Jerusalem. He meets with Peter again years later as they have a dispute in Antioch (Gal 2:11). Paul does not mention Joseph of Arimathea or the empty tomb. He does, however, relay a tradition that Jesus was buried:
1 Corinthians 15:3-8: 3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures 4 and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
Theissen and Merz write:
The analysis of the formula tradition about the resurrection of Jesus allows the following conclusion: a tradition in 1 Cor 15.3b-5, which goes back very close to the events themselves, attests appearances to both individuals and groups. The credibility of this tradition is enhanced, because it is in part confirmed by the narrative tradition, which is independent, and because in the case of Paulwe have the personal testimony of an eye-wtiness who knew many of the other witnesses. There is no doubt about the subjective authenticity of these testimonies; they come from people who attest an overwhelming experience in good faith." [The Hitorial Jesus A Comprehensive Guide, pg 490]
Joseph Fitzmyer writes:
Because Paul cites a bit of the early Christian kerygma about the risen Christ, this passage is usually regarded as preserving the oldest record of the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Along with 1 Thess 1:10 and Rom 4:25; 6:3–4, which echo the same pre-Pauline kerygma, it is older than any of the reports in the four Gospels, and for that reason is highly esteemed. [Anchor Bible, 1 Corinthians]
Paul provides contemporary-primary date that predates the Corinthian community (he is handing it on and) that goes back to the earliest days of the church and to Jesus’s original followers. One thing that is very curious as well, if we are allowd to peak at some later narrative details, is that of all the individuals listed, Paul persectued Jesus, Peter denied him and fled and James may have been unbelieving at first.
Dale Allison tells us the verb bury
"would hardly be used of the unceremonious dumping of a criminal into an unmarked trench as dog food: that was not burial but its denial. Now whether or not 1 Cor 15:4 summarizes an early form of the story about Joseph of Arimathea, “it would be strange,” as Barnabas Lindars observed, “to include this detail in the statement if the burial of Jesus was in fact unknown.” [Resurrecting Jesus]
It seems then that we have strong evidence for the belief that Jesus was in fact buried in the earliest church. Unfortunately, Paul doesn’t tell us anything specific so we cannot use him as evidence to validate the details of empty tomb story first found in the Gospel of Mark. For example, Paul doesn’t help us decide if it was an expensive tomb – hewn in rock with a fancy, expensive and uncommon rolling stone, or a common tomb Jewish leaders would use for executed criminals? Was Jesus given an honorable burial or simply wrapped in linen and put in a tomb to satisfy Jewish piety and the commands of God? Paul doesn’t help us resolve that issue.
Why doesn’t Paul mention the empty tomb?
Much ado has been made about nothing here. Fitzmyer writes:
There is no mention of the empty tomb in this kerygmatic fragment, and its absence has often been used to question the Gospel accounts of it or to maintain that it was an item that was only added to the primitive preaching at a later date. What is usually overlooked, however, is the stereotyped four-part formulation of the tradition cited here, which presents the essentials of death, burial, resurrection, and appearance in a well-established enumerative mode of expression, but not with all the details. It presumes that Christ’s risen body (unmentioned) was no longer where it was laid in burial. [Anchor Bible Commentary,1 Corinthians]
Paul was not actually making a historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus. Gordon Fee writes:
Although the enumeration of appearances might suggest otherwise, Paul is not here setting out to prove the resurrection of Jesus. Rather, he is reasserting the commonly held ground from which he will argue against their assertion that there is no resurrection of the dead. To do so he appeals to “the tradition” of the whole church, which he preached and they believed, namely that Christ died, was buried, and was raised on the third day. The emphasis is threefold: First, he reiterates both at the beginning (vv. 1-2) and the end (v. 11) that this tradition is something they have indeed believed. Two points are made here: (a) In keeping with the emphasis at the end of the preceding argument (14:33,36), what Paul preached and they believed is the common ground of the whole church (cf. vv. 3-5, 11). (b) Alongside that emphasis is the reminder that their very existence as believers is at stake on this matter. That is, any deviation from this gospel which “saved them” and “in which they stand” puts them in danger of “believing for naught.” [New International Commentary, 1 Corinthians]
We have good reason to believe this very early tradition Paul hands on is but a summary statement. Dale Allison writes: “Surely no one would ever have been satisfied with the shorn assertions, “Jesus appeared to Cephas” and “Jesus appeared to five hundred people at once.” This is no more plausible than urging that Christians at first said things such as “Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38) and only much later enjoyed telling miracle stories about him; or that while Paul and others preached Christ crucified, no supposed particulars about Jesus’ martyrdom emerged until decades after the fact, when interest unaccountably set in; or that “he appeared to Cephas” was ever proclaimed without explaining who Cephas was if the audience knew nothing about him. (Later Christian creeds omit the appearances altogether, probably in part because the witnesses were no longer alive.)” [Resurrecting Jesus] On 1 Cor 15:3-8, Hengel wrote:
“A Jew or Gentile God-fearer, hearing this formal, extremely abbreviated report for the first time, would have difficulty understanding it; at the least a number of questions would certainly occur to him, which Paul could only answer through the narration and explanation of events. Without clarifying delineation, the whole thing would surely sound enigmatic to ancient ears, even absurd.” [Hengel, “Begrabnis,” 127. Cf. Marco Frenschkowski, Offenbarung und Epipbanie^ vol. 2, Die verborgene Epipbanie in Spatantike und frubem Christentum (WUNT2.80; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 229]
So we know there was much more to the story at this point. Since Paul does not give us further details we cannot be certain of exactly what they were or were not. But we can certainly use this to raise a very wary eye at the dubious claim “Paul invented Christianity.”
Gordon Fee writes:
“and that he was buried,” functions to verify the reality of the death. In the present context it emphasizes the fact that a dead corpse was laid in the grave, so that the resurrection that follows will be recognized as an objective reality, not merely a “spiritual” phenom- enon. Therefore, even though the point is incidental to Paul’s own concern, this very early expression of Christian faith also verifies the reality of the empty tomb stories.6 1 It is common in some quarters of NT scholarship to deny this latter;62 but that seems to be a case of special pleading. The combined emphasis on death, burial, and third-day resurrection would have had an empty tomb as its natural concomitant, even if not expressed in that way. Given this language, embedded in the heart of the earliest tradition, the early Christians and Paul would find it unthinkable that some would deny that they believed that the tomb was also empty, or that those stories were the creation of a later generation that needed “objective verification” of the resurrection. One may not believe that Jesus rose and that the tomb was therefore empty; but one may scarcely on good historical grounds deny that they so believed/ [New International Commentary, 1 Corinthians]
And just as an FYI, I am doing with this conversation at this point. I won’t spend another hour responding to your inevitable 20 word sound bite in response.
I said he is correct that traditional authorship is hotly contested. I am not convinced by the claims to traditional authorship but I am also not convinced they are incorrect either. It is difficult to know with certainty one way or another. I think questions of dating, authorship and provenance are very difficult given the quantity of surviving material we have. There are good reasons for dating, for example, Mark and Luke, quite early, and reasons for dating them later than scholarship has currently settled in. Even though a consensus has emerged on Macrcan priority, the synoptic problem itself and understanding the literary relationship between the gospels is extremely difficult and complex. Still, I find certain historical facts emerge quite readily from the material. \
Not at all the case to me. First, what those arguing Mark invented the story in the late 70s fail to note is that apparently, Christianity was doing just fine without out. Christians already believed Jesus, who was crucified, has returned and appeared to them. So while it may be claimed Mark had creative flair, one cannot claim he had some dire apologetical motivation to create this scene. The opposite is true. If the empty tomb was made up in the 70s, Christianity progressed just fine without it beforehand. It’s a bit self-defeating.
Second, Mark is working with tradition here. The evidence does not favor creation whole cloth as Dale Allison argued:
The reduction of the empty tomb to Markan creativity, whatever the redactional motive postulated, does not, to my mind, compel. Not only is the independence or partial independence of Lk. 24:1-12 and/or John 20 a live option,11 but the case for the redactional origin of Mk 16:1-8 is unimpressive. This is why so many scholars, despite disagreement over the details, find tradition here.12 For Mark to compose an entire story without some pre-Markan basis would be, in the view of many of us, exceptional; and no one has yet explained why, on the theory of Markan origination, the list of women in 16:1 differs from the list in 15:47. The several hapax legomena are, further- more, consistent with positing pre-Markan tradition.13 Finally, “Mark 16:7, which is probably redactional…interrupts the story in which it occurs, since it begins with a disjunction alla (‘but’) and disrupts the natural progression from the women’s sight of the empty tomb and reception of the announcement of Jesus’ resurrection (16:5-6) to their reaction of fear and flight (16:8).”14 Again we have indication of a pre-Markan story.
Mark is not fabricating whole cloth but working with tradition and the actual evidence may be that Mary was down played in the tradition. Paul mentions the appearance of Jesus to a bunch of man and 500 brothers, not 500 brothers and sisters. The biggest problem Mark had–and early Christians, was that Jesus was crucified by Rome. That was shameful and embarrassing (Paul calls it a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles). You are assuming that Mark is inventing something that was not already common knowledge to Christian: that Jesus was crucified, buried and his body was not where it should have been. Paul basically confirms this in 1 Cor 15. From Dale Allison:
For the record, this is what good critical scholarship looks like, whether one agrees with its conclusions or not. It takes a lot of time to go through and every argument is very nuanced.
