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Hello,

I hope this is the appropriate section to post this here.

I was updating my website today, and saw my article on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. I wrote this a while back, as a way of summarising why I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, as well as helping out some friends.

It basically goes through the arguments used to counter disbelief in Christ as the Son of God. Those of you who have friends who wish to be Christians but feel they cannot commit themselves to Christ because they are not convinced that he is the Son of God, may wish to point them to this article.

The address is:
http://wokjai.mybesthost.com/apologetics/theResurrectionOfJesusChrist.html

Please note that the article makes the assumption that the God of the Bible exists. To argue for that as being intellectually credible would require another article ....

Cheers.

Ultra Magnus wrote:Hello,

I hope this is the appropriate section to post this here.

I was updating my website today, and saw my article on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. I wrote this a while back, as a way of summarising why I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, as well as helping out some friends.

It basically goes through the arguments used to counter disbelief in Christ as the Son of God. Those of you who have friends who wish to be Christians but feel they cannot commit themselves to Christ because they are not convinced that he is the Son of God, may wish to point them to this article.

The address is:
http://wokjai.mybesthost.com/apologetics/theResurrectionOfJesusChrist.html

Please note that the article makes the assumption that the God of the Bible exists. To argue for that as being intellectually credible would require another article ....

Cheers.

This critique of a few is written in the spirit of Proverbs 27:17 (ESV) "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another", and is not meant for debate, I seem to be becoming a prelude to locked threads but I would prefer that were not so. This is a subject that I have been interested in for a while, and when I feel I am ready I believe I will do a article. Not content to simply deconstruct elements of some of your arguments, I offer to help reconstruct them too and also add more material if you wish it. Indeed, my wish is to improve the article.

Constructive criticism:
1. These days, to not cite your sources and sometimes your source's sources is to inhibit the careful scrutiny of the truth of others - something contrary to your declared intent. Where you cite ancient historical works, give the cite numbers, if you need help with getting them I can help. It might also be wise to list your modern sources' page numbers in the body of the text, and I can help with some of the references there too.

2. Your argument on the tomb-guards as it stands is kinda half baked because of a glaring hole in its argument. Namely, Matthew's Gospel has them bribed to say that they had in fact all fallen asleep, and some may note the private nature of this story and dismiss it as an invention to explain the fact that the very guards that guarded the tomb fell asleep. One atheist who took a shot at arguing for Roman soldiers at the tomb short curcuited and used the info you presented, in an amusing rhetorical reversal of William Lane Craig's argument of the Apostles that "who would die for what they knew was a lie?" to say that the soldiers snoozed, the disciples stole the body, and they had to admit they slept and died for it.

3. "The seal" argument is unaware that from the commentaries on the "Nazareth Inscription" (complete text at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazareth_Inscription ) among the things most telling about it is "the unprecedentedly harsh penalty of death" for "those who violate tombs" (H.H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome From 133 BC to AD 68 Fifth Edition p. 472). Since much thought places this edict of Caesar in the reign of Claudius, somewhere in the 40's A.D., the penalty for breaking a seal wouldn't seem to be death before then. However, this handy little inscription has a good place at the edge of Resurrection apologetics.

4. Don't be so hasty in underestimating the power of the 12 as fighting goes. Remember first of all]The Resurrection of the Son of God[/I] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0800626796/qid=1124088856/sr=2-3/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_3/102-0029141-3120172 and perhaps The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0830822003/ref=pd_sr_ec_ir_b/102-0029141-3120172?v=glance&s=books&st=* for his chapter long summary of major high points in the previous work, and, if it ever comes it (it seems about a month overdue so far) his Life After Life After Death http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0800636511/qid=1124088856/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_8/102-0029141-3120172?v=glance&s=books may serve as a more popular level version of the first highly stellar work. And as a personal commentary, I sometimes consider nicknaming Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God to be 'Wright's Complete Resurrection of the Dead Handbook'.

GhostontheNet wrote:This critique of a few is written in the spirit of Proverbs 27:17 (ESV) "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another", and is not meant for debate, I seem to be becoming a prelude to locked threads but I would prefer that were not so. This is a subject that I have been interested in for a while, and when I feel I am ready I believe I will do a article. Not content to simply deconstruct elements of some of your arguments, I offer to help reconstruct them too and also add more material if you wish it. Indeed, my wish is to improve the article.

Hi GhostontheNet,

Not at all, and thank you for the constructive criticism that follows.

GhostontheNet wrote:Constructive criticism:
1. These days, to not cite your sources and sometimes your source's sources is to inhibit the careful scrutiny of the truth of others - something contrary to your declared intent. Where you cite ancient historical works, give the cite numbers, if you need help with getting them I can help. It might also be wise to list your modern sources' page numbers in the body of the text, and I can help with some of the references there too.

Yes, this does seem to be an issue. Normally I would cite the sources in greater detail and with more clarity, but when I wrote this it was rather ad-hoc in nature and I have not had time for updating this article (see comments below for why..).

GhostontheNet wrote:2. Your argument on the tomb-guards as it stands is kinda half baked because of a glaring hole in its argument. Namely, Matthew's Gospel has them bribed to say that they had in fact all fallen asleep, and some may note the private nature of this story and dismiss it as an invention to explain the fact that the very guards that guarded the tomb fell asleep. One atheist who took a shot at arguing for Roman soldiers at the tomb short curcuited and used the info you presented, in an amusing rhetorical reversal of William Lane Craig's argument of the Apostles that "who would die for what they knew was a lie?" to say that the soldiers snoozed, the disciples stole the body, and they had to admit they slept and died for it.

Alright, let me see if I've correctly understood what you said..

You are saying that the soldiers may have slept (this being the hole in my argument) and that the disciples may have stolen the body, but then it does not seem to make sense that they would knowingly risk their lives for a lie. This is my understanding of your point.

GhostontheNet wrote:3. "The seal" argument is unaware that from the commentaries on the "Nazareth Inscription" (complete text at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazareth_Inscription ) among the things most telling about it is "the unprecedentedly harsh penalty of death" for "those who violate tombs" (H.H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome From 133 BC to AD 68 Fifth Edition p. 472). Since much thought places this edict of Caesar in the reign of Claudius, somewhere in the 40's A.D., the penalty for breaking a seal wouldn't seem to be death before then. However, this handy little inscription has a good place at the edge of Resurrection apologetics.

4. Don't be so hasty in underestimating the power of the 12 as fighting goes. Remember first of all]

Really? Wow, I didn't know about this one. Interesting.

GhostontheNet wrote:6. If you do not mind doing additional research and don't get left in the dust by New-Testament-scholar-speak and extremely long books, you may wish to read N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0800626796/qid=1124088856/sr=2-3/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_3/102-0029141-3120172 and perhaps The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0830822003/ref=pd_sr_ec_ir_b/102-0029141-3120172?v=glance&s=books&st=* for his chapter long summary of major high points in the previous work, and, if it ever comes it (it seems about a month overdue so far) his Life After Life After Death http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0800636511/qid=1124088856/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_8/102-0029141-3120172?v=glance&s=books may serve as a more popular level version of the first highly stellar work. And as a personal commentary, I sometimes consider nicknaming Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God to be 'Wright's Complete Resurrection of the Dead Handbook'.

I haven't replied to the other points because I felt they were just information and I see no good grounds for disagreeing with them.

If you happen to write something on this topic, let me know, I'd want to read it when I have more spare time.

As to why I won't be able to update my article, I am currently doing research for another essay which I am actually required to do, since it's part of my class assessment. So in a sense I need to be focusing on that first.

But I'll still try to come into this forum regularly.

Cheers.

Ultra Magnus wrote:Hi GhostontheNet,

Not at all, and thank you for the constructive criticism that follows.

You're welcome.

Ultra Magnus wrote:Alright, let me see if I've correctly understood what you said..

You are saying that the soldiers may have slept (this being the hole in my argument) and that the disciples may have stolen the body, but then it does not seem to make sense that they would knowingly risk their lives for a lie. This is my understanding of your point.

That is a part of my point, taken from donning a skeptical cloak and reading your article as one who knew nothing of the resurrection and resurrection apologetics might read it. In this cloak, I push the point that if one were to read your article and knew only that, it is the ironic question (built on a hypothetical that the penalty of death for snoozing would be carried out) of 'Why would the soldiers die for what they knew was a lie?'

Ultra Magnus wrote:I haven't replied to the other points because I felt they were just information and I see no good grounds for disagreeing with them.

That's well and good, my response was never intended to be a counter to the article anyway.

Ultra Magnus wrote:If you happen to write something on this topic, let me know, I'd want to read it when I have more spare time.

As to why I won't be able to update my article, I am currently doing research for another essay which I am actually required to do, since it's part of my class assessment. So in a sense I need to be focusing on that first.

But I'll still try to come into this forum regularly.

Cheers.

So then, you implicitly reject my offer to give you some additional material here, am I right? Even if you focus on that, so long as you do not forget the location of this thread, you should be able to add stuff later. However, because some people are fond of doing things entirely in their own way and giving help to them is an insult (me on certain things, though not this), I won't list any material without your approval.

GhostontheNet wrote:So then, you implicitly reject my offer to give you some additional material here, am I right? Even if you focus on that, so long as you do not forget the location of this thread, you should be able to add stuff later. However, because some people are fond of doing things entirely in their own way and giving help to them is an insult (me on certain things, though not this), I won't list any material without your approval.

The first post in this thread was something of a "by the way" thing, because I was updating my website with something else (which unfortunately did not update because the file manager program with the host sometimes breaks).

If I was to do this article again (or in the sense of updating it), I think I ought to do it properly (or as proper as I can manage). To be honest I have not read the books associated with those URLs you posted.

Apart from full-time work, part-time study, commitments to a magazine and comic studio, I do enjoy taking time left over to still think about our faith and related issues. It is stimulating, but as I have discovered in the past few years, I am not good at juggling multiple tasks, or at least not with the same degree of concentration for each of them. This is why I come to this forum or read some comics to give myself some rest.

Hence any "pet projects" (such as that article I wrote a while back), while great if could be improved, will by necessity be left on the "back burner" for some time to come.

I don't feel insulted by your offer to help, and I don't think your intention was to ever insult me, but just to point out the places that my article can be improved in.

When I mentioned that if you were ever to write a similar article, I said this because I can see you have no trouble thinking about these issues in a sceptical manner and deflecting objections raised. I could also see that you have the ability to express yourself coherently.

I admit I am fond of doing things my own way, but that's not to say I somehow don't need help. There's also the issue of what a person says and how the person says it. In this case, I haven't been put off by your comments.

But, I don't know what your own schedule in life is like, so it may be that you're just as busy as I am, or even busier.

Hope that explains my reply to your offer for help.

Cheers.