The resurrection and Atheists?

Question

Im hoping to get friendly reasonable answers, but I've tried that before to no avail. The question is to Atheists. Christianity has survived for aproximately 1, 980 years, at the core of Christianity is the resurrection of Christ. Can you site any examples of the dead body of Jesus being produced? Their may be a scant few, which I'd like to see for myself if you can tell me. Was the body "proven" to be Jesus or another hoax? The thrust of my argument is that the Romans and the denying Jews wanted to crush this new belief and would have done anything to produce the dead lifeless body of Jesus. For anyone unfamiliar, the resurrection is that Jesus rose from the dead bodily, and the scriptures say only grave clothes were left. He later appeared very alive in a glorified body with marks on it from the crusifixion. If the apostles and other followers were "fooled" by the resurrection and a body was produced, WHY did they continue to suffer horribly and die for a cause they new wasnt true?

Answer 1

Yeah Chrisitanity has survived for about 2000 years.. At approx 4000 BC Adam was Born, 2000 BC Abraham was born, and the Israelites,, at year 0 Jesus was born, and another 2000 years marks the time of the end..

The truth lives on the inside of you.. The unbeliever does not hear the word, or they would come flocking to it...It requires more faith, to be an atheist.. To believe the world created itself by chance is ridiculous..


In response to Quant
http://www.pb.org/pbdocs/resrecon.html

let's suppose that the 4 Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were only made-up stories about a person who never existed. This would imply that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all got together and made up this story out of thin air. If they were creating what they knew to be a false story, they would have rehearsed the story in detail to avoid differences. In that case, all of the minor details of the story would also have been made up, and then, in writing their various accounts, all of the details would have matched exactly. There would have been NO differences. But the fact that there are differing details in the stories strongly suggests that they were writing of a true event . Any lawyer or judge could tell you that they would not expect two or more witnesses to an event to tell their accounts of the event exactly the same way. If they did match up exactly, this would be evidence of a conspiracy.

And also, if those copying the Gospels were taking liberty with changes, then the first thing they would have done is ironed out the apparent inconsistencies. The fact that they left them in, despite the fact that they seemed to disagree with other minor details, proves that they were unwilling to change ANYTHING in the Gospels

Answer 2

Other religions have been around much longer than Christianity, e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Confucianism, etc. Judaism is a more orthodox version of the ancient Hebrew religion, so it has been here longer than Christianity. Obviously, being around a while proves nothing. People believed the Earth was flat for centuries, and some fools still do. Ancients thought the sky was a dome 7 to 15 miles above us. That belief is seen in Revelation 6:13-14 saying stars fell unto earth and the sky rolled up like a scroll. Some Greek sages knew better than that 200 or more years before Revelation was written. They measured the girth of the earth and the distance to the Moon reliably. What is your shaggy dog question? I got lost in the details. The masses didn't know your "cause" is untrue. Some people are neurotic and want to be martyrs. Many want to believe something and have no discrimination about what they believe. People suffer and die for many things besides Christianity, so that proves nothing at all. Fanatics are as zealous about PeTA, Greenpeace, etc. as they are about religions.

Answer 3

Greetings,
There are no examples of the dead body of Christ;except where the scriptures say that Joseph of Aramathea went to Pilate so that he could have the body and bury it in the tomb that Joseph had just recently constructed for his own death.

We can only assume that the Pharisees and Saducees plus the Roman guards actually entered the tomb to see if there actually was a body in there before the stone was rolled into place and the seals put in place. I am sure that scince none of those groups had any ulterior motives as to deceiving the people in those times that we can conclude that there was an actual physical body placed in the tomb;afterall it would have been advantageous to them to show that there was no body and that therefore the whole affair was bogus and a contrived fakery so that they could denounce the entirety
of the the basis that a new religion had been started.

I believe that it was Paul that stated that if there had been no death and resurrection then our faith had been in vain.

a work in progress

Answer 4

No, no proof of a body was ever found. Consider this though:

A few of Jesus's disciples, not wanting to be proven wrong, moved the body from the tomb and left it in the wilderness where wild animals would have devoured it. When they were persecuted, they tried to recant, but they couldn't provide the body either. This would have only seemed all the more miraculous to the people who still believed, and these idiots who tried to make themselves right would have been killed for being liars one way or another.

Just because a few may have been involved in the hoax of it, doesn't mean all of them would be, and it'd have looked quite miraculous to those who didn't know it was a hoax.

Answer 5

There is no proof either way that Jesus was resurrected, and his body has nothing to do with it. What happened to the body when he ascended to heaven? You trying to tell me that he brought his corporal self into heaven? Bologna. Also, maybe the body was hidden, by those seeking to prevent his body from being defaced.

Why did he have to rise, physically, for the apostles to carry on Jesus's message? Maybe they thought he was brought back to life by them keeping his message alive. Or maybe the apostles were devoted to their cause because they had an easy life. They were welcomed into people's homes, fed, and anointed everywhere they preached; very similar racket to what the preachers have going in the churches today. They knew they were sowing seeds for future generations of snake oil salesmen, which is why they suffered for it. Who knows?

You won't get a direct or provable answer to your question. This is why the debate will continue ad infinitum. You will get your answer when you die.

Answer 6

The reason that there was no dead Jesus is that there was no live Jesus, either... Jesus is an entirely fictional character.

First Century writings (Epistles) give no indication whatsoever of an actual person who lived in the recent past. They allude to a Jesus Christ who existed in the 'spiritual' realm, and whose existence was 'revealed' by 'midrash'... reinterpretation of OT scriptures under the influence of the 'Holy Spirit', a Hebrew adaptation of the 'modern' Greek idea of 'wisdom'... an emanation from the godhead. This was just another one of dozens of 'salvation cults' that existed in the mideast at that time. the idea to transform this mythical Christ character into a made-up historical person did not emerge until the 2nd century.

Answer 7

To your last question, I can provide no answer. In Jonestown, Guyana, several hundred people drank cyanide-laced kool-aid because their master had instructed them to do so. It doesn't fall to me to explain people's motivations...

There are several possible explanations for the resurrection of Jesus: (1) Jesus never existed. (2) Jesus existed and was crucified, but the 'resurrection' was made up. (3) Jesus was crucified but did not perish - he merely fell unconscious, was taken for dead, was entombed and later came to and left his tomb.

Having not been there I'm at absolutely no liberty to say which of these might be correct. Oddly enough, the Romans and the Jews of the time say nothing about a so-called resurrection: not even an attempt to deny its existence. It's interesting how mute they were on that topic, isn't it?

Answer 8

Jesus christ is actually an alien and I can prove it.

All depictions of him "rising from the dead" has a bright, white light taking him up, right? Have you seen X-Files? I think it's safe to say that those alien abductions were based off reported events. And do you know how the abductees were taken up? Yep, a bright, white light. Coincidence? I think not. That's just my opinion on religion in general. And it's up to you whether or not to take this as a "friendly, reasonable answer," I'm just stating my factual observations and throwing two and two together.

Answer 9

They can't find Mozart's body either... I guess he must have been resurrected from the grave...

This is an invalid point. Can you find the body of the majority of people that have died in the last 2000 years? Not if you wanted to. I'll bet they have no idea where Pontius Pilate's body is either.
Maybe he resurrected too!

Answer 10

You're making the mistake of assuming Jesus even existed in the first place; the very fact that no contemporary historian seemed to notice his "miracles" or the thousands of people supposedly following him around, that he produced no writings of his own, and no one even mentions him in ANY writing until a full generation after his supposed death, there's no reason for any rational person to accept the story of Jesus as anything other than myth....