On Creationism

This is partly in response to a post by Joe Hinman, which in turn was a response to a comment I made on his blog. http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2019/12/real-contradiction-in-resurrection.html The question is whether Jesus was first seen in Galilee or in Jerusalem (and surrounding area) after the crucifixion. Mark says it was Galilee, the later authors say it was Jerusalem. Bear in mind it takes about three days to travel from one to the other. We can suppose that Jesus was miraculously in two places at the same time, but not Peter (or the other disciples). If Peter saw Jesus in Jerusalem on that first Sunday, he simply cannot have seen Jesus in Galilee on that day too. Mark Mark says Jesus intended to go on ahead to Galilee, and see the disciples there: 27 And Jesus *said to them, “You will all [k]fall away, because it is written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.’ 28 But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” And ...

I debate frequently with a guy called Joe Hinman, who used to post on CARM as Metacrock. He frequently cites Brown in Death of the Messiah, volume 2, to support his position. He gets it wrong, and it is useful for me to have easy access to some quotes. Brown on the Gospel of Peter Brown made his reputation of the Gospel of Peter, so is pretty much THE authority. The relevant part of the book is the section "Overall Proposal About Composition Based on Sequence and Content", which is from page 1332 to 1336, where Brown first looks at alternatives, and why they fail, before, at the bottom of page 1334, he presents his own hypothesis: After working with the tables and lists above (and the massive vocabulary difference), I am convinced  that one explanation makes better sense of the relationship between GPet and the canonicals than any other. I doubt that the author of GPet had written any gospel before him, although he was familiar with Matt because he read it carefully in ...

In the Canaanite polytheism, the head of the pantheon was El, with his consort Asherah. El had 70 sons, and each (or some?) was connected to a specific people. Yahweh was the god associated with the people of Israel and Judah. That connection was very much analogous to a marriage between the god and the nation (at least for the Hebrews), and it may be that Old Testament ideas about marriage were derived from he relationship between God and Israel/Judah, though it might just as easily be that the relationship derived from ideas about marriage. God was very much the husband, so he set the rules, and he was free to have more than one wife; Israel and Judah specifically. On the other hand, if the people of Israel or Judah started to worship other gods, this was analogous to adultery or even prostitution, and would make God very angry. Ezekeil sums this up nicely: Ezekiel 16:6 “‘Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Li...

I have blogged about Jesus' burial a couple of times, and to some degree this is repeating what was said earlier. However, in this post I want to focus on how the early Christians freely embellished the gospels as it suits their purpose. I would guess Joseph of Arimathea was in the habit of getting corpses off crosses, something he did as a requirement of his position and religion. The corpses would be dumped in a nearby communal grave, which is all his religion required. If the gospel is right, the entire Sanhedrin had condemned Jesus as a blasphemer, so no way would Joseph take any care of the body, he just wanted it under the ground. Chances are the disciples were not around; they guessed that that was what happened. Burial in a communal grave for criminals is as dishonourable as it gets, so as the decades passed the early Christians set about fixing that. Here is the earliest version we have by Mark. It claims Jesus was wrapped in linen and buried in a tomb cut out o...

I have been reading Robert Eisenman's "James the Brother of Jesus" recently. He makes the case that James was the leader of the Christian church after Jesus died, until his own death in AD 62. Since that time, however, his role got downplayed, as Jesus became ever more divine. It was awkward for God incarnate to have a brother, so James was redacted from the narrative. Eisenman draws on the Dead Sea Scrolls to a large degree, and this is generally regards as suspect, as he has to ignore the dating of the documents to make it work. Nevertheless, the rest of his argument seems to be well regarded, and I found it pretty convincing. Five years later (Jul/24): I now think Eisenman has it wrong. A better explanation: We have James, the Brother of John, who was an original disciple, and became leader of the church. Then we have James, the Brother of Jesus, a pious man who rejected Jesus claims when Jesus was alive, but became convinced later, perhaps after having a vision, and...

The Spear of Destiny is the weapon that supposedly was used to pierce Jesus to see if he was dead. Whether that actually happened is an interesting question. The Swoon Theory There is a claim, the "Swoon Theory", that Jesus did not die on the cross, and that instead he was taken down mistakenly whilst still alive, and he later managed to escape from his tomb, and so was later seen alive by the disciples. I personally do not find it very likely, but Christians who argue against will always cite the piercing by the spear as "proof" Jesus really was dead. The Account So we should take a look at what it says in John. John 19:31 Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. 32 The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with J...

What did Jesus mean when he said: Mark 13:30 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Mark was written around 70 AD; Jesus' generation was pretty much at an end. Note that pretty much every Bible translates it this way (all twenty eight of these ). Why did Mark have Jesus say a prophecy that was wrong? The destruction of the temple happened in 70 AD at the hands of the Romans in retaliation for the Jewish revolt. The author of Mark lived through that - though possibly at a distance. For him, the end of the world had arrived! He therefore had no problem putting words in Jesus mouth. The Previous Chapter We shall start with the previous chapter. In Matthew, Jesus spends pretty much all of chapter 23 saying woe to the Pharisees, accusing them of hypocrisy. The author of Matthew knew that woe would indeed come to them when the temple was destroyed. I...

Did the disciples see the risen Jesus? One alternative is they hallucinated. My personal opinion is that whatever they saw, it was in Galilee, probably in the order recounted in 1 Cor 15, and nothing like the events described in the gospels. We cannot say what they saw, and I am certainly not putting this forward as what happened - I do not think we have enough information to even make a reasonable guess. I am just looking at whether it is plausible . Grief Vision It is very common to have a vision of a loved one who has recently passed away. I couple of links here and here . Note that these are personal visions, so arguably not like the mass sighting seen in Galilee. That said, a grief vision by one disciple, Peter perhaps. Willful Belief This paper discusses how people believe what they want to be true. Here is the abstract: This article investigates collective denial and willful blindness in groups, organizations, and markets. Agents with anticipatory preferences, link...

The fine-tuning argument (FTA) is a popular one for theists wanting to prove God. Craig is a frequent proponent. Here is the Discovery Institute on the FTA, and here is CMI's take: Neither really give a formal argument, so I will give one from here : The fine-tuning of the universe to support life is either due to law, chance or design It is not due to law or chance Therefore, the fine-tuning is due to design How Finely Tuned Exactly? The argument is based on the claim that changing the nature of the universe even slightly would prevent intelligent life appearing. So far that has not been established - we just do not know what the effects would, or under what conditions life could form. Maybe not life as we know it, but how can we rule out life in an unimaginable form? It also seems to be the case that not so many parameters need to be fine tuned as certain people would like you to think. That is not to say there is no fine tuning. It is a thing, and it does need e...

I came across this recently (linked from The Sensuous Curmudgeon). It is an interview with John Lennox, whom I posted about a year or so ago. For all his credentials, Lennox seems a pretty poor thinker (but I suspect that is his religion clouding his brain specificall;y when it comes to thinking about religion). When atheists ask him how it is possible for him to be both a scientist and a Christian he inquires of them: "What do you do science with?" and he points to his head to make it obvious. Most of them reply that they do science with their brains. Lennox then lets them simmer on that thought and then asks them to tell them about their brains with which they do science. "What do you really believe about it? Give me a short history of the brain," he presses them. They often say something like "that's relatively easy because the brain is the end product of the mindless unguided process," he said. "And I look at them and I sometimes smile and...

Was it crucifixion? At least one scholar has said that what happened to Jesus was not technically crucifixion, but suspending from a pole. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7849852/Jesus-did-not-die-on-cross-says-scholar.html I do not think the distinction matters so I am not going to address that here. I am going to consider any execution by of Jesus by the Romans to be crucifixion. There was a crucifixion, but... Some non-believers think there was a cruxifixtion, but Jesus did not die. This is the position of Muslims. Islam teaches that it was made to appear that Jesus died on the cross. This is usually taken to mean some made to look like Jesus was crucified, but could include the swoon theory. This very much is an important distinction, but not one I am concerned with here. This would still imply something happened; some kind of crucifixion was a historical event. So was Jesus crucified? Scripture I do think we have good reason to think it happened. I ...

We can see evidence of glaciation all over the world, so we can see with our own eyes that there was an ice age. Even some creationists have to admit that, and so Answers in Genesis have inventing an Ice Age (with capitals!). They offer this great timeline to help us understand what actually happened: https://assets.answersingenesis.org/doc/articles/am/v8/n2/ice-age-map.pdf So we have the Flood in 2350 BC, then three generations to the Tower of Babel, about 2250 BC, and the start of the Ice Age, which then lasts six generations, to about 2000 BC, when Abram was born. That is a very quick Ice Age. Back in reality, the last ice age started 2.5 million years ago, and is still going (we are in a warmer, interglacial period). What is fascinating is how fast stuff happens in this time line. The Elephant-Kind Mastodons first appear after two generations (around 2285 BC I guess), evolved from the elephant-kind on the ark, and woolly mammoths just two generations after that. That is s...

Christians say that because of the New Covenant, they are not required to follow the laws of the OT, the laws of the old covenants. Is that a Biblical position? Or just more convenient? But Jesus said... In fact, Jesus was very clear that the old laws of the OT still apply: Mat 5:18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. The usual response is to say that actually these laws only apply to Jews. Really? So God is a racist, and considers it only an abomination when a Jew eats shellfish? If it is an abomination for a Jew to eat shellfish, why is it not an abomination when a Christian does it? The New Covenant is for Jews It is especially odd because the Bible states that the new covenant is specifically for Jews: Jeremiah 31:31 "The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the pe...

It seems almost certain to me that the various sighting of the resurrected Jesus in and around Jerusalem were made up, and the only actual sights - whatever they actually were - were in Galilee. While Mark makes that clear, he offers absolutely no insight into what was actually seen there. Paul Paul gives us no details on where it happened, but as oyr earliest account, is still very important. This was probably an early creed, so in fact pre-dates the epistle. 1 Corinthians 15:4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas,[b] and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, Peter The Gospel of Peter is truncated, and ends just at the important bit. [58] Now it was the final day of the Unleavened Bread; and many w...

This is a reference for my own convenience that I will update as and when. Occasionally when debating with Christians they cite some obscure people, and I have to do some research to find out who they are, what their beliefs are, etc. I debate with Joe Hinman a lot, and he frequently cites various theologians, but as he is dyslexic, his spellings are erratic, so it is useful just to know the real spellings of these names. To save me repeating that effort, I will record the results here. If they have decent Wiki writes, there is little more than a link to that. So far all the scholars listed are Christians born before the end of WW2. David Hendrick van Daalen (1919-???) There is a quote popularised by WL Craig by van Daalen, from Real Resurrection: It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions Why is van Daalen quoted as such an authority? I struggled to find much ...

The concept of gods predates Judaism. Early man invented gods to explain the inexplicable - lightning, earthquakes, the passing of the seasons, even the more mundane things like plants growing. Just look at what Greek and Roman gods were like to see how the ancient people used gods to explain. Life was precarious, and it made sense to make an offering to the god of fertility to ensure your crops grows - it is better than leaving it up to chance. Yahweh was just one of those gods originally, and you can see signs of polytheism in the Bible still. The Canaanite Pantheon The head of the Canaanite religion was El, a name that is in the Bible, as later Yahweh fused with El to become the head. However, in these verses we can see that Yahweh (the Lord) is still subordinate to El (the Most High). Deuteronomy  32:8 When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children ...