lmao only you, muslims and WWII fascists think so. I have no problem discussing with an atheist and I even read hindu scriptures with Shânkara's commentary, sufi poems, etc. — hithere

Sorry for upsetting you. You have the right to be a dreamer. I am talking about reality and how things run in the world, we like it or not.
If you cannot see it, you have no choice but to keep dreaming :(
A mature wise person tries his best to discover the world as it is. He doesn't keep seeing it the way he likes it to be (as almost every newcomer into life does... including me in my early years).

Have a good day.

No one can deny that the apostles believed Jesus resurrected, but that begs the question on what basis do they have this belief? It is either the case that Jesus physically resurrected or that an alternative explanation must be true. — Josh Vasquez

False dichotomy. We don't really know exactly what the disciples believed. There is a poem that asserts Jesus "appeared" to various people, but the most likely explanation is that some of them sensed his presence - which is a common experience of people who have lost a loved one.

Regarding martyrdom, there's no good evidence of anyone dying for insisting they'd seen a resurrected Jesus.

Your entire argument is boilerplate apologetics that Christians tell each other, and accept uncritically, that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Hey! Forgive me for the late reply to your post.
You bring up an interesting perspective that I do not think had heard before, or at least read in as much depth as you put it in. I will push back on your claim that it is more impressive that to see the survival and resurrection of Jesus’ teachings than the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I would argue that had Jesus not resurrected I do not think his teachings would have had as much bearing as they did. Let’s imagine two scenarios, one where Jesus dies and does not resurrect and the other where he dies and resurrects. In the event of the former scenario I do not think the disciples would have gone to the nations of the world preaching and testifying of the works and teachings of Christ. In fact, you might think that they would simply stay in Israel, go about their lives and gather every once in a while, to reminisce on their rabbi and his teachings. You see the teachings of Jesus were very puzzling before his death and resurrection because no one really believed he was the messiah. When the disciples went to the nations to preach, they did not do so thinking the teachings of Christ were the most important part, in fact they were secondary to the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. In the latter scenarios where Christ does have a bodily resurrection it would be such a radical event that merited the disciples leaving their past lives to preach it to the masses, no matter how crazy it sounded. In addition to leaving their past lives behind the disciples were so convinced of Jesus’ resurrection that they were willing to die for it. Furthermore, if Jesus resurrected from the dead that would confirm his divinity and the authority by which he taught. That would not make it a miracle that his words or teachings survived, rather it would be expected. If God came to earth and taught humanity how to know him and how to find eternal life, I would hardly expect those words to die off, in fact I would be surprised if they didn’t spread like wildfire across the world.

Hi! Thanks for taking the time to think through my argument and bringing up questions of your own, it is very much appreciated and encouraged.

Allow me to address your first point that puts into question when the gospel writer Matthew chooses to add into his account. In the Christian theology, Jesus is thought to be fully man and fully God, with that in mind there are things that Jesus needed to restrict himself from exercising. For example, in Matthew 26:53 when Jesus is arrested by soldiers and reassures his disciple that this was necessary to happen he also says that if he wanted to he could call on God the Father and twelve legions (that is three thousand) angels would come to his side at the snap of his finger. As the story goes, he did not do that. Instead he voluntarily submitted himself to arrest and crucifixion. My point here is that perhaps he restricted himself from having a divine foreknowledge or omniscience. Another hypothesis could be that while he maintained his omniscience just knowing he would resurrect would not be comfortable in the moment he was suffering. It’s often overlooked how much pain Jesus went through. Jesus was betrayed by his best friends (the disciples), which put him through emotional suffering, he was flogged and crucified, which put him through physical suffering, but he also bore the sins of the world on the cross which separated him from God, ultimately causing him spiritual suffering. I think it was rational that Jesus expressed his sense of abandonment to God on the cross because regardless of what he knew the pain he suffered in the moment far outweighed the knowledge of his resurrection.

Much of the Bible seems to be written in a kind of parable fable art form. — Hippyhead

I would not agree with this statement because that is discounting the numerous books of history in the Old Testament, along with the gospels and the Acts of the apostles which are regarded by scholars as documenting history. Of course, they had a certain lens, and they weren’t exactly history text books, but the gospel writers simply gave a written account of the life of Christ as they heard it from the apostles or as they experienced it.

As example, the Adam and Eve story tells deep truths about the human condition that are remarkably relevant to our own times. But I don't believe there really was a guy, a gal, and a talking snake. — Hippyhead

I will agree with you here that I’m not sure that the creation story is meant to be taken literally, but rather as a beautiful prose that illustrates the beauty of God and his magnificence in creating the heavens and the earth. Along with the unfortunate telling of the fall of man.

The point here is that a key statement by Jesus seems to be his advice to "Die and be reborn" which I see as extremely wise psychological/spiritual advice, but perhaps not a literal description of his own physical fate, ie. resurrection. — Hippyhead

I’m not sure it’s right to conclude that because one book of the bible is not meant to be read literally that it translates to the rest of the Bible as well. We must keep in mind that the bible is to be thought of as a library in the sense that it consists of sixty-six different books written by about forty different authors.
I would argue that by disregarding the possibility of a true physical resurrection of Christ you would be missing the greatest treasure that the world holds. There could be a giant “X marks the spot” right on Jesus, and you’re running the risk of entirely missing it by brushing it off as a coincidence rather than digging to see where it leads.

Thanks for taking the time to read my response, I’m looking forward to hearing from you soon :)

I would argue that had Jesus not resurrected I do not think his teachings would have had as much bearing as they did. — Josh Vasquez

I totally agree with you on this. Jesus body's resurrection was very important, at that time, as all other miracles were as well.

Naturally, the multitudes (as groups of people, not as individuals) are interested in listening to rich and/or powerful persons only; usually via their official speakers and the like.

On the other hand, a real rich person cannot survive for long if he is not protected by a powerful group (usually the ruling group of a region/country). In exchange, he has to serve this group in one way or another. In other words, he cannot be real sincere every time he addresses the masses openly; unless he risks losing all his legitimate privileges (provided to him by the law, made/supervised by the ruling group) if not much worse (even worse than death). And Jesus is clear concerning this natural fact... the rich man of {Matthew 19:24}.

So, to be real free and independent, Jesus, who knows already this natural rule/fact above, incarnated as an ordinary human. And being all-knowledge, He knew how to attract the attention of his audience by various miracles. Naturally, his most important miracle was his body's resurrection, as you detailed on your reply.

The main purpose of Jesus miracles and the ones of the first apostles/disciples was just to spread Jesus teachings in the world. It was a very hard task. The essence of Jesus message contradicts the essence of any imposed law, said of man or God. Yes, good Jews and good Muslims, for example, are supposed to obey God (Moses' God and Allah respectively)... they are not supposed to love God :) Obeying is not Loving. Obedience is unidirectional (a slave/follower obeys a master) while Love is bidirectional. In other words, a faithful obedient slave and his master can never be unified while two beings (here, spiritual ones) can be unified by Love.

Now, as a pointed out on a previous post, these miracles are no more important since Jesus sayings/teachings could be accessed by almost anyone in the world. On the other hand, the world lives now (and to the end of time) a living miracle; the resurrection of Jesus message.

Yes, while all formal systems (religious or political) around the world don't allow preaching OPENLY (via satellites for example) many Jesus teachings 'as clear as He did', no one of them dares considering the printing of the Gospel (as hard copies or eBooks) as a crime that deserves punishment. — KerimF

I have a couple of questions regarding this event.

Nowadays, we don't really consider witness accounts to be very reliable. We need additional evidence to be sure. That's why we have near mandatory video surveillance in major cities.

That's the difficult thing about religion as most are based on witness accounts.

So, if we were to subject those same witnesses to the same rigorous of questioning as we do (even to victims) today, how many of these accounts would be considered as valid?

There is a section regarding the resurrection that states that 500 people "saw Jesus." That is indeed a good number. But again, what I would ask is, how do those people know who they were looking at? Might this be an issue of mistaken identity?

We also have the account of Josephus, the sole account outside of the gospels that speak of a Jesus figure.

However, some are claiming that the section of Jesus was a recent addition to his work since just prior to that, he was known to have been highly skeptical of messianic figures. And he has also been shown to exaggerate things greatly.

So how trustworthy is this source?

There is a section regarding the resurrection that states that 500 people "saw Jesus." That is indeed a good number. But again, what I would ask is, how do those people know who they were looking at? Might this be an issue of mistaken identity?
...
So how trustworthy is this source? — 8livesleft

Vanishingly slight. But note that we are not, in this example, examining 500 witnesses, but one: the author of the text. There is no reason to believe there might be 500 people who saw Jesus resurrected, or 500 people who mistakenly identified him. The text is, itself, one dubious witness account.

That said, pertaining to your specific question:

On October 13th, about 70.000 - 100.000 people had assembled to observe what Portuguese newspapers had been ridiculing for months as the absurd claim of three shepherd children that a miracle was going to occur at high-noon in the Cova da Iria on October 13, 1917. According to many witness statements, after a downfall of rain, the dark clouds broke and the sun appeared as an opaque, spinning disk in the sky. It was said to be significantly less bright than normal, and cast multicolored lights across the landscape, the shadows on the landscape, the people, and the surrounding clouds. The sun was then reported to have moved towards the earth in a zigzag pattern, frightening some of those present who thought it meant the end of the world. Astronomers across the rest of the world did not observe any unusual activity of the sun.

In answer to the question "How many people can be simultaneously mistaken about the Sun hurtling toward the Earth", the answer is apparently somewhere between 70 and 100 thousand. 500, then, is small fry. (And, just to be clear, the Sun did not hurtle toward the Earth. We're still here.)

That said, pertaining to your specific question:

On October 13th, about 70.000 - 100.000 people had assembled to observe what Portuguese newspapers had been ridiculing for months as the absurd claim of three shepherd children that a miracle was going to occur at high-noon in the Cova da Iria on October 13, 1917. According to many witness statements, after a downfall of rain, the dark clouds broke and the sun appeared as an opaque, spinning disk in the sky. It was said to be significantly less bright than normal, and cast multicolored lights across the landscape, the shadows on the landscape, the people, and the surrounding clouds. The sun was then reported to have moved towards the earth in a zigzag pattern, frightening some of those present who thought it meant the end of the world. Astronomers across the rest of the world did not observe any unusual activity of the sun.

In answer to the question "How many people can be simultaneously mistaken about the Sun hurtling toward the Earth", the answer is apparently somewhere between 70 and 100 thousand. 500, then, is small fry. (And, just to be clear, the Sun did not hurtle toward the Earth. We're still here.) — Kenosha Kid

Well, I have questions about this event as well.

The dancing sun phenomenon itself was said to have been some supernatural miracle but is it? Back in the day, people made prophecies about vanishing suns and moons, as well as predicting rain - but we already know all those things follow cycles and we know when the next eclipse will be coming.

So, is the dancing sun just another yet unknown natural phenomenon? Now of course we do have a prophecy so the question is does the church have records of such cycles? I believe they do.

There's also the whole timing of the thing. At that time, there was a great schism between Rome and Russia, between Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodox. So, might there have been some agenda that Rome was pushing?

Miracles or politics?

There is no such thing as a "more rational" view of an event so long ago. Language changes every generation so there is no guarantee we have the right translation of the gospels. Assuming we do though, Josephus said Jesus did miracles, but so did other jews, it is claimed, in that time and place. Miracle workers are everywhere in ancient history. The New Testament is mostly reliable as a historical record except for the virgin birth, , raising of Lasuras, the resurrection, and the claim that Jesus's disciples died for belief in the resurrection. Those are religious documents intended to convert people. It's totally "rational" as you say to reject those four claims I mentioned but to basically accept the rest.

I think at the last supper Jesus was so afraid of his death that he tried to shatter his ego into 12 parts and impart them to his apostles. Christians interpret this as a sacrament. But I think it was based on fear

So, is the dancing sun just another yet unknown natural phenomenon? Now of course we do have a prophecy so the question is does the church have records of such cycles? I believe they do.

There's also the whole timing of the thing. At that time, there was a great schism between Rome and Russia, between Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodox. So, might there have been some agenda that Rome was pushing?

Miracles or politics? — 8livesleft

The answer is likely similar to mine regarding the resurrection: it's the author of the story who should be doubted, not his supposed witnesses.

First, the miracle had been predicted. Second, the person investigating the event was himself a priest. Third, the story was published on the 29th of the same month. Now... 70-100K witness statements would be a lot to collate for an international war crimes tribunal spanning more than 10 years. It is not something one man is going to achieve in 16 days.

In reality, there were a comparatively small number of contradictory statements by people who were expecting a miracle and who weren't leaving without one. The report of so many people witnessing a particular impossible event is faulty on both counts, conflating the number of people in attendance with the number of witnesses, and the sum total of witness reports with each report itself.

In The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary Kevin McClure wrote that the crowd at Cova da Iria may have been expecting to see signs in the Sun, since similar phenomena had been reported in the weeks leading up to the miracle. On this basis, he believes that the crowd saw what it wanted to see. McClure also stated that he had never seen such a collection of contradictory accounts of a case in any of the research that he had done in the previous ten years. — Wikipedia

Doubtless there were some pretty weather phenomena that day, doubtless a small number of people silly enough to stare into the Sun believe they saw some weird shit, and doubtless many in a large crowd of pilgrims completely agreed that they had seen something after others told them about it (people distinctly remember seeing the first plane strike the first tower on 9/11 - as you say, witness testimony is not reliable). But ultimately the story of the miracle as collated and presented is a fiction, like the story of Jesus's resurrection most certainly is.

Well, that's interesting!

At any rate, this is also why I think there's a tremendous drop off in such events since the advent of commercially available recording equipment, not to mention the 24/7 surveillance most major cities have now without a single verifiable recording of such miracles or deities.