#jebus cripes

Brennan Lee Mulligan: *makes the PCs all confront their mortality and their darkest desires and fears*

We even know the names of many of them. On the other hand, all we have is the bible’s claim of a claim: anonymous authors who weren’t there claiming, decades later, that a story exists wherein unidentified witnesses were rumored to have seen something those witnesses concluded was magic.

This isn’t even hearsay; it’s utterly worthless.

Yeah, no. Lee Strobel lied through his entire little fairytale. He cherrypicked out soundbites to weave the story he wanted to tell, rather than using all the evidence from a neutral position, which is what honest, genuine inquiry is (aka the scientific method). It’s certainly not the position of the “journalist” he claims to be.

And he provides no testable, objectively verifiable evidence. Starting with ever having been an atheist in the first place. He’d already written multiple Xtian apologetics books and worked as a pastor prior to his “Case For” book. And it’s funny how his story simply comes to the same conclusion he already had. That is - the god he already believed in is the “right” one. A book that ultimately only explores presuppositionalism.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/how-case-for-christ-author-lee-strobel-fabricated-his-best-selling-story/

There is exactly as much evidence supporting a magical resurrecting man as there is supporting a magical resurrecting unicorn. And in addition to no evidence supporting Horus, there’s also none - and only contradictory tales - supporting the Jesus character.

Starting with no ability to identify or verify the “500 people” claim, and no way to evaluate any of the steps along the way to the “resurrection” - the thing on which the entirety of Xtianity hinges: no way to confirm Jesus was “divine,” no way to verify he was actually dead - remembering medical science was primitive, and even today people are misdiagnosed as dead, even with electronic machines to assist this determination - no way to verify he was in the tomb, no way to verify what happened a day and a half later, no way to verify what happened in between, why it was empty or what it even means or indicates (other than “I can’t think of anything else other than magic”).

You don’t have “proof,” you have the claim of “proof.” The problem is that Xians go “oh, okay,” and leave it at that, never wondering what the nature or the quality of that proof is.

There’s literally nothing to work with - especially 2000 years later. Only tales of tales of what people thought might have happened. Like tales of Slenderman or Bigfoot. Except in the case of the bible, they’re only supported by tales from anonymous authors, none of whom were there. And in this case, you’re just assuming they’re true. You haven’t actually justified that it happened at all, just quoting from the same book that makes the claim in the first place.

[evidence for spider-man jpg]

Why should I care what it says in 1 Corinthians - or any of it - when you haven’t demonstrated this book accurately depicts anything about this “god” or anything related to it, including its overwrought meat-puppet sacrifice plan? Do you care about what it says in the Vedas if there’s no reason to think Shiva or Vishnu exist? Don’t you consider it a miracle that Osirus was resurrected from the dead?

If you replaced the word “Jesus” in the story with the word “Elvis,” would you then be able to spot the problem? What about substituting the word “Bigfoot”?

Because of this passage, if there weren’t concrete proof that Jesus Christ actually was raised from the dead, I’d just be some idiot believing a lie told a couple thousand years ago.

I guess you are, then. Remembering that you’re the one who presented this as the unavoidable conclusion, not me. Like how “god” is restricted to only one of two after-death conclusions, either by its own limitations or complying with someone else’s instructions.

There is literally nothing outside the book that substantiates the magical claims inside it. Any more than anything in the real world supports the claims of a vampire-slaying girl called Buffy rising from the dead - although, to be fair, the continuity is far more consistent in BtVS. Or Elvis, as previously mentioned. And we have far more reports of both Elvis and Bigfoot than of Jesus. Actual dates, actual places, actual names of people who saw Bigfoot or Elvis. You have more reason to believe these than the myths and legends of the bible.

In addition to the above, we also know that this is not how Roman executions worked; the bible is historically wrong on this and other facts (e.g. the money changers incident), mostly because it’s written by people who weren’t there.

“Jesus” would never have been put into a tomb, he would have been left to rot there as an example, since the Romans wouldn’t have cared about Jewish tradition, they kept very good records of their judicial process - none of which refer to this mythical character, who is only written about by people who believed in the legends. Just as people today write about the Money Cat.

If Lee’s fairytale was substantiated, then we’d have had scientists poring over all his evidence and 24 hour coverage. Everybody would have been sitting on the edge of their seats to finally get confirmation of this magical sky elf. And the scientists who finally verified it would have won Nobel Prizes.

On the other hand, we have multiple books, multiple authors debunking his fairly clumsy attempts at trickery:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8124168-the-case-against-the-case-for-christ

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/173134.Challenging_The_Verdict

https://infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/strobel.html

https://infidels.org/library/modern/paul_doland/strobel.html

http://www.caseagainstfaith.com/taylor-carrs-review-of-the-case-for-christ.html

https://www.watertowndailytimes.com/blogs16/jerry-moore-the-case-for-irony—lee-strobel-practices-what-he-preaches-against-20180315

If this story is what convinced you, then you are by definition irrational. Or gullible. Or both. Even if it wasn’t a dishonest attempt by someone to both pass off unabashed proselytizing as unbiased investigation and make a grab for the Xtian dollar, even if was genuinely the story of one atheist who came to this conclusion… why would you think that people should just say “that’s good enough for me”? Why wouldn’t they check to see what he might have missed? Why wouldn’t they verify this for themselves? Because they’d come up empty?

How would you detect that you are wrong? What are you looking for that would indicate you made a mistake? If you have no way to detect whether you’re wrong, then you don’t even care whether your beliefs are true or not - you’re just going to believe them anyway, the same as other religionists having “faith” in their, separate, different religion to yours - and have no basis for asserting they are true.

Here are some videos I often share, explaining what evidence and proof is, and how we form justified ideas and beliefs. Your fraudulent little author satisfies none of these requirements, and his conclusion comes from nothing but logical sleight-of-hand, convincing only to those who want to believe and don’t understand logic and justification.

Grace, it's Christmas for goodness sake! Think about the baby Jesus! Up in that tower, letting his hair down, so that the three wise men can climb up and spin the dreidel and see if there's six more weeks of winter.

-- Karen Walker