h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Gif, I don't know what you're trying to prove.
I thought we'd agreed that the earliest christians (ie. Peter and the disciples and the others with them) believed that Jesus rose from the dead. Are you in dispute with this?

Gif,
I've already explained how we know that the doctrine of the resurrection was central to the church from the word go, irrespective of who wrote the gospels. Jesus' disciples believed it, yes?

No, I'm not at all sure that they did.

It's clear that within a few decades of his death, people belived he had come back to life. What I'm saying is that there doesn't seem to be any evidence that he did come back to life, or that anyone who knew him thought he came back to life.

In other words, their belief in the Resurrection does not seem to have been supported by any evidence.

Gif

"their belief"

- meaning the early Church, not the disciples. Probably not clear in my post, sorry.

Gif

If you're going to make me go through again why it's clear Peter and the disciples believed in the resurrection this is when people start asking me whether my brain reboots over night and it's your fault, Gif!
(see post 103)

This all reminds me of superb Goon Show Sketch where Eccles is asked what time it is...he has it written on a piece of paper so whenever he is asked he can look at it and tell the person. The time must be correct as it's written on the piece of paper.

And here it is:

http://www.hexmaster.com/goonscripts/what_time_is_it.html

"I mean he proved it to them. Not us."

And your evidence for this - that they say so?

How does this show they're not deluding themselves? How is their *evidenced* behaviour distinguishable fromm self-deluders?

"He demonstrated it to the disciples, as Luke states in Acts:"

But Luke would say that.

"So this is not cognitive dissonance."

Just saying it isn't so doesn't work. In fact, ironically, it sounds like you're trying to convince yourself...

"Cognitive dissonance is where you explain why things are not as they should be according to your beliefs."

Oh dear. You either didn't read, or didn't understand, the definition, did you?

"the uncomfortable tension that may come from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs".

Two conflicting thoughts - "he's dead, I saw him die" vs. "he was the messiah, he can't be dead".

Behaviour that conflicts - e.g. having to dispose of an inconvenient corpse.

This is *textbook* CD, assuming you bother to read the textbook.

"Going and hiding the body isn't cognitive dissonance either. You're not reconciling the facts, you're consciously perpetrating a fraud (and then dying for it?). For cognitive dissonance to work you have to convince yourself, and you can't do that by hiding the body."

Again - do please try to discuss cognitive dissonance as it is actually defined, rather than as you would like it to be defined.

Discussing stuff with Christians always seems to get back to this wilful redefining of words.

SoRB

For clarification of what point you're trying to make, could you explain the relevance of the Goon show sketch to this discussion, RDD?

Christian Circular reasoning/logic.

Hi WG,

Yes, it's clear Paul believed in the Resurrection, since we have letters written by him where he states it happened.

I'm still trying to work out why you think that the disciples (i.e. people who knew Jesus before his death) believed in the Resurrection.

Gif

Where's the circular logic in taking a text and saying, "Let's find out what these people believed by looking at what they wrote"?

That's what you do to find out what anyone believed, be it Hitler or Marx or the earliest Christians.

I'm not using it as an argument to say it's true just because they wrote it. I suppose that's what you mean by circular logic, but if you pay attention that's not what I'm doing.

What I am doing is underlining the fact that this was their belief. I think we need to agree that they believed in the resurrection, (and I think it's agreed by scholars that they did believe in it) or else how can we discuss their cognitive dissonance?

"On the other hand, you would expect unanimity if it were true."

But unaninimity is not proof that it was true. People were pretty unanimous once that the Earth was the centre of the Universe.

You've still got your work cut out for you.

All throughout history, we find people fervently believing the oddest of things. Not lying, *believing*. Small groups and sometimes large groups. Manipulating the data of the environment to make it fit in with their beliefs. Just because they believed it happened doesn't make it true.

<>

The act of taking the body and hiding it will be a cause of information that will increase dissonance, will it not? They would know that they had hidden the body. How is that going to help them convince themselves that Jesus is alive?

Do you seriously imagine the disciples, or anyone, would hide the body, and then go around proclaiming Jesus to be alive?



Surely my suggestion that

That sure is what it appears to the rest of us as you have still not done anything apart from quote text showing they all believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

If you can't see that I suggest you go away and read up on scientific method.

Woodpigeon:

True - and unfortunately we have documentary evidence that early Christians wrote under the names of more famous people, either dishonestly (to give their writings more authority) or honestly (as in "I saw John do this in a vision so John would have written this if he'd has the chance" or "Gosh, that can't possibly be right, I'll just correct it and put what John clearly meant to say").

Gif

Sorry,

surely my suggestion earlier would make more sense.

What would the dissonant cognitions have been?

1. That Jesus was a great teacher from God, the messiah.
2. That he was killed.

The disciples knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he'd been killed. Like I said, they could have reduced the dissonance between these facts simply by seeing this (2) as not conflicting with (1). Maybe Jesus will rise again. Let's make his tomb a shrine. But the body vanished totally.

Do you not understand what I'm saying? Where there's cognitive dissonance the subject seeks to reduce cognitive dissonance.

Do you not understand that by stealing the body the disciples would have been increasing the cognitive dissonance they were experiencing?

Who says the disciples necessarily removed the body? Someone else could have done it.

Ach. This is a long way from accepting in any way that there was a bodily resurrection. We're dealing here with a credulous bunch of illiterate people from a primitive age in history. Is this story any different from the Turin Shroud? Again, you only needed one faker and a bunch of people who would believe anything...

post 133 appears incomplete.

Yes, it's continued in 136.