You don't know that, either. You only surmise that. What you see is not necessarily all there is.
People die for their faith either because:
1. It is true.
2. It is false and they were mistaken and/or deluded.
3. It is false and they made it up themselves.
Now, in regard to the gospels, #3 makes no sense as nobody dies for what they know is a lie of their own creation. #2 is problematic because the apostles claimed to see the risen Christ. They either did, in which case we arrive at #1 or they did not in which case they suffered some sort of mass delusion as they all kept their testimony to their deaths. So, of the three, which is the most likely? I contend that it is #1.
Judaism is true as far as it goes. That, however, was not what we were discussing. We were discussing the difference between suicide and dying for your faith.
You don't know that, either. You only surmise that. What you see is not necessarily all there is.
The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ was historically confirmed by many eyewitnesses. On one occasion he appeared to upward of 500 disciples, most of whom were still alive when the apostle Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was so well established that Paul could write in this letter: “If, indeed, there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised up. But if Christ has not been raised up, our preaching is certainly in vain, and our faith is in vain. Moreover, we are also found false witnesses of God, because we have borne witness against God that he raised up the Christ, but whom he did not raise up if the dead are really not to be raised up?”—1 Cor. 15:13-15.
First-century Christians, like the apostle Paul, knew for a certainty that Jesus had been resurrected. They were willing to face hardships of all kinds, even death itself, in the full assurance that they would be rewarded in the resurrection.
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1973284?q=were+there+eyewitnesses+of+jesus+resurrection&p=par
You don't know that, either. You only surmise that. What you see is not necessarily all there is.
4. They believe in it very strongly.
No writers of the gospels claimed to be eyewitnesses.
You don't seem to understand that beliefs can't be classified simply as true or false. A believer doesn't believe because they know something is true, they only believe it is true. You can't classify religious belief as true or false because there is no basis for that classification.
What else is there, if you can't "see" it? By that I mean, detect it in any physical way.
hey im all for people jut getting up from being dead dead being possible
you might be a vampire i might be an alien
why should any one believe that
its suspicious all the magicly alive people split town instead just hanging around being immortal jesus could have used his magic to usher in a kingdom under his rule with his miracles and immortality being proof to the world that his will was backed up by power and serving him had benefits
but nope we get a story that such a thing will totally happen when he comes back some day but your ****ed if you don't believe it because um.....we need people to spread are faith and influence maybe? i mean no because god wills it ya that's it
Your claim is that christian martyrdom is so unique that it is the only example of its kind of dying for a religious belief. And this type of martyrdom is uniquely the most powerful evidence of the veracity of the belief. So any other religious who die for their religion you simply dismiss. But you still don't seem to get that dying for anything says absolutely nothing about the thing you are dying for and everything about human behavior.
No, not when you claim that the apostles made up the story of the resurrection. That's where your argument fails. They either saw what they said they saw or they made it up. So, you have to explain, knowing what we know about human behavior, why they would die for that which they made up and knew to be false. If you claim that they merely "thought" they saw the risen Christ, you have to explain why this mistaken idea would have infected so many people and what they really saw. There would have had to be mass delusion or lunacy. Again, it's a rather unlikely scenario.
Dead people coming back to life after three days is a far more unlikely scenario.
Here is the account from Irmgard Schloegl's "The Zen Teaching of Rinzai".
"One day at the street market Fuke was begging all and sundry to give him a robe. Everybody offered him one, but he did not want any of them. The master [Linji] made the superior buy a coffin, and when Fuke returned, said to him: "There, I had this robe made for you." Fuke shouldered the coffin, and went back to the street market, calling loudly: "Rinzai had this robe made for me! I am off to the East Gate to enter transformation" (to die)." The people of the market crowded after him, eager to look. Fuke said: "No, not today. Tomorrow, I shall go to the South Gate to enter transformation." And so for three days. Nobody believed it any longer. On the fourth day, and now without any spectators, Fuke went alone outside the city walls, and laid himself into the coffin. He asked a traveler who chanced by to nail down the lid.
The news spread at once, and the people of the market rushed there. On opening the coffin, they found that the body had vanished, but from high up in the sky they heard the ring of his hand bell."[30]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection
The fact that those who claimed that they saw the risen Christ went to their deaths, cannot be explained other than by the conclusions I outlined. They were either telling the truth or they all suffered from some unexplained delusion. You simply have to decide which makes more sense.
I'm not sure why this is supposed to mean anything to me. I'm only concerned with what Christianity claims and the reliability of Jesus as an actual historical figure.
The bible claims it. The people who supposedly witnessed it did not write the gospels.
Even if that were true, so what? If they witnessed something and passed that to others who faithfully recorded it and then those original witnesses went to their deaths for it, what does that tell you? You're right back to the same choice. Either they were truthful or deluded.
The fact that those who claimed that they saw the risen Christ went to their deaths, cannot be explained other than by the conclusions I outlined. They were either telling the truth or they all suffered from some unexplained delusion. You simply have to decide which makes more sense.
No, not when you claim that the apostles made up the story of the resurrection. That's where your argument fails. They either saw what they said they saw or they made it up. So, you have to explain, knowing what we know about human behavior, why they would die for that which they made up and knew to be false. If you claim that they merely "thought" they saw the risen Christ, you have to explain why this mistaken idea would have infected so many people and what they really saw. There would have had to be mass delusion or lunacy. Again, it's a rather unlikely scenario.
Who said they believed it was false? How many drank the kool-aide for Jim Jones? I would bet they all thought that what he taught was true, at least the adults. People dying for a belief that was false is far more common than you imply. That is a common, but bad argument.
Of course there are other explanations. You have to decide to be more nuanced in your view of how a religion can arise other than by eyewitnesses seeing something. Unless you were there. Were you?
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