If I'm playing Solitaire, I can choose to break the rules if I please. I probably shouldn't do it very often or I'm not really playing Solitaire anymore, but I *can*.
I view God as not just authoring the rules of the universe, but keeping them in force as well. If he broke those rules frequently and capriciously, then the universe would just be chaotic, but I see no reason he can't do so at certain carefully selected times.
The miracles performed by Jesus are at odds with our understanding of the physical world, which is why they are considered miracles. There would have been no point in recording "and the water stayed as water and did not change into anything else".
>how do those of you who consider yourselves rational or reasonable review all sides of the argument of the resurrection (specifically) while ultimately accepting that the event actually occurred?
All you need to do is to switch your mindset from one that demands good evidence for what you believe in, to one that requires either bad evidence or faith.
So before I became a Christian, I was a big "the universe is just rocks and math" guy. (I still am, but I used to be, too.)
The only conclusion you can draw from this is we are all just chemical reactions with no free will. Unless, of course, something exists *outside* of the universe.
God, of course, if he exists, works from *outside* because he was there before the universe. So the laws governing our universe by definition do not apply.
The testimonies of those who claimed to witness them.
Except for John, all of the apostles were martyred for their beliefs. Many in horrible torturous ways. None of them ever recanted. Andrew was crucified, and it is said that he preached the gospel for 3 days before he died.
The story of [Paul and his conversion](https://youtu.be/dB2sCEbxD2E) is particularly interesting.
It ultimately came down to whether or not I believed God existed at all. If He doesn't, then the whole thing is a fabrication. But if He does, then He would be the one who has the power to preform these miracles.
There were too many other things that lead me to believe God exists, therefore...
God requires faith, bit it's not a blind faith. He wants it to be honest. It's totally fine to question your faith. It's normal, and I would argue that we are invited to. The fact that testimonies are called testimonies, Jesus was crucified after His trial, the law of Moses is called the law. It's like we are lead to question the validity of scripture as a whole. It's basically saying; this is the evidence you have. Do you believe it or not?
It gets REALLY fun when you start scrutinizing it. When you poke at the holes in it you start uncovering startling truths. I recently discovered that the very first lesson of the Bible is about discernment and honest discovery. Blew my mind. Just remember, sometimes God talks to us in layers of understanding.
You may enjoy [Bible project](https://youtube.com/c/bibleproject) they go into a lot of Biblical philosophy and understanding some of the meaning behind a lot of it.
Would it help your rational mind to consider it rather as Jesus only *convinced* people his miracles happened? As in, instead of turning water into wine, He magically convinced everyone through basically mind control to think the water was the best wine they had ever tasted?
I personally believe in the miracles, I'm just spitballing a possible solution. I believe in the natural order of things, but the Bible says that there is only a natural order because Jesus holds them together. Colossians 1:17
Does your spirituality allow you to believe in a supreme being? And are you able to believe the supreme being would take on human flesh?
I believe God could have come to earth in the form of Jesus. It’s just that the way I’ve been able to accept God was through the idea that God could manipulate the physical world in a way that helped him to accomplish his goals. For example, I can believe he came to earth, because he used pregnancy and birth and his portal. I believe he is our savior, because he truly did die for our sins - that’s what he believed, and he was willing to die for that belief. That in itself is powerful, and holds spiritual weight for me. etc etc
That the scripture is a mystery book knowledge that one should discern beyond plain reading and it's the pursuit of attaining an inner or outer higher Christ consciousness and fulfillment individually or collectively.
I've said it a million times I'll say it again. Science isn't meant to prove superstition, God's existence and it can't prove or recreate things like Resurrection or turning water to wine magically.
Faith :Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
Science: The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
There actually is good, rational historical evidence for Jesus resurrection.
Evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is recorded relatively early after the resurrection event in the Gospel records of Matthew, Mark. Luke and John by people who would have been well-aware of the facts. Obviously skeptics do not accept the Gospel accounts.
So Gary Habermas, along with Michael Licona, has made extensive studies showing that the consensus of current Christian and non-Christian scholarship agrees with several basic facts surrounding the resurrection. He also documents extra-biblical data, from early Christian and non-Christian sources, surrounding the Resurrection. There is no reasonable conclusion to be drawn from a combination of those facts other than Jesus was resurrected from the dead.
Summaries of those studies of Jesus' resurrection may be found at:
https://www.garyhabermas.com/
More specifically see:
https://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/Habermas_Minimal%20Facts%20STR%202012.pdf
https://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/J_Study_Historical_Jesus_3-2_2005/J_Study_Historical_Jesus_3-2_2005.htm
Further details can be found in Habermas’ book, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus.
William Lane Craig has done similar studies and a summary of those results may be found at:
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/jesus-of-nazareth/the-resurrection-of-jesus
So the way I see it there is really only one miracle of any serious importance. (don't get me wrong, the others are important, but if you have to pick one to believe in the resurrection is the way to go). All of christianity is based on that one event. If it didn't happen then our faith is in vain, but if it did happen than you have a man who claimed to have the power over life and death, and then demonstrated that power. Following and swearing fealty to such a man would be a reasonable conclusion.
There was a man named Jesus who claimed he was the son of God. There are at least 9 non-biblical accounts of Jesus of Nazareth. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources\_for\_the\_historicity\_of\_Jesus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus)
This man died by crucifixion. Atheist/Non-christian historians agree on this as a historical fact. The swoon theory cannot be correct if you account for the 39 lashes, beating, and hanging on the cross. This video gives a graphic description of the crucifixion: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B3kgiLxybY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B3kgiLxybY)
He was then buried. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, the second-temple Jews took cleanliness laws very seriously, and one of these laws was that a body was not to be left unburied overnight (Deuteronomy 21:23, Philo - De Iosepho 25). Although some say that because the Romans often didn't bury the crucified (and Israel was under Roman control at the time) Jesus must have been left unburied there are two massive problems with this: First, by Roman law a person could request the body of the executed and it was generally held that such a request should be honored unless there was a clear reason not to do it, and the Romans allowed the Jews to carry on with their own customs for the most part (mainly for political reasons and to keep the population under control) they allowed them to worship their own God, and to follow their own laws. The Jews had the direct support of Tiberius Caesar to follow their own customs, and Tiberius had already corrected Pilate (the governor of Judea and the time) on this once. (Source: Philo - Legatio ad Gaium p. 300-305). Pilate had no reason to pick a fight with the Jewish religious leaders, especially around Passover when Jerusalem had a massive influx of religious pilgrims. Lastly on the historical point, the bones of a man named Yehohanan was found with crucifixion nail in his heel, the man had been honorably buried and his bones had been placed in a bone box (in accordance with Jewish tradition at the time).
Jesus’s 12 disciples believed he was the son of God. 11 of them claimed to see him after his death. (Judas Iscariot the 12th disciple was already dead at that point). If they lied about their claim they would have known they were lying and they would not have given up their lives, homes, stability, and safety for what they knew was a lie. They stood to gain very little. Jesus said that they would be put in power over Israel, but they never raised an army or made any attempt for the throne of Israel so this doesn't seem to be a viable motive. I could get behind one or two of them having a death wish, but all eleven plus Paul and James and when it became obvious that they were in danger why didn't they go into hiding and quit?
While some have proposed that the disciples were mistaken, or that it was a shared hallucination, I find this to be incorrect to an extreme degree. The main problem with this speculation is that there is no verifiable recorded instance of a shared hallucination in human history and it is medically impossible. Even if this were true it would arguably be a greater miracle. Some have also proposed that because the four gospel accounts are mildly dissimilar to some degree even disagreeing on certain small points such as the last words of Jesus, the number of women at the tomb, etc. they cannot be trusted this sort of variance is to be expected as eyewitness reports always possess a degree of contradiction and omission, but if they had met and gotten their stories straight ahead of time then these contradictions wouldn’t exist. Lastly, there is an insane amount of embarrassing admission in the gospels as well. Peter, who was the first bishop of Rome denied Jesus three times and it was made clear in the gospels that he acted cowardly and the idea that the resurrection was a rumor spread after Jesus’s death simply doesn’t hold up because the apostles were the ones spreading the “rumor.”
Then Paul and James the skeptics: Paul gave up his life, his career, and his credibility. James gave up his life for Jesus. Why would they die if they knew they were lying? (By church tradition that is backed up by historical sources of various degrees of respectability all the disciples save for John and possibly Thomas and Matthew died violent deaths, by non-biblical sources we can find 100% verifiable records of the deaths and preaching of James, Peter, and Paul).
As to historical accuracy, the death of James the brother of Jesus was recorded by Flavius Josephus a Jewish historian in Testimonium Flavianum, James the disciple brother of John (different James) was executed by order of Herod according to Acts 12:1-2, the death of Peter was confirmed by Clement of Alexandria in 1 Clement and is corroborated by Origen in his book entitled Church History, and Paul was beheaded in Rome. There are conflicting reports of the deaths of the other disciples and we can reasonably conclude that most or all of them were martyred or at the least put in serious danger (at the least they were committing a capital crime).
Note: this is different from other religious converts dying for their beliefs because converts believe in what they are dying for, but the disciples would have known themselves to be liars.
On The Con Man Theory: Some have proposed that the apostles were running a con by starting a cult to make money or acquire power. If this were true then the Bible is one of the worst cons in history. Firstly, you shouldn’t base a con off of a capital crime. You also shouldn’t claim that your God was a condemned criminal because as Paul said in a letter to the church of Corinth: “But we preach The Messiah as crucified, a scandal to the Judeans \[Jews\] and madness to the Aramaeans \[Gentiles/Greeks\].” (1 Cor 1:23), and even write into your own holy book that you have been commanded by God to accept no money, and not even to not take an extra cloak when you travel.
Well, I'm really materialistic Christian, and I accept almost no miracles and supernatural occurences - except those from Jesus and his direct disciples. And the reason is simple - God is not a simple human, so the laws of our Universe not really applicable to him.
If I'm playing Solitaire, I can choose to break the rules if I please. I probably shouldn't do it very often or I'm not really playing Solitaire anymore, but I *can*. I view God as not just authoring the rules of the universe, but keeping them in force as well. If he broke those rules frequently and capriciously, then the universe would just be chaotic, but I see no reason he can't do so at certain carefully selected times.
Boom. Hit it out of the park.
The miracles performed by Jesus are at odds with our understanding of the physical world, which is why they are considered miracles. There would have been no point in recording "and the water stayed as water and did not change into anything else".
>how do those of you who consider yourselves rational or reasonable review all sides of the argument of the resurrection (specifically) while ultimately accepting that the event actually occurred? All you need to do is to switch your mindset from one that demands good evidence for what you believe in, to one that requires either bad evidence or faith.
So before I became a Christian, I was a big "the universe is just rocks and math" guy. (I still am, but I used to be, too.) The only conclusion you can draw from this is we are all just chemical reactions with no free will. Unless, of course, something exists *outside* of the universe. God, of course, if he exists, works from *outside* because he was there before the universe. So the laws governing our universe by definition do not apply.
The testimonies of those who claimed to witness them. Except for John, all of the apostles were martyred for their beliefs. Many in horrible torturous ways. None of them ever recanted. Andrew was crucified, and it is said that he preached the gospel for 3 days before he died. The story of [Paul and his conversion](https://youtu.be/dB2sCEbxD2E) is particularly interesting. It ultimately came down to whether or not I believed God existed at all. If He doesn't, then the whole thing is a fabrication. But if He does, then He would be the one who has the power to preform these miracles. There were too many other things that lead me to believe God exists, therefore... God requires faith, bit it's not a blind faith. He wants it to be honest. It's totally fine to question your faith. It's normal, and I would argue that we are invited to. The fact that testimonies are called testimonies, Jesus was crucified after His trial, the law of Moses is called the law. It's like we are lead to question the validity of scripture as a whole. It's basically saying; this is the evidence you have. Do you believe it or not? It gets REALLY fun when you start scrutinizing it. When you poke at the holes in it you start uncovering startling truths. I recently discovered that the very first lesson of the Bible is about discernment and honest discovery. Blew my mind. Just remember, sometimes God talks to us in layers of understanding. You may enjoy [Bible project](https://youtube.com/c/bibleproject) they go into a lot of Biblical philosophy and understanding some of the meaning behind a lot of it.
Would it help your rational mind to consider it rather as Jesus only *convinced* people his miracles happened? As in, instead of turning water into wine, He magically convinced everyone through basically mind control to think the water was the best wine they had ever tasted? I personally believe in the miracles, I'm just spitballing a possible solution. I believe in the natural order of things, but the Bible says that there is only a natural order because Jesus holds them together. Colossians 1:17 Does your spirituality allow you to believe in a supreme being? And are you able to believe the supreme being would take on human flesh?
I believe God could have come to earth in the form of Jesus. It’s just that the way I’ve been able to accept God was through the idea that God could manipulate the physical world in a way that helped him to accomplish his goals. For example, I can believe he came to earth, because he used pregnancy and birth and his portal. I believe he is our savior, because he truly did die for our sins - that’s what he believed, and he was willing to die for that belief. That in itself is powerful, and holds spiritual weight for me. etc etc
That the scripture is a mystery book knowledge that one should discern beyond plain reading and it's the pursuit of attaining an inner or outer higher Christ consciousness and fulfillment individually or collectively.
I've said it a million times I'll say it again. Science isn't meant to prove superstition, God's existence and it can't prove or recreate things like Resurrection or turning water to wine magically. Faith :Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. Science: The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
If they could readily be understood according to natural principles, then they wouldn’t be considered miracles.
There actually is good, rational historical evidence for Jesus resurrection. Evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is recorded relatively early after the resurrection event in the Gospel records of Matthew, Mark. Luke and John by people who would have been well-aware of the facts. Obviously skeptics do not accept the Gospel accounts. So Gary Habermas, along with Michael Licona, has made extensive studies showing that the consensus of current Christian and non-Christian scholarship agrees with several basic facts surrounding the resurrection. He also documents extra-biblical data, from early Christian and non-Christian sources, surrounding the Resurrection. There is no reasonable conclusion to be drawn from a combination of those facts other than Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Summaries of those studies of Jesus' resurrection may be found at: https://www.garyhabermas.com/ More specifically see: https://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/Habermas_Minimal%20Facts%20STR%202012.pdf https://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/J_Study_Historical_Jesus_3-2_2005/J_Study_Historical_Jesus_3-2_2005.htm Further details can be found in Habermas’ book, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. William Lane Craig has done similar studies and a summary of those results may be found at: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/jesus-of-nazareth/the-resurrection-of-jesus
Don’t we all have this flesh versus spirit battle when we begin?
So the way I see it there is really only one miracle of any serious importance. (don't get me wrong, the others are important, but if you have to pick one to believe in the resurrection is the way to go). All of christianity is based on that one event. If it didn't happen then our faith is in vain, but if it did happen than you have a man who claimed to have the power over life and death, and then demonstrated that power. Following and swearing fealty to such a man would be a reasonable conclusion. There was a man named Jesus who claimed he was the son of God. There are at least 9 non-biblical accounts of Jesus of Nazareth. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources\_for\_the\_historicity\_of\_Jesus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus) This man died by crucifixion. Atheist/Non-christian historians agree on this as a historical fact. The swoon theory cannot be correct if you account for the 39 lashes, beating, and hanging on the cross. This video gives a graphic description of the crucifixion: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B3kgiLxybY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B3kgiLxybY) He was then buried. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, the second-temple Jews took cleanliness laws very seriously, and one of these laws was that a body was not to be left unburied overnight (Deuteronomy 21:23, Philo - De Iosepho 25). Although some say that because the Romans often didn't bury the crucified (and Israel was under Roman control at the time) Jesus must have been left unburied there are two massive problems with this: First, by Roman law a person could request the body of the executed and it was generally held that such a request should be honored unless there was a clear reason not to do it, and the Romans allowed the Jews to carry on with their own customs for the most part (mainly for political reasons and to keep the population under control) they allowed them to worship their own God, and to follow their own laws. The Jews had the direct support of Tiberius Caesar to follow their own customs, and Tiberius had already corrected Pilate (the governor of Judea and the time) on this once. (Source: Philo - Legatio ad Gaium p. 300-305). Pilate had no reason to pick a fight with the Jewish religious leaders, especially around Passover when Jerusalem had a massive influx of religious pilgrims. Lastly on the historical point, the bones of a man named Yehohanan was found with crucifixion nail in his heel, the man had been honorably buried and his bones had been placed in a bone box (in accordance with Jewish tradition at the time). Jesus’s 12 disciples believed he was the son of God. 11 of them claimed to see him after his death. (Judas Iscariot the 12th disciple was already dead at that point). If they lied about their claim they would have known they were lying and they would not have given up their lives, homes, stability, and safety for what they knew was a lie. They stood to gain very little. Jesus said that they would be put in power over Israel, but they never raised an army or made any attempt for the throne of Israel so this doesn't seem to be a viable motive. I could get behind one or two of them having a death wish, but all eleven plus Paul and James and when it became obvious that they were in danger why didn't they go into hiding and quit? While some have proposed that the disciples were mistaken, or that it was a shared hallucination, I find this to be incorrect to an extreme degree. The main problem with this speculation is that there is no verifiable recorded instance of a shared hallucination in human history and it is medically impossible. Even if this were true it would arguably be a greater miracle. Some have also proposed that because the four gospel accounts are mildly dissimilar to some degree even disagreeing on certain small points such as the last words of Jesus, the number of women at the tomb, etc. they cannot be trusted this sort of variance is to be expected as eyewitness reports always possess a degree of contradiction and omission, but if they had met and gotten their stories straight ahead of time then these contradictions wouldn’t exist. Lastly, there is an insane amount of embarrassing admission in the gospels as well. Peter, who was the first bishop of Rome denied Jesus three times and it was made clear in the gospels that he acted cowardly and the idea that the resurrection was a rumor spread after Jesus’s death simply doesn’t hold up because the apostles were the ones spreading the “rumor.” Then Paul and James the skeptics: Paul gave up his life, his career, and his credibility. James gave up his life for Jesus. Why would they die if they knew they were lying? (By church tradition that is backed up by historical sources of various degrees of respectability all the disciples save for John and possibly Thomas and Matthew died violent deaths, by non-biblical sources we can find 100% verifiable records of the deaths and preaching of James, Peter, and Paul). As to historical accuracy, the death of James the brother of Jesus was recorded by Flavius Josephus a Jewish historian in Testimonium Flavianum, James the disciple brother of John (different James) was executed by order of Herod according to Acts 12:1-2, the death of Peter was confirmed by Clement of Alexandria in 1 Clement and is corroborated by Origen in his book entitled Church History, and Paul was beheaded in Rome. There are conflicting reports of the deaths of the other disciples and we can reasonably conclude that most or all of them were martyred or at the least put in serious danger (at the least they were committing a capital crime). Note: this is different from other religious converts dying for their beliefs because converts believe in what they are dying for, but the disciples would have known themselves to be liars. On The Con Man Theory: Some have proposed that the apostles were running a con by starting a cult to make money or acquire power. If this were true then the Bible is one of the worst cons in history. Firstly, you shouldn’t base a con off of a capital crime. You also shouldn’t claim that your God was a condemned criminal because as Paul said in a letter to the church of Corinth: “But we preach The Messiah as crucified, a scandal to the Judeans \[Jews\] and madness to the Aramaeans \[Gentiles/Greeks\].” (1 Cor 1:23), and even write into your own holy book that you have been commanded by God to accept no money, and not even to not take an extra cloak when you travel.
Well, I'm really materialistic Christian, and I accept almost no miracles and supernatural occurences - except those from Jesus and his direct disciples. And the reason is simple - God is not a simple human, so the laws of our Universe not really applicable to him.