The Resurrection

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I'm feeling unsituated
I'm gonna bang my head against the wall
'Til my brain becomes inflated
And I can't even think at all
I'm feeling sort of agitated
Gimme some reason and heresy
Now I need separation
I need apostasy


**Apologies to the Lillingtons for lyric butchery

John chapter 10

The Good Shepherd.
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* “Amen, amen, I say to you,a whoever does not enter a sheepfold* through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber.
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But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
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The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
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* When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him,b because they recognize his voice.
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But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.”
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Although Jesus used this figure of speech,* they did not realize what he was trying to tell them.

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* So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep.
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* All who came [before me] are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.
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I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.
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A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.
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I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.c
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A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them.d
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This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep.
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I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me,
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just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep.e
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I have other sheep* that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.f
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This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.g
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No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again.* This command I have received from my Father.”h

19
Again there was a division among the Jews because of these words.i
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Many of them said, “He is possessed and out of his mind; why listen to him?”j
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Others said, “These are not the words of one possessed; surely a demon cannot open the eyes of the blind, can he?”k

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print ... reasonable

I understand that many people here have strong feelings about religion, and I respect that everyone’s experiences and beliefs are different. For me, as someone who identifies as Christian/Catholic, some of the anti-religious sentiments expressed here can be deeply painful. I know these views aren’t always aimed at me personally, but they do affect me.

I also recognize that the Internet is a tricky place for meaningful debate. People often present “facts” to support their point of view, and it’s easy to find things that reinforce our existing beliefs—sometimes without challenging those ideas or considering the full picture. It’s human nature, I guess. But it’s important to me that we remember there’s a difference between fact and truth. Truth often requires listening, empathy, and an understanding that every person’s story is different.

I don’t want to argue. I just wanted to express how hurtful these discussions can sometimes feel to me. I believe we can disagree without being disrespectful or assuming the worst about each other.

As a Christian and Catholic, I understand that part of my faith is being ready to defend it when needed. However, I often find these contentious discussions online to be overwhelming and deeply disturbing. The sheer volume of hostility, the way arguments can quickly become heated or disrespectful, and the lack of genuine dialogue can make it difficult to engage without feeling emotionally drained.

I believe that defending my faith doesn’t always mean entering into every argument or debate. Sometimes, it’s about living by example, practicing patience, kindness, and understanding, even in environments where my beliefs are not shared or are criticized. I think we all need to be mindful of how our words affect others—on all sides of the discussion.

I just wanted to share this perspective, not to shut down conversation but to ask for a little more respect and understanding from both sides. I believe in healthy, thoughtful dialogue, and I hope we can all approach these topics with more empathy.

Thanks for listening.

Try to picture things from the other side. Would you accept such far-fetched claims being made if they weren't part of a package of beliefs you've already embraced?

It's not like resurrection is a widely documented phenomenon, instead it's a quite exceptional claim of a unique phenomenon. Why would anyone who hasn't already accepted the overall package of ideas accept the claim at face value when the only supporting evidence amounts to trust me bro?

I'm not even sure it's fair to describe a rejection of such claims as anti-religious when ultimately they seem to be mostly just anti-miracle or anti-unsubstantiated magical claims. Facts shouldn't be in scare quotes when the literal fact is that resurrection is not something that has ever been documented in a meaningful way.

Nobody owes it to believers to handle their feelings with kid gloves when they make far-fetched, unsubstantiated claims involving the supernatural—at least not anymore than those believers handle other people's feelings with kid gloves when exposed to far-fetched, unsubstantiated claims involving the supernatural from other faith movements.

You and I both reject the notion that God's only son was teleported to heaven by the one true god (as Muslims believe). Why would I treat your version of that story (the resurrection) with more respect than you'd treat their version of the story?

You and I both reject the notion that Superman is a real entity because the premise strains credibility.

When you offer an incredible premise, why would you expect me to not reject it when it rightly strains credibility?

I'd don't really say this to draw you into an argument. You don't need to share your answers to those questions, but please consider them when you're feeling disrespected or like you're facing hostility. It's probably not intended as disrespect for people to admit that things you genuinely believe simply don't pass their BS detector and to express why those things fail to pass.

Most non-believers are quite familiar with what it is about the dominant religion in their culture that causes them to reject that dominant religion. When they have strong criticisms of that religion and what it believes, it's not because they're seeking to upset followers of that religion, it's because they've gotten used to defending their positions against followers of that religion seeking to invalidate those positions.

This post is ass-backward and doesnt make any sense. How can something spread from X to Y when Y doesnt exist yet? How could anything spread TO eastern orthodoxy before Eastern Orthodoxy existed?

Both Christianity and Judaism are chocked full of memes that existed in the mythology of the Pagan cultures of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. That much is so.

But the Pagan meme content became codified (along with the rest of religion) in late Roman times first, and THEN...the religion spread across the map and evolved variants (ie Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic), and then a thousand years after the fall of Rome the Protestants broke off from the Catholics in northwest Europe during the Reformation. But all three variants of Christianity inherited certain core beliefs and memes ...including the Resurrection. Protestantism (for example) didnt lack a belief in the Resurrection UNTIL the notion drifted to Protestant countries after 1500 AD who then decided to adopt the belief- what you are stating. Thats absurd. It was a core belief that they retained from the Catholics who in turn inherited the tenet from the early Christian sect in Roman times that was the common precursor to both Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

I was talking about Easter eggs in that post, not resurrection.

I think it goes back to an earlier story. There's an account of Jesus healing a Centurion's servant. There's a suggestion that Jesus had followers in the local Roman military precisely because of stuff like that. It may be possible that these followers placed themselves at key points and did just enough to evacuate him. Yes, he might have been crucified, but they didn't break his legs. They declared him dead. They guarded his tomb. I expect they fabricated spearing him in the side and conspired to spread that rumour with the help of the other disciples.

It's not fake news, there's proof. 1 guy reported that 500 other guys saw Jesus being alive after he died. That's 500 witnesses!

True we don't have their names. True some people might say one guy saying 500 other guys told him only counts as one witness but we should just believe him.

In other news, Micheal Jackson has come back to life! 50,000 people told me they say Micheal Jackson being alive. That counts as 50,000 witnesses!

It is interesting to know how mythologies form. Even I'm not cynical enough to think that it all originates from straight-up lies, but I just don't know. And we'll probably never know. The big takeaway for me is... There is no reason to believe it happened, and while how it got to be believed is interesting, it just turns into speculation... More beliefs without evidence.

It may be the result of a 'perfect storm'.

Jesus wasn't in the manger, newly born, when the three wise men turned up. it took time to travel from 'the east', following his birth star. And an edict was put out to kill all little Jewish boys up to toddler age.
They travelled far, with expensive gifts, to worship this kid. It wasn't simply a case of drop of the presents, take photos, and go home.

I suspect, given the family needed to evacuate, they set the rumour that they were going to Egypt, but went home with the three wise men. He grew up with an education fusing his parent's Jewish theology with the eastern philosophy, and probably picked up a bit of eastern healing traditions.

Goes back to Israel. Impresses the theologians. Heals some Romans. Gets devotees from a wide social circle.

Gets crucified, but saved by his legionary followers. Instructs some followers in how to heal him enough to stabilise him. Gets evacuated east to his second home where he dies of old age.

Note that this event isn't attested to outside of the Gospel of Matthew, not in any other biblical source and certainly not in any extra-biblical source. On that basis it seems fair to conclude that the massacre of innocents is not a historic event and never actually happened.

True. But then all of scripture comes into question. So we're free to make such stories as we will.

I feel like questioning all of scripture is reasonable, because a lot of it is pure make-believe when examined critically.

The legends portraying Jesus as some important and foreseen entity should be scrutinized, same with the claims of resurrection. They won't withstand it because the claims being made are not based in reality.

It seems more likely that any historical Jesus was little more than one of many itinerant preachers that were common in the era, rather than the messiah, a prophet or literally god. All of the far-fetched claims date to after his actual life, rather than before it or during it. It's like how the one that got away steadily gets bigger in every retelling, especially in second and third-hand retellings.

It dawned on me the ways that something that didn't actually happen could be spread not as a lie, but for other reasons, but be misconstrued or whatever and become something that people down the line believe actually happened. Of course, I'm not saying I'm introducing novel thinking here or anything, just more thoughts on this from me versus my last post.

I was reading about a legend in my state of a phantom dog that people say if you ran into twice it would bring you sadness, if you ran into it a third time, you would pass away. (the first time may have been fortune? IDK) Looking into it, the original story was fiction/literary, but got misconstrued as a true legend over time.

Also, I was thinking of how sometimes fictional stories are told to children to teach morals (like fables). Well, what if something was taught as a moral to a child, but for whatever reason they never learned it wasn't true (like say the parent who taught it to them passed away when they were young) and then spread it on? Perhaps the tale was originally more believable but got distorted by word of mouth over time and became more unbelievable? That seems preposterous to us in this day and age, but is it possible that something like that could happen? Especially just think of how things were two thousand years ago.

I can't say either of these would apply in this situation, though. Although, thinking of the first scenario, it is interesting how much NT books can be studied in literary manner. Like from my understanding, Revelations is not particularly unique from its time, part of a fiction called "apocalypticism" or something like that. Plus when you look at Revelations outside of a lens of believing it is prophecy, it then becomes evident it's an apocalyptic genre description of Rome.

The Bible is a heck of a lot more interesting when you look at it culturally as opposed to thinking it's a holy text of any kind.

One thing that can be said for sure is that we have no extant primary sources from people who claimed to have seen the resurrection. I don't think we even have any of Jesus in any way, but I could be wrong. Either way, this creates a degree of separation versus the time where Jesus might have existed and our documents - a time where perhaps something like mentioned above (like where word-of-mouth over time heavily misconstrues something) could have happened and caused this?

This doesn't even take into account copying errors or later forging.

Doesn't it have to make one wonder how a document supposedly given to us from God is so... utterly unreliable?