Cease Fire! You Are Out of Bullets Anyway!

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: Charlotte, Jenn and poor innocent by-standers who will note my repeated good faith efforts to leave this off-topic thread and especially my gullible, credulous, naive friend Fe, who wrote: : : You were the one who raised the issue of Occam's Razor, Ivan. When it comes to the issue of the birth of the Church, I don't think anything but the resurrection of Jesus is the most obvious explanation, as Jenn and Charlotte noted--which, it would seem, satisfies the criteria of Occam's Razor. : Dear People: I HAVE read YOUR bible, especially as regarding the resurrection. See how many different answers it yields to the following (very incomplete, mind you) list of questions: So YOU tell me how many women were present at the scene? How many angels? How many disciples? Where did the angels tell the disciples to meet Jesus, Jerusalem or Galilee? How about those fellows on the road to Emmaus? Did they already know he was allegedly risen or were they skeptical? When did Jesus allegedly first appear to the eleven? Galilee or Jerusalem? Did Jesus allegedly ascend on the same day he allegedly arose or 40 days later? Did the women first see Jesus or did they leave the garden without seeing him? Did the women see him before or after Peter? Did the women touch Jesus or not? Does Paul's chronology agree with the gospels? : Let me help you out here: THERE ARE DIFFERENT ANSWERS TO ALL OF THESE QUESTIONS IN YOUR BIBLE. : Therefore, is the common argument that the apostles were somehow transformed from defeated and fearful (cf. the gospels which are in total conflict on SO many points, which, ergo, is historically inaccurate) to triumphant and cheerful (cf. the Acts which are also historically inaccurate and conflict with the gospels and epistles) based on reliable writings? Can you find, in secular history a single extrabiblical reference to the early Christians in the first Century Christian Era? : You believe in a myth, a legend, a fable and nothing more, I'm afraid. : Still, I plead with you, let's move on to our Darwin OS metaphor for the sociobiologically-based and culturally evolved 21st Century human nature! Or, call it Christ OS or PxOS, doesn't matter to me. : I buy into your hierarchical metaphor and your pluralistic epistemology and maybe even your first principle Thomistic metaphysics (the Big Bang)! Heck, I'll go so far as to affirm natural mysticism, so inspired and awe-stricken at nature as I am, glorious contingency that she is! With so much agreement, why focus on our rather trivial disagreements. : Let's agree that Occam's Razor allows for simple explanations for 1) our ontology (using a hierarchy which allows for continuity/discontinuity to be an open-ended question); 2) our epistemology - which can be pluralistic and still not unscientific; 3) verily, verily, yea, even our metaphysics using your Thomistic approach to causality (though I wince at its transmutation back to Aristotlean ideas of formal and logical causes and positively deny final causes, at least those that are teleological); 4) a natural mysticism (strictly monistic though). : What MORE do you WANT from me? : almost persuaded, : Ivan : your Bible School teacher du jour : P.S. to Fe - Quit tossing your fundamentalist, dogmatic hand grenades. Haven't you figured out by now that all I'm going to do is pull the pins and throw them back at you. (I love it!)

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