Is Jesus' Resurrection literally true? - Iain McGilchrist & Sharon Dirckx 

I think a conversation between Jonathan Pageau and Iain McGilchrist would be excellent given some of his comments here

God cares. I love Sharon Dirckx’s response to Iain McGilchrist’s obvious struggle with miracles given the evil and suffering arising from a world with free will. We are on a one-way track to death, but God intervened with the greatest miracle - Jesus Christ coming in the form of a man to take our place on the cross and rise again.

I struggled for years with the dilemma about the miracles and especially the resurrection. If only they weren't so pervasive in the gospels it would be much easier to believe! For years I sort of made myself believe that the bodily resurrection actually happened. All the great theologians push this truth so hard, and surely to deny it is heresy isn't it? Now though I have found a balance which has given me much peace. John Crossan and Karen Armstrong have helped. Armstrong writes a great deal about the importance of Myth. Not just for the Christian but for everyone one way or another. Shortly afterwards I read John Crossan stating that it was quite likely that Jesus' body was thrown in a limepit. Shocking stuff! Having read the Psalms daily (well most days) I have realised that it is there that "Chiristianity" really has its roots. Aspects of what has become Christian doctrine occur in almost every psalm. This, I think , is where the disciples, and especially the authors of the gospels find their inspiration. One sees time and time again how the gospels tie in verses of the psalms with the life of Jesus. The reality of Jesus death has become "glorified" for us in a way which is profoundly misleading and the gospel writers are perhaps largely to blame. They played down the horror and emphasised the glory because that is how they had come to SEE- but very much in retrospect. THere was no glory for Jesus and only horror and misery apparent to everyone else that day. And yet there IS a glory. And it is this hidden glory that gradually dawns upon the disciples as they are huddled fearfully (but still together btw) in their room in Jerusalem reading their psalms and discovering, just like we do, that there, in black and white, is the key to the mystery. This indeed IS a resurrection! Jesus DOES appear to them - there in the texts - just like He does to all of us "with ears to hear." God does not intervene in natural events. I firmly believe that he mourns with us over every terrible event and would act if He could. But the only way that He CAN act is through us. We are indeed sons of God: an essential part of this story; HIS story. If we fail to act then God cannot act either. "God's will be done" yes but so often we read that as a submission. It isn't! It's a call to action. Here endeth the sermon! Sorry. Too long! I got carried away. And it just dawning upon me that the majority of viewers of this channel are probably staunch atheists!

No wonder God does more miracles in places like South America and Africa where people simply believe without talking so much pedantic nonsense.

McGilchrist seems to be the one kind of a person who really thinks he knows but never really tests his knowledge like the apostles did. to test your truth of your beliefs you set yourself up in a court of law (which is relatively safer).

When Amighty God made the universe He put electromagnetic force in everything...and Jesus was just showing us that despite opposition from hostile thinking we can all harness this invisible, electromagnetic force if we follow God's righteous commands, as Jesus lived them because then we too enter into an electromagnetic science with so much to offer...especially after Wormwood has passed and all hostility has been dealt with.

If you want to know about real miracles you shouldn’t look for the weird or the paranormal miracles in the bible, because the real miracle is just being alive. I don't deny those other kinds of miracles are true. I just saying those are “small-stuff ” miracles and that we really ought to focus on the much more astounding miracle that we are even here to talk about those other miracles at all.

Yes.

Explaining Story Magic. In the stories of Star Trek, they have great advances in technology, I'm going to call a word I created called Superscience. There are advances in technology described like Warp Drive Star Ships, Transporters and Photon Torpedoes. Now do we think those technologies actually exist? I'm going to say no, we think that Gene Roddenberry made those up. How much does it cost to make up Warp Drive Star Ships and use them in stories? Very little. If someone was to do the actual research into matter-antimatter energy process and then getting that energy system to bend space to allow the Star Ship to travel at tremendous speeds would take a lot of money and research and time. Trillions of dollars and sometimes failed experiments. But to put Warp Drive Star Ships in stories, the cost is not much at all. Consider making up stories about a God. How much does it cost to make up stories about a God that can walk on water, turn water into wine, tell fishermen on which side of the boat to throw their nets to catch a great amount of fish. How much does that cost? Also very little. How much does it cost to write stories about a God that can die a horrible, painful death, but then comes back to life 3 days later? Also the actual cost is not that much. There is a phrase from History 'paper holds still.' What the stories of Christianity and the Religion of Christianity has done is try to claim that the writers of the stories paid a huge price by being tortured and many times killed for the stories. But lots of people in the same time period in History were tortured and killed for many different reasons. Does not make the stories true. But what does Jesus do or not do to make us think that the stories are not true? It is all the other knowledge that a real Nature's God would have that is valuable information to humans, but Jesus of Christianity does not tell us. Jesus is a Supernatural God. Jesus of Christianity is never a Nature's God. A Nature's God would have all sorts of knowledge about Nature. A Nature's God would know about Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology, Geography, Mathematics, etc.. A Nature's God would know about printing presses, eye glasses, great ideas on how to advance economics. A Nature's God would know best ways to prevent all diseases. Such as Hippocrates suggested that diseases are natural, they are not caused by the Gods or were superstition which advanced Medical Science and was the start of Medical Science. Why would a God bother to Supernaturally heal humans he came across? If Jesus really wanted to do good for humans, Jesus would have told us how to prevent disease naturally and that would have been a million times better. Does your Christian God like to watch from heaven humans suffer and die to diseases that could have been prevented if only your Christian God spoke up? Modern Science and modern medicine must really piss off Jesus. Jesus just does not know enough about Nature. Jesus has some clever parables, that people in the ancient world might consider coming from a God, but to those of us in the modern world, we should know better. Jesus can do the Supernatural, which any storyteller can have their character do. But knowledge of Nature is not easily made up by human storytellers. That was why Thomas Jefferson put in the Declaration of Independence of the US the words, 'Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.' Jefferson read a lot from the Philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment and did not think that Christianity was true, that Christianity was from a God. Jefferson thought Christianity was from human story tellers. Are the events of Star Trek miracles? Or are they human created stories?

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Romans 9:10

My thoughts on Miracles are, if god granted Miracles to everyone the world would descend into hell. People would wish for their loved ones to never die. People would wish for conflicting Miracles. Free will might not be possible. I believe there is a reason Miracles are few are far between. Maybe there is a reason we don’t get what we want, not immediately anyway.

Miracles in the Bible were rare.

If God created everything, why wouldn't He be able to interact with His creation in ways we would call miraculous? His ability, power, and understanding is greater than ours. We send metal tubes with people into the air and keep it aloft by harnessing our own powers and understanding of propulsion and aerodynamics. Normally such mass would crash to earth and, unfortunately, sometimes has. Nevertheless we interfere with a ballistic trajectory by countering gravity with different forces. Similarly, if we accept the possibility of God, then we must also grant the possibility of miracles. Indeed there can be no defense against it. Nature, as a "very gracious host", would simply work with God's actions rather than be irreparably disrupted by it.

No we don’t. I’m not even convinced there even was a jesus, let alone believed he preformed magic tricks.

Sharon's Dirckx comments on "probabilistic laws" are incoherent really. I know they were off the cuff so to speak but all we got was an irrelevant example (ie in what way does someone intercepting an object in flight contravene any law of nature?), then an example of what Basil Faulty would call "the bleeding obvious" (miracles are contrary to the laws of nature) and an appeal to authority fallacy (Luke the Physician said it was true). I don't want to be unkind but this surely should not be taken very seriously.

If God exists then miracles are possible including the dead being raised. That's the 64000 dollar question though isn't it? Does God exist? How do you go about establishing that or does it come down finally to faith?

It’s almost certainly did not actually happen… Saying it did is a demonstration of arrogance

Somebody bring this guy to Bethel church in Redding already 😂

Miracles don't happen. This is the basis of the scientific endeavor. It is simply unscientific to say they do without overwhelming evidence.