The Biblical God Doesn't Exist by John Espinoza

Author:John Espinoza
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: god, religion, faith, atheism, evidence
Publisher: John Espinoza

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16. The Resurrection Myth

There is nothing more certain in the life of a human being than death. Every human being who has lived during the 200,000 years of our existence on this planet has died or is dying. It is still joked that nothing is certain except for death and taxes, but I think the evidence will support that taxes can in fact be avoided. Not so with death. The incredible advancements in science and medicine have slowly pushed the average life expectancy in an upward trajectory, but science cannot prolong the human life indefinitely, nor has science ever brought a truly dead human back to life. For those who will argue the contrary, that we have in fact restored human beings to life after being “dead” for a short period, the answer is simple: they weren’t dead.

Easter marks the day that Christians the world over commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. As we just discussed, The Council of Nicaea selected the date in 325, during the time of the Roman Empire when the Nicene Creed was also written. After being dead for three days, Jesus appeared outside his tomb, in varying versions of the tale from the four Biblical Gospels, and spoke with his followers before ultimately flying off the face of the Earth into Heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father.

Christopher Hitchens, of whom I am an unabashed fan, told various versions of what I am about to paraphrase during debates whenever the topic of Biblical miracles came up. In order to get the full impact of the argument that follows, it’s important to remember that the Gospels were not written during Christ’s lifetime. They were all written many decades after his death by unknown authors. There is no argument here as scholars have confirmed these facts repeatedly. There is no contemporary writing of the life and times of Jesus Christ anywhere in the world. The first mention of him is in Paul’s letters to the Churches of Galatia, and scholars have dated them to approximately the year 49.

If you were to witness something yourself, which required the suspension of the laws of nature, for example seeing a man walking the streets whom you had seen executed just three days earlier, you would have to ask yourself the following question: What is more probable; that the laws of nature have been suspended in this one instance, or that you are under some misapprehension? Anyone in this situation would have to ask himself or herself this, and this is if you had seen it with your own eyes. If you are taking it instead on a report from others, who were also non-eyewitnesses, passed along through generations in ancient texts, then you are essentially advertising that you’ll believe anything.

What should increase your skepticism of these accounts, apart from the rather obvious impossibility of a reanimated corpse, is that the resurrection of the dead seemed quite common at the time. Lazarus

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