Richard Carrier Asks: Why God Did It This Way?

Richard Carrier asks the question: "Why on earth would a God, who wanted to save all mankind, only appear to a few hundred, most unnamed, people and then give up? Wouldn't it be much more efficient and effective...to bypass the apostolate and just appear to everyone?" (Carrier, "The Spiritual Body of Christ," in Price and Lowder, Empty Tomb, 195).

Mike Licona responds, "Whatever reason God had for doing it that way, it worked. Nearly a third of the people of the world today claims to be Christian. And I think it's just like the Christian God to use the weak to trump the strong, and the fools to shame the wise. It would be just like that God to take the few and the obscure to influence the masses. Now, because of that, the world has been turned upside down." (Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 153).

Mike Licona and Richard Carrier debate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1_GY...layer_embedded

Two things I disagre with Mike Licona about. I really disagree with Licona about is his view he thinks when a person dies their spirit goes to heaven rather than remaining asleep awaiting to be resurrected. To be absent from the body is to be with the Lord doesn't say how long that interval will take. I just think it is weird one's spirit is flying around up their in heaven disembodied. We are not allowed to come before the High Priest naked.

We are spirit, soul and body (Heb. 4.12, 1 Thess. 5.23). Our soul can only operate with the use of a body because our soul was formed when God breathed in the breath of life directly creating man's spirit and when the spirit made contact with the body man became a living soul, so that man was a tripartite being of 3 independent elements: spirit, soul and body. Heb. 4.12 says you can divide your spirit, soul and body.

So how strange that would be your intuitive spirit with its power of conscience and communion is flying up in heaven with God without a mind, will and emotion of the soul's functions, because the soul is dependent on the connection of spirit with the body.

You can see the problem is most troublesome for the view Mike Licona takes. In part, my problem I have with lots of scholars in Christendom is they lack the conscientious discernment of issues like this, because these scholars are so adept at touting the party line, they forget about the truth.

Secondly, I disagree about Mike Licona's take on tongues, for tongues are not gibberish babble but spreading the word of God in different languages. When he cited an example of people in a church he was at in Turkey who said Mike was speaking their language in his own tongue, he was aghast. Isn't the more likely scenario they were lying or they were hearing things they wanted to hear?

What bugs me about this debate is Mike Licona did not stay on target. On target is staying on the point that group hallucinations are impossible and people don't willingly die for what they know is a lie. Clearly the disciples testified to having seen Jesus alive from the dead in various group settings and were all martyred except for John though John too was nearly killed and imprisoned which he could have avoided if he recanted.

Richard Carrier thinks the universe always existed. He believes in an infinite regress of cause and effects. However, that is impossible because if there was an eternity of the past of cause and effects then he would by definition of eternity have had an eternity to come into being before now, so he should have already happened. And he should never have existed because a past eternity would still be going on, thus never reaching this point.

Carrier also said that there is evidence the universe comes from non-existence. Isn't he contradicting himself from what he just previously said the universe always existed? And how can that which does not exist cause anything for it doesn't exist? Prior probabilities he attempted to employ and such are inconsequential. That which doesn't exist can't cause anything. All causal entities have properties. Non-existence does not have that characteristic.

Here we see Carrier contradicting himself jumping back and forth from infinite regress to something from nothing. It's a silly little game Atheists play, passing the hot potato.

What Richard needs to do to disprove Christianity is because group hallucinations are impossible and people don't willingly die for what they know is a lie, he would have to attack what Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 15, Gal. 1 & 2 as legend.

Consult The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary R. Habermas and Mike Licona on page 88 to see that if what Paul wrote in these 3 chapters clearly tells us one vital detail: the original disciples claimed resurrection from the beginning to the end of their lives.

Therefore, what is the naturalistic explanation to account for this? Since the disciples truly believed it then legend is out of the realm of possibility.

98% of the talk back and forth and summaries are really irrelevant to the core proof.

Conclusion: only one logical option: Jesus is God who raised Himself form the grave.