Paulogia vs Jonathan McLatchie - Was Physical Resurrection Required for Development of Christianity?

I'd take one step further and ask whether it is required for the development of Christianity for there have been an historical Jesus. I'd use Paul's logic, but suggest that the historical basis of the expanded retellings of the legends could have been fictional. This would be consistent with the authorial practice at that period (and today!) of putting one's philosophical or moral arguments into the mouth of a fictional narrator—for example, constructing the entertaining tale of the Sermon on the Mount in order to make one's rather dry list of moral precepts more interesting and palatable. As Paul argues, once such a seed had been planted, a process of literary evolution could have been kicked off that would eventually develop into what we know as the Jesus story and Christianity.

I, too, judge Paulogia for naming his dog Bella.

Interesting

I just saw a debate, of his, with matt d,
Where matt critisised apologists who claim that discrepancies are a point for reliability.

And matt asked him, if he is one of those..

And he stumbled a bit with his words, and basically said no..

Now, here, he's using it as a point for the reliability of the gospels.

Just lol man

What it always comes down to is that we do not have eyewitness testimony. We have third hand accounts of dubious veracity that claim to be from eyewitness testimony. We don't actually know if any eyewitness testimony ever existed. We don't actually know if any of the claims about the supposed eyewitness testimony is accurate*. We do not know if the people who were *claiming eyewitness testimony were actual eyewitnesses to anything nor if they were accurately relating events if they did see them. Hell, we don't know if there were actually people claiming to be eyewitnesses at all*. It boggles the mind that *anyone doesn't have some doubts about this account.

If i missed it, but i would really like to know how he justifies his religion or text is true and other religions and texts are false, cuase if you accept his methodology you have to accept other religions as true as well.

The vocabulary of the apologist ;
Maybe this, possibly that, might be, perhaps, could be, should be, seems like, hopefully, ect, ect, ect...

So "Doctor" Jonathan's entier argument was a bunch of assertions and sketchy connections that somehow, when added up, leads to cheese-us.

I'm having a real problem believing that Jesus and 500 other dead came back to life and NO ONE wrote about 500 zombies walking around except Christians.

As a former Christian, I admire the level of research and the clarity of your conclusions.

I skipped to the end first to make sure Jonathan didn't rage quit this time.

Sorry my mistake. There is the reference of 500 seeing a zombie.

The Bible is 100% fiction, no claim exists that can change that. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. are an absurdity, ridiculous nonsense, hateful fiction. Religion is NO solution for the requirements of humanity in the 21st century. God is fiction in every religion, culture, and language, every second of every day, 365. Religious apologists demonstrate their willful and hateful ignorance and their hate for people they don't like, these are hateful people with obsolete world views. God is created by human in the image of knuckle-dragging human; no one has a god in evident observable reality.

People are so desperately needy for their gods to exist!

When the crux of your entire argument hinges on subjective concept of “casualness”

Dr. McLatchie bases too many of his conclusions on fakes premises and contradictory terms. He tends to view the four gospels as one work. He thinks one can use one gospel to help explain another. This is incorrect. Additionally, what is partial independence? If we know Matthew copied directly from Mark, Matthew is dependent on Mark. If Matthew adds details to Mark’s story, this is not a sign of independent reporting, it is a sign of invention or embellishment.

I’m dating myself but this guy reminds me of Bruce McCollugh’s character “Gavin” from The Kids in the Hall . The hat, the glasses, the speaking style, it’s uncanny. 😂

I really enjoyed the calm, respectful tone of this discussion despite Jonathan's argument being so painful to listen to. Well done Paul.👍

Are the discrepancies amongst the gospels re what Jesus said on the cross "minor"? Are these passages "casual"?

McLatchie also doesn't understand math or probability.

The Odysee is also historically accurate in many ways. That doesnt make everything in it true.

Not quite as painful as when Johnathon tried to debate Aron Ra - but painful enough.

The Jesus in the Thumbnail is gym goals though. What a chad!

McLatchie is an embarrassment. He ostentatiously displays the "dr" title with his name, I'm spite of the fact that his doctorate is in the sciences and is thus irrelevant. I have a PhD in history and know a fair bit about the first few centuries of Christianity, but my speciality is the middle ages so I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on biblical history. His "arguments" are, to be frank, silly. No historian would appeal to his invented category of undersigned coincidences. He seems incapable of understanding how textual traditions develop and ignored Paul's argument about textual dependence. Does McLatchie even understand what that means?

Johnathan absolutely talking too fast and stumbling over his words

I like how Johann wears a hat that is top big for his head and one he's never worn before this debate (as in its not something he wears all the time). He's basically acting like a billboard.

Jonathan is one of the most indoctrinated parrots I’ve ever seen.

All he cares about is “plausible” as if that matters. Santa Claus is “plausible” by his standards.

I wonder how many Christians employing this argument ever took a good long look at the history of Mormonism?

With the Mormons, we have a modern, WELL DOCUMENTED case of a self-proclaimed prophet for which many other people were willing to lie, invent stuff, claim that they had visions, you name it, it's utterly bizarre what sort of events have transpired merely during Joseph Smith's life (who was a known conman) but all also since his death.

Many of them willingly put themselves in danger in order to protect the idea of Joseph Smith being the prophet, to the point that the Mormons have literally gone to war with the state of Missouri, only to flee to Illinois and then also cause a bunch of conflicts there, ultimately resulting in Smith's death, as well as many of his close henchmen.

This is modern day times, it's well documented historically, and yet people cannot quite grasp how people could have either make stuff up or be sincerely mistaken thousands of years ago with much poorer documentation.

To argue from position of McLatchie is to argue from a faith-based worldview where you just have to accept personal testimonies as fact but once you do that it means you already bought into the narrative. I don't understand why any apologists tries to present this as some sort of evidence-based position (McLatchie claims it is). It has no explanatory power on its own, it literally relies on the idea that you already think the testimonies are accurate and honest.

It really did feel like the answer was "the ev8dence os is true and point to exactly what I want because I want it to be true, and all other evidence is wrong because special pleading". Also he does the thing where when asked for further/concrete evidence the apologist just says"its what I alluded to" or "oh its out there I assure you" rather than give a single example.

How is it never brought up in these debates/discussions that the 3rd and 4th century church leaders who compiled the Bible most likely selected the gospels that most easily harmonize with each other? There were some 52 gospels written about Jesus or involving Jesus in some way… and only 4 made it into “God’s Word” due entirely to the selection process of early church leaders with an agenda to promote Christianity

How is torment any different from infinite worship?
They sound synonymous to me?

McLatchie must be one of the worst debaters I've ever seen.

If Tolkienism was a religion, McLatchie would be arguing for the veracity of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I bet my money on that!

He’s such a Bible nerd (He gives me Dungeons and Dragons geek vibes. lol) Too bad he’s caught up in trying to prove he’s not wrong, while rejecting all academic consensus.

This guy is clearly not a scholar or someone who puts any value on the vast amount of scholarship because there is zero evidence that any of the gospels were written by eye witnesses. The earliest gospel was written 40 years after the supposed death of Jesus! This cannot be serious.

Jonathan cannot be taking seriously. He is only an apologist, his desire for the gospels to be truly written by the names attributed to them. The fact that every Bible scholar in the world disagrees with him should disqualify him from any serious conversation

Jonathan: "The Bible mentions someone by name that they helped carry Jesus' cross, so it's evidence it happened"

Oh cool, my brother wrote a werewolf fanfic and mentioned me by name in it, so it's evidence that Underworld is true

Is it just me ore was Jonathan's entire intro statement just a big Non Sequitor?

To anyone seeing this debate with no context from Paulogia, he chose the debate topic, and he chose "Does the Existence of Christianity REQUIRE a Physical Resurrection of Jesus?". But upon starting the debate, it became clear that Johnathan either didn't know that, or chose an easier version of that to debate.

That's why this debate can feel a little off at moments, and it is a testament to Paulogia's knowledge that he was able to pivot to a different topic in the moment.

Christians when preaching: "All of the apostles were so sincere in their belief that even when being given the chance to repent before the executioner, they didn't waiver for a moment, and died because it!"

Professional apologists when pressed on it: "Well some people didn't like Christians in that time."

For a resurrection to be probable it would first need to be demonstrated to be possible

A book says a thing. That is what all teological debates are about.

"Resurrection", my arse! It's bad enough Christianity starts mid-story! Step method: 1. Prove a historical Jesus existed. 2. He was magical 3. His magic came from a god 4. That god was your god 5. That your god exists at all! (You might want to start with #5)

He's argument is pretty much: I find my beliefs more believable, therefore I believe my beliefs

Boy is McLatchie clinging on to those gospels like a life preserver. Despite almost every credible scholar concluding they are not eye witness accounts. I'll bet Paulogia wishes he could have used his "for the bible tells me so" jingle.

Meh. All the undesigned/artless stuff is bogus. Jonathan doesn't give any reason to think that details that potentially explain one another in an undesigned way couldn't accumulate in a fictional, as opposed to a historical, story world. Especially in stories that are aware of each other (indeed, use each other), follow the same general outline, and include many of the same sequences. That was the point with Paul's Star Wars analogy. Also, many of the details have better explanations for why they exist in the texts and thus have no evident explanatory connection with other details in the way Jonathan has mapped this all out in his gospel 'head canon'.

In other words, Jonathan is basically saying that if the gospels were 'historical reportage', we would expect details to mesh in a way that looks consistent, but no argument is offered that they wouldn't look that way if they weren't 'historical reportage'. His 'historical reportage' model is also implausible, because we have to consider the way ancients conceived of and wrote history. The gospels don't match ancient historiography very well, so his 'historical reportage' hypothesis already looks implausible.

He also wasn't able to articulate very well why there couldn't be a kernel of historical details with embellishments. He proposes this 'inductive' approach where external confirmation of some details in the gospels should lead us to be confident in all the details we can't corroborate externally. But that's silly. First, no one thinks you should believe everything anyone says just because they are right about some things. Second, it just ignores evidence where the gospels seem to be getting things wrong, contradict each other, etc. Of course, he'd probably try to explain all that away, but apologists don't do well with this, and it becomes clear that it's the assumption that essentially everything the gospels say is true is motivating their rather obvious excuses.

Same, lame apologetics from Jonathan as usual.

I take the resurrection as a new alternative one…whether or not Jesus rose from the Death doesn’t say or do anything…a resurrection means nothing only for the people who are willing to care!

Think: If I had a hypothetical roommate who gods forbid dies from accident, that Death only matter as much as I need someone to help me with paying rent monies and as much as I care for the loss of the individual and his effects and those who know my roommate and I must take account of…

Yes, human beings we know have an impact on our lives but the distal life of a person we hardly know besides hearsay should NOT matter two sh!ts!

Jesus may or may not have existed…my Apatheist take is why care when it really matters not!