1. The Christian movement would have stopped instantly if the tomb wasn't empty, someone would just have to show the dead body to everyone.

2. The Story in Matthew 28 would only be needed if the tomb was empty and people needed another way of explaining it.

3. Early Christian preachers used the empty tomb as the basis for their work, which would have been stupid unless people knew it was true.

Therefore it's highly likely the tomb was empty, even non-Christian historical scholars agree on this. There are therefore 4 main theories of how that happened:

1. Jewish or Roman authorities stole the body, and the disciples mistakenly thought that he had been ressurected. This is obviously wrong as pretty soon the authorities were trying to stop the Christian movement, and would again, have produced his body.

2. Jesus didn't fully die, just went into some unconscious state, revived in the tomb, then somehow moved the boulder himself, this is frankly ridiculous, as like I said, Romans knew how to kill, and if it turned out they hadn't killed someone, they would be dead themselves.

3. The disicples stole the body and imagined or pretended they saw him alive afterwards. The number of identical and independant hallucinations needed to generate the early church's proclamation is totally unbelievable, and without any other parallels. Also many witnesses were killed and tortured for saying they had seen Jesus alive, which you would be highly unlikely to go through if you had made it up in the first place. Although people still die for apparently silly things, people may die for things they can't prove are true, but won't die for things they can prove are not true. In addition, the people who found the empty tomb were women, which to 1st century Jews would not have been acceptable witnesses.

4. This leaves us with option 4, God rose Jesus from the dead.

Please read this: http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/josh2.html

I know you'll probably just discount this as crap, but this article states several evidences of the resurrection of Jesus and is very interesting.

Another good read is The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. If you're interested to see both sides of the debate, this would be a great and challenging book to pick up.

I highly doubt you've actually researched the evidence or lack thereof for Jesus' ressurection, so I don't think your statement is an informed one.

No, logic always applies to anything, and we were discussing whether or not it was logical to say "A was created by B, and B by nothing".  We are merely discussing the logic of the statement, not necessarily that the statement coincides with reality.

I would argue that the equation merely demonstrated infinite positions.  For it to apply to our discussion the point would have had to have traveled across an infinite distance to reach, for example, x equals 1.  I'm not implying either that the universe had a beginning, existed for an eternity, and is now where it is in time today, I'm saying that by implication, an infinite past is an infinite past endured (which is impossible).

Witnesses claim to have seen miracles in other religions too. Do you suppose we accept every claimed miracle of every religion?

Jesus (not the first or last man to claim to be a god) and was not resurrected. The Christian movement was an offbeat cult until 400 years after Jesus' death, and no one even knew where the tomb was.

When miracles happen in religion, their followers remember where those events occured. Muslims have the Kabah at the exact spot they believe God created a miracle, thats not to mention countless other specific locations of miracles for all religions. The problem with Christianity is that no one knows where this happened (because it didn't) and nobody but a few followers believed it for centuries.

If Jesus was resurrected from the dead, his tomb would be the holyiest place on Earth, and you can be assured that somebody would bother to remember where it was. All we got were a bunch of zealous Christians making up locations centuries later, thats why there are numerous temples dedicated to the spot Jesus was put on the cross and no temples for his tomb.

If there was a starting point, then there would not be an infinite past. y=x ; x>0 or y=x^(1/2)

If there was no starting point, then there would be an infinite past. y=x ; x=all real numbers

To beat it all we (as far as we know) cant look past the Big Bang, so we can only assume anyway what happened before or if there was a before anyway.

I believe God exists because he created the Earth, not some big bang or whatever philosophers have come up with recently.

I also do not believe in evolution. I did not evolve from a monkey, or a fish, or whatever they think. I, and all humans are created in God's image.


And I am christian, i don't believe in allah or buddah or any of that nonsense.

I think you're incorrectly ascribing time to the equation, because while an infinite number of positions are possible (as is allowed the equation), it still does not describe points transversing distance.

While I may grant you that, the oscillating universe idea does include the universe collapsing and re"Big Bang"ing, and if one is going to argue that the physical laws we know not may not have applied then, then that would be aprt from the idea of an oscillating universe, which is design soley to circumvent the problem of energy creation, which is not a problem if you ignore the laws for another argument.

I think you're not taking into consideration the whole Christian movement was being persecuted, tortured, killed, crucified, etc and driven underground by a little known authority called the Roman Empire (!), plus most Christians will agree that going on pilgrimages etc is a waste of time, I know Catholics do it, and it was popular in medieval times, but actual places etc have no meaning to Christians, what they mean however is completely different, but the actual place, the place his actual tomb was, why should I go there, what would I gain by going there?

And give some substantiation for your other religion 'miracles', and give numbers.

Maybe you haven't heard of how Islam came to be. Muhammad goes on a journey and sees an archangel, forget which one, but the archangel basically outlines Islam to Muhammad.  That's as legit as Jesus' resurrection and Moses acquiring the ten commandments. It's a Miracle I tell you.

Also you are basing your assumptions on this?

"The disicples stole the body and imagined or pretended they saw him alive afterwards. The number of identical and independant hallucinations needed to generate the early church's proclamation is totally unbelievable, and without any other parallels. Also many witnesses were killed and tortured for saying they had seen Jesus alive, which you would be highly unlikely to go through if you had made it up in the first place. Although people still die for apparently silly things, people may die for things they can't prove are true, but won't die for things they can prove are not true. In addition, the people who found the empty tomb were women, which to 1st century Jews would not have been acceptable witnesses."

You are basing your belief on hallucinations? Do you even know what the definition of a hallucination is?  Hate to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure hippies saw some even cooler stuff than Jesus back in the 60s. Hallucinogens didn't just magically appear several hundred years ago. They've always been here and they've always affected people's minds the same way.

Firstly I would like to applaud everyone for being polite and not flaming, but rather properly debating within civil terms. Usually by this time people have jumped in and brought everything down to the level of fanboys screaming insults at each other to make themselves feel better.

Now, it has been put forth that Jesus was not the Son of God. This is possible. However, there are only 2 options about Jesus. The first option is this, he was lying. The reason he was lying could be varied, such as he was schizophrenic or mentally insane. He could have been having Delusions of Grandeur, or simply trying to mislead everyone for whatever reason. He could have hallucinated those beliefs and seriously thought he was the Son of God.
If Jesus was schizophrenic or mentally insane, he would not have lasted in that day in time. If he was having Delusions of Grandeur or trying to mislead people, he would have said something stupid and been stoned by the Jewish religious leaders of his day. If he was hallucinating then he could not have performed those miracles and he would have been stoned by His fellow Jews long before the Romans had to intervene to maintain order.

The second option is this, he was telling the truth. If he was telling the truth, then he was the Son of God, born without sin, lived and was crucified for the crimes of humanity, and rose from the dead. If he told the truth, then there is a God, there is a heaven, there is a hell, there is a life after death or a death after death for everyone.
If he was telling the truth, then he MUST be perfect, because if he wasn't then he could not have been the perfect sacrifice for all of the sins of mankind. If he was perfect, he could not have told anything but the truth. If he always told the truth, then Jesus Christ is the only way to God the Father.

Here is the part where some people say it is simply safer to "believe" than to risk the consequences. I don't believe in this type of "conversion" is what anyone should hope for. Believing to simply escape punishment is a very very very poor way to follow Christ. If you do this and do not follow Him (His teachings, His example) you will likely be "lukewarm" and rejected.

A person should follow Christ, or any religion or belief, because they truly believe it. Having experienced the feeling of forgiveness and love when I asked God for forgiveness I can't explain how I felt that way. If it was not a real and living God, I can't imagine I would have the same feeling, something never experienced before. I have only experienced the same feeling in my relation with God since. It is not something I can recall at my will. A feeling of joy that suddenly bursts forth from deep inside your gut, something that even when you are really happy you don't feel.

Why is there a feeling of Joy? Using simple rationalization the feeling should be more of one of relief and gratefulness produced by a psychological response if God were simply an imagined being. Joy makes no sense for that response, not to mention Uncontrollable Joy. It only makes sense if your spirit has come alive inside of you by the touch and grace of God.

I cannot reason your way through this. God is not something I can explain or prove to you. Without experience one cannot understand certain things, and this is one of them.