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From: smayo@world.std.com (Scott A Mayo)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: proof of resurection
Message-ID: <Apr.16.23.15.09.1993.1823@geneva.rutgers.edu>
Date: 17 Apr 93 03:15:09 GMT
Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

jsledd@ssdc.sas.upenn.edu (James Sledd) writes:

>Finally:
>There is no proof of the resurrection of Christ, except in our spirits
>communion with his, and the Father's.  It is a matter of FAITH, belief
>without logical proof.  Incedently one of the largest stumbling blocks for
>rational western man, myself included.
>I hope that this is taken in the spirit it was intended and not as a 
>rejection of the resurrection's occurance.  I beleive, but I wanted to point 
>out the weakness of logical proofs.

Terms are being used in a loaded way here.

"Logical proof" is an extremely messy thing to apply to real
life. If you think otherwise, try to construct a proof that
yesterday happened. Obviously it did; anyone old enough to be
reading this was there for it and remembers that it happened.
But *proof*? A proof starts with axioms and goes somewhere.
You need axioms to talk about logical proof. You can say that
you remember yesterday, and that you take as axiom that anything
you clearly remember happened. I could counterclaim that you
hallucinated the whole thing.

To talk about proofs of historical events, you have to relax the
terms a bit. You can show evidences, not proofs. Evidences of the
resurrected Jesus exist. Proofs do not.

I think Christianity goes down in flames if the resurrection is
ever disproved. I also think that this will not happen, as
the evidence for the resurrection is quite good as these things
go. It is not entirely fair to claim that you can only take
the resurrection on faith. There are reasons to believe it
that appeal to the mind, too.
