Is the Resurrection of Christ a historical fact?

This has always been an interesting question to me. And it is not a question I want to take on faith. After all, either the Resurrection was a historical fact or it wasn’t. If the Klingons had recording devices that recorded details of this event, and they showed that the Resurrection were faked, I wouldn’t believe it occurred.

A few days ago, someone asked me if I think Christ actually turned water into wine. I said that I didn’t know, because the Gospels weren’t necessarily written to be historically precise, but rather to make important points. But in any case I love that story. And he certainly could have turned water into wine, but there is not enough evidence for me to take it as near certainty.

The Gospels were written decades after Christ lived. And there are some fairly minor discrepancies between them, as would be expected.

That said, I’m almost certain that the Resurrection was a historical fact.

There are a number of good books that go into detail about this, including, “None Dare Call it a Conspiracy”.

I’m not going to give all the details here, so let me present four main points that indicate it did actually happen.

·      Many of the Apostles were afraid and went into hiding at the crucifixion. But within a few days, they seemed to be convinced he had Resurrected.

·      All of the Apostles and disciples went to their deaths, and some were tortured, and not one recanted the Resurrection. No conspiracy, no mass hypnotism, no wishful thinking could account for this.

·      In all four Gospels, it was women who first discovered the empty tomb, and were told by an Angel (or a man) that Christ had risen. At the time of the Gospels, Jewish women were held in very low regard. It is almost inconceivable that the writers of all the Gospels would have placed women at what could be the most important event in history, unless the event actually happened.

·      The post Resurrection accounts of Christ are rather unusual. At one time, he told one of the women to not touch him, because he had not completely risen. What? Frequently, he would show up somewhere, and the Apostles didn’t recognize him immediately. Why would the Gospel writers write such things if they were trying to convince others that Christ had risen? Also, he would show up in closed rooms - something he had never done before. These things seem to indicate that his Resurrected body was somehow different than his previous body. Again, this is not something the Gospel writers would make up if they wanted to convince readers that the Resurrection was real.

The bottom line is that of all the miraculous events that occurred in the Gospels, the Resurrection is the one that is almost certainly a historical fact.

And anyone who comes to that conclusion, would be well to read the Gospel of St. Matthew. You won’t be wasting your time.

And you might well decide to listen and apply what Christ exhorts us to do.

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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at The University of Texas at Dallas, and a former Professor of Mathematics. The views expressed herein are those of the author. One of his main interests is the reconciliation between science and spirituality. You are welcome to comment upon this blog entry and/or to contact him at tfarage@hotmail.com.

Pope Francis: Christians should apologise to gay people. Me: those have harmed gays should apollogize to them.

Here’s a link to some comments made by Pope Francis about homosexuals:

Christians should apologise to gay people: Pope Francis

Well, the Pope got this part right:

The questions is: if a person who has that condition, who has good will, and who looks for God, who are we to judge?" the pope added, repeating his famous "Who am I to judge?" remark about homosexuality made early in his papacy.

This is an appropriate Christian remark. Even given that the Catholic Church and most religions consider homosexual sex to be a sin, it is not up to us to judge individuals.

Unfortunately, the Pope went on to say this:

We Christians have to apologize for so many things, not just for this (treatment of gay people), but we must ask for forgiveness. Not just apologize -- forgiveness.

Really? He wants all Christians to apologize for their treatment of gays? What about Christians who have not mistreated gays? Didn't any of his speech writers catch his ridiculous generalization?

The Pope can get away with this because it's safe to attack Christians. And it's safe to group us all together as if every Christian has the same beliefs as every other Christian.

So if you wish to follow the Pope's logic, say this to your Muslim friends, "You should apologize for the acts of Islamo-Terrorists, because you are Muslim and so are they". Let me know how that goes.

I'm sure the Pope has good intentions. But his comments have the terrible unintended consequence of teaching us to blame an entire group for the sins of a few.

Keep the blame exactly where it belongs: on the perpetrators, and those who encourage them.

Don’t make these broad generalization that try to get an entire group to feel responsible for the bad actions of those in the group. It just leads to divisiveness, and God knows we need less of that.

Each of us is responsible for our own actions, and no one else’s.

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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at The University of Texas at Dallas. The views expressed herein are those of the author. You are welcome to comment upon this blog entry and/or to contact him at tfarage@hotmail.com. Twitter account: www.twitter.com/TimFarage.
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Should Christians accept homosexuals as ethical equals and not as sinners?

The question posed in the title of this post on Quora.com. I thought some of my blog followers would like to see my response.

Christ said that one of the greatest commandments was to love all others, even our enemies. And the only prayer that he is recorded as giving us to say is “The Lord’s Prayer”, which starts with the words, "Our Father". Thus, he taught that we are all children of God.

Furthermore, one of the most well-known stories in the New Testament is the story about a woman caught in adultery, a sin that Christ mentioned a number of times. A number of people were about to stone this woman because that was part of Jewish law. (And, of course Christ was Jewish). 

He famously told the people, “He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.”

They all walked away. Christ said to the woman, “Is anyone left to condemn you?”. She said, “No, my Lord.” He responded, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

In this beautiful story, we are told 1) we are all sinners, and 2) we are not to judge others, even if they have sinned.

If you read the Gospels, Christ railed against hypocrisy more than any other sin. So anyone who considers themselves a Christian and calls out homosexuals as sinners are hypocrites, because they, and we, have all sinned in many ways.

We have no record of Christ mentioning homosexual sex. He did define marriage as between one man and one woman when he said:

“Have you not read that He (God) who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."

Christ gave this spiritual definition of marriage, and so it’s understandable that some Christians believe a marriage can only exist between a man and a woman.

But instead of having laws against same-sex marriage, or polygamous marriage for that matter, it would be much better to remove any government involvement or licensing of any marriages. After all, it has only been since the 1800s or so that any governments licensed marriage. By doing this, people can make whatever private arrangements they wish, and that is their business. They can also file a will, or any other legal documents they wish. These legal documents are between individuals.

Even if a Christian were to consider homosexual sex to be a sin, it would be pretty low on the ladder. At the top would be murder, rape, child abuse, and then stealing, fraud and such. Hypocrisy is not far from the top.

Certainly adultery would be considered a ‘higher level’ sin than homosexual sex, because adultery is mentioned as a sin many times, while homosexual sex was not mentioned by Christ, and only mentioned a couple of times in the letters in the New Testament.

The bottom line is that Christians who rail against those who have homosexual sex are hypocrites, because it is certain that they sin every day, as do we all. We are all children of God and should treat each other as such.

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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at Dallas. One of his main interests is how to improve education using technology. He also writes and speaks about Intelligent Design, and how science and spirituality can be reconciled.

Why Everyone Should be a Christian - Even Atheists - Part 2 - Christianity Makes More Sense of the World than other Worldviews

Purpose

Part one of my Christmas post, "Why Everyone should be an Christian, even Atheists - Part 1", claimed that if everyone followed that set of Christian beliefs, we would have true Peace on Earth.

In the second and last part of this series, I attempt to show that adopting this Christian Worldview explains the world as we know it, and explains ourselves and our cultures better than any other worldview.

For ease of the reader, I re-list my Christian Worldview beliefs.
 

My Christian Worldview

1) We are to love God with all our heart and all our mind and all our soul. 

2) We are to love all others, even our enemies. 

3) We are to treat others as we would wish to be treated. 

4) We are to use our talents to make the world a better place.

5) We are to help the poor. 

6) We are all Children of God, and thus He has given each of us a ‘spark’ of Himself. Thus, we humans are brothers and sisters. 

7) It is up to us to grow toward God by developing this spark of Christ within us - to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect. 

8) Because we have free will, we are responsible for each of our thoughts, words, and deeds. 

9) Cause and effect operates in the realm of human interactions as well as in the realm of physical laws. Hence, the consequence of each person’s thoughts, words, or deeds will return to that person in kind. For example, loving thoughts or actions that benefit other people’s lives will come back to us as loving thoughts or actions which others show toward us.  Similarly, negative actions will result in negative repercussions. To summarize, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Most Eastern religions call this Karma. 

10) Each person has the right to life, liberty, and to be secure in their own property. Thus, each person has the right to live life in the manner in which he or she sees fit, as long as this does not interfere with the right of others to do the same. 

11) Children are our greatest resource, and families with loved and well-reared children are the bedrock of a true civilization.  

Christ said, "But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matthew 18:6-7) 
 

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How this Christian Worldview Explains Us and our World better than other Worldviews 

This is not meant to be a step-by-step logical argument. Rather, it gives indications that the Christian Worldview explains more about our own personal thoughts and feelings, than other worldviews - it is the simplest explanation as to why things are the way they are.

Let's get personal here. Each adult seems to assume we are beings of free will, and knows right from wrong. Every culture has had court systems whose foundation consists of those two assumptions. We don't put animals on trial because we assume they don't have free will. So we have this almost unconscious belief that we were created as independent individuals, with the freedom to make our own choices. Evolution cannot adequately explain this, but being created in God's image explains it quite well.

Every culture that anthropologists have been able to study, has shown that each has a belief in God or gods. I have heard some use the theory of evolution to explain this, saying that this belief helps to keep people from being less violent, and encourages them to cooperate. But we are the only species that believes in God. If the evolutionary explanation were true, it would seem that many species would have evolved the same belief. Occam's razor applies here. The simplest explanation that fits all the facts is the best one: the reason that every culture believes in Higher Beings is because there are Higher Beings.

Many cultures have also adopted the Christian beliefs of The Golden Rule, using one's talents to benefit others, marriage, and passing down knowledge to future generations. Why do parents care if their children are better off than they are? There seems to be a built in drive to make humanity better. Why? The best explanation is that God made us this way. He wants us to grow toward Him: To Create a Kingdom of God on Earth, as Christ told us to pray for.

How about this fact. Studies have shown that over 80% of people on Earth have some belief in Higher Powers. Are we just fooling ourselves? Don't think so.

And where did the greatest religious leaders come from? Were Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Moses, and Zoroaster just random exceptions, or were they sent for a reason? And thousands of years later, many of us still try to follow their teachings.

And what of those from many different times, and many different cultures, who have claimed they have had a 'religious experience'. The individual experiences vary, but most experience a feeling of complete peace; of everything in the Universe being connected; of sensing God; and sensing a love that permeates the Universe. 

Conclusion

No other worldview explains these facts better than the Christian Worldview given above.
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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer and Graduate Adviser in the Computer Science Department at The University of Texas at Dallas. The views expressed here are those of the author. You are welcome to comment upon this blog entry and/or to contact him at tfarage@hotmail.com.
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Why Everyone Should be a Christian - Even Atheists - Part 1 - There Would be Peace on Earth

Purpose

It's Christmas time again, so why not post a blog about why it's good to be a Christian? The purpose of this post is to show that a Christian Worldview is superior to other worldviews, even if you are an Atheist. (By 'worldview', I mean one's philosophy of life). This will be done in two ways. In Part 1, I will show that there are only advantages to an individual and to the world if all were to adopt a Christian Worldview. In Part 2, I will show that the Christian Worldview gives the best explanation of as to how the world is, and why humans are the way we are.

The Atheistic Worldview

Let's say that you don’t believe in God or any other higher intelligence. Where does that leave you? Well, it leaves you - body, brain, and all, as the result of random processes, and natural laws. And what does that imply? Bertrand Russell gives an honest, excellent description of the result of such a belief system:

"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins…." 

Beautifully written. But if this belief system sounds good to you, read no further.

My Christian Worldview
 
Now let’s say you believe in Christianity. Because there are thousands of different Christian beliefs, I will enumerate my core Christian tenants:

1) We are to love God with all our heart and all our mind and all our soul. 

2) We are to love all others, even our enemies. 

3) We are to treat others as we would wish to be treated. 

4) We are to use our talents to make the world a better place.

5) We are to help the poor.

6) We are all Children of God, and thus He has given each of us a ‘spark’ of Himself. Thus, we humans are brothers and sisters.

7) It is up to us to grow toward God by developing this spark of Christ within us - to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect.

8) Because we have free will, we are responsible for each of our thoughts, words, and deeds.

9) Cause and effect operates in the realm of human interactions as well as in the realm of physical laws. Hence, the consequence of each person’s thoughts, words, or deeds will return to that person in kind. For example, loving thoughts or actions that benefit other people’s lives will come back to us as loving thoughts or actions which others show toward us.  Similarly, negative actions will result in negative repercussions. To summarize, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Most Eastern religions call this Karma.

10) Each person has the right to life, liberty, and to be secure in their own property. Thus, each person has the right to live life in the manner in which he or she sees fit, as long as this does not interfere with the right of others to do the same. 

11) Children are our greatest resource, and families with loved and well-reared children are the bedrock of a true civilization. 

Christ said, "But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matthew 18:6-7)

 
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I'm sure that many Christians might have a different list, but it can't be denied that all of these are a part of Christ's teachings. It is of interest to note if that I am not assuming any belief about Christ’s identity. This is because I believe Christ was interested in us doing God's will, and was not so concerned about who we think he is. 

Let's see if I can justify the (very modest) claim that everyone should be a Christian, as defined above.

Advantages of the Christian Worldview 

Number one above is accepted by all Christians, and indeed by most religious people. But what about Atheists? Consider the power, my dear Atheist friends, of loving God with all you heart, mind, and soul. If your heart, mind and soul are focused on our Creator, and His love for us, it would be difficult for fearful, hateful, or angry thoughts to enter our hearts. This would benefit us all. As Earl Nightingale famously said, "We become what we think about."

How about this prayer for Atheists: "Dear God, if you exist, please help me to become a better person, to help others, and to use my talents to make the world a better place." It sure couldn't hurt to say this, and it certainly could help.

The second belief above about loving others, even our enemies, is one of the most powerful statements ever made. I interpret this to mean that we are to want and desire the best for every person on Earth. What would it mean, for example, to love a terrorist? It means we want the best for him - we'd want him to turn away from his erroneous ways, to ask forgiveness from those he has harmed, and to do the best he could to make up for the harm he has caused.

The next three beliefs about treating others with kindness, using our talents to help make the world a better place, and to assist the poor, are beliefs that all people of goodwill share.

The sixth belief that we are all children of God, and that each of us was created with a spark of God within us, is certainly not something Atheists believe. But this belief is equivalent to the belief in the brotherhood and sisterhood of man. And that belief can only lead to good.

The belief about being perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect, can easily be thought of as, "Keep growing and getting to be a better and better person." Hard to disagree with that.

Beliefs eight and nine deal the fact that we have free will and are therefore responsible for our thoughts, word, and deeds. Not much to disagree with there.

Then it continues with the idea that we get back what we put out - the idea of Karma. I certainly can't prove this scientifically, but it is the spiritual equivalent to Newton's third law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So believe in Karma or not. But the world would definitely be a better place if everyone acted like they believed in Karma.

The tenth belief about having the right to be secure in our life, liberty, and property is also accepted by most people of good will. One point to emphasize with respect to Christianity, is that Christ never taught us to harm those who did not believe what He taught. So Christianity is in harmony with the First Amendment to our Constitution - that our rights to our beliefs, our words, our writings, etc., should not be infringed.

And finally, the belief that loved and well-raised children are the bedrock of a true civilization is also accepted by most. 

Sadly, and all too often, many children around the world are not loved or well-raised. Christ's quote above that leading children to sin is one of the worst sins one can commit will come back to haunt these so-called parents. 

Conclusion 

I trust that this post was convincing enough that my readers would consider adopting my Christian Worldview. Think about this: It couldn't hurt!

In the second and last part of this series, I attempt to show that adopting my Christian Worldview explains the world as we know it, and explains ourselves and our cultures better than any other worldview.

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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer and Graduate Adviser in the Computer Science Department at The University of Texas at Dallas. The views expressed here are those of the author. You are welcome to comment upon this blog entry and/or to contact him at tfarage@hotmail.com. ___________________________________