Not fit for the Kids' Table

Victor Reppert: "It must be noted that there is no way, on the model I have presented, to show that everyone who denies the Resurrection is irrational, or engaged in bad faith."

How about showing that *almost* everyone -- and certainly the most vocal -- who denies the Resurrection is engaged in bad-faith hypocrisy?

[The point here is that most "skeptics" have no problem at all with Carl Sagan's scientistic assertions about things just happening for no reason nor cause nor meaning -- events that have never been observed to have happened and that would be considered by nearly everyone except "skeptics" to be miracles, or probable miracles, were they ever to be observed to actually have happened.]


There is another point it seems to me that you constantly overlook -- which is that even were Christianity false, that is, even if Christ did not rise from the dead [and his rising did not mean what Christianity says it means], that doesn't touch on the even more basic question: "Is God?"

The question of Christ's Resurrection is pointless unless there is a Creator-God who intentionally restored life and soul to that dead body as a promise to do likewise with those who love him. After all, one could acknowledge that Jesus really was dead and really did come back to life ... and then "explain" it as one of those (asserted by scientism) pointless [meaningless], astronomically improbable events that just happen from time to time all by themselves for no reason and with no cause [and no attendant meaning], as discussed in the above link.

[To reiterate a point I've made many times -- it's not the (alleged) fact that Jesus really was dead and really did come back to life that gets the so-called skeptics' panties in a bunch, it's the (alleged) meaning of his coming back to life that they hate; for that meaning points to the reality of the Creator, and of moral duties ... and of moral judgment. If Jesus' coming back to life were just a strange historical footnote, to which no one ascribed any particular significance, then the "skeptics" wouldn't be at all skeptical that it really did occur.]

Now, as it happens, we human beings have many lines of argument and evidence that show:
1) belief in the Creator is rational;
2) disbelief in the Creator is irrational.

ERGO, anyone who denies the reality of the Creator is [willfully] irrational.

WHY do you continue to waste your time -- and encourage others to waste their time (to say nothing of sanity) -- in the logically impossible quest of rationally convincing irrational people to acknowledge that you are rational? Arguing Christ with Jews, or even with Hindus, may be a rational undertaking; arguing anything "religious" with God-deniers is the epitome of irrational behavior.

UNTIL a person acknowledges that there is a Creator, he has nothing to say: he "has no place at the table", as the saying goes. It's not that he "belongs at the Kids' Table" [as some God-haters like to say of Christians ... and even of persons who are not necessarily Christians], for even children are rational beings ... it's that, in willfully choosing irrationality, the God-denier belongs on the floor, fighting with the dogs for whatever scraps fall from the Kids' Table.