Obliterating Bart Ehrman's Explanation of Christianity

Ex atheist here. 1. Witnessed a failed exorcism by a shaman at a ayahuasca retreat, he could do absolutely nothing about the person being held down by several people while screaming the whole night. Around 30 of us in there. That threw my worldview upside down and I was terrified day and night after that.. 2. I had a radical encounter with Jesus after opening up the Gospel of John. Been a follower of Jesus Christ since 2016, saved by grace through faith. Hallelujah!

Bart Ehrman said in one if his videos that Paul may have been persecuting Jesus' followers because Jesus died on a tree (a cross is regarded as a tree), which goes against Torah somewhere. So even Paul was prepared to radically change his beliefs in ways that could be personally dangerous, which would seem hard to believe if his faith wasn't genuine and he had no evidence to believe.

Jimmy Akin already utterly dismantled Ehrman.

How can you firmly believe that these three (at least) definitely saw “something they interpreted as Jesus” and conclude the most logical explanation is all of them simply imagined it? I’d sooner believe they didn’t see anything and this is all a fairy tale.

Thank God for Dr. Craig. God bless him.

The recent evidence of the Shroud should convince anyone with an open mind that 1) Jesus died 2) Jesus was resurrected Also if you want proof from the gospels, how about Thomas. Jesus told him to put his hand into his side and his finger into the wounds in his hands. Thomas's response "My lord and my God. " Be not unbelieving but believe.

You don't have to be nor become a Christian to recognize the super forceful point Craig is making here. The evidence we have simply is not well-explained by anything like a small series of isolated, individual "experiences" of a highly ambiguous character. Regardless of one's worldview, whatever caused the origination of Christianity certainly involved something a great deal more mysterious and unusual than Dr. Ehrman's hypothesis admits.

In every single group appearance story there are one or more persons described as doubting. Why does WLC never mention that verifiable fact?

Ehrman claims that Jesus wasn't buried in a grave and yet we have Jesus' burial cloths - the Shroud of Turin.

Craig is very articulate and states things very well.

Cam is on a roll! „Demolishing“ and „obliterating“ atheist arguments left and right and at the same time showcasing the creme de la creme of apologetics!

No vision and certainly not hearing about someone elses vision..would ever be powerful enough that every one of these men died....because they refused to say it did not happen..but through torture and horrible deaths persisted in saying.."Jesus resurrected from the dead. I saw Him. Believe in Him..as he will do this for all who do. Every single one..to a man..chose death over denying this. What would convince Ehrman? Seeing Jesus!

I've listened to Bart, and I imagine that he would say that there was not one single Jewish idea about the resurrection. He would say there were multiple "Judaisms" just like later there were multiple "Christianities." I'm fairly certain I've heard him make this response to Craig's argument. I don't know what the response to that would be. The other alternative explanation is that all religions start out as something unexpected... or else there wouldn't be a need for a new religion.

Bart is notorious for speculating, then pretending his speculation is factual, then pounding the table like his speculation is fact.

Okay, so all of the reports of people seeing Elvis post mortem means that Elvis also resurrected, right? It's not hard to imagine how absurdly poor this logic is.

I was expecting an obliteration but left pretty disappointed. Nothing WLC said really undermines BE point, his arguments are purely speculative.

Convincing just like everything else in reality Yet reality has no reality.very convincing evidence which is all dreamt up, like all convincing evidence is regarding any topic

How does dr. Craig explain that the Jewish priests seemed to expect the resurection by employing a guard at the tomb; does their understanding of Jesus contradict the Jewish and the understanding of apostles that the resurection "should be" collective and apocalyptic event? Matthew: "The Guard at the Tomb 62 The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. 63 “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ 64 So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.” 65 “Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard." This is from dr. Craig: "According to Matthew's version, on Saturday, that is, on the Sabbath, which Matthew strangely circumnavigates by calling it the day after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees ask Pilate for a guard to secure the tomb to prevent the disciples from stealing the body and thus 'fulfilling' Jesus' prediction of rising on the third day. ".... "Perhaps the most serious difficulty with the guard story, however, is that if the disciples did not grasp the import of the resurrection predictions, then the Jews, who had much less contact with Jesus, would not have grasped them either. This is, however, essentially an argument from silence, since Matthew does not tell us how the Jews learned of Jesus' prediction. It assumes that we have recorded in the gospels all instances on which Jesus spoke of his resurrection or that if this prediction was conveyed to the Jews surreptitiously we must know about it. It is possible that the actions of the Jews were not motivated by any knowledge of resurrection prophecies at all, but were simply an afterthought to prevent any possible trouble that could be caused at the tomb by the disciples during the feast. Taken together these considerations have a cumulative weight, however, and in themselves would probably cause one to be sceptical about the historicity of the guard story." ((https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/historical-jesus/the-guard-at-the-tomb)) How come this does not imply that the priests understood Jesus on His claims about His ressurection and the disciples did not? I do not get dr. Craigs explanation provided in the explanation in that post.

Bart fans crying and insulting you in 3, 2,1...

If Jews believed the Resurrection of the Dead was only a corporate event after the end of the world how come the Gospels report the raising from the dead of Lazarus, Jairus' daughter and the Saints?