THE EVIDENCE THAT YOU TOO CAN LIVE FOREVER

"How can you deal effectively with the facts if you deny their existence?" - Robert J. Ringer

We’ve talked about many benefits from being Christian and following God’s principles, both for society and for individuals. See these links if you haven't read them yet: 

• Health—Following God’s principles adds ~10 years to life on average (and sometimes much more)
• Marriage—People who follow God’s principles have ~35% less divorce, are significantly happier and Christian fathers spend about double the time with their kids as other fathers do, which gives many advantages.
• Morals—Even attending church improves morals significantly. Following God’s principles is an incredible help to morality.
• Happiness—Religion and reading the Bible increases happiness by up to 25%. 
• Self-Control & Success: Happiness has a direct impact on how successful you are. Much research shows that religion increases happiness and 80 years of research shows that religion improves self-control which is a major factor in many kinds of success.
• Forgiveness and promotion of peace and justice: Christians have had a complex relationship with power. But, while they've made some mistakes, the Christian worldview produces people who continually challenge the status quote whether it's Roman, Communist, Nazi, American, atheist, democratic, Christian or whatever. It ranged from a monk challenging the gladiator games morality to Christian wet nurses picking up abandoned babies all the way up to Martin Luther King's campaign for equal rights and Shane Claiborne's peaceful protest against the Iraq war, going to Iraq and going to targets that might be bombed to try to prevent attacks.
  
• Building Modern Science: Christians and Bible principles directly built most of the foundations and branches of modern science.
• Human Rights improvements: Christians have pioneered most of the human rights movements in history.
• Money—Christian nations and those that follow biblical principles are consistently wealthier on average than those who do not.
  and many others
  

INTRO--WHY IS JESUS' RESURRECTION IMPORTANT?

• “All my possessions for one moment of time.” said Queen Elizabeth
• "I am abandoned by God and man; I shall go to hell! I will give you half of what I am worth, if you will give me six month's life." Voltaire, Voltaire, the most influential atheist of Europe in his day.
• "As Vice President, George Bush represented the U.S. at the funeral of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Bush was deeply moved by a silent protest carried out by Brezhnev's widow. She stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then, just as the soldiers touched the lid, Brezhnev's wife performed an act of great courage and hope, a gesture that must surely rank as one of the most profound acts of civil disobedience ever committed: She reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband's chest. There in the citadel of secular, atheistic power, the wife of the man who had run it all hoped that her husband was wrong. She hoped that there was another life, and that that life was best represented by Jesus who died on the cross, and that the same Jesus who resurrected might yet have mercy on her husband.” Gary Thomas, in Christianity Today, October 3, 1994, p. 26.
  

EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS DON'T REQUIRE EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE (it's a double standard fallacy)

INTRO--HOW DO WE VERIFY AMAZING CLAIMS?

• Paul Bunyan: A giant logger with a blue ox who can cut down whole forests with a swing and who can pull winding roads straight with his ox.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bunyan
                                              
  
  
• Dangeun: A bear wants to become human, stays in a cave for 100 days eating garlic and mugwort and as a reward is transformed into a human. She marries Hwanung, son of the Lord of Heaven and has a child, Dangun, who is the founder of the Korean nation.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangun
           
  
  
• Lee Soon Shin: In the late 1500s, the Japanese were attacking Korea. Unfortunately, the Korean admiral Lee Soon Shin was defeating them in every naval battle and cutting off their supply lines. The Japanese devised a clever plan to send a double agent, Yoshira, to the Korean general Kim Gyeong Soo. After gaining his confidence, the spy told general Kim that Kato Kiyomasa, the Japanese admiral, was coming to attack Korea and Admiral Lee should ambush him. The Korean general and king gave the order. Admiral Lee refused because he knew the location was very dangerous.  Admiral Yi was arrested, tortured nearly to death and demoted to the rank of a common soldier.  His replacement, Won Gyun, attacked as ordered, and lost nearly the whole Korean fleet as well as his own life. 
  
  Admiral Yi was quickly reinstated. But, he had only 13 ships left.  Still he pledged to fight and carefully planned his strategy.  At the battle of Myeongnyang in 1597, he lured the Japanese fleet of ~333 ships to a carefully chosen place where his ships were hiding. He ambushed them, sinking ~120+ enemy ships without losing even 1 of his own ships. He routed an enemy force whose sailors outnumbered his 25 to 1. This is probably the most extraordinary naval achievement in history.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Soon_Shin
                                        
  

• Emperor Qin's Terracotta Tomb: ~100 years after Emperor Qin died, we find the earliest reference to his amazing tomb in the writings of Sima Qian who wrote the Historical Records or Shi Ji. Sima Qian writes about his burial, his coffin being encased in a bronze sarcophagus floating on a river of mercury, vaulted ceilings covered with constellations of the night sky. He claimed that Emperor Qin was buried with palaces, towers, officials, valuable artefacts and wonderful objects and other details. These were also quite amazing claims.

• Can we watch Lee Soon Shin defeat the Japanese? No.
• Can we watch Caesar cross the Rubicon? No.
• Can we watch Paul Bunyan straighten out roads with his ox? No.
• Can we watch Ungnyeo change from a bear to a human being? No.
• Can we watch Hannibal cross the Alps with elephants? No.

• Primary Sources (from friendly witnesses): 8 diaries(일기) (some of these may not be eyewitnesses though & Lee Soon Shin wrote several of them, so it's not 8 sources.)
  
• Secondary & Tertiary Sources: 4 chronicles(연대기) & 36 collections of books(문집) & 16 other documents.
  
• Hostile Witnesses: There are 10 documents written by Chinese and Japanese historians at that time.

• Logical evidence: The Japanese invaders withdrew from attacking Seoul at that time. Why would they do that? One good reason is that Lee Soon Shin’s victory cut their supply lines and their shipping ability and so they had to withdraw.

What about physical evidence? There is no evidence that any Korean ships were there since none were lost in the battle. It is unlikely that any evidence of the Japanese ships will ever be found since they were wooden and most wood disappears after a century underwater if not quickly covered (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipwreck#Construction_materials).

This is VERY good evidence comparatively speaking. But, it's from only ~500 years ago and 3 nations had very significant strategic interest in knowing about the outcome of this battle. It was an international event of the highest interest.

• He was only famous for ~3 years.
• He was not an aristocrat. He was from the lower classes like Jesus  
• He left no autobiography or anything written
  

                          
                             

1. We must be objective and open minded since this is a subject of the greatest importance for life.
2. There is very little if anything in history that is 100% certain. We judge by how likely something is.
3. The evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is comparable to the evidence used in capital murder cases (and in other places he shows that it is equal to or better than the evidence for many historical figures).
4. If you discredit the Gospel accounts based on discrepancies, you have to discredit many other things in history too (and later he talks about other cases as well…where the Bible meets and exceeds the standards used in secular history).
5. As above on pg. 52-53, because of the extreme persecutions they had to endure, it was impossible for the disciples to do what they did if Jesus had not actually reason from the dead and they knew it was true.

• “Witnesses are not even close to being reliable forms of evidence.” Vynj**
• “Ask any law professional there is nothing as unreliable as witness accounts, so that’s out !” Youtube atheist
• “Eyewitness testimony IS the least reliable form of evidence available.” Infern** (he cites http://agora.stanford.edu/sjls/Issue%20One/fisher&tversky.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_testimony, http://www.youtube.com/user/AntiCitizenX#p/u/3/TJic51MeVaU)

• Criminals plan the robbery of a bank and one decides to become a witness for the government and tells what happened in the weeks they were planning things together. His testimony is fully legitimate and very credible.
• Jews who witnessed their family members arrested by Nazis and taken to concentration camps.
• Family members searching for their missing relatives during wars such as the Vietnam war and them or the detectives they hire doing surveillance and witnessing them alive even though they were thought to be dead.
• Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus and a co-regent with him just before the Persians conquered Babylon.
• ALL Jesus’ disciples who knew Him well and who doubted his resurrection and they and others testified that they saw him over a period of 40 days.

• Intention test – The biographers stated or implied their intention was to accurately preserve history.
• Ability test – The biographers were educated and practiced in oral tradition which enabled memorization until content could be written.
• Character test – The authors seem to be men of integrity and consistently accurate.
• Consistency test – The biographies are sufficiently diverse to show they were independent, and alike enough to show they were all trying to describe the same thing.
• Bias test – The authors had nothing to gain by misrepresenting the truth, and actually were in jeopardy of their lives for communicating their materials.
• Cover-up test – The authors did not try to cover up or omit items that were difficult to explain (such as miracles). A made up story that was aiming to convince many people would have tried to leave out things like miracles.
• Corroboration test – People, places, and events mentioned in the biographies are consistent with other historical recordings of the day.
• Adverse witness test – There is no historical evidence that contemporaries of the authors made attempts to discredit or criticize the biographies for being factually inaccurate.

• Older sources. Many historians prefer the oldest sources about Jesus; and as a rule of thumb they tend to disregard sources written more than a century after Jesus' death.[18]
• Criterion of embarrassment. Statements contrary or dissimilar to the author's agenda, but still included by the author, are likely to be reliable. For example, if the crucifixion was a cause of embarrassment to early Christians, they would be unlikely to claim that Jesus had been crucified unless he actually had been.[19]
• Multiple attestation. When two or more independent sources present similar or consistent accounts, it is often the case that oral accounts pre-date written sources. Multiple attestation is not the same as independent attestation. If one account used another account as a source, then a story present in all of these is in fact attested in only one independent source. The mainstream viewpoint is that Mark's account was used as a source for Matthew and Luke.[18][20] See the Historicity of Jesus for a list of sources pertaining to this question.
• Historical context. A source is more credible if the account makes sense in the context of what is known about the culture in which the events unfold.[21] E.g., some sayings from the Coptic-language "Gospel of Thomas" make sense in a 2nd century Gnostic-beliefs context, but not in the context of 1st century Christians, since Gnosticism is assumed to have appeared in the 2nd century.[22][23]
• Linguistic analysis. There are certain conclusions that can be drawn from linguistic analysis of the Gospels. For example, if a dialogue makes sense only in Greek, it is possible that it is worded in that text in a way that is different from original Aramaic. E.g., the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus from John ch. 3 is believed by some to make sense in Greek, but not in Aramaic.[21] According to Bart Ehrman, this criterion is included in the analysis of contextual credibility, because he believes that Jesus and Nicodemus were speaking in Aramaic.[21]
• Author's agenda. This criterion is the flip side of the criterion of dissimilarity. When the presented material serves the supposed purpose of the author or redactor, it is suspect.[24] For example, various sections of the Gospel accounts, such as the Massacre of the Innocents, portray Jesus' life as fulfilling prophecy; and in the view of some scholars, this could reflect the agenda of the account authors rather than historical events.[25][26][27]
• Currents within contemporary research typically take the historical criterion of plausibility as their foundation rather than the criterion of dissimilarity.[28] Accounts, therefore, that fit the Jewish context and make sense of Christianity's rise may be historical.[28]

"The genuineness of these writings (Old Testament books) really admits of as little doubt, and is susceptible of as ready proof, as that of any ancient writings whatever.  The rule of municipal law on this subject is familiar, and applies with equal force to all ancient writings, whether documentary or otherwise;... 

"the presumption of the law is the judgement of charity.  It presumes that every man is innocent until he is proved guilty;...that every document, found in its proper repository, and not bearing marks of forgery, is genuine. Now this is precisely the case with the Sacred Writings...They (skeptics) come to us, and challenge our reception of them as genuine writings, precisely as Domesday Book, the Ancient Statues of Wales, or any other of the ancient documents which have recently been published under the British Record Commission, are received....

"If any ancient document concerning our public rights were lost, copies which had been as universally received and acted upon as the Four Gospels have been, [it] would have been received in evidence in any of our courts of justice, without the slightest hesitation.  The entire text of the Corpus Juris Civilis is received as authority in all the courts of continental Europe, upon much weaker evidence of its genuineness; for the integrity of the Sacred Text has been preserved by the jealousy of opposing sects, beyond any moral possibility of corruption; while that of the Roman Civil Law has been preserved by tacit consent, without the interest of any opposing school, to watch over and preserve it from alteration. Simon Greenleaf, “An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice”, p. 8-10.

• Matthew,
• John,
• Peter,
• James,
• Mark,
• Jude

• Paul (a primary source),
• Pontius Pilate in the Acts of Pontius Pilate (a primary source, but lost to history),
• Josephus,
• Mara bar Sarapion,
• Tacitus,
• the Jewish Talmud,
• Lucian,
• Celsus,
• Thallus,
• Julius Africanus,
• Thomas
  

Rene Girard was a secularist French philosopher and anthropologist who taught at Stanford for ~14 years until his retirement. He became fascinated with the fact that in modern times disenfranchised people gain a sort of moral authority and noted that in the last couple centuries human rights have increased exponentially. It was surprising because he could find nothing similar in ancient literature. Victors, not the marginalized, wrote history, and the myths from Babylon, Greece and other places celebrated strong heroes, and ignored the rights of the losers/weak if they mentioned them at all.  In his research, he traced this phenomenon back to the historical figure of Jesus.

It struck Girard that Jesus’ story was radically different from every heroic story of its time. Jesus chose poverty and disgrace, spent his infancy as a refugee, lived in a minority race under a harsh regime and died as a prisoner. From the very beginning, Jesus took the side of the underdog: the poor, the oppressed, the sick, the “marginalied”. His crucifixion, Girard concluded, introduced a new plot to history: the victim becomes the hero by being a victim which introduced a student of Girard’s called “the most sweeping historical revolution in the world, namely, the emergence of an empathy for victims.” 

Girard contends that Jesus’ life and death brought forth a new stream in history, one that undermines injustice. It may take centuries for that stream to erode a hard bank of oppression, as it did with slavery, and sometimes that stream has to confront Christians who have gotten corrupt or comfortable following the morals of the society of their time instead of thinking of how God wants them to advance, but with people like Nightingale, Martin Luther King, Shane Claiborne, Tony Campolo, the founders of Habitat for humanity, Oxfam, Amnesty International, society for prevention of cruelty to animals and 100s and 100s of others, the stream of liberation flows on.  To the consternation of his secular colleagues, Girard eventually converted to Christianity for this and other reasons.
See a very short list of some of the human rights movements pioneered by Christians (I have books listing MANY more)
http://www.truth-is-life.org/EvidencePeopleExperience.html

“If one chooses to challenge a hypothesis and the data put forth by another researcher to support it, one is under the obligation to

1. form a hypothesis that provides an alternative to the first;

2. reinterpret the original data presented in such a way that it __better supports__ the new hypothesis than the original, and

3. produce new data that, in addition to the original, more strongly supports the alternative hypothesis than the original. That is the progression of science. Hypotheses are continually being reformulated in this way, because science IS a process, and undergoes revision as new data become available.
http://scintilla.nature.com/node/380683