[Bored chemist]

"Inconsistent effects" is not "no effects".

It means there are multiple mechanism at play. After all, we are dealing with tiny effects in a human body.

"inconsistent effects" is exactly what you get when there's no real effect.
"After all, we are dealing with tiny effects "
Or none.

It cannot be faith in God.

Well spotted.

[duffyd]

Evidence. Three types. Scientific, legal and anecdotal. Let us take hydroxyquinone against Covid-19

At the moment science says it does not know. Anecdotes say it seems to work.

There is a book called "The Case for Christ" by Lee Stroebel which deals with the evidence for Christ as if it were a legal matter to prove. He says legally anyone would win a legal case based on the evidence considered admissible.

"duffyd You want everyone else to believe in something you were told was true. Without any evidence. Because the grown ups that taught you that were the ones you thought you could trust implicitly."

Not only does she know everything, she is very humble about it, too.

[CliveG]

Jesus, help this doctor and her husband who are suffering. I pray they would look to you and find in you the glory and wonder of your love.

Thank you. That is a wonderful message of caring. Both of them are committed Christians. If God is going to to help any of the faithful, it really should be those two.

[duffyd]

Evidence. Three types. Scientific, legal and anecdotal. Let us take hydroxyquinone against Covid-19

At the moment science says it does not know. Anecdotes say it seems to work.

There is a book called "The Case for Christ" by Lee Stroebel which deals with the evidence for Christ as if it were a legal matter to prove. He says legally anyone would win a legal case based on the evidence considered admissible.

"duffyd You want everyone else to believe in something you were told was true. Without any evidence. Because the grown ups that taught you that were the ones you thought you could trust implicitly."

Pay attention to this whopper. Not only is what she wrote incorrect, she had no information supporting what she said. And, obviously she knew she didn't have any information, so, it was a deliberate fabrication. Courts will consider all the testimony of someone who lies once to a court as worthless.

[CliveG]

"Inconsistent effects" is not "no effects".

It means there are multiple mechanism at play. After all, we are dealing with tiny effects in a human body.

"inconsistent effects" is exactly what you get when there's no real effect.
"After all, we are dealing with tiny effects "
Or none.

It cannot be faith in God.

Well spotted.

My wife called me to dinner while I was in the middle of my post then. I knew I should have worded it better.

By "tiny" I meant that the effects happen on a molecular scale that defy direct measurement. When billions of cells are involved all of these tiny effects add up. It is like quantum tunneling where a "tiny" effect is multiplied billions of times in a "tunnel diode".

The corona virus needs to be specially adapted to penetrate the cell. It takes just a "tiny" change to either make it easier or harder.

The "tiny" effects of the cell tower radiation can also be cumulative. Like tobacco smoking, there is a gradual degradation of the cells in part or all of the body. The body is designed to remove particles of dust and pollen from the lungs. But when overloaded the mechanism and cells are stressed and once again cumulative damage can occur with extended exposure.

Cell radiation is similar both with regard to duration and intensity and the accumulation of damage. I know this from the exposure to the tower that was next to us. The symptoms got worse with time and the damage did not disappear when I moved away.

What is also clear is that the effects on the cells can be both beneficial or detrimental. Cancer cells could be killed at first, and then healthy cells start showing damage. Competing effects often show on a graph as a negative dip followed by a positive surge, depending on what variables are being measured.

Many of these tiny effects have been demonstrated in scientific tests. You simply cherry-pick the tests you prefer.

Did you see the "Cool" emoticon after my God comment? It is early days. New Zealand and Sweden might yet be devastated. However, taking a survey of faith versus corona has way too many variables to give any clear result. We cannot prove the existence of God that way. What about a practicing Christian who is in favor of bombing a country into the stone age? Would God consider that to be a serious breach of his commandments? If making war on other countries since WW2 and using the CIA to do some of the things it did, the USA as a whole could be on God's "naughty list".

[duffyd]

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. Lewis, C.S.

[duffyd]

David Strauss, a nineteenth century liberal scholar, was unconvinced of the swoon theory, saying that a half-dead Jesus would not have convinced his disciples of a glorified resurrection. Strauss points out that you can’t talk about the empty tomb without considering the transformation that took place with the disciples who had previously abandoned Jesus. What else can explain what they claimed they saw, and empowered them to speak the message of the risen Jesus?

[duffyd]

According to a small few, the disciples actually had some sort of mass LSD trip, a group hallucination. There are many reasons why this theory doesn’t add up. In short, the disciples claimed to have touched him, ate with him, yet he walked through walls! Also, there has never been one documented account of an entire group of people having the same hallucinations. And the disciples would need to be under a continual psychotic delusion to face martyrdom  with non-resistance, declaring that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

[duffyd]

As I've mentioned before, I would love to debate these matters with those who want a true, honest, fair debate and not a bunch of B.S.

[duffyd]

Bruce Metzger, considered the greatest textual critic of the 20th century said the most confirmed piece of ancient history is that the apostles were certain Christ rose from the dead.

Pity we don't have any first-hand accounts of their discovery, then.

I always assumed that if you can roll a stone in front of a tomb, someone else can roll it away again. That's how we physicists work with engineers.  And in the slightly weird world of medical physics, we are quite used to moving dead bodies from A to B, for all sorts of reasons.

Not that it matters much. J Arthur Findlay (The Rock of Truth) lists 13 other crucified saviour gods, born of virgins, who rose from the dead. I mentioned this to my excellent RE teacher, back in my schooldays. He replied "Indeed, but I'm only paid to teach you about one of them." Good bloke - used to conduct weddings on Saturday morning and referee rugby in the afternoon.

Whatever they saw, it was enough to change the mind of James, the brother of Jesus, and Saul of Tarsus, a zealous Pharisee and persecutor of the church. James becomes the leader of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15), and he is later martyred for his belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead. What could have happened to prompt the brother of Jesus to become one of the church’s greatest leaders? An encounter with the risen Jesus is the most likely of all possible scenarios. The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth
By David D. Flowers

Let's see. I know. I'll make up 300 more mythical figures and I'll say they are exactly like Christ in every way! That way, I'll completely crush the idea that Jesus was special.

[duffyd]

The empty tomb makes the most historical sense. If the body was not missing, the early Christian message could have been easily stamped out with, “Resurrected? We have his body right here!” The big question is ‘why was it empty?’ The Jewish polemic against the Christian message was that the disciples had stolen the body (Matt 28:11-15; Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, 108; Tertullian’s On Spectacles, 30). Matthew writes, “And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day” (28:15).

If they stole it, and they endured all hell for proclaiming his resurrection, they were total morons.

[duffyd]

  Bruce Metzger: “In the case of Attis, the evidence for the commemoration of the Hilaria [feast of joy] dates from the latter part of the second Christian century. There are, in fact, no literary or epigraphical texts prior to the time of Antonius Pius (A.D. 138-161) which refer to Attis as the divine consort of Cybele, 2 much less any that speak of his resurrection.3 With good grounds, therefore, it has been argued that the festival of the Hilaria was not introduced into the cultus of Cybele until the latter part of the second Christian century or even later. http://www.frontline-apologetics.com/religions_christianity.html, Accessed 3-31- 11.
Bruce Metzger: “Still more remote from the rise of Christianity is the Sumerian epic involving Inanna’s descent to the Nether World.”   Metzger: “Ninshubur, perceiving that his mistress, Inanna, has not returned from the Nether World, proceeds to make the rounds of the gods, lamenting before each of them in accord with a formula which manna had previously given him. Then Father Enki devises a plan to restore the goddess to life; he fashions two sexless creatures and instructs them to proceed to the Nether World and to sprinkle the “food of life” and the “water of life” upon Inanna’s impaled body. This they do, and the goddess subsequently revives.” 
  Bruce Metzger: “In the case of Adonis, there is no trace of a resurrection in pictorial representations or in any texts prior to the beginning of the Christian era. In fact, the only four witnesses that refer to the resurrection of Adonis date from the second to the fourth century.   Hans Barstad: “It is today possible to discount the theory of Adonis as a dying and rising god as a Frazerian concept strongly influenced by the wish to demonstrate that Christianity was not an innovation, but that all its essential features are to be found in earlier religions. Hans M. Barstad, The Rligious Polemics of Amos: Studies in the Preaching of Amos (Vetus Testamentum, Supplement, No 34) The Netherlands: Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), 150.
Check out the other figures who some allege formed the basis for claiming He was a mere copycat.

[duffyd]

Metzger wrote in no uncertain terms, "The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is overwhelming. Nothing in history is more certain than that the disciples believed that, after being crucified, dead, and buried, Christ rose again from the tomb on the third day, and that at intervals thereafter he met and conversed with them.”

[Bored chemist]

As I've mentioned before, I would love to debate these matters with those who want a true, honest, fair debate and not a bunch of B.S.

A debate means you address people's points.

Metzger wrote in no uncertain terms, "The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is overwhelming. Nothing in history is more certain than that the disciples believed that, after being crucified, dead, and buried, Christ rose again from the tomb on the third day, and that at intervals thereafter he met and conversed with them.”

considered the greatest textual critic of the 20th century

By whom

confirmed piece of ancient history is that the apostles were certain Christ rose from the dead.

That seems unlikely.
Is it, for example, as well confirmed as the fact that Nero was an emperor?
To tick that box it would need to be stamped onto all the coins of the era.
Is the Apostles' opinion really that well confirmed?


Even if it was; so what?
The question isn't about their belief, but about the fact.
And even if (this is now piling three levels of "what if" on top of eachother) he lived on after the crucifixion, couldn't it just be that the Romans botched an execution?

But seriously, did you actually believe the bit about " the most confirmed piece of ancient history "?
Because if you did, it just shows a lack of clear thinking.

[alancalverd]

In Jewish law, it was punishable by death to get on somebody's nerves, correct?

No. No occupying power has ever ceded the death sentence to its subjects. Crucifixion was a Roman execution - the only permitted biblical method is stoning. You should study the bible.

[duffyd]

In Jewish law, it was punishable by death to get on somebody's nerves, correct?

No. No occupying power has ever ceded the death sentence to its subjects. Crucifixion was a Roman execution - the only permitted biblical method is stoning. You should study the bible.

It took you long enough.
How do you like it?
Just throw out some trash out there and see what happens. Funny that you finally responded to that when you've ignored all the errors of yours I've exposed in some detail.
200 hundred years later no one started writing the New Testament? Why do you bother? I mean, I'm not trying to be insulting, but I just don't understand why you pretend to know stuff about this topic when your knowledge is so limited?

[duffyd]

Practically everything we need to know is wrapped up in this brilliant statement by Professor Metzger, Ehrman's reason for attending Princeton Theological Seminary. "The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is overwhelming. Nothing in history is more certain than that the disciples believed that, after being crucified, dead, and buried, Christ rose again from the tomb on the third day, and that at intervals thereafter he met and conversed with them.”
The changes wrought in the defeated disciples once they realized He had indeed risen from the grave are inspiring and convincing. And the same responses have continued for 2,000 years. Not only is that evidence, it is extremely powerful evidence. When you have Ehrman, even though he left his first love, describe his born again experience in terms used by millions of others, and similar to John, Pete, Saul/Paul, James, the whole crew except for Iscariot, something awfully  remarkable, something other worldly is likely the cause.
In reality, everything in life and time and history, Everything, hinges on the fact that this GodMan rose from the dead. 

[CliveG]

Last night the lock-down in South Africa was extended by two weeks. We now have another 3 weeks after the first 2.
Gaaaah! I said that the difference between SA and NZ/Sweden was religion - so one could not explain the small infection rate. But here is a puzzle. And this despite the extensive disregard for the regulations in the poorer areas.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52228932
During the past fortnight South Africa has seen a dramatic, and unexpected slow-down in the daily rate of coronavirus infections.
Health experts are warning that it is far too early to see this as a significant development, and worry that it could even trigger a dangerous sense of complacency.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has now suggested that the two weeks of lockdown is responsible. He has extended the nationwide restrictions, scheduled to end in one week's time, to the end of the month.
But - as the country and the continent continue to brace for the potentially devastating impact of the pandemic - doctors are struggling to explain what's going on.
The beds are ready. Wards have been cleared. Non-emergency operations rescheduled. Ambulances kitted out. Medical teams have been rehearsing non-stop for weeks. Managers have spent long hours in online meetings drawing up, and tweaking their emergency plans.

Friend visiting a woman and her husband after the lock-down.
"Hi, where is Jim."
"In the garden."
"I just walked through the garden and I did not see him."
"You need to dig a little."

The top politicians have given 1/3 of their salary for 3 months to the Solidarity Fund. The government is finally beginning to take their jobs seriously. This is God's intention - that people find a more humane cooperative social compact. The US model of naked capitalism is showing the weaknesses of such a system. Instant firings and no national health, and the rich able to manipulate politicians to get even richer.

Easter. Interesting time.

[CliveG]

A Harvard study links air pollution to bad covid-19 outcomes.

Guess what is also likely to coexist with air pollution?

Cell phone microwave electrosmog. Some defenders of Telcos will say that there are studies linking air pollution to illness, and I will say that there are studies linking electrosmog to illness - choose who you decide to believe. It is like the early days of the climate change debate.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/air-pollution-linked-with-higher-covid-19-death-rates/

People with COVID-19 who live in U.S. regions with high levels of air pollution are more likely to die from the disease than people who live in less polluted areas, according to a new nationwide study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

[alancalverd]

There is a very strong correlation between death and breath. On average, dead people have taken more breaths (and heartbeats, research shows) than those still alive. You may form your own conclusions.