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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[origamiscienceguy]

Well, Mary Mandolin, and the other Mary saw it first, then they told the disciples. John and Simon saw it as well

"So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying."


Every time he says "the other disciple" that is actually John talking about himself in third person. It makes this story a bit more entertaining if you know that. 

Of course, there are the roman guardsmen themselves:

"And when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, 13and said, "You are to say, 'His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep.' 14"And if this should come to the governor's ears, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble."

(by the way, if the guards actually fell asleep, or were defeated by a couple of fishermen and an accountant, they probably would have killed themselves.)

[Descan]

I don't think Roman guards in some backwater province were... well, fanatic Japanese samurai.

They'd get fired or maybe executed for failure, but wouldn't kill themselves

[origamiscienceguy]

I don't think Roman guards in some backwater province were... well, fanatic Japanese samurai.

They'd get fired or maybe executed for failure, but wouldn't kill themselves

fair enough, but you get the point.

[Teneb]

I don't think Roman guards in some backwater province were... well, fanatic Japanese samurai.

They'd get fired or maybe executed for failure, but wouldn't kill themselves

More likely they would be decimated, which is in a way even worse. (Just in case someone doesn't know, decimation involves separating those to be punished in groups of ten and then singling out one of them. The other nine had to beat that one to death.)

[TD1]

That was for deserters, though - surely not something for simply messing up guard duty.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Mary Mandolin

I believe you mean Mary Magdalene.

Also, you're right, it does seem kind of weird that God would "hallucinate" (read induce hallucination) in a bunch of people rather than just DO TEH THING.

I consider myself Catholic... well, because my parents are. And I consider "heresy" more like "modding." I don't much like vanilla. Especially with its homophobia and anti-woman sentiments.

[penguinofhonor]

Still, even if someone had to screw up pretty badly for this to happen without divine intervention... so? Even if you think Christianity started without any acts of God, it's obvious that some very uncommon things happened around that time. World-spanning religions don't get started very often.

Like, the argument seems to be "This is unlikely to have happened by mundane means, so I think it's more likely that the creator of the universe personally intervened here." I just don't get that logical jump. It's a big world with a lot of people - unlikely things happen every day.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Hmm, but as a folk-wisdom-saying has it, "big things have to start somewhere." Sure, it's unlikely that any given religion will turn into a world-spanning one, but... out of the thousands, since we are seeing a world-spanning religion, one had to be the one.

It's rather similar to the Anthropic Principle, noted for being hated by Creationists all over the world. Or the flat one, depending on their flavor.

[TD1]

Also, it wasn't hey presto religion-o. Christianity had a solid Jewish base and religious centre set up. They were a splinter group that gained support within their community, and then (mainly because of Constantine converting after it had a few hundred years of development) it became huge. In fact, not even then according to some - a lot of people think that paganism was much stronger at that time than early Christian writers tried to portray them as.

[Frumple]

Hmm, but as a folk-wisdom-saying has it, "big things have to start somewhere." Sure, it's unlikely that any given religion will turn into a world-spanning one, but... out of the thousands, since we are seeing a world-spanning religion, one had to be the one.

Eh? We've got like... what, five or six world spanning religions, at least? The abrahamic three's spread around (and the big two of them are both notable in being fractured all to hell, heh), hinduism and buddhism's all over the place, more I'm forgetting. And there's enclaves of dozens more spread out all over the planet, just without a comparable bulk of population behind them. Takes a lot more than being world spanning to be the one, ha. Plenty religions have managed that, at this point. It's been a long time since that took much effort, and christianity certainly didn't manage it much earlier than anyone else did.

[Rolepgeek]

I don't think Roman guards in some backwater province were... well, fanatic Japanese samurai.

They'd get fired or maybe executed for failure, but wouldn't kill themselves

Nah, Rome was big on honor. They'd probably be ordered to fall on their swords, if nothing else. They might even do it voluntarily, if they were of fairly high-up families. Or do some other penance to the state, since if they were high-up, they could probably get out of death punishments.

[Reelya]

Still, even if someone had to screw up pretty badly for this to happen without divine intervention... so? Even if you think Christianity started without any acts of God, it's obvious that some very uncommon things happened around that time. World-spanning religions don't get started very often.

What happened was The Roman Empire. You had the empire securing trade routes, growing urban centers which were now connected, and many, many, small localized religions. As the idea of a unified "empire" solidified and different cultures mingled, the pre-existing "tribal" gods gave way to the idea of universal God(s). So there was a celestial power-vacuum.

Basically, having the Empire meant the time was ripe for a trendy new religion to spread like wildfire. A slightly exotic origin probably helped. Mithraism had a similar trajectory around the same time, but lost out to Christianity.

[Orange Wizard]

The fact that one of the core points of the religion is "go out and share the Word" certainly helped.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Indeed it is so. Religions are even characterized as such, either surviving through universal conversion (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism) or high-barrier ethnic restriction (Hinduism, Judaism, Shinto, "Chinese Tradition", Indigenous Religions).

This is also what makes new religious movements so interesting, since it is only with the modern era that they started arising as a third category, essentially through all the mechanisms we think of as cult behavior.

[Reelya]

I'm not really sure that the "cult" is really a new thing. Something similar seems to happen at times of social upheavals throughout history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Dissenter

The Adamites took their name and practises from a North African Christian sect that first existed between the 2nd and 4th centuries. The Adamites that emerged in the 17th century held similar beliefs, believing that they existed in a state of grace, claiming to have regained the innocence that Adam and Eve possessed prior to the Fall.

The Adamites were said to have associated with each other in the nude, professing that a person could reattain the innocence and purity held by Adam through being unburdened by clothing.

The Familia Caritatis ("Family of Love", or the "Familists"), were a religious sect that began in continental Europe in the 16th century. Members of this religious group were devout followers of a Dutch mystic named Hendrik Niclaes. The Familists believed that Niclaes was the only person who truly knew how to achieve a state of perfection, and his texts attracted followers in Germany, France, and England.

The Familists were extremely secretive and wary of outsiders. For example, they wished death upon those outside of the Family of Love, and re-marriage after the death of a spouse could only take place between men and women of the same Familist congregation. Additionally, they would not discuss their ideas and opinions with outsiders and sought to remain undetected by ordinary members of society: they tended to be members of an established church so as not to attract suspicion and showed respect for authority.