I think it’s worth relating the argument about the Resurrection and the argument about rabbits chewing their cud. We now have a reasonably good definition of “dead”. We know that classical civilisation in 33AD didn’t.
Assuming that there was a person called Jesus and that he was crucified, we have no means of knowing whether he was, in fact, dead or not. It’s necessarily impossible to apply the modern definition since the ECG hadn’t been invented then.
There are scientific phenomena that would result in the observations that are reported in the gospels as the Resurrection (most obviously, a coma caused by brain anoxia, and a recovery over a few days).
This is, interestingly, the Qu’ran’s position on the Resurrection. I’m not especially tied to it, but it does allow one to hold that the gospel writers were not deliberately lying (which raises the value of the gospels as evidence in general) without having to hold that the Resurrection was, in fact, a miracle.
I can see that a UU, someone who thinks that there is ethical value in (say) the Sermon on the Mount, being inclined to this position in that it strengthens the Bayesian evidence for the gospels which are our only available reports of the Sermon on the Mount.
I think it’s worth relating the argument about the Resurrection and the argument about rabbits chewing their cud. We now have a reasonably good definition of “dead”. We know that classical civilisation in 33AD didn’t.
Assuming that there was a person called Jesus and that he was crucified, we have no means of knowing whether he was, in fact, dead or not. It’s necessarily impossible to apply the modern definition since the ECG hadn’t been invented then.
There are scientific phenomena that would result in the observations that are reported in the gospels as the Resurrection (most obviously, a coma caused by brain anoxia, and a recovery over a few days).
This is, interestingly, the Qu’ran’s position on the Resurrection. I’m not especially tied to it, but it does allow one to hold that the gospel writers were not deliberately lying (which raises the value of the gospels as evidence in general) without having to hold that the Resurrection was, in fact, a miracle.
I can see that a UU, someone who thinks that there is ethical value in (say) the Sermon on the Mount, being inclined to this position in that it strengthens the Bayesian evidence for the gospels which are our only available reports of the Sermon on the Mount.