By 'event' you don't merely mean the resurrection, though.  For you, the only way you can be a witness to the resurrection is to be a witness to both the DEATH and to the alleged RESURRECTION.

ASININE.

I would agree that you'd have to be a witness to the man resurrected in order to be called any eye-witness to the resurrection.

Also lost in all this lazy argumentation is the fact that the concept of 'resurrection' is not merely 'resucitation' as you suggest it to be.

Even if it was resuscitation, the logic would still be ungodly bad- but par for the course.  As if in order to be a witness to Terri Schiavo's resucitation you'd have to first see her go into a coma.  Asinine.

At anyrate, a witness to the 'resurrection' could be a witness merely by virtue of seeing the new, different, and transformed body of Jesus.  However, you do not need to have seen the man dead in order to be a legitimate witness to the allged resurrection.  You can say that you think the best inference is that they did not die, but you could still say that if you had witnessed the alleged death in the first place.   Thus, the centurion who speared Jesus' side would have had first hand observation of Jesus being 'dead,' and if he saw Jesus alive- resurrected later- he could still disbelieve his eyes and cling to his 'rational' inference that maybe the spear had not had the effect he'd intended.

Thus, whether you are a witness to the 'death' or not, you may still choose to prefer the inference that in fact the dead dude hadn't been dead.  In order to be a witness to the resurrection, all you need is a solid reason for thinking the man was ever dead in the first place.

So, witnessing the 'death' is in no way a requirement for witnessing a resurrection, just as you do not need to have witnessed my birth in order to be a witness to my current existence.

edited to remove verbage that was true but perhaps unconstructive.

You are going back on yourself.  In the other thread you made it clear they had to be a witness to the death, too.

Now, the problem with your latest post is that you are equivocating.  Technically speaking, there is NO ONE that we know of who saw a person rise from the dead.

You have continued to harp on there only being 'one' witness.  By your definition, there is not even the one, and they are all making inferences.

You think their inference poor.  *shrug*

If this is your big vendetta, that no one was there to see Jesus shake off the rags and come back to life, its not worth arguing with you about it.  Its more productive to talk about the inference, but then, that means setting aside your continued desire to assert that there was only 'one' eye-witness.

BTW, you are wrong even about Lazurus.  Technically, as far as I know, no one saw him actually come to back to life, either.  So, in fact, no eyewitnesses to that, either.  But it was a good try.

So, what we can do is state for the record that when we talk about folks being eyewitnesses to the resurrection, we in fact mean "eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus."  Whether others on the board will go along with that, I don't know.  I will, because it makes very little distance of substance to distinguish between 'eyewitnesses to the resurrection' and 'eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus.'  It's only the latter that has ever been argued or maintained, anyway, as I think is pretty obvious.

You are going back on yourself. In the other thread you made it clear they had to be a witness to the death, too.

Now, the problem with your latest post is that you are equivocating. Technically speaking, there is NO ONE that we know of who saw a person rise from the dead.

You have continued to harp on there only being 'one' witness.

How should I respond to this? . . . Thank you?

Here, you freely admit that "NO ONE that we know of. . . saw a person rise from the dead."

If "NO ONE" saw a person rise from the dead, then clearly according to your own words NO ONE was an eyewitness to a resurrection.

By your definition, there is not even the one, and they are all making inferences.

Again, these are not "my" definitions.

resurrection: The act of rising from the dead or returning to life.

eyewitness: A person who has seen someone or something and can bear witness to the fact.

I'm afraid that is standard English usage for those words.

BTW, you are wrong even about Lazurus. Technically, as far as I know, no one saw him actually come to back to life, either. So, in fact, no eyewitnesses to that, either. But it was a good try.

Again. . . thank you. You argue my case better than I do.

Then there were no "eyewitnesses" for Lazarus' reported resurrection, either. (But the inference drawn in that instance -- even if it was incorrect -- at least was more understandable.)

So, what we can do is state for the record that when we talk about folks being eyewitnesses to the resurrection, we in fact mean "eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus."

Sorry, but this no worky. This assumes that that which you would demonstrate is true, doesn't it?

You need to demonstrate first that Jesus was resurrected before you can claim that anyone was an eyewitness to a "resurrected" Jesus.

Alas, you disappoint.

"Two points about this. First, based only upon our inference, we cannot claim to be eyewitnesses to your birth, can we?"

No, but that doesn't mean that you can not be an eyewitness to me being born.

I am born, aren't I?

To see the resurrection happen is to see the birth.  To see the resurrected is to see the born.

Right?

You are equivocating as it suits you.

"Similarly,"

There is no reason to comment on this while the tortured logic that feeds it is allowed sustenance.

"Second, to be an eyewitness to your current existence is to be"

an eyewitness to a born person.

You gotta keep like terms with like terms, apples with apples, oranges with oranges.  If you thought you could escape the parallel by embracing 'birth'-->'existing' you are quite wrong.  The parallel is plain:

resurrection--->resurrected
birth--->born

As a witness to a resurrection is to a witness of a birth, a witness to the resurrected is a witness to the born.

See, when you keep it in like terms, its clear.

Now, what about some other examples?

Give me a host of real world examples where the same principle applies.

""I am born, aren't I?""

"Again, I may reasonably infer that you were, but since I did not witness your birth, I cannot say,"

I didn't ask, WAS I born, I asked, AM I born?

Since I'm not asking for an eyewitness to my birth this shouldn't be a problem.

"The problem here seems to be that you, incredibly enough, believe that a person's resurrection from the dead is as common as a two-hour trip to the mall."

If I thought that, the resurrection would not be worth arguing about.  Perhaps you do not actually understand the arguments being presented to you.

But you are changing the argument in midstream.  First, it was a discussion about what constitutes an eyewitness to 'a resurrection.'  Now you are turning it into a study of evidentiary standards.  In other words, your logic is being exposed as deficient when taken on its own terms, so you need to introduce new terms that you hope will justify it.

Normally, not being an eyewitness to a birth does not preclude being an eyewitness to a person that is born.   Similarly, not being an eyewitness to a resurrection does not preclude being an eyewitness to a person that is resurrected.  That is straightforward enough, so your only hope is to decide that 'resurrection' is an extraordinary matter, so it fits into an extraordinary class of things, and so your flawed logic, in this context, is acceptable.

Sorry.

"OTOH, it's entirely possible that any person whom I meet on the street has not been born and has been resurrected from the dead."

Not by definitions of 'resurrection' that Christians use.  But what do you care about that!  We're the ones initiating, developing, and sustaining arguments on the 'resurrection' so what right do we have to define the terms we use?  

Your only hope in this endeavor is to show that we make inferences all day long about the nature of things:

You did not witness the birth of most but you consider them born.
You did not witness the auto-purchase of most, but consider them to be auto-purchasers.
You did not witness your OWN birth, but you consider yourself born.
You did not witness the authoring of most books, but you consider them to be authored.

This goes on and on, and covers (I reckon) most of our reality.  So the whole thing utlimately falls to your view that it is nothing more than inference that allows you to classify someone as born, an auto-purchaser, or author.  If you maintained that logic into the rest of your doings, I might not have a quibble.  However, if I asked if you were an eyewitness to anyone born, you would probably say yes.  And the reason why you allow it in that case and not in the case of the resurrection goes straight back to the fact that you think the resurrection to be 'extrordinary.'

However, if you were to be more objective, you would admit that what is going on is that the strength of the inference does not merely reside on things we might consider 'ordinary' or 'extraordinary.'  Keep in mind please, that the strength of the inference is different than the nature of the inference.  You must concede at this point that you think the nature of the inference to be the same.

In order to consider someone as at one time 'auto-buying' certain criteria are erected which we need only be reasonably confident are met when we see someone.  Ie, we do not need to see them purchase their car, but we can see them in the possession of the car, and draw our inferences, as you say.

Now, a pre-set criteria for someone being resurrected, is only that the person was dead.  You have said in this thread that in fact you don't have to be an eye-witness to the death in order to be an eye-witness of the resurrected.  I really don't know where you stand on that, because you said otherwise, elsewhere.  In this thread, it was your view that seeing someone allegedly resurrected only means that they didn't in fact, die.

However extraordinary you think a resurrection is, though, death I think you admit is ordinary, right?  As ordinary as birth?  Your posts seem to suggest so.  For a person to be an eyewitness to the resurrected you need only be reasonable certain that the dude was dead- established by ordinary mechanisms, I presume?

Or do you now go back on this and say that no, they need to be an eyewitness to the actual death, too?

"If you are human (and I assume that you are) then from that fact alone I can reasonably infer that you were brought into life by birth at some point in the past but not that you are now currently being brought into life by birth."

Do you consider yourself an eye-witness to born people or not?  You think that you have a reasonable inference that people were born 'at some point in the past' though you didn't witness the event that the inference requires.  Isn't it the case that given your assurances supporting the inference, you do consider yourself an eyewitness to born people?

I just want to hear you come out and say, explicitly, that you are not an eye-witness to born people, unless you specifically witnessed their actual birth.

"This is clearly untrue."

No it isn't.  Stop flailing.  You're going to hurt yourself, or worse, someone around you.

"If you're truly interested in "what constitutes an eyewitness to a resurrection" then discuss that and quit changing the subject. Again, an "eyewitness" must observe any event to which he would be an "eyewitness." This really is simple. If a person does not observe an event, then he is not an eyewitness to that event."

You're the only one changing the subject.  Indeed, I do not even think you have the subject mastered well enough to keep on the subject.  At this point, it is agreed that there wasn't an eyewitness to the resurrection itself (the birth), but that does not mean that one cannot be an eyewitness to the resurrected (the born), provided you have assurances supporting the initial conditions required for the 'past participle.'

Your only way to justify your argument that one cannot be an eyewitness to the resurrected is to repudiate the position that one can be an eyewitness to the 'born' without actually witnessing the birth of the person in question.

I look forward to seeing you, as the supremely 'rational' one, repudiating that.

"Excuse me?"

I can think of none at the moment.

"No, I agree. For an inference of "resurrection" to be anything more than absolutely laughable, a person must observe a dead body and then later that same person must observe that same body alive."

See above.  Explicitly:  Do you not consider yourself an eyewitness to a born person unless you actually saw them being birthed?

If the answer to that is 'yes,' then I commend you for your consistency, though I have no reason at all to think you're rational on the point, and there certainly is no sense discussing it with you.  To any extent that you might be making a legitimate point, the point is so pathetically weak that I think it shows the depths you have to sink to in order to make your argument.  

If the answer is 'no' then I rebuke you for your inconsistency, and believe your impartiality to be completely compromised.