> this gem found in Matthew

Why is it so incredible that at the moment of a resurrection there would be the possibilities of other resurrections? If Jesus's resurrection proves to be true, these other resurrections could have numerous meanings, but certainly they fall into the category of possible as well, if we can verify Jesus's resurrection as true.

My case would be this:

- Matthew seems to be strongly under the impression he is writing historiography (Mt. 27.45ff.). He speaks of darkness for 3 hours (that the others there could verify), words Jesus spoke that everyone standing around could hear, what the eyewitnesses said to each other, one offering Jesus a sponge of wine vinegar, etc. Given Matthew's careful attention to structure elsewhere in his Gospel, the structure and grammar here would indicate that Matthew is writing as historical narrative, not poetry, fiction, or symbolism.
- Jerusalem lies near a fault line, so earthquakes are quite possible (27.51). There is no extrabiblical evidence of the temple curtain tearing, but we can't argue from silence either for or against All I'm saying is that a ground tremor is easily within the range of historically possible. The mention has spectacular symbolism, but there's no verifiable way to prove or disprove its historicity. Nor does the text specify which temple veil was torn (there were at least 2). Nor can we examine archaeologically for such things. The temple mount now in existence and visible in Jerusalem was built in about the 1300s.

Now, the symbolism of vv. 52-53 is both powerful and meaningful, so we have to debate its historicity. The alternatives, however, don't make sense.

- If Matthew is just speaking apocalyptically (he invented the story for theological purposes), it doesn't make sense. There was no Judaistic or pre-Christian tradition saying that the death of the messiah would precipitate a general resurrection.
- It doesn't make sense that he got this story from the apocryphal Gospel of Peter. First, it hadn't yet been written, and second, the possibility that Matthew would have known about it is remote at best.
- Matthew invented the story as a fulfillment to Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 26, Zech. 14 and Daniel 12. This is unlikely also, because it would be strange for him to claim that the national restoration of Israel had happened.

We're left with historicity as possibly the best choice. Aside from many points of obvious powerful symbolism, what's the purpose behind this? I think it gives evidence that Jesus's resurrection has the power to raise all his saints, as he promised, that He is the firstfruits of those who are "asleep," and it's true that people who died in the Lord will be raised to new life. This was just a tiny glimpse of all that was promised, even to verify that it was all true.

> Since the graves were "opened" anyone could look inside the graves. What would a passerby see? Naked, dirty and rotted animated corpses?

No, resurrection bodies, like Jesus's.

> the talking donkey

We should think of this as God talking through the donkey rather than a miracle giving the donkey human speech.

> floating axehead

Yeah, the only reasonable biblical explanation is a miracle here.

> the big fish and Jonah

Not a whale, for sure. A whale shark has the gullet size to get a man in his mouth, but they are not usually founding the Mediterranean. The "3 days and 3 nights" could be symbolic imagery—figurative—and not literal. The fish got him, couldn't do anything with him, and barfed him up pretty quickly. Sometimes, even, "3 days and 3 nights" is an expression of distance, not time.

> 5,000 Jews instantly converting to Christianity in a single day

It's possible. The population of Jerusalem at the time was about 60,000. 3,000 added to the church (Acts 2.41) represents about 5% of the population).

> 3 hours of darkness throughout the entire world during the crucifiction story

Goodness, no. Not throughout the whole world. Just in the area.

> My counter claim is simply this: If you have evidence then demonstrate that evidence and quit using the word faith altogether. If you mean "trust" or "confidence" then use trust and confidence.

As I said, the way the Bible uses "faith" is the things we know but they haven't happened yet. I know the grocery store is still around the corner, but I can't prove it until I go there and verify it. But I know it's there. I would see the smoke it it had burned or heard the explosion if it had blown up. Faith is just a different kind of knowledge than our knowledge of past events.

> When I speak of the historical evidence, I am referring to facts that any reasonable person would also admit. There are thousands of elements of the Bible that have been confirmed by archaeology and historiography, geography and cultural studies.

This is not being contested and lends nothing to the discussion. Sure there was an Egypt, a Cyrus the Great and there are other facts that are mentioned in the bible. There are always facts included in fictional writing.

The heart of the problem is the unbelievable claims made in the bible such as this gem found in Matthew. The anonymous writer says an earthquake ripped open tombs and graves, then many saints were awoken from death. Now, these "many" saints can't go anywhere for two days because they have to wait on Jesus to stop being dead. What do you think all those saints were doing while they were waiting for Jesus to wake up? Since the graves were "opened" anyone could look inside the graves. What would a passerby see? Naked, dirty and rotted animated corpses? When and where did they get clothes? What about that first meal they had after being revived? What about legal issues concerning their return? Were they able to repossess their property and what kind of legalistic earthquake would that have set off with the Jewish leaders? Really, If this really happened it is remarkable that there is no surviving record of this anywhere, not even from the other supposed witnesses. Paul never mentions it either.

I'm going to toss out a couple other examples, not for you to specifically respond to, but for you to see what seems ridiculous to me. You have a donkey giving advice to its rider; an ax head that floats; a man that swallows a whale, no wait, I got that backwards, but it would have been a better miracle than a great fish that swallows a man, particularly if you want a "sign"; 5,000 Jews instantly converting to Christianity in a single day; 3 hours of darkness throughout the entire world during the crucifiction story; the unreconcilable testimony of the empty tomb story from the anonymous authors of the gospels. These are the things that are too fantastic to believe and require the "faith" that the OP was referring to.

My counter claim is simply this: If you have evidence then demonstrate that evidence and quit using the word faith altogether. If you mean "trust" or "confidence" then use trust and confidence.

Do you think your confidence and trust is justifiable? If your evidence is factually trustworthy and justifiable then it will need no testimonial from you or anyone else, just like facts and truth it will stand on it's own and speak for itself.

No big red circle needed. When I speak of the historical evidence, I am referring to facts that any reasonable person would also admit. There are thousands of elements of the Bible that have been confirmed by archaeology and historiography, geography and cultural studies. I have knowledge, not just "blind faith" (which is what most detractors mean by "biblical faith"). It's knowledge that is part of a common body known to any reasonable person. These evidences give the writing credibility. On top of the extra-biblical historical substantiation, the Bible is a theological interpretation of historical events, which is not subject to scientific inquiry, but is rather an interpretive framework that is independent of such proofs. These interpretations, however, have been confirmed to me by the common experiences of millions of people. Though some people would contend that experiences cannot be used as evidence, I disagree. When it comes right down to it, all truths are filtered through human experience. Knowing, at root, is relying on clues that we experience to form a coherent pattern, that are shared by others so that we can arrive at a consensus of what we call "truth." The knowledge I have of the truth of the Bible involves epistemic acts sharing the same basic features that our ordinary, workday epistemic acts do. Dr. Esther Meek wrote, "The wall separating faith and reason is a misguided model of knowledge. Skeptics claim that the ideal of certainty forces a wall between rationality and faith. But epistemologists recognize that the wall keeps out just the elements of knowing that undergird all knowing. Breaching the wall doesn't dilute knowledge, but transforms our understanding of it. Resolving the difficulty is not just for the sake of claiming to know God, but also for our hope of having any knowledge at all. Both faith and reason face death by absurdity apart from this reconciliation."

> My belief in God is based on my knowledge of the credibility of those writings, the logic of the teaching, and the historical evidence behind it all.

First, let’s put a big red circle around your statement, “My belief in God is based on my knowledge of the credibility of those writings, the logic of the teaching, and the historical evidence behind it all.” Your claim of knowledge about the credibility is what OP would label as faith. You are claiming to have high confidence that you possess knowledge that a body of writing, the bible, is accurate and factual. The shortcut to the underlying problem is that you do not have knowledge of facts, you have an opinion and you seem to be confident of that opinion. As a matter of fact when you ask your god if you are correct about your assumptions, guess what, he agrees and you believe you have received his confirmation. If indeed your assumptions about the reliability of your understanding were correct then your beliefs would be able to withstand investigation and would be provable. In other words, if you are correct then it would be the case that your interpretation of the evidence that convinces you will also convince any reasonable person. It would convince anyone who is a body of people who have no ax to grind and would be indisputable, at least until a better explanation further refines it. The credibility of the writings, the Bible, would not be a collection of evidence that only has to meet “your” personal level of confidence but it needs to meet a level of confidence that is impartial to religious doctrine. It must meet a high level of confidence to any honest evaluator. It doesn’t and that’s why it falls into the “faith” definition of believing when there is not good evidence. You see, good evidence is something that most everyone can agree upon.

> We have reasonable predictions about what's likely to occur in the future, based on our observations about the world and about what has happened in the past.

Right. And I was using the term "assumption" to describe that reality. I'm using "assumption" as "making a reasonable prediction." I am also using faith, as the Bible uses it, in that same category. People came to Jesus for healing because he had given evidence that he had the power to heal and he was willing to heal, so they came to him with a reasonable prediction that he might heal them also.

> However, a sane/rational person will not say that they're 100% on that if pressed

Again, right. Agreed. Epistemologically nothing is 100%. But my spiritual faith is characterized by as much reasonable prediction as other things. It falls in the same categories of what other disciplines term as "knowledge."

> Just remember how burden of proof works; it's always on the person making a claim.

Agreed. That is how the burden of proof works, except, as I have learned, from many atheists on this forum who claim that the burden of proof always lies with the Christians, even though the atheists make claims as well. This may or may not pertain to you, it's just a little bit of venting on my part. An atheist may claim, "I know Christianity is untrue." And when I challenge them to support their proposition, they claim they don't have to. "The burden of proof is on you," they say. Sorry. Venting again.

> That would lead you to accept all sorts of evidence-free claims, which would open you up to the possibility of holding false beliefs.

Agreed. Beliefs, to be warranted, must be subject to evidence and substantiation.

> The goal should be to believe (1) as many true things and (2) as few false things as possible. Therefore, you don't want to expose yourself to the possibility that belief X, Y, Z that you hold is false.

Agreed.

> None of us ever know the future.

Exactly. We have reasonable predictions about what's likely to occur in the future, based on our observations about the world and about what has happened in the past.

It's never certain.

Someone might say, "You take it on faith that the sun will rise tomorrow!" That's a silly statement because

(1) I'm not 100% that the sun/Earth will even exist tomorrow ("rogue black holes" are out there, to my knowledge, and could come screaming through our solar system at any moment and wipe everything out)

(2) the reason that I believe that it's likely (not certain) that the sun will rise tomorrow is based on observations about physics and how things have worked in the past.

It's totally reasonable to think (based on observations about physics and based on observations about what has occurred in the past) that it's likely that the sun will rise tomorrow.

If you were to (1) claim certainty or (2) claim that it's an epistemological presupposition, you would run into epistemological problems.
But nobody sane/rational would ever (A) claim certainty on something like that or (B) claim that it's a presupposition with zero evidence or argument to support it.

> I assume the door will open.

This is colloquial usage. It's perfectly reasonable to believe that it's likely that it will open. In a colloquial context, it's OK to say that you "assume" that the door will open. However, a sane/rational person will not say that they're 100% on that if pressed, and will not say that it's an epistemological presupposition if pressed.

> I haven't heard or seen evidence to motivate me to believe anything different

Just remember how burden of proof works; it's always on the person making a claim.

If you say that Bigfoot exists, I don't accept that claim for the reason that "I haven't heard or seen evidence to motivate me to believe anything different." That would lead you to accept all sorts of evidence-free claims, which would open you up to the possibility of holding false beliefs. The goal should be to believe (1) as many true things and (2) as few false things as possible. Therefore, you don't want to expose yourself to the possibility that belief X, Y, Z that you hold is false.

> We make these assumptions because of evidence, not with a lack of them.

I agree that in a colloquial sense you could say, "I assume that the sun will rise tomorrow because it has done so every day in the past." That's a colloquial usage of "assume." I'm OK with that. Here, "assume" does not actually mean/entail/imply

(1) certainty (that you're 100% on this)

(2) epistemological presupposition (that you presuppose this without any evidence/argument).

Now you just seem to be constructing straw men to avoid processing what I've explained.

If you want to dive into epistemology, you know that even things we know we can't really know, nor can we know how we know them. But we also know that we don't have to have certainty to have justifiable knowledge. We all work off of presuppositions and first principles. A lot of things come to bear besides evidence. We may say we follow the evidence where it leads (Baconian science), but the problem is that evidence doesn't really lead (it's not that simple); people's thinking leads.

In order to know a thing, we have to know what it is, and we also have to know HOW we know what it is. To know whether things really are as they seem to be, we must have a procedure for distinguishing appearances that are true from appearances that are false. But to know whether our procedure is a good procedure, we have to know whether it really succeeds in distinguishing appearances that are true from appearances that are false. And we cannot know whether it really does succeed unless we already know which appearances are true and which ones are false. And so we are caught in a circle.

You can't verify your procedure without first having knowledge, but you can't get any knowledge without first verifying your procedure. Kant would say the only option is to pick one or the other and run with it (choose a procedure that you assume but cannot prove will yield true knowledge, like positivism does with science; or choose some tenets of knowledge that you assume are true even though you can't verify them, which is called foundationalism and is the process used in nearly all of philosophy). The way to verify (or contest) truth in a Kantian system isn't to verify (or contest) the first principles, but to test for coherence: a system based on faulty assumptions (or an inaccurate procedure) will eventually either contradict reality, or contradict itself.

So there seem to be some first principles (there is such a thing as truth and we can know it) that we have to assume before we can have a rational conversation or even assume that truth and knowledge exist.

We have to have some commonsensical approach to real life and knowledge. We "know" that knowledge requires presuppositions, coherence to reality as a consensus of observation and experience, assumptions, belief, and perception.

Just because you had nowhere near 100% knowledge that your car would start, you were basing that assumption on the evidence at hand: cold temperatures, car having sat for X hours, knowledge that the battery wasn't new, etc. You were still working off of the evidences and making assumptions based on those evidences. At that point, however, you didn't know what to believe. You weren't necessarily acting out of faith, but only hope or wishful thinking at that point.

> We know that when we turn a key a car starts.

Colloquially, when someone says that they "know that X" they don't actually mean "I believe that X to an epistemological certainty of 100%."
But this particular sentence doesn't even get anywhere close to certainty, so it's very strange that you bring it up as an example.

Last month, my family got back from our New Year's Vacation.

My brother's SUV had been out in the cold overnight.

We had no idea whether it would start.

We were nowhere near 100% regarding our beliefs about whether it would start.

We planned for the eventuality that it would not start.

Then you unfortunately didn't take time to digest what I wrote. None of us ever know the future. When I turn a doorknob, I assume the door will open. (I can see it's unlocked and I process the evidence that nothing would prevent it from opening.) When I drive to the local mall, I assume it will still be there (I haven't heard or seen evidence to motivate me to believe anything different). We make these assumptions because of evidence, not with a lack of them.

> I define Biblical faith as "making an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make that assumption reasonable."

Assumptions are not based on evidence. That's what makes them assumptions.