Resurrection – Fact or Fantasy
The doctrine of resurrection teaches that one day our dead bodies will rise
again from the dead by the power of God and we will be alive again and there
will be no death anymore. Some believers in resurrection hold that our bodies
will be like what they are now except we will be perfectly healthy and happy.
On the other extreme are those who hold that the resurrection body will have
strange powers such as being able to change how it looks at whim, go through
walls, need no food or drink and glow with light. Why bother raising us at all
if we have powers like angelic spirits? It seems raising us is adding nothing.
It is thought that the doctrine teaches that even if we survive death as souls
we are not complete people until we get our bodies back.
Resurrection is then about the salvation or the restoration of the whole person.
The advantages of the doctrine are said to be these:
Resurrection supposedly implies that the body is sacred. But the doctrine
demeans our bodies as they are. It suggests we need to be turned into magical
bodies that can presumably turn into doves if we will them to. A body that can
waft through a solid wall is not a body as we know it. A body to us means
something solid and natural. The resurrection doctrine does not honour our life
of blood and sweat and tears and courage. There is less magic with the doctrine
of reincarnation than there is with resurrection. It is more rational to believe
in reincarnation. Reincarnation has us returning in a real and normal body for a
start! I am not recommending reincarnation though!
Resurrection implies that the body is necessary to be a whole person
The God who believers say will raise us doesn’t have a body by nature.
Christians believe that by nature he is spirit and doesn't need a body though he
became man in Jesus Christ. It would make more sense for God to make us as
beings that have bodies but don’t need them or to convert us into beings that
don’t need our bodies back at death. To believe in this perfect bodiless God is
really to indicate that the body is a mark of our inferiority. It is a negative
belief.
Resurrection by teaching that you need the body to be a proper person is
inferring that people with damaged brains who have lost their memories or people
who have lost the say the sense of sight, hearing and touch are not proper
people.
There is no evidence that anybody has come back from the dead. Suppose a miracle
such as somebody being turned into a frog or rising from the dead is reported.
What is more likely assuming the report is not down to lies or fraud? It is more
likely that some uncanny and strange coincidences have happened to make it look
like the miracle happened than that the miracle happened. Natural events are
very likely. Uncanny coincidences are very unlikely. Miracles are more unlikely
still. So it follows that though the uncanny coincidences may show some
otherworldly power at work there is no need and no right to assume a miracle.
Believers in God hold that what is in the universe does not need to exist and
can be done without. They say it exists only because God gratuitously made all
things from nothing. This really says that all things - even a bird singing -
are miracles. The order of nature is a miracle. A God believer could in the
miracle of order. It keeps things in order. We can't live if people start
turning into frogs! A God believer then does not need to believe in God setting
up the miracle of the order of nature and then changing that order to do another
kind of miracle. It is all so stupid. The miracle of creation can be taken as
evidence that claimed miracles of apparitions and men rising from the dead are
false.
The resurrection idea demeans. Reincarnation is so much better. The resurrection
idea will produce psychological problems in those who believe it.