Who Said That?

"Let us take an example to test this little doctrine [of the resurrection], so innocently put forth [by the Christians]:  A certain man was shipwrecked.  The hungry fish had his body for a feast.  But the fish were caught and cooked and eaten by some fishermen, who had the misfortune to run afoul of some ravenous dogs, who killed and ate them.  When the dogs died, the vultures came and made a feast of them.  How will the body of the shipwrecked man be reassembled considering it has been absorbed by other bodies of various kinds? . . .  Ah!  You say:  `All things are possible with God.'  But this is not true.  Not all things are possible for him.  [God] . . . cannot make 2 x 2 = 100 rather than 4, even though he should prefer it to be so."

Leave your guess in the comments section below.  Please, no google searches or cheating.  Answer to follow next week.

Update on Friday, January 15, 2010 at 02:42PM by Kim Riddlebarger

This is from the pagan philosopher Porphyry (who lived in Tyre from 230-305).  This is his argument against the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body.  It is found in his Against the Christians:  The Literary Remains, 91.

Goes to show that the new atheism isn't really different from the old atheism.

Comments

[steve]

David Hume?

[Philip Walker]

steve: Ah, yes, it must be someone like an Enlightenment sceptic. The content sounds like a very modern objection, but the language is older. I can roll with Hume.

[Matt Holst]

Has the sarcasm of Hume. I suppose God couldn't create man from the dust either, hmmm?

[dsanger]

Benjamin Franklin

[rfwhite]

Bart Ehrman.

[Richard]

George Steinbrenner.

[Bobby Grow]

Mark Twain

[Coyle]

Isn't this from the last book of Augustine's City of God? If it isn't, there's something similar there- he asks a series of questions to the effect of "at the final resurreuction, between a cannibal and his last meal, whose resurreuction body will have the mass of the original person's body?"
These two questions seem to be in the same vein...

[Paul C. Quillman]

Dawkins?

[C T Hall]

Christopher Hitchens?

[Gene Schlesinger]

Celsus.

[Wesley]

Dawkings

[Wesley]

Dawkins

[Scott Roper]

It's an old objection that Augustine was aware of, but the quote is more modern.

[Philip Walker]

Gosh, I'm surprised the objection is so old. It sounds like it needs a level of scientific awareness which people didn't really have in those days.

[Charles S]

Jean Paul Sartre?