It's a shame that Elvis didn't have a Paul to spread the good news of his resurrection. There was certainly more "evidence" in the form of "testimony" that proved his resurrection than there was for Jesus.
Good enough for some atheists, apparently. One wonders, then, why John's old teacher wins so many debates on this subject, even in the eyes of many neutral and even atheist observers. One would think the skeptic could just bring this "cheat sheet" along and win every time!
(1) Point one I'm inclined to concede, at least for the sake of the argument. In any case, the best evidence for the resurrection is certainly to be found in Christian documents.
(2) I think this one is flatly wrong, and confused besides. The claim in bold is not even logically supported by the rest of the paragraph. The Gospels can be written by eyewitnesses, and / or based on eyewitness accounts, without being written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There is a great deal of internal evidence that they were. It's a relatively trivial point to add that there is plenty of reason to ascribe Luke to Luke, John to John, and some for Mark. Matthew is, I admit, somewhat more mysterious.
(3) Three depends on (2), so fails.
(4) I trust Paul; I don't trust Joseph Smith or those he conned. Anyway, the cases are dissimilar: it's a whole lot harder to fool someone into believing they met their beloved teacher risen from the dead, than to fool the kind of people who would trust Joseph Smith into believing a book full of scribbles is "Reformed Egyptian." Combined with all the other evidence, the indirect and careful way Paul describes the eyewitnesses to the resurrection is pretty convincing -- most are still alive, but some have passed away.
(5) It is ridiculous to assume the early Christians did not know how their own leaders died. This one is implausible to an extreme. In any case, we have Paul's own desciption, and Luke's, too, how relentlessly the early Christians were hounded for their faith, Paul himself coming to the brink of death on numerous occasions. (II Cor. 11:23-33) Few if any scholars dispute either that Paul thought he saw Jesus, or that he put his neck on the line numerous times for his claim.
The analogy of Joseph Smith only deepens the problem. Joseph Smith was hated not for his golden tablets, but for hogging the women and conning people out of money. Lots of people die in pursuit of sex and cash. Smith didn't die willingly, either, -- he died in a shootout, with a gun in hand, after a lynch mob broke into the jail where he was being held on charges of destroying a hostile press.
If that's the best skeptics can come up with -- I've seen this line several times -- it underlines the Christian argument in bold red ink.
(6) Here Hallquist simply misstates the Christian argument. It's not that no one ever hallucinates. It's that large groups of people don't usually hallucinate the same thing, and that thing being the return from the dead of their leader, who had lunch with them. Hallquist or Loftus are free to cite counter examples.
(7) Sure, be careful with the testimony of hysterical children. That's the moral of the story of the Salem witch trials, and of the "child abuse" cases in Wenatchee, Washington a few years ago.
(8) "That's it!" Is it? Oh, yes, there's a book, too. Let me encourage atheists who plan to debate Christians on the resurrection to copy out this "cheat sheet" and make liberal use of it!
That pretty much sums up my own thoughts about the resurrection. Even if it did happen the so-called evidence is simply too meager for me to believe it. In fact, the gospels claim that the disciples themselves did not believe until they received empirical evidence of Jesus' resurrection. I ask for no less before I can believe. Anecdotal miracle tales bolstered by Church traditions of apostolic martyrdom are simply not that convincing.
I have yet to be convinced that there was *a* Jesus, a single living man who was born in a specific place and did specific, verifiable things during his life. The gospels don't give us any personal attributes for Jesus at all - compare them to other biographical writing in the ancient world. I understand that physical details were not considered important, but it's very odd that none managed to slip through. We don't even have ".. and Jesus partook of the goat cheese of Hebron, which was his favorite.." Or "..and Jesus twisted his ankle climbing the hill.."
Joseph Smith and Ron Hubbard made up new religions, why couldn't some Israelite do the same, and distribute the prototypes of the gospels to the gullible? To me, the resurrection story looks like a straightforward borrowing from other religions to make the new cult more competitive.
Interesting list, though I think my lack of belief in the resurrection stems from something akin to, "A timeless, spaceless, disembodied mind of unfathomable power" (to use Craig's formulation) chose to do something in a single time and single space inaccessible to the billions before and after who would supposedly benefit eternally from the ability to interact first hand with the incarnation of this vacuum-bodies god?
What gives?
If I'm not expected to trust countless other comparably worthless things today without first hand evidence... why this particular formulation of a deity, based on error-riddled scripture that constantly butts up against "issues" that require the mystery card to be played to be given a higher buy-in?
God already knows exactly what would lead me to belief. I'm waiting.
P.S. The "free will" card doesn't fly in response to that last point. Everyone has "belief threshold" x and as far as I can tell they are completely unaware of where x lies on the scale from "requires literally no evidence" up to "needs to know everything in the known universe." If your x is met, it's met and you believe. If not, you don't and that's that. We leave that alone in every other area of life -- if you're not convinced, you'll be provided with more evidence or left alone with your read of the situation.
Only in religion is it stated that god has a mysterious respect of "free will" and won't "force" evidence upon you. I just don't get that. If a believer has had their x met and god wills everything... he's willed your belief. There's no way around that.
the page is riddles with factual inaccuracies, but that really isnt a surprise. but since atheists generally speaking do not follow up on things this is what you get.
Articles like this make for very interesting reading, but it bothers me that so many of the theists think the burden of proof is on us to prove that there isn't a God, or that there wasn't a resurrection, or that there is no teakettle orbiting the sun. That's not how it works guys =)
I wouldn't concede point one. N.T. Wright's contribution is pointing out how a resurrection makes sense of how one goes from a second temple Judaism to early Christianity which involves loads of non-biblical considerations.
Hendy,
If I'm not expected to trust countless other comparably worthless things today without first hand evidence... why this particular formulation of a deity,
Any worthwhile education in science will require to accept tons and tons of data without first hand experience. The vast majority of people will never go to the moon, see the data produced in a particle accellerator let alone understand what to do with that data, witness dissections of multitudes of animals and/or organ systems, etc. A liberal arts education, even a scientific one only gives you a handful of general experiments and even if you went on. you can only specialize and the rest of the scientific data is beyond your first hand experience for mere lack of time, funds, opportunity, etc.
According to the NT legend the apostle Thomas demanded physical proof of JC's resurrection. His request was granted. We can assume that Thomas had already spoken directly with eyewitnesses to the empty tomb and others who had seen the resurrected Jesus. Apparently those testimonies were not convincing to him. Given a deity that will respond to demands for proof I think it is reasonable to request the same physical evidence be provided.
clamflats, the moral of the story of Thomas seems to allude you. The problem was that he was an irrational skeptic. He saw the kinds of things that Jesus did, he heard the testimony of people he trusted, insisting on physical evidence was not wise after that.
Scripture is not flatly against skepticism. Nathaniel at the beginning of the book of John was looked upon positively for his skepticism of Jesus. The bereans didn't accept Christ until they saw that the gospel was consistant with the old testament.
But this naive skepticism, that we have to see things for ourselves isn't just incompatible with faith. it's incompatible with even scientific knowledge. See what I said above to Hendy.
DBM - "One wonders, then, why John's old teacher wins so many debates on this subject, even in the eyes of many neutral and even atheist observers."
Define "wins" :)
I have listened to enough WLC debates to make my ears bleed, and I can see how, based on presentation and polish, he is often the "winner', but on convincing evidence, I have yet to hear him win one debate.
You're on the verge of fitting Twain's definition of insanity.
For the last time. Your religious epistemology is subject to the same inter-subjective reliability tests as all other claims of external knowledge, and it doesn't pass that test. Even you recognize that Christian dogma can not be deduced a priori. Yet, you keep trying to claim that the usual rules for knowledge justification don't apply to your religious beliefs, but at every turn, you use the same type of knowledge arguments that everyone else uses for their own knowledge claims. Enough with the special pleading, ok?
Instead of the constant arguing in circles, you really should just go with the real knowledge argument that all of your silliness really boils down to: I know, that I know, that I know. All of your (and Plantinga's) arguments ultimately boil down this statement, and no amount of dressing them up in sophistry changes that.
RobR - "The problem was that he was an irrational skeptic."
Wrong. I don't care how many of my trusted friends approached me claiming that they personally witnessed the resurrected body of my dead friend, it would be perfectly reasonable for me to be skeptical of their claims of him coming back to life.
Aargh! I'm clicking on the link at 10:37am Thursday, and it's a dead link! Is anyone else having this problem? Pleeease help, I really want to read this!
the moral of the story of Thomas seems to allude you. The problem was that he was an irrational skeptic. He saw the kinds of things that Jesus did, he heard the testimony of people he trusted, insisting on physical evidence was not wise after that.
Thomas was not the only doubter in the gospel tales, and I see nothing irrational about needing an exceptional amount of evidence to warrant belief in an implausible claim. Further, I do not consider the gospel tales to be literal histories to begin with; they are theological propaganda written to serve the faith communities of the anonymous authors who penned them.
@Hendy wrote: Re "God already knows exactly what would lead me to belief. I'm waiting."
Hi, Hendy. Yes, very well put. I hope you realize (or know) believing may not come from outside sources that would count as empirical evidence, but rather that the faith necessary to believe will come from within (in the form of a changed heart). As Jesus put it: "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." As such, every unbeliever is half-way there. Keep waiting.
Ryan: Yes, of course. But Hallquist said, "or based on eyewitness testimony." Luke clearly did base both his books on eyewitness testimony, to which he obviously had access.
Bob: Personally I'm not overly enchanted by Craig's style. It's good, but his debates are mostly held on college campuses, with plenty of sharp people in attendance, and it's unwarranted to assume they are just bewitched by the sonorous tones of Craig's voice.
But based on my own study (Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus), I think the evidence for the Gospels is much stronger than can be presented in a single debate, or a single piece of paper, actually. If I were asked to do that, I wouldn't know where to begin.
Ryan: Yes, of course. But Hallquist said, "or based on eyewitness testimony." Luke clearly did base both his books on eyewitness testimony, to which he obviously had access.
Even if "Luke" claims that he interviewed people who told him that they were eyewitnesses, how would you verify that information at this stage of the game? The people "Luke" got his info from could have been deluded or lying.
If Matthew was an eyewitness, then why does he have the post-resurrection appearances in Galilee, while Luke has them happening in Jerusalem? Could the eyewitnesses not remember which part of Palestine they were in when Jesus 2.0 came by for a visit?
I think the one-pager reads rather amateurish. He makes assertions with the assumption that his assertion will be accepted by the adage (scholars agree). They do not. No Christian will accept this and will dismiss it as tripe. While I think Jesus is a mythological figure, never a real individual, and some core of Christianity has its roots in a Roman Pagan belief, this document adds nothing to the debate and cannot be used to debate Christians.
One argument I haven't seen used against the idea that J rose from the dead is the absurdity of the ascension. How is it that physically floating up into the sky makes any sense? Yes, it made sense to the believers most likely to hallucinate a body rising up into heaven, if heaven is located in the clouds somewhere. But then we want to know: How high up did he go? The ionosphere? Lower? Higher? Did his molecules disassemble at a certain point? It only makes sense if heaven is "up there" and the original concept of immortality is used in which the actual physical body is returned to its original state, otherwise the ascension makes no sense.
David B Marshall's counter arguments are weak and inaccurate: 1. If the "best evidence is *certainly* to be found in the Christian documents," then what is your definition of evidence? Evidence is something that can be verified by some means (measured or minimally experienced directly, in a repeatable way). Your statement would be more accurate and considerably more truthful, if you said: There are ample references in our own literature to confirm our believers sincerely felt the resurrection really happened.
2. If anything, it's your initial assertion that isn't supported by your subsequent statements. You think it's "flatly wrong" that there's "little evidence" the Gospels weren't written by the people attributed as their authors? Is that your claim? You definitely do not know much about Biblical scholarship to say there's "a great deal of internal evidence that they were..." what? The original authors? No, they were not! At best, there is a source generally called Q that probably circulated for a long time before the gospels were codified in their current form. You say there's "plenty of reason" to ascribe Luke to Luke...so, present it because there's plenty of reason, historical research, and scholarship that says you're wrong, pure and simple.
3. Hence, this point is logical and makes perfect sense to anyone who isn't already a believer.
4. Paul is no less of an ideologue than Joseph Smith was. He apparently had a conversion experience of some kind that makes everything he says completely suspect and unreliable to anyone but the confirmed believer. The fact that you "trust Paul" says it all: You're already a believer. If this were a court case and we were in a jury, Paul's statements would be hearsay testimony. It wouldn't stand up to scrutiny and that's what these points are about.
5. The argument isn't that the early Christians didn't know why they were dying but that they were deluded and dying for a delusion doesn't make it any more real.
6. You think "large groups of people don't usually hallucinate the same thing," but in fact, this is what large groups of people are especially good at and there have been many studies to show this is the case, both in secular and religious contexts. You could not be more wrong on this one point than anything else you've said. Group think and shared realities are why the scientific method was developed: So when people make claims like Jesus rose from the dead, there's a way to take it out of the realm of projection and put under the microscope of scrutiny.
7. I don't find this point very strong. It feels more like a rehash of the earlier ones (people say things, children make up stories, we all know this) but I think my idea I stated in the beginning that Jesus ascending/floating up into the sky when there's no logical reason for this other than to confirm the group think of "heaven is thata-way," is a stronger point to make, especially to anyone seriously considering the credibility of a story like the resurrection. So, I'd personally revise this point 7 to ask why the ascension story makes any sense whatsoever.
8. I think it's obvious that this point is more a formatting error than a actual point.
(1) Most historical evidence is found in documents and is NOT "repeatable." History is not chemistry.
2. I meant there is a great deal of evidence that the Gospels were based on eyewitness acounts. That sentence was, admittedly, ambiguous. Actually, I know quite a bit about biblical scholarship, and have read quite a few skeptical attempts to explain the NT evidence, or explain it away. Read Ben Witherington on Luke.
3. "Hence, this point is logical and makes perfect sense to anyone who isn't already a believer."
Of course it's logical: what it isn't is factual. At least three, probably all, the gospels were clearly based on eyewitness testimony.
4. The question isn't whether Paul and Joseph Smith are both "ideologues," which is empty pejorative, but whether both are equally trustworthy. Obviously they were not.
5. I'm not sure what your point is here.
6. Parallel examples?
7. I didn't make any claim about the ascension, so I'll pass on this one.
Re: David B Marshall... 1. Documents are not the evidence! There may be references in documents to something that can be confirmed but I think the original point is still valid: Many years, decades, after the events we are told stories and asked to believe them as if they're first-hand accounts. They simply are not and thus they are not credible.
2. The best research confirms what Chris wrote.
3. Scribes changed, added and deleted >thousands of words< over the many hundreds of years of its early formation. How do you account for the fact that not a single extant document is the same? Each scribe has made his own changes & mistakes and earlier texts have even greater variations than later ones. That is objective and verifiable evidence for this point being a valid point, contrary to your faith in its veracity.
4. I think it's "obvious" both men are ideologues for their causes. Calling Smith a conman, as you did, isn't any less pejorative than me saying Paul has a vested interest in his position. (1st Timothy & 2nd Peter likely weren't even written by him, so how do you "trust Paul" when you don't know who actually wrote under his name?)
5. Too many other points are too important to worry about this.
6. Well, studies have been done to test the effectiveness of eye witness testimony where someone commits a (staged) crime then people are asked to verify what the criminal (actor) did, looked like, & said. Turns out, mere minutes after the event if someone said they thought the person was a black, wearing a red shirt with a gun, other people's memories would get recreated to confirm that, even though it wasn't true. That's a secular example. A religious example would be Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, where tens of thousands of people regularly see things are simply aren't there. That's why the Christian texts are Not Reliable.
7. I meant, I didn't find Chris' point very strong, hence my revision to use the ascension as another example of the so-called eye witnesses being unreliable.
Bottom line for me is this: The Christian texts are not reliable. No resurrection occurred. A whole lotta other stuff didn't happen and by not believing any of it I have the gift no god can bestow: A clear and peaceful mind.
Steven, I don't know what Plantinga has to do with this discussion.
As for alleging that "I know what I know what I know" I did not choose to offer much in the way of rebuttal but rather refutation. In rebuttal, you offer reasons for a position that was argued against. In refutation, what is offered is a response against those original arguments. In other words, it might be true that Jesus didn't rise from the dead and yet the arguments offered here are still bad! (not that I answered every single point... others have done fine there given what is reasonable to expect in short blog comments).
You said, He saw the kinds of things that Jesus did
You do not know what any biblical character did or did not see or say or otherwise witness. All you get from bibles is hearsay. That is not evidence of anything. Bibles tell stories having no qualitative differences from the fiction qua fiction today or the manifest contemporaneous other mythologies the bible's fables were taken from.
Then, you continued with he heard the testimony of people he trusted,
You want us to think that the bible character Thomas - a complete fiction for all we know - should have trusted testimonies from the people he trusted, yet you would tell all of us here that a child of Muslim parents should not trust their parent's testimonies even though his trust of them is implicit. You would tell us that testimonies from Muslims or Hindus inherently cannot be true and therefore they are not to be trusted. You'll want special pleading concerning who bible Thomas should trust since it is comes from the set of myths, legends and fairy tales respected by your social group.
To trust someone is not to credulously elevate them to infallible. One must be quite familiar with another for trust to be established, but establishing trust in no way inoculates one against being mistaken. I know many people in whom I place my trust, but when the people I trust are wrong I let them know it. In certain topics I can trust that some of my trusted friends will nearly always be wrong. Trust is never a reason to make matters worse by allowing an error of consequence to go unchallenged.
Let's see, now, do lay Christians or their clergy ever violate other's trust in them? Hmmm. It seems they do. Rather frequently, actually. Bible Jesus' disciples would have been no more trustworthy in thought, word or deed than the Vatican Pedophile Brigade. They would have been no more likely to be "correct" in their assessments of fantasy, fiction, and superstition than would the followers of L. Ron Hubbard. Thomas would have been wise to accept the testimonies of those he trusted only to the extent that you would tell us children of Hindu parents should trust them concerning religious notions.
You said, Scripture is not flatly against skepticism.
Nobody gives a shit, Rob R. You know full well that Christians today do not read bibles or much of anything else. They don't read bibles, study bibles, and they sure as hell don't know what is in their bibles. As I pointed out to you in a different thread as many as 12 percent of adult self-identified Christians think that Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. The bible is functionally meaningless to Christians, and theology is even meaningless-er.
Then, you heaved this scat in the pool, But this naive skepticism, that we have to see things for ourselves isn't just incompatible with faith. it's incompatible with even scientific knowledge.
Accepting scientific knowledge based on what others say is a no-brainer. Why? It frickin' works, that's why. You fully agree with me that all religions are wrong, with you making special pleading for only one sub-sub-sub-Christianity. You acknowledge that Islam is wrong, Hindu is wrong, Buddhism is wrong, just like me. But, if Mommy R had beaten Shiva into you rather than having beaten Jesus into you, you'd be a sub-sub-sub-Hindu.
Rob R, Here you show yourself to be untrustworthy again, Rob R. There is a significant difference between the inane religious faith you cling to for reasons of tradition, mommy with a belt, revelation and authority, and the confidence one can have in the vast body of reliable scientific understanding mankind has accrued since prying itself free of Christianity's chokehold on thought and progress. No one needs your stupid religion, Rob R, but humanity would number only a fraction of what it does if not for science. Here, again, you purposely conflate, you lie, you deceive, as you have been doing for years, religion's stupid "faith" with science's "confidence." You equate your religion's pathology called "faith" with science's remedy called "confidence."
You want your religious self-indentification to mean something and you repeat lie after lie to denigrate science which is more uniformly embraced by Christians than is any specific point of theology. From food to medicine Christians in the developed world turn to science every minute of every day. Poll after poll and study after study show Christians use their religion as a social outlet and they use it to blot out guilt hammered into them in childhood; but, what they observably don't do is rely on it. Christians know they can rely on science, and they know their religion and their god do nothing at all.
Interesting little document. The issue here, I suppose, is whether the evidence supports either of two main hypotheses: 1. That the bible is the Word of God and reliably relates God's Great Plan to save fallen humanity by way of an actual resurrection from the dead of an actual human who was really god and that the contradictions and mistakes and misattributions are consistent with that, or: 2. This is a human story that has beenultiply embellished, is liberally cut through with propaganda, superstition, credulity, lies and guff, written years after the events they supposedly relate.
1 is easily rejected as just silly. 2 is very obviously correct. Indeed, the gospels themselves contain ample evidence that the resurrection never happened; instead, a later belief was formulated, and each author clumsily tried to make their story fit.
In many ways, however, it is very simple. If the resurrection happened, the bible is a shockingly poor record, and therefore is not the word of any god worth looking at. If it *didn't* happen, the bible is also not the word of a god. Either way, Belief-based Christianity falls, and the bible itself is the agent of it's doom, and poor wee Jesus is left without a witness, which is pitiful.
Weren't the gospels written 40-70 years or more after the supposed events? So no one who wrote about them actually witnessed anything.
John, even if the average age of death back then was much younger than it is today (though I'm not sure how deflated that would be counting the deaths of infance), people did indeed live that long back then. So the gospels were written within living memory.
For all who might've read Russ's response, I'm willing to respond to some similar points when they are of some quality if they are of quality. I just don't respond to Russ. I don't have time for hysterical tirades loaded with ad hominem, red herrings and so on. I don't even read them, I occasionally skim them to see if he's still up to his old ways.
John, even if the average age of death back then was much younger than it is today (though I'm not sure how deflated that would be counting the deaths of infance), people did indeed live that long back then. So the gospels were written within living memory
Plenty of time for legendary distortion as well. In fact, one can actually see the evidence for legendary progression/expansion when one reads the gospels in a chronological order starting with Mark and ending with John.
Craig wins debates in large part because his opponents don't know how to counter his sleazy debating tactics. In his debate with Richard Carrier, Carrier gave a first-rate opening statement, which Craig proceeded to mostly ignore in favor of personal attacks on Carrier. Carrier never called him out on it, and instead fell into the trap of trying to answer all of Craig's sleazy attacks, for fear that Craig would get up and whine that Carrier hadn't answered all of his [mostly irrelevant] points.
As for your criticisms:
(2) There are plenty of Biblical scholars, even believing Christians, who aren't convinced by your "great deal of internal evidence" for the authorship claims. I'd ask you what this evidence is, but first, ask yourself "if the hypothetical cultist (from 3) with the anonymous tracts claimed analogous evidence as proof that his tracts were really eyewitness accounts, would I buy it?"
(4) First, why should I trust the kind of people who would trust the likes of Jesus or Paul?
Second, why are you convinced that the statements that appear in front of the Book of the Mormon aren't "careful"? I suggest actually reading the main one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Witnesses
(5) Depends on how "early" is early. It may be that when a Christian leader died, Christians at that time knew how it happened. But why be sure the story would have been accurately preserved a century later, given the clear evidence that legends grew up around the disciples very quickly?
Re: the Joseph Smith analogy, how do we know the disciples died willingly?
(6) I didn't attribute to Christians the claim that "no one ever hallucinates." People like Habermas, though, will make claims like "Paul couldn't possibly have hallucinated, even if no one else saw what he say." It's these claims I was targeting in (6).
(7) Sadly, there is little evidence that adults are always more trustworthy than children.
Plenty of time for legendary distortion as well. In fact, one can actually see the evidence for legendary progression/expansion when one reads the gospels in a chronological order starting with Mark and ending with John.
You could conclude that. But it isn't necessary. Mark is a very short gospel and Jesus' ministry for three years and what little is covered before then is surely ripe for expansion.
Course, what you would call a distortion and what I or the ancient mind would call a distortion isn't the same. I don't think the Gospels are an attempt to merely record just the facts and the events exactly as they happened. They are told in such a way as to emphasize theological points and to convey the kind of life Jesus had. Surely, if Jesus did not perform miracles, the gospels would be flatly wrong. But they are clear that he performed miracles.
The question is whether what is told is consistent with what the life that they witnessed.
I'd also like to point out that the writings of paul which although not biographical contain many details about Jesus life including his teachings are not within decades of Jesus' life but within years. And what Paul says has continuity with the gospels.
Surely, if Jesus did not perform miracles, the gospels would be flatly wrong. But they are clear that he performed miracle
Yes, they clearly claim that. Why should I believe this claim based on literature that is clearly meant to be propaganda? IOW, why should I consider the gospels to be historically accurate to any degree?
I'd also like to point out that the writings of paul which although not biographical contain many details about Jesus life including his teachings are not within decades of Jesus' life but within years. And what Paul says has continuity with the gospels.
That's funny. I believe that Paul pretty much usurped the religion of Jesus and supplanted Jesus' teachings with his own theology. Matthew seems to take digs at Paul in the Sermon on the Mount.
The claim that Saul Paulus's writings are in continuity with the gospels is a joke. What the gospels very very clearly show is an evolution of christology from a relatively simple notion in Mark to the crazy excesses of John. And Saul Paulus continues the trend.
The fact is that there is not one single first hand account of anyone having witnessed the "risen" Christ, and the early stories are all of the character of visions and imaginings. What the *bible* clearly demonstrates is that the belief came first, it grew up in the years following the death of Jesus the Nazarene, and by the time the gospels were being written, there were wee stories being made up about it.
This happens all the time. All that needs to be explained here is *stories*, and stories are easy. Theistic Christians (as opposed to Atheistic Christians) confuse the *stories* (which claim a non-specific "resurrection", even though they contradict each other) with the *evidence*, which is that the stories were largely invented, probably to explain the loss of Jesus's corpse.
Incidentally, I have often wondered whether Saul Paulus's surname implied a relationship to Sergius Paulus, governor of Crete. As a Roman Citizen by birth, Saul would not have needed to *change* his name to Paul, but it is very strange that in Acts, he only starts to get called "Paul" (his patronym) after he visits Sergius...
John, scope for a couple of articles about The Impostle Paul?
I honestly don't think this has a snowball's chance in their imaginary Hell of convincing a believer. I, of course agree, but I recognize that I am inclined to agree just as they are inclined to disagree.
The biggest problem that I see is that number 1 SHOULD be the only one necessary. But it isn't. For believers the fact that the Bible says something is so is sufficient to make it so.
This is why we always end up having to discuss this on their terms, pointing out inconsistencies, pointing to implausibilities and contradictions and impossibilities in the text itself.
It is maddening that Theists of all stripes do not apply the same standards of proof to other historical works that they apply to their own precious scrolls. Clearly they don't believe that the events described in the Iliad or the Odyssey or the Tale of Gilgamesh or other tattered scraps of ancient manuscripts are literally true. They fail to see that these were STORIES and that they have placed Ultimate Cosmic Importance on the ancient equivalent of a Swords and Sorcery Epic.
If the pattern holds I can only imagine that 2000 years from now, theists will be arguing over the tattered remnants of a copy of the Lord of the Rings and aruging over where all of the Hobbits and Elves went, why there is no physical or archaeological evidence for their existence and the salvific power of Frodo's sacrifice. For whosoever shall believeth in Frodo shall have life everlasting. They of course will be debating those who believeth in Harry Potter.
And our descendants will still be pointing this out. Unfortunately for us, the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are MUCH more internally consistent than the Bible, which will make our job even harder. ...sigh...
Rob R, You responded to me, clamflats, the moral of the story of Thomas seems to allude you. The problem was that he was an irrational skeptic.
I'm not interested in the moral to the story. I had plenty Xtian instruction in my youth and understand what message is supposed to be. My point was that even in the NT legends there are examples of the deity responding to requests for physical evidence from someone who presumably had direct access to the very eyewitnesses that are now the only evidence proffered.
You call Thomas irrational, JC didn't. He just implied that Thomas wasn't as blessed as those "who don't see and still believe", that is, those with blind faith.
Any worthwhile education in science will require to accept tons and tons of data without first hand experience. The vast majority of people will never go to the moon, see the data produced in a particle accelerator let alone understand what to do with that data, witness dissections of multitudes of animals and/or organ systems, etc.
Please stop suggesting that religious faith is equivalent to “faith” in science. Please.
One with even the most basic science education actually will indeed have been exposed to “tons and tons” of first-hand data. I have a liberal arts education. I have dissected earthworms, frogs and fetal pigs. I’ve seen the Moon lander and the rocks at the Smithsonian. Actually, it’s simpler than that: Go outside and look up, there’s the Moon. Where’s Jesus?
Please point me to where I can get any “first-hand experience” of the resurrection?
More importantly, even with my lowly liberal arts education, I can understand the manner in which scientific claims are evaluated and verified or falsified. Religious claims simply are not evaluated in the same way.
Further, I have good reasons to believe that, if I chose to, I could personally verify or falsify scientific claims. I am typing this on a computer. I know how it works in the most general terms, but I have no real understanding of how this gizmo works. Does this mean I have “faith” in the computer or computer science? No. Because I know people who started with as little knowledge as I who now actually design and build computers. And I know I could have followed the same path.
How exactly can I personally verify or falsify the claims of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?
Finally, you falsely equate the plausibility of resurrection and scientific claims. I may never walk on the moon, but nothing about the claim “men have walked on the moon” is inconsistent with my experience. The moon is far, but given the mini-rockets I’ve launched and the plane flights I’ve taken, there’s no reason to think it’s impossibly far. The Smithsonian rocks may be fake, but the claim “the Moon is made of rocks” is not inherently incredible.
The Resurrection does not comport with my – or anyone alive’s – experience. The claim that “a man rose from the dead” is inherently incredible. There is a single source of 2000 year-old data for this incredible claim (and not even eyewitness, i.e. first-hand, data at that). Because Jesus ascended, the claim cannot be verified or falsified.
Convenient, that.
Religious faith and "faith" in science are not equivalent.
Actually, pretty much every legal system in history has either not allowed hearsay evidence at all or has only allowed it under very narrow circumstances because it is inherently unreliable and prone to abuse.
"I saw X do Y." and "A told me that he saw X do Y."
The first is admissible testimony. The second is hearsay.
The first is subject to cross examination and further inquiry to establish its conformity with the evidence and the other testimony at trial. The second is useless. It is not subject to any cross examination and further inquiry because the ONLY thing that can be elucidated is whether A said what A said. It sheds no light whatsoever on whether what A said was true or false. This is why we do not allow hearsay in legal proceedings.
While I am discussing this solely in the legal context, hearsay is just as unreliable in other contexts.
'I saw your husband cheating on you' is a very different statement than 'X said that he saw your husband cheating on you.' In the first, you could ask the person if they were sure it was your husband, where they were, what time it was, who it was, what the circumstances were. In the second, all you can ask is 'Really?' Useless.
In the context of the resurrection, you have hearsay within hearsay within hearsay. None of the other links in the chain can do more than verify whether X said that Y happened, or that A said that X said that Y happened, or that B said that A said that X said that Y happened. This all occurred before any of this was ever even written down, leaving not only the contemporaries without any ability to confirm or clarify the original story, but the original scribes as well. It may be good evidence that A said that B said that C said that D said that X said that Y happened, but it is NOT evidence in any way shape or form that Y actually happened.
I generally agree, but I question whether the statements in the Bible constitute literally no evidence of the truth of the matters asserted, i.e., the resurrection.
First, as you note, in the legal context, hearsay statements are admissible if they are subject to certain exceptions. I wonder if anyone has every really fly-specked the Bible to determine whether exceptions apply (excited utterance and statement against interest seem the most likely)?
More seriously, in the historical context, does hearsay really not count for anything? I don’t believe, but my inclination would be to accept the Bible as evidence. Extremely weak evidence, given the nature of its claims, but evidence nonetheless.
I've thought about that actually. I think excited utterance is the most likely candidate for getting around the initial hearsay problem. 'Holy Shit! That guy rose from the dead!' Would almost certainly get the 'Excited Utterance' exception, at least on the Bar Exam.
The bigger problem for admissibility purposes would be the Hearsay within Hearsay problem. What exception applies to the repeaters of the eyewitness testimony? What about their repeaters. EU doesn't apply. I don't really see a Statement Against Interest or any of the Non-Hearsay exceptions.
That said, because I'm nice, I would probably allow it and let the jury decide on the weight. And yeah... weak, weak, weak evidence.
About as good as the evidence for Ulysees' amazing exploits in the ancient Aegean.
Hah! If I had been drinking I would’ve done a spit-take. I think the “Holy Shit!” question should be standard on all Bar exams from now on.
Yeah, at first blush, I don’t see how it gets around the “multiple layers” problem, either. Though I still think statement against interest might have some traction. Maybe an argument in the “the disciples risked their lives by proclaiming their faith” vein?
Rob: On the age thing, check the bios of the scientists Carrier mentions in Christian Delusion, final chapter. Indeed they commonly lived into their 70s, sometimes 80s. The disciples would have been young when they were following Jesus around the countryside. Aside from which, an account can be based on eyewitness testimony given well before the account was written.
Suppose for the sake of argument that the story of the empty tomb is fiction. Put yourself in the shoes of Mark and the others, and imagine that you are trying to invent the story of the empty tomb.
The first thing that you have to ensure is that the body is actually buried. You can deal with this by having a member of the Sanhedrin (Joseph of Arimathea) ask Pilate for the body. Then Pilate has to agree to this. Next you have to ensure that the body is buried in a tomb rather than a common grave. You can do this by making Joseph a secret follower of Jesus who gives him an honourable burial in his own private tomb.
Next you have to make sure that the tomb is discovered. If you are Mark you can do this by having the women visit the tomb a couple of days later to anoint the body. Ah, but wouldn't the body already have been anointed? You can deal with that by making sure that Jesus dies just before the Sabbath starts so there isn't enough time to anoint the body.
If you're Matthew you have other ideas. You've put a guard on the tomb to stifle any accusations about theft of the body, so you just have the women visiting the tomb. In that case you don't want the women just visiting the tomb and going home without realising a miracle has occurred. Therefore you need to roll the stone away so they know that something has happened. If you're John this creates a bit of a headache because you've made the body magically disappear while leaving the shroud behind. In other words God can make the body disappear but in order to get into the tomb He has to move the stone out of the way. Still, can't be helped.
If this was a script for a film it wouldn't really work. You might say it's too contrived. But of course it isn't a script, is it? This all really happened, didn't it? Unfortunately, if it really did happen, the same problem remains. Instead of the gospel writers struggling to make the story work, we have God struggling to make the story work. God has tried to tell us a story by manipulating events to create that story. God had to make sure Pilate handed over the body. God had to make sure Jesus was buried in tomb. God had to make sure the women visited the tomb etc. In other words, all the people involved in the whole business were like characters in a script that God was manipulating to arrive at the right outcome. So it seems that God is actually a second rate novelist trying to tell us stories but not quite pulling it off.
I’m definitely no legal expert, so I would like to know: as to the exceptions in legal-settings in which hearsay is acceptable – is there a criteria of sorts that establishes when these exceptions are permitted, or is the exception determined on case-by-case basis?
It seems to me (and correct me if I’m wrong) that at the heart of your reply to me, lies an emphasis on the importance of being able to cross-examine or inquire to a first-hand witness. If so, I would agree this is very important.
Inquiring into the persons making first-hand claims about the life of Jesus and his resurrection–none of us here in 2010 can do such cross examining.
HOWEVER, prior to a final-draft gospel being written, the author would have been within a context in which they could accessibly inquire to (i.e. “cross-examine”) the disciples, the family of Jesus, and individuals who were among Jesus’ more general audience. And then of course there’s Paul, who was personally aquainted with the disciples Gal 1:18-19, as also evident in the Acts. He was likewise in a position to obtain details from the apostles.
My curiosity is this: does a gospel being mere hearsay vs a gospel being eyewitness testimony, make a difference to most of the atheists on this thread? Or would they say an eyewitness based gospel is not evidence still?
I would like to know if this argument about hearsay is based on us not being able to cross- examine the witnesses (e.g. the disciples), or a sense that the immediate witnesses to Jesus were not cross-examined by gospel writers? Or both?
Russ: for you and others who resent when apologists make claims to knowledge about the gospels, you do realize don't you, that you likewise make claims to knowledge when you the say the gospels are only hearsay and are not based on eyewitness testimony.
Why do you say such as opposed to saying " I'm agnostic as to whether the gospels are mere hearsay or contain eyewitness testimony" ?
You asked, Why do you say such as opposed to saying " I'm agnostic as to whether the gospels are mere hearsay or contain eyewitness testimony" ?
You're kidding, right? Are you so blinded by your religious delusion that you fail to see that the limitless questions raised by the gospels and the conflicts and contradictions among them, will never be resolved among Christians themselves? Christians do not agree that there is a god or that someone going by the moniker Jesus was also his own father and his own son and the creator of the universe and the be all and end all of all that matters and whose death was required to save mankind from an imaginary original sin. Christians do not agree among themselves on anything. The content of what passes as Christian thought increasingly divides, diverges and multiplies. That is not truth and it sure as hell is not reliable. Most of mankind rejects the Christianities with good reason: it observably doesn't work.
You do not speak for the whole of Christianity, Ana. Hell, if I wanted to I could start a church; call it "Christian;" and, let the good times roll from the collection plate to my bank account. But, I'm not immoral enough to go that route. I love people too much to lie to them and take their money when they are better off keeping it rather than handing it over to some skanky Christian clergyman.
What's more, the bible as written, Testaments Old and New have inspired far too much inhumanity for any of it to be true. Bibles do not house knowledge. They hold the musings of a people lacking the intellectual tools to distinguish what they wish to be true from what is true. Bibles authorize the impeding of the search for knowledge and the inhibiting of truth. We've seen this down the ages and we see it in all its glory yet today. By the lights of Christians themselves, bible contents are contradictory. Christians hate those who disagree with them, including the majority of other Christians. Of course, they trot out euphemistic language to disguise their hatred for others, but as Christian behavior in the third world testifies, if it were not for the developed world's secular controls keeping the Christianities from each other's throats, their would be blood in the streets.
I had asked: "Why do you say such as opposed to saying " I'm agnostic as to whether the gospels are mere hearsay or contain eyewitness testimony" ?"
No I wasn't kidding.
And as to your response to me - What does what Christians can or cannot agree on, resolve or don’t resolve, have ANYTHING to do, ANY BEARING at all, on the authorship of a gospel and its containment or lack thereof, of eyewitness details?
All you had to do Russ, was to ignore my question, or to respond with “I’m not going to answer your question” instead of going on a red-herring diatribe against the whole of Christianity.
Seems to me if we're looking for actual evidence to confirm something as significant as the quest for victory over death, there really isn't any at all. There are documents that describe other people's accounts and that's pretty much all that exists. So you either trust these people's testimony or you don't.
What would be tangible evidence of the resurrection? Either:
1. Jesus is still physically here, alive, well & walking among us for the past 2,000 years. If he really rose from the dead into some kind of immortal body, there's no reason for him to float up into the sky and disappear. Or,
2. By believing in Jesus, being a follower, or some variation on that theme, you would simply also come back to life after three days, say your good-byes, and then ascend, thus confirming that yes, believing in Jesus does have an upside.
Of course we know neither is true and the best the apologists can provide is a moving target of reinterpretations, strained exegesis, and faith that some other goodness must in store for the faithful.
You'd like the resurrection story to be true. I'd like it to be true, also. But you know and we all know, deep down inside, we really don't know what happens when we die. We can't know and if the best we've got for skeptics is, "Oh man, you're looking for the Risen Son of God? He was here a minute ago, you just missed him! But trust us, he was here. Right guys? Oh yeah, he definitely here, no doubt about it," that just is not now, nor will it ever be, good enough.
No one including Jesus has ever come back from the dead. It takes a brave soul to face that Truth and be at peace with it.
Even if the authors of the gospels claimed actual eyewitness testimony, it is still a rather fantastical claim that would necessitate rather extraordinary evidence. The fact that is it compounded by hearsay only necessitates the need for greater corroboration.
And even those who claim firsthand personal knowledge of an event are not necessarily reliable. Pesonal knowledge is simply a necessary precondition for reliable testimony, not necessarily proof that what they say is true. When an attention seeking crackpot claims to have personally witnessed or experienced an alien abduction, alien visitation, alien anal probing or Bigfoot sighting, we do not simply accept what he has to say. We do not take it on faith. We demand evidence. We are even more skeptical of those who say "My cousin Herb told me that he was probed by little green men." The fantastical nature of the claim is merely compounded by the hearsay nature of the testimony.
A good example of ancient hearsay would be to ask whether you believe that Achilles was immortal (except for that heel thing). There is reasonable historicity for numerous portions of the Iliad. It seems clear that Troy was a real place, that there was a war, that subtrefuge was involved and a number of the characters appear to have been actual historical people. Achilles, Menaleus, etc. The same can be said for the historicity of Arthur, King of the Britons.
Sure, there is some historical basis to these stories, but the divine intervention in all of them, the pixies, angels, demons, gods, ladies of the lake, are simply rhetorical spice to take what would otherwise be a dry historical recitation and give it pathos and a moral foundation.
If we want to accept the more fantastical claims made in ALL of these historical epics (and yes, the Bible is nothing if not a historical epic) we need more than alleged internal consistency and alleged eyewitness testimony.
If the moral of the story isn't consistant with the conclusion you drew about the way God should always act, then your conclusion is problematic for that reason amongst any others.
there are examples of the deity responding to requests for physical evidence from someone who presumably had direct access to the very eyewitnesses that are now the only evidence proffered.
Which doesn't indicate that we should always expect this. We don't have the same relationship with God that the first disciples had. It actually wouldn't be consistent with scripture for us to have that. The disciples saw what they saw so that they would bear witness to the world. The saw what they saw so that God would then work through them building the community of the church through which he would also work. God works through the church and this is necessary for full salvation. It is not only our relationship with God that has been marred. it is also our relationship with each other, and God by working not only directly with individuals but through them is reparring both at the same time. Trust is part of the solution, and if we refuse to act and work within a trusting relationship not just with God but with each other, then we are not fully engaging in God's salvific plan.
You call Thomas irrational, JC didn't.
that's right. I drew the conclusion based on the narrative. He was indeed irrational, not just to mistrust what his long time companions had told him, but an event that is consistent (as far as the narrative is concerned) with what he had already seen from a man who demonstrated power over nature, sickness and death itself. To be a perpetual skeptic in light of that is just nuts.
Please stop suggesting that religious faith is equivalent to “faith” in science. Please.
It isn't equivalent. But common ground is undeniable.
One with even the most basic science education actually will indeed have been exposed to “tons and tons” of first-hand data.
Which is still relatively miniscule in terms of all that science claims and all that we believe about science. I've had more lab experience than you and I'll tell you that when the labs get more in depth, more calculated, you often only see that your results, if not a complete failure which is only a minority of the time is still not directly what was calculated. Then you gotta calculate percent error and speculate as to why your results were off. And that is all done in good faith that the original formulas were correct to begin with. When it is a failure, the scientifically minded student (and even most of the dimwitted ones) knows that it is his first hand experience that is wrong, that something must be wrong somewhere because the text books couldn't possibly be wrong. And that kind of faith is indeed the rational approach to have.
I’ve seen the Moon lander and the rocks at the Smithsonian.
which could have been assembled there and the rocks from some quarry. Stupid idea I know. We know better that we should trust that it is real. But the trust is still trust and that shouldn't be taken for granted.
Please point me to where I can get any “first-hand experience” of the resurrection?
You refered to the moon above which we can look up and observe that it's a flat disc that moves around the earth. Anything more is beyond first hand experience except for a very small minority of individuals.
More importantly, even with my lowly liberal arts education, I can understand the manner in which scientific claims are evaluated and verified or falsified. Religious claims simply are not evaluated in the same way.
Which is just an overly simplified view. Many scientific claims are subject to much contrary data yet isn't falsified. Thomas Kuhn, Harvard trained physicist and historian of science points out that many of the most basic claims of science are this way.
And your implication that something is dubious just because it isn't verifiable or falsifiable is just beyond both.
Further, I have good reasons to believe that, if I chose to, I could personally verify or falsify scientific claims.
I have very good reason to believe that will never be true of much more than an extreme minority of scientific claims because I highly doubt you have the time or money to perform all of the experiments and get all the training for the majority of scientific claims. Perhaps if you were ubber rich and lived for a few centuries (I'm sure even this is naively optimistic), it'd be different, but even then, scientific progress will have gone on exponentially continuing to leave you behind on a pointless quest since it's just better to rely on the community.
Does this mean I have “faith” in the computer or computer science?
yes.
No. Because I know people who started with as little knowledge as I who now actually design and build computers. And I know I could have followed the same path.
Of course you know this. And you certainly don't know it by first hand experience. Computer design is a matter of history and history is not observable first hand by those who weren't there.
How exactly can I personally verify or falsify the claims of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?
We can certainly probe them for theological consistency. We can look at a cross section of writings from the era and look at how history was written and recorded at the time and see what we can expect of it in terms of a historical document (such studies have been done, such as the studies of bioii). We can look at correspondence to the religious experience today of believers. that is of course the terms at which we are looking at it.
Finally, you falsely equate the plausibility of resurrection and scientific claims.... The Resurrection does not comport with my – or anyone alive’s – experience.
An extreme minority of human beings have walked on the moon, most of whom are inaccessible to the first hand experience of the public and actually, most of the world. The ressurection was observed by more people than that. Of course, the moon walk was far more well documented. But it's not like we have good reason to think that that is the only way we should evaluate this (the believer has powerful existential reasons for believing in the resurrection). AFter all, that is true of most historical claims going back millenia when compared with the moon walk.
There is a single source of 2000 year-old data for this incredible claim
This is false, there are many sources (the bible counts as several given that it is a collection of documents from several authors). And there is more reason to believe that there is more eyewitness input in scripture. I haven't read it but Richard Bauckham builds this case in his book "Jesus and the Eye Witnesses". There is also a community that is the result of the resurrection and N.T. Wright has built a case that a resurrection explains why the early Christian community developed from second temple Judaism.
This is false, there are many sources (the bible counts as several given that it is a collection of documents from several authors).
We have several documents that come from one partisan group. That is not quite the same thing as multiple independent attestation. Further, the gospels have a clear literary interdependence to them. One might count Paul as a separate source, although Paul is quite clear that he never met Jesus (at least not while Jesus was alive).
And there is more reason to believe that there is more eyewitness input in scripture. I haven't read it but Richard Bauckham builds this case in his book "Jesus and the Eye Witnesses".
I would recommend that you read "Scripting Jesus: the Gospels in Rewrite" by L. Michael White.
There is also a community that is the result of the resurrection and N.T. Wright has built a case that a resurrection explains why the early Christian community developed from second temple Judaism.
I would say that the destruction of the Second Temple pretty much assured the success of these small Christian cults (plural) ,one of which was successful enough to eventually evolve into the Catholic Church.
Ana, You said, What does what Christians can or cannot agree on, resolve or don’t resolve, have ANYTHING to do, ANY BEARING at all, on the authorship of a gospel and its containment or lack thereof, of eyewitness details?
All you had to do Russ, was to ignore my question, or to respond with “I’m not going to answer your question” instead of going on a red-herring diatribe against the whole of Christianity.
You keep regurgitating your favorite apologetics here to give the impression that you've got some intellectual moxie, but you need to have this simple syllogism parsed explicitly? You're kidding, right? Are you so blinded by your religious delusion that you fail to see that the limitless questions raised by the gospels and the conflicts and contradictions among them, will never be resolved among Christians themselves, and that their disagreements amount to refutations of supposed eye witness accounts? If one Christian says that the Jesus of bible story fame turned water into wine and another says the whole water into wine business was a metaphor for something they really want to put into the mouth of their Jesus, then your imagined biblical eye witness accounts are not eye witness accounts at all. There are no eye witnesses to the mental contriving of metaphors. There exists no reason whatsoever to think that anything written in the bibles used throughout the Christianities contain any factual information at all. Bible fables and legends might use a few recognizable names, but it still contains no more truth than historical fiction. From the observably fictitious Genesis, through the whole of the morally reprehensible Old Testament, on to the absurd gospels, and all the way to the psychotic break from reality called Revelation, only a fool believes any of it to be true. Christians in general do not believe it to be true, but rather they believe in the truth of their own personal metaphorizations of verses they hold dear.
If it was true, we would see it.
It is not at all a red herring to point out the logical impossibility that multiple mutually contradicting interpretations of a string of words in the bible cannot all be true, but they can be, and almost certainly are, all wrong. If I want to know just how wrong the Christianities are, I can just ask the Hindus. You'll accept the truth of gods like Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva, right? They are gods and you must listen to them or you will suffer the consequences. But, you don't believe their Brahma bullshit anymore than I do, or should, believe yours. Your license to reject all the religions and gods and saviors your religious social group dismisses is the same license I use in rejecting yours.
Your religious stupidity has no special esteem over other religious stupidities.
We have several documents that come from one partisan group. That is not quite the same thing as multiple independent attestation.
By the same logic, all our sources partisan against the Nazi's in the common western tradition are suspect.
That they agree with each other in light of having a vested interest says nothing against their reliability.
I would say that the destruction of the Second Temple pretty much assured the success of these small Christian cults (plural)
Okay. i don't know what that has to do with the price of tea in china. it certainly isn't relevant to my comment about second temple Judaism. It certainly doesn't explain how early Christianity arose out of second temple Judaism.
That they agree with each other in light of having a vested interest says nothing against their reliability.
I was showing that they are not the multiple, independent attestations that internet apologists try to claim them to be. As far as their historical reliability is concerned, I welcome you to read up on higher-biblical criticism. Don't just read conservative Christian books.
It certainly doesn't explain how early Christianity arose out of second temple Judaism.
That is a fairly complex discussion that is a little ponderous for a combox. Let's just say that a supernatural resurrection is not the ONLY way that Christian belief could have arisen in first-century Palestine.
I was showing that they are not the multiple, independent attestations that internet apologists try to claim them to be.
There's more than one way in which sources can be independent. Insisting that they cannot all represent the same theological perspective almost seems like begging the question (and as a matter of fact, they are not the same theologically as they have different emphasis. But of course different theologies aren't necessarily incompatible).
After all, if they all disagreed, then you would claim that that was the evidence that what they were discussing was historically dubious.
Let's just say that a supernatural resurrection is not the ONLY way that Christian belief could have arisen in first-century Palestine.
Of course not. the question is still what is the best explanation, not the only one.
There's more than one way in which sources can be independent. Insisting that they cannot all represent the same theological perspective almost seems like begging the question (and as a matter of fact, they are not the same theologically as they have different emphasis. But of course different theologies aren't necessarily incompatible).
The gospels are not independent at all. They all show unmistakable signs of literary interdependence--including the fourth gospel.
the question is still what is the best explanation, not the only one.
The best explanation that seems the tidiest may not necessarily be the correct explanation of what happened 2,000 years ago. It is my stance that is impossible to know with any certainty. Even somewhat implausible naturalistic scenarios will seem more plausible to a rationalist who does not believe that miracles can happen. If one starts with the assumption that the bible is historically accurate to a high degree, then an actual resurrection would be the tidiest explanation to account for certain "facts." But if the gospels are non-historical narratives scripted to make a theological point, or as propaganda to generate belief, then I believe that alternative naturalistic scenarios become viable options.
You made a second post so as to address my question, and even then it's obscured in being surrounded by text that merely goes on to make the same point as your previous post: that Christians disagree amongst themselves.
“ the limitless questions raised by the gospels and the conflicts and contradictions among them, will never be resolved among Christians themselves, and that their disagreements amount to refutations of supposed eye witness accounts”
1)I am very glad that there exist differences in the gospels, because if there didn’t, then the objection that would be faced instead of present one, is that the four gospels are TOO much the same, therefore too suspicious. That, if these four gospels supposedly have four authors (and hence are the product of four different personalities and perspectives), why don’t they reflect this diversity! Ergo, the accusation would be something along the lines of collusion.
2) Ex: If Christians disagree amongst themselves, as to how to interpret Jesus’ words about the bread during the Last Supper (i.e. “This is my body”) that has absolutely NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on whether the account of the Last Supper was supplied by eyewitness testimony.
If I come home mumbling to myself “when will people learn that they can’t have their cake and eat it too?”, and observer B at my house decides to textually take note of what I said, then if a third party someday reads the text and interprets it to mean that people should not be given a slice of their own birthday cake, that has NO BEARING WHATSOVER on whether observer B eyewitnessed my speaking. SUBSEQUENT INTERPRETATIONS OF A TEXT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH WHO AUTHORED THE TEXT, AND/OR WHETHER THE TEXT IS THE PRODUCT OF EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY!
“You keep regurgitating your favorite apologetics here to give the impression that you've got some intellectual moxie, but you need to have this simple syllogism parsed explicitly?”
The sooner you realize that nothing of what you’ve said is original - that it has already been put out there incessantly by critics of Christianity - the better. Don’t fancy yourself with the thought that YOU’RE free from being charged with regurgitation.
The next time a Christian comes your way, before viewing him/her as another puppet of apologetics, accuse yourself of being a puppet for the headquarters of online atheism.
The gospels are not independent at all. They all show unmistakable signs of literary interdependence--including the fourth gospel.
There is some dependence and some independence. Obviously Mark is independent of the other two synoptics. The other two have there own unique material. And the other two show evidence of yet another source, Q. The scholarly consensus is that even if John knew of the other gospels, he didn't really use them as a source.
Paul is yet another source even though his biographical material is sparse. Nevertheless, he demonstrates that there is a rich tradition that he is building upon. James is yet another source. Not biographical, but connected with an orthodox early church movement.
The best explanation that seems the tidiest may not necessarily be the correct explanation of what happened 2,000 years ago.
Walter, virtually ALL knowledge entails risk. Yes, this is a very real possibility that the best explanation may be false. All knowledge entails risk, thus to have confidence that we can have knowledge at all is fittingly described as faith.
To demonstrate that one explanation is better than another is indeed to lower that risk.
Even somewhat implausible naturalistic scenarios will seem more plausible to a rationalist who does not believe that miracles can happen.
Yes, subjectivity cannot be eliminated. And I believe that there are subjective considerations that we ought to consider epistemically beneficial.
But if the gospels are non-historical narratives scripted to make a theological point, or as propaganda to generate belief, then I believe that alternative naturalistic scenarios become viable options.
I don't buy the dichotomy. I agree with something that I heard attributed to James Dunn. The gospels are all theology and all history, and if you attempt to peal back the layer of theology to get at the history, you get nothing. History here of course is not told according to enlightenment standards of "just the facts, ma'am."
The scholarly consensus is that even if John knew of the other gospels, he didn't really use them as a source.
a) I believe that it can be shown decisively that at least one of the authors (or editors rather) of the fourth gospel did indeed use one or more of the synoptics.
b) Not all scholars are convinced of the existence of the Q document.
c) Paul claims to have received his gospel via "revelation." IOW, he personally witnessed nothing.
d) I'm not sure that I buy into James being any kind of source for the Resurrection story.
The gospels are all theology and all history, and if you attempt to peal back the layer of theology to get at the history, you get nothing. History here of course is not told according to enlightenment standards of "just the facts, ma'am."
That seems like a fancy way of saying that early historians embellished when attempting to make a theological point. I agree. The gospels are non-historical dramatizations that probably contain some genuine sayings of a first-century itinerant rabbi who later became heavily mythologized due to a 'perfect storm' of events.
You believe it can be? Okay. Many Scholars believe otherwise.
b) Not all scholars are convinced of the existence of the Q document.
I'm not concerned whether Q is a document or not. It still evidences that Mathew and Luke have a common source in addition to Mark.
c) Paul claims to have received his gospel via "revelation." IOW, he personally witnessed nothing.
I see no reason to equate revelation (specically a vision of Jesus post resurrection) with nothing.
d) I'm not sure that I buy into James being any kind of source for the Resurrection story.
I take it back.
The gospels are non-historical dramatizations
Going from embellishment to non-historical is a leap. It may make sense to modernist who takes modern day historical standards for granted and thinks in terms of slippery slopes. But I don't.
a) "John" uses a literary technique known as intercalation where a story is sandwiched between two parts of another story. Case in point is: Peter's denial of Jesus. The vignette of Peter's denial is sandwiched at the same point in Jesus' trial as it is in Mark's gospel. No two authors would have independently used the same literary technique at the same spot unless some copying was going on. The gospels are not independent compositions.
Ana, SUBSEQUENT INTERPRETATIONS OF A TEXT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH WHO AUTHORED THE TEXT, AND/OR WHETHER THE TEXT IS THE PRODUCT OF EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY!
All capitals! It must be true, then.
Eye witness testimony doesn't mean shit, Ana. Truly independent eye witness accounts from reliable witnesses that tell a highly consistent tale increase our confidence that the witnesses had similar experiences, but as police reports, courtroom proceedings, psychological studies, Jesuses in stumps, Virgin Marys in smears on windows or mold on a wall or burned toast demonstrate unequivocably, eye witness accounts are not reliable.
There are numerous "awareness videos" on youtube and elsewhere on the net that demonstrate this perfectly.[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4 is an example] They underscore the fact that people miss all kinds of things when their attention is focused on something specific. So it goes with religious believers who live out their lives forced to and focused on loving an imaginary thing which they further imagine constitutes a very real threat to them and their loved ones.
The religious in bein emotionally forced to fear and prove their love for the smoking, flaming disembodied head, they miss the fact that its an illusion created and sustained by the man behind the curtain to satisfy his needs and wants, which often includes the desire to control them.
So desirous are you, Ana, of defending your superstition that you overlook your own malarkey-filled holy book. Luke states explicitly at the outset that the author of Luke was not an eye witness. Maybe for you that would be an ironic metaphor for his actually having been an eye witness. The author of the book of Luke was writing for Theophilus. Do you know if Theo - philus means a person or a god lover? No you don't. When the author says "just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word," do you know how many links were in the chain from an eyewitness to the author? No you do not. Since we know that eyewitness accounts themselves are not reliable, are you going to tell us that "Bob said that Tom said that William said that Harold said that Phil was an eyewitness, and Phil said..." gets us something more reliable? Well, that's where observably failed mindless faith gets you, isn't it?
You should simply admit that you don't know that any of it is true, that your faith is unwarranted and unjustified, but that you like the other Sunday-go-to-meeting social club members and they won't let you play with them unless you claim to believe the same stupid shit they tell you to believe.
It's not true, Ana. It's not believable, Ana. It's not helpful, Ana. It's not needed, Ana.
If it was true, we would see it. Truth is funny that way. If it was reliable, we would see that too. Reliable is, well, reliable. If it worked, the world would be a happier, healthier and more peaceful place since the god of your gospels says it answers prayers. But it doesn't. It does nothing.
No two authors would have independently used the same literary technique at the same spot unless some copying was going on.
Perhaps. I don't know that that what you describe is so unique that it couldn't have occurred via coincedence. Maybe it isn't coincedence at all. Perhaps this is the what Peter and the Beloved disciple both remember.
The gospels are not independent compositions.
If they aren't completely independent, it doesn't mean that there aren't independent aspects. I already mentioned this.
a) Q is purported to be a source of Jesus' sayings during his life--it is not an independent source of testimony concerning the resurrection.
I know what it is purported to be. nevertheless, there is a huge amount of material that Mathew and Luke have in common evidencing a common source, be that the faith community at large or a document.
No, Q as it is traditionally envisioned isn't about the Ressurection. Course, I don't know that if there is a Q document that it doesn't have a similar enough resurrection account that we don't associate it with Q since discussion of it is only on the evidence of the common ground between the other two gospels that also isn't in mark.
But I was conflating issues here and admittedly drifting from the specific topic. I think it is worthy of considering as a source of the Jesus tradition as a whole. If you've ever Read John Loftus, you might've heard of a cumulative case. It's not a strong contribution to specifically the ressurection, but as a contributor to the case of the Jesus tradition as a whole and indirectly, though in a very small way, towards the resurrection.
b) Paul never claimed to see Jesus in corporeal form, therefore Paul is useless as a witness to a physical resurrection.
Paul's experience contributes to the belief of Jesus resurrected. I wasn't thinking of the resurrection event itself. Of course, no one saw the resurrection itself, they saw Jesus.
Does it make a difference that Paul did not touch Jesus to know he was bodily present? Perhaps Jesus wasn't bodily present, yet the vision was confirmation that Jesus had risen from the dead and that Paul's persecution of those who believed was in error.
For a good naturalistic scenario of how belief could have started check out Kris D. Komarnitsky's book. Here is a summary:
I might consider it. I have enough to read though including from skeptics.
I read the millerite description and I can't say that I saw that the parallel was that strong.
Let me confess something to you Walter. While I feel as a whole, belief in the resurrection is very reasonable and more so in the broader context of Christian life, experience and theology (because there are many angles to look at this matter), I know very well that I have much more homework to do on the history.
that said, I feel free to critique some of the absurdities here posted along the lines that the resurrection can be debunked in one page, or because the gospels where written decades later, or because some of the authors and/or editors of the gospels weren't necessarily themselves eye witnesses. And with that and other posts here (I'm satisfied with some of what I read from David Marshall), I'd say we can safely say that no, you cannot debunk the ressurection in one page.
Now did Komarnitsky do it in his book? Perhaps. I can't really judge on the basis of that summery, though as I mentioned, I looked at one of his parallels and didn't find it to be that parallel to what we read in scripture (the post resurrection accounts came fast after the death of Jesus with many eye witnesses, not that comparable to one guy who decided he saw Jesus return to heaven to cleanse it instead of earth. And furthermore, the resurrection was reportedly anticipated in the statements of Jesus (and this may be one area where Q might be a stronger witness if it also contains such foreshadowing).
Now did Komarnitsky do it in his book? Perhaps. I can't really judge on the basis of that summery, though as I mentioned, I looked at one of his parallels and didn't find it to be that parallel to what we read in scripture (the post resurrection accounts came fast after the death of Jesus with many eye witnesses, not that comparable to one guy who decided he saw Jesus return to heaven to cleanse it instead of earth. And furthermore, the resurrection was reportedly anticipated in the statements of Jesus (and this may be one area where Q might be a stronger witness if it also contains such foreshadowing)
Mark Goodacre makes a pretty good case against the existence of Q:
When you claim that post-res. eyewitnesses came fast after Jesus' death, you are still assuming gospel reliability. Komarnistsky does not debunk the resurrection; he presents a believable scenario on how it could well have happened without a miraculous resurrection.
Ana, You said, And yet, they[eye witness testimonies] are still used. Because we realize, that though imperfect, we can't do without them.
I wonder if you apply your statement consistently in all aspects of your people-centered life. That is: "eye witness testimony doesn't mean shit".
Yes, I do apply my statements consistently in all aspects of my people-centered life. My life is people-centered. While many Christians are dumping their time, energy, and piles of money down the shithole of religion, I'm off doing work for people. That's the only way persons in need get help. They do not, I repeat n-o-t, get help from gods, no matter how Christians misattribute their own efforts to imaginary gods, angels, or saviors. In one minute I can do more work for real people needing something real in their lives than all the prayers that have ever been prayed have ever done for anyone.
Part of using eye witness testimony appropriately is being completely open to the possibility that your friends, family, acquaintances and strangers are detached from reality. A friend of mine just last night told me how a psychic helped her communicate with her mother who died recently. As she described it the psychic simply relayed back to her details that she had herself supplied. She's out of touch with reality. I asked her if the psychic supplied any details shared between her and her mother without her volunteering the information first. Wanting to believe it was true she simply changed the subject. The religious live their entire lives out in much the same way, wanting the psychic to be for real and being willing to avert their attention away from reality's harsh light so the farce can be maintained.
There is a big difference between making allowances for people's preferred ways of looking at the world and allowing them to abuse everyone based on that way of seeing things. Christians insist that their dumptruck full of bullshit is true and that their acceptance of the bullshit as true gives them the right to dictate to others how they should conduct themselves, what their goals and aspirations should be, and whether the real understanding of the world through science should be rejected so the Bullshit-As-Truth perspective can be maintained.
If it worked, Ana, we would see it. It doesn't work, so we don't see it.
You make valid points regarding the “faith” we have in science, but in the context of the resurrection they still strike me as a massive, unjustified equivocation.
One comment seems the most telling, and with it you unwittingly demonstrate a fundamental difference between science and religion, and between the rational and religious mind-sets:
When it is a failure, the scientifically minded student…knows that it is his first hand experience that is wrong, that something must be wrong somewhere because the text books couldn't possibly be wrong. And that kind of faith is indeed the rational approach to have.
The “faith” you describe may be “rational” for most science students, whose goal is a passing grade from a professor. But I suspect this kind of absolute faith in an approved text would make for an utterly lousy scientist.
On the other hand, this kind of absolute faith in an approved text makes great catechism students and Popes alike. Both student and Pope assume the Text "couldn’t possibly be wrong," and “experiments” are run simply to affirm the text, explain away apparent contradictions, to create endless defenses, theodicies and theologies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Your comments do not address my point about plausibility. Nothing about “men on the Moon” is inherently implausible. With regard to other historical claims: Nothing about the claim “a man named Julius ‘Caesar’ existed” is inherently implausible. The claim “a man came back from the dead,” on the other hand, is inherently implausible.
And I think you know it.
As to the evidence: Twelve (!) men claim to have walked on the Moon. Nine are still alive. These nine men constitute an infinitely greater set of first-hand data than that available for the resurrection (I’ve actually heard Armstrong speak, so I am closer to eyewitness testimony than were the authors of the Gospels). Even after they die, we will have second-hand data magnitudes of order greater than that for the resurrection. The Moon exists. The Moon rocks exist. The lander exists. The film exists. The NASA engineers exist. There is a massive amount of evidence for the Moon landing, of all stripes – physical, testimonial, historical, first and second-hand.
In short, to equate the plausibility of the resurrection or the evidence for it (whether in nature, quality or quantity) with that of the Moon landing, is flatly ridiculous.
And I think you know it.
Computers: I am typing on my Blackberry. It is working. I hand it to you. And you type, and it works. And you hand it to Fred, and he types, and it works. It works whether any of us has any understanding of the “truth” of how it works, or not. It simply is not “faith” equivalent to religious faith to accept the word of the Blackberry engineer as to how it works. (Please, I beg you, don’t tell me the Bible “works” in the same way my Blackberry does!)
And I think you know it.
And again, you miss my point, which was not personal verification of history, but replication. I can replicate my EECS friends’ experiences. I repeat my question to you: How can I replicate the experiences of the apostles?
I think you must agree, I can't.
I leave it to others with more knowledge of Bible studies than I to evaluate whether this book constitutes more than a single source of data for the resurrection.
When you claim that post-res. eyewitnesses came fast after Jesus' death, you are still assuming gospel reliability.
Well, there lies a problem. Things do get a bit ad hoq when you float away from the gospels.
If gospel reliability is an issue, it surely is just as much a matter of faith to suggest that they are completely unreliable.
Let's say that the gospel tradition of the early reports of the post death encounters of Jesus are the result of a delusion. To place all these encounters a few short days after the death of Jesus fictitiously and with the intensity presented if not true is going to be to big a lie even 40 years after the fact within living memory to sell even with the intensity with which it is presented.
Furthermore, Jesus predictions about his death and resurrection aren't just mere delusions but outright lies.
Even then, it's a likely story, but a bigger speculation than taking the gospels to be reliable and only preferable if one favors naturalism or skepticism (and is truly not neutral either way).
If gospel reliability is an issue, it surely is just as much a matter of faith to suggest that they are completely unreliable.
What really happened 2000 years ago is shrouded in the fog of history. I cannot say for certain that the "gist" of the gospel story never happened. I can say that there is ample evidence against them being completely accurate due to there being significant contradictions in several areas. I believe there is sufficient reason to doubt all of the miraculous claims.
Let's say that the gospel tradition of the early reports of the post death encounters of Jesus are the result of a delusion. To place all these encounters a few short days after the death of Jesus fictitiously and with the intensity presented if not true is going to be to big a lie even 40 years after the fact within living memory to sell even with the intensity with which it is presented.
You have to remember that the gospel narratives were most likely penned after the destruction of the Temple. Even Church tradition already has Peter, Paul, and James executed by this time. The gospels were also originally written in Greek, which means that there intended audience was probably Gentiles living outside of Palestine. I don't think the argument that the apostles would have corrected these narratives really holds much water.
Furthermore, Jesus predictions about his death and resurrection aren't just mere delusions but outright lies.
I prefer to call it pious fiction. It is not the same as lying with malicious intent.
I can say that there is ample evidence against them being completely accurate due to there being significant contradictions in several areas. I believe there is sufficient reason to doubt all of the miraculous claims.
Contradictions in what? If they weren't always concerned to tell exactly what happened, if they weren't written according to modern standards of history, it's not clear that the differences in reporting some events is important.
I don't think the argument that the apostles would have corrected these narratives really holds much water.
Jesus had over a hundred disciples and many more who witnessed his ministry and according to Paul, his several hundred who saw the resurrected Christ. The gospels were well written within living memory. And the idea that the church did not preserve the writings and memories of its revered leaders who played so prominantly in the recorded stories is desperate. That their disciples couldn't be trusted in a highly oral culture where the stories would have been repeated over and over again is dubious.
Of course, the gospels written for the world were written in Greek and for the Jews who were likely to speak greek (as matthew is particularly aimed at the Jews).
Not baseless. Even Catholic Bible scholar Raymond E. Brown was quoted as saying that Christians should prepare themselves for the fact that large amounts of the New Testament gospel stories are historical dramatizations because the authors simply did not know what happened.
Whether you accept Brown's findings or not, my arguments are not baseless.
Contradictions in what? If they weren't always concerned to tell exactly what happened, if they weren't written according to modern standards of history, it's not clear that the differences in reporting some events is important.
Perhaps they were just sloppy in reporting details? Maybe the evangelists were just as sloppy about misreporting some of Jesus's words leading us to err in some of our theological beliefs?
It all comes down to religious faith in the end--you either have it or you don't.
I always have a little chuckle when it is mentioned that "Matthew" is aimed at Jews - it clearly is *aimed* at them, but with staggering ineptitude. Matthew's use of prophecy and his misunderstandings of the Septuagint and Hebrew idioms are frankly embarrassing, and his little inventions to sex up his story (such as the star of Bethlehem, and even the whole "virgin" thing) are deeply unimpressive.
Rob makes the point that for the gospellers to place fictitious accounts so close to the death of Jesus is a dangerous ploy - I totally disagree. If you look at all the accounts of the resurrected Jesus, they have an other-worldly flavour to them that is quite different to the real live Jesus in the gospels. He's already a ghost. All these stories, where they haven't been invented fully, are ghostie stories, based on reports of "visions", not a real resurrected Nazarene. Even that fraud Saul Paulus admits as much - it's all "appearances". These are visions, not actual resurrections.
Furthermore, as I mentioned previously, at the time Saul was writing 1 Corinthians, many *Christians* (perhaps even the majority!) did NOT accept the resurrection really happened, and Saul was trying to browbeat them into submission. Ultimately successfully.
But people nowadays like to imagine C1CE Christianity and C1CE Judaism as the same as their current counterparts; that is an error. C1CE Judaism was a mad hotch-potch of crazy sects, and the Christians fitted right in. Indeed, even within the "Christian" camp, there were many factions & denominations.
Walter, In support of your position, I offer this from the Catholic Encyclopedia concerning the invention of the gospels, In all the departments forgery and interpolation as well as ignorance had wrought mischief on a grand scale.
Celsus the Roman philosopher wrote about gospel revision and repair work in the second century, saying, in part, Some of them, as it were in a drunken state producing self-induced visions, remodel their Gospel from its first written form, and reform it so that they may be able to refute the objections brought against it.
If it was true they would not need to revise. If it was true they wouldn't need to continually alter it and its interpretation.
Matthew's use of prophecy and his misunderstandings of the Septuagint and Hebrew idioms are frankly embarrassing What’s an example of this?
and his little inventions to sex up his story (such as the star of Bethlehem, and even the whole "virgin" thing) are deeply unimpressive. How do you know they didn’t really happen?
All these stories, where they haven't been invented fully, are ghostie stories, based on reports of "visions", not a real resurrected Nazarene. First, how can you prove that they are invented? Second, how does a ghost eat fish?
Even that fraud Saul Paulus admits as much - it's all "appearances". These are visions, not actual resurrections. Thomas put his hands in the wounds in the company of others. How is that a “vision”
Furthermore, as I mentioned previously, at the time Saul was writing 1 Corinthians, many *Christians* (perhaps even the majority!) did NOT accept the resurrection really happened, and Saul was trying to browbeat them into submission. Ultimately successfully. How does this disprove the resurrection?
Indeed, even within the "Christian" camp, there were many factions & denominations. Like what?
"Celsus the Roman philosopher wrote about gospel revision and repair work in the second century, saying, in part,
Some of them, as it were in a drunken state producing self-induced visions, remodel their Gospel from its first written form, and reform it so that they may be able to refute the objections brought against it."
This quote is intriguing to me. I have been looking for that quote by Celsus since I saw your post. Most of what I can find attributed to him is in what Origen had to say in response to his attacks on christianity. Can you direct me to where I can find that quote by Celsus....it seems most of what he had to say has been lost (or burned by zealous apologists??)
Most of my doubts about christianity have been fuelled by my suspicions that apologits have been reworking scripture since they began preaching to suit the beliefs they already hold to be true and the skeptics have finally caught on to their antics.
91 comments:
It's a shame that Elvis didn't have a Paul to spread the good news of his resurrection. There was certainly more "evidence" in the form of "testimony" that proved his resurrection than there was for Jesus.
Good enough for some atheists, apparently. One wonders, then, why John's old teacher wins so many debates on this subject, even in the eyes of many neutral and even atheist observers. One would think the skeptic could just bring this "cheat sheet" along and win every time!
(1) Point one I'm inclined to concede, at least for the sake of the argument. In any case, the best evidence for the resurrection is certainly to be found in Christian documents.
(2) I think this one is flatly wrong, and confused besides. The claim in bold is not even logically supported by the rest of the paragraph. The Gospels can be written by eyewitnesses, and / or based on eyewitness accounts, without being written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There is a great deal of internal evidence that they were. It's a relatively trivial point to add that there is plenty of reason to ascribe Luke to Luke, John to John, and some for Mark. Matthew is, I admit, somewhat more mysterious.
(3) Three depends on (2), so fails.
(4) I trust Paul; I don't trust Joseph Smith or those he conned. Anyway, the cases are dissimilar: it's a whole lot harder to fool someone into believing they met their beloved teacher risen from the dead, than to fool the kind of people who would trust Joseph Smith into believing a book full of scribbles is "Reformed Egyptian." Combined with all the other evidence, the indirect and careful way Paul describes the eyewitnesses to the resurrection is pretty convincing -- most are still alive, but some have passed away.
(5) It is ridiculous to assume the early Christians did not know how their own leaders died. This one is implausible to an extreme. In any case, we have Paul's own desciption, and Luke's, too, how relentlessly the early Christians were hounded for their faith, Paul himself coming to the brink of death on numerous occasions. (II Cor. 11:23-33) Few if any scholars dispute either that Paul thought he saw Jesus, or that he put his neck on the line numerous times for his claim.
The analogy of Joseph Smith only deepens the problem. Joseph Smith was hated not for his golden tablets, but for hogging the women and conning people out of money. Lots of people die in pursuit of sex and cash. Smith didn't die willingly, either, -- he died in a shootout, with a gun in hand, after a lynch mob broke into the jail where he was being held on charges of destroying a hostile press.
If that's the best skeptics can come up with -- I've seen this line several times -- it underlines the Christian argument in bold red ink.
(6) Here Hallquist simply misstates the Christian argument. It's not that no one ever hallucinates. It's that large groups of people don't usually hallucinate the same thing, and that thing being the return from the dead of their leader, who had lunch with them. Hallquist or Loftus are free to cite counter examples.
(7) Sure, be careful with the testimony of hysterical children. That's the moral of the story of the Salem witch trials, and of the "child abuse" cases in Wenatchee, Washington a few years ago.
(8) "That's it!" Is it? Oh, yes, there's a book, too. Let me encourage atheists who plan to debate Christians on the resurrection to copy out this "cheat sheet" and make liberal use of it!
That pretty much sums up my own thoughts about the resurrection. Even if it did happen the so-called evidence is simply too meager for me to believe it. In fact, the gospels claim that the disciples themselves did not believe until they received empirical evidence of Jesus' resurrection. I ask for no less before I can believe. Anecdotal miracle tales bolstered by Church traditions of apostolic martyrdom are simply not that convincing.
I have yet to be convinced that there was *a* Jesus, a single living man who was born in a specific place and did specific, verifiable things during his life. The gospels don't give us any personal attributes for Jesus at all - compare them to other biographical writing in the ancient world. I understand that physical details were not considered important, but it's very odd that none managed to slip through. We don't even have ".. and Jesus partook of the goat cheese of Hebron, which was his favorite.." Or "..and Jesus twisted his ankle climbing the hill.."
Joseph Smith and Ron Hubbard made up new religions, why couldn't some Israelite do the same, and distribute the prototypes of the gospels to the gullible?
To me, the resurrection story looks like a straightforward borrowing from other religions to make the new cult more competitive.
Interesting list, though I think my lack of belief in the resurrection stems from something akin to, "A timeless, spaceless, disembodied mind of unfathomable power" (to use Craig's formulation) chose to do something in a single time and single space inaccessible to the billions before and after who would supposedly benefit eternally from the ability to interact first hand with the incarnation of this vacuum-bodies god?
What gives?
If I'm not expected to trust countless other comparably worthless things today without first hand evidence... why this particular formulation of a deity, based on error-riddled scripture that constantly butts up against "issues" that require the mystery card to be played to be given a higher buy-in?
God already knows exactly what would lead me to belief. I'm waiting.
P.S. The "free will" card doesn't fly in response to that last point. Everyone has "belief threshold" x and as far as I can tell they are completely unaware of where x lies on the scale from "requires literally no evidence" up to "needs to know everything in the known universe." If your x is met, it's met and you believe. If not, you don't and that's that. We leave that alone in every other area of life -- if you're not convinced, you'll be provided with more evidence or left alone with your read of the situation.
Only in religion is it stated that god has a mysterious respect of "free will" and won't "force" evidence upon you. I just don't get that. If a believer has had their x met and god wills everything... he's willed your belief. There's no way around that.
If he can will yours... he can will mine.
David B Marshall; in regards to your point 2, the Luke author admits to being a non-eyewitness in the first verses of the book.
the page is riddles with factual inaccuracies, but that really isnt a surprise. but since atheists generally speaking do not follow up on things this is what you get.
Articles like this make for very interesting reading, but it bothers me that so many of the theists think the burden of proof is on us to prove that there isn't a God, or that there wasn't a resurrection, or that there is no teakettle orbiting the sun. That's not how it works guys =)
~Rhaco
I wouldn't concede point one. N.T. Wright's contribution is pointing out how a resurrection makes sense of how one goes from a second temple Judaism to early Christianity which involves loads of non-biblical considerations.
Hendy,
If I'm not expected to trust countless other comparably worthless things today without first hand evidence... why this particular formulation of a deity,
Any worthwhile education in science will require to accept tons and tons of data without first hand experience. The vast majority of people will never go to the moon, see the data produced in a particle accellerator let alone understand what to do with that data, witness dissections of multitudes of animals and/or organ systems, etc. A liberal arts education, even a scientific one only gives you a handful of general experiments and even if you went on. you can only specialize and the rest of the scientific data is beyond your first hand experience for mere lack of time, funds, opportunity, etc.
According to the NT legend the apostle Thomas demanded physical proof of JC's resurrection. His request was granted. We can assume that Thomas had already spoken directly with eyewitnesses to the empty tomb and others who had seen the resurrected Jesus. Apparently those testimonies were not convincing to him. Given a deity that will respond to demands for proof I think it is reasonable to request the same physical evidence be provided.
clamflats, the moral of the story of Thomas seems to allude you. The problem was that he was an irrational skeptic. He saw the kinds of things that Jesus did, he heard the testimony of people he trusted, insisting on physical evidence was not wise after that.
Scripture is not flatly against skepticism. Nathaniel at the beginning of the book of John was looked upon positively for his skepticism of Jesus. The bereans didn't accept Christ until they saw that the gospel was consistant with the old testament.
But this naive skepticism, that we have to see things for ourselves isn't just incompatible with faith. it's incompatible with even scientific knowledge. See what I said above to Hendy.
seriously? these points have been dealt with. see habermas and n.t. wright.
DBM - "One wonders, then, why John's old teacher wins so many debates on this subject, even in the eyes of many neutral and even atheist observers."
Define "wins" :)
I have listened to enough WLC debates to make my ears bleed, and I can see how, based on presentation and polish, he is often the "winner', but on convincing evidence, I have yet to hear him win one debate.
Rob,
You're on the verge of fitting Twain's definition of insanity.
For the last time. Your religious epistemology is subject to the same inter-subjective reliability tests as all other claims of external knowledge, and it doesn't pass that test. Even you recognize that Christian dogma can not be deduced a priori. Yet, you keep trying to claim that the usual rules for knowledge justification don't apply to your religious beliefs, but at every turn, you use the same type of knowledge arguments that everyone else uses for their own knowledge claims. Enough with the special pleading, ok?
Instead of the constant arguing in circles, you really should just go with the real knowledge argument that all of your silliness really boils down to: I know, that I know, that I know. All of your (and Plantinga's) arguments ultimately boil down this statement, and no amount of dressing them up in sophistry changes that.
RobR - "The problem was that he was an irrational skeptic."
Wrong. I don't care how many of my trusted friends approached me claiming that they personally witnessed the resurrected body of my dead friend, it would be perfectly reasonable for me to be skeptical of their claims of him coming back to life.
Aargh! I'm clicking on the link at 10:37am Thursday, and it's a dead link! Is anyone else having this problem? Pleeease help, I really want to read this!
the moral of the story of Thomas seems to allude you. The problem was that he was an irrational skeptic. He saw the kinds of things that Jesus did, he heard the testimony of people he trusted, insisting on physical evidence was not wise after that.
Thomas was not the only doubter in the gospel tales, and I see nothing irrational about needing an exceptional amount of evidence to warrant belief in an implausible claim. Further, I do not consider the gospel tales to be literal histories to begin with; they are theological propaganda written to serve the faith communities of the anonymous authors who penned them.
@Hendy wrote:
Re "God already knows exactly what would lead me to belief. I'm waiting."
Hi, Hendy. Yes, very well put. I hope you realize (or know) believing may not come from outside sources that would count as empirical evidence, but rather that the faith necessary to believe will come from within (in the form of a changed heart). As Jesus put it: "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
As such, every unbeliever is half-way there. Keep waiting.
Ryan: Yes, of course. But Hallquist said, "or based on eyewitness testimony." Luke clearly did base both his books on eyewitness testimony, to which he obviously had access.
Rob: True.
Bob: Personally I'm not overly enchanted by Craig's style. It's good, but his debates are mostly held on college campuses, with plenty of sharp people in attendance, and it's unwarranted to assume they are just bewitched by the sonorous tones of Craig's voice.
But based on my own study (Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus), I think the evidence for the Gospels is much stronger than can be presented in a single debate, or a single piece of paper, actually. If I were asked to do that, I wouldn't know where to begin.
Ryan: Yes, of course. But Hallquist said, "or based on eyewitness testimony." Luke clearly did base both his books on eyewitness testimony, to which he obviously had access.
Even if "Luke" claims that he interviewed people who told him that they were eyewitnesses, how would you verify that information at this stage of the game? The people "Luke" got his info from could have been deluded or lying.
If Matthew was an eyewitness, then why does he have the post-resurrection appearances in Galilee, while Luke has them happening in Jerusalem? Could the eyewitnesses not remember which part of Palestine they were in when Jesus 2.0 came by for a visit?
I think the one-pager reads rather amateurish. He makes assertions with the assumption that his assertion will be accepted by the adage (scholars agree). They do not. No Christian will accept this and will dismiss it as tripe. While I think Jesus is a mythological figure, never a real individual, and some core of Christianity has its roots in a Roman Pagan belief, this document adds nothing to the debate and cannot be used to debate Christians.
One argument I haven't seen used against the idea that J rose from the dead is the absurdity of the ascension. How is it that physically floating up into the sky makes any sense? Yes, it made sense to the believers most likely to hallucinate a body rising up into heaven, if heaven is located in the clouds somewhere. But then we want to know: How high up did he go? The ionosphere? Lower? Higher? Did his molecules disassemble at a certain point? It only makes sense if heaven is "up there" and the original concept of immortality is used in which the actual physical body is returned to its original state, otherwise the ascension makes no sense.
David B Marshall's counter arguments are weak and inaccurate:
1. If the "best evidence is *certainly* to be found in the Christian documents," then what is your definition of evidence? Evidence is something that can be verified by some means (measured or minimally experienced directly, in a repeatable way). Your statement would be more accurate and considerably more truthful, if you said: There are ample references in our own literature to confirm our believers sincerely felt the resurrection really happened.
2. If anything, it's your initial assertion that isn't supported by your subsequent statements. You think it's "flatly wrong" that there's "little evidence" the Gospels weren't written by the people attributed as their authors? Is that your claim? You definitely do not know much about Biblical scholarship to say there's "a great deal of internal evidence that they were..." what? The original authors? No, they were not! At best, there is a source generally called Q that probably circulated for a long time before the gospels were codified in their current form. You say there's "plenty of reason" to ascribe Luke to Luke...so, present it because there's plenty of reason, historical research, and scholarship that says you're wrong, pure and simple.
3. Hence, this point is logical and makes perfect sense to anyone who isn't already a believer.
4. Paul is no less of an ideologue than Joseph Smith was. He apparently had a conversion experience of some kind that makes everything he says completely suspect and unreliable to anyone but the confirmed believer. The fact that you "trust Paul" says it all: You're already a believer. If this were a court case and we were in a jury, Paul's statements would be hearsay testimony. It wouldn't stand up to scrutiny and that's what these points are about.
5. The argument isn't that the early Christians didn't know why they were dying but that they were deluded and dying for a delusion doesn't make it any more real.
6. You think "large groups of people don't usually hallucinate the same thing," but in fact, this is what large groups of people are especially good at and there have been many studies to show this is the case, both in secular and religious contexts. You could not be more wrong on this one point than anything else you've said. Group think and shared realities are why the scientific method was developed: So when people make claims like Jesus rose from the dead, there's a way to take it out of the realm of projection and put under the microscope of scrutiny.
7. I don't find this point very strong. It feels more like a rehash of the earlier ones (people say things, children make up stories, we all know this) but I think my idea I stated in the beginning that Jesus ascending/floating up into the sky when there's no logical reason for this other than to confirm the group think of "heaven is thata-way," is a stronger point to make, especially to anyone seriously considering the credibility of a story like the resurrection. So, I'd personally revise this point 7 to ask why the ascension story makes any sense whatsoever.
8. I think it's obvious that this point is more a formatting error than a actual point.
Rowan:
(1) Most historical evidence is found in documents and is NOT "repeatable." History is not chemistry.
2. I meant there is a great deal of evidence that the Gospels were based on eyewitness acounts. That sentence was, admittedly, ambiguous. Actually, I know quite a bit about biblical scholarship, and have read quite a few skeptical attempts to explain the NT evidence, or explain it away. Read Ben Witherington on Luke.
3. "Hence, this point is logical and makes perfect sense to anyone who isn't already a believer."
Of course it's logical: what it isn't is factual. At least three, probably all, the gospels were clearly based on eyewitness testimony.
4. The question isn't whether Paul and Joseph Smith are both "ideologues," which is empty pejorative, but whether both are equally trustworthy. Obviously they were not.
5. I'm not sure what your point is here.
6. Parallel examples?
7. I didn't make any claim about the ascension, so I'll pass on this one.
Re: David B Marshall...
1. Documents are not the evidence! There may be references in documents to something that can be confirmed but I think the original point is still valid: Many years, decades, after the events we are told stories and asked to believe them as if they're first-hand accounts. They simply are not and thus they are not credible.
2. The best research confirms what Chris wrote.
3. Scribes changed, added and deleted >thousands of words< over the many hundreds of years of its early formation. How do you account for the fact that not a single extant document is the same? Each scribe has made his own changes & mistakes and earlier texts have even greater variations than later ones. That is objective and verifiable evidence for this point being a valid point, contrary to your faith in its veracity.
4. I think it's "obvious" both men are ideologues for their causes. Calling Smith a conman, as you did, isn't any less pejorative than me saying Paul has a vested interest in his position. (1st Timothy & 2nd Peter likely weren't even written by him, so how do you "trust Paul" when you don't know who actually wrote under his name?)
5. Too many other points are too important to worry about this.
6. Well, studies have been done to test the effectiveness of eye witness testimony where someone commits a (staged) crime then people are asked to verify what the criminal (actor) did, looked like, & said. Turns out, mere minutes after the event if someone said they thought the person was a black, wearing a red shirt with a gun, other people's memories would get recreated to confirm that, even though it wasn't true. That's a secular example. A religious example would be Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, where tens of thousands of people regularly see things are simply aren't there. That's why the Christian texts are Not Reliable.
7. I meant, I didn't find Chris' point very strong, hence my revision to use the ascension as another example of the so-called eye witnesses being unreliable.
Bottom line for me is this: The Christian texts are not reliable. No resurrection occurred. A whole lotta other stuff didn't happen and by not believing any of it I have the gift no god can bestow: A clear and peaceful mind.
repost for clarity,
Steven, I don't know what Plantinga has to do with this discussion.
As for alleging that "I know what I know what I know" I did not choose to offer much in the way of rebuttal but rather refutation. In rebuttal, you offer reasons for a position that was argued against. In refutation, what is offered is a response against those original arguments. In other words, it might be true that Jesus didn't rise from the dead and yet the arguments offered here are still bad! (not that I answered every single point... others have done fine there given what is reasonable to expect in short blog comments).
Rob R,
You're floating more philosophical turds.
You said,
He saw the kinds of things that Jesus did
You do not know what any biblical character did or did not see or say or otherwise witness. All you get from bibles is hearsay. That is not evidence of anything. Bibles tell stories having no qualitative differences from the fiction qua fiction today or the manifest contemporaneous other mythologies the bible's fables were taken from.
Then, you continued with
he heard the testimony of people he trusted,
You want us to think that the bible character Thomas - a complete fiction for all we know - should have trusted testimonies from the people he trusted, yet you would tell all of us here that a child of Muslim parents should not trust their parent's testimonies even though his trust of them is implicit. You would tell us that testimonies from Muslims or Hindus inherently cannot be true and therefore they are not to be trusted. You'll want special pleading concerning who bible Thomas should trust since it is comes from the set of myths, legends and fairy tales respected by your social group.
To trust someone is not to credulously elevate them to infallible. One must be quite familiar with another for trust to be established, but establishing trust in no way inoculates one against being mistaken. I know many people in whom I place my trust, but when the people I trust are wrong I let them know it. In certain topics I can trust that some of my trusted friends will nearly always be wrong. Trust is never a reason to make matters worse by allowing an error of consequence to go unchallenged.
Let's see, now, do lay Christians or their clergy ever violate other's trust in them? Hmmm. It seems they do. Rather frequently, actually. Bible Jesus' disciples would have been no more trustworthy in thought, word or deed than the Vatican Pedophile Brigade. They would have been no more likely to be "correct" in their assessments of fantasy, fiction, and superstition than would the followers of L. Ron Hubbard. Thomas would have been wise to accept the testimonies of those he trusted only to the extent that you would tell us children of Hindu parents should trust them concerning religious notions.
You said,
Scripture is not flatly against skepticism.
Nobody gives a shit, Rob R. You know full well that Christians today do not read bibles or much of anything else. They don't read bibles, study bibles, and they sure as hell don't know what is in their bibles. As I pointed out to you in a different thread as many as 12 percent of adult self-identified Christians think that Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. The bible is functionally meaningless to Christians, and theology is even meaningless-er.
Then, you heaved this scat in the pool,
But this naive skepticism, that we have to see things for ourselves isn't just incompatible with faith. it's incompatible with even scientific knowledge.
Accepting scientific knowledge based on what others say is a no-brainer. Why? It frickin' works, that's why. You fully agree with me that all religions are wrong, with you making special pleading for only one sub-sub-sub-Christianity. You acknowledge that Islam is wrong, Hindu is wrong, Buddhism is wrong, just like me. But, if Mommy R had beaten Shiva into you rather than having beaten Jesus into you, you'd be a sub-sub-sub-Hindu.
Rob R,
Here you show yourself to be untrustworthy again, Rob R. There is a significant difference between the inane religious faith you cling to for reasons of tradition, mommy with a belt, revelation and authority, and the confidence one can have in the vast body of reliable scientific understanding mankind has accrued since prying itself free of Christianity's chokehold on thought and progress. No one needs your stupid religion, Rob R, but humanity would number only a fraction of what it does if not for science. Here, again, you purposely conflate, you lie, you deceive, as you have been doing for years, religion's stupid "faith" with science's "confidence." You equate your religion's pathology called "faith" with science's remedy called "confidence."
You want your religious self-indentification to mean something and you repeat lie after lie to denigrate science which is more uniformly embraced by Christians than is any specific point of theology. From food to medicine Christians in the developed world turn to science every minute of every day. Poll after poll and study after study show Christians use their religion as a social outlet and they use it to blot out guilt hammered into them in childhood; but, what they observably don't do is rely on it. Christians know they can rely on science, and they know their religion and their god do nothing at all.
So, stop floating the turds, already, Rob R.
"meaningless-er"
(chortle)
Eloquent.
Weren't the gospels written 40-70 years or more after the supposed events? So no one who wrote about them actually witnessed anything.
Interesting little document. The issue here, I suppose, is whether the evidence supports either of two main hypotheses:
1. That the bible is the Word of God and reliably relates God's Great Plan to save fallen humanity by way of an actual resurrection from the dead of an actual human who was really god and that the contradictions and mistakes and misattributions are consistent with that, or:
2. This is a human story that has beenultiply embellished, is liberally cut through with propaganda, superstition, credulity, lies and guff, written years after the events they supposedly relate.
1 is easily rejected as just silly. 2 is very obviously correct. Indeed, the gospels themselves contain ample evidence that the resurrection never happened; instead, a later belief was formulated, and each author clumsily tried to make their story fit.
In many ways, however, it is very simple. If the resurrection happened, the bible is a shockingly poor record, and therefore is not the word of any god worth looking at. If it *didn't* happen, the bible is also not the word of a god. Either way, Belief-based Christianity falls, and the bible itself is the agent of it's doom, and poor wee Jesus is left without a witness, which is pitiful.
Weren't the gospels written 40-70 years or more after the supposed events? So no one who wrote about them actually witnessed anything.
John, even if the average age of death back then was much younger than it is today (though I'm not sure how deflated that would be counting the deaths of infance), people did indeed live that long back then. So the gospels were written within living memory.
For all who might've read Russ's response, I'm willing to respond to some similar points when they are of some quality if they are of quality. I just don't respond to Russ. I don't have time for hysterical tirades loaded with ad hominem, red herrings and so on. I don't even read them, I occasionally skim them to see if he's still up to his old ways.
John, even if the average age of death back then was much younger than it is today (though I'm not sure how deflated that would be counting the deaths of infance), people did indeed live that long back then. So the gospels were written within living memory
Plenty of time for legendary distortion as well. In fact, one can actually see the evidence for legendary progression/expansion when one reads the gospels in a chronological order starting with Mark and ending with John.
@David B. Marshall
Craig wins debates in large part because his opponents don't know how to counter his sleazy debating tactics. In his debate with Richard Carrier, Carrier gave a first-rate opening statement, which Craig proceeded to mostly ignore in favor of personal attacks on Carrier. Carrier never called him out on it, and instead fell into the trap of trying to answer all of Craig's sleazy attacks, for fear that Craig would get up and whine that Carrier hadn't answered all of his [mostly irrelevant] points.
As for your criticisms:
(2) There are plenty of Biblical scholars, even believing Christians, who aren't convinced by your "great deal of internal evidence" for the authorship claims. I'd ask you what this evidence is, but first, ask yourself "if the hypothetical cultist (from 3) with the anonymous tracts claimed analogous evidence as proof that his tracts were really eyewitness accounts, would I buy it?"
(4) First, why should I trust the kind of people who would trust the likes of Jesus or Paul?
Second, why are you convinced that the statements that appear in front of the Book of the Mormon aren't "careful"? I suggest actually reading the main one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Witnesses
(5) Depends on how "early" is early. It may be that when a Christian leader died, Christians at that time knew how it happened. But why be sure the story would have been accurately preserved a century later, given the clear evidence that legends grew up around the disciples very quickly?
Re: the Joseph Smith analogy, how do we know the disciples died willingly?
(6) I didn't attribute to Christians the claim that "no one ever hallucinates." People like Habermas, though, will make claims like "Paul couldn't possibly have hallucinated, even if no one else saw what he say." It's these claims I was targeting in (6).
(7) Sadly, there is little evidence that adults are always more trustworthy than children.
Plenty of time for legendary distortion as well. In fact, one can actually see the evidence for legendary progression/expansion when one reads the gospels in a chronological order starting with Mark and ending with John.
You could conclude that. But it isn't necessary. Mark is a very short gospel and Jesus' ministry for three years and what little is covered before then is surely ripe for expansion.
Course, what you would call a distortion and what I or the ancient mind would call a distortion isn't the same. I don't think the Gospels are an attempt to merely record just the facts and the events exactly as they happened. They are told in such a way as to emphasize theological points and to convey the kind of life Jesus had. Surely, if Jesus did not perform miracles, the gospels would be flatly wrong. But they are clear that he performed miracles.
The question is whether what is told is consistent with what the life that they witnessed.
I'd also like to point out that the writings of paul which although not biographical contain many details about Jesus life including his teachings are not within decades of Jesus' life but within years. And what Paul says has continuity with the gospels.
Surely, if Jesus did not perform miracles, the gospels would be flatly wrong. But they are clear that he performed miracle
Yes, they clearly claim that. Why should I believe this claim based on literature that is clearly meant to be propaganda? IOW, why should I consider the gospels to be historically accurate to any degree?
I'd also like to point out that the writings of paul which although not biographical contain many details about Jesus life including his teachings are not within decades of Jesus' life but within years. And what Paul says has continuity with the gospels.
That's funny. I believe that Paul pretty much usurped the religion of Jesus and supplanted Jesus' teachings with his own theology. Matthew seems to take digs at Paul in the Sermon on the Mount.
The claim that Saul Paulus's writings are in continuity with the gospels is a joke. What the gospels very very clearly show is an evolution of christology from a relatively simple notion in Mark to the crazy excesses of John. And Saul Paulus continues the trend.
The fact is that there is not one single first hand account of anyone having witnessed the "risen" Christ, and the early stories are all of the character of visions and imaginings. What the *bible* clearly demonstrates is that the belief came first, it grew up in the years following the death of Jesus the Nazarene, and by the time the gospels were being written, there were wee stories being made up about it.
This happens all the time. All that needs to be explained here is *stories*, and stories are easy. Theistic Christians (as opposed to Atheistic Christians) confuse the *stories* (which claim a non-specific "resurrection", even though they contradict each other) with the *evidence*, which is that the stories were largely invented, probably to explain the loss of Jesus's corpse.
Incidentally, I have often wondered whether Saul Paulus's surname implied a relationship to Sergius Paulus, governor of Crete. As a Roman Citizen by birth, Saul would not have needed to *change* his name to Paul, but it is very strange that in Acts, he only starts to get called "Paul" (his patronym) after he visits Sergius...
John, scope for a couple of articles about The Impostle Paul?
I honestly don't think this has a snowball's chance in their imaginary Hell of convincing a believer. I, of course agree, but I recognize that I am inclined to agree just as they are inclined to disagree.
The biggest problem that I see is that number 1 SHOULD be the only one necessary. But it isn't. For believers the fact that the Bible says something is so is sufficient to make it so.
This is why we always end up having to discuss this on their terms, pointing out inconsistencies, pointing to implausibilities and contradictions and impossibilities in the text itself.
It is maddening that Theists of all stripes do not apply the same standards of proof to other historical works that they apply to their own precious scrolls. Clearly they don't believe that the events described in the Iliad or the Odyssey or the Tale of Gilgamesh or other tattered scraps of ancient manuscripts are literally true. They fail to see that these were STORIES and that they have placed Ultimate Cosmic Importance on the ancient equivalent of a Swords and Sorcery Epic.
If the pattern holds I can only imagine that 2000 years from now, theists will be arguing over the tattered remnants of a copy of the Lord of the Rings and aruging over where all of the Hobbits and Elves went, why there is no physical or archaeological evidence for their existence and the salvific power of Frodo's sacrifice. For whosoever shall believeth in Frodo shall have life everlasting. They of course will be debating those who believeth in Harry Potter.
And our descendants will still be pointing this out. Unfortunately for us, the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are MUCH more internally consistent than the Bible, which will make our job even harder.
...sigh...
Russ,
"All you get from bibles is hearsay. That is not evidence of anything." (emphasis mine)
ALL? How do you know this Russ? Please do tell.
Also, according to who or what, is hearsay "not evidence of anything"?
You said to Rob R, in reference to his comment about doubting Thomas:
"You do not know what any biblical character did or did not see or say or otherwise witness."
(emphasis mine).
Apply that statement onto yourself Russ, and then explain to Rob how you know that no biblical character composed any gospel.
Rob R,
You responded to me,
clamflats, the moral of the story of Thomas seems to allude you. The problem was that he was an irrational skeptic.
I'm not interested in the moral to the story. I had plenty Xtian instruction in my youth and understand what message is supposed to be. My point was that even in the NT legends there are examples of the deity responding to requests for physical evidence from someone who presumably had direct access to the very eyewitnesses that are now the only evidence proffered.
You call Thomas irrational, JC didn't. He just implied that Thomas wasn't as blessed as those "who don't see and still believe", that is, those with blind faith.
Rob R. said:
Any worthwhile education in science will require to accept tons and tons of data without first hand experience. The vast majority of people will never go to the moon, see the data produced in a particle accelerator let alone understand what to do with that data, witness dissections of multitudes of animals and/or organ systems, etc.
Please stop suggesting that religious faith is equivalent to “faith” in science. Please.
One with even the most basic science education actually will indeed have been exposed to “tons and tons” of first-hand data. I have a liberal arts education. I have dissected earthworms, frogs and fetal pigs. I’ve seen the Moon lander and the rocks at the Smithsonian. Actually, it’s simpler than that: Go outside and look up, there’s the Moon. Where’s Jesus?
Please point me to where I can get any “first-hand experience” of the resurrection?
More importantly, even with my lowly liberal arts education, I can understand the manner in which scientific claims are evaluated and verified or falsified. Religious claims simply are not evaluated in the same way.
Further, I have good reasons to believe that, if I chose to, I could personally verify or falsify scientific claims. I am typing this on a computer. I know how it works in the most general terms, but I have no real understanding of how this gizmo works. Does this mean I have “faith” in the computer or computer science? No. Because I know people who started with as little knowledge as I who now actually design and build computers. And I know I could have followed the same path.
How exactly can I personally verify or falsify the claims of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?
Finally, you falsely equate the plausibility of resurrection and scientific claims. I may never walk on the moon, but nothing about the claim “men have walked on the moon” is inconsistent with my experience. The moon is far, but given the mini-rockets I’ve launched and the plane flights I’ve taken, there’s no reason to think it’s impossibly far. The Smithsonian rocks may be fake, but the claim “the Moon is made of rocks” is not inherently incredible.
The Resurrection does not comport with my – or anyone alive’s – experience. The claim that “a man rose from the dead” is inherently incredible. There is a single source of 2000 year-old data for this incredible claim (and not even eyewitness, i.e. first-hand, data at that). Because Jesus ascended, the claim cannot be verified or falsified.
Convenient, that.
Religious faith and "faith" in science are not equivalent.
@ Ana,
Actually, pretty much every legal system in history has either not allowed hearsay evidence at all or has only allowed it under very narrow circumstances because it is inherently unreliable and prone to abuse.
"I saw X do Y." and "A told me that he saw X do Y."
The first is admissible testimony. The second is hearsay.
The first is subject to cross examination and further inquiry to establish its conformity with the evidence and the other testimony at trial. The second is useless. It is not subject to any cross examination and further inquiry because the ONLY thing that can be elucidated is whether A said what A said. It sheds no light whatsoever on whether what A said was true or false. This is why we do not allow hearsay in legal proceedings.
While I am discussing this solely in the legal context, hearsay is just as unreliable in other contexts.
'I saw your husband cheating on you' is a very different statement than 'X said that he saw your husband cheating on you.' In the first, you could ask the person if they were sure it was your husband, where they were, what time it was, who it was, what the circumstances were. In the second, all you can ask is 'Really?' Useless.
In the context of the resurrection, you have hearsay within hearsay within hearsay. None of the other links in the chain can do more than verify whether X said that Y happened, or that A said that X said that Y happened, or that B said that A said that X said that Y happened. This all occurred before any of this was ever even written down, leaving not only the contemporaries without any ability to confirm or clarify the original story, but the original scribes as well. It may be good evidence that A said that B said that C said that D said that X said that Y happened, but it is NOT evidence in any way shape or form that Y actually happened.
@Jeffrey A. Myers
Very nice explanation of hearsay.
I generally agree, but I question whether the statements in the Bible constitute literally no evidence of the truth of the matters asserted, i.e., the resurrection.
First, as you note, in the legal context, hearsay statements are admissible if they are subject to certain exceptions. I wonder if anyone has every really fly-specked the Bible to determine whether exceptions apply (excited utterance and statement against interest seem the most likely)?
More seriously, in the historical context, does hearsay really not count for anything? I don’t believe, but my inclination would be to accept the Bible as evidence. Extremely weak evidence, given the nature of its claims, but evidence nonetheless.
Any actual historians out there who can weigh in?
@ Clamat,
I've thought about that actually. I think excited utterance is the most likely candidate for getting around the initial hearsay problem. 'Holy Shit! That guy rose from the dead!' Would almost certainly get the 'Excited Utterance' exception, at least on the Bar Exam.
The bigger problem for admissibility purposes would be the Hearsay within Hearsay problem. What exception applies to the repeaters of the eyewitness testimony? What about their repeaters. EU doesn't apply. I don't really see a Statement Against Interest or any of the Non-Hearsay exceptions.
That said, because I'm nice, I would probably allow it and let the jury decide on the weight. And yeah... weak, weak, weak evidence.
About as good as the evidence for Ulysees' amazing exploits in the ancient Aegean.
@Jeffrey A. Myers
Hah! If I had been drinking I would’ve done a spit-take. I think the “Holy Shit!” question should be standard on all Bar exams from now on.
Yeah, at first blush, I don’t see how it gets around the “multiple layers” problem, either. Though I still think statement against interest might have some traction. Maybe an argument in the “the disciples risked their lives by proclaiming their faith” vein?
A project for a summer associate.
Rob: On the age thing, check the bios of the scientists Carrier mentions in Christian Delusion, final chapter. Indeed they commonly lived into their 70s, sometimes 80s. The disciples would have been young when they were following Jesus around the countryside. Aside from which, an account can be based on eyewitness testimony given well before the account was written.
I'll have to answer these other guys later. It's been a long day.
@ Clamat,
Always look for the '!'. :)
That's true. It's also possible it might qualify under the 'It is against your interest to appear delusional.'
I would have loved that job as a Summer Associate.
Suppose for the sake of argument that the story of the empty tomb is fiction. Put yourself in the shoes of Mark and the others, and imagine that you are trying to invent the story of the empty tomb.
The first thing that you have to ensure is that the body is actually buried. You can deal with this by having a member of the Sanhedrin (Joseph of Arimathea) ask Pilate for the body. Then Pilate has to agree to this. Next you have to ensure that the body is buried in a tomb rather than a common grave. You can do this by making Joseph a secret follower of Jesus who gives him an honourable burial in his own private tomb.
Next you have to make sure that the tomb is discovered. If you are Mark you can do this by having the women visit the tomb a couple of days later to anoint the body. Ah, but wouldn't the body already have been anointed? You can deal with that by making sure that Jesus dies just before the Sabbath starts so there isn't enough time to anoint the body.
If you're Matthew you have other ideas. You've put a guard on the tomb to stifle any accusations about theft of the body, so you just have the women visiting the tomb. In that case you don't want the women just visiting the tomb and going home without realising a miracle has occurred. Therefore you need to roll the stone away so they know that something has happened. If you're John this creates a bit of a headache because you've made the body magically disappear while leaving the shroud behind. In other words God can make the body disappear but in order to get into the tomb He has to move the stone out of the way. Still, can't be helped.
If this was a script for a film it wouldn't really work. You might say it's too contrived. But of course it isn't a script, is it? This all really happened, didn't it? Unfortunately, if it really did happen, the same problem remains. Instead of the gospel writers struggling to make the story work, we have God struggling to make the story work. God has tried to tell us a story by manipulating events to create that story. God had to make sure Pilate handed over the body. God had to make sure Jesus was buried in tomb. God had to make sure the women visited the tomb etc. In other words, all the people involved in the whole business were like characters in a script that God was manipulating to arrive at the right outcome. So it seems that God is actually a second rate novelist trying to tell us stories but not quite pulling it off.
Thanks Jeff for your input about this.
I’m definitely no legal expert, so I would like to know: as to the exceptions in legal-settings in which hearsay is acceptable – is there a criteria of sorts that establishes when these exceptions are permitted, or is the exception determined on case-by-case basis?
It seems to me (and correct me if I’m wrong) that at the heart of your reply to me, lies an emphasis
on the importance of being able to cross-examine or inquire to a first-hand witness. If so, I would agree this is very important.
Inquiring into the persons making first-hand claims about the life of Jesus and his resurrection–none of us here in 2010 can do such cross examining.
HOWEVER, prior to a final-draft gospel being written, the author would have been within a context in which they could accessibly inquire to (i.e. “cross-examine”) the disciples, the family of Jesus, and individuals who were among Jesus’ more general audience. And then of course there’s Paul, who was personally aquainted with the disciples Gal 1:18-19, as also evident in the Acts. He was likewise in a position to obtain details from the apostles.
My curiosity is this: does a gospel being mere hearsay vs a gospel being eyewitness testimony, make a difference to most of the atheists on this thread? Or would they say an eyewitness based gospel is not evidence still?
I would like to know if this argument about hearsay is based on us not being able to cross- examine the witnesses (e.g. the disciples), or a sense that the immediate witnesses to Jesus were not cross-examined by gospel writers? Or both?
Russ: for you and others who resent when apologists make claims to knowledge about the gospels, you do realize don't you, that you likewise make claims to knowledge when you the say the gospels are only hearsay and are not based on eyewitness testimony.
Why do you say such as opposed to saying " I'm agnostic as to whether the gospels are mere hearsay or contain eyewitness testimony" ?
Ana,
You said,
Apply that statement onto yourself Russ, and then explain to Rob how you know that no biblical character composed any gospel.
Well, OK then. I, cute and cuddly Russ, do not know what any biblical character did or did not see or say or otherwise witness, and neither do you.
Ana,
You asked,
Why do you say such as opposed to saying " I'm agnostic as to whether the gospels are mere hearsay or contain eyewitness testimony" ?
You're kidding, right? Are you so blinded by your religious delusion that you fail to see that the limitless questions raised by the gospels and the conflicts and contradictions among them, will never be resolved among Christians themselves? Christians do not agree that there is a god or that someone going by the moniker Jesus was also his own father and his own son and the creator of the universe and the be all and end all of all that matters and whose death was required to save mankind from an imaginary original sin. Christians do not agree among themselves on anything. The content of what passes as Christian thought increasingly divides, diverges and multiplies. That is not truth and it sure as hell is not reliable. Most of mankind rejects the Christianities with good reason: it observably doesn't work.
You do not speak for the whole of Christianity, Ana. Hell, if I wanted to I could start a church; call it "Christian;" and, let the good times roll from the collection plate to my bank account. But, I'm not immoral enough to go that route. I love people too much to lie to them and take their money when they are better off keeping it rather than handing it over to some skanky Christian clergyman.
What's more, the bible as written, Testaments Old and New have inspired far too much inhumanity for any of it to be true. Bibles do not house knowledge. They hold the musings of a people lacking the intellectual tools to distinguish what they wish to be true from what is true. Bibles authorize the impeding of the search for knowledge and the inhibiting of truth. We've seen this down the ages and we see it in all its glory yet today. By the lights of Christians themselves, bible contents are contradictory. Christians hate those who disagree with them, including the majority of other Christians. Of course, they trot out euphemistic language to disguise their hatred for others, but as Christian behavior in the third world testifies, if it were not for the developed world's secular controls keeping the Christianities from each other's throats, their would be blood in the streets.
Russ,
I had asked: "Why do you say such as opposed to saying " I'm agnostic as to whether the gospels are mere hearsay or contain eyewitness testimony" ?"
No I wasn't kidding.
And as to your response to me -
What does what Christians can or cannot agree on, resolve or don’t resolve, have ANYTHING to do, ANY BEARING at all, on the authorship of a gospel and its containment or lack thereof, of eyewitness details?
All you had to do Russ, was to ignore my question, or to respond with “I’m not going to answer your question” instead of going on a red-herring diatribe against the whole of Christianity.
Seems to me if we're looking for actual evidence to confirm something as significant as the quest for victory over death, there really isn't any at all. There are documents that describe other people's accounts and that's pretty much all that exists. So you either trust these people's testimony or you don't.
What would be tangible evidence of the resurrection? Either:
1. Jesus is still physically here, alive, well & walking among us for the past 2,000 years. If he really rose from the dead into some kind of immortal body, there's no reason for him to float up into the sky and disappear. Or,
2. By believing in Jesus, being a follower, or some variation on that theme, you would simply also come back to life after three days, say your good-byes, and then ascend, thus confirming that yes, believing in Jesus does have an upside.
Of course we know neither is true and the best the apologists can provide is a moving target of reinterpretations, strained exegesis, and faith that some other goodness must in store for the faithful.
You'd like the resurrection story to be true. I'd like it to be true, also. But you know and we all know, deep down inside, we really don't know what happens when we die. We can't know and if the best we've got for skeptics is, "Oh man, you're looking for the Risen Son of God? He was here a minute ago, you just missed him! But trust us, he was here. Right guys? Oh yeah, he definitely here, no doubt about it," that just is not now, nor will it ever be, good enough.
No one including Jesus has ever come back from the dead. It takes a brave soul to face that Truth and be at peace with it.
@ Ana,
Yes to both.
Even if the authors of the gospels claimed actual eyewitness testimony, it is still a rather fantastical claim that would necessitate rather extraordinary evidence. The fact that is it compounded by hearsay only necessitates the need for greater corroboration.
And even those who claim firsthand personal knowledge of an event are not necessarily reliable. Pesonal knowledge is simply a necessary precondition for reliable testimony, not necessarily proof that what they say is true. When an attention seeking crackpot claims to have personally witnessed or experienced an alien abduction, alien visitation, alien anal probing or Bigfoot sighting, we do not simply accept what he has to say. We do not take it on faith. We demand evidence. We are even more skeptical of those who say "My cousin Herb told me that he was probed by little green men." The fantastical nature of the claim is merely compounded by the hearsay nature of the testimony.
A good example of ancient hearsay would be to ask whether you believe that Achilles was immortal (except for that heel thing). There is reasonable historicity for numerous portions of the Iliad. It seems clear that Troy was a real place, that there was a war, that subtrefuge was involved and a number of the characters appear to have been actual historical people. Achilles, Menaleus, etc. The same can be said for the historicity of Arthur, King of the Britons.
Sure, there is some historical basis to these stories, but the divine intervention in all of them, the pixies, angels, demons, gods, ladies of the lake, are simply rhetorical spice to take what would otherwise be a dry historical recitation and give it pathos and a moral foundation.
If we want to accept the more fantastical claims made in ALL of these historical epics (and yes, the Bible is nothing if not a historical epic) we need more than alleged internal consistency and alleged eyewitness testimony.
post 1 of 3
Clemflats,
I'm not interested in the moral to the story.
If the moral of the story isn't consistant with the conclusion you drew about the way God should always act, then your conclusion is problematic for that reason amongst any others.
there are examples of the deity responding to requests for physical evidence from someone who presumably had direct access to the very eyewitnesses that are now the only evidence proffered.
Which doesn't indicate that we should always expect this. We don't have the same relationship with God that the first disciples had. It actually wouldn't be consistent with scripture for us to have that. The disciples saw what they saw so that they would bear witness to the world. The saw what they saw so that God would then work through them building the community of the church through which he would also work. God works through the church and this is necessary for full salvation. It is not only our relationship with God that has been marred. it is also our relationship with each other, and God by working not only directly with individuals but through them is reparring both at the same time. Trust is part of the solution, and if we refuse to act and work within a trusting relationship not just with God but with each other, then we are not fully engaging in God's salvific plan.
You call Thomas irrational, JC didn't.
that's right. I drew the conclusion based on the narrative. He was indeed irrational, not just to mistrust what his long time companions had told him, but an event that is consistent (as far as the narrative is concerned) with what he had already seen from a man who demonstrated power over nature, sickness and death itself. To be a perpetual skeptic in light of that is just nuts.
Please stop suggesting that religious faith is equivalent to “faith” in science. Please.
It isn't equivalent. But common ground is undeniable.
One with even the most basic science education actually will indeed have been exposed to “tons and tons” of first-hand data.
Which is still relatively miniscule in terms of all that science claims and all that we believe about science. I've had more lab experience than you and I'll tell you that when the labs get more in depth, more calculated, you often only see that your results, if not a complete failure which is only a minority of the time is still not directly what was calculated. Then you gotta calculate percent error and speculate as to why your results were off. And that is all done in good faith that the original formulas were correct to begin with. When it is a failure, the scientifically minded student (and even most of the dimwitted ones) knows that it is his first hand experience that is wrong, that something must be wrong somewhere because the text books couldn't possibly be wrong. And that kind of faith is indeed the rational approach to have.
post 2 of 3
I’ve seen the Moon lander and the rocks at the Smithsonian.
which could have been assembled there and the rocks from some quarry. Stupid idea I know. We know better that we should trust that it is real. But the trust is still trust and that shouldn't be taken for granted.
Please point me to where I can get any “first-hand experience” of the resurrection?
You refered to the moon above which we can look up and observe that it's a flat disc that moves around the earth. Anything more is beyond first hand experience except for a very small minority of individuals.
More importantly, even with my lowly liberal arts education, I can understand the manner in which scientific claims are evaluated and verified or falsified. Religious claims simply are not evaluated in the same way.
Which is just an overly simplified view. Many scientific claims are subject to much contrary data yet isn't falsified. Thomas Kuhn, Harvard trained physicist and historian of science points out that many of the most basic claims of science are this way.
And your implication that something is dubious just because it isn't verifiable or falsifiable is just beyond both.
Further, I have good reasons to believe that, if I chose to, I could personally verify or falsify scientific claims.
I have very good reason to believe that will never be true of much more than an extreme minority of scientific claims because I highly doubt you have the time or money to perform all of the experiments and get all the training for the majority of scientific claims. Perhaps if you were ubber rich and lived for a few centuries (I'm sure even this is naively optimistic), it'd be different, but even then, scientific progress will have gone on exponentially continuing to leave you behind on a pointless quest since it's just better to rely on the community.
Does this mean I have “faith” in the computer or computer science?
yes.
No. Because I know people who started with as little knowledge as I who now actually design and build computers. And I know I could have followed the same path.
Of course you know this. And you certainly don't know it by first hand experience. Computer design is a matter of history and history is not observable first hand by those who weren't there.
post 3 of 3
How exactly can I personally verify or falsify the claims of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?
We can certainly probe them for theological consistency. We can look at a cross section of writings from the era and look at how history was written and recorded at the time and see what we can expect of it in terms of a historical document (such studies have been done, such as the studies of bioii). We can look at correspondence to the religious experience today of believers. that is of course the terms at which we are looking at it.
Finally, you falsely equate the plausibility of resurrection and scientific claims.... The Resurrection does not comport with my – or anyone alive’s – experience.
An extreme minority of human beings have walked on the moon, most of whom are inaccessible to the first hand experience of the public and actually, most of the world. The ressurection was observed by more people than that. Of course, the moon walk was far more well documented. But it's not like we have good reason to think that that is the only way we should evaluate this (the believer has powerful existential reasons for believing in the resurrection). AFter all, that is true of most historical claims going back millenia when compared with the moon walk.
There is a single source of 2000 year-old data for this incredible claim
This is false, there are many sources (the bible counts as several given that it is a collection of documents from several authors). And there is more reason to believe that there is more eyewitness input in scripture. I haven't read it but Richard Bauckham builds this case in his book "Jesus and the Eye Witnesses". There is also a community that is the result of the resurrection and N.T. Wright has built a case that a resurrection explains why the early Christian community developed from second temple Judaism.
This is false, there are many sources (the bible counts as several given that it is a collection of documents from several authors).
We have several documents that come from one partisan group. That is not quite the same thing as multiple independent attestation. Further, the gospels have a clear literary interdependence to them. One might count Paul as a separate source, although Paul is quite clear that he never met Jesus (at least not while Jesus was alive).
And there is more reason to believe that there is more eyewitness input in scripture. I haven't read it but Richard Bauckham builds this case in his book "Jesus and the Eye Witnesses".
I would recommend that you read "Scripting Jesus: the Gospels in Rewrite" by L. Michael White.
There is also a community that is the result of the resurrection and N.T. Wright has built a case that a resurrection explains why the early Christian community developed from second temple Judaism.
I would say that the destruction of the Second Temple pretty much assured the success of these small Christian cults (plural) ,one of which was successful enough to eventually evolve into the Catholic Church.
Ana,
You said,
What does what Christians can or cannot agree on, resolve or don’t resolve, have ANYTHING to do, ANY BEARING at all, on the authorship of a gospel and its containment or lack thereof, of eyewitness details?
All you had to do Russ, was to ignore my question, or to respond with “I’m not going to answer your question” instead of going on a red-herring diatribe against the whole of Christianity.
You keep regurgitating your favorite apologetics here to give the impression that you've got some intellectual moxie, but you need to have this simple syllogism parsed explicitly? You're kidding, right? Are you so blinded by your religious delusion that you fail to see that the limitless questions raised by the gospels and the conflicts and contradictions among them, will never be resolved among Christians themselves, and that their disagreements amount to refutations of supposed eye witness accounts? If one Christian says that the Jesus of bible story fame turned water into wine and another says the whole water into wine business was a metaphor for something they really want to put into the mouth of their Jesus, then your imagined biblical eye witness accounts are not eye witness accounts at all. There are no eye witnesses to the mental contriving of metaphors. There exists no reason whatsoever to think that anything written in the bibles used throughout the Christianities contain any factual information at all. Bible fables and legends might use a few recognizable names, but it still contains no more truth than historical fiction. From the observably fictitious Genesis, through the whole of the morally reprehensible Old Testament, on to the absurd gospels, and all the way to the psychotic break from reality called Revelation, only a fool believes any of it to be true. Christians in general do not believe it to be true, but rather they believe in the truth of their own personal metaphorizations of verses they hold dear.
If it was true, we would see it.
It is not at all a red herring to point out the logical impossibility that multiple mutually contradicting interpretations of a string of words in the bible cannot all be true, but they can be, and almost certainly are, all wrong. If I want to know just how wrong the Christianities are, I can just ask the Hindus. You'll accept the truth of gods like Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva, right? They are gods and you must listen to them or you will suffer the consequences. But, you don't believe their Brahma bullshit anymore than I do, or should, believe yours. Your license to reject all the religions and gods and saviors your religious social group dismisses is the same license I use in rejecting yours.
Your religious stupidity has no special esteem over other religious stupidities.
Again, if it was true, we would see it.
Russ, your responses are as gentlemanly and civil as they are thoughtful and intelligent.
Walter,
We have several documents that come from one partisan group. That is not quite the same thing as multiple independent attestation.
By the same logic, all our sources partisan against the Nazi's in the common western tradition are suspect.
That they agree with each other in light of having a vested interest says nothing against their reliability.
I would say that the destruction of the Second Temple pretty much assured the success of these small Christian cults (plural)
Okay. i don't know what that has to do with the price of tea in china. it certainly isn't relevant to my comment about second temple Judaism. It certainly doesn't explain how early Christianity arose out of second temple Judaism.
That they agree with each other in light of having a vested interest says nothing against their reliability.
I was showing that they are not the multiple, independent attestations that internet apologists try to claim them to be. As far as their historical reliability is concerned, I welcome you to read up on higher-biblical criticism. Don't just read conservative Christian books.
It certainly doesn't explain how early Christianity arose out of second temple Judaism.
That is a fairly complex discussion that is a little ponderous for a combox. Let's just say that a supernatural resurrection is not the ONLY way that Christian belief could have arisen in first-century Palestine.
I was showing that they are not the multiple, independent attestations that internet apologists try to claim them to be.
There's more than one way in which sources can be independent. Insisting that they cannot all represent the same theological perspective almost seems like begging the question (and as a matter of fact, they are not the same theologically as they have different emphasis. But of course different theologies aren't necessarily incompatible).
After all, if they all disagreed, then you would claim that that was the evidence that what they were discussing was historically dubious.
Let's just say that a supernatural resurrection is not the ONLY way that Christian belief could have arisen in first-century Palestine.
Of course not. the question is still what is the best explanation, not the only one.
There's more than one way in which sources can be independent. Insisting that they cannot all represent the same theological perspective almost seems like begging the question (and as a matter of fact, they are not the same theologically as they have different emphasis. But of course different theologies aren't necessarily incompatible).
The gospels are not independent at all. They all show unmistakable signs of literary interdependence--including the fourth gospel.
the question is still what is the best explanation, not the only one.
The best explanation that seems the tidiest may not necessarily be the correct explanation of what happened 2,000 years ago. It is my stance that is impossible to know with any certainty. Even somewhat implausible naturalistic scenarios will seem more plausible to a rationalist who does not believe that miracles can happen. If one starts with the assumption that the bible is historically accurate to a high degree, then an actual resurrection would be the tidiest explanation to account for certain "facts." But if the gospels are non-historical narratives scripted to make a theological point, or as propaganda to generate belief, then I believe that alternative naturalistic scenarios become viable options.
Russ,
You made a second post so as to address my question, and even then it's obscured in being surrounded by text that merely goes on to make the same point as your previous post: that Christians disagree amongst themselves.
“ the limitless questions raised by the gospels and the conflicts and contradictions among them, will never be resolved among Christians themselves, and that their disagreements amount to refutations of supposed eye witness accounts”
1)I am very glad that there exist differences in the gospels, because if there didn’t, then the objection that would be faced instead of present one, is that the four gospels are TOO much the same, therefore too suspicious. That, if these four gospels supposedly have four authors (and hence are the product of four different personalities and perspectives), why don’t they reflect this diversity! Ergo, the accusation would be something along the lines of collusion.
2) Ex: If Christians disagree amongst themselves, as to how to interpret Jesus’ words about the bread during the Last Supper (i.e. “This is my body”) that has absolutely NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on whether the account of the Last Supper was supplied by eyewitness testimony.
If I come home mumbling to myself “when will people learn that they can’t have their cake and eat it too?”, and observer B at my house decides to textually take note of what I said, then if a third party someday reads the text and interprets it to mean that people should not be given a slice of their own birthday cake, that has NO BEARING WHATSOVER on whether observer B eyewitnessed my speaking. SUBSEQUENT INTERPRETATIONS OF A TEXT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH WHO AUTHORED THE TEXT, AND/OR WHETHER THE TEXT IS THE PRODUCT OF EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY!
“You keep regurgitating your favorite apologetics here to give the impression that you've got some intellectual moxie, but you need to have this simple syllogism parsed explicitly?”
The sooner you realize that nothing of what you’ve said is original - that it has already been put out there incessantly by critics of Christianity - the better. Don’t fancy yourself with the thought that YOU’RE free from being charged with regurgitation.
The next time a Christian comes your way, before viewing him/her as another puppet of apologetics, accuse yourself of being a puppet for the headquarters of online atheism.
The gospels are not independent at all. They all show unmistakable signs of literary interdependence--including the fourth gospel.
There is some dependence and some independence. Obviously Mark is independent of the other two synoptics. The other two have there own unique material. And the other two show evidence of yet another source, Q. The scholarly consensus is that even if John knew of the other gospels, he didn't really use them as a source.
Paul is yet another source even though his biographical material is sparse. Nevertheless, he demonstrates that there is a rich tradition that he is building upon. James is yet another source. Not biographical, but connected with an orthodox early church movement.
The best explanation that seems the tidiest may not necessarily be the correct explanation of what happened 2,000 years ago.
Walter, virtually ALL knowledge entails risk. Yes, this is a very real possibility that the best explanation may be false. All knowledge entails risk, thus to have confidence that we can have knowledge at all is fittingly described as faith.
To demonstrate that one explanation is better than another is indeed to lower that risk.
Even somewhat implausible naturalistic scenarios will seem more plausible to a rationalist who does not believe that miracles can happen.
Yes, subjectivity cannot be eliminated. And I believe that there are subjective considerations that we ought to consider epistemically beneficial.
But if the gospels are non-historical narratives scripted to make a theological point, or as propaganda to generate belief, then I believe that alternative naturalistic scenarios become viable options.
I don't buy the dichotomy. I agree with something that I heard attributed to James Dunn. The gospels are all theology and all history, and if you attempt to peal back the layer of theology to get at the history, you get nothing. History here of course is not told according to enlightenment standards of "just the facts, ma'am."
The scholarly consensus is that even if John knew of the other gospels, he didn't really use them as a source.
a) I believe that it can be shown decisively that at least one of the authors (or editors rather) of the fourth gospel did indeed use one or more of the synoptics.
b) Not all scholars are convinced of the existence of the Q document.
c) Paul claims to have received his gospel via "revelation." IOW, he personally witnessed nothing.
d) I'm not sure that I buy into James being any kind of source for the Resurrection story.
The gospels are all theology and all history, and if you attempt to peal back the layer of theology to get at the history, you get nothing. History here of course is not told according to enlightenment standards of "just the facts, ma'am."
That seems like a fancy way of saying that early historians embellished when attempting to make a theological point. I agree. The gospels are non-historical dramatizations that probably contain some genuine sayings of a first-century itinerant rabbi who later became heavily mythologized due to a 'perfect storm' of events.
a) I believe that it can be shown decisively
You believe it can be? Okay. Many Scholars believe otherwise.
b) Not all scholars are convinced of the existence of the Q document.
I'm not concerned whether Q is a document or not. It still evidences that Mathew and Luke have a common source in addition to Mark.
c) Paul claims to have received his gospel via "revelation." IOW, he personally witnessed nothing.
I see no reason to equate revelation (specically a vision of Jesus post resurrection) with nothing.
d) I'm not sure that I buy into James being any kind of source for the Resurrection story.
I take it back.
The gospels are non-historical dramatizations
Going from embellishment to non-historical is a leap. It may make sense to modernist who takes modern day historical standards for granted and thinks in terms of slippery slopes. But I don't.
@Rob
a) "John" uses a literary technique known as intercalation where a story is sandwiched between two parts of another story. Case in point is: Peter's denial of Jesus. The vignette of Peter's denial is sandwiched at the same point in Jesus' trial as it is in Mark's gospel. No two authors would have independently used the same literary technique at the same spot unless some copying was going on. The gospels are not independent compositions.
More to come...
I'm not concerned whether Q is a document or not. It still evidences that Mathew and Luke have a common source in addition to Mark
a) Q is purported to be a source of Jesus' sayings during his life--it is not an independent source of testimony concerning the resurrection.
b) Paul never claimed to see Jesus in corporeal form, therefore Paul is useless as a witness to a physical resurrection.
For a good naturalistic scenario of how belief could have started check out Kris D. Komarnitsky's book. Here is a summary:
Doubting Jesus' Resurrection
Ana,
SUBSEQUENT INTERPRETATIONS OF A TEXT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH WHO AUTHORED THE TEXT, AND/OR WHETHER THE TEXT IS THE PRODUCT OF EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY!
All capitals! It must be true, then.
Eye witness testimony doesn't mean shit, Ana. Truly independent eye witness accounts from reliable witnesses that tell a highly consistent tale increase our confidence that the witnesses had similar experiences, but as police reports, courtroom proceedings, psychological studies, Jesuses in stumps, Virgin Marys in smears on windows or mold on a wall or burned toast demonstrate unequivocably, eye witness accounts are not reliable.
There are numerous "awareness videos" on youtube and elsewhere on the net that demonstrate this perfectly.[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4 is an example] They underscore the fact that people miss all kinds of things when their attention is focused on something specific. So it goes with religious believers who live out their lives forced to and focused on loving an imaginary thing which they further imagine constitutes a very real threat to them and their loved ones.
The religious in bein emotionally forced to fear and prove their love for the smoking, flaming disembodied head, they miss the fact that its an illusion created and sustained by the man behind the curtain to satisfy his needs and wants, which often includes the desire to control them.
So desirous are you, Ana, of defending your superstition that you overlook your own malarkey-filled holy book. Luke states explicitly at the outset that the author of Luke was not an eye witness. Maybe for you that would be an ironic metaphor for his actually having been an eye witness. The author of the book of Luke was writing for Theophilus. Do you know if Theo - philus means a person or a god lover? No you don't. When the author says "just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word," do you know how many links were in the chain from an eyewitness to the author? No you do not. Since we know that eyewitness accounts themselves are not reliable, are you going to tell us that "Bob said that Tom said that William said that Harold said that Phil was an eyewitness, and Phil said..." gets us something more reliable? Well, that's where observably failed mindless faith gets you, isn't it?
You should simply admit that you don't know that any of it is true, that your faith is unwarranted and unjustified, but that you like the other Sunday-go-to-meeting social club members and they won't let you play with them unless you claim to believe the same stupid shit they tell you to believe.
It's not true, Ana. It's not believable, Ana. It's not helpful, Ana. It's not needed, Ana.
If it was true, we would see it. Truth is funny that way. If it was reliable, we would see that too. Reliable is, well, reliable. If it worked, the world would be a happier, healthier and more peaceful place since the god of your gospels says it answers prayers. But it doesn't. It does nothing.
If it worked, we'd see it.
"Eye witness testimony doesn't mean shit, Ana...eye witness accounts are not reliable."
And yet, they are still used. Because we realize, that though imperfect, we can't do without them.
I wonder if you apply your statement consistently in all aspects of your people-centered life. That is: "eye witness testimony doesn't mean shit".
No two authors would have independently used the same literary technique at the same spot unless some copying was going on.
Perhaps. I don't know that that what you describe is so unique that it couldn't have occurred via coincedence. Maybe it isn't coincedence at all. Perhaps this is the what Peter and the Beloved disciple both remember.
The gospels are not independent compositions.
If they aren't completely independent, it doesn't mean that there aren't independent aspects. I already mentioned this.
a) Q is purported to be a source of Jesus' sayings during his life--it is not an independent source of testimony concerning the resurrection.
I know what it is purported to be. nevertheless, there is a huge amount of material that Mathew and Luke have in common evidencing a common source, be that the faith community at large or a document.
No, Q as it is traditionally envisioned isn't about the Ressurection. Course, I don't know that if there is a Q document that it doesn't have a similar enough resurrection account that we don't associate it with Q since discussion of it is only on the evidence of the common ground between the other two gospels that also isn't in mark.
But I was conflating issues here and admittedly drifting from the specific topic. I think it is worthy of considering as a source of the Jesus tradition as a whole. If you've ever Read John Loftus, you might've heard of a cumulative case. It's not a strong contribution to specifically the ressurection, but as a contributor to the case of the Jesus tradition as a whole and indirectly, though in a very small way, towards the resurrection.
b) Paul never claimed to see Jesus in corporeal form, therefore Paul is useless as a witness to a physical resurrection.
Paul's experience contributes to the belief of Jesus resurrected. I wasn't thinking of the resurrection event itself. Of course, no one saw the resurrection itself, they saw Jesus.
Does it make a difference that Paul did not touch Jesus to know he was bodily present? Perhaps Jesus wasn't bodily present, yet the vision was confirmation that Jesus had risen from the dead and that Paul's persecution of those who believed was in error.
For a good naturalistic scenario of how belief could have started check out Kris D. Komarnitsky's book. Here is a summary:
I might consider it. I have enough to read though including from skeptics.
I read the millerite description and I can't say that I saw that the parallel was that strong.
Let me confess something to you Walter. While I feel as a whole, belief in the resurrection is very reasonable and more so in the broader context of Christian life, experience and theology (because there are many angles to look at this matter), I know very well that I have much more homework to do on the history.
that said, I feel free to critique some of the absurdities here posted along the lines that the resurrection can be debunked in one page, or because the gospels where written decades later, or because some of the authors and/or editors of the gospels weren't necessarily themselves eye witnesses. And with that and other posts here (I'm satisfied with some of what I read from David Marshall), I'd say we can safely say that no, you cannot debunk the ressurection in one page.
Now did Komarnitsky do it in his book? Perhaps. I can't really judge on the basis of that summery, though as I mentioned, I looked at one of his parallels and didn't find it to be that parallel to what we read in scripture (the post resurrection accounts came fast after the death of Jesus with many eye witnesses, not that comparable to one guy who decided he saw Jesus return to heaven to cleanse it instead of earth. And furthermore, the resurrection was reportedly anticipated in the statements of Jesus (and this may be one area where Q might be a stronger witness if it also contains such foreshadowing).
Now did Komarnitsky do it in his book? Perhaps. I can't really judge on the basis of that summery, though as I mentioned, I looked at one of his parallels and didn't find it to be that parallel to what we read in scripture (the post resurrection accounts came fast after the death of Jesus with many eye witnesses, not that comparable to one guy who decided he saw Jesus return to heaven to cleanse it instead of earth. And furthermore, the resurrection was reportedly anticipated in the statements of Jesus (and this may be one area where Q might be a stronger witness if it also contains such foreshadowing)
Mark Goodacre makes a pretty good case against the existence of Q:
LINK
When you claim that post-res. eyewitnesses came fast after Jesus' death, you are still assuming gospel reliability. Komarnistsky does not debunk the resurrection; he presents a believable scenario on how it could well have happened without a miraculous resurrection.
Ana,
You said,
And yet, they[eye witness testimonies] are still used. Because we realize, that though imperfect, we can't do without them.
I wonder if you apply your statement consistently in all aspects of your people-centered life. That is: "eye witness testimony doesn't mean shit".
Yes, I do apply my statements consistently in all aspects of my people-centered life. My life is people-centered. While many Christians are dumping their time, energy, and piles of money down the shithole of religion, I'm off doing work for people. That's the only way persons in need get help. They do not, I repeat n-o-t, get help from gods, no matter how Christians misattribute their own efforts to imaginary gods, angels, or saviors. In one minute I can do more work for real people needing something real in their lives than all the prayers that have ever been prayed have ever done for anyone.
Part of using eye witness testimony appropriately is being completely open to the possibility that your friends, family, acquaintances and strangers are detached from reality. A friend of mine just last night told me how a psychic helped her communicate with her mother who died recently. As she described it the psychic simply relayed back to her details that she had herself supplied. She's out of touch with reality. I asked her if the psychic supplied any details shared between her and her mother without her volunteering the information first. Wanting to believe it was true she simply changed the subject. The religious live their entire lives out in much the same way, wanting the psychic to be for real and being willing to avert their attention away from reality's harsh light so the farce can be maintained.
There is a big difference between making allowances for people's preferred ways of looking at the world and allowing them to abuse everyone based on that way of seeing things. Christians insist that their dumptruck full of bullshit is true and that their acceptance of the bullshit as true gives them the right to dictate to others how they should conduct themselves, what their goals and aspirations should be, and whether the real understanding of the world through science should be rejected so the Bullshit-As-Truth perspective can be maintained.
If it worked, Ana, we would see it. It doesn't work, so we don't see it.
@Rob R.
You make valid points regarding the “faith” we have in science, but in the context of the resurrection they still strike me as a massive, unjustified equivocation.
One comment seems the most telling, and with it you unwittingly demonstrate a fundamental difference between science and religion, and between the rational and religious mind-sets:
When it is a failure, the scientifically minded student…knows that it is his first hand experience that is wrong, that something must be wrong somewhere because the text books couldn't possibly be wrong. And that kind of faith is indeed the rational approach to have.
The “faith” you describe may be “rational” for most science students, whose goal is a passing grade from a professor. But I suspect this kind of absolute faith in an approved text would make for an utterly lousy scientist.
On the other hand, this kind of absolute faith in an approved text makes great catechism students and Popes alike. Both student and Pope assume the Text "couldn’t possibly be wrong," and “experiments” are run simply to affirm the text, explain away apparent contradictions, to create endless defenses, theodicies and theologies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Your comments do not address my point about plausibility. Nothing about “men on the Moon” is inherently implausible. With regard to other historical claims: Nothing about the claim “a man named Julius ‘Caesar’ existed” is inherently implausible. The claim “a man came back from the dead,” on the other hand, is inherently implausible.
And I think you know it.
As to the evidence: Twelve (!) men claim to have walked on the Moon. Nine are still alive. These nine men constitute an infinitely greater set of first-hand data than that available for the resurrection (I’ve actually heard Armstrong speak, so I am closer to eyewitness testimony than were the authors of the Gospels). Even after they die, we will have second-hand data magnitudes of order greater than that for the resurrection. The Moon exists. The Moon rocks exist. The lander exists. The film exists. The NASA engineers exist. There is a massive amount of evidence for the Moon landing, of all stripes – physical, testimonial, historical, first and second-hand.
In short, to equate the plausibility of the resurrection or the evidence for it (whether in nature, quality or quantity) with that of the Moon landing, is flatly ridiculous.
And I think you know it.
Computers: I am typing on my Blackberry. It is working. I hand it to you. And you type, and it works. And you hand it to Fred, and he types, and it works. It works whether any of us has any understanding of the “truth” of how it works, or not. It simply is not “faith” equivalent to religious faith to accept the word of the Blackberry engineer as to how it works. (Please, I beg you, don’t tell me the Bible “works” in the same way my Blackberry does!)
And I think you know it.
And again, you miss my point, which was not personal verification of history, but replication. I can replicate my EECS friends’ experiences. I repeat my question to you: How can I replicate the experiences of the apostles?
I think you must agree, I can't.
I leave it to others with more knowledge of Bible studies than I to evaluate whether this book constitutes more than a single source of data for the resurrection.
When you claim that post-res. eyewitnesses came fast after Jesus' death, you are still assuming gospel reliability.
Well, there lies a problem. Things do get a bit ad hoq when you float away from the gospels.
If gospel reliability is an issue, it surely is just as much a matter of faith to suggest that they are completely unreliable.
Let's say that the gospel tradition of the early reports of the post death encounters of Jesus are the result of a delusion. To place all these encounters a few short days after the death of Jesus fictitiously and with the intensity presented if not true is going to be to big a lie even 40 years after the fact within living memory to sell even with the intensity with which it is presented.
Furthermore, Jesus predictions about his death and resurrection aren't just mere delusions but outright lies.
Even then, it's a likely story, but a bigger speculation than taking the gospels to be reliable and only preferable if one favors naturalism or skepticism (and is truly not neutral either way).
If gospel reliability is an issue, it surely is just as much a matter of faith to suggest that they are completely unreliable.
What really happened 2000 years ago is shrouded in the fog of history. I cannot say for certain that the "gist" of the gospel story never happened. I can say that there is ample evidence against them being completely accurate due to there being significant contradictions in several areas. I believe there is sufficient reason to doubt all of the miraculous claims.
Let's say that the gospel tradition of the early reports of the post death encounters of Jesus are the result of a delusion. To place all these encounters a few short days after the death of Jesus fictitiously and with the intensity presented if not true is going to be to big a lie even 40 years after the fact within living memory to sell even with the intensity with which it is presented.
You have to remember that the gospel narratives were most likely penned after the destruction of the Temple. Even Church tradition already has Peter, Paul, and James executed by this time. The gospels were also originally written in Greek, which means that there intended audience was probably Gentiles living outside of Palestine. I don't think the argument that the apostles would have corrected these narratives really holds much water.
Furthermore, Jesus predictions about his death and resurrection aren't just mere delusions but outright lies.
I prefer to call it pious fiction. It is not the same as lying with malicious intent.
I can say that there is ample evidence against them being completely accurate due to there being significant contradictions in several areas. I believe there is sufficient reason to doubt all of the miraculous claims.
Contradictions in what? If they weren't always concerned to tell exactly what happened, if they weren't written according to modern standards of history, it's not clear that the differences in reporting some events is important.
I don't think the argument that the apostles would have corrected these narratives really holds much water.
Jesus had over a hundred disciples and many more who witnessed his ministry and according to Paul, his several hundred who saw the resurrected Christ. The gospels were well written within living memory. And the idea that the church did not preserve the writings and memories of its revered leaders who played so prominantly in the recorded stories is desperate. That their disciples couldn't be trusted in a highly oral culture where the stories would have been repeated over and over again is dubious.
Of course, the gospels written for the world were written in Greek and for the Jews who were likely to speak greek (as matthew is particularly aimed at the Jews).
I prefer to call it pious fiction. It is not the same as lying with malicious intent.
a baseless speculation of course.
a baseless speculation of course.
Not baseless. Even Catholic Bible scholar Raymond E. Brown was quoted as saying that Christians should prepare themselves for the fact that large amounts of the New Testament gospel stories are historical dramatizations because the authors simply did not know what happened.
Whether you accept Brown's findings or not, my arguments are not baseless.
Contradictions in what? If they weren't always concerned to tell exactly what happened, if they weren't written according to modern standards of history, it's not clear that the differences in reporting some events is important.
Perhaps they were just sloppy in reporting details? Maybe the evangelists were just as sloppy about misreporting some of Jesus's words leading us to err in some of our theological beliefs?
It all comes down to religious faith in the end--you either have it or you don't.
I always have a little chuckle when it is mentioned that "Matthew" is aimed at Jews - it clearly is *aimed* at them, but with staggering ineptitude. Matthew's use of prophecy and his misunderstandings of the Septuagint and Hebrew idioms are frankly embarrassing, and his little inventions to sex up his story (such as the star of Bethlehem, and even the whole "virgin" thing) are deeply unimpressive.
Rob makes the point that for the gospellers to place fictitious accounts so close to the death of Jesus is a dangerous ploy - I totally disagree. If you look at all the accounts of the resurrected Jesus, they have an other-worldly flavour to them that is quite different to the real live Jesus in the gospels. He's already a ghost. All these stories, where they haven't been invented fully, are ghostie stories, based on reports of "visions", not a real resurrected Nazarene. Even that fraud Saul Paulus admits as much - it's all "appearances". These are visions, not actual resurrections.
Furthermore, as I mentioned previously, at the time Saul was writing 1 Corinthians, many *Christians* (perhaps even the majority!) did NOT accept the resurrection really happened, and Saul was trying to browbeat them into submission. Ultimately successfully.
But people nowadays like to imagine C1CE Christianity and C1CE Judaism as the same as their current counterparts; that is an error. C1CE Judaism was a mad hotch-potch of crazy sects, and the Christians fitted right in. Indeed, even within the "Christian" camp, there were many factions & denominations.
It's all crazy.
Walter,
In support of your position, I offer this from the Catholic Encyclopedia concerning the invention of the gospels,
In all the departments forgery and interpolation as well as ignorance had wrought mischief on a grand scale.
Celsus the Roman philosopher wrote about gospel revision and repair work in the second century, saying, in part,
Some of them, as it were in a drunken state producing self-induced visions, remodel their Gospel from its first written form, and reform it so that they may be able to refute the objections brought against it.
If it was true they would not need to revise. If it was true they wouldn't need to continually alter it and its interpretation.
Shane
Matthew's use of prophecy and his misunderstandings of the Septuagint and Hebrew idioms are frankly embarrassing
What’s an example of this?
and his little inventions to sex up his story (such as the star of Bethlehem, and even the whole "virgin" thing) are deeply unimpressive.
How do you know they didn’t really happen?
All these stories, where they haven't been invented fully, are ghostie stories, based on reports of "visions", not a real resurrected Nazarene.
First, how can you prove that they are invented? Second, how does a ghost eat fish?
Even that fraud Saul Paulus admits as much - it's all "appearances". These are visions, not actual resurrections.
Thomas put his hands in the wounds in the company of others. How is that a “vision”
Furthermore, as I mentioned previously, at the time Saul was writing 1 Corinthians, many *Christians* (perhaps even the majority!) did NOT accept the resurrection really happened, and Saul was trying to browbeat them into submission. Ultimately successfully.
How does this disprove the resurrection?
Indeed, even within the "Christian" camp, there were many factions & denominations.
Like what?
Russ,
You said:
"Celsus the Roman philosopher wrote about gospel revision and repair work in the second century, saying, in part,
Some of them, as it were in a drunken state producing self-induced visions, remodel their Gospel from its first written form, and reform it so that they may be able to refute the objections brought against it."
This quote is intriguing to me. I have been looking for that quote by Celsus since I saw your post. Most of what I can find attributed to him is in what Origen had to say in response to his attacks on christianity. Can you direct me to where I can find that quote by Celsus....it seems most of what he had to say has been lost (or burned by zealous apologists??)
Most of my doubts about christianity have been fuelled by my suspicions that apologits have been reworking scripture since they began preaching to suit the beliefs they already hold to be true and the skeptics have finally caught on to their antics.
Thanks for your help.
Jason
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