A simple challenge for atheists

[FatAndFaithless]

How do you prove a miracle happened? If an event can't be naturalistically explained, than either 1) it did not happen or 2) it did happen and would therefore be supernatural. In the absence of surviving physical evidence to examine, say a man born blind now sees--something not available to us 2000 years later, we are left with eyewitness testimony.

But it's not eyewitness testimony. It's people decades later relaying what they claim people claim they saw.

To save you all time, I know you are going to say some version of: the gospels were written 30-50 years later, my favorite crackpot historian that says Jesus never existed, it is fact that all of this was a big hoax. Yeah yeah yeah. Those are all opinions. There are plenty of modern secular historians who believe that Jesus existed.

Bart Ehrman (a secular agnostic) wrote: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees" B. Ehrman, 2011 Forged : writing in the name of God ISBN 978-0-06-207863-6. page 285

Robert M. Price (an atheist) who denies the existence of Jesus agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars: Robert M. Price "Jesus at the Vanishing Point" in The Historical Jesus: Five Views edited by James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy, 2009 InterVarsity, ISBN 0830838686 page 61

Michael Grant (a classicist) states that "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." in Jesus by Michael Grant 2004 ISBN 1898799881 page 200

Richard A. Burridge states: "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more." in Jesus Now and Then by Richard A. Burridge and Graham Gould (Apr 1, 2004) ISBN 0802809774 page 34

It is clear that the four authors of the gospels and Paul (who wrote even earlier) believed these events took place. They would have all known the major characters. So since you want to deny the content of the gospels really happened, you can't simply say they were mistaken--there are too many of them and the resulting historical chain of events have to be explained. So you are left with the conclusion that it was a big hoax. Frankly, that is harder to believe than believing in the events as they were told.

Ugh, this shit again. There's a thread in which this kind of idea is dissected in excruciating detail.

Additionally, can you have one single post that doesn't contain or end in a massive argument from ignorance? "It just seems more likely to me that all the miracles and supernatural, untestable, unverifiable, unrepeatable, untouchable events actually happened as described, rather than the people who wrote about these events were simply wrong."


Are you serious?