The God of Convenience

[Esquilax]

So Papias who lived two to three generations after Jesus died was less able to identify the authors of the gospels than we are today? Papias could have had access to parents or grandparents of Jesus' contemporaries. So tell me why Papias wasn't qualified to determine who wrote the gospels? Here is Papias' own statement concerning his methods of gathering evidence. I'll go with Papias.

So, do you know anything at all about how your own holy books were compiled? Because when they were originally written, they had no authors attached; the author names were traditional christian names added to the books by the church at a later date, long after anyone who was alive at the time could say otherwise. Papias- who lived in the second century, by the way- added in, despite the fact that even the early church didn't think so, and were adding the names because they were traditional, that in fact, the authors were the apostles. But he had no way of knowing that; not only was he using second hand information at best, but the names themselves were fabricated out of whole cloth just to give the books authors.

You're asking me to believe that the names the church made up just so happened to be the correct names of the real writers. I don't know why you think that's okay.

I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.

So, you'll take purported third hand information, passed down verbally from unnamed sources, to a guy who was born at best seventy years after Jesus died, reported in the form of sheer fiat assertions, with no evidence behind it, as truth?

No wonder you're a christian.

Since we experience unexplained events to this day, we can't say that Jesus didn't have the power to perform miracles.

Yes we can: no evidence has ever been presented that miracles are even possible. Impossible things, obviously, cannot happen, and so without some indication that these things are even possible, we have no reason to add them to the list of possible causes for things. Once again, and this is like the ninetieth time I've said this to you, the argument from ignorance is not evidence for your god.

Neither is your burden of proof shifting "you can't prove that it didn't happen!" schtick. This is just pathetic, Lek.

You may not believe it, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Until I've been convinced otherwise I'll accept the testimony of the church fathers who were so close to the time of Jesus.

So you'll shift the burden of proof, and believe the unjustified assertions of non-contemporary sources.

If we know that the earliest gospel was penned 30 years after Jesus' death, then it obviously could have been written by an eyewitness.

Given that, from what we can tell, the average life span in that time period was around 20-35 years, this is doubtful unless all the apostles were children. Were the apostles children, Lek?

You seem to be saying that your historians and scholars are smarter than mine. Since there is no consensus, that means you're historians are right. You agree that there is disagreement among historians and then you say that you don't need complete consensus to make the determination. You make these big statements as if you are unarguably right.

Yeah, we wouldn't want anyone to make any completely unjustified assertions, would we? That would be crazy.

At any rate, don't take "we don't need full consensus," to mean "there is no consensus." Among mainstream historians there is a consensus in the majority that the biblical authors are anonymous. I'm sorry if your fringe historians don't accept this, but there it is. Additionally, I detailed the history of the new testament books- a little thing called "evidence"- through which one comes to this conclusion of anonymity. Your response has been little more than "nuh uh, you can't prove they weren't written by the apostles!"

I don't really need to argue back against baseless assertions and appeals to fringe scholars.

I think that the authors are more qualified to speak for themselves, but obviously they didn't give their names. Someone wrote them and whoever they were didn't mention their names.

That's absolutely true. And when the church attached names to the books later on, they were plug names based in religious tradition, not fact. Hence, the books were anonymously written.

And if the authors are most qualified to speak for themselves, and none of them made the claim that they met Jesus, then what does that tell you?

They must not have felt compelled to tell who they were. If Mark didn't write the Gospel of Mark, then why didn't the "real" author tell who he was?

We can't know for sure, but a few possibilities that come to mind are that there were multiple authors, or that given the sheer number of books in the gospel accounts before the church decided which ones were canonical, the writer had no idea how significant his or her book would become centuries later.

Your question runs both ways, though: if Mark did write the gospel of Mark, why didn't he see fit to tell us that he was the real author? Why did he remain silent? And are you really telling me that the church a century later just so happened to guess the correct name, out of their stable of plug names they added in for convenience?

Yes, we already know you'll accept an argument from ignorance when it suits your argument, and that the rest of us understand that it's a fallacy. But let me ask you this: a muslim is sick, he prays to Allah, and when he recovers science doesn't know why. Do you take this as evidence that Islam is true, and Allah actually healed him?

Yes.

So what you've got is evidence that every single god ever exists. But those are mutually exclusive gods, so how do you tell which "evidence" is real, and which is not?

All you now have is a pile of arguments from ignorance which, at best, lead to some truthful representations of reality, and some false ones. Therefore, these miracle healings are not necessarily all truthful.

It's a subject that's very interesting to me. God can heal anybody, including atheists. God knows the hearts of us all.

So every unanswered question is evidence for your god specifically, even when someone prays to another god? Do you have any idea how irrational and presuppositional you're being?

You and your "special pleading".

Dismissal is not rebuttal.