(May 23, 2015 at 9:17 am)Randy Carson Wrote: After a bit of...interaction with the mods, I'm not 100% certain about what I can and cannot post at this point. Therefore, I'm going to outline the case I WOULD have made and wait to see what happens next.

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The Historical Reliability of the New Testament – Summation

Catholic apologist Trent Horn wrote, “The balance of evidence in favor of God's existence outweighs the evidence against God's existence. No one piece of evidence may prove it, but taken as a whole they may very well accomplish that task.”

Here is that evidence.

The four gospels have been accurately delivered to us (meaning we know what they wrote).

• Nearly 6,000 copies of the New Testament can be studied using textual criticism.
  
• The Telephone Game and all attempts to claim distortion via oral tradition are bogus.
  

The authors wrote early (meaning it was possible that they were actual eyewitnesses).

• Silence regarding the Destruction of the Temple (AD 70) and the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul) (AD 64-65) suggest an early date.
  

The authors recorded eyewitness accounts.

• All of the early sources attribute the gospels to the traditional authors: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The synoptic gospels are not attributed to major figures such as Peter, James or Mary; instead, they are assigned to a tax-collector (Matthew), a lesser character who may not have been present (Mark), and a gentile (Luke). This is one example of how the gospels meet the Criterion of Embarrassment.
  
• Matthew was an apostle, and may have been chosen specifically because of his record-keeping skills which were needed to make contemporaneous records of Jesus’ teaching and deeds.
  
• Luke interviewed people who were present. This may have included Mary for the nativity account.
  
• Mark was the companion of Peter, the leader of the apostles.
  
• John was an apostle.
  

The authors wanted to write accurate accounts (as opposed to pious fiction).

• Luke and John specifically state that they are writing so that others may know the truth.
  
• The disciples believed they were passing on the words of God – a responsibility they took seriously.
  

The authors wrote accurate accounts which are verified and corroborated.

• Jewish and Roman accounts corroborate the basic story.
  
• Verifiable external evidence suggests that the authors had intimate knowledge of the geography, architecture, religious and political leadership, religious customs, language of the day, etc. Even the names of the people appear in the correct percentages.
  
• Unintentional internal corroboration provides additional evidence that the gospels are accurate.
  
• Accuracy regarding these details adds to the impression that the authors are credible.
  

The authors were accountable to other eyewitnesses – both supportive and hostile.

• Many eyewitnesses were still alive at the time the gospels and epistles were written. Anyone disagreeing with a gospel could have easily refuted an erroneous account.
  
• The Jews did not deny the tomb was empty; they offered alternative explanations for why it was.
  

The authors had no ulterior motive.

• What did the authors of the gospels gain from their work? The three classic motives are: power, money, and sex. Not only did Christianity reject these things in general, but the authors were persecuted and killed.
  

Additional Points for Discussion:

• The disciples suffered and died for their beliefs. None recanted their story at the last minute to save himself. People are willing to die for what they believe, but rarely are people willing to die for something they know to be a lie.
  
• Skeptics such as James and Saul were converted.
  
• Key social structures were changed in the wake of the resurrection of Jesus.
  
• The emergence of the Church suggests that it was founded by someone, directed by someone and based upon the life and teachings of someone. It is unlikely that this person was a legend.

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With the reliability of the gospels established by the weight of the evidence, we must consider two additional points:

1. The four gospels clearly show that Jesus claimed to be God.
   
2. The four gospels contain clear support for the resurrection of Jesus which He offered as proof of His claims.
   

There are reasons to dispute all of your premises, especially that the Gospels were eyewitness accounts or that they were attributed to the Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John early.  Nor is there much corroboration of the Gospels elsewhere in the historic record.  The Gospels contradict each other.  And what historical records we do have contradict the Gospels.

I don't have time for a point by by analysis, but you have yet to do that either.

My major point is that you simply cannot prove god, or miracles, or a resurrection via eyewitness testimony, even if it were modern day eyewitness who you could cross-examine.  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof in order to make them more likely than not.  For example, if I claimed my dog flies, my say so, even in a court of law under oath would be unlikely to convince anyone because the chances that I would be lying or disillusion would be much greater than the chances of a wingless flying dog.  So too if I and my whole family claimed my great grandmother rose from the dead last Friday.  That would be so even if our disinterested neighbors agreed.  To prove her resurrection would need to provide solid physical evidence of her death, produce the great grand mother herself, and provide proof of her identity.  Even then, we'd have a hard time proving that she really had died and that she wasn't someone else. This is why skeptical people do not believe in ghosts, ESP, or UFO abductions despite tons of eyewitnesses.

So, I see your quest to prove the resurrection or that Jesus was god via the Bible as hopeless.  Regardless of whether the claims you make about it above are true, the Bible is not sufficient evidence on which to base supernatural claims.  No historical account is.

(May 19, 2015 at 10:37 pm)Jenny A Wrote:

(May 16, 2015 at 4:59 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Not so, PT.

The gospels and the epistles were written in Greek.

My English translation was made from the Greek and not from some intermediary language(s).

Yes Dear, but Jesus and his disciples  spoke Aramaic, not Greek.  So that's one translation right there.

You have no idea how many hours I have spent making that very point to Protestants. Why? Because Jesus actually said, "You are kepha, and on this kepha I will build my Church." Kepha is Aramaic for rock and there is no distinction between a small kepha and a large kepha. Protestants argue that there is a distinction between a petra (large rock) and a petros (small rock), and since "Peter" comes from petros, they claim Peter was only a small rock.

However, Jesus and the disciples were probably bi-lingual, and the shift from Aramaic to Greek in the mind of the author would not be too large.

Quote:And there were many retellings of the story before it was ever written down.  How far off our version is from the original Greek text ignores the question of how reliable the Greek original was.

It's an interesting point. Oral cultures had memory skills that are largely forgotten in modern times. Even today, there are some ancient stories of more than 100,000 lines that have been memorized, and the audiences know the story well enough to discern whether the storyteller has deviated from the original. Additionally, the Qur'an has been memorized in its entirety by many.

So, I think the argument regarding the oral tradition of the gospels actually works in favor of the reliability of the NT.

(May 23, 2015 at 9:17 am)Randy Carson Wrote: Knowing what I know of Islam, I would be explaining to them why they were in error. Not all religions are based upon equally solid evidence, Rob, and it makes no sense to lump them all together.

You have a book..they have a book.  As far as I've seen from you, your religious justifications are -identical- to theirs..........both are silly. Would you like me to link you to a few dozen threads where muslims argue precisely what you do, in the manner that you do, offering the same amount of evidence that you do, of precisely the type that you do........and then reach an entirely different "conclusion"?


Where's a muslim apologist when you need one, eh? I'm sure they would -also- delight in correcting you......sharing your groups preoccupation with the notion that they are qualified to opine upon some existent god. What with the intellectual giants that you've shown yourselves to be over these many centuries with arguments such as the ones espoused in this thread, of course.

(May 19, 2015 at 11:13 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Even the Bible says not to pay any attention to Jewish fairy tales.  We know that the New Testament is not historically accurate because it contains a lot of scenes in which there were no independent witnesses.  Therefore the writers could not have known about those incidents and what was said during those times.

How do you know there were no independent witnesses?

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(May 19, 2015 at 11:20 pm)rexbeccarox Wrote: LOL @ WLC being peer-reviewed

Here is a link to WLC's websiite where you may read some of them for yourself:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/scholarly-articles

If you believe that Craig is not a bona fide scholar, please provide 1) evidence of that assessment by other scholars or 2) your own credentials so that we may evaluate whether you are in a position to make such a judgment.

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(May 20, 2015 at 1:46 am)robvalue Wrote: I've made it pretty clear what I think. I'll concede all the arguments, right up until the point someone suggests it's reasonable to believe supernatural claims. That is the ultimate goal here.

If this was only intended as textual analysis, that would be different. But this is by admission just the first stage in a larger argument. I'm giving Randy as much as he could ever gain through these arguments, allowing every point, but then saying there is this one obstacle which appears to be insurmountable. I'm doing the equivalent of removing thousands of henchmen for him, giving him all the power ups they were holding, and moving him straight to the boss fight. How much more generous can I be?

So I'm not dismissing the arguments, I'm conceding them to show that they are irrelevant as a basis for proving Christianity is "true" because even if they are all sound, they don't reach the desired conclusion.

If yourself or Randy really wants to just discuss historical realiability for its own sake, then that is fine. I've debated the existence of Jesus on the forum endlessly, my position being that saying he is based on a real person is not saying much at all. The very best I've seen is people linking together someone called Jesus who was crucified and had a brother called James. Even that part is not completely convincing, and anything after that is incredibly shaky. So to say "Jesus existed", in terms of what can actually be pinned down to him, is saying next to nothing. There were probably hundreds of people back then who would fit an extremely vague notion of "Jesus", depending on what aspect you're looking at. I think Jesus is most likely a compilation of many people around at the time, as a foundation, then built on with an almost entirely mythical life story.

On the atheist experience, they are trying to do the same thing, cut to the chase. They know what is coming at the end, and that it's the part where the non sequitur is going to happen from experience.

Rob-

We have half a dozen witnesses who wrote their testimonies in the NT: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James. We can verify the reliability of the text, we an determine that the dates of authorship are early enough, we can evaluate the veracity of what they wrote with regard to geography, topography, customs, language, political and religious leadership, the distribution of names, etc.

All of this speaks to the credibility of the authors are reliable eyewitnesses.

So, when, exactly, did the desire to record an accurate, orderly account of the life of Jesus end and the fairy tale begin?

I'm asking you for YOUR opinion, but watch to see that several more of your forum mates will offer conflicting and contradictory opinions about when and how this transition from truth to fable occurred.

(May 23, 2015 at 10:36 am)Randy Carson Wrote:

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(May 19, 2015 at 11:20 pm)rexbeccarox Wrote: LOL @ WLC being peer-reviewed

Here is a link to WLC's websiite where you may read some of them for yourself:

{snip}
If you believe that Craig is not a bona fide scholar, please provide 1) evidence of that assessment by other scholars or 2) your own credentials so that we may evaluate whether you are in a position to make such a judgment.

Nah.  That's not how burden of proof works.

[/quote]

The bible is the claim not the evidence.

(May 20, 2015 at 1:01 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote:

(May 17, 2015 at 5:22 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:

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How do you know this?

This was about the supernatural. The question was along the lines of is any supernatural thing possible.

Now my answer of no is down to the supernatural being things like miracles and ghosts etc or to put it another way "impossible things" so the question I hear is "is it possible for an impossible thing to happen" to which the answer is of course no.

Supernatural is a word used to explain why they believe in stupid shit.

Are supernatural events possible? It appears your answer is "no".

How do you know this?

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(May 20, 2015 at 9:23 pm)SnakeOilWarrior Wrote: Is it too much to hope that our Randy Catholic has given up?

Why would you hope for that?

I obviously provide some entertainment for this intellectually in-bred little clique, and if your arguments are actually so strong and atheism really is better for the future of all humanity, why aren't you eager to win another soul over to your god-less point of view?

Silly person, if you don't want care for the discussion, DON'T READ IT. 

It's never occurred to you that there is no reason to proselytize for atheism, or that some atheists might find that act to be fundamentally obnoxious?  Who would want you in their club, Randy....introspection -may- provide clarity here.

(May 23, 2015 at 11:07 am)Randy Carson Wrote:

(May 20, 2015 at 1:01 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: This was about the supernatural. The question was along the lines of is any supernatural thing possible.

Now my answer of no is down to the supernatural being things like miracles and ghosts etc or to put it another way "impossible things" so the question I hear is "is it possible for an impossible thing to happen" to which the answer is of course no.

Supernatural is a word used to explain why they believe in stupid shit.

Are supernatural events possible? It appears your answer is "no".

How do you know this?

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(May 20, 2015 at 9:23 pm)SnakeOilWarrior Wrote: Because no supernatural phenomena has ever stood up to scrutiny.

Outside of fiction there is no supernatural.

(May 23, 2015 at 10:07 am)Jenny A Wrote: There are reasons to dispute all of your premises,

Well, that's true, Jenny. And to be honest, one of the reasons to dispute my premises is because you don't like the conclusion they point to.

Pre-marital sex? That's out? Contraception? No good according to the true Church. Etc, etc. People have lots of reasons for disputing information that is presented to them, and not all of it is based upon the strength of counter arguments.

Quote:especially that the Gospels were eyewitness accounts or that they were attributed to the Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John early.

I have ARGUED my case. You have merely asserted yours.

Quote:Nor is there much corroboration of the Gospels elsewhere in the historic record.

Jesus was a carpenter from a backwater outpost of the Roman Empire. One wonders that he got a mention at all. But he did, didn't he? And today, the Catholic Church sits in the heart of an empire that vanished long ago. But, yes, the external corroboration is significant.

Quote:The Gospels contradict each other.

So did the eyewitnesses of the sinking of the Titanic.

Quote:And what historical records we do have contradict the Gospels.

Bring it.

Quote:I don't have time for a point by by analysis, but you have yet to do that either.

Nor will I be allowed to in a comprehensive manner. This is a "discussion" forum, I'm told. So, we're discussing BIG things in very small chunks.

Quote:My major point is that you simply cannot prove god, or miracles, or a resurrection via eyewitness testimony, even if it were modern day eyewitness who you could cross-examine.  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof in order to make them more likely than not.  For example, if I claimed my dog flies, my say so, even in a court of law under oath would be unlikely to convince anyone because the chances that I would be lying or disillusion would be much greater than the chances of a wingless flying dog.  So too if I and my whole family claimed my great grandmother rose from the dead last Friday.  That would be so even if our disinterested neighbors agreed.  To prove her resurrection would need to provide solid physical evidence of her death, produce the great grand mother herself, and provide proof of her identity.  Even then, we'd have a hard time proving that she really had died and that she wasn't someone else. This is why skeptical people do not believe in ghosts, ESP, or UFO abductions despite tons of eyewitnesses.

So, how would you go about proving to those skeptics that your dog had flown or that your grandmother had been raised from the dead? What would or could you do that the Apostles did not do? And how would you feel when EVERYONE IN TOWN began to mock you, call you a liar, and eventually turn on you even with threats against your life? Would you deny that your dog had flown even if you faced imprisonment, loss of employment, etc? Would you turn your back on what you knew to be true just because other people denied it?

Quote:So, I see your quest to prove the resurrection or that Jesus was god via the Bible as hopeless.  Regardless of whether the claims you make about it above are true, the Bible is not sufficient evidence on which to base supernatural claims.  No historical account is.

Sufficient for what? To be coercive?

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(May 23, 2015 at 11:02 am)rexbeccarox Wrote: Nah.  That's not how burden of proof works.

The Scientific Burden of Proof

In the sciences, the burden of proof falls to the one proposing a hypothesis. It doesn’t matter what the hypothesis is:

If you want to propose that Particle X exists, the burden of proof falls to you.
If you want to propose that Particle X does not exist, the burden again falls to you.

Either way, in science the person proposing a hypothesis needs to provide evidence for it by using the scientific method (i.e., making a prediction based on the hypothesis and then seeing whether the prediction is fulfilled when a test is run).

Only by doing this can the hypothesis be scientifically established (to the extent that anything can ever be scientifically established).

The Philosophical Burden of Proof

Most discussions about the existence of God are not scientific ones. They may involve observations about the universe and things that science studies (e.g., order, design, etc.). However, they also involve premises that cannot be verified scientifically. Many of them involve premises of a philosophical nature, and so the discussion of God’s existence is often regarded as a philosophical matter rather than a scientific one.

Who holds the burden of proof in philosophy? As in science, it’s whoever is making a claim. It doesn’t matter whether you’re:

asserting the existence or non-existence of Plato’s Forms,
claiming the truth or falsity of a particular view of epistemology, or
asserting that moral judgments are just expressions of emotion or something else.

The principle remains the same: The burden is on you to argue for your own claims.

Philosophy may use a different method than science, but its assignation of the burden of proof is the same.

Taken from: Who Has the Burden of Proof When Discussing God? | Strange Notions

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(May 23, 2015 at 11:20 am)Rhythm Wrote: It's never occurred to you that there is no reason to proselytize for atheism, or that some atheists might find that act to be fundamentally obnoxious?  Who would want you in their club, Randy....introspection -may- provide clarity here.

If religion is the source of all the problems claimed by atheists, then the elimination of religion is in your own best interest. 

And kinda like politics wherein Republicans and Democrats both try to sway the independent moderates, you better snatch up as many of us slow-minded Christians as you can before taking on the Muslims because you're gonna need all the manpower you can find at that point.

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(May 23, 2015 at 11:28 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: Because no supernatural phenomena has ever stood up to scrutiny.

Outside of fiction there is no supernatural.

How many of them have you investigated personally?

Are you relying on the - OOPS! - testimony of others to tell you about them?

How do you know that outside of fiction there is no supernatural?

What tools would you use to measure the supernatural?