Is Accepting Christian Evidence Special Pleading?

[JackRussell]

Hey, But Saul/Paul had a Damascene road experience that revealed Christ to him. He didn't A/S/K for it, we are told he was previously opposed to this mindset. But then he got made......

I am asked to believe when this experience has been denied to me.

Hmmmmmm

[SteveII]

No there isn't, coward. For example Vorlon's citation of mormonism, where we have proof of the founder, his history, his religion's history, everythinghe wrote and quite a lot of what he said. As we have virtually nothing of christianity until well into its second century (and no three word fragments of single pages don't count) you cannot truthfully claim christianity has the same evidentiary basis as mormonism. Hell, even with islam, another religion bsed solely off legend we know most of the major players actually existed and did at least some of the stuff attributed to them. We can say this about exactly none of the founding members of christianity (unless you want to argue it was largely founded at Nicaea).

So your latest baseless assertion fails under even the most dilletantish of scrutinies.

And not only that, an examination of Early Christian History shows that from the very beginning they did not agree on the substance of who Jesus was.  The diversity of Christian theology was even more intense in the 1st and 2nd Centuries CE than even now.  A sect of Judaism, divided among Ebionites, Nazarenes, and Elkasites, each of whom had different versions (Christologies) of Jesus based on their theology (Docetism, Adoptionists, and Gnosticism).  It was the Proto-orthodox view, championed by Paul the Apostle, gained wider adherence throughout the Roman Empire as they gained more influence with the imperial throne, you know, Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, the oppression of Pagans, and all that.   You Christians really have a nasty habit of weeding out opposing views and killing them off.  Does not help your cause one little bit.

When you say "very beginning", what you are really talking about is 170 years later -- or 6 generations. That's like saying "at the very beginning when we had cell phones and the California Gold Rush was happening..."

Docetism -- 197–203
Adoptionists -- late second century
Gnosticism -- late first and second century - was a separate movement not compatible with Christianity even though they attempted to incorporate Christianity into its belief system for a time.

You imply that Paul's teachings won out of some subjective competition. There was not competition once it became easy to just go back to the original gospels and epistles (as they propagated throughout the church) and it became obvious that these were just heresies/misunderstandings that failed to stick.

[The Grand Nudger]

As easy as writing a bunch of letters, or?

[JackRussell]

Oh boy. Have you ever played chinese whispers?

[Minimalist]

As late as 160 AD when Justin wrote his First Apology to Emperor Antoninus Pius we have a significant xtian writer, in Rome, who makes not a single reference to this "paul" guy.  He does, however, know of Marcion.

When a xtian can explain how Justin, a gentile, does not know of the guy who supposedly brought jesusism to the gentiles a century earlier I will be suitably impressed.  So far, you have all failed miserably.

Then there is:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/newtestame...ion8.rhtml

The book known as 2 Corinthians is one of the fourteen New Testament letters that have traditionally been attributed to Paul, the great early Christian missionary preacher. While the authorship of many of these letters has been debated by modern scholars, there is a nearly unanimous consensus that 2 Corinthians was written by Paul. However, it was probably not written in the same form in which it appears today. Most scholars agree that 2 Corinthians is a combination of several letters written by Paul to the community of Christian believers in the Greek city of Corinth.

At the very least, this implies some sort of editing of the "holy" horseshit.  Then there is the whole archaeological problem of Corinth in the first century.

[SteveII]

You must realize that, allowing for a moment the fiction of Paul - the act of "going up around there and teaching people" is what would have started christianity?  How can we fail to appreciate a situation in which christianity had not yet been codified?  What would the purpose of "Pauls", lol, "letters"...... be other than to effect such codification?  

If Paul was teaching, and if Pual was acting as an arbitrator of accuracy in dogma...and if pauls are the works which survived and upon which christianity became based..........'

Then had some other person been teaching some other thing to some other group you could not xpect that the wheels of "history" would have yielded the same result.  The centuries of rooting out heresy...on it's face, puts the lie to any such conjecture.  As points of fact, other people were teaching other things to other groups of people.  This is precisely what -necessitated- the pogroms in the first place.   

What -you- believe about Paul and christianity is incoherent and self defeating.

I have no problem with Paul's function being to codify Christian living and being a very important figure in the early church. That in no way implies he made it up or he does not back up his reasoning at every step. 

In addition, you are failing to distinguish the content of the epistles to those of the gospels.  As far as the basics of Christ and his teachings, that was around for 20 active years before he started writing (15 chapters of Acts). The content of the gospels (although not yet written as we know them) were known and is easily sufficient for the first generation that actually experienced the events described (or knew those that did). As time passed, it became necessary for someone such a Paul to get at leas the application part down so that those new converts in far away places, who would never meet an apostle, had some guidance. 

If not Paul, somebody would have had to. Would Christianity have been different? That is not apparent. We do not know if Paul reasoned out everything himself or if his years of training supplied the basic structure.

[Minimalist]

If not Paul, somebody would have had to.

My money is on Marcion.

[vorlon13]

does codification = hijacking ??

Codification would imply vigorous correlation with Christ's teachings, Paul certainly wasn't shy about contradicting Christ . . . .

[Angrboda]

Jospeh Smith was an eye witness to the miracle of the golden tablets, has second hand testimony from angels, and we have secondary evidence that Joseph Smith was indeed the author of the material -- that's something we don't have for any of the alleged authors of the bible, nobody can verify that 1 Peter was written by Peter.  You're treating the evidence of the religion of Mormonism according to a different standard than your own.  When Joseph Smith offers eye witness testimony, then it's all in his head.  When an anonymous author of the bible offers second hand testimony, why then it's "paleographic gold".  That's de facto an example of you special pleading the evidence of Christianity.  When you dismiss other religions for reasons that you don't equally apply to your own, that sure as hell is special pleading.  A similar argument could be made for Mohammed.

Your comparison is way way off. Joseph Smith wrote down a bunch of things that happened only to him. No one else was there. This is actually a good comparison to the alien abduction example atheists are so fond of. 

The 9 authors of the NT wrote down what happened in public.

And yet none of those 9 were verified eye witnesses to the events. That's 1 good witness to 0 witnesses on your side. Spin cuts both ways.

Tens of thousands of people would have been affected in some way by the events they relate. We have historical evidence that some significant number of people acted on their belief that the events of the NT happened (even before the gospels were written): there are churches across the Roman Empire before 50 AD. 1 Peter? Are you kidding me? That's 5 chapters out of 260. 

This testifies to the fact that people believed the stories. That's hardly in question. Many believed in the Eleusinian mysteries. Their belief doesn't count as evidence to the truth of those mysteries. The fact that a belief spreads to others isn't evidence of the facts supporting that belief. This is a nonsense complaint.

In addition, your use of the term 'anonymous' is inaccurate and often used in an attempt to poison the well. Do you actually think that the people who received the first copies of the gospels received them on their doorsteps and did not know where they came from? Get real. They would have known exactly who the editor was and where the information came from. The name of the editor is unimportant to pass along. The only concern was the apostle's name who provided the input.

This is meaningless speculation. Your speculations on the matter don't count as evidence. Plenty of documents were circulated in the ancient world with either no attribution or false attribution. Some of those documents even appear in the bible, which impugns your weak "just so story" about people not accepting anonymous testimony. And our knowledge of practices back then flatly contradicts your rosy spin.

So, your comparison is nonsense and your charge of special pleading unsupported.

Why? Because you don't believe the testimony of one good witness but you gullibly swallow the hearsay testimony of a corral of anonymous writers, liars, and forgers? Regardless, preferring the anonymous testimony of 9 unknown writers to one known writer isn't any kind of rational metric, it's simply a preference for what you already believe. We don't know whether any of those 9 even witnessed anything. It's your comparison of the two that is nonsense. You don't believe Joseph Smith. Period. That's your only actual criterion. In a prior post you stated that you believe the testimony of the new testament is what it appears to be ("I believe that most of the epistles are what they appear to be."). You accept uncritically the Christian testimony, yet get skeptical when the testimony is in favor of another religion. That's special pleading.

[TheBeardedDude]

Personally, the fact that no two "divinely-inspired" texts agree with one another is a great example of how human these texts are and how lacking they are in divining inspiration. You'd think a god would ensure that the method that they chose to communicate with humans with was at least more reliable than a game of "telephone."

So for you spelling error's during copying is a deal breaker?
Also, the evidence seems to show that it is not equivalent to the telephone game, so I am curious what you base this conclusion on?

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Read Misquoting Jesus.  You have much to learn.  I have an E-book somewhere if you don't want to go to your library or buy it.  I'd be glad to send it to you.

"Jesus Interrupted" is another good one.

If there is a place to get the E-book for free legitimately then I will have a look.  Otherwise, what is it, that you think that I need to learn?   You seemed to avoid the questions I asked.  

Perhaps you could summarize some of the arguments, or share some of the evidence for the claims.  If you can give me a reason to, I'll buy the book.   However, you are going to need something more than spelling errors.

"So for you spelling error's during copying is a deal breaker?

Also, the evidence seems to show that it is not equivalent to the telephone game, so I am curious what you base this conclusion on?"

Spelling errors? No, I'm talking about full-on differences in translations whereby meanings become so skewed that one can interpret scripture nearly any way one wants. 

Theist 1: "It's metaphorical" 
Theist 2: "No, it's literal!"
Theist 3: "It's clearly an allegory."
Theist 4: "Well, it's not literal but not entirely a metaphor and...blah blah blah."

I mean that a god chose to knowingly communicate with imperfect beings and through a medium by which there are guaranteed to be major discrepancies. 

And then on top of this, you have texts that directly contradict themselves. Old Testament contradictions, such as how many gods are there ("Thou shalt have no other gods before me" plus some of the earliest versions of OT texts actually name other gods within them, later translated all to the same god). 

It is a more holistic issue with the biblical texts, their translations and issues, and contradictions. It reads as one might expect a text written by numerous authors (who were largely ignorant of the world) and edited by numerous more (who were also largely ignorant of the world and who may have also had a clear agenda when translating the texts).

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lol

Okay. So let me get this straight. You believe that neither the Romans nor Paul are responsible for the Christian Church being around? [1] I think you might need to rethink what the important steps were for your religion to ever become anything more than a series of isolated cults wandering around the Middle East. [2]

1. You got it straight!!
2. Except that Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians are not in the Middle East. Thomas went to India and there have been Christians there ever since. It seems you are confusing the Catholic Church with the plain church that started on day 1--they are not the same thing. Granted the Catholic church affected history to a tremendous degree, but it is simply not true that the Catholic Church was necessary for Christianity.

I'm almost willing to bet you also think these people's names were literally Peter, Thomas, Jesus, and Paul.