The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The main contention is that a creature called God or Allah or some other deity with an ethnocentric name or even multiple deities exist and that he or they revealed themselves to ancient people. Or course there's zero evidence of such BS ever happening in the entire history of humanity other than multiple fairy tales created by assorted con men throughout the ages.

The bottom line is that no deity of any kind has ever done anything godly since it was first created by a con man to gain control over his fellow dummies. The simple reason for that is that no things such as "gods" actually exist. They are all imaginary. All entities called "gods" were simply men with the power of life and death over their herd of dummies. The God character of the Bible bit the dust when the last Babylonian emperor met his bloody end. He's not coming back.

[robvalue]

You asked why the bible is inaccurate: it includes events that have been debunked by science such as the global flood (stolen from previous mythologies) and the "creation of the Earth out of nothing". Your only defense here is the argument from ignorance. Also the fact that it contradicts itself in hundreds of places makes it not even internally accurate.

We don't really need to see hundreds of pages of reasons why the bible isn't quite as crap as people say it is, all that matters is whether you can substantiate the supernatural claims. I hope it's not going to be "they wouldn't die for a lie" and "well most of it is quite accurate so it's all accurate". If you have something more convincing than that, I'm all ears  Talking about the motivations or credentials of the authors is not going to cut it I'm afraid.

We're not doubting your arguments are convincing to you, but you have a lot of work if you intend them to be convincing to us. For a start, they have to show how the supernatural claims of the bible can somehow be demonstrated to be accurate, using methods which wouldn't apply to all religious texts or indeed Lord of the Rings. As has been said, we want to know why you believe in Christianity. The real reason that actually convinces you.

[vorlon13]

I wonder if any defender of the historical reliability of the New Testament is an actual Literalist ??

LOL, do I even need to ask ?? Just because they feel it's 100% accurate doesn't mean they have to act like it, what am I thinking ??

[dyresand]

Bible = Historically inaccurate

History book = Historically accurate.

[DeistPaladin]

We don't really need to see hundreds of pages of reasons why the bible isn't quite as crap as people say it is, all that matters is whether you can substantiate the supernatural claims. I hope it's not going to be "they wouldn't die for a lie" and "well most of it is quite accurate so it's all accurate". 

It could be the "Trilemma" argument that he has in mind. There are a few other variations on the "(philoso-babble goes here) therefore Jesus" types of "proofs" for Christianity that we can reasonably hope for.

However, there's no reasonable hope for any as yet undiscovered magic artifacts, demonstrations of supernatural powers or interviews with angels anytime soon. It's fair to say that if he had any actual evidence to offer that truly rises to the level of the burden of proof for his extraordinary claims, we wouldn't be hearing about it from some apologist wannabe dropping by our forum. 

It's also fair to guess we won't see any new philoso-babble arguments. Already the greatest minds that Christianity could muster working over the centuries have already done their best. 

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Oh, and Randy, for your benefit since you're new to this forum, "philoso-babble" is a term I use for often recycled "proofs" of Islamo-Christianity that are packaged and canned by professional apologists which exclusively involve mental constructs, thought experiments and hypotheticals. 

Even before we examine all the logical fallacies that are usually packed into such arguments, it's worth noting the complete absence of any hard evidence or demonstrations of the supernatural. At best, this is extremely weak "evidence", if it could be called that at all. I call this "philoso-babble" because academic philosophers regard apologetics as junk philosophy much the same way as scientists regard Intelligent Design as junk science. 


Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is the rule you operate by in every area of your life, else you would not be able to function since you would be unable to distinguish reality from all the invisible supernatural dangers that could exist and you can't prove otherwise. 

If I told you "I had lunch with my wife yesterday", this is a mundane claim which you would accept with my testimony and the lack of contrary evidence.

If I told you, "I had lunch with President Obama yesterday", this is an extraordinary claim which you would rightfully want to see evidence for. You'd be right to want more than just an argument that it's logically possible I could have had lunch with the President of the United States. You'd want to see hard evidence that this event actually took place. 

If I told you, "I had lunch with my father who's been deceased for over 10 years and his cremated ashes reconstituted themselves into his body and he's feeling so much better now," this is a batshit crazy claim that is on par with the claims you make with regard to Christianity being an accurate reflection of the universe in which we live. Four eye-witnesses would not be sufficient.

[robvalue]

I wonder, if a christian talked to a group of 100 people who all just witnessed god coming down to earth, admitting he is evil, then disappearing again... would they believe them? Come on, 100 people! And you can actually talk to them, not just read hearsay accounts of what they said years later.

How many christians would accept this without question? My guess is: none.

And please, no... not the trilemma!

I will be impressed if the arguments are even something we haven't heard before, in some form.

[Minimalist]

Dismissing the OT which is just dog shit as far as historical evidence is concerned I wonder what "history" there is in the NT which is little more than the babblings of jesus-freak retards and contains virtually no history at all.

And that which it does, like Augustus' alleged world-wide decree for everyone to return to their home town, is absurd rubbish.

[Crossless2.0]

Dismissing the OT which is just dog shit as far as historical evidence is concerned I wonder what "history" there is in the NT which is little more than the babblings of jesus-freak retards and contains virtually no history at all.

And that which it does, like Augustus' alleged world-wide decree for everyone to return to their home town, is absurd rubbish.

What I love about the census story is that, in order to believe it, one must also believe that Augustus was as stupid as the people who buy into the story in the first place.  Augustus was a lot of things, but stupid wasn't one of them.

[robvalue]

We're not trying to be mean, Randy. It's just we've been through this hundreds of times and stopped seeing anything new after the first 5 or so times. Maybe you'll surprise us

And not prophecies... no. No prophecies today.

[Mudhammam]

Dismissing the OT which is just dog shit as far as historical evidence is concerned

The OT contains a lot of important historical and geographical information, especially about conflicts the early Hebrews confronted. True, it's full of myth and embellishment, but so was practically every ancient text prior to (and still many following) the 5th century. It isn't until Thucydides that we have the first serious attempt (Herodotus notwithstanding) at reporting events free of nationalistic and religious fervor, and even then we have to take account of blatantly false information and individual bias.