The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[Randy Carson]

Muslim, Jewish, Atheist - makes no difference to me what someone's beliefs are. If they are NOT Christian, then they are forced to explain away the account of the resurrection of Jesus one way or another.

Bullshit. We're not forced to "explain away" a fucking thing.

Not to me. You have to explain the resurrection in some fashion to yourselves.

It's up to you to convince us if you want us to believe. You really don't get the whole burden of proof thing, do you? So far you've done a shit job. If that gawd of yours actually exists, it bust be epic face-palming at the poor job your doing.

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).

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.

oh, but his infallible church didn't 

vote that gospel into the cannon so it's not true/doesn't count.

Well, of course. If I could hack your forum account and post that I, SoW, had been visited by an angel and converted to Christianity, etc., would you claim that the post was spurious? Heretical, so to speak? Or what if I came online and claimed that I actually witnessed you responding to an altar call at a tent revival meeting and that the only reason you were denying it is because you were embarrassed to be a Christian? 


Would you want to include those posts in the "canon" of authentic SoW postings here at AF? Or would you "vote" them out?

The early Church evaluated the various epistles and gospels that were circulating and recognized which were inspired and which were not. This is how the canon was formed.

[Minimalist]

http://www.westarinstitute.org/blog/marc...testament/

Critics of Marcion like Tertullian and Epiphanius complained that Marcion cut and edited scripture to fit his beliefs. Biblical scholar Adolf von Harnack accepted this claim in his definitive text on Marcion, Marcion: The Gospel of an Alien God (1920). However, Tertullian and Epiphanius lived several generations after Marcion, and they assumed the New Testament they read already existed in Marcion’s era. It didn’t. Marcion’s critics were reading history backward instead of forward: there was no New Testament yet.

Yeah - so when did this so-called "paul" make it to the big time?  Justin, c 160 never heard of him which considering that Justin was in Rome writing to the emperor seems utterly unbelievable.  How could he not know of the man who brought jesus to the Gentiles a century earlier....or so the bullshit story goes.

[Cyberman]

Okay, Randy, I will explain the resurrection to myself. It's pious fiction. There you go.

[Randy Carson]

For those who may not be familiar with some of the relationships between the Apostles and the Early Church Fathers, the Apostle John had a disciple named Polycarp who had a disciple named Irenaeus who became bishop of Rome.

In AD 80, Clement of Rome, a disciple of both Peter and Paul who became the fourth pope, wrote the following:

"Through countryside and city [the apostles] preached, and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty, for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. . . . Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry" (Letter to the Corinthians 42:4–5, 44:1–3 [A.D. 80]).

Writing about AD 180, Irenaeus wrote the following:

"The blessed Apostles [plural meaning Peter and Paul], having founded and built up the Church [of Rome], they handed over the office of the episcopate to Linus. Paul makes mention of this Linus in the Epistle to Timothy. To him succeeded Anencletus; and after him, in the third place from the Apostles, Clement was chosen from the episcopate. He had seen the blessed Apostles and was acquainted with them. It might be said that He still heard the echoes of the preaching of the Apostles, and had their traditions before his eyes. And not only he, for there were many still remaining who had been instructed by the Apostles. In the time of Clement, no small dissension having arisen among the brethren in Corinth, the Church in Rome sent a very strong letter to the Corinthians, exhorting them to peace and renewing their faith. To this Clement, Evaristus succeeded; and Alexander succeeded Evaristus. Then, sixth after the Apostles, Sixtus was appointed; after him, Telesphorus, who also was gloriously martyred. Then Hyginus; after him, Pius; and after him, Anicetus. Soter succeeded Anicetus, and now, in the twelfth place after the Apostles, the lot of the episcopate has fallen to Eleutherus. In this order, and by the teaching of the Apostles handed down in the Church, the preaching of the truth has come down to us." (Against Heresies 3.3.3, [A.D. 180])

"Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time" (Against Heresies 3:3:4 [A.D. 189]).

"Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth, so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. . . . For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches with which the apostles held constant conversation, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question?" (ibid., 3:4:1).

I'm not that old, and I can name every US President from Obama back to Roosevelt from memory with a few VP's and some dates thrown in for good measure. And I can name a fair number from Washington on...but not in proper order. So, why does this matter?

Clement was a disciple of Paul and the successor of Peter in Rome. Irenaeus was only one "generation" removed from Paul.  The Church knew who its leaders were, and both Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome.

[Thumpalumpacus]

[blahblahblahblah]

Hey, asshole, you forgot to answer this:

Wait -- you don't consider the protection of pedophile priests as a failure -- in this case, a failure of conscience?

I'll get to the rest of those points later.  Answer me that: you honestly don't think that protecting molesters is an ethical and moral failure?!

You're clearly uncomfortable with defending child molesters ... so why do you support them?

[Minimalist]

In AD 80, Clement of Rome, a disciple of both Peter and Paul who became the fourth pope, wrote the following:

Or maybe not.

Loisy maintains that the author of 1 Clement was a distinguished Roman elder who flourished 130-140 and that this Clement was named in the Shepherd of Hermas (Vision, 8:3), which is also to be dated to the mid second century.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/1clement.html

or...

http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/apostolic.html

The next personality that proto-orthodox Christianity brought forward as another example of apostolic succession is Clement of Rome (d. c101). We know very little about this Clement beyond the fact that an unsigned epistle from Rome to Corinth around 96 CE was attributed to him (the letter was unsigned) and that he was recognized by later tradition as the bishop of Rome.

BTW, the 96 dating assumes some "persecution of xtians" by Domitian for which there is no evidence at all.

[Ravenshire]

Bullshit. We're not forced to "explain away" a fucking thing.

Not to me. You have to explain the resurrection in some fashion to yourselves.

Just as much as I have to "explain away" the resurrection of Lord Voldemort to not believe it actually happened.

It's up to you to convince us if you want us to believe. You really don't get the whole burden of proof thing, do you? So far you've done a shit job. If that gawd of yours actually exists, it bust be epic face-palming at the poor job your doing.

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).

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.

You're the one making the claim, dumbass. I just don't buy your bullshit.

oh, but his infallible church didn't vote that gospel into the cannon so it's not true/doesn't count.

Well, of course. If I could hack your forum account and post that I, SoW, had been visited by an angel and converted to Christianity, etc., would you claim that the post was spurious? Heretical, so to speak? Or what if I came online and claimed that I actually witnessed you responding to an altar call at a tent revival meeting and that the only reason you were denying it is because you were embarrassed to be a Christian?

I would have absolutely zero fucks to give if you did so, because it would be evident to those who know me at all that the posts are fraudulent. They wouldn't need some bunch of assholes voting on their authenticity to prove they're not mine.

Would you want to include those posts in the "canon" of authentic SoW postings here at AF? Or would you "vote" them out?

Once again, no vote would be necessary.

The early Church evaluated the various epistles and gospels that were circulating and recognized which were inspired and which were not. This is how the canon was formed.

Yeah, that infallible church you keep talking about. I don't buy that bullshit either. Your "holy truths" were decided by consensus through vote.

[Pyrrho]

He supports child molesters because he has no interest in the Bible at all.  See:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-33541-po...#pid950900

(It should be obvious if you look at the part that is a response to me, seeing what I posted and what I quoted.)

And also:



As screwed up as Christianity is, Catholics are even bad for Christians.

[Randy Carson]

Hey, asshole, you forgot to answer this:

Wait -- you don't consider the protection of pedophile priests as a failure -- in this case, a failure of conscience?

I'll get to the rest of those points later.  Answer me that: you honestly don't think that protecting molesters is an ethical and moral failure?!

You're clearly uncomfortable with defending child molesters ... so why do you support them?

My apologies, Parker. There was extensive discussion of this in a more relevant thread, and I didn't realize that you were not part of the fun there. I wrote:

First, there is no excuse for the sins committed by the priests who committed these crimes nor for the failures of the bishops who mishandled them. Those guilty of the crimes should be prosecuted, and those who showed poor judgment after the fact should be retired.

(I'm highlighting that because it was frequently missed by others.)

Second, I have spent MANY hours online discussing the matter in forums such as this.

Third, while I am disappointed, I am neither outraged nor shocked. We are a fallen race, and fallen people, fallen Christians included, commit sins.

Fourth, I keep this in perspective. I do not disassociate myself from public schools just because school teachers abuse minors. I do not disassociate myself from colleges and universities just because Jerry Sandusky abused minors at Penn State. I do not stop voting for elected officials just because our president had sex with an intern in the Oval Office. Why? See my previous point.

Fifth, unlike people who relish the opportunity to bash Christians in general and Catholics especially, I recognize the bias inherent in the reporting.

Only a tiny fraction of priests were involved; the percentage of pedophile priests is LOWER than the percentage of school teachers who abuse children.

And school systems moved teachers around, too. I provided sources to support my posts if facts are at all of interest to you.

[Minimalist]

Not to me. You have to explain the resurrection in some fashion to yourselves.

It's total fucking horseshit.  Check that off the list.