Why be good?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Here, I'll play:

Why is what the authors of the gospels wrote about the things they saw any less credible than the things you wrote about (highlighted above for clarity)?

Because unlike our experiences, they aren't verifiable.

Alternatively, why should we give you the benefit of the doubt - and take you at your word - but not do the same with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

Because if push comes to shove, you could get hold of the Reserve records for his branch of service and verify his service -- including his presence in combat -- from their records. You could also find his squad-mates and interview them.

Can you explain what makes YOUR write up of YOUR personal experiences more believable than theirs?

Because claiming to have been in combat -- or in my case, to have gone into the danger of a working fire -- is much more believable than claiming to have been the son of God.

I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and shit a better argument than this one that you're mounting, Pigeon.

[IATIA]

Alternatively, why should we give you the benefit of the doubt - and take you at your word - but not do the same with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

So what you are saying is, that the stories of Zeus, Hercules, Gilgamesh, Ra, Anubis, Marduk, An, Enlil, etc. (I can list hundreds more if necessary) are also true.

[Randy Carson]

Lol...haven't read all of it. Just some pertaining to me. I can attest that what CD said was true. I don't care if you believe it or not. Our word is a lot more reliable than your fairy tale. Jus' sayin'.

Kitty-

Thank you for joining the discussion. 

If you DO decide to go through the thread more carefully, you will note that at NO time did I ever dispute the truth of what CD, Steel or Parkers originally posted. Obviously, I did not dispute your witness of CD's experience, either.

What I illustrated, however, is that when people tell us what they experience or see, in the absence of evidence to the contrary (about their character, etc), we can normally believe what they have reported.

This is just as true of the four gospel writers as it is of CD, Steel, Parkers and you.

Now, I would not say that this ALONE proves that God exists or that Jesus is God, but it does suggest that there is a better case for the historical reliability of the NT than most in this forum fully appreciate.

---

Oh, that's right.  You don't have jack-shit.

And you're not even intelligent enough to see that crucial distinction.

Heh. Intelligent? I manage to get by.

I posted three questions to CD a minute or two ago. See what you can do with them.

Thanks.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Heh. Intelligent? I manage to get by.

I'd set the bar higher if I were you.

I posted three questions to CD a minute or two ago. See what you can do with them.

Thanks.

Been there, done that ... unimpressed.

[Randy Carson]

When CD, Parkers and Steel took exception to my "atheists in foxholes" comment, they wanted to counter my comments with their own personal experiences (CD and Parkers) and the experiences of others (in Steel's case). When they put them into writing in an online forum, they had every expectation that what they wrote would be accepted and believed as true. 

Now, they may counter after the fact that they don't give a hoot whether I believe it or not...but that isn't consistent with their motivation at the time they first posted. At that point, it was their expectation that their anecdotal evidence would be demonstrate that I was in the wrong about "atheists in foxholes". IOW, it was their expectation that their personal eyewitness testimony would be sufficient to overcome my previous comments.

You're absolutely wrong. Why do you think I have that stuff online? I've had this "atheist in a foxhole" conversation several times before, and you're not the first theist to question what I've said about it -- hell, you're not even the first theist here at this forum; you can ask Drich about that. So I didn't expect at all to be accepted at face value, and that is exactly why I have this sort of stuff loaded onto my Tinypic.  If you go and look at the upload dates, you'll see they long predate this questioning.

Parkers, I do not and have never denied your service or your testimony about your experiences. So, I'm not sure why you keep referring me to your service records....I BELIEVE YOU.

That's the whole point of this...I can believe what you say about your service, your experiences with "atheists in foxholes" and the authenticity of the documents you have scanned and put online, etc.

I don't know you from Adam, but I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt in spite of the fact that you are highly motivated to prove me wrong (above just about all others in the forum have been out to do so since the day I arrived - and that's saying something).

I BELIEVE YOU because in the absence of evidence to the contrary about your character, your motivations, your mental state, etc., I have no reason to believe that you would lie about something important to you.

Neither did the apostles.

[SteelCurtain]

Hahaha suckered into? Every single person here knew exactly where you were going with that transparent bullshit. We just were hoping you weren't that stupid.

Of course you all did. And I really appreciate the fact that no one said a word in advance and let the whole thing play out to the end. That was nice.

I did post three questions to CD a moment ago...care to answer them?

Please feel free to peruse the why would they lie gallery of idiocy which we have encountered many times before you. If you think we were at all surprised by you turning over high card with a pair on the board, here's a pro tip, Randy: We all see the pair on the board.

Why is what the authors of the gospels wrote about the things they saw any less credible than the things you wrote about (highlighted above for clarity)?

You have yet to demonstrate the following:
1) Who the writers of the gospels were
2) That they saw what they wrote down rather than wrote down oral history
3) That, even if we take 1) and 2) out of the equation and make some ridiculous logical leaps to get where you want us to be, that just because a person believes something and relates that, this makes it true. See Frederic Bartlett's experiments on reconstructve memory. (note: I hesitate to even put this last one in here, because I know you'll skip right over the first two points. Please prove me wrong.)

Alternatively, why should we give you the benefit of the doubt - and take you at your word - but not do the same with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

You shouldn't. If you cared to verify it, you could do so. Makes literally no difference to me. If you were skeptical to the point where any part of my story makes you think I was lying, you are free to investigate and come to your own conclusion. Either way, it is something that you could find out.

Can you explain what makes YOUR write up of YOUR personal experiences more believable than theirs?

Well, mine doesn't have zombies running around. Mine doesn't have conflicting accounts of Jesus' childhood, birth, death. Mine doesn't have men walking on water or multiplying fish, or magical healing, rising of the dead, a claim to have been written by illiterate lower class peasants from rural Galilee, proven to be pseudepigraphical. I am the primary source for my story.

So, those things. But still, make up your own mind. I will trust that the people who know me will trust my story, and that is all that matters to me.

[dyresand]

Pro Tip Randy

1. Pslams - don't use them if you were to read them in order of the time they were written you can see how pointless it is using them in a argument.

2. Gospels - don't use those either

3. Bible passages - were heard them all before don't bother

4. Don't piss people off

5. Show a little respect.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Pro Tip

1. Be ORIGINAL <- important.

2. Don't be a ass.

[Esquilax]

Why is what the authors of the gospels wrote about the things they saw any less credible than the things you wrote about (highlighted above for clarity)?

Alternatively, why should we give you the benefit of the doubt - and take you at your word - but not do the same with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

Can you explain what makes YOUR write up of YOUR personal experiences more believable than theirs?

You know, you could keep asking these questions, or, you could go back and see the answers to them that have existed here since yesterday, twenty minutes after you first posed this point. I mean, you've definitely already read them, you deleted all of them bar the first and last line of my post for a quote earlier, so what gives, continuing to pretend that they haven't been given?

That's lie number three.

[Randy Carson]

I don't think you fully appreciate what has happened here today.

Randy, I understand exactly what went on here, though I certainly do not appreciate it: you impugned the character, personally, of a number of people here, whom you don't know, simply to make a cheap rhetorical point. In doing so, you demonstrated that the real human beings here on this forum, many of whom I've known for years and like a great deal, are less important than your feeling of being constantly correct.

How did I impugn anyone? If I did, it was accidental, because I was very careful in what I wrote and how I phrased my questions. But if you disagree, please quote me verbatim in context so that I may see my error.

Almost immediately after you took your ridiculous point to its ill-fitting conclusion, I posted a response detailing the many, many reasons one should dismiss the gospel testimony, while accepting that of my friends here. Here it is, it took me maybe twenty minutes from your post to write it. Your very next post- I hope you didn't dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on the back there, by the way- asserted that nobody had addressed what you said, which is a complete lie, as I had done so literally two posts after you had hunkered down over a heap of newspapers and unclenched the argument in the first place. That's lie number one.

Why do you call me a liar? I've read your posts...you write almost as much as I do...and I wasn't impressed with the response you gave. So, yeah, you responded, but you didn't really refute my point.

I will say this...and this is not a courtesy that I think many will extend to me...I will go back and re-read your post CAREFULLY a second time. Okay?

The thing is, you can't even claim to have missed my rebuttal, because that's the post you're quoting to respond to me. You just deleted all of the actual rebuttal, as if you can just pretend it was never there. So you're claiming that nobody has addressed what you said, while having laid eyes on a post that addresses what you said. That's lie number two.

Ah...see above. That's zero lies so far.

So to recap: you begin by insulting all of us, for no reason other than that it serves your infantile, equivocatory purposes. Then you lie about it afterwards, multiple times, to make yourself look better, as though the rest of the thread isn't recorded for anybody to look at and link to anytime they like. It's not that nobody addressed what you said, it's that you're too busy declaring victory, that you're too much of an intellectual coward, to pit your baseless, fiat assertions (Randy's patented "because I said so!" style of argumentation) against the actual facts, and scholarly consensus surrounding these issues. You want the appearance of having intellectual justification for your beliefs, while cheating when it comes to the hard work, and this is aptly demonstrated by the fact that your responses are either nothing but claims, or "you don't actually disagree with me, you're just biased against me," which is toddler logic at its finest.

Now, if you want to come back and address the rebuttal I actually wrote, that's fine, though I doubt you can do it adequately. But what you can't do is sit here and pretend that nobody has written one, unless you like being the new forum charlatan, in which case by all means, encourage people to join you in the solipsistic echo chamber you call a life. We won't do it, but it's so very entertaining watching you swan around in your little imaginary world, chest all puffed up at victories against strawmen opponents using equivocations instead of arguments.

<snort>

People throw so much crap at me in these threads that I don't bother to respond to most of them. But if you watch carefully, you will note that from time to time someone like Julia or Jenny or Jorm or somebody will ask a decent question to which I try to provide a courteous thoughtful reply.

And I LIKE being challenged in a serious way because it makes me think my own positions through more carefully. So, one of the reasons I'm in the forum at all is to challenge myself to learn, etc. IOW, I WANT people to respond on a serious, intellectual level. Instead, it's all epithets and ad hominems and the latest filibuster about some thing eating stuff...perhaps the thinking is that if they derail the thread long enough, I'll go away. Silliness, really.

But, yeah, as I said, I didn't see anything of substance the first time, but I will go back and re-evaluate your post. Now, in fact.

[Esquilax]

How did I impugn anyone? If I did, it was accidental, because I was very careful in what I wrote and how I phrased my questions. But if you disagree, please quote me verbatim in context so that I may see my error.

"There are no atheists in foxholes," which is a statement you made about me specifically, and then applied it to everyone else, while sticking to that statement, impugns our character in that is asserts we are insincere in our beliefs. You backpedal by calling it an aphorism, a general rule, but that doesn't alter that the content is insulting, nor that you said it, to me, with specific use of pronouns asserting that I would believe in god when I get close to death.

Why do you call me a liar? I've read your posts...you write almost as much as I do...and I wasn't impressed with the response you gave. So, yeah, you responded, but you didn't really refute my point.

Why do I call you a liar? Because when you say that nobody has addressed what you said, while knowing someone addressed what you said, that's a lie. You might not be impressed with what I wrote, but your fiat dismissal means absolutely nothing.

I will say this...and this is not a courtesy that I think many will extend to me...I will go back and re-read your post CAREFULLY a second time. Okay?

Maybe try actually responding to it, eh? Because "nuh uh!" isn't much of a rebuttal, in fact it smells distinctly like a dodge.

<snort>

People throw so much crap at me in these threads that I don't bother to respond to most of them. But if you watch carefully, you will note that from time to time someone like Julia or Jenny or Jorm or somebody will ask a decent question to which I try to provide a courteous thoughtful reply.

And I LIKE being challenged in a serious way because it makes me think my own positions through more carefully. So, one of the reasons I'm in the forum at all is to challenge myself to learn, etc. IOW, I WANT people to respond on a serious, intellectual level. Instead, it's all epithets and ad hominems and the latest filibuster about some thing eating stuff...perhaps the thinking is that if they derail the thread long enough, I'll go away. Silliness, really.

But, yeah, as I said, I didn't see anything of substance the first time, but I will go back and re-evaluate your post. Now, in fact.

Hey, you say you want a serious response, but when I give one that references the scholarly consensus on the gospels, plus probabilities with regard to reality, you dismiss it out of hand, without a second thought, as though "I don't find this convincing" counts for anything. I already know you most likely disagree with what I wrote; the reasons why are what we're here to discuss, and when you won't even post them then it's you who is derailing the thread, not me. I responded to the meat of what you wrote. You responded with "nah," when you bothered to respond at all; lest we forget, your very first response to what we all had wrote was to say that nobody had addressed it. I had, and it turns out that you didn't want to seriously respond.

But somehow, we're the ones not producing anything meaningful.