(August 16, 2015 at 11:27 am)robvalue Wrote: It's a false trichotomy Randy. Either you know that, in which case you're dishonest, or you don't know it, in which case you don't know logic.
Option 4: he simply believed he was the son of God, managed to get some other people to believe him and got killed for causing trouble. That's not covered by your 3 options, hence false trichotomy.
And this is where your "false trichotomy" charge fails. If Jesus believe that he was God, he was a lunatic. Lewis covered that...which you would know if you had ever bothered to read what he wrote. See, here's the thing...you're arguing against Lewis without actually having read Lewis.
Quote:I don't know if he existed, neither do you. I'm happy admitting the limits of my ability to interpret history.
You just can't bring yourself to make a decision, can you? The reason is because you don't WANT to decide...doing so has implications for how you choose to live, so it's better to claim that you can't really know for sure. That way, you can pretty much live however YOU want to live without having to answer to God for anything, can't you?
But I'm curious...by that reasoning, are there other historical figures whose existence you are equally willing to question, rob? If you had taken a history test in school and answered questions about Socrates or Alexander the Great with "I don't really know whether he existed or not, so I can't answer these questions", what kind of a grade would you have gotten from your teacher?
Why is it that historians believe we can know some things about the ancient past with some degree of confidence? Why is it that Ehrman says we can know that Jesus existed? Why is that you can't say that?
What are your criteria for accepting the existence of any person from the distant past? And how does YOUR yardstick (meterstick?) line up with that of professional historians?
Quote:But if he existed, your 3 options are not the only ones.
Your refusal to admit that someone can believe something but be wrong is at the heart of your faulty thinking.
What would be the real difference between Jesus believing he was a poached egg and believing he was God? Wouldn't he be considered a lunatic either way by those who heard him making the claim?
