RE: Why science and religious fatih need not be in conflict: It's as easy as 1-2-3!
May 5, 2017 at 10:06 am
(This post was last modified: May 5, 2017 at 10:08 am by Neo-Scholastic.)
(May 5, 2017 at 9:51 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:Neo-Scholastic Wrote:Tom Wright is a fine scholar and a firm believer in the resurrection. So why do you cite him since you obviously disagree with him on the central issue? It's kind of like complaining that you aren't being hung with a new rope.
I am impressed. The fallacy of 'how dare you cite someone on something they are qualified to have an educated opinion on when you don't agree with every position they hold' seems a little long, but it may be the most concise way to describe what's been accomplished here. It seems like a round-the-block to get to a tu quoque combined with a reverse appeal to authority and a backwards ad hom. If I were one of the judges, I'd give it a ten.
Just to be clear the quote doesn't even accurately reflect Wright's position. Every informed person knows that the gospels are titled the "Gospel According to (fill in the blank)..." not the "Gospel written by ( fill in the blank). So, indeed, none of the gospels claim to have been written by actual apostles. That's hardly anything surprising. They are however understood, even by Wright, to be written by people intending to and capable of accurately record the recollections of the apostles after which the gospels are named. Moreover, the notion that Luke and Acts were in fact written by a highly educated contemporary of the apostles with command of extensive non-trivial facts about official titles, contemporary medical terms, geography, and even meteorology that could not be known by anyone other than a travel companion of Paul, that notion, is much more credible than any alternative interpretation of both those texts and external sources. Moreover, if Luke relied on source material from Mark and Mathew, something out of which skeptics tend to make a big deal, then Mark and Mathew are credibly dated within the generation of possible eyewitnesses.