(July 31, 2017 at 12:35 am)Cecelia Wrote: Generally if you want people to believe your extraordinary claims, then yes--you do need extraordinary evidence. And the bible is NOT evidence. [1] The number of people believing it is NOT evidence. [2] The bible is the one making the claim (and I might add nobody knows who wrote the bible. Nobody even knows anything about the people who wrote the bible, except for what they themselves wrote. Which makes it not just an extraordinary claim, but a dubious one at that. Here people are putting their trust in an unknown author of unknown origins, from which they know nothing about except what the author themselves has said about themselves.) [3] The people believing the claim are the ones that accept it--but aren't evidence themselves. [4]
All you're essentially saying is that you don't need extraordinary evidence for your claim, because a lot of people agree with you, and atheists can just shove it. If that's what you're saying, instead of typing a wall of text, just say "Fuck off Atheists. God is real!" You might as well. It'll be just as convincing, and more honest than the bullshit of trying to spin logic in such a way logic is not meant to be spun. [5]
1. Here is a recap on the evidence we have:
- Documentary--books, letters (both actual and inferred-by careful textual examination)
- The presence of churches, the growth, the persecution, and the occasional mention in surviving secular works.
- The characters, their actions, character, stated goals, meaning of their words, and eventual circumstances
- Jesus' own claims (explicit, implicit, connections to the OT--some of which the disciples may have never known).
- The actual message: how it seems to fit the human condition, resonate with people, and how it does not contradict the OT--which would have required a very sophisticated mind to have navigated that.
- Paul and his writings on application and affirmation of the major claims--done before the Gospels were independently written. To have them work so well together is incredible.
- This one can't be stressed enough: the unlikelihood of alternate theories to explain the facts. I think it is obvious people believed from day one when Jesus was still walking around. I have never heard an alternate theory which could account for most or all of the concrete and circumstantial evidence we have.
You could write books on any one of the points above (and people do). The point is, it is not as simple as saying "there is no evidence" There are layers upon layers of evidence that one person or another will find somewhere between uninteresting to compelling.
2. I agree
3. We know quite well who wrote most of the NT. The books that we are unsure of, at least we know what group they came from. That is NOT to say the people who first started copying these texts did not know where they came from. In addition, the books we do not know NOW exactly who wrote them, they agree with and compliment the others.
4 Except the eyewitnesses that wrote books/letters like John/Peter/James and the other eyewitnesses mentioned all throughout Luke and Acts (which was written specifically as a investigative account) that interacted with Paul and the churches.
5. I am not trying to spin anything. I am discussing a premise that there is no such thing as extraordinary evidence. Only evidence.
