Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

[Mister Agenda]

The claims of Jesus aren't truly known, only what was eventually written down about what he was said to have said. There's no way of discerning his own words from words put in his mouth by followers who wanted the deified version of their teacher to be ascendant. I doubt it was added later, more likely the sayings of Jesus were mixed with those of previous or contemporary teachers very early in the oral tradition.

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The very story you're trying to defend as accurate in every jot and tittle illustrates that the Jews had no authority to put anyone to death under Roman occupation.

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Even the doctor was without schooling? Since the disciples didn't actually write the gospels, there's no reason to drag them into it. They weren't around to make corrections.

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You seem to have a very distorted idea of how long it takes for events to be mythologized. It can happen in a very short time, and it's easy to find documented examples of that sort of thing happening in the last hundred years, including people who walked around healing pretty much anyone who touched them (and who weren't remarkably religious, they were just novel to the locals). It only takes a minute to tell someone a version of events that is inaccurate and the version that spreads by word of mouth is the version that is most dramatic and entertaining.

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Your arguments seem to be based on personal incredulity, for the most part.


I thought you said the disciples were too unschooled to do sophisticated theology?


You so often cite how many scholars agree with you that it didn't occur to me that you would actually think the Gospel of Luke was written by the apostle Luke. How many scholars agree with you on that?


You're the only one proposing a conspiracy. I guess that's easier to argue against than what I actually proposed. Paul joined in on an existing movement and seems to not have known about some of the events of the gospels.


That those beliefs are central to Christianity is not in question. Whether the resurrection and everything else in the gospels actually happened is what is in question.


1. You don't have to prove it to yourself, true. What are all your posts on the topic for, then?

1.1 You are explaining a theory that has no reason to believe it other than the supernatural content. This is where the OP comes in. Regular evidence points to Jesus pretty much said what they said he said. 

1.2 Unfortunately they didn't get the memo before they stoned Stephen. 

1.3 Luke was not a disciple. Why weren't the disciples around to review the documents before they were copied and sent out. The actual disciple probably did not sit down with a quill. 

2.3 No. Personal incredulity is not understanding something...therfore no. This is simply inferrence to the best explanation. You have to admit that if these events happened, then the simplest explanation is that it happened as it was claimed. 

3. Luke was not a disciple. Never met Jesus. See Luke 1. He "set out to write an orderly account."

4. No, I am pointing out that if you deny that the events unfolded they way they are laid out, that that's what you are stuck with. You have a timeframe and real characters that would have known the truth interacting and producing results that are nearly certainly true (the first century church and the documents we have are largely the way they were to begin with). Either it is true or it was a conspiracy.

I'm curious what you think Paul did not know that was material to all this.

5. That is the question. 

1...Combat bad reasoning among my atheist friends (for their own good).

Thanks for correcting me about Luke. The rest of your response is pretty amazing.

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I didn't go with myth. I went with an historical Jesus.

Yes, but I assumed you did not go with the version that does miracles, forgives sins, claims to be God, and died for our atonement and rose again. How would you characterize all those things? Myth? Lies?

Since the 'mythicist' position is that Jesus didn't really exist, you're introducing a needless element of confusion between the 'mythicist' and 'historicist' positions. No, I wasn't going with the version that actually violated the laws of biology and physics. You specifically requested an account that didn't do that.

What does it take to justify rational belief in true miracles? More than stories about them.

And I would hesitate to characterize all of those things as one thing because they don't all fall into the same category. I expect Jesus forgave sins, possibly may have claimed to be God, though I personally suspect those words were put in his mouth in the re-telling; he most likely died because he got in trouble with the Romans and his followers added meaning to his death by making it an atoning sacrifice, he may have survived the crucifixion; people were declaring other people dead mistakenly pretty frequently back then; and it would actually explain why he 'died' so quickly when the process usually takes days, and why it was so important to get him off the cross and into a tomb when the Roman practice was to leave those crucified up until they rotted enough to fall off. If it was the case that there was a conspiracy to rescue Jesus by drugging him, it would be a lie. If he was in a deep coma without drugs being involved, all concerned could reasonably and honestly suppose he rose from the dead, given the medical knowledge of the time. Or it could have been like when Elvis died and people started seeing him everywhere, in which case it's legend (rather than myth). Only one of these resurrection scenarios requires an intent to deceive, and the object of the deceit would have been the Romans.

All that is speculative, but they're natural alternatives to your version, which is what you demanded.