(August 2, 2017 at 5:02 pm)Simon Moon Wrote:(August 2, 2017 at 4:00 pm)SteveII Wrote: Welcome to the party Simon.
1. First, 'good' as it applies to standards of proof is subjective, so that sentence is your opinion. Second, what type of evidence for first century miracles, supernatural, God claims would be 'good' evidence? If this 'good' evidence is not possible, then you are just question begging: miracles can't happen so the NT can't be evidence of miracles.
I have never claimed that miracles can't happen. Only that I have not been presented with the type of evidence that would convince me.
My claim is that texts, written by scientifically illiterate people, decades or more after the alleged events, by non eyewitnesses, is not good evidence. Anyone that considers themself a critical thinker but then lowers their bar for evidence for miracle claims to texts, is doing it wrong.
Quote:2. Not at all. Unlike all of the atheist who make the claim of "no evidence", I am willing to look at the evidence presented from other religions and tell you precisely why I don't find them compelling. Go ahead...present some evidence for another religion and I will tell you why we have apples and oranges and definitely not special pleading.
And of course, you will use your religious texts as the ruler, in order to make the judgement on whether they are or are not compelling. While, what you should actually be comparing them to is the "null hypothesis". The same ruler I compare ALL religious texts to.
Quote:3. I'm sure they are. What we don't have is other people describing the same single event -- the abduction of one single person. All we have is self-reporting. Here is the real problem with this analogy: if Jesus had written his claims down, you would argue that it needed to be witnessed by others for us to believe!!
Actually, this is not true. There are quite a few experiences with mass sightings and multiple abductions.
Quote:4. It is your claim they were not eyewitnesses! They claimed they were. Competing claims...I go with them.
Not my claim. The claim of the majority of Biblical scholars, including Christian scholars.
1. Why do you say non-eyewitnesses? 27 books plus Q, possibly L and M as well is in the list of evidence. The fact that we don't know who wrote 3-4 of them does not mean what you think it means. Of course the recipients would have known the exact provenance of each. In the case of the three gospels, the people who copied the manuscripts for distribution only felt the need to record whose information was contained in the document (Matthew, Mark, John) and not the guy with the pen. Luke was not a disciple and intended to "write an orderly account" in Luke and Acts. If you want actual eyewitnesses with their names on the books, John, Peter, and James.
2. I consider the evidence. You didn't present any to comment on so I guess I am off the hook for 'special pleading'.
3. Notice you did not address my point. I specifically said multiple people describing the same abduction. Otherwise these abductions are in the mind of one person at a time--which is only evidence of what goes on in the mind of one person at a time.
4. First, I don't believe you are right, second, you can find a scholar to believe nearly anything to support any opinion you or I want to.
