(June 28, 2018 at 12:14 pm)Crossless2.0 Wrote:(June 28, 2018 at 11:45 am)SteveII Wrote: Nope. Science does not disprove these things because no one ever claimed they were naturally occurring events (and therefore the purview of science). To think so is question begging--the most popular sport of AF.
Fair enough. But there may be some naturally occurring events at work behind these claims of the sort routinely studied by anthropologists, social psychologists, philosophers and psychologists of religion, experts in the spread of comparative mythologies, etc. After all, the ancient world was rife with extraordinary stories and claims. Hiding behind, "But these are claims about supernatural events" doesn't really cut it for me or, I daresay, for most other non-believers.
The NT contains page after page of claims about the supernatural. Any alternate naturalistic theory you can propose for the existence of the NT and the first century church and their obvious beliefs has no evidence. It's fine if people don't believe as I do, but there is no escape-hatch-theory available for a "misunderstanding". So it would seem it's an all-or-nothing kind of thing. Either you believe events of the NT happened pretty much as it describes (because it is an interdependent system) or you believe that the whole enterprise is a fabrication by someone. The obvious question though is by whom and how did they pull it off without leaving any evidence?
