(October 8, 2021 at 11:31 am)ayost Wrote: Again, without something definitive showing me that the gospels cannot be true, I have no reason to doubt what they say is true.
So here is where I would take issue with your approach because that's not the way historians approach ancient literature generally and I doubt the way you approach the scripture of other religions such as Islam. Historians don't take ancient works at face value until shown incontrovertible proof of falsity or as an all or nothing proposition. They look at many indicia of reliability and approach each claim individually. Many accounts of Roman emperors include clearly fantastical elements. Historians can tentatively accept some of these claims but, applying the principle of analogy, reject others as likely fabricated. Fantastical claims in ancient works were common, and that is one reason they are so easily rejected. So I would say there are very good reasons to reject the miracle claims of the gospels, including the resurrection. That doesn't require us to deny a historical Jesus but rather to temper what we believe about his life and death through a principled set of criteria that we apply to other works of ancient literature.
