Modern examples of gullibility as evidence against Christian claims

[DeistPaladin]

Mark, Matthew and John were eyewitness followers of Jesus.

Nope. Even taking Christian claims of authorship at face value.

Mark: Companion of Paul, not a witness, told the story he heard from Peter's preachings, and Peter wasn't an eye-witness to all the events, according to Mark, so we've got hearsay on top of anonymous hearsay.

Matthew: Elaborated on Mark, corrected some of his theological mistakes regarding Jewish tradition but still lied and lied and lied about what the OT said. Seriously, cross-reference some of the OT that Matt references and you see that ol Matt is lying his ass off.

Matthew was responsible for evangelizing to the Jews. No wonder he failed so miserably.

John: His "advanced" theology, such as "The Jews" being a hostile religious group and his introduction of Trinitarian type concepts (John's Jesus was one with Yahweh while the Synoptic Jesus was clearly separate from and subordinate to Yahweh) rule out that his testimony was contemporary with the others.

as well as internal agreement

Three words: Mark chapter 16.

That resurrection account just got better and better with the telling, even with later editions of Mark.
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It means the quoter believed they happened. You don't use fiction to support the point you're making in an essay.

***Bzzzzz*** Wrong.

The lines between fiction, urban legend and "true story" are all a lot more fuzzy than we might think, even in the modern age.

Even today in the Information Age, where debunking an urban legend is just a Google search away, fanciful stories make their way from fiction (labeled as such) to a "they say" type urban legend to "no, this really is a true story". Do a search on "glurge" stories sometime.

Even as a skeptic, I've learned to be very careful about what sources I cite. There are urban legends on our side too, like the one about the preacher who went to evangelize to an atheist native tribe in the south Pacific and wound up becoming an atheist. Turns out that was just a story too. The difference between "our side" and yours is we seek to distance ourselves from and expose this kind of crap, even if it supposedly supports "our position". (I put "our side" in quotes because really we lack belief in something but let that go).

Now take us back to ancient times when people didn't have access to such information. Further, let's remember we're talking about religion, a force that seems to multiply this urban legend effect.

The earliest histories of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than four hundred years after Alexander’s death. Two writers. Four hundred years later. This is typical. Other examples, first date is time written and second is earliest copy:

Apples and oranges. Military and political leaders are set to a different standard than miracle working godmen. This is so because mundane claims require mundane evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The existence of some guy who was a military leader is a mundane claim. The existence of a miracle working godman is an extraordinary claim.

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Just to add to my point about fiction -> urban legend -> "true story" above...

Remember how Christians freaked out about Dan Brown and his work of fiction about a Jesus bloodline?

This was a work of fiction and labeled as such. And yet Christians flipped out because they were so afraid people would take it seriously and such beliefs might worm their way toward "true story".

This only underscores how Christians are well aware of how fuzzy the lines really are between fiction and false history.