Why do you believe?

[The truth]

quote='['The truth' pid='368565' dateline='1354392686']
Not really, it all comes down to A. the reliability of the witness B. were there judge well except the testimony and even then they need more evidence to back the claim


I am sorry to say faith has no academic merit or can it be used as evidence, but I will let it slip this once. the accounts of Jesus even if the disciples had given accounts directly they would have been old ad memories warp over time (this is why back in the first point about reliability of the witness, time of a key factor) and thus may not be what really happened. Also again the original text my have been closer to the true but time and scholar error/ deliberate change over 2000 years can greatly chance the story.



the many factors that can influence a witness's ability to accurately identify a suspect, 

includes how much stress a witness is under:
We know that the disciples were under a lot of stress. For the scriptures said that they were all on one accord inside of there room waiting for something that Christ had promised them after his resurrection. They abandoned there life duties to wait for a dead man. 
the next influence is the amount of time a witness had to look at the person: 
This also agrees with the eye wittness account of the apostles. They saw Jesus for 40 days strait! 
the lighting present at the time: there experience for christ was doing the day. So this also agrees.
how long it's been since someone first witnessed the crime or suggestions of guilt by police: when they first gave there testimony it was only weeks after his resurrection. Hundreds of people saw him not just the apostles for these forty days. In court these eye witnesses would definitely hold up.


I truly understand where you are coming from but think about this for one moment: 
We derive our knowledge on events of ancient history primarily from written sources. These sources consist of historians' annals, official proclamations, personal correspondence, genealogies, or someone recording a song or tale previously only transmitted orally. The historian will combine these with other sources (such as paintings or relics, monuments, archaeological remains, etc.) and try to derive the true events and development of the society which he is studying. Before dismissing the Biblical accounts as "ghost stories" or third and forth hand knowledge, I would propose that you could research how we account for our current view of all ancient events. Contrary to what may be assumed, the New Testament documents were all composed within sixty years of the events which they record. This is hardly enough time to develop them into incredible fairy tales.  It would be tantamount to someone constructing the idea in the 1990's that Kennedy never really died after the Dallas shooting, but the whole thing had been faked by Hollywood. This story won't go anywhere, because there are too many eyewitnesses still alive today who could contradict it. When examining the evidence given, the life and resurrection of Christ stands out as the most well documented and supported events of ancient times. No other facet of ancient history has as many manuscripts, from so many different areas, in such a short time from the instance of occurrence as does this. There is no good historical reason to deny the events took place.

http://www.comereason.org/cmp_rlgn/cmp005.asp

The church fathers were Aramaic, is was only later when the different texts were made and the change from Aramaic to Greek became a problem. also the Bible in total is missing 13 books because they were voted out of canon (can somebody help me reference this) and some books total a more interesting twist on the Jesus/Yahweh story.

Textual interpretation did become a problem on some levels but there's no evidence to suggest that there were no true interpreter at the time who understood Aramaic in it's original form. Besides, there were other church fathers who wasn't Aramaic at all. The total books that was voted out of the cannon were done so because they were not in agreement with the original witness of the apostles and the first century church documents.

This has recently been refuted let the evidence speak for it self

 It is no wonder that Nazareth was not mentioned by historians:
John 1:46 -- And Nathaniel said to him (Philip): "Can there be any good thing come out of Nazareth ?"
This implies that Nazareth is a lowly, poor and backward place where it will never produce any person of significance....

Historians write about kings and emperors; not about people in rat holes...

The evidence that Nazareth DOES existed in Jesus' time came from the finding of a list in Aramaic (Jewish language) describing a number of famlies of priests that were no longer needed in 70 AD.
It is the custom to select priests from every town and city to serve in the temple ,

When the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, the priests were no longer needed....

Archaeologists have discovered a list of 24 families of priests who were relocated after the temple's destruction and one of the family was registered as having moved to .... you guessed it.... Nazareth !

So Nazareth does exist in 70 A.D. !

Recently, a Roman bathhouse from 2,000 years ago - the time of Christ - was found in Nazareth
A first century temple was also found that dated back to the first century

http://www.ichthus.info/CaseForChrist/Ar...intro.html

Firstly is was Catholic Archaeologists that did the digging. Why is this important?
Well Christianity would be complete destroyed if Jesus's home town did not exist, so they could 'edit' what they found to keep there faith in tacked and since (ironical) this place is mostly Arabic if Jesus did not exist they loss a profit and what does that say for the rest of the Quran. so both had a big steak in it.
And because its sacred no Non-religious Scientist will ever get a look.
Also The bible says the town of Nazareth not the hamlet of Nazareth which it is more likely to be. Also if there was a settlement there it was not renamed Nazareth until 135 CE/AD. Also not in the gospel of Philip (one that got voted out of the bible) Jesus is not Jesus of Nazareth but Jesus of Nazarene (or Nezer) or Truth (or even Branch/flower derived from the Hebrew noun 'netser' ('netzor'))
You can look deeper for yourself @ http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html
Sources are at the bottom of the page.

I understand why you think someone has falsified the documents but isn't this only opinions?

I'm sorry I had to comeback you were the only one who gave me any type of intellectual argument. Your statements were thought provoking. To bad there aren't many of atheist like you around the truth!!!![/quote]
I try to be fair as work debatable on friendly terms, like you I seek the true, no matter what it really is and as long as its accurate with evidence then I will support it. I hope it keeps being thought provoking .

Continue to seek the truth. I believe in the end you will find it. You have a honest heart unlike a lot of bias atheist I come across. Thank' for keeping it on friendly terms. That's the only way we could find some real truth without ripping each other's heads off. Lol

http://www.comereason.org/cmp_rlgn/cmp005.asp