John the Baptist

[DeistPaladin]

Of course you did, but that's not at all a necessary conclusion from the texts.

But it's the simplest explanation. The alternative is to tie yourself into knots trying to make them all fit with one another. See my "ad hoc hypothesis" description above.

That's a non sequitur. Reversing the two doesn't necessitate JtB baptizing Jesus in gJohn.

You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were defending the apology that you refused to defend earlier.

That said, and you're welcome to decide you've changed your mind, can you map out the 4 point timeline? I think I may just be confused as to the order of events you're describing.

Regardless, have the problem that you haven't shown Jesus calling Peter and Andrew in gJohn.

The passage refers to Peter and Andrew calling Jesus the Christ and following him. The later passage in John chapter 3 that I offered described where Jesus and his disciples went. In other words, Jesus had gathered his disciples, an event which doesn't happen in the Syoptics until after JtB was put into prison.

As usual, critics try to cover their argument from silence fallacy with a special pleading fallacy.

My use of the absence of evidence was not fallacious, for reasons already offered. Much as people of faith try to claim otherwise, in some cases absence of evidence IS evidence of absence.

Otherwise, as I've said, Argument from Ignorance wouldn't be a fallacy.

By the way, God spoke to me this morning and said you should renounce Jesus and become a deist. You can't cite the lack of evidence for my claim as a reason not to believe me because that would be Argument from Silence.

And where did I use Special Pleading?

Tautology. You could lump any record of the events into "Christian mythology."

Not necessarily. Non Christians could have reported on the miracles as "sorcery" or "unexplained events".

For that matter, non Christians could have failed to notice the miracles but still reported on the famous and controversial ministry of Jesus which had spread to all the colonies like wildfire and captured the attention of the local priests and rulers.

They could have. They didn't. Clearly, if Jesus existed, he got no one's attention outside his small band.