Challenge to atheists: I find your lack of faith disturbing!

[xpastor]

Actually, the burden of proof is on you to show that the apostles, or eyewitnesses of Jesus' ministry, did write the New Testament.

No it's not, the claim was made by MsTricky, when one makes the claim one needs to explain why they believe their claim.

OK, fine. The NT is filled with fantastic stories which violate the laws of nature. It is only one of many works from that era which do the same, e.g. Herodotus, Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana, virgin birth stories about Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Augustus. So why should we believe that the NT is true and other tall tales from that time are false?

Even the most conservative commentators acknowledge that we do not know for sure who wrote the four gospels. Nobody signed them and the authors never explained their connection to the subject matter. The headings "According to Matthew, According to Mark, etc.) were added decades later on the basis of traditions handed down by the Church Fathers.

And that's proof of what exactly, it doesn't eliminate the apostles.

It doesn't eliminate virtually every other literate person at that time and place. Actually when we specify literate persons we do eliminate the apostles. Peter and John are specifically said to be illiterate in Acts 4:13, and this is what we would expect of all of Jesus' immediate disciples who were manual workers from Galilee.

Too many Christians argue for the Bible from the basis of "it could have been thus." Could is the last refuge of the implausible. There could be a Loch Ness monster because the loch is very deep. There could be unicorns but we just haven't seen one yet. As Betrand Russell pointed out, there could be a teapot orbiting the sun in between the Earth and Mars which is just too small to be detected by our telescopes ... but the probability of its existence is negligible.

You have no way of knowing that a forger did not slip by Ephesians or 2 Thessalonians, which appear to differ in style and content from the other epistles. ...

What makes you believe Ehrman knows any of them are forgeries. Forgeries where caught and eliminated, you yourself said so. Because there were forgeries you assume they found their way into the scripture, I believe they did not because all the NT lines up in it's teachings.

You talk as if Ehrman is just making up this stuff out of thin air? Ehrman got a doctorate in NT studies under Bruce Metzger who was regarded by many as the greatest NT scholar of his time. More significantly still, Ehrman started off as a fundamentalist, a graduate of Moody Bible Institute. If it was so glaringly obvious as you imagine that the NT can just be taken at face value, I'm sure he would have been happy to accept it.

Here are his reasons for challenging two of the epistles attributed to Paul.

2 Thessalonians seems to present a totally different eschatology than 1 Thessalonians. In 1 Thess 5:2-3 (regarded as authentic) he warns "the Day of the Lord will come as a thief comes at night. When people say, 'Everything is quiet and safe,' then suddenly destruction will hit them! It will come as suddenly as the pains that come upon a woman in labor, and people will not escape." However, in 2 Thessalonians 2 he warns not to expect the end any time soon and he lists signs which must first happen:

Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to be with him: I beg you, my friends, 2 not to be so easily confused in your thinking or upset by the claim that the Day of the Lord has come. Perhaps it is thought that we said this while prophesying or preaching, or that we wrote it in a letter. 3 Do not let anyone deceive you in any way. For the Day will not come until the final Rebellion takes place and the Wicked One appears, who is destined to hell. 4 He will oppose every so-called god or object of worship and will put himself above them all. He will even go in and sit down in God's Temple and claim to be God.

5 Don't you remember? I told you all this while I was with you. 6 Yet there is something that keeps this from happening now, and you know what it is. At the proper time, then, the Wicked One will appear. 7 The Mysterious Wickedness is already at work, but what is going to happen will not happen until the one who holds it back is taken out of the way. 8 Then the Wicked One will be revealed, but when the Lord Jesus comes, he will kill him with the breath from his mouth and destroy him with his dazzling presence. 9 The Wicked One will come with the power of Satan and perform all kinds of false miracles and wonders, 10 and use every kind of wicked deceit on those who will perish. They will perish because they did not welcome and love the truth so as to be saved. 11 And so God sends the power of error to work in them so that they believe what is false. 12 The result is that all who have not believed the truth, but have taken pleasure in sin, will be condemned.

Not at all the same picture of a thief coming in the night at any moment. In fact, to me it sounds as if the author of 2 Thessalonians has been reading Revelation, which was written long after Paul.

Most scholars are confident that Ephesians is not authentic on grounds of style and content.

This short epistle uses 116 words not found anywhere in Paul's undoubted writings. It is written in long convoluted sentences quite unlike the short choppy sentences he normally employs.

Paul says of himself in Ephesians that he lived "in the passions of the flesh, following its desires and senses." However, in his other writings he presents himself as a strict follower of the law, e.g, "According to the righteousness found in the Law I was blameless." (Phil. 3:6) There is also a striking contrast in the way he describes the Christian experience. In Corinthians Paul squelches the idea that the resurrection has already happened, that the Corinthians have already been raised up with Christ. However, in Ephesians that is exactly what he says: [God] "hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (2:6)