The written records as evidence

[Vicki Q]

I think I'm going to add you to my ignore list. Why? Might have everything to do with the use of "YOLO".

Feel free. But whatever you decide, you might want to recalibrate your irony meter.

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Simon Moon

What a wonderful username.

Well, I'm convinced... that there might have possibly been some mundane events in the life of Jesus, that might have been believed by some early Christians to be miracles. Then were written in texts decades later, by mostly unknown authors, later edited and loaded with copy errors.

Agreed, and that's the point. The history will take us back to some sorts of events in Jesus life for some of the stories in the NT. Neither myself nor JPM are naïve about what happened after that. In fact JPM's lack of naivety is a major strength.

I'm not sure why mundane events would be interpreted as miracles. They can't have appeared to be mundane. Making gullible claims about C1 villagers knowledge of science won't do it either. Joseph was worried about Mary's pregnancy not because he did not know where babies came from, but precisely because he did.

What is more likely? That mundane events were misinterpreted as magic? Or they were actually magic?

If you say the latter, then that means you will be in a constant state of cognitive dissonance, having to believe in all sorts of mutually exclusive miracle claims from different religions.

Either that, or you are forced into the fallacy of special pleading for the miracle claims of the religion you decided to believe in.

Or I'm comfortable with God acting through other religions. You seem to be making assumptions about my beliefs.

Yes, if you have a gullible worldview that allows you to believe unsupported, unlikely, implausible miracle claims, then yes, you will believe the miracle claims.

You can interview 1000's of people that are still alive that honestly and sincerely believe they were abducted by aliens.

Do you give their claims any credibility? Why or why not?

I try to keep an open mind in situations where I haven't examined the evidence and see no compelling argument either way.

It doesn't matter what the early church believed. Even if their belief was sincere, there is no rational reason to justify accepting their claims just because they believed.

What witnesses?

That was sort of the point I was making in the first half of the last post. A methodical use of critical historical techniques will take us as far as saying that: witnesses (friend and foe alike) believed with clarity that events happened in Jesus' life which can be described as unusual and not easily explainable within current scientific models.

To go beyond that takes us into a wide ranging debate, to which I summarise my view that the best and simplest explanation is that it is more or less true.

Are there non-religious models that fit the evidence better than religious ones?

Of course there are.

Perhaps JPM should finish: “the shifts in C20 physics simply serve to remind us that...not only the arguments in defense of miracles but also the arguments rejecting them depend in part on the particular view of the physical universe that prevails in a given period of civilization. Once that prevailing vision of the cosmos changes, not only arguments in defense of miracles but also the arguments against them require reformulation”.