Debate with a Christian

[Jacob(smooth)]

I'm less happy with restricting it to "errors" because it leaves our the element of proof. To show an error one assumes the correlary to be true. Some of my issue is the "dog which barked in the night" principle, which is not so much an error.

But the hell with it. Let's call it errors to get things moving. Provided you promise not to get semantically pedantic over the difference between an error and an inconsistency or whatnot.

The restriction is necessary because you have asked that I deal with one point at a time in a four round debate. My case is extensive and much of it is revolving around various interpretations of key concepts relating to the nature of the gospels, what historians consider to be contradictions, the burden of proof and who it goes to in approaching texts critically etc etc.

All of these concepts and several more must be enumerated and expounded upon and this will necessitate my opening post to contain a lot more than just "one point".

In fact my opening post would of necessity have to be about the size of a small chapter one commonly finds in reference material dealing with these concepts.

Maybe you would just like to give me one reason why you think the gospels are errant? No debate would be necessary to the discussion of this reason. We could just start a new thread here and dedicate it to this reason.

Ye gods, we've used more words debating the structure of the debate than the debate will involve . Fine, cover as many points as you like but I don't really want to read an entire book on hermeneutics in order to muddy what is a very simple topic.

OK, because their are substantive differences between the accounts of the same events which mean they can't all be correct.

Now enough already. It's a flippin online forum not the Oxford debating society and this is swiftly moving from a bit of fun to a pain in the arse. We can do one with the original title or not bother.