So with the Gospels being irreconcilable with one another or with what we know of history and the supposed eye-witnesses having been discredited, the Christian Apologists will just give up and join the natural universe with the rest of the grown ups, right?
"NO!"
"Never give up! Never surrender!"
"Your orders, sir?"
"Activate the Unlimited Ad Hoc Hypothesis Generator"
That's right. Why accept defeat when your entire worldview rests upon an admittedly unproven assertion about the existence of things which must be believed in without evidence and against all evidence? Since the gods you believe in are made up, why not also just make up reasons why contrary evidence can be explained away?
And if those reasons to dismiss the evidence are themselves debunked, you can just improvise either new reasons to dismiss the contrary evidence or reasons to dismiss the contrary evidence against your made up reasons to dismiss the evidence.
And so on... and so on... repeat as needed.
The great thing about this approach is you can just pull reasons to dismiss the contrary evidence out of your ass, even improvising them on the spot.
There's no need to worry about providing any evidence for your improvised ad hocs. All you have to do is say, "It coulda happened".
It doesn't matter that the ad hocs are extremely unlikely. They need only be remotely plausible. And if they're not, you can just improvise more ad hocs to make the proposed ad hocs plausible.
And you can smugly grin to yourself as the skeptic must now do the legwork to fact check your improvised bullcrap. And when he/she comes back with evidence against your ad hocs, just make more up. Then watch them scurry about playing wack-a-mole.
Eventually, you "win" when the skeptic gets tired and goes home. Since it's logically impossible to prove a negative, you're guaranteed to be able to churn out more ad hocs than the skeptic can possibly disprove.
Monte Python demonstrates the effectiveness of this technique.
"He's dead"
"No, the parrot is resting" (ad hoc)
"OK, if he's resting, I'll wake him up" (evidence against ad hoc)
"He's stunned. You stunned him as he was waking up." (ad hoc to cover ad hoc)
"Maybe he's pining for the fjords." (a new ad hoc)
"The Norwegian Blue prefers to mourn on its back" (ad hoc to cover ad hoc)
"Well, of course he was nailed there..."
With the discussion of the Ad Hoc Hypothesis finished, we come to the show put on by the apologists. They have no evidence. They have no contemporary accounts. They have no artifacts. Their presentation lacks any substance. Still, they put on quite a show.
One of the rabbits pulled out of a hat by appologists is the "earlier census". This is not just one ad hoc but a flourish of them.
First, they assert that the "census" being referred to by Luke was an earlier census, one conducted in 9-8 BCE.
Second, they must move Quirinius about so they assert that either the text says "before" and not "when" or "during" (and all the English translations have gotten it wrong since then) or that Luke wasn't referring to Quirinius as a governor but an administrator of the census (and again, all the translations are wrong).
Translation errors are still errors. If the Holy Spirit watched over all the scribes but didn't oversee the translations, it renders the supervision of the original texts rather moot. Oh well, let that go.
Third, if Quirinius wasn't the governor of Syria, they needed to make him an administrator of the earlier census, brought in to micromanage the actual governor of Syria at that time.
The problems with this apology are legion:
But fear not, true believer, for the apologist will stand ready for a fresh round of ad hocs that I'm supposed to research and come back with more evidence disproving them.
Luckily for me, I'm armed with Occam's Razor.
The simplest explanation is it's exactly what it looks like. The reason they SEEM to contradict each other is because they DO contradict each other.
"NO!"
"Never give up! Never surrender!"
"Your orders, sir?"
"Activate the Unlimited Ad Hoc Hypothesis Generator"
That's right. Why accept defeat when your entire worldview rests upon an admittedly unproven assertion about the existence of things which must be believed in without evidence and against all evidence? Since the gods you believe in are made up, why not also just make up reasons why contrary evidence can be explained away?
And if those reasons to dismiss the evidence are themselves debunked, you can just improvise either new reasons to dismiss the contrary evidence or reasons to dismiss the contrary evidence against your made up reasons to dismiss the evidence.
And so on... and so on... repeat as needed.
The great thing about this approach is you can just pull reasons to dismiss the contrary evidence out of your ass, even improvising them on the spot.
There's no need to worry about providing any evidence for your improvised ad hocs. All you have to do is say, "It coulda happened".
It doesn't matter that the ad hocs are extremely unlikely. They need only be remotely plausible. And if they're not, you can just improvise more ad hocs to make the proposed ad hocs plausible.
And you can smugly grin to yourself as the skeptic must now do the legwork to fact check your improvised bullcrap. And when he/she comes back with evidence against your ad hocs, just make more up. Then watch them scurry about playing wack-a-mole.
Eventually, you "win" when the skeptic gets tired and goes home. Since it's logically impossible to prove a negative, you're guaranteed to be able to churn out more ad hocs than the skeptic can possibly disprove.
Monte Python demonstrates the effectiveness of this technique.
"He's dead"
"No, the parrot is resting" (ad hoc)
"OK, if he's resting, I'll wake him up" (evidence against ad hoc)
"He's stunned. You stunned him as he was waking up." (ad hoc to cover ad hoc)
"Maybe he's pining for the fjords." (a new ad hoc)
"The Norwegian Blue prefers to mourn on its back" (ad hoc to cover ad hoc)
"Well, of course he was nailed there..."
With the discussion of the Ad Hoc Hypothesis finished, we come to the show put on by the apologists. They have no evidence. They have no contemporary accounts. They have no artifacts. Their presentation lacks any substance. Still, they put on quite a show.
One of the rabbits pulled out of a hat by appologists is the "earlier census". This is not just one ad hoc but a flourish of them.
First, they assert that the "census" being referred to by Luke was an earlier census, one conducted in 9-8 BCE.
Second, they must move Quirinius about so they assert that either the text says "before" and not "when" or "during" (and all the English translations have gotten it wrong since then) or that Luke wasn't referring to Quirinius as a governor but an administrator of the census (and again, all the translations are wrong).
Translation errors are still errors. If the Holy Spirit watched over all the scribes but didn't oversee the translations, it renders the supervision of the original texts rather moot. Oh well, let that go.
Third, if Quirinius wasn't the governor of Syria, they needed to make him an administrator of the earlier census, brought in to micromanage the actual governor of Syria at that time.
The problems with this apology are legion:
- The assertion that there was a census in 2 BCE by the article is not supported in any publication that I know of. The links that seemed to be footnotes on the site don't work. What a surprise!
- If the census was taken in 8 BCE, Jesus would have been too old by the time Luke tells us that JtB even started his ministry in 28/29 CE, never mind when JtB was jailed.
- We know where Quirinius was and it wasn't in Syria micromanaging some stupid census that the local authorities could have managed. He was either conducting important military campaigns or being governor of another provice (in modern day Turkey).
- The narrative of Luke's reference to Quirinius and the tax census is when Rome took over the new province and Augustus wanted to know how much tax revenue could be generated.
- Prior to 6 CE, Judea was not a Roman province and its citizens were not Romans. It was a client kingdom run by Herod the Great. Its citizens would have been Judean, not Roman.
- The census in 8 BCE would have been too late for Jesus to be about 50 when he was crucified in 28 CE according to John.
But fear not, true believer, for the apologist will stand ready for a fresh round of ad hocs that I'm supposed to research and come back with more evidence disproving them.
Luckily for me, I'm armed with Occam's Razor.
The simplest explanation is it's exactly what it looks like. The reason they SEEM to contradict each other is because they DO contradict each other.
Atheist Forums Hall of Shame:
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
