(January 28, 2015 at 5:06 pm)SteveII Wrote: You can claim the first century Christians were wrong all you want. That does not make it so. You have failed to prove that either 1) they really didn't believe or 2) that they beleived but there was a better explanation than a miracle happened.By the same token, their claims are just that, until actual evidence is provided. The extra-Biblical claims regarding Jesus are light on claims to divinity, and as I already said even the one that could be construed that way treats the subject casually. As if godhood were not something to get excited about.
I don't have to prove that some fellow running around claiming to be god wasn't god, or that he didn't rise from the dead. I can apply the same level of skepticism that you apply to every other claim of divinity, with the added bonus of being just a bit more consistent in my demands for proof.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
