The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[DeistPaladin]

We don't really need to see hundreds of pages of reasons why the bible isn't quite as crap as people say it is, all that matters is whether you can substantiate the supernatural claims. I hope it's not going to be "they wouldn't die for a lie" and "well most of it is quite accurate so it's all accurate". 

It could be the "Trilemma" argument that he has in mind. There are a few other variations on the "(philoso-babble goes here) therefore Jesus" types of "proofs" for Christianity that we can reasonably hope for.

However, there's no reasonable hope for any as yet undiscovered magic artifacts, demonstrations of supernatural powers or interviews with angels anytime soon. It's fair to say that if he had any actual evidence to offer that truly rises to the level of the burden of proof for his extraordinary claims, we wouldn't be hearing about it from some apologist wannabe dropping by our forum. 

It's also fair to guess we won't see any new philoso-babble arguments. Already the greatest minds that Christianity could muster working over the centuries have already done their best. 

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Oh, and Randy, for your benefit since you're new to this forum, "philoso-babble" is a term I use for often recycled "proofs" of Islamo-Christianity that are packaged and canned by professional apologists which exclusively involve mental constructs, thought experiments and hypotheticals. 

Even before we examine all the logical fallacies that are usually packed into such arguments, it's worth noting the complete absence of any hard evidence or demonstrations of the supernatural. At best, this is extremely weak "evidence", if it could be called that at all. I call this "philoso-babble" because academic philosophers regard apologetics as junk philosophy much the same way as scientists regard Intelligent Design as junk science. 


Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is the rule you operate by in every area of your life, else you would not be able to function since you would be unable to distinguish reality from all the invisible supernatural dangers that could exist and you can't prove otherwise. 

If I told you "I had lunch with my wife yesterday", this is a mundane claim which you would accept with my testimony and the lack of contrary evidence.

If I told you, "I had lunch with President Obama yesterday", this is an extraordinary claim which you would rightfully want to see evidence for. You'd be right to want more than just an argument that it's logically possible I could have had lunch with the President of the United States. You'd want to see hard evidence that this event actually took place. 

If I told you, "I had lunch with my father who's been deceased for over 10 years and his cremated ashes reconstituted themselves into his body and he's feeling so much better now," this is a batshit crazy claim that is on par with the claims you make with regard to Christianity being an accurate reflection of the universe in which we live. Four eye-witnesses would not be sufficient.