The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[robvalue]

Yeah. At some point you're just going to have to say, "And I choose to believe what they say really happened, and happened exactly as they said it, and the supernatural causation they attributed was correct." Or, "This story is special because ... and this makes this the one real religion."

And if you don't say that, you need to come up with an argument so blinding that it will take us by storm. In my opinion it's a near impossible, if not actually impossible, task to demonstrate even vaguely let alone beyond reasonable doubt that the supernatural stuff happened. I don't care if we could talk to eyewitnesses right now who saw Jesus be ressurected. It's not enough evidence for a sceptic. And similarly, you would not believe a group of 4 people who said they have just been abducted by aliens, without a whole lot of evidence, right? Or would you?

Why do people take testimony from around that time as somehow magically true? People could be fooled or plain make stuff up back then just as well as they can today, you know. Just saying, "Well, I don't think they made it up or were fooled because..." is not going to cut it.

I'm just trying to save some time and sweat here. This is the only part that matters, you can have the whole rest of the bible word for word for all I care, and you could even say all the accounts are eye witness accounts and were exactly what people believed happened. That is your absolute best case scenario. And even then, it's not good enough. Belief does not make fact.