The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[robvalue]

Thanks for addressing my point.

But here we go, logical fallacies I'm afraid. Equivocation fallacy: courtroom. No half decent courtroom accepts supernatural explanations. In your example, we have a load of people in court just saying what they believe happened, and it's an extraordinary story. It's akin to "I saw a ghost appear and it scared him to death." Now, do you think any courtroom would ever accept a claim like that? Even if the court think these 20 witnesses, all with the same story, really do think they are telling the truth? Even if they are the most reliable witnesses ever? The answer is no. Or if they do accept it, the court is a joke. We're trying to establish whether there actually was a ghost, not just something a bit like a ghost but with a natural explanation. Reliability does not equal infallibility.

You can't pretend supernatural claims are the same as natural ones. In a courtroom we hear about things which we at least know are possible. Not so with supernatural things. So equivocation fallacy, I'm afraid.

You say there is more evidence. Evidence for what? In the courtroom example, what "evidence" could back up a ghost story? You're trying to establish the credibility of the witnesses, I get it. What I'm saying is I don't care how credible they are, why should I accept supernatural claims from them? I wouldn't from anyone else, not even my wife. I am not saying they are even lying. I'm conceding for the sake of argument that they are telling the truth about what they believed happened. But that doesn't mean that it actually happened. So yes, you're just arbitrarily deciding to believe what they believe. What else are you doing? You're saying it's more likely these things actually happened than they are mistaken.

It's my contention that this is an impossible gap to bridge. To give me a reason why I should believe what someone else believes, when they talk about something I have no reason to believe is even possible, requires a logical fallacy. I identified the equivocation fallacy above. Would you like to try again?