The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[robvalue]

Well, there's two answers to that. There's the amazing generous answer, from my previous challenge, and I'll just be repeating myself.

"Telling the truth" means saying what they bekieved happened.

No, telling the truth means telling the truth. Someone can believe something that is not true, but what I have said is that the authors appear to have been careful in their research, accurate in their details and thoughtful in their presentations.

You are imbuing them with not just complete and utter honesty but infalibility to not be mistaken, or fooled, to misenterpret, to oversimplify, to be confused, for memories to get distorted... or just plain not understand what's going on and filling in the gaps. There is a world of difference between what someone believes about an event, and the truth of the event. And given the unbelievably extraordinary nature of the claim, it will always be staggeringly more likely that they fell foul of one of the hundreds of ways a human can err rather than it actually happened just as they wrote.

Given that the community of believers would quickly correct any errors that appeared in a written account, I'm not at all inclined to believe that errors made it into print. (And you should take note of the fact that I am NOT appealing to the promise of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus said would remind the apostles of all that He had said to them them NOR am I relying on the infallibility of the Catholic Church which has settled this matter long ago.) These books were not written in a vacuum or simply churned out and published one day..."Hey, everybody....look what I wrote!" The authors were part of a community, and novelties would not have been received well. Contrary to the claims of Ehrman and his disciples in this forum, the Church was not interested in embellishing a legend. It was interested in preserving the truth.

In fact, actual ressurection itself is not a given. The last part of Mark is highly suspected of being a forgery, meaning even he did not actually know Jesus had risen. It's suspected to have ended at 16:8 with just some guy telling them to spread the rumour he had risen. A story was probably later added to try and cement it as fact rather than a rumour. As you hopefully know, Matthew and Luke borrowed heavily from Mark so this is really just the one account and it's not what people would like it to be.

What a mish-mash of ideas! Mark was the travelling companion of Peter and Paul. He wrote his gospel based upon the teachings of Peter. And you want to say that Mark was unaware of the resurrection? Rob, seriously, you need to read some scripture...not as a believer but just so you can avoid this kind of fuzzy thinking.

Not so generous answer: They got some things right, sure. It's not hard. If you're living at that time, you could write things down that were true. They can also make up a story based very loosely on a real character, and pepper it with actual true stuff to make it more convincing.

How would that story fly given that living eyewitnesses to Jesus' crucifixion were still alive? And if the account of feeding the five thousand was pure fiction, wouldn't more than a few people have said, "Hey, I have relatives living up that way...they never heard of any of this"?

And if you want to claim that the whole kit and kaboodle is pure fiction, then you have to explain the extra-biblical sources which point to the existence of the historical Jesus. It's one thing for forum members to be dismissive...but it's another thing to actually justify dismissing the pagan and Jewish references to Jesus and/or the Church. I have not doubt there are scholars who are willing to do just that, but I think I'm on pretty safe ground when I say that most scholars - even the skeptical ones - acknowledge that there are some 10-15 universally accepted facts about Jesus which lead us to believe that He - one man - did exist.

You're still insisting on the false dichotomy that the gospels are either completely true I'm every detail or totally false. This is simply not true, if anything. In fact, the disciples making up the story fits the facts a whole lot better than the story really happening. Far better. It requires no greater assumption than people are willing to make up stories to get what they want, which we know is true. All this "they died for this and that" is also in the bible, so could be written to make it look like they really believed it.

Would Bobby Henderson be willing to die for the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Nobody dies for something they know to be a lie.

The apostles did not believe because they heard. They knew because they saw. And they have told us what they knew and saw accurately.

Whether you believe depends on God's grace and your will.

[Edited the below about a million times. Sort it out Rob.]

OK, we're done. If you refuse to acknowledge the difference between telling what you think is the truth, and actually being correct, you're being extremely dishonest and using a massive double standard. You're saying someone who has done careful research must be correct about everything. Unless, of course, their research is about a different religion. You're happy to distinguish between belief and fact for every person ever, including your most trusted friends, but not for the authors of one particular specific book.

I didn't say it was all fiction, I was very clear to make that point. You're not addressing my points, you're strawmanning me and just using evasive fallacious reasoning. I could address all the fallacies, but it would be pointless while you hold the above stance. The general consensus is that the gospels were not written by eye witnesses, by the way. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that they were, and you still need to be dishonest to try and make the case. I acknowledged there may have been a "real Jesus" beneath the story, yet you are talking as if I said the opposite.

Your case boils down to "You should just believe it because the bible has some historical accuracy". Well, so does Spider-Man. New York exists, but it doesn't mean Spider-Man does. Whether you believe the bible depends on whether or not you've already decided it is true for other reasons, which I'm sad to see you're not willing to discuss. If you change your mind about that, I'll rejoin the discussion. Or if you admit to some of this dishonesty. If what you say is actually true, you should not need all these dishonest and fallacious arguments to try and convince me. And to convince us is the point of this, for which you are failing I'm afraid. The burden of proof is on you, as you are making the claim. Even if all the crazy stuff in the bible did happen, so what? It's clearly all finished now. No evidence of anything like that going on today. It seems god is dead or has lost interest.

Yes, people can die for things they know are false. People can do all sorts of strange things. And again, this only establishes that they thought they were correct, not that they were actually correct. You acknowledge this distinction in every person ever alive, except bible authors.

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That last point I made, about this distinction, is what you need to think about if you take anything away from your discussion from me.

You also feel the need to misrepresent what atheism is in order to try and shift the burden of proof. I guess you didn't read my website:

http://robvalue.wix.com/atheism#!what-is-atheism/c57k

Not all atheists are strong atheists. And to ask us to prove the bible wrong... the argument from ignorance. Here is my article about logical fallacies, in case anyone is unsure what exactly I'm talking about when I reference a particular one:

http://robvalue.wix.com/atheism#!logical-fallacies/cwi1

One final thought. I can't speak for every atheist of course, but personally I have no agenda. I have no particular reason to want to disbelieve in gods. I just do, because I'm unconvinced. If there actually is a god, I don't care. I would carry on my life exactly the same way. I would assume a being of such power would have no interest in anything I do, nor require anything from me. So I'll continue to put those people and animals around me first because I know what I do matters to them. If christianity was true, I wouldn't care. I would carry on my life exactly the same way. It would just mean either god was an evil bastard, or the bible is misrepresenting him. So what, I don't care. Nothing I can do about it.

So you see, it makes no difference to me either way. This allows me a kind of objectivity, because I have no vested interest either way. If there is a god and he is of good moral character, he would be pleased with how I am living my life I think. If he is any other type of god, I don't particularly care what he thinks.