Why be good?

[Randy Carson]

Parkers, I do not and have never denied your service or your testimony about your experiences. So, I'm not sure why you keep referring me to your service records....I BELIEVE YOU.

That's the whole point of this...I can believe what you say about your service, your experiences with "atheists in foxholes" and the authenticity of the documents you have scanned and put online, etc.

I don't know you from Adam, but I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt in spite of the fact that you are highly motivated to prove me wrong (above just about all others in the forum have been out to do so since the day I arrived - and that's saying something).

I BELIEVE YOU because in the absence of evidence to the contrary about your character, your motivations, your mental state, etc., I have no reason to believe that you would lie about something important to you.

Neither did the apostles.

You're still missing the point, which is that I do not expect you to accept my word at face value. I expect you, and anyone else who claims to be intelligent, to ask for evidence if such is pertinent. It clearly is pertinent when you're pulling your Perry Mason act about asking me if I'd swear to it: here, I'll show you, you need not take my word is my response.

I understand, Parkers. Really. I know that you were NOT asking me to accept your word.

But what I'm driving at is this: we DO believe people all the time based upon our inclination to accept what people say at face value unless we have some reason to doubt them. I quoted Professor Richard Swineburne previously precisely because he makes this point: we accept what knowledgeable and reliable people say ALL THE TIME without fact-checking them.

That is because I understand that the onus is upon me to demonstrate my claim.

Fair enough. But it was pretty obvious that not only you three but Stimbo and others were getting pissed that I asked if you would be willing to testify in court, etc. CD was very insulted and said so - if memory serves. The consensus of the group was, "Who the hell are you to question...". And no, that is not a quote...just my impression of the sentiment of the group earlier in the thread. 

When you can present evidence in proportion to the extraordinary claims made in the NT, we will once more have the basis for conversation. Until then, your comparison of the NT author's writings to the service history of any poster here is fatuous -- because our claims are documented.

Parkers, I think that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would say they HAD documented their accounts pretty well. Luke is pretty emphatic about having researched the whole thing carefully, for example.

I feel sort of embarrassed for you that you don't see such a simple point as the one I'm making here.  I'm not accusing you of wronging me. I have not accused you of doubting my service.  What I have done is show you what is required to evidence a claim. I'm saying that you don't understand something so simple as standards of evidence.

Thank you for understanding that I was not accusing you of anything. Lord knows, there are plenty of people in this forum accusing me of enough as it is.

But there is no need to feel embarrassed for me. I am fully aware of your need for 'extraordinary evidence", believe me. But what I have done is to show the entire forum that the reason people got bent out of shape yesterday when I asked how far you would be willing to go to defend your written statements, is because the natural human response to someone saying something is belief. Not disbelief.

When you approach the historical accounts of Jesus with a hermeneutic of suspicion, you are off to a bad start.