Challenge to atheists: I find your lack of faith disturbing!

[Minimalist]

there are some facts

And those would be?

[Lion IRC]

... Herods command to have all the newborns slaughtered is recorded in the bible and nowhere else.

Strange that.

Maybe it wasn't all that extraordinary for him to do stuff like that. He wasn't a very nice guy.

How about the slaughter of the Canaanites?
Counter-apologists like to talk about that a LOT.
Historical event or fiction?

[MindForgedManacle]

I'm not sure exactly who pointed these out, however they hold as true, including for people like Ehrman who are secular/non-believing NT/Greek historians/scholars.

I don't get what you're sayimg here. Elaborate? Because if you're saying Ehrman agrees with those 4 facts in particular, you're flat out wrong, as Ehrman has made clear in both debates and on his website.

You could think of it in terms of Holocaust denial. Some of the "facts" are open for discussion, such as the exact number of people who were killed - estimated to be 11 million - but I don't think anyone would be surprised if that figured turned out to be 11.5 million or 12 million. But some of the indisputable facts would be that Nazi's targeted Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled and people who resisted the Nazi regime. That they systematically and deliberately practised genocide, in addition to forced labour.

The Holocaust has far more more documentation and multiple types of evidence than anything related to Jesus of Nazareth. That's not even a remotely good comparison.

The same can be said for the life of Christ - there are some facts - in fact well more than the four that I've listed - that are well beyond disputed. Other facts would include that Paul wrote "at least" these 7 epistles: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.

You brought up those 4 facts, so I stuck to those. Further, what do the Pauline letters have to do with facts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth?

And I see you skipped over 1st Timothy. Perhaps because it is *most probably* a forged Pauline letter? You're not a Biblical inerrantist, are you?

[Minimalist]

Fiction.

BTW, your problem with Herod is that you are ignoring class distinctions. Herod was apparently popular with the commons as there were no revolts against him.....it was the nobility which hated him. Guess who wrote the histories?

[MindForgedManacle]

Maybe it wasn't all that extraordinary for him to do stuff like that. He wasn't a very nice guy.

...Said the Bible. Further, killing infants tends to be noteworthy, regardless of the character of who commanded it.

How about the slaughter of the Canaanites?
Counter-apologists like to talk about that a LOT.
Historical event or fiction?

We bring it up because for Biblical literalists it's a massive problem in your theology if an perfect being is calling for constant near-genocides.

As for their historicity, probably didn't happen. As with much of the OT (esp. Exodus), it's pretty well established archaeologically that it either didn't happen or it didn't happen on anywhere near the scale that is claimed.

[Lion IRC]

Maybe it wasn't all that extraordinary for him to do stuff like that. He wasn't a very nice guy.

...Said the Bible. Further, killing infants tends to be noteworthy, regardless of the character of who commanded it.

Noteworthy? Abortion doesn't seem to get much publicity. Herod was not a nice guy. He killed his own relatives too.

How about the slaughter of the Canaanites?
Counter-apologists like to talk about that a LOT.
Historical event or fiction?

We bring it up because for Biblical literalists it's a massive problem in your theology if an perfect being is calling for constant near-genocides.

It's not a problem for me. Sometimes there are 'end-justifies-the-means' excuses for terrible violence.
More babies died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than in Canaan.
You don't hear Lawrence Krauss apologising on behalf of scientists for the physics that produced the atom bomb!

[MindForgedManacle]

Noteworthy? Abortion doesn't seem to get much publicity. Herod was not a nice guy. He killed his own relatives too.

You're just baiting, but I'll take you up on it and thrash you. Abortion is by definition NOT the killing of an infant. The majority of abortions take place well before the fetus stage. And in fact, there are legal issues preventing later term abortions in all but extreme circumstances. And to even make this type of argument work for you, you have to make a 'potential life argument', which I'll be happy to do.

I'm not sure what killing his relatives has to do with this. My point was that if such had happened, clearly it was recorded because it was found newsworthy.

It's not a problem for me. Sometimes there are 'end-justifies-the-means' excuses for terrible violence.

1) Not for an omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly-good being. No outcome is of ANY difficulty for it. It contradicts its apparently fundamental goodness. It could have convinced the Canaanites to leave. It could have converted them. But it chose genocide.

Further, using an 'ends-justifies-the-means' ethic means you cannot support God via a Divine-Command morality. And as I just mentioned, it's fundamentally in contradiction with God's supposed capabilities.

More babies died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than in Canaan.
You don't hear Lawrence Krauss apologising on behalf of scientists for the physics that produced the atom bomb!

Firstly, that's stupid beyond belief. There were less people in Canaan than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so more couldn't be killed anyway.

Secondly, the Israelites didn't have the technology to kill that many people. If there were as many Canaanites in the story and the Israelites had atomic weaponry, they could have killed just as many people, and if we take the story seriously, they WOULD have killed that many people.

We don't need Krauss to do that. Einstein (who helped both indirectly and somewhat directly in its creation) apologized for and felt somewhat ashamed in having done so.

[Optimistic Mysanthrope]

...Said the Bible. Further, killing infants tends to be noteworthy, regardless of the character of who commanded it.

Noteworthy? Abortion doesn't seem to get much publicity. Herod was not a nice guy. He killed his own relatives too.

For me, there is a huge difference between an abortion and the systematic killing of of children under 2. I can understand how other might have a different opinion though.

It's not a problem for me. Sometimes there are 'end-justifies-the-means' excuses for terrible violence.

That doesn't seem to be a very moral attitude towards genocide.

[Ryantology]

Noteworthy? Abortion doesn't seem to get much publicity

Nope, you never do hear about that in the news, never have politicians in backwards parts of America doing their damndest to close abortion clinics. No sir. You nailed that one.

It's not a problem for me. Sometimes there are 'end-justifies-the-means' excuses for terrible violence.

Why don't you tell us precisely what ends justified the deliberate slaughter of an entire people, with explicit instructions not to spare the helpless and innocent.

More babies died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than in Canaan.

And of course, that makes your genocides okay.

You don't hear Lawrence Krauss apologising on behalf of scientists for the physics that produced the atom bomb!

Thus saith LAWRENCE KRAUSS ... go and smite Hiroshima, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

I'm just as sure that never happened as I'm sure that no god ever ordered up a fresh genocide of some obscure desert civilization, but the fact that you not only want to believe that it happened but that you worship the fictional criminal who was fictionally responsible, means that you're just one mental glitch away from becoming a danger to society.

[Aractus]

I don't get what you're sayimg here. Elaborate? Because if you're saying Ehrman agrees with those 4 facts in particular, you're flat out wrong, as Ehrman has made clear in both debates and on his website.

Ehrman has some wild theories/speculation. But nothing he says disagrees with the fact that he still has confidence that Jesus existed, called disciples, etc. Which facts in particular are you saying he disagrees with?

You brought up those 4 facts, so I stuck to those. Further, what do the Pauline letters have to do with facts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth?

And I see you skipped over 1st Timothy. Perhaps because it is *most probably* a forged Pauline letter? You're not a Biblical inerrantist, are you?

I never said that any of his writings are "probably forgeries". Regarding the Pastoral Epistles, I simply didn't say that's overwhelming consensus for Pauline authorship as there is for the others I mentioned. I would point out to you that the scepticism of Pauline authorship is based on some rather flimsy assumptions, and not on hard facts or evidence.

For instance, the fact is that none of the three contain any new doctrine or contradictory message not found within Paul's other letters, so if it's a forgery what was its purpose? Also, as pointed out by Daniel Wallace, Ehrman can't have his cake and eat it too - Ehrman bases his conclusion that the three Pastoral Epistles are forged based on the vocabulary of the text - well if he is willing to make this claim, then he's saying that he does know exactly what the original greek text said, because how else would he know what the vocabulary is?

My view remains that the inherent greek vocabulary is that of the scribe and not of Paul, and that's an inescapable problem for anyone - like Ehrman - who claims that such sweeping conclusions can be made on the basis of vocabulary. The simple fact is that Paul himself didn't put pen to paper, and dictated his epistles to a scribe, who would memorize what Paul said go away and write it down on papyrus.

Romans 16:22: "I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord."