Why are other civilizations ignored in the Bible?

[Jacob(smooth)]

Yeah, I had a blond moment regarding the number of fingers (hey, I never claimed to be perfect!)

No, you need to be a Christian to be sufficiently humble to claim perfection!

Nobody else is humble enough.

[DeistPaladin]

Maybe because the bible wasn't a news paper?

Its toilet paper to wipe my ass......

Don't wipe your ass with that! It's from Drippy's mind. You don't know where it's been!

Sorry I'm late to this party.

[DeistPaladin]

Yahweh got up late the morning they were dividing up parts of the world that they could influence. Is it any wonder that in the OT he seems so angry? Other gods got entire continents and relatively advanced civilizations to play with, Yahweh got some desert backwater miles away from the places with a decent bar.

...and all the other gods got all the cool names. I mean, just listen to them:

ZEUS!
ODIN!
RA!
MARDUK!
yahweh...

[Chad32]

Remember, when you point the finger at other people, you have four fingers pointing at yourself.

I don't know how you people point, but...
I use one finger aiming where I'm pointing...
The thumb is aiming down..ish
And the remaining 3 point to the right (if I use my right hand), although... they're kind of curled up and each of the 3 bones in each finger is pointing in one direction (left, backwards!, and right)

I do curl three fingers all the way to my palm, but I certainly don't contort my thumb to the point that it's pointing at me. Still, that makes it a 2/3 split, pointing at the person and myself.

[Esquilax]

Is this a good argument. No it is not. For it assumes that in order for an account of a person's life to be reliable the account must be written while the person is alive.

That's not the argument, but let me put it this way: so, your extra-biblical source for the existence of Jesus is a piece of writing from a person who never met him, saw him, talked to him, or existed in the same time frame as him. Your great confirmation of Jesus' existence comes from a source that never actually confirmed that he existed. How can it possibly fulfill that criteria by definition, then?

You know what, I bet I can find sources that state that Zeus existed, from people that never met or saw Zeus at all, are you willing to take that as confirmation that Zeus existed? No? Why not?

I am not aware of any historian who holds this view. It would be great if we did have an account of Christ written by someone while Christ was alive but we do not. If historians made this the sole prerequisite in determining the reliabilty of an account of a person's life then a great many historical accounts of other people would also have to be deemed unreliable.

Of course, his absence, given how influential the bible claims him to be, is rather glaring. Mind you, I don't take that to be the sole prerequisite either, but as I've said to you before, when we don't have any confirmatory accounts that are particularly solid, we don't tend to accept the magic claims about them as true. I mean, there are accounts of Roman generals and such being blessed by magic omens that ensured their victory, but we tend to discard those claims as meaningless superstition. Yet, you're asking for a special exemption for Jesus, when the evidence for him is less solid as for those generals.

I'm fully willing to grant that there was a human being called Jesus that existed at that time, that the bible is based on. That doesn't prove that he was the son of god.

[catman]

You hope not and yet you persistently ask for evidence for Christianity. This seems odd to me.

You hope not......

Kind of reminds me of some things other atheists have said regarding their atheism. Thomas Nagel and Aldous Huxley come to mind.

The idea of hoping God does not exist, not wanting God to exist, finding reasons to not believe in God all speak of an issue that is not an intellectual one, but rather an emotional one.

I wanted god and heaven to exist. I didn't leave Christianity and become an atheist because I wanted to. I became an atheist because it was the only logical stance I could make sense of.

When I debate theists like you I am hoping one of you will point out what I'm missing. Tell me how my uncomfortable conclusions are false.

After all these years though I don't really believe that any of you have it.

So I'm operating under the assumption that said evidence doesn't exist.

Anything can happen though. Maybe I'll be surprised one day.

I really kind of doubt it, though

Yeah, I am the same way. I didn't leave Christianity because I wanted to. It was just the logical stance.

[discipulus]

One of the problems I have with the bible is the "dog that barked in the night" thing.

For eg, Matthew 27:52-53. Now I know that this was before twitter, but you'd think that if a significant number of people came back from the dead and started walking about, and indeed were "seen by many" it would get at least a mention in contemporary records. The Romans were an organised bunch, the expected dead people to stay dead. Failure to do so may have reasonably be expected to cause comment.

In other news, It must have made for some awkward "honey I'm home" conversations.

Why think the Roman historians would record such an event?

The Romans in general despised the Jews and more or less tolerated their existence. They were also proud people. Why would they record something that would bring their credibility and judicial practices into question? If Roman historians recorded this occurance, they would be lending credibility to the testimony of Jesus' followers that Jesus was divine afterall. For the death of Christ and the resurrection of the dead bodies occured simultaneously. Many of His followers would have argued that the supernatural occurance was directly related to Christ's death, which is the last thing the Romans would have wanted to allow to happen.

You also assume that these resurrected individuals appeared to Romans. But the scripture is silent on the issue. It is not unreasonable to think that these resurrected people appeared to them that knew them even as you yourself alluded to. If this indeed was the case, it is more probable that these resurrected individuals were seen by Jews not Romans.

Even if some Romans in the holy city saw these resurrected individuals, it does not follow that Roman historians would have recorded this. If some Romans did claim to see resurrected people they were probably ridiculed and dismissed as crazy decieved individuals not unlike many of you here would dismiss such a claim if it was made to you.

So it seems to me that your argument is simply unpersuasive. It does not follow that just because some people were resurrected that therefore it would be recorded by Roman historians.

[Minimalist]

Apparently you are the type who is utterly shameless when it comes to inventing bullshit to get your gospel stories off the hook.

[Tonus]

The Romans in general despised the Jews and more or less tolerated their existence. They were also proud people. Why would they record something that would bring their credibility and judicial practices into question?

Would they have understood this at the time? Or did every single historian decide that it was more important to keep the Jews from getting too uppity than it would be to report that there was an earthquake, eclipse, AND zombie apocolypse on the SAME DAY?

Because at some point, I'm thinking that their dislike of the Jews had to take a back seat to OH MY GOD ZOMBIES AND EARTHQUAKES AND ECLIPSES ON THE SAME DAY!!! Or were they really that anti-Jew that they saw these things and said "don't tell anyone, or the goddamn Jews will be all 'I told you so' and whatnot."?

[Jacob(smooth)]

So it seems to me that your argument is simply unpersuasive

Yeah, I wasn't really expecting it to be persuasive to you . Wasn't really an argument.

Tell me. Does what you're doing seem like mental gymnastics to you? Or does it seem the simple and most straightforward solution?