A simple challenge for atheists

[FatAndFaithless]

The events described in the gospels and Acts are the best attested to set of individual events in ancient times. There are 4 sources (with supporting documentation from Paul) easily within a lifetime of eyewitnesses AND subsequent historical chain of events that support them.

I think you forgot a few inconvenient facts here, like how all the gospels were written anonymously, and none of them list any eyewitnesses that they were drawing their knowledge from. Or how the early church chopped and changed what counted as a canonical gospel over time.

Or how, quite simply, the gospels are the claim of what happened, not evidence for that claim. The claims of the gospels exist only in the gospel, there are no secondary historical texts that reference the pertinent divine claims of that book, therefore the book itself is the claim, and not evidence for itself. You can't say "the events depicted in this book are true, because the book says they're true!" Steve.

"But you can't ask me for any evidence for the supernatural stuff! It's just more likely that it happened as they said!"

[Whateverist]

Evidence of what? It is, at best, our interpretation of someone's interpretation of someone else's perception of what they may or may not have seen and experienced. It is called hearsay and is not evidence by any stretch of the imagination.

The events described in the gospels and Acts are the best attested to set of individual events in ancient times. There are 4 sources (with supporting documentation from Paul) easily within a lifetime of eyewitnesses AND subsequent historical chain of events that support them.

So is the bible primarily of interest to you as an historical account of the activities of the person named Jesus from that time period? Do you accept it all as being equally reliable or do you think the compiling and editing that went into putting the bible together may have had a filtering effect? If the very same reportage was to be made today I'd expect to find it in one of those super market rags and would have no trouble dismissing it out of hand. I doubt any neutral person would buy it unless they were raised by adults who did the same.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Ugh, this shit again. There's a thread in which this kind of idea is dissected in excruciating detail.

Additionally, can you have one single post that doesn't contain or end in a massive argument from ignorance? "It just seems more likely to me that all the miracles and supernatural, untestable, unverifiable, unrepeatable, untouchable events actually happened as described, rather than the people who wrote about these events were simply wrong."

Are you serious?

Yes. The gospels are evidence. The quality of the evidence is opinion. You cannot prove that these things didn't happen. I cannot prove that they did. You can't prove that miracles can't happen just like you can't prove there is no God. I can't prove that miracles happened and I can't prove there is a God. The only thing I can do is to defend that believing in God is not irrational.

No, just, no! They're a claim. They claim that x and y happen, they don't evidence it.

You're right, we can't prove that miracles don't/can't happen, but neither are we bothered because the whole burden of proof lies with the person making the claim in the first place. We dismiss your claims for this very reason; no evidence.

And that's it, in its simplest form. You want
Me to believe your claim? Satisfy my minimum requirement for evidence, which is something demonstrable, verifiable, and repeatable. You yourself probably use this benchmark everyday in your life, so why not apply it to your religious beliefs?

[Esquilax]

You're right, we can't prove that miracles don't/can't happen, but neither are we bothered because the whole burden of proof lies with the person making the claim in the first place. We dismiss your claims for this very reason; no evidence.

I don't understand why so many theists lately say "evidence for my beliefs is not possible," and end up at "therefore, my beliefs require no evidence to be justified." Saying you can't possibly provide evidence for you beliefs doesn't absolve them of the burden of proof, it just means that they fail to shoulder that burden.

[SteelCurtain]

The wonderful thing about arguments from authority is that oftentimes the person quoting the "authority" looks for a quote that matches what they want to assert without looking at what the entirety of this person's opinion is.

So--- let's take Bart Ehrman for example.

“The historical problems with Luke are even more pronounced. For one thing, we have relatively good records for the reign of Caesar Augustus, and there is no mention anywhere in any of them of an empire-wide census for which everyone had to register by returning to their ancestral home. And how could such a thing even be imagined? Joesph returns to Bethlehem because his ancestor David was born there. But David lived a thousand years before Joseph. Are we to imagine that everyone in the Roman Empire was required to return to the homes of their ancestors from a thousand years earlier? If we had a new worldwide census today and each of us had to return to the towns of our ancestors a thousand years back—where would you go? Can you imagine the total disruption of human life that this kind of universal exodus would require? And can you imagine that such a project would never be mentioned in any of the newspapers? There is not a single reference to any such census in any ancient source, apart from Luke. Why then does Luke say there was such a census? The answer may seem obvious to you. He wanted Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, even though he knew he came from Nazareth ... there is a prophecy in the Old Testament book of Micah that a savior would come from Bethlehem. What were these Gospel writer to do with the fact that it was widely known that Jesus came from Nazareth? They had to come up with a narrative that explained how he came from Nazareth, in Galilee, a little one-horse town that no one had ever heard of, but was born in Bethlehem, the home of King David, royal ancestor of the Messiah.”

"Paul, by the way, never says that Jesus declared himself to be divine.”

“the idea that Jesus rose on the 'third day' was originally a theological construct, not a historical piece of information.”

“But one thing they all (i.e., E. P. Sanders, Geza Vermes, Dale Allison, Paula Fredriksen, and many others) agree on: Jesus did not spend his ministry declaring himself to be divine.”

"Whoever wrote the Gospel of John (we’ll continue to call him John, though we don’t know who he really was) must have been a Christian living sixty years or so after Jesus, in a different part of the world, in a different cultural context, speaking a different language—Greek rather than Aramaic—and with a completely different level of education .. The author of John is speaking for himself and he is speaking for Jesus. These are not Jesus’s words; they are John’s words placed on Jesus’s lips.”

Do you agree with these quotes as well? If not, then what makes them different from the quote that you gave us earlier? Do you see what the problem could be with arguments from authority?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

You're right, we can't prove that miracles don't/can't happen, but neither are we bothered because the whole burden of proof lies with the person making the claim in the first place. We dismiss your claims for this very reason; no evidence.

I don't understand why so many theists lately say "evidence for my beliefs is not possible," and end up at "therefore, my beliefs require no evidence to be justified." Saying you can't possibly provide evidence for you beliefs doesn't absolve them of the burden of proof, it just means that they fail to shoulder that burden.

Get out of jail when confronted with the absurdities of their own beliefs I guess.

[robvalue]

The "but maybe" argument seems to be very popular on the forum at the moment.

"But maybe" [unfalsifiable set of actions that I really want to be true] happened.

Therefor, they probably happened. Good enough for me.

Would any of you theists seriously accept such a bullshit argument about any other topic than religion? Seriously?

[downbeatplumb]

The "but maybe" argument seems to be very popular on the forum at the moment.

"But maybe" [unfalsifiable set of actions that I really want to be true] happened.

Therefor, they probably happened. Good enough for me.

Would any of you theists seriously accept such a bullshit argument about any other topic than religion? Seriously?

But maybe I did all with my magic time machine that I might invent at some point in the future?

It carries with it the same irrefutable lack of evidence but is slightly more likely as I exist.

[JesusHChrist]

Once you need to invoke magik/supernatural/miracles to save your argument, you have lost.

As anyone with half a brain knows, my cat created the world a month ago. Prove he did not! It could have happened. Checkmate, non-my-cat-is-god-deniers!

[IATIA]

The events described in the gospels and Acts are the best attested to set of individual events in ancient times. There are 4 sources (with supporting documentation from Paul) easily within a lifetime of eyewitnesses AND subsequent historical chain of events that support them.

Easily within a lifetime?


ca. A.D.-----------------------200-----250---------------300--------350--450

Matthew--------------------------------P45---------------B-----------Sin.
Mark------------------------------------P45---------------B-----------Sin.--A
Luke------------------------------------P4,P45,P75-------B-----------Sin.--A
John---------------------------P66-----P45,P75----------B-----------Sin.--A
Acts-------------------------------------P45---------------B-----------Sin.--A
Romans-Hebrews------------P46------------------------B-----------Sin.--A
James-Jude-----------------------------------------------P72,B------Sin.--A
Apocalypse-----------------------------P47---------------------------Sin.--A