The Canonical Gospels Have No Authority

[Minimalist]

The Constitution of the United States has no authority aside from the government that supports it as in "we the people." The Bible's authority comes from the support of God* and his people.

GC

* Evidence for same still unavailable.

[FallentoReason]

My understanding, based on years of (admittedly layman's) reading and picking the brains of various scholars, is that these "memoirs of the apostles" were not the synoptic Gospels + John, but rather included various writings which today are called the "gnostic gospels."

In the Early Church, there was a huge variety of opinion among believers. These opinions can be roughly divided between Christian Gnosticism on the one hand (Early Christian Writings, Gnosticism), and what was to become the Catholic church on the other.

Gnosticism is far closer to today's Charismatic movement than to Roman Catholicism. Its focus is the individual's relationship with Christ, with a strong emphasis on "knowing" which can be likened to the "Born Again" experience. Christian Gnosticism was a strongly spiritual movement, and was decentralized by its very nature. This decentralization posed a problem for those who wished to impose a political structure on the church, and was bitterly opposed as heresy by the early founders of what became the Roman Catholic Church.

Prior to the founding of the Roman Catholic Church, there was no accepted new Testament canon of scripture. The Biblical Canon was established in part to strengthen the centralized, top-down structure of the RCC. Writings which encouraged individual spiritual experience were discarded and often destroyed, and those which were useful to a top-down, priest-based system were edited to fit the RCC doctrine and declared to be the Word of God.

Current-day Evangelical Protestantism is far closer to the spirit of Gnostic Christianity than most Christians know.

The protestants had no problem with developing from the Bible as it stands today, we did not have nor need those documents to develop a personal relationship with Christ. Those documents that did not make it into the Bible seem to be important only to those who want to destroy Christianity, that speaks to the truth of the Bible.

GC

Circular reasoning. Besides, there was no "Bible" at the time of Christians shooting other Christians' writings down.

[Drich]

their is a big gapping hole in this line of reasoning. The assumption being because we only have a written record of 2nd century involvement with the gospels that they must have orginated in the second century.
This would be a valid conclusion IF our records of the first and second century church were any where near complete. They are not. It would be like someone 100 years from now going through all my posts, and proclaim that I never owned a 1967 Mustang or a 64 ranchero because in all my posting I never mention the mustang or ranchero.

Again this would be a logical conclusion if my threads here were a complete chronical of my life. However my work here does not center around my life, (even though I have shared personal experiences) and the work here does not include my two cars, which doesn't mean I never owned them. Like wise to point to a hole in a incomplete historical record is in this case an Arguement from silence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_silence

Which produces fallacious reasoning/Faulty conclusions.

I partly agree with what you're saying. Except where your example fails is that it's not representing the actual reality of things. To make it true to our dilemma at hand, your example should have you posting in a car forum and only then if you never once mentioned your 1967 Mustang or 64 Ranchero can the person 100 years from now rightfully conclude that you never owned them, with the assumption being that it's incredibly unlikely that you wouldn't mention such information. Remember that we're not dealing with mindless data. We're dealing with people who have certain *intentions* and from these intentions we can justifiably expect certain things of them.

It's sort of the same deal here. We have Church Fathers and apologists exhausting all the resources they have on hand in order to defend the faith, yet the most glaringly obvious documents they should have referenced are nowhere to be found in their writings. Take Papias for example - 5 volumes of what Christ had to say, and not one word he uttered appears again in our Gospels.

Fishy eh? And I'm not talking about the age of Pisces in which Jesus was born

But again with out a complete record to draw from the certainty in which this book makes its assumptions is based of fallacious reasoning. In short 'the car forum' in which the assumptions are made are no where near complete.

[Minimalist]

We can only evaluate the evidence we have....not the fantasies that spring from your desperation to believe in nonsense.

Unlike you, some people actually read your holy horseshit to see what it says...not what they hope it says.

https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/5656

Another bewildering author is Philo of Alexandria. He spent his first-century life in the Levant and even traversed Jesus-land. Philo chronicled contemporaries of Jesus—Bassus, Pilate, Tiberius, Sejanus, Caligula—yet knew nothing of the storied prophet and rabble-rouser enveloped in glory and astral marvels.

The Bible venerates the artist formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, but he was a man essentially oblivious to his savior. Paul was unaware of the virgin mother and ignorant of Jesus’s nativity, parentage, life events, ministry, miracles, apostles, betrayal, trial, and harrowing passion. Paul didn’t know where or when Jesus lived and considered the crucifixion metaphorical (Gal. 2:19–20). Unlike what is claimed in the Gospels, Paul never indicated that Jesus had come to Earth. And the “five hundred witnesses” claim (1 Cor. 15) is a forgery.

I read the works of second-century Christian father Athenagoras and never encountered the word Jesus—Athenagoras was unacquainted with the name of his savior! This floored me. Had I missed something? No; Athenagoras was another pious early Christian who was unaware of Jesus.

Now, I wouldn't expect you to take my word for it so you can check it yourself.

He's right. In the two extant writings we have of Athenagoras he makes impassioned defenses of xtian silliness but never mentions anyone name "jesus." Odd, no?

Here you go.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/athenagoras.html

Read it and weep. He's one of your boys.

[FallentoReason]

I partly agree with what you're saying. Except where your example fails is that it's not representing the actual reality of things. To make it true to our dilemma at hand, your example should have you posting in a car forum and only then if you never once mentioned your 1967 Mustang or 64 Ranchero can the person 100 years from now rightfully conclude that you never owned them, with the assumption being that it's incredibly unlikely that you wouldn't mention such information. Remember that we're not dealing with mindless data. We're dealing with people who have certain *intentions* and from these intentions we can justifiably expect certain things of them.

It's sort of the same deal here. We have Church Fathers and apologists exhausting all the resources they have on hand in order to defend the faith, yet the most glaringly obvious documents they should have referenced are nowhere to be found in their writings. Take Papias for example - 5 volumes of what Christ had to say, and not one word he uttered appears again in our Gospels.

Fishy eh? And I'm not talking about the age of Pisces in which Jesus was born

But again with out a complete record to draw from the certainty in which this book makes its assumptions is based of fallacious reasoning. In short 'the car forum' in which the assumptions are made are no where near complete.

Like I said, you have to remember that people have intentions. The early Church Fathers (and apologists) obviously wanted to defend the faith. Put yourself in their position, and tell me which books would be your go-to sources to take on such a task? Obviously the eye-witness Gospels, among other things perhaps. The fact that they haven't mentioned them is (1) bizarre and not in line with their intentions and (2) the chances of our records being such that we're missing exactly those people who *did* mention our Gospels is extremely low, because it's a random assortment of extant documents.

[Esquilax]

But again with out a complete record to draw from the certainty in which this book makes its assumptions is based of fallacious reasoning. In short 'the car forum' in which the assumptions are made are no where near complete.

It's not our problem that the record as it stands looks exactly like a record in which your claims are false, Drich. You can't stuff those claims into every little gap, because "we don't know" is not evidence for your god.

The fact that you're pushing to link your argument so closely to ignorance is so very telling.