120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[Lumpenproletariat]

You keep proving the point: We have the same kind of evidence for the miracles of Jesus as we have for most historical events (of that time).

The Jesus miracles in the gospels are best explained as real events, for which we have the same kind of evidence as we have for normal historical events.

No such thing. Confirmed historical events normally have multiple independent sources that corroborate an account of an event or historical personage.

"Confirmed"?

Confirmed historical events normally have multiple independent sources that corroborate an account of an event or historical personage.

But we have similar multiple independent sources that corroborate the Jesus miracle events. Just because Luke and Matthew rely on Mark does not mean they are not independent sources. Josephus also relied on Philo for some of his facts, but this does not disqualify him as a separate independent source.

Are you saying that these are independent eyewitness accounts of Jesus performing miracles...

How many times must I repeat it? -- Virtually NONE of our historical facts for ancient history comes from eyewitness accounts. The gospel accounts have more corroboration from separate sources than most of our standard history. But virtually no history of that time is known to us from eyewitness accounts. I.e., none of our sources are eyewitness accounts.

(Presumably the accounts we have trace back to original eyewitnesses, but we have NO EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS today. No more for Tacitus or Plutarch or Herodotus etc. than for the gospel accounts. No eyewitness account of Caesar's assassination or virtually any other event.)

. . . but of course not. Hence they are not multiple independent accounts of the events being described.

Then what you're saying is that we have NO independent accounts of the history for 2000 years ago. I.e., we have NO credible history for that long ago. So throw out ALL our history of the Greeks and Romans.

These are various writers repeating things that they had heard or read.

Yes, like 99% of our sources for history 2000 (or 1000) years ago. So again, the Jesus miracles in the gospels are reported events "for which we have the same kind of evidence as we have for normal historical events." You have not shown otherwise.

Repeatedly, again and again, the only way you're disputing the Jesus miracle stories as credible reports of what happened is by disqualifying ALL our sources for historical events from that time.

 

[DBT]

"Confirmed"?

Aren't you arguing that multiple independent accounts in effect confirm the events in the gospels? That the miracles/events described in the gospels happened as described because there are multiple independent accounts?

How many times must I repeat it? -- Virtually NONE of our historical facts for ancient history comes from eyewitness accounts. The gospel accounts have more corroboration from separate sources than most of our standard history. But virtually no history of that time is known to us from eyewitness accounts. I.e., none of our sources are eyewitness accounts.

Thucydides was a participant in the Peloponnesian War. Xenophon, etc, wrote about their experiences and the people and events, things that were happening around them, errors included.

(Presumably the accounts we have trace back to original eyewitnesses, but we have NO EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS today. No more for Tacitus or Plutarch or Herodotus etc. than for the gospel accounts. No eyewitness account of Caesar's assassination or virtually any other event.)

So all you have is hearsay....unlike the existence of Caesar which actually has multiple independent sources confirming his existence, statues, inscriptions, Julius Caesar's name and/or image appeared on coinage from 49 BC until his death, a coin commemorating the murder of Julius Caesar, and so on, done by people living in the time responding to actual personages and events, not hearsay.

There is no comparison to be made. This has been pointed out numerous time, yet here I am having to point it out again.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

How much extra evidence is necessary? How do we know when a miracle claim becomes credible?

I just read your reply above to my earlier post, and you have misstated what my actual position is several times. You often abbreviate what my viewpoint is by attributing absolutist words to me that actually do not represent my views. I try to be careful and emphasize that we are dealing in terms of probabilities, likelihoods, chances, etc. You have instead used absolutist terms and phrases like "could ever" or "possible" or "impossible" to describe my views, so it is hard to take you as an accurate describer of what my position really is. Just as some examples here---

Through our own current observations of the world around us, we humans tend to learn about what is and is not possible, or at least what is likely or unlikely to be the case.

Our own direct current observations of the world leave out 99.99999% of all the stuff happening. There could easily be some unique or unusual events happening, or which did happen, which are rare enough that the majority of us never experience such things. It's not reasonable to think that if we never personally experienced such a thing ourselves that then no such thing could ever happen. Our non-experience of it might reduce the probability that it ever happens, or happened, but if there are some reports saying it happened, it increases the possibility that it did happen, even though we did not experience such a thing ourselves. So it can't be ruled out as a possibility.

For instance, if you come across a note that describes an elephant flying around in the air, your initial assumption should be that the note is NOT describing accurately what actually happened.

Sure, but what if you come across 1 or 2 further reports saying this, beyond that one note. Doesn't that increase the possibility that it happened? Maybe it's still less than 50% probable, but the probability increases incrementally with each additional report.

Yes, if those additional reports are demonstrated to be generally unbiased, then . . .

But even a "biased" source saying something is additional evidence. None of the ancient historians was really unbiased. Also, even the sources which seem to be less biased might not really be so. For 1000 or 2000 years ago it's very difficult to say for sure that this or that writer was unbiased. But whether biased or not, the additional source is additional evidence.

If we can detect the bias very definitely, then you can say this might be a factor, carrying some weight, but it does not cancel out this additional report as evidence. It's not easy to measure what the higher or lower probability is, when we try to factor in every perceived bias or other possible distortion.

. . . to be generally unbiased, then that increases the POSSIBILITY that it happened. It does not, to any significant degree, make it likely that it really happened though.

In some cases it does. For a fantastic miracle claim, we probably need more than only one extra source. But what if we have 2 extra sources? or 3? At some point the probability reaches 50%.

For the resurrection of Jesus we have 5 separate sources saying this happened. It's arbitrary to claim that the probability is still less than 50%. It might be much higher. There is no scientific objective way we can calculate exactly what the probability is, or claim it to within a spread of 10 or 20 percentage points. We don't know.

You can't arbitrarily dictate that we must have 50 extra independent sources, or 20, or whatever number.

The PROBABILITY would still be in the likelihood that it is a fictional story or somesuch.

With 5 extra sources you can't be sure of this. It might be up in the 70% or higher range.

Also, even if it's 49% or less, belief can be based on probability less than 50% in some cases. Some decisions are made based on a possibility of something happening even if the probability is less than 50%. Like fastening a seatbelt as a precaution in case of an accident. So a belief might still be reasonable in some cases where the actual probability (if it could be calculated) would be under 50%.

Maybe it was not intended to be taken literally in the first place but instead as a fictional story, or maybe it was intended literally and the person believes it really happened. Either way, the rest of us who did not witness such a thing should still presume that such a thing did not really happen.

Probably, but if there are extra sources saying it happened, then the likelihood of it being true increases. Some odd events do happen even though most of us never experience such a thing.

Notice the change in terms you are giving there, however. You say it is "probably" the case that such a miracle event did not happen. Even if its probability increases with further evidence, it will still be the case that it more likely did not.

No, it depends on HOW MUCH further evidence there is. An extra 2 or 3 or 4 sources might turn it into a likely-did-happen from a likely-did-not. You're right that in some cases only one extra source isn't enough. Maybe most cases. Maybe. But 3, 4, 5 extra sources?

So even if its likelihood increased from a 3% chance to an 8% chance, it is still likely to not have happened as such.

But maybe its likelihood increased from 5% to 51% because of the extra evidence.

There is still a much stronger probability that it did not happen.

Not necessarily.

If the number of sources increases from 1 to 5, this very well could increase the probability to over 50%.

Please again note that I am not saying it is IMPOSSIBLE to have happened. We are dealing in what is PROBABLE AND IMPROBABLE here, so that needs to be figured into your worldview so you do not confuse those terms and concepts again here.

There's no reason why the 5 sources for the resurrection of Jesus does not increase the probability of that event (5 sources vs. 1 source) from 5% to 60% or 70%. We cannot calculate with certainty what the increased probability is.

We have plenty of experience ourselves with elephants, and in all that experience they have never been observed to be flying around. If somebody says otherwise, the burden of proof is on them.

Only one person claiming it is not enough. Or two. But if others also say this happened, and witnesses were present, then at some point it we have to start taking it seriously. It starts to be in the doubtful rather than absolutely-not category.

You're using the elephants example to make your point, because of the humor and also the extreme nature of it, so we reject it as ridiculous. But that's only because there are NO examples of any such observations. But that doesn't prove your point that no type of phenomenon can ever happen unless it is observed regularly by most people.

Please stop so blatantly and flagrantly misstating what my actual position is. It is not my argument that such phenomenon that we have given as examples of miracles CANNOT EVER HAPPEN. Instead, we need to work within the confines of just what is most likely to be the case.

For only one source, it's only 1 or 2% probable. But for 3 sources it becomes 20 or 30% probable. For 5 sources it becomes 50 or 60% probable. Maybe. It depends. In some cases the 5 sources pushes up the probability to even 90%.

We work in probabilities, odds, chances, likelihoods, evidence, etc. We just do not usually have the luxury of being able to have proof, absolute certitude, etc. Please stop misstating and confusing what my real position is here.

4 or 5 sources for the same reported miracle event (the resurrection of Jesus), in documents that have come down from that time is certainly the ONLY case of any such event reported in multiple documents. So this one example of a miracle claim has more evidence (far more evidence) than any other such reported event, from centuries ago.

We agree that we cannot simply rule out a miracle event regardless of any evidence. If there's extra evidence, then at some point the reported event becomes credible. Or rather, it's not unreasonable to believe it, even if there is still doubt.

This is a good place to clear up a related point:

Modern Publishing vs. publishing 2000 years ago​

How many sources do we need for the year 2000 AD vs. 100 AD?

How much EXTRA EVIDENCE is necessary to believe a miracle claim?​

​

The time difference issue (today vs. 2000 years ago) came up in regard to the Joseph Smith reputed miracles. It is argued that we have more sources for the JS miracles than for the Jesus miracles in the gospels.

And one could also cite miracle claims on YouTube and other modern media sources. No doubt there are some miracle claims in modern times for which there are more than only 5 "sources" claiming some miracle happened.

A MATHEMATICAL FORMULA can be devised to deal with this. We have to take account of the fact that in modern times there are a million times as many potential sources than for 2000 (or 1000) years ago.

We can't plug accurate realistic empirical numbers into such a formula. So the principle can be stated generally, to make the point. And some conjecture has to try to fill in the possible details. Nothing of this can be PROVED, but we can make a reasonable case for comparing miracle claims of today to claims from 1000 or 2000 years ago. We can draw conclusions from it, though it's still only conjecture, not proof. Reasonable conjecture, which is legitimate for making the point.



PS: Total publishing volume / total outlets/sources

For this formula, we need a number, or symbol, to represent the TOTAL PUBLISHING VOLUME in existence during the time period.

This number represents the total number of published sources, outlets, media which report the events, or which report/publish any information, or ideas, etc.

So let's just call this quantity PS for published sources.

We use this term, or symbol, or quantity, along with NR below, to express the degree of evidence which exists for any miracle claim(s).




NR: A higher degree of evidence is directly related to the greater amount of evidence, or pieces of evidence, for the claim.

So we can call this NR, meaning the actual number of reports such as written sources, etc. making the miracle claim in question.

For the Jesus resurrection, this number is 5, or for the healing miracles it is 4.

For a modern miracle claim, appearing on 10 or 20 different YouTube channels, this NR would then be 10 (or 20) etc.

So we have a NR of 20 for this modern miracle claim, vs the Jesus resurrection NR of only 5.

So then do we have more "evidence" for the modern YouTube miracle than for the Jesus resurrection, because 20 is greater than 5?

Obviously not.

What we have to do is divide the NR by the PS number to attain the true weight of evidence for either miracle claim. Thus,


NR/PS represents the true value of the total evidence for any miracle claim.

For miracle claims during the same period, this formula is not necessary. And maybe all miracle claims from before 1000 AD could be expressed by just the NR number. Though to be really precise, we'd have to factor in some conditions which took place in the middle ages which make that period more susceptible to miracle claims than the 1st century AD.

But for now let's just use the formula to point out the difference between modern miracle claims, in the year 2017, vs. claims from about 50 AD.

And also, let's compare to miracle claims of the 19th century, or 1800-1900, vs. 50 AD.

The PS number, for theoretical purposes, can be expressed with a simple number, like 10 or 50 or 100 or 1000 etc. And we can use approximations, or abstract quantities, expressed symbolically, to make the point, and one is free to adjust the numbers up or down to try to make it more realistic in their opinion.

Whereas the NR number is more literal, and real, such as the 5 sources for the Jesus resurrection, or the 20 YouTube videos making the same claim.

NR/PS then gives us the expression for the degree of evidence in each case of a miracle claim.

Let's say that PS is the simple number 1 for the 1st century AD. I.e., PS = 1 (1st century AD)

Then for 1500 AD, the PS might be 100. PS = 100, meaning that there are 100 times more total publishing sources in the year 1500 AD than in 50 or 100 AD.

With increasing publishing resources, by 1800 the PS number would be more like 500. PS = 500 Meaning there are 500 times as many publishing outlets/sources in 1800 than there were in 50 AD. (The real number is probably much higher.)

Then for 2017, it must easily be more than 1000. Probably more like 10,000 or 100,000. We could say PS = 5000. Obviously it gets very difficult to guestimate the total increase in publishing outlets/sources today with the vastly expanding technology.

Now, for the Joseph Smith miracle claims there might be 20 sources. These would have to be 19th century sources only. So, given these hypothetical values, the measure of the evidence is:

Evidence for Joseph Smith miracle claims = NR/PS = 20/500.

Evidence for the Jesus miracle claims = NR/PS = 5/1.

Evidence for modern YouTube miracle claim on 20 sites = NR/PS = 20/5000 (or 20/10,000) etc.

These adjustments for comparing miracle claims from different time periods thus make it possible to compare the degree of evidence for modern miracle claims vs. miracle claims from the 1st century. And this makes it clear that we have more evidence for the Jesus miracle stories than for any other cases that are known, or for which there is any record.

Thus we can establish a criterion for measuring the weight of the evidence for modern claims vs. claims from many centuries past, and compensate for the extreme increase in publishing in modern times which distorts the comparison. The number of sources claiming an event happened is a measure of the evidence, or constitutes most of the evidence for claims of what happened. But as the total number of publishing outlets/sources increases, an increase of claims or reports is inevitable.

Another way to express this would be to compare the total number of claims made in one time period vs. another time period. And then replace the PS value above with this total number of claims value.

So,

TC = the total number of claims made, or known to have been made, during the time period.

Combine this with the NR number, to get the formula:

Total evidence = NR/TC for any miracle claim. I.e., divide the number of sources for the claim, NR, by all the claims being made, or published, or reported.

In the 1st century, we could estimate the total number of claims as 100 (though obviously there is no officially-established number)

So TC = 100, and NR (Jesus resurrection) = 5

So the total evidence is NR/TC = 5/100.

Meanwhile in the 19th century, there would easily be thousands of such claims. Maybe 5000 such claims.

With the NR for Joseph Smith being 20, the calculation would be

TC = 5000, and NR (JS miracle claims) = 20

so the total evidence is NR/TC = 20/5000.

Now of course you can laugh at this (here, I'll help you laugh at it: ), ho ho ho, because of the arbitrary choice of numbers, but does anyone really believe the total number of publishing sources in 1800 was not vastly greater than that of 50 AD?

or that the total number of miracle stories circulated in 1800 was not vastly greater than that of 50 AD?

Plug in your own numbers.

So the principle is legitimate, even though there's much speculation over what particular numbers to insert.

The point: there is nothing arbitrary about requiring a vastly greater number of "sources" or reports for miracle claims today vs. miracle claims 2000 years ago.

 

[Keith&Co.]

How many times must I repeat it? -- Virtually NONE of our historical facts for ancient history comes from eyewitness accounts.

Well, as long as you seem to think that written accounts, someone writing down 'this is what happened,' and nothing else, are the only things historians have access to, you can repeat it a zillion times AND YET no one is going to be persuaded to your analysis of the gospels.

 

[abaddon]

How many times must I repeat it? -- Virtually NONE of our historical facts for ancient history comes from eyewitness accounts....

You should never have merely repeated it. It's a lame argument. Most of what you write are just incredible assertions repeated time and time again.

Your argument is that if historians accept Herodotus (for an example) they ought to accept the accounts of Jesus's miracles. But they accept neither. Herodotus is widely recognized as having included many hard-to-believe things in his "Histories" so nobody accepts his writings as a whole as historical. Even Thucydides rejected him as "just a storyteller" for mixing fantastical things in.

Do historians really accept other documents that are as shaky as the gospels as historical fact? That in itself is an extraordinary claim. Next time you declare what historians say about anything, include a citation to help demonstrate it's true.

You claim that miraculous events are acceptable as history if other dubious tales are history. Quote historians saying so, and stop repeating the unsupported assertion.

Other history is uncertain therefore miracles (and just the miracles of Jesus) are believable is some shit logic anyway.

 

[Kharakov]

Jesus destroyed Atlantis. Smote it, he did. I saws it with me own eyes.

 

[atrib]

Jesus destroyed Atlantis. Smote it, he did. I saws it with me own eyes.

Your testimony would be WAY more credible if you were an anonymous reporter many decades and thousands of miles removed from the alleged smiting, who had heard the story from an unnamed source on the street, than if you witnessed the events yourself. That is what Lumpy has been claiming.

 

[abaddon]

Jesus destroyed Atlantis. Smote it, he did. I saws it with me own eyes.

Is that after he left Chicago bound to New Orleans?

But I believe you though! Cuz my life would be meaningless without a story like this to believe in!

 

[Brian63]

Lumpenproletariat,

I just read the top half only of your long post above and you again misstated my position several times in the same way you misstated it earlier, without correcting it (hence my disinterest in reading the other half of the long post as well). What I stated before, and what I will repeat again here is:


"You often abbreviate what my viewpoint is by attributing absolutist words to me that actually do not represent my views. I try to be careful and emphasize that we are dealing in terms of probabilities, likelihoods, chances, etc. You have instead used absolutist terms and phrases like "could ever" or "possible" or "impossible" to describe my views, so it is hard to take you as an accurate describer of what my position really is. Just as some examples here---"




I do not know how to make that point any clearer, or if you are even trying to accurately understand what my real position is either. When you make the following absolutist statements to describe my stance, you are mis-describing my view again.

Through our own current observations of the world around us, we humans tend to learn about what is and is not possible, or at least what is likely or unlikely to be the case.

Our own direct current observations of the world leave out 99.99999% of all the stuff happening. There could easily be some unique or unusual events happening, or which did happen, which are rare enough that the majority of us never experience such things. It's not reasonable to think that if we never personally experienced such a thing ourselves that then no such thing could ever happen. Our non-experience of it might reduce the probability that it ever happens, or happened, but if there are some reports saying it happened, it increases the possibility that it did happen, even though we did not experience such a thing ourselves. So it can't be ruled out as a possibility.

I am not ruling it out as a possibility. That is not what my position is, and what I have been emphasizing. It makes it LESS PROBABLE, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE.

For instance, if you come across a note that describes an elephant flying around in the air, your initial assumption should be that the note is NOT describing accurately what actually happened.

Sure, but what if you come across 1 or 2 further reports saying this, beyond that one note. Doesn't that increase the possibility that it happened? Maybe it's still less than 50% probable, but the probability increases incrementally with each additional report.

You say "maybe it's still less than 50% probable" but you do not say whether it is really "less than 50% probable." Will you go on record and say whether it is more likely to have happened, or to not have happened? Please note again the question is not whether you think it is POSSIBLE to have happened, only if it is PROBABLE to have happened.

You can't arbitrarily dictate that we must have 50 extra independent sources, or 20, or whatever number.

Holy shit. Is anyone actually advocating that we "must have" extra independent sources, or is that just a position you are attributing to them? I am not certainly holding that position. The more extra independent sources we have, the more supported the events are to have happened. I never attached any number at all to the actual amount though that we must have to be reasonable to believe. You, however, say "or whatever number" to describe my view, even though I do not put a number on it, and would not either.

Also, even if it's 49% or less, belief can be based on probability less than 50% in some cases. Some decisions are made based on a possibility of something happening even if the probability is less than 50%. Like fastening a seatbelt as a precaution in case of an accident. So a belief might still be reasonable in some cases where the actual probability (if it could be calculated) would be under 50%.

You are right that it is a PRECAUTION that the person is taking when they are fastening their seatbelt, even though they probably still think they will not go through an accident on their trip.

Religious beliefs being held, however, are NOT A PRECAUTION against just a possibility of a religion being true. The person actually thinks the religion is probably true. On beliefs on the whole, a person holds one as being true and the converse of it being false, because they think that is the more likely and probable to be the case. So that is a very important difference you need to recognize. When someone makes a statement like "God exists" they are not saying that it just *might* be true that that god exists. They are saying they think it is more probable to be true than the converse being true.

...except maybe for cases like Pascal's Wager, where a person might be motivated to hold their beliefs because of the mere POSSIBILITY of them being true, rather than their actual PROBABILITY. Pascal's Wager is not a reasonable position to take though.


I frankly do not have an interest in reading the second half of your earlier reply to me, since you repeatedly and severely misstated my position several times in the first half. If there is anything in particular in that you want me to address, please feel free to mention so, and if it is somewhere in the universe of describing my actual views, I will take a closer look at it. Otherwise I have other life matters I need to take care of instead.

Thanks,

Brian

 

[Brian63]

Lumpenproletariat,

In my post just above I was a bit sarcastic and insulting towards you, and I do want to say I am sorry for that. We have different views on this subject, but I should not have been derogatory towards you like I was. So I am sorry.

In my regular job, I have recently been dealing with several people who have been misquoting me and misdescribing my opinions on different matters, and it has gotten me into (a little, but some) trouble because of it. So that has been bothering me as of late, and especially when I see others do the same. I mention that not to excuse my behavior or justify it, but just to explain it. I am sorry for my behavior earlier.

Take care,

Brian

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The Jesus miracle stories are more credible because there is more evidence. More evidence = more likely to be true.

What's with the need to prove your belief is well-reasoned? The junk about "more evidence for the Jesus miracles than we have for many historical facts which we routinely accept because they are reported in the documents" is sophistry.

No, "more evidence" means more sources saying it, or more written documents from the time, or sources closer to the actual events.

I will repeat just one example of a historical fact we know based on ONE SOURCE ONLY, and from a source much farther removed from the actual event than the gospel accounts are removed from the Jesus events of about 30 AD.

Josephus reports on the capture of the Jerusalem temple in 63 BC by General Pompey. He says that when the walls were finally breached, the first Roman to cross over was Faustus Cornelius, the son of the tyrant Sulla. This is a simple fact which everyone believes because Josephus says it. No other source than Josephus says this.

So, we have less evidence for this fact than we have for the miracles of Jesus. MUCH LESS evidence -- just this one source only, and from a writer more than 100 years later than this event.

By contrast, the Jesus miracle acts are reported by 4 (5) writers, dated 30-70 years later than the reported events. So the evidence for the Jesus miracles is much better evidence, being from multiple sources, and these much closer in time to when the reported events happened.

Now you can multiply this random example by 10 million (or probably more like 50 or 100 million) other examples of facts from ancient history which are routinely accepted as fact because they are reported by one source which is more than 50 (100) years removed from the reported events. We routinely believe the events happened because of such evidence.

Here's a wikipedia page relating this event, which takes the Josephus account as accurate, even though this is the ONLY source for most of the details of the event:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(63_BC)
First over the wall was Faustus Cornelius Sulla, son of the former dictator and a senior officer in Pompey's army. He was followed by two centurions, Furius and Fabius, each leading a cohort, and the Romans soon overcame the defending Jews. 12,000 were slaughtered, while only a few Romans troops were killed.

Virtually all the details are from Josephus only.

Here's another page which relates this event, and it does not cite Josephus as the source for this, though it lists Josephus and some other sources in some footnotes.
https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Siege of Jerusalem (63 BC)&item_type=topic
So it is normal to give as fact a claim from one source only, saying it's what happened, based only on this, and not even to name the source for the particular fact, though usually the source is found somewhere in footnotes.

So facts like these are frequently based on very little evidence, one source only, and seldom is there any suggestion that it might not be true because of such little evidence. It's written in a document that this happened, and that's it -- it's a historical fact.

It's just a riff off of some historians saying a similar thing about Jesus' historicity (no strong reasons to doubt that a person named Jesus existed).

No, it's an extension of the logic historians apply to the documents -- telling us something happened based on the evidence of one document only, or one writer, who says it happened. And likewise we have documents, the gospel accounts, saying these events did happen, i.e., that Jesus did perform these miracle acts, just as we have documents saying other events happened, which are therefore accepted as historical fact.

Many such documents, which we rely on, are biased, containing religious stuff and political propaganda, like the Josephus accounts, and yet this one source is all that is necessary for them to conclude that it's fact.

That basic stance doesn't apply to the fantastical bits but you pretend that's a generally accepted practice (if the fantastical is written about sooner rather than later).

Fantastic claims are not in the same category.

For these we need more than only one source. I.e., we need EXTRA EVIDENCE, beyond just one claim in one source. That one claim is evidence, but we need MORE than the normal amount of evidence for miracle claims or anything fantastic. And this doesn't mean historians pronounce it as fact. They leave these claims in a doubtful category, without pronouncing whether they are true or false.

And if the source is closer to the event, that increases the credibility. So if the source is 150 years removed from the event, like the report of Honi the Circle-Drawer producing rain by praying and dancing in a circle, then the source is less credible than a report only 25 years from the event, like St. Paul writing about the resurrection of Jesus. The latter is much closer, so it's better evidence. So sooner rather than later is an additional factor which can increase the credibility.

Anyway, the 'I need to convince you this is reasonable' stuff... You seem to value evidence and reason a bit but only just enough for reality to bug you some. Just enough to make you want to layer your unreason with a vague semblance of reason (and at great length).

You lost me.

Why not boldly admit your . . .

"boldly"? You mean be a HE-MAN like you?

. . . admit your belief in miracles is a leap of blind faith on your part?

But I DISbelieve in miracle claims generally. There's usually not enough evidence (or none at all). It's only in a very few cases that there is serious evidence. Probably 99% of miracle claims are false.

The Elijah/Elisha miracle stories, e.g., are probably fiction. There's only one source for these, 300 years later than the reported events. Outside the one source, I-II Kings, there is virtually no mention of these characters before the New Testament. (For Elisha there is no mention whatever except one reference in Luke.) So it's the evidence that makes it credible, not blind faith.

Because that's what it is and . . .

By fiat? because you dictate it?

No, the blind leap of faith is your belief that ALL miracle claims have to be automatically false regardless of any evidence in this or that case. It's blind faith when you dictate to people to discount the evidence and believe your dogma that no miracle event can ever happen.

. . . it'd be more forthright to just say so than . . .

Why are you preaching a sermon on what someone is supposed to say?

. . . more forthright to just say so than strain so hard to try (and fail) to prove it's otherwise.

It's not otherwise -- I don't challenge your claim of being more bold and forthright and masculine -- I can't prove it's otherwise and won't try.

I can't "prove" anything, except that we have EVIDENCE that something unusual happened 2000 years ago, and it's reasonable to believe it, because the evidence is better than the evidence we have for many historical facts which we routinely believe.

That you can't address this but want to obsess on who is more "bold" or "forthright" is a further indication that the above is probably the truth.

 

[Keith&Co.]

But I DISbelieve in miracle claims generally. There's usually not enough evidence (or none at all).

Silly Lumpy steps on his own dick, here.
You keep on claiming that if someone tells a story about a miracle, that's evidence for it.
So if you hear of a miracle claim, by your standards, that's evidence for it.
It's not POSSIBLE for you to decide that the evidence for a miracle is

(or none at all)

because someone told you the story. That's your bare minimum for evidence.

Unless, of course, you're treating Jesus' miracle stories differently than other miracle stories. You know, special casing once again.

 

[Kharakov]

It's a miracle that people still talk about Jesus like a real person. Jesus was a cyberorganic nation/state organism that was born of the Roman Empire. The Jews are actually just Romans (Italians) who pretend to have been slaves for political expediency.

 

[abaddon]

Josephus ... says that when the walls were finally breached, the first Roman to cross over was Faustus Cornelius, the son of the tyrant Sulla. This is a simple fact which everyone believes because Josephus says it. No other source than Josephus says this.

Your logic is like comparing one guy saying "the brown cow was first through the gate" to five guys saying "the spotted cow leaped over the moon", then proclaiming that the latter has "more evidence" and therefore is reasonable to believe.

Maybe the first guy's report was propaganda (as with Sulla's son), favoring the brown cow because he's from a line of famed cows. So these other 5 lies should be accepted too if that one lie is.

It's written in a document that this happened, and that's it -- it's a historical fact.

Which just means historians are ok with it because it's not incredible enough or there's no contradicting reports to justify a dispute. They want a tale to tell.

No, it's an extension of the logic historians apply to the documents...

No, it's you abusing logic and taking how they don't dispute mundane details and then mis-applying that to claims of a totally different sort to proclaim them reasonably acceptable as historical "fact".

Fantastic claims are not in the same category... [We] need MORE than the normal amount of evidence for miracle claims or anything fantastic.

Right, we need evidence they ever happen at all, and not anybody's say-so. It's not hard to discern when the human mythic imagination intrudes into one of history's tales. Unless you're a blind faith believer of the myth, a fish in a fishbowl with no awareness of it, then of course the myth must seem "reasonable" to you.

And this doesn't mean historians pronounce it as fact. They leave these claims in a doubtful category, without pronouncing whether they are true or false.

And do you leave the miracles in the gospels in a doubtful category like the historians do?

.... So sooner rather than later is an additional factor which can increase the credibility.

Sooner rather than later doesn't do much change the character of insertions of the mythical imagination.

The only thing that'll increase the credibility of miracles is to see things of that sort happening now. Else the most credible explanation is they're mythical elements within a tale that is either itself a myth, or maybe is partly historical (the bits that are mundane enough to not dispute overmuch).

. . . admit your belief in miracles is a leap of blind faith on your part?

But I DISbelieve in miracle claims generally... it's the evidence that makes it credible, not blind faith.

Blind faith is not a state of having no reasons at all. It's the acceptance of bad reasons as good reasons because they work for reaching the conclusion that one wants. It's evidenced when the bad reasons are shown to be lame but the believer just goes on repeating them anyway (as if his "manhood", his identity, is dependent on it).

... It's blind faith when you dictate to people to discount the evidence and believe your dogma that no miracle event can ever happen.

Yeah, it's dogmatism if I side with the substantial empirical evidence of the universe against flimsy hearsay that looks very exactly like human fantasy...

That you can't address this but want to obsess on who is more "bold" or "forthright" is a further indication that the above is probably the truth.

Not good logic.

And I did address it. That's what you were countering in the first half of your post.

The only evidence that'd make your favorite miracles seem credible is to demonstrate things like that ever happen at all. NOW. Not by referring to the past where any number of trapped-inside-of-myths doofs will say anything they want.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The evidence for the miracles of Jesus is superior to that for other acclaimed miracle legends, myths, prophets, heroes, etc.

I don’t look at the Gospel Jesus miracle claims in a vacuum relative to the dozens of other foibles in the emergence of this new sect out of Judaism and its history.

We agree it should not be looked at in a vacuum. What else should we look at?

Some related factors to look at are the other miracle claims which were made during all these centuries. Leaving aside whether the claims are true -- whether the events really happened -- but just considering the miracle claims themselves, which are definitely there, there is a pattern of their occurrence in the chronology.

Virtually ALL the miracle claims occurred BEFORE 600 BC, and AFTER 100 AD (or maybe 70-100 AD) and into the Middle Ages. With a stretch you might say there's a hint of such claims in Josephus, though there's virtually nothing there. Definitely in the Book of Acts there are many, from about 90-100 AD.

And, from 600 BC to 100 AD is a VIRTUALLY EMPTY space for claims of new miracle events, i.e., miracle acts by some wonder-worker appearing historically during this time.

ONLY REAL EXCEPTION: the healing claims made at the temples/statues of Asclepius, or other ancient gods. These are all there is in the way of any miracle acts being performed by some new miracle-worker. I.e., there is NONE, except the healing miracles attributed to the ancient god Asclepius.



The EMPTY SPACE of NO NEW MIRACLE LEGENDS 600 BC - 100 AD

There is NO historical person in this 700-year period to whom any miracle acts are attributed in the literature. Except if you consider Asclepius a person in history -- but if he existed, it was only back many centuries, perhaps around 1500 or 2000 BC, etc. Nobody knows when this person existed, if he did exist; just as we can't be sure if Apollo or Athena or Jupiter etc. might have once existed as real persons.

And the Asclepius cult was dying out during the centuries/decades leading up to the Jesus miracle stories. The latter appeared sometime from 30-80 AD. The resurrection of Jesus claim first appears no later than 55 AD, with Paul's epistles. While the Asclepius inscriptions were becoming fewer and fewer up to this time.

But this EMPTY period comes to an end, around 100 AD, and suddenly there is a REVIVAL of the Asclepius cult, and an increase in the Asclepius worship and miracle claims.

So when you fill in the "vacuum" with facts about other miracle claims, what we see is a huge 600-700-year BLANK leading up to 50 AD or 100 AD -- and then suddenly, out of nowhere, the Jesus miracle stories appear, in a huge quantity, followed by more Christian miracle stories and then a flood of new pagan miracle stories.

And then there appears a whole new category of miracle heroes like Honi the Circle-Drawer, Hanina ben Dosa, Apollonius of Tyana, and Simon Magus.

This new breed of miracle stories, resembling the Jesus miracle stories in a way unprecedented, appears abruptly after 100 AD, along with an explosion of new Jesus miracle stories in the later non-canonical Christian writings, apocryphal "gospels" and so on. Then this is followed by the many Christian miracle stories of the saints into the Middle Ages. But before about 50-100 AD there is a total BLANK -- no such miracle claims.

All this points to a strange unexpected happening, no later than 50-55 AD, an outburst of miracle stories unlike any other in history, and then this followed by a series of copy-cat stories beginning around 100 AD and later.

While earlier, proceeding back from the first century AD there's nothing, unless you go way back to the Elijah/Elisha stories of 600 BC.

So this is what you get when you fill in that "vacuum" with facts about miracle claims. What you find is that the Jesus miracle stories are TOTALLY ALIEN to anything going on during the time when they appear out of nowhere with nothing to explain where they came from.

The closest to the Jesus miracle healing phenomenon which you can find, the Asclepius cult, is dying, becoming less popular, as the demand for such miracles from the healing god is decreasing and there is apparently less and less craving for deities to cure people. So it's impossible to find any social or psychological need, unique to this period, to be satisfied by the new Christ miracle healing cults suddenly popping up after 30 AD. Nothing to explain what ignited this new unprecedented flood of miracle healing stories appearing in the gospel accounts.

That's what fills the VACUUM you refer to. I.e., when you don't look at it "in a vacuum" but fill in the related facts of the historical period.

Humanity generally accept much of what is historical upon vague information, but not miracles and gods.

That's mostly true. Claims that so-and-so did a miracle were REJECTED by the ancients, because there was not the extra evidence required in order for them to be credible. But what humanity did accept were traditions/practices about the ancient gods. I.e., not claims about what some wonder-worker last week did, but about how the gods created man or the earth and sun and moon, or how they fought and killed each other a thousand (or million or billion) years ago, and so on.

But miracle claims from the latest charlatan starting a new cult, or rumors about such things, were rejected routinely, or at best only a tiny group of wackos took it seriously, and virtually nothing of it was recorded in writing.

So we don't see such claims in the literature, generally, about a wonder-worker 10 or 50 or 100 years ago who did miracles. Such stories are extremely rare (virtually nonexistent) in the ancient literature, because no one believed such claims of recent miracle-worker fads.

It doesn’t matter whether King Egbert of Wessex drove Wiglaf, the king of Mercia, into exile or if the Vikings killed Wiglaf. But one of those options is far more likely than the other. I know George Washington existed and I accept much of the history about him. Yet I don’t buy the cherry tree or wooden teeth myths. People regularly set aside the BS injected into history, even if we don’t always know when made-up shit gets thru simply because it reasonably could be true.

You want the synoptic gospels to be 3 sources along with Paul’s letters.

The number of sources is fact, regardless what someone wants.

We don't choose what the sources are. We have 4 sources about the healing miracles, or 5 about the resurrection. The scholars/experts/researchers have turned up these separate documents. Just because there is content which overlaps them does not mean they are less than 4 (5) sources.

Writers quoted from earlier writers, sometimes even plagiarizing the earlier source. But this does not mean there are fewer sources, i.e., that the later one is not really a separate source. All the sources exist as separate documents. The later ones help to corroborate the earlier, even though they also rely on them for some of their content, and even though they might contain some distortions.

I-II Chronicles is a separate source from I-II Samuel and I-II Kings, even though it relies heavily on these and other earlier sources. These are all separate sources. Chronicles helps corroborate the earlier sources. Josephus repeats much information in I Maccabees, but this does not mean Josephus isn't a SEPARATE source from I Maccabees.

I see one source gradually exaggerated and expanded into what we now know as the synoptic gospels.

If it makes you feel good to "see" or pretend the number of sources is fewer than the 4 or 5 (the correct number), then no one can force the facts into you to contradict your visions. But you are fantasizing and inventing your own set of facts to suit your ideological commitment in artificially reducing the number of sources.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are separate sources from the books of the Hebrew Bible, though they contain virtually the entire Hebrew Bible. But these scrolls also contain some changes from those earlier writings, and they constitute a separate source on much of that literature and other content, just as Matthew and Luke are separate sources from Mark.

Much of the Scrolls is just copies from the Tanakh, even copied word-for-word, while also much is an expansion of it, and is heavily dependent on the earlier writing. Yet the Dead Sea Scrolls are a SEPARATE SOURCE of knowledge of those events and traditions recorded there. You can't claim honestly that they are the same source. Or that the later synoptic gospels are the same source as Mark.

You're entitled to your make-believe about the sources, but you can't expect others to conform to your invented facts contrary to the findings of scholarship, which give us the 4 separate gospel accounts and Pauline epistles as sources. You can't demand that everyone else conform to your decree that these 4 (5) sources are really only 1 or 2 or 3. We are entitled to accept the findings of archaeology and scholarship rather than submit to your ideology-driven interpretations to artificially reduce the number of these documents. The separate manuscripts/documents exist, as an objective fact, and you cannot wish them away.

And I see Paul’s letters as the vague beginning, . . .

Of what? the Jesus events? the gospel? But he clearly says that Jesus existed BEFORE him and that other believers preceded him. How could his letters be the beginning when he says in them that others believed in Jesus before he did?

. . . which for some very odd reason don’t talk much at all about who Jesus was.

The pattern is obvious, i.e., that Paul excludes EVERYthing about Jesus prior to the night of the arrest. He mentions this night and some of what follows. But he excludes absolutely everything earlier. It might be odd, but it's not difficult to conjecture why he might have limited his interest to only the very end, and to the later "cosmic" or "spiritual" Christ, whose last days on earth are the beginning of Paul's story.

And there is nothing IMPOV that make that not the most plausible explanation.

If by "explanation" you mean that before Paul there was nothing of the claims about Jesus, or that Paul invented this story initially, to which all the rest was added later, you have to explain Paul's words in Galatians:

Galatians 1: 13 -- For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it;

He's speaking of the early Christian church, in Judea. This existed earlier, BEFORE his conversion and his visions of Christ. What did these earlier Christians believe in if not the Jesus we see in the gospels and spoken of by Paul? How could Paul be the beginning of this Jesus story, if before his revelations there were already believers in this Jesus person? whom he says he persecuted?

14 and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, 16 was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with flesh and blood, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, . . .

Who were these "apostles before" Paul, to whom he did not go? It's true that he says he got his "gospel" separately from them, but still he is saying they were already "apostles" before he was, meaning they were already followers of the same Jesus to whom he himself was an apostle.

. . . but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned to Damascus. 18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days.

Who is this Cephas (also called "Peter") if not an apostle of Jesus prior to Paul being an apostle?

19 But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord's brother.

Who was this "apostle" who he thought was the brother of Jesus? Doesn't this Jesus have to be someone PRIOR to Paul, whose epistles are not the beginning of the story about this Jesus, but are from someone coming later who adopts this Jesus and adds his own ideas to this earlier person? How can you say this Jesus began with Paul rather than being earlier than Paul?

20 (In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!) 21 Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cili'cia. 22 And I was still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea;

Who is this "Christ" Paul is speaking of, if not someone EARLIER than himself, around whom some "churches" in Judea have organized already, long before Paul's revelations and new teachings about him?

23 they only heard it said, "He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy." 24 And they glorified God because of me.

If Paul is preaching the same "faith" which he earlier tried to destroy by persecuting those earlier believers, how could his Jesus figure have been invented by him? i.e., if he was persecuting earlier believers and "apostles" of this Jesus long before he received his own revelations? How could he have invented that Jesus if his Jesus invention or visions came AFTER he was persecuting Jesus believers? How could he have "tried to destroy" something he had not yet invented?

So when you say, "I see Paul’s letters as the vague beginning . . ." -- what are they the beginning of? The Jesus he says resurrected obviously existed BEFORE he wrote his letters. Those letters cannot be the beginning of the Jesus belief, because he was persecuting that faith long before he wrote any of those letters.


(This Wall of Text to be continued)

 

[Keith&Co.]

Virtually ALL the miracle claims occurred BEFORE 600 BC, and AFTER 100 AD (or maybe 70-100 AD) and into the Middle Ages.

This is so silly, Lumpy.

You talk as if you're an acknowledged expert in lecture, but your bona fides just aren't there.
The best you can say is that you're not aware of many miracle claims, here, but the fact is, you're not an expert. Over the course of this thread, you've been shown to be ignorant of many significant facts that have impact on your thesis.
When you learn of these facts, usually offered as counter evidence against your favorite myth, you work hard to marginalize either the new facts or the person who provided them.
Or you ignore the whole thing.

So, here, your theory rests on the lack of counter evidence. But clearly, if someone were to provide that counter evidence, nothing would change, would it? So clearly, you're not basing your belief on evidence, not really, you're filtering the evidence and pretending you're offering an argument.

Boring.

 

[funinspace]

I don’t look at the Gospel Jesus miracle claims in a vacuum relative to the dozens of other foibles in the emergence of this new sect out of Judaism and its history.

We agree it should not be looked at in a vacuum. What else should we look at?

Some related factors to look at are the other miracle claims which were made during all these centuries. Leaving aside whether the claims are true -- whether the events really happened -- but just considering the miracle claims themselves, which are definitely there, there is a pattern of their occurrence in the chronology.

Virtually ALL the miracle claims occurred BEFORE 600 BC, and AFTER 100 AD (or maybe 70-100 AD) and into the Middle Ages. <noise>

Blah blah blah IT’S THE MHORC MIRACLES!!!! Yet here you are regurgitating the same miracle hobby horse shit over and over again…get back to me when you publish your Mythical Hero’s Official Requirements Checklist (MHORC). You seemed to have lost track of the "what else" part.....

That's what fills the VACUUM you refer to. I.e., when you don't look at it "in a vacuum" but fill in the related facts of the historical period.
<noise>

No, you are completely distorting the VACUUM I refer to. I’ve said it enough, so I’ll just quote the vacuum that you wallow within as you ride your Jesus miracle hobby horse puzzle piece:

I don't know of anyone here who has said that only because the gospel accounts are "anonymous", they are not credible. That is just Lumpy's pretend punching bag he keeps attacking... Besides time and distance, it also includes discounting the conflicting birthing narratives of GMatt & GLuke and the forged ending of GMark (as Lumpy has acknowledged). It also includes a bizarre forced march census' that never happened; Harod's killing of the babies that didn't happen; the earthquake and blood red sky that no one bothered to record; Jesus' quoted attachment to the old Jewish fables as if they were real; fake Davidian genealogies; and one Roman reference to Pilate, where he was recalled back to Rome as he was too brutal even for their tastes...not quite the patsy of the gospels.

It doesn’t matter whether King Egbert of Wessex drove Wiglaf, the king of Mercia, into exile or if the Vikings killed Wiglaf. But one of those options is far more likely than the other. I know George Washington existed and I accept much of the history about him. Yet I don’t buy the cherry tree or wooden teeth myths. People regularly set aside the BS injected into history, even if we don’t always know when made-up shit gets thru simply because it reasonably could be true.

You want the synoptic gospels to be 3 sources along with Paul’s letters.

The number of sources is fact, regardless what someone wants.

We don't choose what the sources are. We have 4 sources about the healing miracles, or 5 about the resurrection. The scholars/experts/researchers have turned up these separate documents. Just because there is content which overlaps them does not mean they are less than 4 (5) sources.

Yes, these Gospels exist. Yes, they are sources of information, just as the Marcion attempt at a single Gospel is also a source of information; as is the Gospel of Thomas. However, that does not establish that they are independent sources.

Hey, look some Christian blowhard thinks 5,800 NT manuscripts means something, why not run with that?
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/sources-for-caesar-and-jesus-compared

What about the manuscripts? Here the New Testament is far superior to its classical companions. Our earliest manuscripts start appearing within decades of the writing. The fragment p52 is dated around AD 125. It only has a few portions of John 18, but it starts a trail that has full manuscripts of the Gospels appearing by the fourth century. The number of Greek manuscripts we have of the New Testament up to the time of the printing press is more than 5,800. The wording of the New Testament, including the Gospels, is extremely solid. Unclear spots often appear with an “or” note in Bible margins that record such differences.

Or maybe take the word of the dozens of esteemed Christian theologians involved with the development and release of the New Oxford Annotated Bible:

I also like what the forward to GMark in The New Oxford Annotated Bible; NRSV with the Apocrypha; an Ecumenical Study Bible says: "Mark is by far the shortest of the four canonical Gospels and is generally thought to be the earliest, and to have been used in the composition of both Matthew and Luke".

Or the well known 2-source-hypothesis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-source_hypothesis

The Two-source hypothesis (or 2SH) is an explanation for the synoptic problem, the pattern of similarities and differences between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke were based on the Gospel of Mark and a hypothetical sayings collection from the Christian oral tradition called Q.
<snip>
The Two-Source Hypothesis was first articulated in 1838 by Christian Hermann Weisse, but it did not gain wide acceptance among German critics until Heinrich Julius Holtzmann endorsed it in 1863.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Hermann_Weisse

Weisse was the first theologian to propose the two-source hypothesis (1838), which is still held by a majority of biblical scholars today. In the two-source hypothesis, the Gospel of Mark was the first gospel to be written and was one of two sources to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, the other source being the Q document, a lost collection of Jesus's sayings.

I see one source gradually exaggerated and expanded into what we now know as the synoptic gospels.

If it makes you feel good to "see" or pretend the number of sources is fewer than the 4 or 5 (the correct number), then no one can force the facts into you to contradict your visions. But you are fantasizing and inventing your own set of facts to suit your ideological commitment in artificially reducing the number of sources.

You are funny….pretend…LOL Yeah, Dr. Feel Good…

I feel good about pretending to agree with the 2-source hypothesis (Q & Mark) that most theologians ascribe to. Then we have Paul’s letters, from a guy who never met this Jesus; and the psychedelic Gospel of John that is said to have been written circa 80-90CE per the same New Oxford Annotated Bible.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The evidence for the miracles of Jesus is superior to that for other acclaimed miracle legends, myths, prophets, heroes, etc.

(continued from previous Wall of Text)

Instead, if one steps back and looks at the larger picture of the formation of Christianity out of the history of Judaism one runs into so many problems, it is literally hard to list them all. I'll just re-post my comments from almost a year ago:

Your MHORC seems to include a magical decade limit conveniently right below the time span that most scholars put down for the development of a large portion of your particular holy texts.

What? "magical decade limit"? "holy texts"?

The Jesus miracles, if they happened, occurred near 30 AD. Paul relates the resurrection miracle at around 55 AD. Mark's account of that plus the healing miracles is dated at about 70 AD, followed by the other gospels up to about 100 AD.

This time gap between the reported events and the writings about them is a relatively NARROW GAP by comparison to other historical events reported during those times. And there are virtually NO other reported miracle events, until modern times, where this time gap is so short, or where the alleged miracle event has that same amount of evidence, or minimum evidence necessary to establish normal events as historical.

LOL…See, you know what “magical decade limit” I meant. The magical puzzle part is that you tie this limit together with your parlor trick puzzle piece requirement. Who cares?

If someone can rewrite coherently and decipher the above "magical decade limit" and "magical puzzle" babble, please render this into plain English, so it can be taken up later in another Wall of Text.

BS can spring forth within days, let alone 15 years from the purported death of Jesus and Paul’s first writings.

Not if by "BS" you mean miracle stories such as the healings or the resurrection -- such miracle claims did not spring forth in a short time after the reported event, in the literature. There are not any examples of such a thing. When you say "BS can spring forth within days . . ." etc., this cannot refer to BS miracle healing stories or resurrection stories, because there are no examples of it anywhere in any of the literature, Jewish or Greek or other. You can claim anything that makes you feel good, but you cannot rewrite history and put events into the record which are not there. There are no cases of such events having been reported within days or 15 years or even 50 or 100 years of the reported events.

You can strrrrrrrretch the facts and claim there's an exception somewhere, but you have to strain and distort the details to pound that square peg into the round hole. There's virtually no example you can cite. As we proceed beyond 200-300-400 AD you might find increasing copycat stories (St. Augustine, e.g.), patterned on the Jesus miracles -- maybe after 1500 you can come up with something that appears to have more sources, after publishing has expanded to include much more BS than earlier, or up to the present when every kind of BS imaginable is published in multiple sources, so that instant miracle-workers become a dime a dozen in modern times. But not 2000 (or even 1000) years ago.

And Paul is a guy who by his own words never met Jesus.

Most of our evidence about ancient historical figures comes from writers who never met the historical characters they wrote about and who never even lived at the same time. Paul is closer to the time of Jesus than most of our sources for ancient history were to the times written about in them. (Of course you can name 2 or 3 exceptions to this rule, which proves that the rule is correct 99% of the time.)

The writings of [Quran] and the LDS have a much better sourcing history than the NT.

By modern times everything has "better sourcing" than the ancient documents. The 19th-century LDS miracle claims have "better sourcing" than the writings of Polybius, but the latter is more credible, not necessarily because of the absence of miracle claims, but because the Polybius literature is a much higher percentage of the total published literature of its time than the LDS miracle claims are of the 19th-century published literature.

The gospel writings are a much greater percentage of the total published literature of the 1st century AD than the LDS literature is a percentage of the total published literature of the 19th century. Meaning the Jesus miracle stories have far greater credibility and status as evidence of what happened in 30 AD than the JS miracle stories as evidence for what happened in 1820-1844.

The term "better sourcing history" has little meaning when comparing documents from 2000 years ago to documents of modern times.

The [Quran] just doesn’t come with parlor tricks.

The LDS miracle stories ("parlor tricks") might appear in a larger number of (19th-century) sources than the 4/5 (1st-century) sources for the Jesus miracles, because by the 19th century the total volume of publishing had increased by a factor of probably greater than a million times what existed in the 1st century. As a percent of the total published literature of the time, the JS miracle stories do not register on the radar screen.

I.e., had Joseph Smith appeared in the 1st century rather than the 19th, with all the same supernatural powers (i.e., probably none), there would be no trace of him today in any surviving literature. He would be less significant than Simon Magus, who barely receives mention in the surviving documents up to 200 AD.

However, there is nothing to support your time limit. In fact it has been shown over and over that mythos can develop within very short periods of time.

Not miracle claims. You can't give any examples.

I don’t need to give you examples as I find your MHORC to be BS.

You don't give an example because you don't have any, even though you've tried to find one.

Mythos of all sorts springs up very quickly.

You can keep repeating this falsehood, but you disprove it by not giving any example.

Miracle Max and its time limits is your thingy.

That's MHORCSHIT. It's also my thingy that the earth is spherical rather than flat.

You are conceding the following:

Miracle claims in the ancient world (earlier than 1000 AD) virtually always are tainted by at least three deficiencies:

1) Time Gap:

The reported miracle event, if it happened at all, took place many generations or centuries before the first source we have which reports it. E.g., the pagan myths are of events which allegedly happened thousands of years (even millions in some cases) before the first written sources we have about those events, i.e., the most reliable or closest sources telling us that the events happened.

From 100 AD and later, we have a flood of miracle stories in writing, virtually all of which were written 100+ years after the events reportedly happened, which is a delay of 2-3 generations during which much mythologizing typically happens.

2) Only one source:

Usually there is only one source for a miracle claim, especially if the time gap mentioned above is a short one, like only 100 or 200 years.

There are virtually no exceptions to the above deficiencies in the ancient miracle stories. But where a possible exception to the above seems to appear, there is a third factor which greatly undermines the credibility of the story:

3) Wide reputation and celebrity status of the alleged miracle-worker

Always the miracle-worker is a powerful or famous celebrity figure of his time (unlike Jesus) with an impressive reputation and long career, which easily explains how s/he became mythologized into a miracle-worker in a shorter time than usual, or perhaps got mentioned in 2 sources rather than only 1.

Possibly the best example of this is the Emperor Vespasian who reportedly did a miracle act, which was reported in 2 sources rather than only 1, and this appearing in writing about 50-60 years after the event reportedly happened. Possibly another example is St. Genevieve, reported in an early source. The celebrity status during their lifetime and long illustrious career explain how the mythologizing occurred earlier, or faster than normal.

These facts tell us that in the case of the Jesus miracle stories we have real evidence of the claimed miracle events, in the form of documents reporting them near to the time of the events, whereas in all other claims of reported miracles we do not have such evidence. Or, in the very few exceptions (if any), it is easy to explain how the miracle hero became mythologized (e.g., Vespasian).

Your MHORC seems to include your god doing parlor tricks as a pre-requisite for being a valid theology (aka random puzzle piece). Why?

"valid theology"? Wha-zat?

Are you asking why the Jesus miracle stories matter? I.e., are you asking what difference it makes even if the miracle stories are true?

I stating that I don’t see having a Miracle Max demigod doing parlor tricks as requirement for a faith system.

Maybe you're right, given your babble language.

Whatever you mean by "requirements for a faith system" -- what matters is whether there is a power which can heal, like in the Jesus healing acts, and bring the dead back to life. And one can reasonably hope that this power goes beyond what we see recorded in the gospel accounts, to the extent of making eternal life possible, or the "kingdom of God" which Jesus spoke of. This is a reasonable hope, but not a proven fact. It's reasonable to believe based on the evidence even if it's not 100% proof (or 99%).

Mohammad didn’t have a god/demigod doing parlor tricks as a “proof” to support the Qu'ran promise of a fun-filled afterlife.

He did recognize the Jesus miracle healing acts as historical events. He had to accept the evidence for these, and he had no such miracle power himself.

Why not require a Miracle Max to turn the whole Mediterranean Sea red, or stop the sun for a full day?

Because the evidence that's there is sufficient, showing that Jesus had power as we see in the gospel accounts, so there's no need to invent additional sensationalist fiction stories. However, some additional stories/myths did get added to the original real events, which can be explained as normal mythologizing. So it's not surprising to see some such stories emerging, e.g., apocryphal gospels in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

That would be a cool puzzle piece. Then we would have another shocking event that wouldn’t be possible to have happened and not get recorded.

But that such shocking events were not recorded is the reason not to believe they happened. Whereas the Christ miracle acts have been recorded as something historical, so we have evidence that they happened, and this is relatively good evidence for believing it's true, compared to the evidence we rely on for most (not all) of the normal historical events for that long ago.

Kind of like those Moses and Joshua fairy tales seemed to have happened in an alternate reality.

It's reasonable to disbelieve some of those miracle stories for lack of evidence. You are confirming that the Jesus miracle stories are supported by evidence, while most others generally are not.


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[DBT]

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It'd be better if you kept it brief and to the point, addressing one or two issues at a time, as they come up. Far more manageable and readable than your walls of text.

 

[lpetrich]

Lumpenproletariat seems to think that historians learned of Jesus Christ's miracles and started saying "I'll have to write miracles into my histories" -- miracles that were previously absent.