120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[DBT]

Most of the statues (Caesar) are not contemporary to his time.

Evidence please.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The evidence for the Jesus miracles meets the standards required for historical facts --

plus the added requirement that we need extra evidence for miracle claims.

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.

But it must be repeated as often as DBT and others here keep complaining that the gospel writers were not eyewitnesses to the events, and that because of this they are not reliable sources for us to use in determining what happened. What is "lame" about pointing out to these complainers that virtually ALL our sources for the ancient events are writers who were not eyewitnesses to the events?

If we're supposed to rely on eyewitness accounts only, then why would we believe Livy or Tacitus or Suetonius and most of the other historians who were not eyewitnesses? Should all the historians (except Thucydides and a couple others) be thrown out as sources for historical events? Should 90% of our historical record be shit-canned because those writers were not eyewitnesses?

And if these others do not have to be eyewitnesses and yet we believe them anyway, generally, why should we not believe the gospel accounts also? That they are not eyewitness accounts is obviously no reason to reject them.

Most of what you write are just incredible assertions repeated time and time again.

Are you saying that our sources for ancient history are mostly eyewitness accounts?

How is it an "incredible assertion" so say Tacitus writing later than 100 AD was not an eyewitness to the events of Caesar Augustus who became emperor in 30 BC? Are you saying he really was an eyewitness to those events which happened 50 years before he was born? How is it an "incredible assertion" to say he did not witness events which happened before he was born?

Do you think Tacitus and other historians were all reincarnated from a previous life in which they witnessed the events which they later wrote about in their next life? Or do you think they went back in a time machine, like in the movie "Back to the Future," to witness those events from 100 years earlier?

What's the "incredible assertion" in saying a historian who wrote 100 years later than the events happened was not an eyewitness to those events?

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.

Yes they do accept both these sources, though leaving aside miracle claims or any particular claims they have reason to doubt, such as ones which are contradicted by other accounts. Just because there are parts which are dubious does not mean the whole account is rejected. And even the dubious parts are mostly left in the doubtful category, without usually judging that they have to be false.

Can you find a statement from an historian expressly saying that this or that miracle claim is false and that the alleged event did not really happen? That's not normal.

It's not their function to dictate to the public which dubious claims from the past are true and which ones false. They do "accept" the accounts but set aside miracle claims as dubious, without proclaiming them false and without tossing out the entire document as you're implying.

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.

Yes they do accept his writings as a whole as historical. Much that is in the history books is based on his accounts, despite the dubious parts. And most of the events happened before his life, so he was not an eyewitness or a contemporary to it, and yet he is relied on for those events. And most of our history is from similar sources who were non-contemporaries to the events.

The "hard-to-believe" parts are not worse than average in Herodotus -- he's only one along with all the others who have to be read critically, or with skepticism, and with the need to find corroboration from additional sources for the "hard-to-believe" content -- like the corroboration we have for the miracle acts of Jesus, for which we have extra sources rather than only one.

In fact, the "hard-to-believe" parts in Herodotus have no corroboration, i.e., no extra sources to confirm them, and so we can dismiss most of it as fiction or highly improbable. However, one "miracle" in Herodotus can be believed, because it's not really a miracle at all: the claim that a horse gave birth to a rabbit. This almost certainly was really a case of a deformed horse offspring which looked like a rabbit to someone, and so was probably a natural event.

There are not "miracle" stories in Herodotus such as we see in the gospel accounts. But if such events had really happened and Herodotus knew about them, he likely would have recorded them. The reason he recorded virtually none is that none happened. While the reason they're so frequent in the gospel accounts is that they actually happened. This is the main difference between Herodotus and the gospel accounts regarding alleged miracle events.

Even Thucydides rejected him as "just a storyteller" for mixing fantastical things in.

You're exaggerating. Most of Herodotus is not fantastical and is not rejected, and he is no worse than other ancient historians in this regard. Just because Thucydides ridiculed him does not mean he "rejected" him as a source for history.

Do historians really accept other documents that are as shaky as the gospels as historical fact?

Your phrase "that are as shaky as the gospels" is incoherent babble.

Of course they "accept" ALL documents as evidence for historical facts, though setting aside the parts which are dubious. Historians do not ban a document just because someone labels it "shaky" according to their subjective standard for shakiness.

There are no documents excluded which originated near to the time of the reported events. Documents are not excluded only because a Jesus-debunker brands it as "shaky" and wants it eliminated from the record.

That in itself is an extraordinary claim.

You mean your claim that Tacitus was an eyewitness to events which happened 50 years before he was born?

Next time you declare what historians say about anything, include a citation to help demonstrate it's true.

You can't cite any historian who says a document is rejected because it is "as shaky as the gospels" are (or some other document). This language of yours is babble nonsense. All the documents are judged critically to determine which parts are more credible and which parts less.

You claim that miraculous events are acceptable as history if other dubious tales are history.

Particular miracle claims are more credible if there is extra evidence for them. E.g., if they come from multiple sources rather than only one, and if these sources are reasonably close to the alleged event(s). Your phrase "if other dubious tales are history" is incoherent. But if you're saying nothing unusual can ever happen in history, that's just your opinion which you can't insist everyone must agree with. Probably some unusual events do happen. In all cases it's necessary to look at the evidence.

Quote historians saying so, and stop repeating the unsupported assertion.

You mean the assertion that our sources for the ancient events are from writers who were not eyewitnesses to the events? Are you claiming that Tacitus was a contemporary to Caesar Augustus? There are a few exceptions to this, but these do not change the general rule that virtually all the sources are far removed time-wise from the respective events reported in them.

Do you need someone to provide wiki pages for you which give you the dates for historians like Plutarch, Polybius, Herodotus, Livy, etc.? Virtually nothing they wrote was about events of their own time. This pattern repeats over and over, with only a very tiny few exceptions. Are you calling this an "unsupported assertion"?

So again, to repeat the supported assertion: the gospel accounts cannot be dismissed simply because they are not from eyewitnesses, as DBT and others keep claiming incorrectly, because by that standard most of our historical record would have to be dismissed.

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

Let me try to untangle you from this "shit logic" your keyboard is spewing out:

We have 4 (5) sources -- written documents from the 1st century -- attesting to the miracles of Jesus. There are no other miracle claims in ancient history (before 1000 AD) for which we have such a degree of evidence (none even close). And there are many facts of history which we accept on much less evidence than this -- based on ONE SOURCE ONLY, and from sources 50 or 100 or even 200 years later than the events happened. So these have less evidence for them than we have for the Jesus miracle events.

What part of the above is an "unsupported assertion" or "shit logic"?

 

[DBT]

But it must be repeated as often as DBT and others here keep complaining that the gospel writers were not eyewitnesses to the events, and that because of this they are not reliable sources for us to use in determining what happened. What is "lame" about pointing out to these complainers that virtually ALL our sources for the ancient events are writers who were not eyewitnesses to the events?

The issue of probability has been raised over and over, but is either ignored or dismissed.

It has been repeatedly pointed out that having access to multiple independent sources raises probability considerably, but this is dismissed.

It has been pointed out that physics does not support extraordinary claims such as walking on water or raising the dead, nor do we have evidence for this ever having happened, which lowers probability considerably, but this is just dismissed because it does not suit the claims of the faith.

 

[Learner]

It has been pointed out that physics does not support extraordinary claims such as walking on water or raising the dead, nor do we have evidence for this ever having happened, which lowers probability considerably, but this is just dismissed because it does not suit the claims of the faith.

Who knows ? If you were to put "enough data" in continuously... after some time, physics could support phenomenons like that of the extraodinary claims to some extent. Is cryonics possible ? Some think so and pay to be frozen after death in hope that a future scientist would revive them (not that I think man alone could..defeating the purpose of mentioning). Is there such a thing possible as anti-gravity, manipulating the forces around or within a body mass?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Who knows ? If you were to put "enough data" in continuously... after some time, physics could support phenomenons like that of the extraodinary claims to some extent.

Um, did you notice where he said:

nor do we have evidence for this ever having happened,

So, you're saying that if we get evidence in the future, we may have to accept that this is real.
Which is pretty much what DBT was saying. That we don't have evidence for it NOW, so the claims of an anonymous account that it happened, once upon a time, need some significant evidence to make it a credible account.

Is cryonics possible ? Some think so and pay to be frozen after death in hope that a future scientist would revive them (not that I think man could..defeating the purpose of mentioning). Is there such a thing possible as anti-gravity, manipulating the forces around or within a body mass?

There are plenty of SciFi stories, and myths, and cartoon adventures, and hopeful investments.
That's quite different from positive evidence that any one thing is possible, leading to accepting testimony that it happened somewhere down the line...

 

[Learner]

Um, did you notice where he said:

nor do we have evidence for this ever having happened,

So, you're saying that if we get evidence in the future, we may have to accept that this is real.
Which is pretty much what DBT was saying. That we don't have evidence for it NOW, so the claims of an anonymous account that it happened, once upon a time, need some significant evidence to make it a credible account.

Sure but I replied "Who knows"? meaning later after some time. There are names to these accounts. Are there names or signatures to the hyroglyphics in Egypt or the rossetta stone or the various Sumerian texts to name a few around the world? Yet we have made a historical image and accounts of the ancient past. Scholars also look into the psychology of writers like Bart Erhman said of Pauls letters and believing them to be genuine although he does not agree with miracles according to the bible concept not that he could imo really say such a thing NEVER happened.

There are plenty of SciFi stories, and myths, and cartoon adventures, and hopeful investments.
That's quite different from positive evidence that any one thing is possible, leading to accepting testimony that it happened somewhere down the line...

You can turn any imagination into science fiction but a lot of the "past" science fiction ideas are being developed today. Science I believe would prove to some extent that eventually incredible things are plausible/possible sometime to come minus a time machine.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Sure but I replied "Who knows"? meaning later after some time.

Time is not important. It's been 2000 years. Evidence is what is needed.

There are names to these accounts. Are there names or signatures to the hyroglyphics in Egypt or the rossetta stone or the various Sumerian texts to name a few around the world? Yet we have made a historical image and accounts of the ancient past.

That's Lumpy's desperate plea. Historical accounts of events or people who do not require violations of known and accepted science do not require the same amount of evidence as the impossible.
Also, if we discover that a battle attributed to Ramses X was actually fought by Ramses Y, we don't suddenly lose all faith in the existence of Egypt.

Scholars also look into the psychology of writers like Bart Erhman said of Pauls letters and believing them to be genuine although he does not agree with miracles according to the bible concept not that he could imo really say such a thing NEVER happened.

Not being able to completely dismiss a myth is not the same as Lumpy's attempt to insist that the ONLY explanation for the story is that it must have happened.

You can turn any imagination into science fiction but a lot of the "past" science fiction ideas are being developed today. Science I believe would prove to some extent that eventually incredible things are plausible/possible sometime to come minus a time machine.

So, in that eventuality, when there is positive evidence for, say, people walking on water, using technology known to be available in AD 20, get back to us.

 

[sharon45]

Other findings of the group included:

Jesus of Nazareth was born during the reign of Herod the Great.

His mother’s name was Mary, and he had a human father whose name may not have been Joseph.

Jesus was born in Nazareth, not in Bethlehem.

None of this necessarily undermines one's faith in Christ. All of these biographical details are of minor importance, even though they may be cherished traditions. The basic belief in Christ is not dependent on biographical details like these. I.e., the basic identification of the person Christ is not dependent on these exact biographical details.

Correct. Nothing needs to ever undermine one's faith in some moron representing a so-called savior, but I just ask that said person simply not share the disease with others.

 

[C_Mucius_Scaevola]

Scholars also look into the psychology of writers like Bart Erhman said of Pauls letters and believing them to be genuine although he does not agree with miracles according to the bible concept not that he could imo really say such a thing NEVER happened.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here, but if I'm not mistaken, you seem to be saying Bart Ehrman believes "Paul's" letters are genuine and written by who they're claimed to be written by? If so, I can assure you that this is not the case. Ehrman accepts seven of the Pauline epistles as genuine, but not the other 6 in the NT (he also dismisses claims of authenticity regarding non-canonic "Pauline" letters). This is discussed at length in his book Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics.

Regarding miracles: while Ehrman doesn't appear to believe in the gospel "miracles", he also doesn't, to my knowledge, come right out and say they couldn't have happened. His stance is that, as a historian, he has no way of saying for sure, one way or the other, whether they happened or not. This because miracles, by their very nature, leave no physical evidence of their having happened (and, unlike Lumpy, he doesn't accept claims of miracles as evidence of miracles).

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Why are the gospels not credible? Because ALL sources for any history 2000 years ago are not credible!

Once again -- and again and again -- the main reason we cannot believe the gospel accounts is that we cannot believe ANY ancient history accounts.

If you're tired of hearing this, then Stop repeating this same error over and over!

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.

The meaning of atrib's parable is that in order for the Jesus events to be credible, the accounts of them must meet the following requirements:

1) They cannot be anonymous;

2) They cannot be dated many decades after the events happened;

3) The location where they were written cannot be thousands of miles distant from where the events happened;

4) They cannot use unnamed sources;

5) Instead of the above, the writer of the account must have witnessed the events himself.


Let's take these requirements one by one:


1. anonymity

This requirement would force us to eliminate some significant sources for our known history.

Although most of our sources are not anonymous, some of them are, and these are no less credible. Any credibility problems with these sources have nothing to do with them being anonymous.

Some anonymous sources are I-II Samuel, I-II Kings, I-II Chronicles, much of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I Maccabees. All these are credible sources for history. Any history book about the events in question relies heavily on these sources. Much of the history of the Israelites and Middle East region of that time comes from these sources. Many of our historians would have to retract much of what they present to us as history if they could not rely on such anonymous sources as these.

Some other anonymous sources are two major works on the history of the Franks -- Liber historiae Francorum ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Historiae_Francorum ), and the Royal Frankish Annals ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Frankish_Annals ), also the Sumerian Kings List ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List ), the Secret History of the Mongols ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_History_of_the_Mongols ), and many parts of the Suda ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suda ) (an extensive Byzantine chronicle).

All these contain likely errors, some superstitious elements and legends, and propaganda. Yet all are accepted as reliable sources of historical information used in history books and history classes. And these same flaws are found in the normal NON-anonymous sources like Herodotus and Livy and Josephus etc. There's no connection between the flaws to be found in the documents generally and the anonymity.

So, even though the anonymous sources are the exception, significant parts of our known historical record would have to be scrapped if we followed atrib's requirement that anonymous sources have no credibility for history. Yet he applies this arbitrary requirement onto the gospel accounts, to make a special case of them so they can be arbitrarily excluded as evidence.


2. late dating of the account

By this requirement, demanded by atrib, at least 90% (probably 99%) of our known history from before 1000 AD would have to be censored from the record. Very few historical writers reported events of their own time, or less than 50 years after the events. Even 100 years after the event was normal for historians like Tacitus and Plutarch and Suetonius etc.

So here again, in order to eliminate the credibility of the gospel accounts, one ends up also eliminating the credibility of most of our known history. It is strange that DBT and atrib and others keep going to this extreme in their desperation to disqualify the gospel accounts as credible sources.


3. far distance between the writer and the reported events

It's not true that the gospel accounts generally were written "thousands of miles" from where the events happened. Presumably it's the Gospel of Mark which atrib intends in his parable.

The far distance in this case is really a bit less than 2000 miles. This would be the distance from Rome to Galilee-Judea, which by land might be more than 2000 miles, but much less by sea. We're assuming here that the Gospel of Mark was written in Rome, which is not an established fact but only one theory of several about where this gospel was written.

Does this long distance cast doubt on the credibility of Mark (assuming it was written in Rome)?

To make such a point you also must assume this author/editor was never in Judea himself, or near there, so that he's unlike Josephus who wrote from Rome but had been in Judea-Galilee earlier. If we assume this, then one can claim it's an unusually long distance away from the events.

Let's assume the most extreme possibility here: Mark was written in Rome by someone who had never been to Galilee-Judea. This then is unusual for writings we rely on for historical events -- i.e., very few sources (or maybe none) for history are from a writer this far removed in location from the events.

There must be some exceptions to this, but perhaps it's a very rare case to be this far separated from the events.

But this separation is also very rare for fictional accounts. None of the epic poets and other story-tellers were this far separated from the location of the (fictional) events they relate. So this does not put the Gospel of Mark in a less credible category, i.e., a category more likely fiction than fact, because the fictional accounts also are much closer to the reported events than 2000 miles. So Mark is a rare case for either a factual OR a fictional account of events.

Even if it's true that the Mark editor/writer/redactor was in Rome and had never been in Judea-Galilee, still there are elements connecting him to the place of the events far from Rome. One of these is the use of Aramaic words, which is unique to Mark.

Here's a website which lists all the Hebrew and Aramaic words in the Gospel accounts: http://jewishstudies.eteacherbiblic...brew-aramaic-words-david-bivin-joshua-tilton/

There are several in Matthew which are Hebrew and Hebrew/Aramaic, making a strong case to connect also Matthew to the Judea-Galilee region. Regardless where the final editor/redactor was located, he was connected at least indirectly to the location of the events, probably through acquaintance with someone there.

You can always speculate a disconnection of the source from the events, but the evidence more strongly supports a close connection of at least Matthew and Mark to the Judea-Galilee area. Either they were written there, or are based on sources originating there.

The 19th-century scholar Ernest Renan connected the Mark writer directly to a disciple of Jesus, so that even though this gospel account was written near 70 AD, and even if it was written in Rome, the content in it originated mostly from this direct disciple who witnessed the original events.

In his chapter on miracles, where Renan describes Mark as "pre-eminently the evangelist of miracles and exorcisms," he says:

It seems that the disciple who has furnished the fundamental teachings of this Gospel importuned Jesus with his admiration of the wonderful, and that the master, wearied of a reputation which weighed upon him, had often said to him, "See thou say nothing to any man."

So Renan has this disciple being the link between Jesus in about 30 AD and the later Mark writer of about 70 AD, and he thinks Jesus directly instructed this disciple to "cool it" as to the miracle claims. Renan mostly did not believe the miracle stories as literal events but did place them right at the beginning, in 30 AD (rather than as later fabrications), and as something believed by the disciples and others, and especially by this one disciple who provided the stories to the Mark writer decades later.

The point here is that the later writer had a connection to the events of 30 AD, through sources such as this disciple, and/or others, so it's not important if the account was written in Rome rather than the same location where the events happened. Obviously there's no PROOF where it was written or what the sources were. You could speculate that the whole thing was really concocted centuries later as a gag by drunken British pirates in the Caribbean, and that they planted scrolls and other evidence to be discovered by archaeologists, and the whole Christ gospel did not exist before 1600 or so, being all fabricated one way or another as a massive hoax.

But if we get serious and go with the existing evidence, it indicates that Mark was written by someone who either had been in Judea-Galilee or had contact with someone who had been there and knew of these events, even if the author himself (or editor) wrote it from Rome.

If Rome was the location, and if it's true that this was an unusually long distance between the source and the events, making this document very unique in this regard, it just as likely adds MORE credibility rather than less to the document -- because it shows the importance and urgency of the subject matter and that the reports of this event were spreading rapidly and that something so foreign to the writer was taken so seriously. Why should a Roman think any such upstart cult in Judea was so important as this, to the point that many copies were made and distributed?


4) use of unnamed sources

Here again we must throw out ALL our sources for historical events, if we apply this as a requirement for credibility. I.e., if the only credible documents for history are those which name the sources for the information, then we have virtually no reliable documents to use for our knowledge of historical events.

Some of them name some of the sources, but not all, and most of our documents for history do not name their sources. The witnesses are usually not named, or the oral or written sources. To name these is the rare exception.

One comparison is I Maccabees and II Maccabees. I Maccabees is completely anonymous, not naming who the writer is or what source he relies on, while II Maccabees names a source for all it's content and identifies itself as an abbreviated version of the earlier document it's taken from. So since II Maccabees names its source, that should make it more credible than I Maccabees -- right?

But no, II Maccabees is much less credible, containing much fictional content which has no corroboration, despite naming the source. Whereas I Maccabees is recognized as a reliable source for the Jewish revolt and the early Hasmonean Dynasty period. So this is a case where the document naming the source is less credible than the anonymous document which names no source.


5) The writer must witness the events himself rather than relying on earlier unnamed sources.

By this standard, virtually all our sources for the historical record are disqualified from being credible, and we must eliminate almost all our ancient history knowledge.


So the main reasons why we should not believe the gospel accounts, as driven home here again and again, are also reasons why we should not believe ANY of the sources for our ancient history, and so virtually all of that historical record has to be scrapped along with the gospel accounts.

That's a good-day's work! All the history books and history classes, all those historians, whole departments in major Universities -- all shit-canned in one fell swoop!

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

What are the "other miracle stories" for which there is evidence, such as we have for the Jesus miracle acts?

Why don't you ever give us an example?

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.

OUCH!!!

You keep on claiming that if someone tells a story about a miracle, that's evidence for it.

Yes, but this doesn't include a claim about a miracle that happened a thousand or million years ago, by a god creating humans, or creating the moon or the sun.

But if someone claims to have seen the miracle event, or to have heard it from someone who saw it, or to have testimony from something recent, that's evidence. If there's ONLY ONE such report, it's probably not enough evidence to believe a miracle claim. But it is a small amount of evidence.

So if you hear of a miracle claim, by your standards, that's evidence for it.

Yes, for a recent miracle event -- not for Zeus casting a thunderbolt half a million years ago.

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.

No. "None at all" would be for a claim about the pagan gods/heroes who did something but with no evidence connecting back to the time of the event. The "claim" refers to someone who witnessed it, and there's some serious evidence going back to those witnesses.

Just a story about the gods is not evidence because there's no claim of a link going back to the event. Like a document written by someone who was there or knew someone near to the event.

That's your bare minimum for evidence.

Yes, a claim to have witnessed something is evidence. Or to have indirect connection to a witness, or document telling about the witness or connected indirectly to the witness. The evidence "chain" has to finally go back to at least a hypothetical direct witness, i.e., someone who was probably there, even if they're no longer around.

Unless, of course, you're treating Jesus' miracle stories differently than other miracle stories.

They all have to be treated the same.

We have 4 (5) sources attesting to the Jesus miracle acts, written near to the time of the events. This is good evidence for a time when there was so little being published.

Tell us about the "other miracle stories" from 1000+ years ago for which we have extra sources like we do for the Jesus miracle stories. These "other" stories have to be treated by the same standards. If there are 4 sources near to the time of the reported event(s), then it's good evidence.

You know, special casing once again.

All cases are special. But if you keep refusing to cite any "other" cases, it's difficult to judge their credibility. Why do you keep refusing to name the "other" cases for us to compare to the Jesus miracle stories?

Do you still claim the Pope is sending his vigilante book-burning squads everywhere to destroy the evidence for all the other miracle stories? Can't you get a video of these vigilantes in action and post them on YouTube? Have you seen them yourself? Or do you claim the vigilantes are invisible?

 

[DBT]

Once again -- and again and again -- the main reason we cannot believe the gospel accounts is that we cannot believe ANY ancient history accounts.

If you're tired of hearing this, then Stop repeating this same error over and over!

The only problem is that no one has exactly made that claim or that error. You have altered the terms and references of what has been said in a way that suits your own needs.

 

[Keith&Co.]

You know, special casing once again.

All cases are special.

BZZT! Wrong. But thanks for playing. You can't make your fallacy not be a fallacy by pretending the words mean something else.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Once again -- and again and again -- the main reason we cannot believe the gospel accounts is that we cannot believe ANY ancient history accounts.

If you're tired of hearing this, then Stop repeating this same error over and over!

The only problem is that no one has exactly made that claim or that error. You have altered the terms and references of what has been said in a way that suits your own needs.

And, frankly, I never really get tired of Lumpy demonstrating that he doesn't know how history works, as he tries to support a history argument.

 

[Lion IRC]

Once again -- and again and again -- the main reason we cannot believe the gospel accounts is that we cannot believe ANY ancient history accounts.

If you're tired of hearing this, then Stop repeating this same error over and over!

The only problem is that no one has exactly made that claim or that error. You have altered the terms and references of what has been said in a way that suits your own needs.

No - he's just saying you have to be consistent.
If the Gospels aren't admissible as "history" neither are any any other similar documents.

 

[C_Mucius_Scaevola]

The only problem is that no one has exactly made that claim or that error. You have altered the terms and references of what has been said in a way that suits your own needs.

No - he's just saying you have to be consistent.
If the Gospels aren't admissible as "history" neither are any any other similar documents.

Which other "similar" documents? The Koran? The apocryphal gospels? The Baghavad Gita? Because these are similar documents.

Unsimilar documents would be, for example, Herodotus' Histories, Tacitus' Annals, Thucydides' The Persion War or Xenophon's Anabasis.

So what's the difference? The difference is that the latter were written as historical narratives, while the former were not.

Lumpy's claim that the gospels should be treated like "any other historical document" falls at the first hurdle because the gospels were not written as historical documents. They are religious tracts, written for the purpose of gaining believers. Recording historical events was never their concern, so Lumpy's attempt to legitimise the by lumping (sorry) them in with "other historical documents" is a mistake of categorisation. It's comparing apples and oranges.

 

[funinspace]

And if there had to be parlor tricks, then it would be even more impressive if such an event was noticed by other peoples and written down and preserved. For example, if somehow there was a 24-hour day in Canaan, then it would be fascinating to have the Egyptians writing about it in absolute panic; or maybe the Chinese writing about a night that never seemed to end.

What's really "fascinating" is that all you can do is poke fun at the ancient Hebrew myths, as if these cheap shots have any relevance to what Jesus did or did not do in 30 AD. If Jesus had appeared instead in India and did his miracle acts there, then he would have been put into the context of the ancient Hindu myths, which you could also poke fun at, and prove nothing.

Your logic is that we should not believe ANY reported facts of history, because there are always some other stories nearby that are not literally true, and so therefore there are NO facts or true reports of any facts, and so we cannot know any history at all. If that's your premise, then yes, it follows that the Jesus miracle stories (and ALL reported events of history) are fiction.

Ah the "can’t know any history" meme again. What MHORC chapter is that in anyway?

What's your chapter saying you can arbitrarily delete from the historical record anything you don't like because the record also contains a few myths like Joshua making the sun stop? You need to graduate beyond this pettiness of constantly falling back on the ancient myths, for which there's no evidence, no reports from the time the event might have happened. That these fictions exist is not an excuse to toss out other reported historical events for which there is evidence but which you think should not have happened.

Holy Zeus batman...the "can’t know any history" meme yet again...do you ever tire of talking to your sock puppet?

But again, it seems your god likes a small ant farm over a big one.

Again you're dwelling on something that makes no difference, even if what you're saying is true. It doesn't matter whether "god likes a small ant farm over a big one" or not. You can't give any reason why this word puzzle matters, regardless what the truth is either way.
<snipped noise>

My small ant farm refrain is about the notion of god and the purpose of earth and the purported afterlife. Why would an all-powerful entity make tests of human belief in itself as a criterion for getting the ‘gift’ of eternity in paradise over a real death or even my dreaded phrase “eternal Auschwitz for the masses” doctrine? Why would it toy with such mortal creatures in such a half hazard way? No human would toy with their 6 children in such a callous way. But somehow it is ok for a god construct to be evil, while some try to call it good. These are points of philosophical consideration. And I often utilize the phrase “eternal Auschwitz for the masses”, as far too many Christians are glib in their ugly dogma, in what most people can only consider as an evil construct. This is partly why more and more Christians reject the theology of eternal torment. It would be ironic, assuming the atypical Christian deity exists, if it only throws those into eternal torment those that actually believe it to be a just punishment for “unbelievers”. IMPOV these issues are another component of why this theology is nonsensical. You harp on belief in the Miracle Max part pretty much as the only important thing, as your very custom* version of Christian theology that sounds far more like a custom deism than anything else. Most Christian think the Jesus sacrificing himself for our sins is the big thing. The idea that Jesus-god, sacrificed this part of itself to the god-head part of itself (for 3 days out of eternity), for the sins of creatures it created; and knew from before it created them how it would play out; is rather pathetic theology. These philosophical items all point to human machinations far more so than some all-powerful, just, loving creator entity.

*Part of what gets discombobulated in discussing/debating Christian theology with you, is that you seem to be a deist, who throws out 90% of Christian theology, and seem to make Jesus The God; as most people are debating normative Christian theological constructs.

Tleilaxu Epigram:
Here lies a toppled god —
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and tall one.

Today, even the percentage of Christians is probably down to 28-30% of the world population. The Christian population probably peaked out around 1900, with roughly 34% of . . .

Never-mind those numbers (mostly fake news).

Jesus will turn those numbers around and make Christianity great again, after he completes his courses at Trump University.

So for a god that purported exists and cares about his little ant farm, he sure never did a good job getting the word out...

He used human communication. He provided us with sufficient evidence and left it to humans to pass this on, but we can always complain that there should have been more evidence than this.

Yeah, Trump University is probably where your MHORC theology belongs. It is not a complaint about lack of evidence, . . .

What? You're now saying there's NOT a lack of evidence that Jesus did the miracle acts? So he did show this power, and there is evidence for believing in him, as I've been saying? Are you suddenly changing into a believer? All this time you seemed to be saying there IS a lack of evidence.

. . . not a complaint about a lack of evidence, it is an observation of fact regarding the stagnation of Christian theological faith adherents.

So then you agree there's enough evidence for a reasonable person to believe, but you're only saying there's a failure of people to believe, or lack of "faith adherents."

But when you said "he sure never did a good job getting the word out," didn't you mean there's not enough evidence? i.e., that God didn't provide enough miracles or didn't intervene enough into history to give us certainty about Christ's power to save us, and that if he had provided that much evidence, most or all humans would believe so that God's "ant farm" of believers would be much larger?

That's not the point you were making?

But now you've changed and are saying there is not a "lack of evidence"?

Are you daft? See underlined above. Observing reality is not a concession on sufficiency of evidence.

 

[Lion IRC]

...Lumpy's claim that the gospels should be treated like "any other historical document" falls at the first hurdle because the gospels were not written as historical documents

What? That's exactly what they are.
The New Testament writers wanted to record history.

 

[bilby]

...Lumpy's claim that the gospels should be treated like "any other historical document" falls at the first hurdle because the gospels were not written as historical documents

What? That's exactly what they are.
The New Testament writers wanted to record history.

 

[none]

hmm..