Fine-Tuning Argument vs Argument From Miracles

[atrib]

What verification is there other than that of additional people reporting it? What verification is there of ANY historical events, except further reports of them from other people reporting on it? And there are plenty of historical events which DON'T HAVE ANY VERIFICATION at all from independent sources other than one. So those events did not happen? You want to scrap thousands/millions of facts from the historical record because they are reported in one source only? Do you propose doing away with millions of history textbooks containing such historical facts?

Is is plausible that the Jesus character in the Bible is based on a real life person, perhaps a rabbi or priest who had collected a cult-like following among locals. It is not hard to believe a story like that because such an event would not have been unusual. But where the Bible moves away from plausibility is in its description of seemingly supernatural events. Comparing the supernatural claims of the Bible to the non-supernatural claims of history books is dishonest. History textbooks don't treat supernatural claims as factual. I am certain you understand this distinction as it has been pointed out to you in the past, but you keep repeating this absurd argument anyway.

 

[atrib]

You want to scrap thousands/millions of facts from the historical record because they are reported in one source only? Do you propose doing away with millions of history textbooks containing such historical facts?

No. Just the claims that go against the laws of nature. Like the resurrection of dead people, their unaided ascent into space, talking snakes and bushes, and so on. Since modern historians do not routinely consider supernatural claims to be factual (as you continue to imply), no rewriting of the history books will be required.

Why are you so scared to discuss the story of Jesus's resurrection and his ascent into heaven? Do you secretly doubt the story? Is that why you keep repeating your absurd arguments, to try to convince yourself?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Why are you so scared to discuss the story of Jesus's resurrection and his ascent into heaven? Do you secretly doubt the story? Is that why you keep repeating your absurd arguments, to try to convince yourself?

Note that all along, he has wanted a streamlined ticket to salvation. Minimum effort, so he doesn't have to change his behavior, and reasonable in that yhere are other stories of similar nature. That's why he's willing to dismiss lots of Jesus speeches and some of the more outlandish miracles as fictional. But tales of faith healers are as old as religion. So, not too much of a stretch to think Jesus did that regularlly. The flying into heaven, he only did that once, and there aren't many stories of faith flers. Even Rasputin never claimed to be able to fly.

Lumpy's whole approach is easily understood when you realize he wants the line-of-least-credulity faith, with little demands on his time or energy.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

It doesn't matter if it's called "supernatural" or how the reporters tried to explain it or interpret it.

Lumpen, where we disagree I can try to summarize briefly here---

How did the initial "reporters" of such an event know, or why did they believe, that they were witnessing a supernatural event?

The event was an act which was beyond normal human power to do. So they believed Jesus must have superhuman power.

How could they distinguish between a supernatural event from a natural event for which they did not yet have the naturalistic explanation for?

Maybe they did not distinguish these. It isn't necessary to think the miracle acts of Jesus were a "supernatural event" for which there can be no "naturalistic" explanation. They just saw it as special, and perhaps thought he had superhuman power. They probably didn't all interpret it the same way. They were Jews, and so they figured he must be connected to the God of Moses and Abraham, etc., and they put those ideas into their accounts.

If they had no legitimate reason to believe they had just witnessed a miraculous event (even if they claim they did), then . . .

But they did have a legitimate reason to believe it was miraculous. I.e., in the sense that it was an act beyond normal human power to perform.

. . . then why should we 2000 years later believe that they had legitimate reason to believe so, or know so?

It was a "miraculous" event if this means it was superhuman, or beyond normal human power. They had legitimate reason to believe it was "miraculous" in this sense. It was reasonable to believe this was "miraculous" or superhuman, because humans don't normally have such power. That's what made this event special and worthy to be recorded in documents, so later generations would know of this special historical event.

If an event is not special, and it's about no one of special status, then why would someone record it in writing? i.e., 2000 years ago when unimportant events were never recorded? Jesus was not special at the time, unless he did something highly unusual. If he did perform the miracle acts described, that explains why he was special and why there is a record of his acts, and why he became revered as a Teacher. There were plenty of teachers, rabbis, prophets, etc., who are totally forgotten, so that Jesus was another itinerant preacher/rabbi doesn't explain why anyone wrote about him.

Why wasn't this particular rabbi also forgotten like all the others? Why instead did separate writers make him special and anoint him as the Jewish Messiah? There were other teachers who could have been selected for this role. Why did they choose this one only? How was he different?

He must have done something totally different, maybe something ordinary humans do not or cannot do. Whether you call it "supernatural" or some other term. However he did it, or whatever the explanation, he must have done something which distinguished him from the hundreds of other rabbis who were forgotten.

 

[Brian63]

My questions were asking what gave them grounds to believe that a supernatural event had occurred, but your arguments are about whether superhuman events were occurring, which is a much lower bar to meet. Again I ask---how they would have been justified in believing that a supernatural event occurred, rather than a natural event that they personally just did not know the natural explanation for?

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I'm not asserting anything which assumes such a record existed.

You most certainly are, just indirectly.

So there's much mention of reputed miracle-workers who were hoaxes

"Much"? You just said there were only two authors who wrote about such "hoaxes;" Lucian and Plutarch. Lucian was a satirist born in 125 CE. He wasn't an historian by any measure and is considered, in fact, to be the grandfather of "science fiction." You are evidently mentioning him because he does not specifically call Christianity a "hoax" in any of the books that have survived the ravages of time. But everything we know about Lucian comes from the writings that we have. For all we know, he could have written dozens of books about the still nascent Christian cult, all of which were either lost to time or deliberately destroyed by any number of later "Christians" at any point in time.

Regardless, the only time Lucian does mention Christians, however, it's in a personal letter he wrote to a friend ("Cronius") about the death of Peregrine that had to have been written some time after 165 CE (i.e., after Pregrine/Proteus died).

Here's what he writes about Christians in that letter:

1 Poor dear Peregrine--or Proteus, as he loved to call himself,--has quite come up to his namesake in Homer.
...
10 That business about his father makes rather good hearing: only you know all about that;--how the old fellow would hang on, though he was past sixty already, till Proteus could stand it no longer, and put a noose about his neck. Well, this began to be talked about; so he passed sentence of banishment on himself, and wandered about from place to place.

11 It was now that he came across the priests and scribes of the Christians, in Palestine, and picked up their queer creed. I can tell you, he pretty soon convinced them of his superiority; prophet, elder, ruler of the Synagogue--he was everything at once; expounded their books, commented on them, wrote books himself. They took him for a God, accepted his laws, and declared him their president. The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day,--the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account. Well, the end of it was that Proteus was arrested and thrown into prison.

12 This was the very thing to lend an air to his favourite arts of clap-trap and wonder-working; he was now a made man. The Christians took it all very seriously: he was no sooner in prison, than they began trying every means to get him out again,--but without success. Everything else that could be done for him they most devoutly did. They thought of nothing else. Orphans and ancient widows might be seen hanging about the prison from break of day. Their officials bribed the gaolers to let them sleep inside with him. Elegant dinners were conveyed in; their sacred writings were read; and our old friend Peregrine (as he was still called in those days) became for them "the modern Socrates."

13 In some of the Asiatic cities, too, the Christian communities put themselves to the expense of sending deputations, with offers of sympathy, assistance, and legal advice. The activity of these people, in dealing with any matter that affects their community, is something extraordinary; they spare no trouble, no expense. Peregrine, all this time, was making quite an income on the strength of his bondage; money came pouring in. You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains the contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they take quite on trust, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property. Now an adroit, unscrupulous fellow, who has seen the world, has only to get among these simple souls, and his fortune is pretty soon made; he plays with them.

14 'To return, however, to Peregrine. The governor of Syria perceived his mental warp: “he must make a name, though he die for it:” now philosophy was the governor's hobby; he discharged him–wouldn't hear of his being punished–and Peregrine returned to Armenia. He found it too hot to hold him. He was threatened from all quarters with prosecutions for parricide. Then again, the greater part of his property had disappeared in his absence: nothing was left but the land, which might be worth a matter of four thousand pounds. The whole estate, as the old man left it, would come perhaps to eight thousand. Theagenes was talking nonsense when he said a million odd. Why, the whole city, with its five nearest neighbours thrown in, men, cattle, and goods of every description , would never fetch that sum.

15 –Meanwhile, indictments and accusations were brewing: an attack might be looked for at any moment: as for the common people, they were in a state of furious indignation and grief at the foul butchery of a harmless old man; for so he was described. In these trying circumstances, observe the ingenuity and resource of the sagacious Proteus. He makes his appearance in the assembly: his hair (even in these early days) is long, his cloak is shabby; at his side is slung the philosopher's wallet, his hand grasps the philosopher's staff; truly a tragic figure, every inch of him. Thus equipped, he presents himself before the public, with the announcement that the property left him by his father of blessed memory is entirely at their disposal! Being a needy folk, with a keen eye to charity, they received the information with ready applause: “Here is true philosophy; true patriotism; the spirit of Diogenes and Crates is here!” As for his enemies, they were dumb; and if any one did venture an allusion to parricide, he was promptly stoned.

16 'Proteus now set out again on his wanderings. The Christians were meat and drink to him; under their protection he lacked nothing, and this luxurious state of things went on for some time. At last he got into trouble even with them; I suppose they caught him partaking of some of their forbidden meats. They would have nothing more to do with him, and he thought the best way out of his difficulties would be, to change his mind about that property, and try and get it back. He accordingly sent in a petition to the emperor, suing for its restitution. But as the people of Parium sent up a deputation to remonstrate, nothing came of it all; he was told that as he had been under no compulsion in making his dispositions, he must abide by them.

So what we get from this is a description of a group of primarily well-to-do Jews ("convinced him of his superiority...prophet, elder, ruler of the Synagogue" "partaking of some of their forbidden meats") who worshipped a man (not a god) that was crucified (not resurrected) and supposedly worshipped Peregrine/Proteus as a God as well.

Not as God, but as a God. See the distinction? He describes this cult as being extremely superstitious and non-critical and basically easily duped by Proteus. Worshipped as a god; became devout to him; accepted his laws; made him "President" no less.

So are you arguing that all of this was true? I mean, it must be, because it was written down, right?

As for Plutarch, who was actually a biographer and a philosopher (and a Platonist), he, of course, lived much closer to Jesus' alleged death (i.e., born in 45 CE- 120 CE). He influenced early Christians, but does not write about them most likely for the obvious reason that they weren't much of anything until much later in his life. GMark isn't even written until the late 70's and from Lucian we get that they are basically a Jewish splinter cult at best by about the time Plutarch dies.

But there is no way to explain the Jesus miracle acts as fictional

Nonsense. Look at Lucian's letter. In that letter he writes a fictional account. Or are you now arguing that what Lucian wrote is non-fiction, in which case you'd need to explain how the Christians of circa 160 CE could have taken Proteus as a God and made him their "President" accordingly. Did they not already believe that there was only one God (in three parts, no less)?

given the accounts

"The accounts" are GMark (fiction) and Paul desperately arguing that a belief that Jesus was spiritually resurrected was a necessity or else there was no religion, which in turn conclusively proves that the "Christians" (at least the gentiles, which were the only ones Paul was trusted to handle by the actual disciples) didn't even believe Jesus had resurrected.

Marry that fact to what Lucian writes--that the Christians he referred to in or around 165 CE worshipped a man (not a god) who was crucified (not resurrected) and evidently had no problems worshipping other men as a God as well--and you've got a good 150 years after Jesus' alleged death where the extra-biblical world informs us he was just a man that was killed.

or how people could have mistaken Jesus to have divine healing power

People didn't. Cult leaders did. You are assuming fictional stories are non-fictional and then claiming the fact that they are non-fictional to be evidence that they are non-fictional.

Then you reference Lucian who confirms that Jesus was just a man who was killed that his followers worshipped as a God, not as God, just like they did Proteus.

So is Proteus now also God?

when he did not cite any ancient healing god as his source of power

He most certainly did! He claimed Jehovah was the source of his power. That was the whole basis of his and his follower's claims to his divinity; that he was the son of their Jewish god (whatever name you want to give it; Jehovah, Yawheh, whatever).

EVERYTHING that Jesus does is to fulfill Jewish prophecy.

There are virtually no "primary sources" making any claims of any kind.

You mean extra biblical sources.

History is based on the sources which exist, not on imaginary "primary sources" you wish existed.

So, you mean like the books of the NT?

Our sources for the Jesus miracle acts are better than our sources for most of the ancient history events generally.

"Better" in what sense? Again, as your own reference to Lucian proves, he easily concocted a fictional story about Christians in one letter. That's all it took, unless you are now going to argue that Lucian's account was also non-fictional?

Your argument is ridiculous. It takes zero generations to write a fictional or otherwise mythological story (i.e., fictionalizing/embellishing certain elements of a story that may otherwise be based in some part on real people).

There are reasons one might doubt the reports

Good, then we're done.

, but the complaint that there are no "primary sources" is no more reason to doubt these reported events than 90% of the reported history of those times.

It very clearly is, or, again, are you now going to argue that Lucian was writing a non-fictional, historically accurate account of Christians circa 165 CE as being a group of easily duped communal Jews who worship a man who was killed and who also worship another man (Proteus) as if he were a god (not that he IS a god; but LIKE a god)?

And, according to your own illogic, mustn't we now set in stone Lucian's account as the gospel, if you will, regarding Christians as late as 165 CE?

There are only stories of stories handed down year after year in oral form until decades later (at best) some unknown author (“Mark”) wrote his version.

And that's a better and more reliable account we have for an historical figure than we have for any other 1st-century Jew or 1st-century figure living in Palestine.

Which doesn't change the fact that its shite. Or, again, are we now setting in stone Lucian's account?

Most of our ancient history record was written decades later, even 100 years later, and is based on the oral stories handed down. Only a small percent is from authors contemporaneous to the events.

And it's equally faulty for precisely that reason. The mystery around who Homer was is still just as debated today as it was centuries ago, but no matter who he might have been, there never have been "gods" named Zeus and Poseidon.

The closest we can get to any confirmed identity of any of the authors of the NT is Paul, who never met Jesus (in spite of the fact that he supposedly lived contemporaneously to him and was both a Roman citizen and a Jew).

That's better than we have for most historical figures reported in the writings

Again, proximity means nothing, so let's skip to:

Third, the claims are not just that Jesus could perform miracles, but that his disciples could as well, including raising people from the dead.

There's almost nothing in the Gospel accounts saying that. It's only the Book of Acts reporting those events.

Ummm...Matthew 10? Never heard of it?

1 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy,[a] drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.

So, is Matthew not true either?

But there is no explanation what inspired the Jesus miracle stories unless they were real events.

Nonsense. The explanation is that they are lies made up either by people who wish to control others (aka, a cult) or they're just typical aggrandizements. Again, look at how Paul desperately tries to convince an early church congregation that doesn't believe Jesus was resurrected.

But where there is no explanation of what caused the stories, a good explanation is that the events really did happen.

There are several very simple explanations--deliberate lies either by cult leaders or others; innocent aggrandizements of oral accounts and/or written accounts changed by copyists over time; a cultural understanding that such fantastical characters are never meant to be taken literally; etc.

The very fact that the Gnostic Gospels exist, for a perfect example, and yet are not to this day considered "canon" proves that there were early accounts that church "elders" considered to be too radical or too fantastical or just did not present the version of the cult that they wanted preached.

Yet, curiously, there is not a single mention of any such resurrection either in any of the books of the NT or external sources, which one would think would be significantly news worthy to actually instantiate a working press.

Miracle acts by the disciples, reported only in Acts, are probably fiction and were not widely believed until much later.

Ahhh. And Matthew? Fiction too? And what isn't fictional then? Can you provide an exhaustive and detailed list of everything that isn't fiction and exactly what evidence you have that would prove such an assertion?

No, you can't. As is painfully evidenced in all of this tap dancing you're doing.

Fourth, the fact that there were (supposedly) 12 disciples walking around Jerusalem with the power to heal the sick and raise the dead makes one wonder why those people are not still alive today.

There's virtually nothing of this except in Acts.

Again, wrong, so let's skip all the bullshit about Acts.

It's easy to poke fun at the part which is obviously fiction.

Ahhh. "Obviously fiction."

What cannot be explained is why such stories were not told 50 or 100 years earlier.

Again, Matthew. Which many cult members still think of as the first in the passion narrative mythologies, but is actually dated to around 85 CE.

Why don't we see stories of such miracles in 60 or 40 or 20 AD and earlier?

Ok, well, we do circa 85 CE, so, I guess that means everything after GMark is fiction?

There is no miracle tradition in the Jewish or Greek/Roman culture during these centuries having any resemblance to the Jesus miracle healings

There were many many such "traditions."

There are many pieces of evidence pointing to the Jesus miracle acts as real events in history, unlike other miracle legends of the period.

No, there is really only one, GMark (and he confirms that Jesus granted his disciples healing powers). And then GMatthew--about 15 years later--aggrandizes those powers.

Hey, what do you know? We have a directly applicable example of how one writer--"Mark"--says the disciples have only healing powers and then a later writer embellishes that detail to now include the ability to resurrect the dead.

And that only within about fifteen years of each other. Imagine that.

So which author is correct? And which one embellished? Or did both?

The reliable and neutral sources, or those exterior to Christianity, say nothing about the Jesus miracles, and almost nothing about Jesus generally.

Which should likewise tell you everything you need to know, but then, again, we also have at least two authors that talk explicitly about those miracles--at least in regard to granting powers to the disciples--that show a clear embellishment.

I'll leave it there for now so that you can explain all of these contradictions.

 

[steve_bank]

My questions were asking what gave them grounds to believe that a supernatural event had occurred, but your arguments are about whether superhuman events were occurring, which is a much lower bar to meet. Again I ask---how they would have been justified in believing that a supernatural event occurred, rather than a natural event that they personally just did not know the natural explanation for?

The answer to your question is look at the last 200 years.

The rapid rise of Mormonism from one person's declaration he was visited by an angel and handed tablets.

The belief in ET visitation and UFOs, govt cover up of alien technology. The whole mythology around Area 51.

Look at how Trump convinced people he was a successful businessman.

Bigfoot..a long list.

Today scince has replaced a lot of superstition and yet religious myology is strong. Imagine what it was like when most people were illiterate and there was no rational science.

 

[Learner]

I disagree. I believe that extraordinary claims, especially those that involve the suspension of the natural laws of the universe, require extraordinary evidence. Adding a few extra witnesses adds no credibility to such claims.

I am just curious why you (plural) come up with the phrase : "Suspension of the natural laws of the universe" as it seems : A knowledgeable requirement, in order for those miracles mentioned in the bible to happen. Now I'm not suggesting I know"how" a miracle is "supposed" to work but a counter to your phrase above can be: An ability to Manipulate ,(and not suspend), natural forces which would perhaps equally result in amazing miraculous things.

I suppose I am also saying : It can be misleading imo when using such phrases as suspension of physical laws , which is not a good approach against the God created-everthing-concept that also includes the universe laws. You won't get the satisfying answer to your question. Perhaps you know this.

As has been explained to you many, many times in the other thread, the claims related to the supernatural events described in the Bible are not credible. People can't walk on stormy waters. People can't be healed by a touch. Snakes and burning bushes don't talk. And most importantly, dead people don't rise up from their graves and fly off into space. These are all extraordinary claims that are contrary to what we observe in the natural world.

One thing is for sure. Miracles are not "repeatable in the lab" which would obviously contradict the term "miracle" if it were otherwise ; have consistent results with each repeated experiment. Believers would NOT have the ability anyway, to reproduce the miracle "at will" to satisfy you in any inquest but ... his word only e.g. his testimony. I'm assuming we all know the biblical concept of miracle(s), which are supposed to just happen in special circumstances

There is NO mention of ALL snakes having been created with the intention to talk and ALL donkeys having been intentionally created with the ability to talk ..which is also misleading if not flawed to suggest this as questions to theists, which would result again in a non-satisfying answer for your post. (perhaps expecting a non-answer ?)

Only One serpent in ONE special case in Genesis and ... One donkey in ONE special case and circumstance (it never spoke before or after since) . As I said: The bible does not say GOD created All snakes to speak or that all Donkeys should speak.

Edit: Not forgetting the ONE particular moment where it mentions a voice coming out of ONE particular bush , meaning , not a common biblical thing for other bushes.

(I'll come back to you on your dead people part perhaps later)

 

[Keith&Co.]

All in all, you remain without any evidence for actual miracles, nor any sound explanation for the miracles, but you do want to try to shoehorn the possibility of miracles into the sciences you do not understand well enough to identify actual loopholes.

As usual...

Only One serpent in ONE special case in Genesis and ...

But that ONE snake's behavior got ALL snakes crawling on their belly, eating dust. Not really a 'special case' as much as a 'just so' story.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Our evidence for the Jesus events is the same kind of evidence we have for most historical events.

It is not evidence that anything happened; it is only "evidence" that someone believed something happened.

It's both. All our history record is based on reports of what "someone believed" happened. They had reason to believe it, and we have reason to believe it based on the documents which have come down, and probably most of it is true. It's what our "evidence" for history is, and without these reported beliefs of what happened we'd have no historical record and no history books or history classes.

We know human memory/human experience is more often than not faulty and prone to all manner of mistakes in perception and colored by confirmation bias and simply unreliable on its own to establish anything more than the beginning of an investigation, not its closure.

Will Durant said it better: "History is mostly guessing. The rest is prejudice."

Whatever flowery language you use to describe its nonperfection, without the written record telling us what they believed happened we'd have no history. We believe the record is mostly true, despite its nonperfection. All the writings near to the time are part of the record, including the NT documents, and all are doubted and used critically and relied on to determine what happened.

If I say to you, "I saw Xenu," that is NOT evidence that Xenu actually exists; that is only "evidence" that I saw something that I believed to be Xenu. If 500 people all claim that they saw Xenu, that, likewise is NOT evidence that Xenu actually exists; that is only "evidence" of 500 people who saw something that they believed to be Xenu.

Therefore Julius Caesar did not exist. All we have are recorded statements by people saying they saw him or that someone else saw him, which is not evidence that he existed, according to you.

We have zero corroborating evidence to say one way or another whether what they believed they saw actually existed or . . .

Many facts in our accepted historical record have zero corroborating evidence.

. . . or any number of other explanations account for their experience that don't rest on the notion of the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth (then known as "Teegeeack") in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs.

And what is the 75-million-year-old document reporting these events? Who are the scholars who say this was really written 75 million years ago near the time of the reported events? If that's what you're claiming about your source, and those facts are available to us in our information sources, then why are you so sure those events didn't really happen? And you have more than only one such source for this Xenu event -- right? If there are miracle events reported, we need more than only one source for it.

Now just imagine if the story of Xenu had actually been merely told orally to subsequent generations--and how prone storytelling is to aggrandizement and editing and alteration--for a good forty years before someone claiming to be L. Ron Hubbard wrote it down and then . . .

Whoops! This event of 75 million yeas ago comes from a 20th-century source only? Why are you using this for your example? Don't you understand that the source has to be near to the time of the reported event? You need to first understand what we're talking about. We have 4 (5) sources for the Jesus miracle acts, all near to the time of the reported events, like the sources we use for our historical events are from writers who were near to the reported events.

. . . and then three other people wrote different versions of the Xenu passion narrative years apart, that can't be reconciled with each other, all . . .

Yes, like our historical record is from similar sources, often which contradict each other. Yes, if your example was about sources of information which meet the criteria for history sources, then why shouldn't we give credibility to them? We'd believe them if they were sources near to the event, and if they confirmed the same events happened, as the 4 Gospels confirm the same events. Yes, if, if, if, if all those reasonable criteria were met, the account of Xenu would have credibility as an historical event.

. . . all claiming to be "eyewitnesses" when in fact they relate details and conversations that they could not possibly have personally witnessed.

Like Herodotus and other historians relate conversations they did not witness.

But you said the reported events happened 75 million years ago. We need sources near to the time when the events happened, not 75 million years later. Historical facts are the claims from sources near to the time of the reported events, not something they say happened millions of years ago. Like the Gospel writers, who reported the events of 40 or 50 or 60 years earlier, which was normal for reporting historical events back then.

So if you're trying to give us a clever analogy to the writings which report the Jesus events, you must give us an example of something written near to the time of the events, like less than 100 years after the event allegedly happened.

And then add into the mix that those were all written thousands of years ago in another language and over the centuries hundreds if not thousands of copies were hand written and edited and aggrandized and translated and re-translated and changed in ways we have no possible way of knowing definitively what was original and what was revised.

Like most of our ancient history record. So then you're saying we cannot trust our known history of the Greeks and Romans, because most of it was written "thousands of years ago" in another language and thousands of copies were written and edited and translated and re-translated? What is your point? Shut down all the history classes? Toss out all the history books?

Regardless, the fact that you are so desperately trying to insist that a standard of evidence has somehow been met for a faith-based belief is something you should take a long hard look at.

That's what we're doing here. The Jesus miracle acts are recorded in documents near the time they reportedly happened, just like 90% of our facts for ancient history were recorded, by people who did not witness the events but just relayed what others were saying, in oral reports of what happened 50 years earlier. The writers who were contemporary to the events, like Thucydides, are the rare exception.

And a vast amount of the known history has fewer sources than we have for the Jesus miracle events, which are 4 (5) sources. And there are plenty of contradictions and discrepancies in all the known documents we rely on for the mainline historical events.

ETA: Now apply the exact same scrutiny to a story that actually starts without a resurrection. GMark does not say that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. It ends with the women going to the tomb, seeing it already open and a "young man" sitting inside, who merely tells them Jesus "is risen." Not that he was dead and resurrected from the dead.

The earlier chapter said explicitly that he died. Then the last chapter obviously assumes that and says he rose.

You could nitpick any historical record of what happened and chop it up to claim it doesn't say what it's obviously saying because you omit an earlier chapter. Few historical documents have any credibility if you nitpick them like this. If this kind of word-game is why we cannot trust the accounts of the resurrection, then we also cannot trust any historical documents and there is no historical record.

All of which, no one named "Mark" could have possibly eye-witnessed.

If he did not witness it, he's like 98% of our ancient historians, who did not eye-witness the events they reported.

Whoever "Mark" was could not have been relating personal anecdotes; he could only have been relating what others told him about that morning at best.

Some of Mark is more likely from personal experience/anecdote. Some, maybe most, is indirect reports relating what others told the author/editor around 70 AD.

Most of the historical record is from writers relating what others told them. By your criterion we must toss out most of our known history.

So we do not even have an eyewitness account; we have a hearsay account.

Most of the historical record for 2000 years ago is "hearsay" and was not written by eyewitnesses. The evidence we have for the resurrection event, or the "empty tomb" event, is just as reliable as the evidence we have for most of the historical facts of that time. Again, you're tossing out most of the historical record when you impose these standards.

Add into that mix the fact that we're talking about people who evidently already believe that the dead can in fact resurrect and that real magic exists and that magical beings are everywhere and in abundance, etc.

They didn't believe those things anymore than anyone else believed them. Neither the readers nor the writers of these accounts believed uniquely in resurrections or magic or magical beings. Rather, what they believed was the norm for everyone throughout the centuries before and after the Gospel accounts were written. They had less belief in such things than what was generally believed 500 or 1000 years later, when belief in resurrection and magic were more common than in the 1st century.

Iow, we're not exactly talking about critical thinkers to begin with.

So no historical documents can be trusted, because all the readers and writers were not critical thinkers? Again you're tossing out ALL documents as sources for historical facts, not just the NT writings.

Hence "doubting Thomas" who inexplicably could not simply recognize Jesus and needed to stick his fingers in the wounds, etc. Plus, there is the very logical fact that Jesus never died, merely passed out from blood loss and simply appeared dead to unsophisticated peasants who were not trained doctors/pathologists. He was taken down only after a few hours on the cross . . .

You're trusting the Gospel accounts as your source for all that speculation.

. . . a few hours on the cross (a method of torture and death that would often take days to kill someone, which is why it was so horrific and used as a deterrent).

If you believe the above happened, from these sources, you should also believe that he died, as they all say he did.

In one version of the story, Jesus is taken down and wrapped in anointed linen--effectively medicinal bandages--and then . . .

The only sources having credibility for what happened are the 1st-century ones, closest to the events. There's nothing about "anointed linen" or bandages.

. . . and then placed inside a cave rather than buried in the ground. Iow, bandaged and placed in a safe, environmentally controlled chamber, where he was evidently watched over and cared for the whole time. Someone . . .

Are you an archaeologist who did your own excavating in the Holy Land and came up with some new scrolls telling events which have been suppressed by the Establishment? Did you choose this message board as the place to reveal your explosive new findings? Have you submitted these new scrolls to experts to confirm that they're from the 1st century?

. . . had to have moved the rock after all and it would make no sense for the "young man" to be the one that opened the tomb and . . .

We don't need to know who opened the tomb or speculations on which details would or would not make sense. There is plenty to speculate on about the details, but all we need are the general facts of what happened: He died, was buried, and then rose. Many people witnessed this (death, burial, empty tomb, appearances), regardless of the details, the exact chronology, or which person did this or that. There's much that is agreed, confirmed in the accounts, but also some that's inconsistent because of discrepancies. The accounts cannot be totally accurate on all the details -- like most history sources generally, especially for more than 1000 years ago.

. . . opened the tomb and then just sat in it waiting for someone to maybe come along and . . .

Only for an hour -- he had set his watch ahead not realizing Judea was on Standard Time, so he had an hour to kill.

. . . and check on Jesus, let alone the women to go to the grave for any reason at all, since Jesus was already supposedly dead and in his tomb.

It was customary to anoint a dead body of someone special, so there was a reason.

And who among those women were going to move that rock?

There was a possibility they would not get in and so would have made the trip in vain.

But I digress.

You stumbled off the edge back there and choked to death, like the herd of swine which stampeded over the cliff.

The point is that even taking the "resurrection" part at face value, there are other far more logical and, frankly, obvious explanations for what otherwise ignorant desert peasants would have mistaken as miraculous that actually are not.

The ones who recorded these events were educated and not ignorant peasants, and they did believe the events happened as they reported them, because of the evidence, based on their sources which they considered reliable.

Iow, GMark equally evidences a story that easily got misinterpreted and/or aggrandized. We know this from Paul's letters, in fact, that many at the time did not believe Jesus physically resurrected.

"at the time" = in the 50s AD.

It's normal that many would not believe the claim, even if the event really did happen.

Paul had to insist--vehemently in fact--that without a resurrection, then there was no salvation:

(1 Corinthians 15) 12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.

He then goes into an insistence that the resurrection is "spiritual" not physical, which . . .

No he doesn't. He continues assuming the death and resurrection is physical, as he assumed this when he said Christ died and was buried and was raised.

. . . which further complicates GMark of course and the subsequent other versions, but no need to dive that deep.

You already dived deep into the abyss.

The point being, even those who supposedly lived at the time did not believe the story that was told to them and they were in the first churches.

Of course there were those who believed and those who did not.

But these particular ones Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians were far removed from the original events, so they had far fewer witnesses, including indirect witnesses, to rely on for the facts of what happened. It's clear that Paul ran into much negativity when he preached the resurrection to Greeks during 50-60 AD. He had reason to believe it, being contemporary to the event, near 30-33 AD, but most of his audience was much farther removed from it.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

We have equal or more evidence for the Jesus miracles than we have for most historical facts from that period.

Regardless of your "definitions," if there's evidence that a certain event happened, like the Jesus resurrection, or the healing acts, it's DOGMATIC to pronounce that they could not have happened (despite the evidence) because it's impossible for such events to happen.

Would it be better to question the veracity of the claim seeing no one bothered to write about it for decades after the alleged guy's death?

The first written account about the resurrection, which has survived, is from Paul, about 55 AD, 25 years later. Then we have the later accounts from 70-100 AD, which give earlier information about Jesus, including the healing miracles.

This is a normal time gap for historical events 2000 years ago, or even a shorter time gap than the norm. It is normal to rely on accounts 100 years later than the reported events.

It's not correct to say "no one bothered to write about it" any earlier than these accounts which survived. For most of the historical events probably there were earlier written accounts than the ones which have survived. It's assumed that there was the earlier Q Document relied on by Luke and Matthew. And there were probably some other short written accounts which perished. Most documents were lost, while the ones which survive are a small fraction of the total documents written.

 

[skepticalbip]

We have equal or more evidence for the Jesus miracles than we have for most historical facts from that period.

Hardly. If you are claiming that tales = evidence than we have a hell of a lot more evidence for alien visitations and alien abductions, Santa Claus, bigfoot, trolls, fairies, etc. than we have for Jesus.

As for evidence for historical facts from that period, we have anthropological excavations that turn up bones and weapons where battles were recorded to have been, sarcophagi identifying the person inside, ruins and charred wood where a city was recorded to have been under siege, etc.

 

[atrib]

We have equal or more evidence for the Jesus miracles than we have for most historical facts from that period.

Nonsense. The Biblical stories are works of fiction, a combination of existing mythology that predates the Bible, and stories based on divine revelation/inspiration, as some Christians claim. It is impossible for the authors of the Bible to have gained knowledge of many of the events described in the book, so they must have made it up. That is the only reasonable conclusion.

You are free to tell us why the Bible stories should be considered credible. How did the author come by these stories, i.e what is their source? What kind of fact checking did the author employ to check the veracity of the stories? How can we fact-check these stories? And so on. But you are not going to do that because you have nothing. You are going to ignore all posts that ask for clarifications and details, and keep repeating your absurd and untrue claim.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

It's both.

No, it is not.

All our history record is based on reports of what "someone believed" happened.

No, it is not. Anything that is, however, is typically deemed "apocryphal." That's why we came up with that word.

and we have reason to believe it

No, we don't. But don't let facts stop you.

Will Durant said it better: "History is mostly guessing. The rest is prejudice."

Aka, "apocryphal." Which argues against your position in regard to the Christian mythology, not in favor of it.

Whatever flowery language you use to describe its nonperfection, without the written record telling us what they believed happened we'd have no history.

This is just more nonsense proving that you know the Christian mythology to be nothing more than unreliable anecdotes at best.

If I say to you, "I saw Xenu," that is NOT evidence that Xenu actually exists; that is only "evidence" that I saw something that I believed to be Xenu. If 500 people all claim that they saw Xenu, that, likewise is NOT evidence that Xenu actually exists; that is only "evidence" of 500 people who saw something that they believed to be Xenu.

Therefore Julius Caesar did not exist.

We have extensive evidence that a Caesar named Julius existed (such as coins, and busts), but most importantly, nobody gives a shit if a guy named Jesus existed. indeed, many millions of guys named Jesus have existed.

It's not a question of whether or not men have ever walked the earth; it's a question of whether or not certain claims about certain men are verifiable or not, particularly when those claims involve events that could not possibly have happened as described according to such things as the laws of physics or biology, let alone common sense and basic logic.

And all of that is setting aside the fact that we're talking about extremely ignorant people from thousands of years ago who were all already believers in such things as resurrection and miracles and yet these people still did not believe the bullshit that Paul, in particular, was slinging.

Many facts in our accepted historical record have zero corroborating evidence.

That's because they don't involve fantastical claims that contradict known scientific principles or, again, basic common sense. It's no great leap of faith to accept that someone once lived and ruled a nation. Claiming that the same someone who once lived and ruled a nation was a talking snake, however, would certainly require corroborating evidence and not just, "Uh, yeah, man, I mean, I know like five hundred other people who all heard the snake talk and he, like, ruled Egypt for nine hundred years....so, it's a fact."

You absolutely know this to be true, so the fact that you are desperately trying to spin it should be a wake up call.

. . . or any number of other explanations account for their experience that don't rest on the notion of the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth (then known as "Teegeeack") in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs.

And what is the 75-million-year-old document reporting these events?

All eye-witness accounts of course. It came to Paul L Ron in a Xenu-breathed "vision."

Who are the scholars who say this was really written 75 million years ago

The most respected scholars there could ever be. They are so beyond reproach that they are named "Scientologists!"

If that's what you're claiming about your source, and those facts are available to us in our information sources, then why are you so sure those events didn't really happen?

Because I'm an intelligent, critical thinking adult.

And you have more than only one such source for this Xenu event -- right?

There are thousands of such sources.

If there are miracle events reported, we need more than only one source for it.

How many do you need? That's how many exist.

Now just imagine if the story of Xenu had actually been merely told orally to subsequent generations--and how prone storytelling is to aggrandizement and editing and alteration--for a good forty years before someone claiming to be L. Ron Hubbard wrote it down and then . . .

Whoops!

I can't continue with this idiocy. You're seriously trying to denigrate a ridiculous cult while being in a ridiulous cult, because yours has "4 (5) sources" (when in fact it only has two; one is Paul and he only argues about a "spiritual" resurrection that he didn't actually witness) and whoever wrote GMark, which actually does not end with Jesus resurrecting from the dead, merely that he "is risen" (i.e., got up).

It's pathetic and depressing, so we'll skip this stupidity to:

ETA: Now apply the exact same scrutiny to a story that actually starts without a resurrection. GMark does not say that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. It ends with the women going to the tomb, seeing it already open and a "young man" sitting inside, who merely tells them Jesus "is risen." Not that he was dead and resurrected from the dead.

The earlier chapter said explicitly that he died.

No, it does not. It says:

Mark 15:37 With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

Aside from the fact that this is a story being retold some forty to fifty years after any such alleged event--not a verified news account by an eye-witness who was there to record what anyone did or said and breathed--even if it appeared to a bunch of pig-assed ignorant dessert peasants and Roman soldiers that Jesus appeared to be dead, that does not automatically just mean that he was. Even Pilate was inexplicably surprised that Jesus had already died:

Mark 15:44 Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead.

This is precisely why, in later retellings of Mark's story, the authors embellish it with a Roman soldier stabbing the apparently dead Jesus to make sure that he was, in fact, dead (which, likewise, would not necessarily prove death either).

Which, if we ARE going to take these accounts as being at all historically accurate, tells us that it was not typical for someone to have died so early on in the process. Indeed, the entire reason why crucifixion was such a horrific punishment was that it usually took several days to kill you.

And considering that he was, you know, GOD--an omnipotent being--or, at the very least, the "son" of a god, it seems even more suspicious, but let's table that and instead think--oh THINK--exactly how it could be that someone who had supposedly been extensively tortured and flayed and beaten (wearing a crown of thorns no less) and had been losing significant blood the whole time before being nailed to a cross could have appeared to be dead, but actually not be dead.

If only there were a clinical term for someone who gives nearly every appearance of being dead hanging ten feet up on a cross--and from a combination of severe trauma and blood loss--but is not actually dead. Damnit! What could such a condition be called?

Well, regardless of such an elusive term, what other clues might we find in the text, if we are to take it at face value and consider it a factual account and not just a bullshit story? Well, let's see if anything leaps out at us:

So as evening approached, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. 44 Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. 45 When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. 46 So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

Well, wait, do we have any additional information from these invaluable anecdotal accounts? Perhaps another embellishment? Let's try John's version:

39 Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. 40 They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.

Huh. So, we have surprise from a very knowledgeable source in regard to crucifixion that Jesus had died "already" and we have the fact that Jesus was taken down and essentially bandaged in burial linens, which were themselves soaked in some one hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, what we might call "medicine" today.

Here are the known healing properties of aloe alone:

Aloe vera is a popular medicinal plant that has been used for thousands of years. It is best known for treating skin injuries, but also has several other beneficial effects on health...Aloe vera gel contains powerful antioxidants, which belong to a large family of substances known as polyphenols. These polyphenols, along with several other compounds in Aloe vera, can help inhibit the growth of certain bacteria that can cause infections in humans

And there's this more clinical study:

Wounds and related injuries remain a major cause of death and disability. Wound healing is a complex, highly regulated process that includes cellular, molecular, biochemical, and physiological events that permit living organisms to repair accidental lesions. This process includes 3 overlapping phases: inflammation, proliferation and tissue formation, and tissue remodeling.1 These events are initiated at the time of physical injury and continue throughout the healing process.2

The proliferative phase involves reepithelialization and granulation tissue formation, which includes fibroplasia and angiogenesis. Reepithelialization refers to the resurfacing of the epidermis by keratinocytes, the main cell type of the skin epidermis, from the wound edges and/or residuals of skin appendages.1,3 Keratinocytes begin migration 12 to 24 hours after injury. The migration and proliferation of these cells are key events for reepithelialization and closure of the wound gap. During granulation tissue formation, fibroblasts migrate, proliferate, and synthesize large amounts of collagen and other extracellular matrix to fill the dermal defect in a process known as fibroplasia.4 During angiogenesis, new blood vessels are formed in the wounded area. Angiogenesis depends on the migration and proliferation of endothelial cells from pre-existing blood vessels in the wound edge.1,5

The objective of wound management is to heal wounds in the shortest amount of time with minimal pain, discomfort, and scarring.6 Thus, improving treatment for wound healing and tissue repair will improve the quality of life of patients with wounds as well as reduce the overall cost of wound-related health care.
...
The results suggest A vera accelerates wound healing by promoting the proliferation and migration of fibroblasts and keratinocytes and by protecting keratinocytes from preservative-induced death.

But what about myrrh?

You may be familiar with myrrh from Biblical stories even if you’re not sure what it is...Ancient Egyptians used myrrh and other essential oils to embalm mummies, as the oils not only provide a nice scent but also slow decay. Scientists now know this is because the oils kill bacteria and other microbes...Preliminary animal research suggests that myrrh can directly kill bacteria, as well as stimulate the immune system to make more white blood cells, which also kill bacteria. In test-tube studies, myrrh oil has strong effects against several infectious bacteria, including some drug-resistant ones...Applying diluted myrrh oil on your skin may aid wound healing and fight microbes that can cause infections.

So, both myrrh and aloe soaked linen bandages would be the perfect solution to healing and killing harmful bacteria from infecting any open wounds that one might receive from, I don't know, a crown of thorns and being flayed and beaten and having nails driven into your feet and the like?

And then being placed in a fresh, effectively climate-controlled cave with a life-preserving rock closing off the entrance, so that it creates as nearly perfect a sterile, cool chamber as possible in those hot dessert days (combined with a body wrapped in medicinal linen bandages), such that, someone who, say, had slipped into a temporary coma from blood loss and trauma could be taken down long before actual death in order to heal naturally to the point where a few days later he awakens from his coma and some of his buddies watching over him open the tomb and take him down into town thinking it was a miracle and the like, leaving behind the same creepy "young man" in linen that had evidently been hanging around Jesus when Jesus was arrested to tell anyone seeking jesus that a miracle--that really wasn't a miracle--had happened etc., etc., etc., etc.

IOW, even if we do take your desperate, non-faith based insistence on these accounts as being at all reflecting of actual events, we still find within them strong evidence not of a miracle, but of natural events that were either mistaken for miracles or simply got embellished over time to be turned into miracles that actually were not.

No "nitpicking" involved. Just being an intelligent adult is all that is necessary to see into the actual accounts we do have how easily such natural events could be mistaken for something else, particularly among people who already believed in such things as gods and resurrection from the dead and the like.

All of which, no one named "Mark" could have possibly eye-witnessed.

If he did not witness it, he's like 98% of our ancient historians, who did not eye-witness the events they reported.

Yeah, which is why we don't know who Homer actually was and certainly don't just accept that gods named Zeus and Athena actually existed, or even if there ever actually was a "Trojan War" or "Trojan Horse." These are NOT things that are just accepted as being true by actual historians.

But even in those cases, it doesn't really matter because there is nothing fantastical in the notion that two armies went to war against each other, or that one army figured out a clever way to deceive their enemy.

You are, once again, desperately trying to equate oral history of mundane events with oral history of fantastical claims. That's just straight up nonsense.

Whoever "Mark" was could not have been relating personal anecdotes; he could only have been relating what others told him about that morning at best.

Some of Mark is more likely from personal experience/anecdote.

You have zero basis to make such a claim and ample evidence from within the work that contradicts it. If I claim I am relating events I personally witnessed and then say things like, "And then Jesus wandered out into the desert and had the following conversation with a supernatural being..." I have just tipped to you, the reader, that I am NOT relating events that I personally witnessed unless I actually want out into the dessert night with Jesus and saw and heard everything that I then relate to you.

Again, all of this idiocy is something you never in a million years would ignore in regard to any other mythology, but because this is your pet favorite, suddenly your brain is shut off. Time to skip the rest of this sophistry as well to:

Paul had to insist--vehemently in fact--that without a resurrection, then there was no salvation:

(1 Corinthians 15) 12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.

He then goes into an insistence that the resurrection is "spiritual" not physical, which . . .

No he doesn't.

Yes, he does. Here, I'll prove it:

8 Then those also who have died[e] in Christ have perished. 19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.[f] 21 For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; 22 for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end,[g] when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For “God[h] has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection under him. 28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.

29 Otherwise, what will those people do who receive baptism on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?

30 And why are we putting ourselves in danger every hour? 31 I die every day! That is as certain, brothers and sisters, as my boasting of you—a boast that I make in Christ Jesus our Lord. 32 If with merely human hopes I fought with wild animals at Ephesus, what would I have gained by it? If the dead are not raised,

“Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.”

33 Do not be deceived:

“Bad company ruins good morals.”

34 Come to a sober and right mind, and sin no more; for some people have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.

The Resurrection Body
35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.

42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is[j] from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will[k] also bear the image of the man of heaven.

50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters,[l] is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Unquestionably states categorically that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kindgom of God."

Regardless, no one believed him, which is why he had to write the letter in the first damn place. And we apparently have corroboration of this fact in Lucian, who confirmed that in 165 CE "Christians" were still just a bunch of Jews who worshipped a man (not a god) who was killed (not resurrected).

ETA: I did not see any response to the fact that GMatthew embellished GMark and now, just fifteen or so years later, Jesus granted his disciples the power to raise the dead.

Did I just miss it in all the nonsense I had to skip over?

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Reports that a "miracle" happened are evidence that it happened.

To debunk it you need more than just a dogma that it's "impossible" according to your theory about "the laws of nature" etc.

What we need for miracle claims are extra sources, like we have for the Jesus miracle acts but do not have for all the other miracle claims from the ancient world.

I disagree. I believe that extraordinary claims, especially those that involve the suspension of the natural laws of the universe, require extraordinary evidence.

What about the claim that the mad monk Rasputin caused the czar's son to recover from a blood disease? Isn't this "extraordinary"? He had no medical training. Some believed it was a "miracle," and the evidence shows that the child did recover, whatever the cause. Several times this happened, where Rasputin did something and the child recovered, even though the mainline doctors had no success in treating the child.

This is a real case, documented by the historical evidence, but no proof of what really caused the "miracle" recovery, and there could be a "natural" explanation. There are theories, but no proof of what caused it. There's nothing "extraordinary" about the evidence except that there are enough witnesses, extra evidence, to show that an unusual recovery did take place.

The evidence is that something unusual -- "extraordinary" -- did happen here, because there are extremely few cases of such a thing documented in the historical record. Maybe there are some other cases of this, but none for which there's reliable attestation. So we have evidence for something "extraordinary" here, but this is not extraordinary evidence. What we have is normal evidence, extra sources, saying something unusual happened here, which is sufficient to make this a fact of history, that a child recovered, in an unusual manner, and there is no agreed explanation for it.

So, what we need is extra evidence, though still normal evidence. We need extra witnesses, extra written sources referring to it, attesting that the event happened. With this not-necessarily "extraordinary" evidence, the reported event becomes believable. The evidence is that it happened, but a "natural" explanation is not ruled out. We don't need to establish that the "natural" law was suspended. Not everyone agrees that it was, and not everyone defines "the natural laws of the universe" the same way.

Belief that an unusual event happened does not require that we establish a uniform theory about "the natural laws of the universe" and other abstract concepts. It's OK to propose abstract theories about it, but this isn't mandatory in order to reach a reasonable belief about what happened. It's reasonable to believe the miracle acts of Jesus did happen, based on the evidence in the written record, without getting bogged down in theories about "the natural laws of the universe" or about the precise meaning of "miracle." There can be differing explanations how he performed the acts, and these could include that they were done in accordance with the "laws of the universe" rather than contrary to those laws.

It's a reasonable possibility that it happened, based on the evidence, regardless whether this required any suspension of natural laws.


Extra evidence/witnesses is what makes it more credible. Even if some theorize that it's "impossible" or against "the laws of nature" etc.

Adding a few extra witnesses adds no credibility to such claims.

Yes it does. Additional witnesses and additional sources attesting to the event always add additional credibility. The main reason we don't believe most miracle claims is that they do not have additional witnesses or sources, beyond only one.

Or, in modern times, there may be many alleged witnesses or sources, but these are still a very tiny fraction of all the zillions of unusual claims published in modern times which are dismissed because of the vast expanse of publishing media today which have disseminated so many claims that are uncorroborated or which are debunked in the cases where it's possible to investigate the claims. But not 100% of such claims which are investigated are debunked. But enough cases today are debunked to indicate that probably most miracle claims are false, maybe even 99% of them.

In the ancient world, by contrast, there was not the widespread publishing we have today. So cases of extra witnesses or extra sources have much higher credibility in the ancient documents. The extra attestation has to be measured as a percent of the TOTAL quantity of published matter. If this percent is higher, the credibility of the claims is higher. So, properly understood in terms of the total extent of the claims within the total published reports of the time, the Jesus miracle events stand out uniquely 2000 years ago as events for which there is serious evidence, by contrast to other ancient reputed miracle events which eventually became popularized but not reported in multiple sources near the time of the alleged event.

No one can offer any examples of other cases of reported miracle acts for which we have serious evidence, though other reported cases are mentioned to try to suggest that the Jesus miracle claims fit into a pattern along with other similar claims, which they do not. The examples offered to try to show such a pattern are ludicrous and laughable, by comparison.

Go ahead and give some examples, so we can laugh again at how pathetic they are.

As has been explained to you many, many times in the other thread, the claims related to the supernatural events described in the Bible are not credible.

Some are credible and others are not. You cannot simply lump them all together into one category. A claim having multiple sources near to the reported event is more credible. You have to stop putting all miracle claims together under the same label, and instead be willing to consider each claim individually.

People can't walk on stormy waters.

Of course all these are claims about what "people can't" do normally. But that it's not normally possible for humans doesn't mean it's never possible or that no one can do it. It doesn't mean it has never happened. It still could have happened this once, because there are extra sources attesting to it, and maybe there are some other cases also where it happened but no evidence of it was recorded. Obviously "people can't" normally do such things, and this is why it was noteworthy and was recorded for later humans to learn of it. The fact that normally "people can't" do it is the whole point of recording this one reported case in writing, because this time the reports were credible, unlike any other cases, which were never taken seriously and so not recorded.

There are a few cases in Hindu and Buddhist literature of some stories resembling this, mostly many centuries later, in the Middle Ages, and probably even inspired by the earlier Jesus stories. But in all cases they are of reputed miracles from centuries earlier, not near the time the miracle acts allegedly happened, i.e., by Gautama etc. Or in modern times of course there are some wacko cults here and there making wild claims, amidst the zillions of other published modern claims in today's media.

People can't be healed by a touch.

Most of the Jesus healings were not by a touch but happened by his just saying it. And obviously "people can't" normally be healed this way -- which is why the events are noteworthy and were recorded. Most of the recorded ancient events were written down because they were noteworthy, because they were done by the rich and powerful, or because they were so unordinary. Jesus was not rich and powerful, nor a recognized public figure outside of Judea-Galilee-Syria, so he must have done something unusual in order to be recorded by writers. What did he do which was unusual, if it was not the miracle acts recorded in the gospel accounts? If it wasn't these acts, then there must be something else he did which stands out. But no one can say what it was.

Snakes and burning bushes don't talk.

We don't have serious evidence that these happened. Serious evidence means reports of it near to the time it happened, and it means extra sources for "miracle" claims. One might believe some of those other claims of miracles, in Exodus etc., but not because we have legitimate evidence for them. One source many centuries later than the alleged event is not serious evidence.

And most importantly, dead people don't rise up from their graves and fly off into space.

Yes we know that ordinarily "people don't" do this. We know it because there are virtually no accounts of such things (except in modern times when vast publishing media report every imaginable scenario). But we have one serious case of it reported in multiple sources near to the time. So with serious evidence of it in one instance only, it's reasonable to believe it happened this one time, though it's reasonable to doubt it also, and one can reasonably believe it and hope it's true, despite also having doubts. One can reasonably disbelieve it, demanding still further evidence, or one can reasonably believe it because in this one case we do have some extra evidence, or extra sources.

These are all extraordinary claims that are contrary to what we observe in the natural world.

Yes, meaning such claims are not ordinarily made, or in the few cases of such claims there are no extra sources saying it. This is one reason not to believe such claims. If there were many cases of such claims, with extra sources attesting to it, then it would not be so "extraordinary" or contrary to "what we observe."

You are right to suggest that a "scientific explanation" also increases the likelihood, but even without the knowledge how it could happen there is still reason to believe it happened if there is serious evidence of it in reports or from witnesses. We can't say it couldn't have happened only because we can't explain how it could happen. We can only say that the knowledge how it might happen makes it more credible. But we must also allow the possibility it could have happened and we just don't know how it could happen.

Further, the claims of the Bible were reported by an anonymous source who . . .

Yes, you and others keep repeating this over and over, but you never give any reason why this makes the claims less credible. There are several sources for historical events which are anonymous, and they are not less credible because of this. These are a small minority of the historical sources, but in many cases they are relied on and are the best sources for the events reported, and without them we would not know of those events. You cannot arbitrarily toss all those events out of the historical record simply because they are from anonymous sources. No historian says they are less reliable because the sources are anonymous.

. . . source who did not witness any of the alleged supernatural events.

The vast majority of our reported events in the ancient historical record were not witnessed by the ones who wrote them and made them known to us, yet we believe them. We don't need direct witnesses reporting it to us in order to believe the event happened.

Nor did this source have access to any of the alleged eyewitnesses that we know of.

Most of our ancient historical events come to us from sources reporting it 50-100 years later and not having access to eyewitnesses. Maybe some of them did know eyewitnesses, and maybe the gospel writers knew eyewitnesses. And we can be sure Paul had access to eyewitnesses, and he even names Peter and James. But it's not certain the gospel writers had such contact with eyewitnesses, as many writers of our ancient history record probably did not have. Some had such contact and others (probably most) did not.

This lack of eyewitnesses does not mean the accounts are unreliable, and if such eyewitness testimony was necessary, we'd have to toss out at least half our ancient history record.

And to top it off, the supernatural events were not reported by any contemporary historical source.

Most of the historical events are not reported by a "contemporary" historical source. Thucydides and Xenophon are two rare exceptions to this rule, i.e., that the ancient history events are reported to us in accounts which were not "contemporary" to the events.

If you mean there are no NON-Christian sources contemporary to the gospel accounts which report these events, that might be so (though it's not certain about the famous Josephus excerpt), but even if there's none, that's mainly because all those who reported the claims found them credible, probably because of the many sources they found, and so they became believers. They believed it after they looked into the claims and found them convincing. They were not believers at first, when they first investigated, but became Jesus believers after finding the claims were probably true. I.e., they might have been Jews who believed in the Torah etc., but not believers in Jesus until after they investigated the claims, at which point they began to believe and began writing about it.

It makes no sense to say that the gospel writers were first appointed by "the Church" to write this as propaganda for its "holy book," because there was no "Church" at this time determining doctrine or publishing any "holy book" to be binding on its flock. There was no "flock" and no "Church" (rather there were different Jesus cults or communities here and there, with no one dominating them) binding its members to anything at this period from 60-90 AD. Each gospel writer acted independently with the sources available, each providing his account and including his religious teaching and interpretation of the events, and these 4 accounts differ significantly in their interpretations and theological explanation of what happened.

So all we are left with is the hearsay testimony of an anonymous source, not . . .

Yes, you can keep repeating the clichés about "hearsay," which most of our ancient history record is, and "anonymous" sources, even though there are other such sources we depend on for history. These slogans are all you can come up with. You can't give us any real reasons why we should not believe these accounts.

. . . not connected to the alleged events in any way, and separated in time from the alleged events by decades, . . .

As most of our ancient history sources are not connected to the alleged events, but come only from earlier oral reports of what happened, and separated in time by 50 to 100 years. Those connected closer are the rare exception.

. . . with no contemporary sources to back up this . . .

As most of the ancient historical record has no "contemporary sources" to back it but originates 50-100 years after the events.

. . . to back up this single source.

We have 4 (5) sources for the Jesus miracle events. You can keep distorting the word "source" by claiming that if a source quotes another, it magically ceases to be a source. But you are just "making up shit" when you impose that meaning onto the word "source." Matthew and Luke are "sources" also. You do not magically turn them into non-sources by noting that they quote Mark. There's no scholar or expert who says Matthew and Luke are disqualified as "sources" because they happen to quote Mark. The vast amount of those documents are not quotes from Mark.

And Paul is a source for the Jesus resurrection. So we have a total of 4 (5) sources for the Jesus miracles, not just one "single source" as you falsely like to repeat over and over because it makes you feel good. The truth is based on the facts, not on what makes you feel good.

There is insufficient evidence to establish that this Jesus character existed, much less connect him to miracles.

You're entitled to draw your own subjective conclusions, based on your private feelings, as some others have done. But the overwhelming evidence is that he existed, and we have more than enough evidence for the miracle acts, as there are more reports of these than there are for a vast number of the accepted ancient historical facts. You can reasonably judge that this evidence is "insufficient" to satisfy you that the miracle events happened, but it is sufficient to satisfy others that they did happen, and you can't prove that your definition of "sufficient" is the correct one.

No one can dictate to everyone else exactly how much evidence is required in order to determine that such events did happen. It's reasonable to dictate that some extra evidence is necessary, but not to prescribe how much extra is the required threshold quantity of evidence. In this case we have 4 (5) sources, which is far beyond that for any other miracle claims in the ancient world, and is beyond that of many normal events for which there is only one source and no more.

For all we know, the anonymous source had . . .

Our earliest source is Paul, which is not an "anonymous" source. So you need to quit falling back on this meaningless jargon again and again. When will you come up with something of substance, instead of continuing to rely on this sloganism?

. . . had created a work of fiction, with no intent to attribute historical or factual significance to the stories.

You could say that about half of the ancient sources we use for the historical record. Of course you can pretend that all our ancient literature is fiction, or any part you want to exclude because you don't like it.

The Jesus miracle acts did not necessarily suspend the "laws of nature." There might be conditions where such acts are still within those natural laws. The Mad Monk Rasputin somehow caused a sick child to recover, whatever the explanation. Some unusual events can happen which known science doesn't explain, but this doesn't mean "the laws of nature" were suspended.

Dead people don't rise up from their graves and fly off into the sky under their own power. Sorry, but your claim that such behavior is natural is nonsense.

You are the one introducing claims about what is "natural" and about suspending the "laws of nature." That rhetoric has its usefulness, but you don't erase the evidence of the Jesus miracle acts with such jargon. The evidence is there and is not made to disappear by your sophistry about what is "natural" or what conforms to your ideology about the "laws of nature."

As an example, if your neighbor claimed that he flown from LAX to JFK simply by flapping his arms, then the claim would be considered extraordinary because . . .

So next time my neighbor makes that claim, you're saying I shouldn't automatically believe it?

Correct. Do you believe that such claims should be treated as credible? Please answer the question honestly.

What claims? No one ever makes such claims. Are you saying your neighbors make such claims routinely? What strange community do you live in that you have such wacko neighbors?

Whatever the claim, if there are extra witnesses saying it happened, or extra sources reporting it from various witnesses, then maybe there's some truth to it. It matters if there is corroboration for the claims.

. . . because it defies the laws of nature. Or if he claimed that his grandfather, who had been dead and buried for 20 years, had risen up from the grave and come to visit him. A reasonable person would treat either claim with skepticism, instead of simply taking your neighbor's word that these events had occurred as he had described them.

Thanks for the advice. From now on I'll be more skeptical when my neighbor makes those claims. How many of your neighbors make these claims?

None. But many Christians do believe and make the claim that Jesus rose up from the dead and flew up into the sky under his own power. Because the Bible makes these claims.

More precisely, 5 sources say he rose from the dead, and 3 (2) say he ascended bodily into the sky. So there is extra corroborating evidence, not just one source saying it. There was no such thing as "the Bible" (NT) in the 1st century AD when these documents were written. Christians who believe it because "the Bible makes these claims" are not wrong, but they would be more accurate if they said there are documents from the time which report the events, and this is legitimate evidence, similar to our evidence for many historical events.

Why should the Biblical claims of zombification and auto-levitation be treated differently from the hypothetical neighbor claiming that he can fly and that his grandfather was resurrected from the dead after 20 years?

Because the Jesus acts are corroborated by 4 (5) sources, not just one. But also, because one claim is actually made and the other is not. It is more reasonable to believe a claim which is actually made and corroborated than one which is only hypothetical. If you're trying to offer an analogy, you have to give us an example of a claim actually made. The fact that the claim is actually made by someone makes it more believable than a claim which no one actually makes.

Even if your neighbor was known to you and appeared to be of sound mind, and had the reputation of being trustworthy.

We needn't worry about the trustworthiness of someone who might make hypothetical claims no one ever actually makes.

People do make similar ridiculous claims.

No, if they did, we'd hear something about it on the Nightly News.

Can we get serious? Here's a REAL example of a claim which no one knows the "natural" explanation for, and this was reported on NBC News. (click forward to 19 minutes into the video)



___________________________________ 19:00 _____

Here's a kid who began playing the piano and singing at the age of 11 months. This has to defy the "laws of nature" as much as a claim about a miracle healing. Yet it's credible because it is reported on a mainline news source. Someone says it happened and so we believe it. We don't believe it if one character alone makes the claim, but we believe it if there is some corroboration, such as extra sources claiming it, or it's from a source which has extra witnesses reporting it and checked enough to ensure it's not just one wacko saying it.

Until you can give the "natural" explanation for this case, and other similar cases of savants who had an unusual ability which could not be explained, you are wrong to say it can't be true because it defies "the laws of nature" or "the laws the universe." We don't know how the "laws of nature" allow this to be done, but we know this happened because of the reports saying it happened. If there are reports saying it happened, and there's corroboration, then it's probably true, even if someone says it "defies the laws of nature" etc. And this news story about a kid who started playing the piano with no instruction, at age 11 months, goes contrary to "the laws of nature" as most other reported miracle stories. You don't debunk the evidence by proclaiming that it "defies the laws of nature."

That is the whole fucking point I was trying to make. Go to Church on Sunday and the Pastor will make such claims. Have you even read the Bible or gone to Church?

Yes, and there were no claims there about someone flapping their arms and flying, or about someone dying and returning to life 20 years later. The claims that are really made have to be checked for corroboration, and usually there is none for the miracle claims. But when there is corroboration, extra sources, witnesses other than disciples who worship their charismatic preacher-guru-pundit, then maybe the claim is true, or partly true. The gospel writers were not influenced by the charisma of Jesus, never having seen him, but relied on many oral reports coming from different sources, and there was enough credibility that these claims were worthy to be recorded and published for future generations. Unlike the kind of claims you're referring to, about someone flapping his arms and flying off to New York.

The probability that a human being rose up from the dead and flew up into the sky under his own power is zero. Both events are impossible. The claims are false.

You could say the same about this child playing the piano at age 11 months. Such a thing is "impossible," except that we have reports saying it happened. It's "impossible" and yet it's reported by a reliable source as having happened. According to your logic, the claim is "false" because it's "impossible," and yet it's reported as true. Sometimes the evidence that it happened has to overrule your theories about what is "impossible" or contrary to "the laws of nature."

And how would you know that the claims of the Bible are not hoaxes or misrepresentations or even simple works of fiction?

We don't "know" that the claims of Herodotus or Josephus etc. are not hoaxes or misrepresentations or simple works of fiction. All our known history might be just fiction. But it's reasonable to believe that it's substantially true, telling us what really happened, and then we can read it critically to separate the fact from the fiction, because no source is infallible. We can read the historians and other sources for history this way, including the Bible writings. There is both fact and fiction in all the sources, and we can determine most of the truth and conjecture what happened. And based on this it's reasonable to believe that the Jesus miracle acts really did happen. Like we can believe much of the accepted historical record.

Are you a god with divine powers that enable you to know such things?

Yes, with power to send a thunderbolt to strike you dead if you don't change your attitude.

Do you have a special pair of eyeglasses that let you see into the past?

No, I use a certified time-travel machine. Don't trust those eyeglasses -- they're a scam.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

You keep repeating the same fallacy. Nobody gives a shit about ordinary claims. That’s why ancient history—that doesn’t entail gods and miracles—is more or less accepted. It’s still apocryphal, but no one cares very much whether or not there actually was a Trojan War, because war is common place.

Dance around all you want, but fiction is immediate and mythology is same generation. So it doesn’t matter how many times you pretend that anyone telling you about their mass experience with Bigfoot is reliable evidence that a Bigfoot exists. Anecdotes are not evidence that the claim is real; they are ONLY evidence that someone experienced something they cannot explain.

There is no way for you to get around this. And, yes, if that means we have to throw out any percentage of ancient history, then we throw out that percentage. You are not making a case; you are destroying it.

 

[Atheos]

There is nothing that defies natural laws about an 11 month old boy playing a piano and singing. The boy used fingers to play the piano and vocal chords to sing, something nearly any other tot his age is capable of doing. The only difference is that he did it better than most. Savants are not well understood but they exist.

Find a peer-reviewed example of a kid using telekinesis to play the piano from across the room and we're dealing with something that defies natural laws.

"Reports" from biased witnesses is absolutely the worst possible method of uncovering actual history. Always has been, always will be.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Branding it "supernatural" does not eradicate the evidence that it happened.

It is plausible that the Jesus character in the Bible is based on a real life person, perhaps a rabbi or priest who had collected a cult-like following among locals. It is not hard to believe a story like that because such an event would not have been unusual.

If it was not unusual, why did writers make him into a miracle-worker and identify him as the Messiah? Why do we have these accounts at all, if he was an ordinary rabbi or priest? What's another example of an ordinary person being reported by 5 writers as the Messiah, and by 4 of them as a miracle-worker who healed victims and even raised the dead?

Didn't he have to do something different and noteworthy in order to get this special attention from writers? Why were no other rabbis given similar attention?

But where the Bible moves away from plausibility is in its description of seemingly supernatural events.

You use this term "supernatural" as if no such events can ever happen even though such an event is reported to have happened, and so the report has to be rejected, no matter what. You're saying the report is automatically repudiated as false as long as you label it as a "supernatural" event. You're demanding everyone submit to your authority to designate any claim you don't like as "supernatural" and therefore false, regardless of any evidence that it's true.

Just because a claim has something unusual in it does not automatically make it "supernatural" and therefore false no matter how much evidence we have for it.

There are at least 2 possibilities:

• Maybe a "supernatural" event is possible and did happen, regardless of your ideological doctrines pronouncing them all as impossible, based on something your favorite philosopher preached. You're not entitled to cancel an event from having happened by simply branding it as "supernatural" and therefore false. You can't go through all of history and blot out events you choose to brand as "supernatural" and therefore to be purged from the record. (OK, you can, in your own subjectivity, but you can't demand that everyone else submit to your arbitrary decision to purge this or that from the record. Rather, there are many who think a "supernatural" event can happen in certain special cases, because they have a different favorite philosopher than yours.)

• Maybe the event is NOT "supernatural" at all. Just because it's unusual, or is something which cannot normally happen, or is an act which humans normally cannot do, does not automatically cancel the event or erase it from history. It may be an extremely rare but also "natural" event, or it may be an act someone did which virtually no one else can do but which was done in one case (or 2 or 3 cases).

Just because you don't understand a certain event, or find something difficult about it, doesn't mean the event could not have happened and goes into the "impossible" or "supernatural" category. Not everything which happens can be explained or understood. You can choose to disbelieve it, but that doesn't make someone else wrong who chooses to believe it based on the evidence. You might hope the claim is false, but someone else might hope the claim is true, relying on the evidence indicating that it happened. Their belief is not wrong simply because you want to impose your philosophical categories for what is "supernatural" or "impossible" and therefore to be purged from the record even though there is evidence for it.

Comparing the supernatural claims of the Bible to the non-supernatural claims of history books is dishonest.

If you can't make your point without falling back onto your "supernatural" semantics, then you are only imposing your subjective theories onto others, demanding that everyone submit to your theories about what is "supernatural" and therefore impossible, according to your favorite philosophical theoretician-pundit.

Just because a reported event has something unusual in it does not automatically make it "supernatural" and therefore necessarily to be blotted out from having happened. Unusual events might sometimes happen, even if they are rare. Not every event has to fit perfectly into the pattern of all other historical events. It's possible for 1 or 2 or 3 to stand out uniquely in history as not fitting into the normal pattern.

The "supernatural" events and the "non-supernatural" events of history are all known by the same process of being witnessed by someone and then reported and being recorded in writing. You can give no reason why either kind of event is not made known by this same process. The only difference is that for the less normal events we need to have extra sources, beyond what we require for the normal events.

History textbooks don't treat supernatural claims as factual.

They also don't brand claims as "supernatural" and declare that this means they are false.

Again you are imposing your "supernatural" terminology onto everyone, even though this is your personal subjective term, which is not scientific or objective or understood the same by everyone. A good history book does not throw around a term like "supernatural" like you're doing, dictating what is true or false based on such semantics.

Unusual claims in the history books are treated with extra skepticism, and generally set aside into the doubtful category, without dictating that it's true or false. There is never a dogmatic judgment that the claims are false, but rather, that it's not known and is left to individual interpretation. A decent history book presents the evidence (on disputed points) without drawing conclusions for the reader, as you're doing by imposing your arbitrary terminology and insisting that everyone must reject claims you brand as "supernatural" according to your subjective theories or those of your favorite philosophical school.

I am certain you understand this distinction as it has . . .

The distinction you don't understand is: "supernatural" event vs. unusual event which is not explained by our known science. You are pronouncing that there can never be any unusual event or any event which our known science does not explain. An unusual event happened which you don't like, so you are pinning your "supernatural" label onto it and declaring that it is cancelled from ever having happened because of this label you put on it.

. . . as it has been pointed out to you in the past, but you keep repeating this absurd argument anyway.

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” -- John Adams

You can't erase the facts and evidence by just putting a label on something, calling it "supernatural" in order to make it go away and pretend that those past events did not happen. The evidence is still there, regardless of your jargon. You have to come up with something of more substance than just this nomenclature categorizing you want to impose, thinking you can rewrite history and eliminate the evidence by simply imposing your terminology onto something you think should not have happened.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

If it was not unusual, why did writers make him into a miracle-worker and identify him as the messiah Xenu Mithras Apollo Zeus Rah Mohammed?

fify

Here is a list of people who claimed to be or were claimed by others to have been a Jewish messiah:

• Jesus of Nazareth (c. 4 BC – 30/33 AD), leader of a Jewish sect who was crucified by the Romans for sedition and is believed to have been resurrected.[4] Jews who believed him to be the Messiah were originally called Nazarenes and later they were known as Jewish Christians (the first Christians).[5] Muslims[6][7] and Christians[8] (including Messianic Jews[9]) believe him to be the Messiah.
• Simon bar Kokhba (died c. 135), founded a short-lived Jewish state before being defeated in the Second Jewish-Roman War.
• Moses of Crete, who in about 440–470 persuaded the Jews of Crete to walk into the sea, as Moses had done, to return to Israel. The results were disastrous and he soon disappeared.
• Ishak ben Ya'kub Obadiah Abu 'Isa al-Isfahani (684–705), who led a revolt in Persia against the Umayyad Caliph 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.
• David Alroy, born in Kurdistan, who around 1160 agitated against the caliph before being assassinated.
• Moses Botarel of Cisneros, active around 1413; claimed to be a sorcerer able to combine the names of God.
• Asher Lämmlein, a German near Venice who proclaimed himself a forerunner of the Messiah in 1502.
• David Reubeni (1490–1541?) and Solomon Molcho (1500–1532), messianic adventurers who travelled in Portugal, Italy and Turkey; Molcho, who was a baptised Catholic, was tried by the Inquisition, convicted of apostasy and burned at the stake.
• Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676), an Ottoman Jew who claimed to be the Messiah, but then converted to Islam; still has followers today in the Dönmeh.
• Jacob Querido (?–1690), claimed to be the new incarnation of Sabbatai; later converted to Islam and led the Dönmeh.
• Miguel Cardoso (1630–1706), another successor of Sabbatai who claimed to be the "Messiah ben Ephraim".
• Löbele Prossnitz (?–1750), attained some following amongst former followers of Sabbatai, calling himself the "Messiah ben Joseph".
• Jacob Joseph Frank (1726–1791), who claimed to be the reincarnation of King David and preached a synthesis of Christianity and Judaism.
• Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (r. 1920 - 1950), sixth rebbe (spiritual leader) of Chabad Lubavitch, claimed to be "Atzmus u'mehus alein vi er hat zich areingeshtalt in a guf" (Yiddish and English for: "Essence and Existence [of God] which has placed itself in a body"),[10] and to be the Messiah.[11][12][13][14]
• Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), seventh rebbe of Chabad Lubavitch, claimed to be the Messiah by his followers.

That just a list of people claiming to be Jewish messiahs. There's a whole host of Buddha claimants and people claiming to be the so-called "second coming" of Jesus as well as Muslim claimants.

Your myth isn't in any way special or unique. You know this, which is why you are going to such extreme lengths to pretend otherwise.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

There are NO OTHER EXAMPLES of a reputed miracle-worker for whom we have evidence. Only meaningless laundry lists.

If it was not unusual, why did writers make him into a miracle-worker and identify him as the messiah?

Here is a list of people who claimed to be or were claimed by others to have been a Jewish messiah:

• Jesus of Nazareth (c. 4 BC – 30/33 AD), leader of a Jewish sect who was crucified by the Romans for sedition and is believed to have been resurrected.[4] Jews who believed him to be the Messiah were originally called Nazarenes and later they were known as Jewish Christians (the first Christians).[5] Muslims[6][7] and Christians[8] (including Messianic Jews[9]) believe him to be the Messiah.
• Simon bar Kokhba (died c. 135), founded a short-lived Jewish state before being defeated in the Second Jewish-Roman War.
• Moses of Crete, who in about 440–470 persuaded the Jews of Crete to walk into the sea, as Moses had done, to return to Israel. The results were disastrous and he soon disappeared.
• Ishak ben Ya'kub Obadiah Abu 'Isa al-Isfahani (684–705), who led a revolt in Persia against the Umayyad Caliph 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.
• David Alroy, born in Kurdistan, who around 1160 agitated against the caliph before being assassinated.
• Moses Botarel of Cisneros, active around 1413; claimed to be a sorcerer able to combine the names of God.
• Asher Lämmlein, a German near Venice who proclaimed himself a forerunner of the Messiah in 1502.
• David Reubeni (1490–1541?) and Solomon Molcho (1500–1532), messianic adventurers who travelled in Portugal, Italy and Turkey; Molcho, who was a baptised Catholic, was tried by the Inquisition, convicted of apostasy and burned at the stake.
• Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676), an Ottoman Jew who claimed to be the Messiah, but then converted to Islam; still has followers today in the Dönmeh.
• Jacob Querido (?–1690), claimed to be the new incarnation of Sabbatai; later converted to Islam and led the Dönmeh.
• Miguel Cardoso (1630–1706), another successor of Sabbatai who claimed to be the "Messiah ben Ephraim".
• Löbele Prossnitz (?–1750), attained some following amongst former followers of Sabbatai, calling himself the "Messiah ben Joseph".
• Jacob Joseph Frank (1726–1791), who claimed to be the reincarnation of King David and preached a synthesis of Christianity and Judaism.
• Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (r. 1920 - 1950), sixth rebbe (spiritual leader) of Chabad Lubavitch, claimed to be "Atzmus u'mehus alein vi er hat zich areingeshtalt in a guf" (Yiddish and English for: "Essence and Existence [of God] which has placed itself in a body"),[10] and to be the Messiah.[11][12][13][14]
• Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), seventh rebbe of Chabad Lubavitch, claimed to be the Messiah by his followers.

That just a list of people claiming to be Jewish messiahs.

How about answering my question above:

Why did 4 of our 5 sources for Jesus say he performed miracle acts like healing the lepers, the blind, etc., and raising the dead back to life, and why did ALL 5 say he resurrected from the dead and that he was the Jewish Messiah, long after he had been killed?

Nothing like that is the case for any of your above examples. In all your examples, the would-be Messiah was recognized -- by some only, not ALL the sources -- when he was alive and they hoped he would be victorious, but when the cause went down to defeat, they lost their belief that he was the Messiah.

There's a whole host of Buddha claimants and people claiming to be the so-called "second coming" of Jesus as well as Muslim claimants.

Why don't you just cite the Library of Congress as refuting everything I'm saying. Probably in those billions of volumes there's something disproving me.

You can't name a single case of a "Messiah" figure for whom there is evidence that he performed miracle acts.

In all your examples it is easy to explain why certain followers believed that person was something special, such as a "Messiah" while he was still alive, or a divine Prophet because of a lifetime of being influenced by his charisma. But there's no evidence any of them demonstrated miracle power, and no example of someone worshiped as "Messiah" long after he had been killed.

Your myth isn't in any way special or unique.

It's the only case of a reputed miracle-worker for whom there is actual evidence, from the time, that he did perform miracle acts. You are not able to name another case. Of course there are thousands of gurus and prophets, but no evidence any of them performed miracle acts.

You know this, which is why you are going to such extreme lengths to pretend otherwise.

What I'm doing is continuing to ask the same question, which continues to not be answered:

Where is another example of a reputed miracle-worker, in all the documents from history, for whom there is serious evidence that he did perform miracle acts, based on sources from that historical period?

Why can't anyone give a real answer to this?

Don't give me the Library of Congress as your source. Give ONE EXAMPLE only, the best one you can find, and quote from a particular source we can check for ourselves which gives us this information.

Why can't you quote the source yourself, giving the text in question, about his miracle power? Your laundry list is meaningless if there is NOT ONE EXAMPLE from the list you can cite, giving the evidence or sources or text saying that the guru performed miracle acts.

Your example has to be one where ALL our sources about the person in question say he demonstrated miracle power, like the resurrection of Jesus or the miracle healing acts demonstrate superhuman power.

That no one can actually give an example, but can only throw around a meaningless laundry list like the above, virtually proves the point that there are no examples.