120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[T.G.G. Moogly]

So, an undisputed claim.
That's better than nothing
In fact, it's pretty good because it's so close in time to the event and therefore early enough to be tested/challenged as a myth-making attempt if that were the case.

It was challenged. You cannot possibly be that uninformed if you are at all interested in the topic.

The real question is why no one is challenging Marvel Comics today.

 

[DBT]

So, an undisputed claim.
That's better than nothing
In fact, it's pretty good because it's so close in time to the event and therefore early enough to be tested/challenged as a myth-making attempt if that were the case.

How on Earth is it an undisputed claim?

 

[Lion IRC]

The person who said it was undisputed was YOU

Wall of text aside, we still only have the word of the Author with no way of determining what, if anything, actually happened.

Only have the word of the author.
No other way of knowing.

 

[DBT]

The person who said it was undisputed was YOU

Wall of text aside, we still only have the word of the Author with no way of determining what, if anything, actually happened.

Only have the word of the author.
No other way of knowing.

Just because I pointed out that we only have the word of the Author to go on doesn't mean that the claim that the author makes is undisputed. The claims made by the Author have been disputed countless times.

 

[Keith&Co.]

The person who said it was undisputed was YOU

Wall of text aside, we still only have the word of the Author with no way of determining what, if anything, actually happened.

Only have the word of the author.
No other way of knowing.

Just because I pointed out that we only have the word of the Author to go on doesn't mean that the claim that the author makes is undisputed. The claims made by the Author have been disputed countless times.

But you don't dispute that a claim has been made....?

 

[James Brown]

You know the old bon motte:

"Someone said it; I believe it; that settles it."

 

[Keith&Co.]

You know the old bon motte:

"Someone said it; I believe it; that settles it."

Posers.
The True Christain says, "God said it, that settles it, whether I believe it or not."

 

[ideologyhunter]

Reason #41,226: Because the pro-Trump evangelicals (which is nearly all of the evangelicals) are fine with Trump's baby jails.

 

[DBT]

Just because I pointed out that we only have the word of the Author to go on doesn't mean that the claim that the author makes is undisputed. The claims made by the Author have been disputed countless times.

But you don't dispute that a claim has been made....?

You mean the claim that I made? That we only have the word of the Author to go on?

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The Gospels are 4 (not 1 or 2) separate sources = evidence for 1st-century events.

That's 4 -- count 'em 4 -- separate sources.

all together now: 1, 2, 3, 4​

Your requirements are not only random, but you also ignore them when you pretend that your version of Christianity fits, as you pick and choose them to make your cult sound somehow more plausible.

Two of the major requirements are 1) the proximity of the sources to the reported miracle event, and 2) the number of sources. What is "random" about either of these? Are you denying that a source 30-50 years separated from the reported event is more reliable than a source 100-200 years later? And are you denying that it's more credible if we have 4 sources instead of only one? How did I "pick and choose" the dates when the gospels were written? or the date of the reported events (about 30 AD)? or the number of sources?

You assume that we have your claimed 4-5 sources.

Uh -- yyyeah . . .

You assume that we have your claimed 4-5 sources.

That's a fact. Just like we have the JS written reports. Are you saying the scholars are only hallucinating when they say the gospel accounts and Paul epistles exist? that they hallucinate these manuscripts? or the number of documents? that there are really only 2 gospels? or only one?

wow.

That's some hard-core spin you're throwing out there, Lumpy.

You know EXACTLY why he questions your constant claim that you have 4-5 sources.

I have them, you have them, they exist. The 4 Gospels and the Paul epistles do exist, don't they? These all attest to the Resurrection 25-70 years from when the alleged event happened, don't they? Which is a relatively short time span from the event to when it was written down, for events 2000 years ago.

How are these not "sources" for the alleged event of 30 AD? Even if you think none of it really happened, even so, are these not 4 (5) sources claiming these miracle events happened?

And you pretend that he's questioning the existence of the gospel?

He says: "You assume that we have your claimed 4-5 sources."

Isn't he implying it's not true that we have these 4 (5) sources?

Those writings (called "gospels") are the sources for those alleged events, aren't they? How are they not sources for those alleged events? Isn't their subject matter the events of about 30 AD? If they are not our sources for those events, then what are they? You're admitting they at least exist -- so, what do you think they are, if they are not accounts about something which happened in Galilee-Judea at around 30 AD? at about the time of Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas and John the Baptist? You do understand that those were real persons in history at that time?

Dude, why do you even pretend to respond?

It's none of your business what I "pretend" to do or why. Maybe you're pretending to be Granny Goose, when you post responses. Or maybe I'm pretending to be a celebrated hero-apologist who will be congratulated for my Walls of Text in 10,000 years from now and receive a Trophy to place on my Wall in my Mansion in Paradise. What I might be fantasizing is irrelevant.

It doesn't matter what we're pretending to do or why, when we post these text walls. All that matters is what happened 2000 years ago and what evidence there is. If documents written near the time of the events are not evidence for what happened, then what evidence is there for ANY historical facts of the time? Why should the gospel accounts be the only documents ever written which must be excluded as evidence for what happened?

"You assume that we have your claimed 4-5 sources." Yes, I "assume" it, and why shouldn't I assume "we have" these 4 sources?

Is debunker-scholar Bart Ehrmann only pretending to respond when he assumes we have these 4 sources?

I'm not saying the Gospel accounts are non-problematic. As some of you know, I've made an entire career out of arguing that they're problematic. There are enormous problems with the Gospels. . . . But they are 4 narratives about a person living in first-century Palestine, and they do give us a lot of real information. These 4 Gospels we have -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John -- are not simply one Gospel in 4 forms. They are 4 Gospels based on different literary and oral sources.

. . . Mark is absolutely based on oral traditions that the author had heard. Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their sources, but they had other sources available to them. Matthew and Luke had one other source that they shared together that no longer exists -- scholars call it Q. Matthew had other sources that Luke did not have, Luke had other sources that Matthew did not have -- that means, prior to the writing of the Gospels, you got sources for Mark, different sources for Matthew and Luke, different sources for Matthew, different sources for Luke, and we're not even talking about John, which didn't use Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and had different sources of his own.

These are multiple independent sources from the first century. . . . These sources are independent of each other, they're not copying one another, you have independent sources from before the Gospels.

Some of these sources have traditions in them that almost certainly go back to Aramaic-speaking Palestine. . . .

You have Aramaic stories about Jesus, from Palestine, years before the Gospels. These are stories in Aramaic Palestine that almost certainly go back to the 30s of the Common Era. Multiple sources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSY0f9-ZBxI&t=326s [the above excerpt is 10+ minutes into the video]

He says the Gospels are 4 separate sources, and are based on many earlier separate independent sources.

So am I only pretending to respond to funinspace when I say we do have these 4 sources? When he says: "You assume we have your claimed 4-5 sources," what's wrong with reiterating this fact, that the 4 sources (not only 1 or 2) do exist (and also the Paul epistles), because scholars like Bart Ehrmann say they exist? and that they are 4 sources, not only 1? based on many earlier different independent sources?

Why are you having difficulty grasping that these 4 sources do exist and are evidence for some events in the 1st century?

When did you first experience problems understanding the number 4?

(No, scratch that -- it's inappropriate to make personal remarks.)

 

[DBT]

We only have one source of information; what an Author is telling us. Nobody is disputing that each Author probably based a part of his work on word of mouth transmission. But this doesn't help establish independent eyewitness accounts of the events described by each Author...as each individual Author is only reporting what he himself has heard and read, we only have the word of these Authors.

These are not original eyewitness accounts. A hundred people could write about what they had read and heard said, but the reader is still only has the words of the Authors to go on.

That being the point.

 

[Keith&Co.]

When did you first experience problems understanding the number 4?

I, on the other hand, know exactly why you fail to understand the significance of 'separate.'

Reading a gospel and thus being inspired to write a gospel is not one of the methods used to corroborate a gospel.

 

[lpetrich]

 Synoptic Gospels -- those are the first three of the canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The remaining one is John, and it is very different in content and style from the Synoptics. Here are the numbers for the relationships between the three gospels:

[table="class: grid"]
[tr]
[td]Mark[/td]
[td]Matt[/td]
[td]Luke[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]3%[/td]
[td][/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td][/td]
[td]20%[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td][/td]
[td][/td]
[td]35%[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]18%[/td]
[td]10%[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]3%[/td]
[td][/td]
[td]1%[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td][/td]
[td]24%[/td]
[td]23%[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]76%[/td]
[td]46%[/td]
[td]41%[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
The numbers add up to 100% vertically, but are different horizontally, because they are fractions of these differently-sized Gospels. The table's lines are for Mark-only, Matt-only, Luke-only, Mark-and-Matt, Mark-and-Luke, Matt-and-Luke, and all three.

Notice how much similarity there is -- often word-for-word similarity. This word-for-word similarity is especially evident in the original Greek text. It is very evident that the Synoptics are not independent documents, but are instead, heavily plagiarized.

 

[funinspace]

"You assume that we have your claimed 4-5 sources." Yes, I "assume" it, and why shouldn't I assume "we have" these 4 sources?

Is debunker-scholar Bart Ehrmann only pretending to respond when he assumes we have these 4 sources?

I'm not saying the Gospel accounts are non-problematic. As some of you know, I've made an entire career out of arguing that they're problematic. There are enormous problems with the Gospels. . . . But they are 4 narratives about a person living in first-century Palestine, and they do give us a lot of real information. These 4 Gospels we have -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John -- are not simply one Gospel in 4 forms. They are 4 Gospels based on different literary and oral sources.

. . . Mark is absolutely based on oral traditions that the author had heard. Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their sources, but they had other sources available to them. Matthew and Luke had one other source that they shared together that no longer exists -- scholars call it Q. Matthew had other sources that Luke did not have, Luke had other sources that Matthew did not have -- that means, prior to the writing of the Gospels, you got sources for Mark, different sources for Matthew and Luke, different sources for Matthew, different sources for Luke, and we're not even talking about John, which didn't use Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and had different sources of his own.

These are multiple independent sources from the first century. . . . These sources are independent of each other, they're not copying one another, you have independent sources from before the Gospels.

Some of these sources have traditions in them that almost certainly go back to Aramaic-speaking Palestine. . . .

You have Aramaic stories about Jesus, from Palestine, years before the Gospels. These are stories in Aramaic Palestine that almost certainly go back to the 30s of the Common Era. Multiple sources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSY0f9-ZBxI&t=326s [the above excerpt is 10+ minutes into the video]

He says the Gospels are 4 separate sources, and are based on many earlier separate independent sources.

So am I only pretending to respond to funinspace when I say we do have these 4 sources? When he says: "You assume we have your claimed 4-5 sources," what's wrong with reiterating this fact, that the 4 sources (not only 1 or 2) do exist (and also the Paul epistles), because scholars like Bart Ehrmann say they exist? and that they are 4 sources, not only 1? based on many earlier different independent sources?

Why are you having difficulty grasping that these 4 sources do exist and are evidence for some events in the 1st century?

When did you first experience problems understanding the number 4?

I find it funky that Bart Ehrmann states what he does about GoM and GoL, as I know preachers that really wouldn't agree as they go by the far more common 2-source-hypothesis. But ok, you have an atheist on your side.

2-source-hypothesis:

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

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

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

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

However, the counter point I have made over and over again, is tied back to your claims about the miracle healing being what matters. And I have always agreed that the 4 Gospels and the Pauline letters are all sources for the history of Christianity.

Back in 2015 you said this:

What is an issue is that we have more than one source for the miracles of Jesus. A greater number of source increases the credibility. And they are separate sources, not copies of each other. And that 1 or 2 of them quoted or paraphrased from another does not change the fact that these are multiple separate sources for the same reported events. Quoting from an earlier source in no way reduces the credibility of the account or reduces its reliability as a separate source.

Here is a spreadsheet of the Jesus miracles. One can quickly see that John only shares in 2 miracles with any other gospel and they have Jesus showing off his power, not healing people.
https://www.thoughtco.com/miracles-of-jesus-700158

So, by your own logic John does not corroborate ' the same reported events' for magic healing, so the GoJ is not one of the valid sources for your rather unique Jesus-mono-god. The GoJ is a rather odd source and much later. It features a very different Jesus as well. With your throw out the Christian baby (Yahweh grand miracles; virgin birth; the ending of Mark; and probably a dozen other things I have forgotten) with the bathwater approach, I find it rather that you don't just throw the GoJ out as well. And neither is Paul a source for the Miracle Max Healing, as he never talks about your Miracle Max healing. So, that leaves us down to quibbling about whether or not there are 2 or 3 (Mark, Matthew, Luke) separate sources for your Miracle Max.

 

[James Brown]

The Book of Acts lists the apostles Paul and Peter performing supernatural healings, up to an including raising a person from the dead.

But that's only a single source, so there's no reason to believe it, is there?

Now if someone else wrote a similar book, including large sections copied word for word, well then...

 

[Lion IRC]

Corroboration is useful.

 

[James Brown]

Corroboration is useful.

That's true. It can be. Then again, people hate committees.

Do you have evidence to indicate that the biblical writers corroborated with each other while writing their works?

 

[Jobar]

I have Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist? in the bookcase by my computer. No one questions that Ehrman is an historicist; he thinks there was a real man that was the kernel of the Gospel stories.

I also have right beside Ehrman's work the book by G.A. Wells, with the same title. The first edition of Wells' book was written in 1975; my copy is the revised version written in 1986. It was my first exposure to the mythicist hypothesis, and is still one of the best on that subject.

Here's a review of Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist?, by Kenneth Humphreys, author of the website 'Jesus Never Existed', and the book of the same name. (Which I also have.)

Lump, no one denies that there are atheists on both sides of the mythicist/historicist divide. I've taken part in many discussions on it, since the internet was new.

 

[lpetrich]

Here is a spreadsheet of the Jesus miracles. One can quickly see that John only shares in 2 miracles with any other gospel and they have Jesus showing off his power, not healing people.
https://www.thoughtco.com/miracles-of-jesus-700158

Titled link: 37 Miracles of Jesus in Chronological Order

I have found from it how many miracles are shared by which sets of gospels:

• Mt, Mk, Lk: 11
• Jn: 6
• Lk: 6
• Mt, Mk: 4
• Mt: 3
• Mk: 2
• Mt, Lk: 2
• Mk, Lk: 1
• Mt, Mk, Jn: 1
• Mt, Mk, Lk, Jn: 1

Lumping together Matt, Mark, and Luke as the Synoptics gives us

• Sn: 29
• Jn: 6
• Sn, Jn: 2

So the Synoptics have the most miracles, and a little less than half of them are shared between all three of them.

But the Synoptics and John share only a small fraction of each of their miracles.

 

[lpetrich]

The Synoptics, by themselves, ignoring John's presence or absence:

• Mt, Mk, Lk: 12
• Lk: 6
• Mt, Mk: 5
• Mt: 3
• Mk: 2
• Mt, Lk: 2
• Mk, Lk: 1

Inclusive of additional gospels, the counts are for the Synoptics:

• Mt: 22
• Mk: 20
• Lk: 21
• Mt, Mk: 17
• Mt, Lk: 14
• Mk, Lk: 13
• Mt, Mk, Lk: 12

For the Synoptics with John:

• Sn: 31
• Jn: 8
• Sn, Jn: 2

So the Synoptics overlap rather heavily in what miracles they describe, but only overlap a little bit with John, even considering that gospel's paucity of miracles by Synoptic standards.