120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[Lumpenproletariat]

Analogy of Jesus to Hindu mythic figures

And for your information, I do NOT hate the Bible. I simply do not believe the supernatural stories that the Bible contains, just as I do not believe the supernatural stories regarding the elephant headed god Ganesha, or the monkey god Hanuman who could fly and lift up entire mountains, even though such stories are widely documented in Hindu mythology in multiple sources.

When did Ganesha and Hanuman reportedly live as historical figures? You are saying these are reputed historical figures about whom we have multiple sources claiming they lived in a certain region at a certain time in history?

Unless you can give sources saying when and where they lived as real historical figures, they are not analogous to the "Jesus myth" which is about a reputed historical person who lived near 30 AD in the region of Galilee and Judea.

In addition to giving the approximate date and location of these historical figures, you need to give us the date of the sources which report about them. Within 50 years or so is sufficient. Also we need more than only one source, and they need to harmonize on the very general points (not the details).

If you can't offer this information, then these examples are not to be taken seriously.

It's possible that the Ganesha legend might have evolved from a real character who had a deformity, like the elephant man, thus a real historical figure, who became mythologized over the centuries. In which case the original person probably lived at least 100 years prior to the first sources about him.

You could undermine my theory if you can show that the written documents or sources about these characters appeared within 50 years or so from the time that they lived. But there has to be more than only one source close to the time of the "miracle" events in the legends.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

No, Joseph Smith and Buddha and Mohammad are not analogous to Jesus Christ.

There is too much nonsense here. Your argument essentially boils down to the story of Jesus must be true because people believe it and it was written down within fifty to a hundred years. Writing myths down doesn't make them true. People believing the myths doesn't make them true.

All facts of history could be dismissed by this reasoning.

Your argument that it be written down and people believing it makes it true is the logical fallacy, argumentum ad populum.

Again, by your reasoning, none of the "facts" of history are true. All we have to go on are documents which say it happened.

Not accepting others that meet your idea of the myth being written down and people believing the myth as making them true but that it makes the Jesus myth true is special pleading.

Others that meet the same criterion are also true. The same standards for credibility apply to all cases. If there were evidence for the Krishna myths, then one could reasonably believe those myths also. But there is not the evidence we need. I.e., documents which report the miracle events and which were written near to the time the events reputedly happened.

Joseph Smith's "miracles" were written down contemporaneously and people believe it.

I've asked many times for someone to produce those original documents. It's not sufficient to cite a current Wikipedia article which says those documents exist.

What it seems to be is 1 or 2 of Joseph Smith's disciples reporting something. Only one of them reported anything significant. But this was a follower of Smith who had been under the spell of his charisma for 10 years or longer.

However, without being able to read the actual source for this, it's not a serious analogy to the Jesus example. We need to be able to read the original document, or at least some text source from the 19th century -- not a 21st-century article about it.

Your assertion that his miracles are not true but Jesus's are true is special pleading.

Without the evidence we should discount it. We should not believe miracle stories without multiple sources telling of the events and written near to the time of the reputed events.

The same for Buddha, Mohammad, etc.

In both these cases the recorded evidence is at least 100 years later than the reputed events.

But also, these were both famous celebrities with a wide reputation and long distinguished careers in which they won thousands of followers. So even if some mythologizing had begun before the end of their life it would still not be analogous to the case of Jesus who was a nobody in 30 AD (unless he really did perform the miracle acts, in which case we might speculate that he had become popular, but there's no evidence of any wide popularity during his life).

 

[skepticalbip]

All facts of history could be dismissed by this reasoning.

Your argument that it be written down and people believing it makes it true is the logical fallacy, argumentum ad populum.

Again, by your reasoning, none of the "facts" of history are true. All we have to go on are documents which say it happened.

Not accepting others that meet your idea of the myth being written down and people believing the myth as making them true but that it makes the Jesus myth true is special pleading.

Others that meet the same criterion are also true. The same standards for credibility apply to all cases. If there were evidence for the Krishna myths, then one could reasonably believe those myths also. But there is not the evidence we need. I.e., documents which report the miracle events and which were written near to the time the events reputedly happened.

Joseph Smith's "miracles" were written down contemporaneously and people believe it.

I've asked many times for someone to produce those original documents. It's not sufficient to cite a current Wikipedia article which says those documents exist.

What it seems to be is 1 or 2 of Joseph Smith's disciples reporting something. Only one of them reported anything significant. But this was a follower of Smith who had been under the spell of his charisma for 10 years or longer.

However, without being able to read the actual source for this, it's not a serious analogy to the Jesus example. We need to be able to read the original document, or at least some text source from the 19th century -- not a 21st-century article about it.

Your assertion that his miracles are not true but Jesus's are true is special pleading.

Without the evidence we should discount it. We should not believe miracle stories without multiple sources telling of the events and written near to the time of the reputed events.

The same for Buddha, Mohammad, etc.

In both these cases the recorded evidence is at least 100 years later than the reputed events.

But also, these were both famous celebrities with a wide reputation and long distinguished careers in which they won thousands of followers. So even if some mythologizing had begun before the end of their life it would still not be analogous to the case of Jesus who was a nobody in 30 AD (unless he really did perform the miracle acts, in which case we might speculate that he had become popular, but there's no evidence of any wide popularity during his life).

Cute that is. You persist on only wanting to discuss red herrings rather than the real issue. I notice you clipped the part you didn't want to respond to - the real issue.

You are evading the real discussion of how we know if something can possibly be true by offering endless red herrings. We know if some story is possibly true by whether or not it requires violation of the laws of physics. However, even if a story does not require a violation of the laws of physics it still may not be true. In this case we can judge the possibility of truth by the reliability of the "witnesses".

The Jesus story fails on both counts. It requires violation of the laws of physics and we don't have a clue who the witnesses were or even if there were witnesses instead of inventors of stories so can't judge their reliability. We don't even know who wrote down the myths after decades of embellishment and word of mouth so can't even judge their reliability at faithfully recording the myths.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

What do all mythic heroes other than Jesus Christ have in common? -- There's NO REASON TO BELIEVE their alleged miracles.

(continued)

Lumpenproletariat;102952, Atheos;95263, Lumpenproletariat;95197

So in the case of Jesus the normal mythologizing process is not the explanation for the miracle stories. So you have to find an explanation that is unprecedented, so that something totally unique happened in this case. What is it that happened? The best answer is that in this case the miracle acts really did take place. It is not reasonable to suggest that in this one case only a mythologizing process took place that never happened in any other case before or after.

In the case of Jesus the mythologizing process is exactly the best explanation. Your pitiful attempts at attempting to extricate your favorite invisible friend from the thousands of invisible friends invented in the fertile imagination . . .

But what "thousands" are you talking about? Why have we no others of these "thousands" reported in documents from the time? or any time, from 1000 BC to 1500 AD or so?

Why is there NOT ONE OTHER such cult hero popping up in such a short time and published in separate documents? You can't name one case that comes even close to this, from "the thousands" you claim have been invented. All you can name are minor wacko cults only in modern times, or only a few "gods" or charsmatics who required a long career and usually centuries for their reputation to emerge and for anything to be published about them.

. . . of human beings throughout history are pointless. Not one thing you have presented lends credibility to the absurd tales.

We have more documentation/evidence for the Jesus events, including the miracle acts, than we have for many other events that we believe happened. Vastly more for unusual claims like miracle events. Whereas all you are presenting is the dogmatic premise that miracle events cannot ever happen, no matter what the evidence, because you automatically rule them out no matter what. Other than this dogmatic premise, you have presented nothing.

There is no historical evidence that any of it happened, no artifacts, nothing.

There is more evidence, from documents, for these events than there is for many historical events that we assume did happen. And virtually ALL events have no evidence for them from artifacts

There are many events that are not documented until centuries later and for which there is only one source. But in this case we have events documented within 50 years and earlier, and we have multiple sources. So the evidence for this is greater than it is for many historical facts that we take for granted.

Please be so kind as to provide an example of one of these events that are not documented until centuries later and for which there is only one source. Let's compare it to the stories of Jesus the Magic Jew and see if there is anything obvious that makes the Jesus stories a bit harder to swallow than the example you give.

short answer: Jordanes, , Getica, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanes , which provides events on the early history of the Goths available from this one source only.

long answer: I confess it was more difficult than I expected to find a good example. There are probably many, but they're not easy to dig up. I'll give a couple more, but also I'll amend my statement above, so I can give further examples that make the main point more easily.

So modify the "centuries later" and "facts that we take for granted" and there are plenty of easy examples, and the basic point is still the same.

Homer and the Trojan War would come close, as it's reasonable to take Homer as a mix of historical fact plus fiction. However, my "facts that we take for granted" doesn't fit Homer so well. Still, even with doubts about Homer, it's reasonable to take him as a partly legitimate source for the events 400-500 years earlier.

One could even take Apollonius of Rhodes as a source for Jason and the Argonauts, even if it's 90% fiction, and for this the time gap is much longer. It's not unreasonable to believe that this story is partly historical.

Also, Josephus tells events from more than 200 years earlier, about the Jews after returning from captivity. Some of this is unique to Josephus, though I can't name the particular events off hand.

But a shorter time gap, like 150 years between source and event, would be easier for finding examples more generally accepted as having historical value. Such as Herodotus writing about the lawgiver Solon and the Lydian King Croessus. Or Philostratus writing on the life of Apollonius of Tyana. In both these cases there is legend mixed in with fact, but the source is credible for some events and is the only source, and the fictional element does not negate the factual element.


Philostratus is believed for events 150 years earlier, even though he includes miracle stories.

The Philostratus example is easy to use in order to make my main point, even though it's only 150 years rather 200+ from the events and so falls short of my "centuries later" criterion. (So I'll let the above Jordanes example serve to meet that strict criterion.)

The Philostratus document tells the life of Apollonius, for which there might be another minor source, but nothing giving the details of his life, about his long career and his activities as a philosopher and traveler. Historians accept the Philostratus account as generally reliable, minus the miracle stories. Even if the account is largely fable, much of it is accepted for the historical events, and from it we know that this character really lived a long life and was popular.

So it is assumed that the reported events are generally true, even though there is no other source for them, plus this account does contain miracle stories, which is important, because this demonstrates the point that just because a document contains miracle stories, which are assumed to be fiction, still the document is accepted as generally reliable for the normal events.

So accounts like these are accepted as part of the historical record and inform us on what happened, even if it's the only source and is dated long after the reported events. They have credibility for determining the events of the period and are accepted generally by historians.

But the point is that there is LESS EVIDENCE for the events in these sources than there is for the miracles of Jesus, because for the latter we have 4 (5) sources, and these sources are much closer in time to the reputed events.

"Only one source" and "centuries later" than the reported events

The Jordanes early history of the Goths fits my original claim. It reports on events at least 250 years earlier than he wrote about them, and at least a small part going much farther back. There are the normal scholarly disputes about the book's reliability on details, the usual fact vs. fiction etc. But despite those familiar squabbles, it's relied upon for much of the early Gothic history.

In addition to the Jordanes book, I'll give another example which technically fits the description "not documented until centuries later and for which there is only one source" and is generally accepted as reliable:

The reign of King Sargon of Akkad, or Sargon the Great, is dated prior to 2200 (2270 - 2215 or 2334 - 2279 BC), and this is based on the Sumerian King List of 2000 BC. There are other listings later, but all are based on this list, so this King List is the sole source for the early kings.

Much of the early listings are assumed to be fictional, however it is agreed that Sargon's reign is 23rd century, based on this document of at least 200 years later. And even the earlier listings are at least partly accurate, so even some information from centuries earlier is also recognized as historical, despite the mythical elements. So here also is a valid source for events more than 2 centuries and even 3 centuries earlier than the document, which is the only source for the events.

The truth is that there are other more recent sources that also fit our description (one source only, centuries later), which would make my point better, but it isn't necessary to go searching for them. An historian could probably give several more examples better than the two I'm giving here.

So my statement above --

There is more evidence, from documents, for these events [the Jesus miracles] than there is for many historical events that we assume did happen --

is true, applying it to the Jordanes book as a comparison, and also to Philostratus, as sources for events which we assume happened but for which we have only the one source and which are much farther separated from their source than the Jesus miracle stories are separated from their sources (note: "sources" plural!).

So, there is more evidence, from documents, for the Jesus miracles than there is for the historical events of the Jordanes book, which is generally accepted as a source for early Gothic history, even though most of its information comes from this one source only which was written "centuries later." Likewise the Philostratus is generally accepted and is 150 years later.

Had enough? I'll give another example of this -- one source only, centuries later, routinely accepted as true by historians. This example is of particular interest for our topic:

Burning of the pagan library at Antioch by the Christian emperor Jovian. More on this incident later, but for now this is instructive to show how a source is used for an event that happened centuries earlier.

There's plenty of reason to doubt whether this really happened:

The ONLY source for this event is a document written about 1100 or 1200 AD, and the event being reported happened in 364 AD, so at least 700 years earlier. Now it helps the credibility slightly that this late document is probably quoting or relying on a 7th-century document, though this is not certain -- it's anonymous in the sense that no author is indicated, but it's thought to be from a chronicler John of Antioch who might be reliable.

So this 11th- or 12th-century document, possibly relying on the 7th-century chronicler, is routinely believed by historians for a 4th-century event. And this is absolutely the ONLY document which attests to anything like bookburning or the burning of a library by Christians. THERE IS NO OTHER SUCH DOCUMENT attesting to any such act by any Christians, with the possible sole exception of 1 or 2 cases of burning books on magic or divination, such as the incident in Acts 19:19, which has nothing to do with pagan philosophy/religion books being destroyed.

This 11th- or 12-century document is accepted so casually by several mainline authors, for the 4th-century event, that it's difficult to dismiss this as based on prejudice, such we can dismiss some of the popular celebrity Jesus-debunker sensationalist mythicists who make up stories about Mithras and Horus and other alleged pre-Jesus miracle heroes.

So there is probably some truth to the claim about the burning of that pagan library in 364 AD. The point here is that this is another clear example of a one-only source, centuries later, relied on for the earlier event.

(But to be clear, all the evidence shows that there was no campaign of library-burnings or book-burnings being carried on by the Church or Christian vigilantes on a rampage to destroy evidence of other miracle messiahs or non-physical gnostic-type Christs etc. That idea is paranoia. They were not hunting for books to destroy, though they persecuted Arians who were condemned by the Council of Nicea, and later some additional "heretics.")

And there definitely are many more examples of such sources -- one source only, generally accepted, and dated centuries later after the events -- but it's not easy digging up such examples. The point is not that they're the norm for most historical events, but that there are many examples -- i.e., historical events, routinely accepted as true, based on less evidence than we have for the Jesus events, including the miracles.



Alien abductions, the paranormal, psychic phenomena, etc.

Meanwhile we do have ample evidence of hoaxes being perpetrated by various people for whatever purpose.

We need examples. Each case has to be examined. Usually there's only one source for them. Isn't there usually evidence of a hoax? Or in some cases maybe something really did happen. Unless you give an example, it's not possible to draw a conclusion, or compare them to the Jesus case.

I mentioned alien abduction stories as an example, one which you dismissed even though the examples are very similar to "eyewitness testimony" you appear to believe about equally unlikely events from completely anonymous people.

Not all alien abduction stories should be dismissed. Each one should be investigated. In some cases something unusual probably did happen. One might judge tentatively that such a story is fiction, but no strong conclusion should be drawn until it is investigated. It's better to say we don't know than to automatically reject any such story regardless of the evidence.

A lot of time has been wasted by specialists investigating UFO abduction stories. Not one shred of credible evidence has ever been uncovered but lots of eyewitness testimony has.

And whose verdict was it that "Not one shred of credible evidence has ever been uncovered"? You don't know that.

You cannot say that "The book is closed on alien abductions" or any other weird claims. You never close off the investigation and just insist that all future reports must be condemned as false despite any evidence.

Even if 99% of such claims are false, there may be some truth to some of the claims. In some cases something weird may have happened and it's not known what the explanation is. There have probably been some strange events which defy normal explanation. The claims may have been "debunked," but that may be only the explanation claimed for the event rather than the strange event itself.

The Jesus event, including his miracle healing acts, is a strange episode in history which likely did happen, while the "debunking" of it has been only to discredit some later interpretations or claims about it.

The point of this is to show just how poor a form of evidence "eyewitness testimony" actually is.

Even so, eyewitness testimony is usually reliable. It's evidence which has to be included, even if it's sometimes misleading. The cliché that eye-witness testimony is always unreliable is silly.

And this is true even when skilled investigators can critically cross-examine the testifiers.

But still eyewitness testimony is part of the legitimate evidence. Unless you're saying that anything reported by eyewitnesses must always be rejected as false. Is that what you're trying to say? that the memory of having seen something happen is proof that the something did not happen?


(to be continued)

 

[DrZoidberg]

.... snip ....

Doesn't a figure like Daniel Boone bear some resemblance to earlier historical or legendary figures? Maybe Robin Hood or William Tell? So then Daniel Boone didn't really exist but is only a "tale" inspired by the earlier story? You can't erase historical events just by showing some "similarity" of it to something from earlier history. And where did that earlier history come from? Was it too "inspired" by still earlier stories? So then what was the true first "history" that really happened and from which all the later history was "inspired" but didn't really happen?

.... snip ....

Yes. Daniel Boone was a real historical figure but he has been mythologized. Many of the deeds credited to him didn't happen. Do you really believe that, since he was a real figure, that "he killed himself a bear when he was only three"?

Daniel Boon was a real historical figure but there is no evidence for the amazing feats credited to him.

George Washington was a real historical figure but there is no evidence that he did amazing feats like throwing a silver dollar the several miles across the Potomic.

Caesar was a real historical figure but there is no evidence that he did the miracles credited to him.

Jesus may have been a real historical figure but there is no evidence that he did the miracles credited to him.

I like Bart Ehrman's theory. Ie Jesus is a real historical figure but nothing at all remains of the real Jesus in the myth. Ehrman's theory, based on what type of person could have had the type of impact Jesus did, (created a new religion). He theorises that Jesus was a Rabbi. Around the birth of Jesus Torah scholars were trying to agree on which of all the Torah's was going to be the official Jewish Torah (the scrolls we today refer to as the one and only Torah). Ehrman theorises that Jesus and Christianity is one of the versions of Judaism that lost. Also the type of Judaism that we found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. If true Jesus would have belonged to a rich urban elite. Also.. may not have been called Jesus either. The disciples could each be representatives of the various groups supporting Jesus.

What this theory has going for it is that these are historical events that we know actually happened. Well documented among the Roman reports to Augustus and Nero. We also know what happened to the supporters of the losing sides. Their leaders all got executed. Which fits nicely with the Jesus myth. And as opposed to the Biblical narrative we know that these guys actually did get convicted with the support of the high priest. We know for example that Caiaphas (the main guy who convicted Jesus in the Bible) actually did exist and did convict people and did convict those who the Rabbis considered were heretics. Which Jesus most assuredly was guilty of (if he existed)

 

[Atheos]

I've asked many times for someone to produce those original documents. It's not sufficient to cite a current Wikipedia article which says those documents exist.

Tell you what: You produce Q instead of deferring to opinions of folks who have theorized about its existence and get back with us. Meanwhile I must admit that I do not have in my possession the entire 15 volume journal of Wilford Woodruff, the Encyclopedia of Joseph Smith's Teachings (ISBN 1-57008-672-9), the 7 volume set of Joseph Smith's History of the Church (edited by B. H. Roberts) or the 3 volume set of New Witnesses for God (ISBN 0-9622545-4-1). I'm just not that interested in the Mormon church, but I guarantee you I could get my hands on every one of them if I were so inclined.

You cannot get your hands on even a fragment of this "Q" document to which you have appealed gratuitously in this thread as if its existence is a foregone conclusion anymore than you can get your hands on an actual original copy of GMark.

You don't even know who wrote any of the documents you keep appealing to. You've already admitted that the writers have embellished the story with birth narratives. In other words the only thing we know for sure about these writers is that they're not afraid to lie. Yet we're supposed to believe their fish story. Get real.

The Wikipedia article to which you were referred concerning the miracles of Joseph Smith is copiously footnoted. You are more than welcome to challenge those footnotes. The documents exist, they include the excerpted quotes, some of the contents written therein were written within hours of the reported events and we actually know who wrote them!

Holy crap what a joke your arguments are! :laughing-smiley-014

 

[funinspace]

I've asked many times for someone to produce those original documents. It's not sufficient to cite a current Wikipedia article which says those documents exist.

Tell you what: You produce Q instead of deferring to opinions of folks who have theorized about its existence and get back with us.

Will this work

Meanwhile I must admit that I do not have in my possession the entire 15 volume journal of Wilford Woodruff, the Encyclopedia of Joseph Smith's Teachings (ISBN 1-57008-672-9), the 7 volume set of Joseph Smith's History of the Church (edited by B. H. Roberts) or the 3 volume set of New Witnesses for God (ISBN 0-9622545-4-1). I'm just not that interested in the Mormon church, but I guarantee you I could get my hands on every one of them if I were so inclined.

Stomp stomp stomp...but I don't want them to exist!!!!!

Holy crap what a joke your arguments are! :laughing-smiley-014

Yeah, it got kind of old after the 69th rinsing cycle...

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The quotes from the original source should be available if they are to be taken seriously.

I've asked many times for someone to produce those original documents. It's not sufficient to cite a current Wikipedia article which says those documents exist.

Tell you what: You produce Q instead of deferring to opinions of folks who have theorized about its existence and get back with us. Meanwhile I must admit that I do not have in my possession the entire 15 volume journal of Wilford Woodruff, the Encyclopedia of Joseph Smith's Teachings (ISBN 1-57008-672-9), the 7 volume set of Joseph Smith's History of the Church (edited by B. H. Roberts) or the 3 volume set of New Witnesses for God (ISBN 0-9622545-4-1). I'm just not that interested in the Mormon church, but I guarantee you I could get my hands on every one of them if I were so inclined.

You cannot get your hands on even a fragment of this "Q" document to which you have appealed gratuitously in this thread as if its existence is a foregone conclusion anymore than you can get your hands on an actual original copy of GMark.

You don't even know who wrote any of the documents you keep appealing to. You've already admitted that the writers have embellished the story with birth narratives. In other words the only thing we know for sure about these writers is that they're not afraid to lie. Yet we're supposed to believe their fish story. Get real.

The Wikipedia article to which you were referred concerning the miracles of Joseph Smith is copiously footnoted. You are more than welcome to challenge those footnotes. The documents exist, they include the excerpted quotes, some of the contents written therein were written within hours of the reported events and we actually know who wrote them!

Holy crap what a joke your arguments are! :laughing-smiley-014

Don't be silly.

I'm only asking for quotes from the original text. Not the whole set of volumes.

Quote the part giving the account of the miracle healings.

Meanwhile, I already gave you the Q document earlier. You're already familiar with that text. You can read all the Bible writings online.

I already tried to locate the Mormon documents you refer to. If you can locate them and post them, the relevant quotes, I'll pay a $50 donation to this website. I believe they are not available, probably because Mormons have never published them but keep them in some private collection, because they don't consider them to be of general interest to the public.

The stories are probably no different than those of a faith-healer worshiper who was inspired by their charismatic preacher for several years and which no one except some direct disciples takes seriously.

But if you can turn them up, I'll pay the donation. I don't mind paying it. This is a good message board website.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

What do all mythic heroes other than Jesus Christ have in common? -- There's NO REASON TO BELIEVE their alleged miracles.

(continued)

QUOTE=Lumpenproletariat;102952 QUOTE=Atheos;95263 QUOTE=Lumpenproletariat;95197 < Does anyone need these references? If no one says otherwise, in the future I will omit all such extra references and cite only the post which I directly am quoting. I don't know the formatting to include these (and each little button) without the extra boxes taking up too much space.


The "evidence" we have available for the Jesus myth comes to us completely anonymously, . . .

Is an account necessarily more reliable just because you have the name of an author connected to it? Has it been proved that "anonymous" sources are inaccurate?

And if you have a name attached to the document there are still two problems: 1) You don't know that it really was written by that author just because the name is there, and 2) Even if you can be sure the name is correct, you don't necessarily know that author just by having that name -- your knowledge of that author could be largely mistaken, so that it's only a name and little more, or your impression of the writer is false.

The 3 synoptic Gospels are obviously compilations, containing pieces taken from different authors, so that assigning a correct author's name to them is not possible, because there's more than one. Does this detract from the credibility of the document? Why?

Is a compilation of earlier reports necessarily less reliable or less honest? It might be MORE reliable, because the redactor is collecting this together from more than one source, which can more likely expose factual errors in the sources because of discrepancies. While perhaps reducing the literary value of the writing, it also corrects possible error from one source having it juxtaposed alongside another, thus producing an overall more truthful account.

Whatever the origin of the Mt Mk Lk names, this does not subtract from the credibility of the document. It's best to judge the document piece by piece, comparing the different parts, believing some and doubting others, rather than simplistically condemning the whole document because we don't have an accurate author for each part.

Later I'm going to quote from a medieval encyclopedia called Suda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suda which is hard to figure out, as to the authors. Many pieces of it are anonymous or the authors unknown. And yet it's used as a reliable source for medieval and ancient history items that are otherwise unavailable. One item in it is the alleged burning of the pagan library at Antioch by the Christian emperor Jovian. This source is cited by authors to show that Christians burned books, and is the ONLY original source text for such claims. Even the named authors are unknown in many cases.

Yet there's nothing wrong with this source. There's nothing wrong with trusting unknown authors or writings from doubtful sources.

. . . with no possibility of investigative corroboration.

This is the case for ALL documents from centuries past. We have no way to corroborate any of them through investigation. Any "corroboration" would only be based on some further documents which cannot be corroborated. We cannot revive humans from centuries ago and interrogate them on what they wrote and waterboard them into telling the truth about the real source of something that was written.

It comes to us courtesy of now-unknown people who likely stood to gain much in terms of power and wealth . . .

You could say this about any document you don't like. Including a document that is NOT anonymous. You could say this about the Stoics or the Epicureans or the Hedonists or any group or religion or philosophy. Most of them could be accused of just writing it for personal gain.

. . . by convincing people to believe these myths, to behave and think as they would have them do, and to give them money.

There's no indication of this in the gospel accounts that you couldn't also suspect of anything else that got published.

This fits the Philostratus account of Apollonius of Tyana more than the Gospel accounts. Philostratus was paid by rich powerful people to write his account, and yet historians generally accept it as reliable, minus the miracle events.

And even if someone cashed in, so what? Just because someone wanted the information to be published and paid someone to write it or copy it does not mean it's sinister or dishonest. Maybe there was a legitimate need for the subject matter to be published. It doesn't have to be sinister just because someone rich paid for it. If we eliminated all published matter from the record which was paid for by someone rich, probably most history books would have to be shredded.

It makes extraordinary claims unsupported by even mundane, let alone extraordinary, evidence.

It's supported by the same evidence that supports most historical events. Someone near the time writes it down, claiming that something happened. That's ALL the evidence there is for most historical events.

And it's not "extraordinary" evidence that is needed, but only extra evidence -- more of it -- in the case of "extraordinary claims." Events are events, claims are claims, and we need the same kind of evidence for them, no matter what kind they are. We need the documents near the time which say this happened. And for "extraordinary claims" we need additional evidence, more than one source, which we do have with the Gospel accounts. Many historical events are accepted on the authority of ONE SOURCE ONLY. For the Jesus miracle events we have 4(5).

The only rational stance to take on such abysmal evidence is one of skepticism.

It's not "abysmal" evidence, but is the normal evidence such as for all other historical events, plus more than there is for many events that are believed, i.e., more than the minimum required.

And of course we should ALWAYS be skeptical, and a skeptical person can believe if there is the required extra evidence. Skepticism does not mean that every unusual claim has to be rejected as false. That's not skepticism, but dogmatism and prejudice.

Yet spurred on by the ongoing power and wealth available from fleecing believers, skilled people continue to sell these absurd tales.

And skilled people also fleece NONbelievers, even atheists and free-thinkers etc.

Many humanists and atheists and Jesus-debunkers continue to make profit selling their sensationalist publications. Just because someone is SELLING something does not disprove the product they're peddling. You have to address the beliefs or nonbeliefs expressed in their propaganda regardless whether they're selling something.

Al Gore, Rush Limbaugh, Thom Hartmann, and others get rich preaching their doctrines to true believers and selling their books or movies or whatever propaganda medium they find profitable. This does not prove their beliefs are false.

This is not evidence the tales are true, . . .

And yet, for historical events all we have are the "tales" -- what someone wrote down -- i.e., claims that something happened. This is the evidence we rely on, regardless whether someone pays for it to be published. The fact that someone pays to publish the "tales" does not make the "tales" false. But the fact that someone initially made the effort to write down the "tale" or publish it -- like the "tale" that Caesar was assassinated -- means we give some credibility to it. Because the alternative is that all history has to be tossed out as fiction, meaning we can know nothing about what happened in the past.

As always, your arguments say nothing about the gospel accounts per se, but are just a rejection of ALL documents ever written, and thus a rejection of ALL RECORDED HISTORY. So, just say that we should not believe anything ever published about any historical events -- it's all just lies, "absurd tales" -- all recorded history is a hoax. That's your argument.

. . . it is evidence that people can be bilked into believing just about anything, no matter how absurd it is.

No, it's evidence that people believe something from history if it's supported by documents from the time. If there were no 1st-century documents attesting to the miracles of Jesus, hardly anyone would believe those claims, even if "skilled people" were promoting it and were financed by someone rich and powerful.

It's not true that "people can be bilked into believing just about anything," but rather, they are persuaded if there is evidence for the beliefs, such as documents attesting to the events and written near to the time of those events, like for all historical events. Christ believers know the claims made are based on accounts dating back to the 1st century. This is not "just about anything, no matter how absurd."

There were plenty of other "absurd tales" for people to believe which were not published. E.g., some later claims made in 2nd- and 3rd-century "apocryphal" and "gnostic" gospels, including claims that Jesus was a non-historical, non-physical cosmic being of some sort, or miracle "tales" of Jesus as a child, etc. Why weren't these tales published in multiple documents? Because there was no evidence for them, no credibility. No written accounts dating near to the time of the reputed events. And thus no one took them seriously, so they were not copied, and only a few such documents survived.

You keep asking "why Jesus and not someone else?" I might as well ask "Why Microsoft and not Digital Research?" We could get into endless debates over whatever happened that allowed one competitor to succeed where another disappeared into complete oblivion, . . .

That's not analogous. There are several successful companies, or legendary hero companies that have emerged. For an analogy to the Jesus legend, you have to show that one stands out uniquely apart from all the others. If there was only one giant mega-corporation that stood out far beyond all the others, with none of the others even close, and if this uniqueness continued on for centuries, then we'd have an analogy to the Jesus legend and one could ask for an explanation. And it might even be proper to consider if it's not some kind of miracle that this one company alone stands out so uniquely.

No. The existence of Hindu, Buddhism and other world religions that have nothing to do with Christianity are sufficient to demonstrate that one giant mega-corporation is not the only possible defense of this comparison.

It misses the point to just say that "other religions" also exist which rival Christianity in size or growth, etc. No, you have to provide the evidence for their beliefs, not just show that these religions exist, in order to make the comparison to Christ belief. It's not that the Christ belief has succeeded beyond all the other belief systems in recruiting members and spreading widely. That's not what's unique about Christ belief. The question is: Why is Christ belief the only one supported by evidence, while all the others are not?

This one belief is based on evidence from documents near to the time which attest to the power Jesus possessed. Other religions, no matter how large or impressive or how far they spread across continents etc., do not offer any similar evidence of having power or of having connected with such a power source. If you think they do, then present this evidence. We need documents, from the time of the reported events, showing that someone possessed such power.

I'll correct my earlier statement above: "If there was only one giant mega-corporation that stood out far beyond all the others, with none of the others even close, and if this uniqueness continued on for centuries, then we'd have an analogy . . ." etc. This might seem to suggest that Christ belief is unique for its greater membership or growth and so on, which is not the point, so, more correctly: What stands out about the Christ belief is that it's the only one for which there is evidence of a connection to a superhuman power source.

Of course there are rival beliefs (religions), cults, etc., and some grew large and are just as impressive as Christianity, just as there are rival corporations with no one being the sole superpower mega-corporation. Rather, what stands out is that Christ demonstrated power, for which evidence was preserved, and then perhaps this explains the rapid growth and success of the Christ cult(s), but it's not the growth in membership that's important, but the facts at the beginning, before the cult(s) spread, which show that Christ had this power source. This fact is what is critical, not the later spreading of the new Christ cult(s) and popularity and membership growth.

And the comparison is not about that anyway. It's about marketing. Marketing is what drove Christianity, not the credibility of the myths upon which it was based.

No, there was nothing driving Christianity other than the belief that this person had shown power, mainly in the resurrection, but also the earlier miracle acts.

There's no reason to say that other belief systems were lacking in marketing. If marketing is how Christ believers got their "myths" or beliefs published or promoted, why don't we have other cults also succeeding in getting their own miracle myths published near to the time when those miracles reportedly happened? What is the basis for saying that only Christ believers knew how to market their beliefs, and no one else?

Where are the other Jesus-like cults which also had marketing talent and were able to promote their myths and get them published? You have no basis for saying they did not exist and that no one had marketing talent other than the Christ believers.

You've sort of hoisted yourself on your own petard by bringing Simon Magus into the picture, as Simon is a contemporary example of someone who may have been an actual person, who was painted as a God at some point, who had many devoted followers and whose followers were eventually out-marketed by someone else.

Eventually? You mean he had equal credibility to Jesus at first, but 100 or 200 years later he lost out in the competition because of inferior marketing? OK, but in that case his "devoted followers" should have left behind a body of literature, at least something, telling the "gospel" of Simon Magus, which was rejected but still should exist in some form that survived, just like the Essenes and others left behind their documents. They had 200 years to publish some written accounts just like the Christ cult(s) were publishing the gospel accounts.

No, SM's deficiency is that he lacked credibility. Whatever tricks he was able to perform, it was no comparison to the power of Jesus to perform cures on such a large scale. It was only this unique power Christ had that can explain why his deeds got published and believed widely whereas other personalities, like Simon Magus, never got off the ground and were disdained as petty magicians. And we can assume there were still more tricksters/charlatans even less impressive than Simon who are completely forgotten.

If you explain the spread of the "Jesus myth" only by the superior marketing ability of the Christ believers, you have to explain why ONLY THIS ONE belief had adherents who were capable of this marketing. Why couldn't any other cults also do marketing? Why only the Christ cult(s)? Out of all the millions of cult followers and believers of many kinds, why didn't a single one of them succeed in getting their own Jesus-like hero published in multiple documents near to the time of the reputed miracle events?

Over a period of 1000 or 2000 years, like from 500 BC to 1500 AD, why is there no other cult which showed this same superior marketing talent that the Christ cult(s) displayed and thus get their own miracle myths published, so we could see at least a few other Jesus-like mythic heroes published and reported as performing similar miracle acts? By any reasoning there should be dozens of the Jesus-like cults appearing, with their own "gospel" literature being spread similarly to the Christ gospel.

There is no basis for saying that such marketing skill existed in only one place and at one time in history -- in the 1st century in Judea and Asia Minor, and only St. Paul, as if he were some kind of Superior Alien Being unique in all history, who alone knew how to manipulate millions of gullible minds, and never before or after could anyone else succeed at this.

. . . but what's the point? It remains true that Digital Research once existed as the Goliath to Bill Gates' David. Did it take a god's intervention to make Microsoft successful and dissolve their once vast pool of competitors? No.

There needs to be a reason why one succeeds or wins out above the others. You can probably find those reasons.

And there needs to be a reason why one hero-legend figure is the only one who gets deified into a miracle-worker in such a short time, while all the others require generations or even centuries for this mythologizing process to take place. And why for this one we have several sources near to the event, while for the others there is usually only one source or no source near to the reported event. And also, why this one had the shortest public career of all the hero legend figures and yet still has been mythologized more than all the others.

And what makes this point more extreme is that there is not any other hero legend figure who even ranks a close 2nd to this Christ figure in this regard. There is not any other who comes close, in terms of the degree of mythologizing that took place, who is identified in writings where the evidence is given to indicate the power he possessed, and whose public life was anywhere near as short so as to reduce the time during which he could develop his reputation and create the necessary public image wherefrom the later mythologizing could take root and grow.

There needs to be an explanation for this extreme uniqueness, if it is not that he actually did perform those miracle acts, because these actual events in history in the period of about 29-30 AD would totally explain this uniqueness, i.e., how he got mythologized in spite of having so short a time period in which to establish his public image.

You keep calling it a short time period. It wasn't. A legend can grow overnight.

No it can't. You can't name another example. Every miracle legend you can name, which spread and was published in documents, required a long period. Centuries for the pagan gods. For less grandiose figures, like Apollonius, it required 150 years, and all we have is one source.

Again, for Vespasian, it required a long career, and a reputation of one who was a powerful and popular ruler.

There are no overnighters. Name one. They all required a long career in which to establish their popularity, and usually centuries for the myth to expand to the point of being published and made known to millions.

30 years is plenty of time for such stories to germinate . . .

If that were true you could cite some other examples of similar miracle-hero legends that should have emerged, whose stories also germinated and became published.

It requires at least a long career of public activity and celebrity status in order to establish the hero's reputation, and more than 100 years, usually several centuries, such as the pagan gods required for their stories to become established.

What other miracle legend hero became established in only 30-40 years? Perhaps a famous powerful figure, like the Roman emperor. But not an unknown. Not an obscure person with a very short public career.

. . . and you cannot put any of the miracle narratives any closer to the events in the historical record than [30 years] no matter how hard you try.

OK, not in surviving documents that we still have. Although the resurrection is attested to in Paul, which is less than 30 years.

That 30 years is closer to the events than we have for most events in history for that long ago. The events in question happened in a short period, 1-3 years, which is less than for any person in history that is recorded. Such a brief career is unlikely to be recorded or have any documentation whatever unless it was something extremely unusual.

To demand that we should have documents even sooner than this 30 years makes no sense. That we have any record of this event at all is irregular. We need an explanation why such an event was recorded at all.

No doubt there were some documents earlier than Paul and Mark, which did not survive. What is so early and unprecedented is the emergence of enough copied documents, as early as 40 or 50 years out, copied sufficiently and preserved for permanent future use. This is highly irregular for a person who had no celebrity status or wide recognition during his life and had been publicly active for such a short time. Not just irregular, but totally unprecedented -- there is no other case that comes close to this. No close second.

Paul's non-miracle Jesus with no historical or geographic time frame doesn't qualify.

Paul's writings, 20-30 years later, are evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, which is the most important of the miracles. Whatever this resurrection event was that he attests to, it had to be the same event reported in the Gospel accounts if we are to make any sense of it.

The historical or geographic time frame is that of the Gospel accounts, which put Jesus in Galilee-Judea at about 30 AD. There is no other possible time frame for Paul's Jesus that makes any sense.

And that's conceding that the dude in question actually existed, which is the very issue in question.

There is plenty of evidence that he actually existed. It's more evidence than we have for many historical figures who we assume did exist.

His existence is not the issue in question, but rather, what he did. I.e., if the miracle acts are not real events but fiction only, then what else explains how this one historical person became the only one in history who got deified and mythologized into a miracle-worker in such a short time period, recorded in multiple documents, and yet having such a short public career?

This sets him way apart from any other mythologized figure you can name -- whether from the pagan deities, or from historical figures like prophets or hero legends and so on. He stands apart singularly from them all, so uniquely far apart and separate that there is no way to explain how it could happen by any normal myth-making process we recognize.

Some singular process, happening only once in history, happened in this one case, perhaps a singular unprecedented hoax unlike any other to compare it to, or some other kind of unique one-time-only world event.

In a pre-technology era when people's ability to research claims was limited by the logistical issues of time, travel, education and numerous other handicaps, claims of a great teacher who performed miracles 10 years ago would have been as impossible to debunk as claims of a perfectly formed teapot orbiting a planet around Alpha Centauri would be today.

But if that explains why they believed and spread the "Jesus myth" so soon -- people in the 1st century were easily fooled for lack of debunking capability -- then WE SHOULD HAVE MANY OTHER SIMILAR CULTS which also would have taken advantage of this condition and would have promoted their own Jesus-like myth hero of some kind, complete with "gospel" documents and so on.

But there are no others -- only this one.

You continue to offer explanations which fail to answer -- WHY ONLY ONE?

Where are the dozens or even hundreds of other Jesus-like cults which should have emerged because they did good marketing and had the advantage of being difficult to debunk? Why did only the Christ cult(s) take advantage of this situation of "a pre-technology era when people's ability to research claims was limited by the logistical issues of time, travel, education and numerous other handicaps"?

This pre-technology era was there for millions of charlatans and crusaders of all stripes to exploit to their profit and reap a harvest of souls to whatever scheme they were promoting, just like the Christ cult(s) or Paul or the gospel writers exploited it. How could it be that ONLY ONE cult, or only the Christ cult(s), took advantage of this fertile ground and no others?

It makes no sense.


(to be continued)

 

[Keith&Co.]

Lumpy, how's your vision? Have you gone blind yet?
Do you have to shave your palms?

 

[funinspace]

Tell you what: You produce Q instead of deferring to opinions of folks who have theorized about its existence and get back with us. Meanwhile I must admit that I do not have in my possession the entire 15 volume journal of Wilford Woodruff, the Encyclopedia of Joseph Smith's Teachings (ISBN 1-57008-672-9), the 7 volume set of Joseph Smith's History of the Church (edited by B. H. Roberts) or the 3 volume set of New Witnesses for God (ISBN 0-9622545-4-1). I'm just not that interested in the Mormon church, but I guarantee you I could get my hands on every one of them if I were so inclined.

You cannot get your hands on even a fragment of this "Q" document to which you have appealed gratuitously in this thread as if its existence is a foregone conclusion anymore than you can get your hands on an actual original copy of GMark.

You don't even know who wrote any of the documents you keep appealing to. You've already admitted that the writers have embellished the story with birth narratives. In other words the only thing we know for sure about these writers is that they're not afraid to lie. Yet we're supposed to believe their fish story. Get real.

The Wikipedia article to which you were referred concerning the miracles of Joseph Smith is copiously footnoted. You are more than welcome to challenge those footnotes. The documents exist, they include the excerpted quotes, some of the contents written therein were written within hours of the reported events and we actually know who wrote them!

Holy crap what a joke your arguments are! :laughing-smiley-014

Don't be silly.

I'm only asking for quotes from the original text. Not the whole set of volumes.

Quote the part giving the account of the miracle healings.

My, my, how much you work to avoid finding what is actually available.

One example:
http://www.boap.org/LDS/History/History_of_the_Church/Vol_1

Brother David W. Patten has just returned from his tour to the east, and gives us great satisfaction as to his ministry. He has raised up a church of about eighty-three members in that part of the country where his friends live--in the state of New York. Many were healed through his instrumentality, several cripples were restored. As many as twelve that were afflicted came at a time from a distance to be healed; he and others administered in the name of Jesus, and they were made whole. Thus you see that the laborers in the Lord's vineyard are laboring with their might, while the day lasts, knowing "the night soon cometh when no man can work. [Signed] JOSEPH SMITH.

Meanwhile, I already gave you the Q document earlier. You're already familiar with that text. You can read all the Bible writings online.

Meanwhile, you BS again as there is no Q, there is only a theorized Q. This theorized Q is the assumption that shit was written down sometime, somewhere, by someone prior to the writing of Mark. Mark was written by someone, somewhere (maybe in Rome some 1500 miles away, but theologians admit there is no way to know), roughly 30 years after the famed ending. The oldest fragmentary gospel copies of this come at least another century late. But Mark does come with a rather strange known forged ending...

History of the Church was written by known people, who lived and worked with Joseph Smith. They did this with JS personal journals, some of his followers journals, and church documents. The whole 7 volumes are available here along with the below quote from the introduction:
http://www.boap.org/LDS/History/History_of_the_Church/

The History editor was B. H. Roberts, a prominent LDS leader. Roberts' assignment was to take the manuscript history produced by Joseph Smith (1805-1844) and his clerks between 1838 and 1857 and publish it together with explanatory notes. The history was written as though dictated by Joseph Smith, however he dictated only a small portion of it. The bulk of the manuscript was based on Church records, Church newspaper excerpts and journals of Joseph Smith kept by various men who recorded his activities as well as the diary entries of men who were with Joseph Smith at various times and places or who performed Church missionary efforts, or other tasks of historical importance

And the Jesus demi-god wrote......nada

 

[Keith&Co.]

Is an account necessarily more reliable just because you have the name of an author connected to it?

Not 'an' author. THE author.

Yes. For the purpose of historical research, being able to identify the author helps determine if the author even COULD have been an eyewitness. It helps figure out if the author has a vested interest in the story or is a disinterested reported. It helps figure out when the account was written.

Has it been proved that "anonymous" sources are inaccurate?

You jumped the rail, there, from 'reliable' to 'accurate.' It's entirely possible that the miracle accounts in the Books are accurate.
But the reports are anonymous, not eyewitness accounts, and report things held to be physically impossible by all we know of how the world works. Which means that the evidence for such accounts needs to be a LOT better than we're seeing in order to be reliable.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Is there smoking-gun evidence that Joseph Smith did miracle healings?

I'm only asking for quotes from the original text. Not the whole set of volumes.

Quote the part giving the account of the miracle healings.

My, my, how much you work to avoid finding what is actually available.

One example:
http://www.boap.org/LDS/History/History_of_the_Church/Vol_1

Brother David W. Patten has just returned from his tour to the east, and gives us great satisfaction as to his ministry. He has raised up a church of about eighty-three members in that part of the country where his friends live--in the state of New York. Many were healed through his instrumentality, several cripples were restored. As many as twelve that were afflicted came at a time from a distance to be healed; he and others administered in the name of Jesus, and they were made whole. Thus you see that the laborers in the Lord's vineyard are laboring with their might, while the day lasts, knowing "the night soon cometh when no man can work. [Signed] JOSEPH SMITH.

First, I will go ahead and pay a donation to TFT, though maybe only half, $25, since what you've provided here is far far short of anything serious. But I'll donate that much just to be a good sport. If you can come up with something serious, I'll pay the whole $50 I promised. The following doesn't count toward my $50 challenge since I turned this one up myself:

http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Healings_and_miracles

This is the best I've seen yet, claiming to give the Joseph Smith miracles. Much of it seems to be from 1895, which might be too late. It's difficult to determine the sources for the anecdotes.

It has the Wilford Woodruff quote which is the strongest claim of miracles by Joseph Smith. It seems to claim Smith cured a huge number in some kind of mass healing jamboree on one day. Plus there are many other healing stories which are not too convincing.

Anecdotes like these are very common among many religions. People within the church saying brother so-and-so healed someone, or they prayed and sister so-and-so recovered, and so on -- and meetings or a faith healing rally etc. These are all worshipers within the church family supporting each other and re-assuring each other that God is taking care of them, and so on.

All this is inspired from their belief in the Bible accounts, the Jesus miracles, which is a centuries-old tradition that inspires them and leads to these stories.

These are not analogous to the Jesus healing events, which came not from any religious tradition or anecdotes of the disciples, which kind are discounted by everyone who isn't a member of the religious group in question. Rather, the Jesus accounts are of people who came from outside the circle of his disciples and were healed and then left to tell others what had happened.

The Jesus accounts were believed by writers hundreds of miles away from where the events happened, not part of his group, and who had enough reports that they were credible, having originated not from the direct disciples, but apparently from the ones healed or their family or from onlookers who went out and reported what happened. Or from indirect witnesses who had heard it from a direct witness.

The Jesus reports did not originate from the disciples, like the J. Smith stories originated only from his direct disciples having been under the influence of his charisma over many years.

We need something from someone other than Joseph Smith himself. And we need something originating from someone other than his direct disciples.

If some of the stories seem a bit credible, it might be best to just allow that maybe Joseph Smith did do a few healings, though I doubt these stories. There's little point in going through all of them and trying to show the poor quality of the evidence. Much is just of the "pray for brother so-and-so" variety, but it's not that simple. In one or two cases maybe they try to claim a non-member of their community attested to it. It's hard to tell. There are almost no original sources, but only some quotes. And yet it's supposed to be from the original writing, like an observer from the time. In some of the footnote citations there is something missing. It's very confusing.

There is a very evident pattern of trying to imitate the Jesus stories, and claims are made that these accounts are more credible than the Jesus accounts. There is a very strong "me-too" tone to the whole thing. Like copy-cat stories.


Modern Publishing vs. 2000 Years Ago

In modern times there is a far wider amount of publishing anecdotes like these, whereas 2000 years ago it was not possible to publish very much, so anything like this would not have been written down if it was only the usual "pray for brother so-and-so" story.

So if you can find a real Joseph Smith miracle healing that is serious -- which I haven't seen yet -- post it here. And if it seems true, maybe the best conclusion is that he might have had a little of such power, like maybe some of our current faith-healers also have had some successes. If so it's all based on them having a strong belief based on an ancient miracle healing tradition, where maybe the "healer" is able to exert some influence onto the victim, who is also a believer in the religious tradition, and there's a psychological power generated by their combined belief -- perhaps in some cases there is something to it, and a patient recovers quickly.

But even so, 2000 years ago anecdotes like this were not written down and preserved in copies, like the Jesus events were. They were not noteworthy, perhaps the healer had more "misses" than "hits" and so was not taken seriously, and he did not stand out enough to be able to capture that much interest, that anyone would write it down. The familiar faith-healing anecdotes do not stand out as exceptional like the Jesus healing acts did.

Why were only the Jesus healing acts recorded and copied for later generations? If there were other healers doing the same, we should have dozens of such miracle healer accounts and healing cults similar to the Christ cult(s).

Meanwhile, I already gave you the Q document earlier. You're already familiar with that text. You can read all the Bible writings online.

Meanwhile, you BS again as there is no Q, there is only a theorized Q.

Again, there were many documents that did not survive but which are known to have existed because they are referred to or quoted in documents which we do have. It's perfectly reasonable to "theorize" the existence of the original document that is lost.

This theorized Q is the assumption that shit was written down sometime, somewhere, by someone prior to the writing of Mark. Mark was written by someone, somewhere (maybe in Rome some 1500 miles away, but theologians admit there is no way to know), roughly 30 years after the famed ending. The oldest fragmentary gospel copies of this come at least another century late.

Really -- that early? That's amazing. For most documents from those times the earliest ms are 1000 years or so later.

But Mark does come with a rather strange known forged ending.

We can usually recognize the later additions. These don't detract from the credibility of the document generally.

History of the Church was written by known people, who lived and worked with Joseph Smith. They did this with JS personal journals, some of his followers journals, and church documents. The whole 7 volumes are available here along with the below quote from the introduction:

http://www.boap.org/LDS/History/History_of_the_Church/

The History editor was B. H. Roberts, a prominent LDS leader. Roberts' assignment was to take the manuscript history produced by Joseph Smith (1805-1844) and his clerks between 1838 and 1857 and publish it together with explanatory notes. The history was written as though dictated by Joseph Smith, however he dictated only a small portion of it. The bulk of the manuscript was based on Church records, Church newspaper excerpts and journals of Joseph Smith kept by various men who recorded his activities as well as the diary entries of men who were with Joseph Smith at various times and places or who performed Church missionary efforts, or other tasks of historical importance

You haven't presented anything that is analogous to the Jesus accounts in terms of the credibility.

The only excerpt you offer is a quote from Joseph Smith himself, which won't do. And we need something from someone not connected with him, not one of his disciples, who reports the healing events.

Since there were many newspapers and journals at that time, and widespread book publishing, isn't there anything from someone outside the direct church community who reports on this?

Did any non-disciples show up at an event who were healed by him, like we see in the gospel accounts? Did people come from outside, bringing the lame or blind etc. to be healed by him? people who were not of his group or already disciples? We need something like this, in order to recognize that it was something more than the usual "pray for brother so-and-so" who then recovers a day or two later.

There are millions of "pray for brother so-and-so" miracle healings reported in thousands of religious communities. Virtually all of them are inspired by the Jesus tradition, from centuries earlier. And even for the non-Christian healing events, an ancient religious tradition always underlies these faith and prayer healings which are common in most religions. The mythologizing and anecdotes easily evolve out of this. But this is not how the Jesus healing stories originated.

But not all non-Christ healing anecdotes are necessarily fiction. The healings of Rasputin the mad monk are probably true, being based on accounts not from his disciples. But his power was limited to the ability to heal only one child with a blood disease. But there is good evidence that Rasputin was able to heal that one child.

 

[none]

gremlins, gremlins that protect motorcycles... inspired by jesus

 

[funinspace]

I don't care about your donation promises... You are humorous in your quixotic attempt to justify believing anonymous writers, that may have not even met your demigod, while trying to dis Joseph Smith’s (JS) paper trail. You cannot demand that we have people not connected with the prophet JS for evidence, as all you have is assumed people who may have known your demigod. Paul admits he never met your demigod. I'd be quite content with comparing outside sources for both your demigod and for JS and his miracle, as you have none. Pick a path and live with it.

This is the best I've seen yet, claiming to give the Joseph Smith miracles. Much of it seems to be from 1895, which might be too late. It's difficult to determine the sources for the anecdotes.

It is not difficult. Just spend 10% of the time, you do regurgitating the 739th variant of your vacuous claims, to googling the information. And you would find out that 1895 is simply a later publishing of 7 volumes, not the oldest copy of said documents. We actually have the LDS 1839-1843 originals available online as images.

The original manuscript was written between June 1839–24 Aug. 1843, which is available via scanned images here:
http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperS...56-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834

It has the Wilford Woodruff quote which is the strongest claim of miracles by Joseph Smith. It seems to claim Smith cured a huge number in some kind of mass healing jamboree on one day. Plus there are many other healing stories which are not too convincing.

Yeah, I don't find your miracle claims very convincing either...but that is sort of beside the point.

The below are just from one of the original sources that are available from the above link:
http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperS...ume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834&p=159

About this time, Ezra Booth came out as an apostate. He came into the church upon seeing a person healed of an infirmity of many year’s standing. He had been a methodist priest for some <time> pre vious to his embracing the fulness of the gospel, as developed in the book of Mormon,

http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperS...mber-1805-30-august-1834?p=561&highlight=heal

David <W.> Pattin [Patten] has just returned from his tour to the East, and gives us great satisfaction as to his ministry, he has raised up a church of about eighty-three members in that part of the Country, where his friends live, in the State of New York; many were healed through his instrumentality, several cripples were restored, as many as twelve that were afflicted came at a time from a distance to be healed; he and others administered in the name of Jesus, and they were made whole,

And here is the image for the original source of the one I already provided:
http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperS...mber-1805-30-august-1834?p=221&highlight=heal

Anecdotes like these are very common among many religions. People within the church saying brother so-and-so healed someone, or they prayed and sister so-and-so recovered, and so on -- and meetings or a faith healing rally etc. These are all worshipers within the church family supporting each other and re-assuring each other that God is taking care of them, and so on.

All this is inspired from their belief in the Bible accounts, the Jesus miracles, which is a centuries-old tradition that inspires them and leads to these stories.

These are not analogous to the Jesus healing events, which came not from any religious tradition or anecdotes of the disciples, which kind are discounted by everyone who isn't a member of the religious group in question.

Sure they are analogous. The Jesus cult was constructed within the confines of the Roman Empire with Yahweh, Mithras, and Orisis floating around, with their followers with healing claims. I assume that you are at least familiar with Yahweh miracle healing claims, even if you want to discount the more vague histories of Mithras and Orisis? JS was constructing his new religion to compete with Christianity, just as Paul and his chipmunks were constructing their new religion to compete with Judaism. Not amazingly, both groups most probably felt compelled to make their god-system competitive with the older one(s).

Rather, the Jesus accounts are of people who came from outside the circle of his disciples and were healed and then left to tell others what had happened.

WTF? The Gospel accounts come from the circle of believers within this new Christ cult. There are NO outside accounts.

The Jesus accounts were believed by writers hundreds of miles away from where the events happened, not part of his group, and who had enough reports that they were credible, having originated not from the direct disciples, but apparently from the ones healed or their family or from onlookers who went out and reported what happened. Or from indirect witnesses who had heard it from a direct witness.

The Jesus reports did not originate from the disciples, like the J. Smith stories originated only from his direct disciples having been under the influence of his charisma over many years.

Do you enjoy making shit up? There are NO outside accounts. The Gospels come from within the Christ cult.

We need something from someone other than Joseph Smith himself. And we need something originating from someone other than his direct disciples.

ROTFLMAO So straight from the horse's mouth isn't any good, but anonymous gospels written by people within the Christ cult is good? Never mind that the JS volumes are known to have been compiled by known people who are known to have known JS. Notice the difference? In one case we know who wrote the documents, in what years they were written, and we know that the compilers knew the prophet in question. In the other case, we can only assume that some of the writers knew their demigod, but we really aren't positive as the first document came at least 3 decades after the end of the events, but the years are super fuzzy.

 

[skepticalbip]

I do have to give Lumpy credit for being skeptical of the stories of Joseph Smith's miracles. They are contrary to what we know of reality so require much better "evidence" than the testimony of believers who claim to have seen them even though we know who those giving the testimony are. We know them to be upstanding citizens.

Given Lumpy's clear headed evaluation of the claims of Smith's miracles, only blindered faith (not reason) could account for his unquestioned acceptance of stories of Jesus' miracles that are also contrary to what we know of reality. We don't have a clue who the witnesses were or even if there were witnesses rather than just imaginative stories passed down for decades through chains of Chinese Whispers eventually to be recorded (how faithfully, we don't know) by anonymous authors. We don't even know if the subject of the stories, Jesus, was an actual historical figure or an invention like Hercules.

 

[James Brown]

That's why John Loftus developed the OTF, the Outsider's Test of Faith. Evaluate your own faith with the same skepticism that you use to evaluate (and summarily reject) others' faith. No special pleading.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The sources for the Jesus miracle events meet a higher standard than for most recognized historical events of that time.

Is an account necessarily more reliable just because you have the name of an author connected to it?

Not 'an' author. THE author.

OK, the alleged author. Is the account more reliable simply because there's a name connected to it purporting to be that of the author?

Yes. For the purpose of historical research, being able to identify the author helps determine if the author even COULD have been an eyewitness.

But why does that matter? 99% of our sources for the history we're dealing with are not from eye-witnesses. Virtually all our sources are from authors who relied on reports from others who were closer to the events. But the sources are credible anyway for determining what happened.

It's assumed the (synoptic) gospel accounts are from 1st-century compilers who were not eye-witnesses, just like 99% of the accounts we rely on were not from eye-witnesses. Rather, they had reports passed on from 30 or 40 or 50 years earlier which they assumed originated from eye-witnesses, but it's doubtful that they had direct contact with those eye-witnesses. Anymore than Tacitus and Plutarch knew direct eye-witnesses to most of the events they reported from a generation or more earlier.

It helps figure out if the author has a vested interest in the story or is a disinterested reported.

Not if all you have is a name. You need more than just a name to figure that out. In most cases, having that name does not tell you if the author has a vested interest in the story.

For the gospel accounts, having a name attached would make no difference. The name would be meaningless because we know that the synoptic gospels each have multiple writers. So having that name wouldn't tell us anything.

We do have the name of a compiler of the 2nd century, Tatian, who put together the Diatessaron version of the Christian gospel, which sort of combined the earlier gospel accounts. So, is this "gospel" somehow more reliable because it has a name attached to it? How is it more reliable?

It helps figure out when the account was written.

But this doesn't apply to the gospel accounts because each of these is a compilation from earlier pieces, and these pieces certainly were not all written at the same time. So, even though we can take a guess at when the whole account was compiled, the date of each piece cannot be determined, and knowing when each individual piece was written would be much more important to know than when the whole document was compiled.

So again, having a name attached to the whole document would not have made it more reliable.

Has it been proved that "anonymous" sources are inaccurate?

You jumped the rail, there, from 'reliable' to 'accurate.' It's entirely possible that the miracle accounts in the Books are accurate.

But the reports are anonymous, not eyewitness accounts, and report things held to be physically impossible by all we know of how the world works.

Humanly impossible, of course. That's why they were noteworthy and were recorded.

Which means that the evidence for such accounts needs to be a LOT better than we're seeing in order to be reliable.

This evidence is at a level that is far far above that required for ordinary non-miracle events. If the events in these accounts contained no miracle acts, they would be accepted without doubt as part of the official historical record. Even though there'd be questions, no one would doubt that the events generally did happen.

There is no agreed standard on how much extra evidence is required for miracle events. For ordinary events, one source is sufficient, and this source could be 100 years after the reported event(s). But for miracle events the evidence should meet a higher standard.

For the Jesus miracle events, we have 4 (5) sources, and these range from 30-80 years from the reported events. This is a higher degree of evidence than there is for any other reported miracle events prior to modern times. And also it's a higher degree of evidence than we have for most historical facts from 1000 years ago and earlier.

 

[Atheos]

There is no agreed standard on how much extra evidence is required for miracle events. For ordinary events, one source is sufficient, and this source could be 100 years after the reported event(s). But for miracle events the evidence should meet a higher standard.

For the Jesus miracle events, we have 4 (5) sources, and these range from 30-80 years from the reported events. This is a higher degree of evidence than there is for any other reported miracle events prior to modern times. And also it's a higher degree of evidence than we have for most historical facts from 1000 years ago and earlier.

Yesterday Keith and I watched a fully grown elephant climb to the top of a 50 foot coconut tree, hang by his tail from one of the branches and trumpet the melody of "In a Gadda Da Vida." There were five other witnesses who frequent this thread. So what you're saying is that so long as they all chime in and attest that this is what they saw you will believe it without any doubt.

There is no agreed standard on how much extra evidence is required for someone to believe a story like this, but if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I'd personally find it a bit hard to swallow. Not as hard to swallow as a dude healing blind people with a touch, raising dead people back to life or floating unassisted off into the sky, but I'd still be plenty skeptical, of that I am sure. But I saw it with my own eyes. Add to that nearly everyone has seen elephants and heard them make that trumpeting sound. Climbing elephants are rare, and coconut tree branches strong enough to support the weight of a fully grown elephant are probably even rarer. But with five or six moderately anonymous witnesses what's to doubt?

 

[skepticalbip]

There is no agreed standard on how much extra evidence is required for miracle events. For ordinary events, one source is sufficient, and this source could be 100 years after the reported event(s). But for miracle events the evidence should meet a higher standard.

For the Jesus miracle events, we have 4 (5) sources, and these range from 30-80 years from the reported events. This is a higher degree of evidence than there is for any other reported miracle events prior to modern times. And also it's a higher degree of evidence than we have for most historical facts from 1000 years ago and earlier.

Yesterday Keith and I watched a fully grown elephant climb to the top of a 50 foot coconut tree, hang by his tail from one of the branches and trumpet the melody of "In a Gadda Da Vida." There were five other witnesses who frequent this thread. So what you're saying is that so long as they all chime in and attest that this is what they saw you will believe it without any doubt.

There is no agreed standard on how much extra evidence is required for someone to believe a story like this, but if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I'd personally find it a bit hard to swallow. Not as hard to swallow as a dude healing blind people with a touch, raising dead people back to life or floating unassisted off into the sky, but I'd still be plenty skeptical, of that I am sure. But I saw it with my own eyes. Add to that nearly everyone has seen elephants and heard them make that trumpeting sound. Climbing elephants are rare, and coconut tree branches strong enough to support the weight of a fully grown elephant are probably even rarer. But with five or six moderately anonymous witnesses what's to doubt?

That story or whatever the story will be exaggerated into will become undeniable if it is spread by word of mouth from person to person for fifty years to be finally written down by four anonymous people who have no knowledge of you or Keith and who have never seen an elephant or palm tree.

ETA:
By the way, I must have had a better vantage point. I saw four elephants in that palm and they were trumpeting "In a Gadda Da Vida" in four part harmony.