Merged Topic - Historical Reliability of the Gospels

[Solomon Zorn]

Back when I was a Christian, I used to believe that the biblical prophecies had been, or were being, fulfilled...Some claimed to have had scary visions about the coming end times, and proclaimed themselves the receptors of special divine knowledge on the subject.

A very famous example of this is "The Late, Great Planet Earth," by Hal Lindsey. He predicted the return of Jesus in the early 1980s, if I'm not mistaken. That book is long out of print, but you can still buy used copies here and there. And the guy STILL has a big following! His prophecies failed, yet not one Christian has called for him to be stoned or burned at the stake or covered in jam and then tied to a fire-ant nest, or whatever the bible says to do with false prophets.

I saw the movie, The Late Great Planet Earth, when I was a kid, and it scared the shit out of me. It also sparked my earliest interest in the Book of Revelation, which was my first and only interest in the Bible for many years.

And speaking of that, Jesus, himself, should be labeled a false prophet. He promised to return within the lifetime of his disciples, and here we are, more than 2000 years later, and his modern disciples are still looking for him like little lost puppies.

Jesus gives us the means to discredit him with that prophecy. Here is a very concise, little essay I wrote about it: http://www.solomonzorn.com/ignored.html

[Baruch]

I like to read the first and last chapter of a book.  So when I was a kid, Genesis and Revelations were my favorite Bible books.

[Solomon Zorn]

Coincidence is simply a copout word that means essentially, I have no other explanation.

It's not a cop out. It's a conclusion, that two coinciding events have no significant correlation, but are simply a statistical variation.

I think it would be far better for atheists to explain how they account for specific events in their lives that have no "logical" explanation.

They do have a logical explanation. trdsf has answered you with a great essay on the subject, that you completely ignored:

Very, very simple.

Statistics, and the fact that our brains have evolved to be such good pattern matchers, we even try to identify patterns when they don't exist.

It was exceedingly useful for our ancestors that they could take an unexpected rustle and a faint glimpse of orange and go "YEOW!  TIGER!" and get to safety without having to process that information in a more explicit manner.  And the ones that couldn't do that aren't your ancestors.  Over evolutionary time, that means we became more and more finely honed pattern matchers.

So, we went down the path of making false positives.  The caveman who erred on the side of "Yeow!  Tiger!" and got to safety when there was no need to is your thousand-times-great-grandfather, while the caveman who erred on the side of "Oh, that's just the wind" is fossilized saber-toothed tiger shit.

As our intellectual capacities developed, this instinctive pattern matching did not go away, and because it is instinctive, it is an exceptionally powerful force inside us.  We expect patterns to exist, and now when we think we've spotted one and it's not an imminent risk like a tiger in the grass, we have the intellectual capacity to try to figure out what it "really" was... but what does it mean to try to rationalize a non-existent tiger?

And this feeds directly into the statistics side.

We are horrible seat-of-the-pants statisticians.  This is why people play the lottery.  More importantly, this is why seemingly random and "coincidental" events get mistaken for deliberate and meaningful events.

You remember the remarkable things that happen to you.  But you do not remember the almost-infinitely-many more remarkable thinks that don't happen to you.  And of course the media will sometimes make great play out of really weird events, like twins who haven't seen each other in 30 years happening to move next door to each other, or chance patterns in toast that may or may not resemble Marlene Dietrich or some such.

At this point, strange coincidences no longer become strange because not only are there billions of potential reporters of strange events, the number of potential strange events is orders of magnitude higher.  Someone somewhere bumps into someone else who looks almost exactly like them and takes a selfie and zoom -- another "unexplained", "strange" coincidence.

But it's not unexplained, and strange is not quantitative.  The statistics of large numbers of individuals who subconsciously look for patterns whether or not they're there means that these events get noticed, and reported, and the non-strange non-coincidences don't.  That's not a pattern, that's a self-selected set of events: strange coincidences get reported to others and non-strange non-coincidences don't.

So it doesn't matter if John reports seeing a pattern in his toast that resembles Marlene Dietrich, or some such.  If it didn't happen to him, there are billions of others it could have happened to.  And if it wasn't Marlene Dietrich, it might have resembled Rasputin or Bruce Lee ... or the popularly-conceived (and ethnographically incorrect) image of Jeshua bar-Joseph.

As it is, I do look for patterns in my toast, simply because I know I am a supreme pattern matching machine, honed over millions of years of biological evolution, and because I know heat flow is a stochastic process that by pure chance can generate interesting features.  So far the only pattern I can identify is that the heat flow is uneven, because I can't get a properly brown piece of toast out of my toaster.  In fact, I always carry a camera because you never know what chance things you might see in the clouds, like sharks and numbers and counter-top blenders.

And this brings us to the final part: assigning meaning.  Strange events don't have to be meaningful, they can just be strange events.  It's perfectly all right to go "Whoa, that was weird!" and get on with the rest of your life.  In your world-view, these should be considered meaningful events and you have pre-decided for yourself what that meaning is so you retro-fit the event to your pre-existing notion.

Of course, I expect you tuned out as soon as I said 'evolution' (assuming you even bothered reading in the first place), but there's your answer.

[Baruch]

If all pattern matching is just bullshit, then science is just coincidences taken too seriously, there is no cause/effect.  It is just a statistical fluke that when I cross myself against the electric wall circuit, that I get shocked.  How many times do I need to get shocked, before I take the pattern matching as serious?

[trdsf]

The prophecies of the Bible are fulfilled. There is nothing wrong with the Bible. The coward is the one who rejects absolutes for personal desires.

I gave you links to lists of contradictions and factual inaccuracies in your bible, and you obviously haven't even bothered looking.  I am forced to one of two conclusions: either that you have such a fragile and unexamined blind faith that you daren't test it, or that you are so self-absorbed you think that by repeating an unsupported claim, that somehow makes it true just because you said so.

Assertion doesn't count as evidence.  You need to back it up with something concrete and incontrovertible, or you need to drop it.

[trdsf]

Did the new chew toy get nuked by an admin, or has he just given up?

[FinalSomnia]

He was banished to Purgatory by aitm, I believe

[widdershins]

He was banished to Purgatory by aitm, I believe

I'm going to miss that guy.  He was so witty and insightful.  A real intellect, that Nipper.

[Mike Cl]

I'm going to miss that guy.  He was so witty and insightful.  A real intellect, that Nipper.

Yeah, I agree.  He had me right on the edge of me waking up and agreeing with the silver-tongued writer!

[widdershins]

Yeah, I agree.  He had me right on the edge of me waking up and agreeing with the silver-tongued writer!

I know.  It was like, I wanted to disagree with him and JUST as I'd have myself convinced that he was wrong, BAM!  God did it!  You just can't argue with that ironclad logic.

[reasonist]

He sure demonstrated a closed mind. No matter how convincing the facts were, he ignored them. That's where the irrationality of it all shows. All answers are in one book, no further inquiry necessary. In case of contradiction, always rely on quoting the bible. Littlenipper was a posterboy for ignorance and self deception. R.I.P.

[Unbeliever]

Everybody believes something.

I believe nothing at all - except that I perceive - hence my moniker.

[Baruch]

I believe nothing at all - except that I perceive - hence my moniker.

So, you are a used car salesman's worst nightmare? ;-)

[Unbeliever]

I'm everyone's worst nightmare! 

[Baruch]

I'm everyone's worst nightmare! 

Glad to see someone is on the job ;-)