Merged Topic - Historical Reliability of the Gospels

[Randy Carson]

I'm seriously doubting your interpretation of what "history" teaches us, which you have given very good reason to do.

I'm seriously doubting your desire to think objectively about Church history. Which, as an atheist who wants to deny God's existence, you very much want to avoid.

[Randy Carson]

Explain it, explain it away, there is no difference.  You did only what I already said you could easily do.

Right. It was easy. So easy, in fact, that it ought to dissuade you from making false accusations in the future. The problem is, that although you clearly know the Catholic response, you ignore it because it doesn't fit with what you want to believe about Catholicism.

This is pure prejudice.

Again, you're only doing what I already said you could do.  I didn't actually expect you to do it.  I don't expect you to defend your faith, as I know full well you can )at least well enough to keep you complacent).  Catholics comprise both some of the smartest (you are one of these) and dumbest (I once had a pregnant, unmarried, teenage girl tell me that she got pregnant because, being Catholic, she was unable to use birth control.  The fact that she was also, by those same rules, unable to have sex in the first place eluded her) of the religious people I've known.

It is sad that many people (not just Catholics) don't realize that one choice they have is to simply NOT sin. Not have sex. Duh.

Now, don't go getting a big head.  I don't think you're particularly smart as a person (smart people tend to accept even facts which do not agree with them as not doing so makes one "intentionally ignorant"), but smart for a Christian, anyway.  I've known a few actual intelligent, thoughtful religious people...at least until it comes to religion.

So, I'm not particularly smart, but I'm knowledgeable about fairy tales and magic.

Uh...thanks.

[widdershins]

You are ignorant, Mike. Catholics don't worships statues anymore than you make love to a photograph of your wife in your wallet.

Your photograph and our statues are visual aids. Nothing more.

We don't worship relics, either. But I have a feeling you aren't interested in learning actual Catholic doctrine, so we can wrap this up.

This is the point where Catholics have most seriously deluded themselves, in my opinion.  You think it's not an idol because you pretend not to worship it?  And do you really think you're not worshiping Mary when you're praying to her to take your prayer to Jesus to take your prayer to the big guy?  And that is, by the way, the DUMBEST notion ever.  You have an all powerful god at your disposal who knows your every need and desire, but you don't want to bother him.  He has so much to do already.  So you talk to the mother of his child and ask HER to talk to him for you, a conversation, by the way, which he hears anyway being all-knowing and all.

And if you REALLY don't think Catholics worship idols, just take a look at your history.  Even recent history will do.  Go visit any holy relic.  Do you know where you'll find it?  Under lock and key.  It wasn't always this way.  Why is it now?  Well, for one reason there's a wooden cup somewhere under lock and key which is heavily damaged.  They used to let the public drink out of it, but they found that people hoping for healings or miracles were biting bits of the cup off and swallowing them.  They were hoping that by ingesting bits of this holy relic they would be healed.  Think about that.  Did they REALLY expect God to better hear their prayers if they fucked up his favorite cup?  No.  What they really expected was that by taking a piece of this holy relic inside themselves they would, in essence, be eating divinity; that divinity would become a part of them, flowing through their veins.  And how would it get there?  Not by the power of prayers to dead people.  No, it was through the power of biting off a piece of an idol they worshiped and making it a part of themselves.

You can deliver all the excuses you want, but they all ring hollow.  If you think your religion does not practice idol worship you are just deluded.  Catholics flock to idols they call "holy relics" and, if given the chance, will destroy that idol in its worship, hoping to get some miracle directly from the tangible object of their worship.  I realize that as a Catholic you see this differently, but back in reality there simply is no other explanation for why a populace would destroy a holy relic to take pieces of it with them except that they value the object itself as a source of divinity even more than any god they might anger in the destruction and desecration of that object.  The Catholic religion is so deeply steeped in idolatry that even the dead are made into idols, and I'm not just talking about the fucked-up corpse-hoarding.  I'm talking about the very mental images of past popes, saints, Mary, etc.  You've made statues of Mary to help you visualize her and you very much worship, not the statue itself, but the mental image of Mary.  It has gotten to the point where Catholics can no longer wait the prescribed amount of time for the deceased to be idolized, demanding that repeated recent fast-tracking of popular figures such as Pope John Paul and Mother Theresa.  So important to the Catholic religion are these mental idols that the rules must be set aside to make them "official" idols of the church.

And that leads me to the nail in the coffin, as far as I'm concerned, for the idol worship.  There are more "miracles" associated with saints and popes than there ever were where God, alone, got the credit.  From the Catholic church and ONLY the Catholic church (with the minor exception of a few cults here and there...not a joke, I'm being serious) religious people attribute miracles ONLY to God.  With the Catholic church, however, it is FAR more common to attribute miracles to some saint or pope.  How many people has John Paul healed?  How many people have seen the Virgin Mary?

Now, I'm sure you can explain away all of this.  All learned Catholics have bothered to learn how to disguise their ignorance as "knowledge" and how to reject any reality which doesn't equal, "I win!"  But reality is reality, just the same.

[widdershins]

Right. It was easy. So easy, in fact, that it ought to dissuade you from making false accusations in the future. The problem is, that although you clearly know the Catholic response, you ignore it because it doesn't fit with what you want to believe about Catholicism.

This is pure prejudice.

Yes, Randy, I'm the one who has a preconceived notion of the world and refuses to see reality for what it is, that magic is real, there is a giant fairy in space that made everything and he FUCKING HATES IT when I touch my weewee.  It's all so clear now.

Now, to what "false accusations" are you referring?  The idol worship thing in my original response?  I have actually ONLY JUST clearly laid out quite compelling evidence to show MASSIVE AND INSTITUTIONALIZED idolatry in Catholicism.

If you want to disagree with me, fine.  But don't call me a liar.  If you think I disrespect your beliefs in magical fairies and zombies now, you haven't seen anything yet.  You call me a liar again and I'll show you what disrespect looks like.  Keep in mind, you're the one who believes in magical fairies creating everything and taking an intimate interest in our very lives...until they didn't anymore which, oddly, happened right around the same time the world started getting civilized with displays of these magics becoming less and less frequent as people got smarter and smarter and science started taking root, these wondrous displays of magic now relegated to tiny little shitholes throughout the world which, conveniently, would be dirt-poor pathetic little villages if random displays of magic didn't bring morons hoping to see some fucking magic to convince them that they actually believe what they think they believe.  You change the wording any way you like.  Call it "miracles" instead of "magic".  NONE of that shit is "false" in any way and, no matter how you say it, it sounds fucking stupid.

It is sad that many people (not just Catholics) don't realize that one choice they have is to simply NOT sin. Not have sex. Duh.

The Catholic church's stance against homosexuality is really confusing to me given their patriarchal deities awkwardly intense interest in penises and obvious disdain for anyone with a vagina, relegating them to, essentially, second-class citizenship.  No dick?  God has no interest in seeing you standing in front of the church, hearing what you have to say, whatever, just fuck off.  Have a baby?  Ewe!  Unclean!  Dirty vagina!  Gross!  Unclean, one week...wait, was does the BABY have a vagina TOO?  EWE!  Unclean, TWO weeks!

So, I'm not particularly smart, but I'm knowledgeable about fairy tales and magic.

Lol, not as "knowledgeable" as you might think.  You don't have "knowledge".  You've learned propaganda.  You reject "knowledge" if it doesn't agree with you.

[aitm]

Claims the babble is accurate,
Uses babble as proof,
Claims babble is accurate...

hmmm circle jerk much? LOL

[SGOS]

If you wish to discuss a doctrine of Catholicism, start a thread. I'll be there.

The words you refer to were the words I was anticipating from you.  I don't want to discuss Catholicism.  I said I wanted to discuss exorcism, but there I was being sarcastic.  I really don't care about that either.

[Poison Tree]

Happy to oblige.

Look, you little fuck wit, I'm all out of patience with your willful ignorance. The verse that needed context, which I provided and you did not, was John 7 which you presented as evidence for Jesus being born in Bethlehem when it is in fact someone objecting that he was not.
Mark says nothing about Jesus being from Bethlehem.
John presents someone saying Jesus was not born in Bethlehem and does not refute the claim.
Matthew has Mary and Joseph living in Bethlehem (until Jesus in perhaps as old as 2), fleeing to Egypt and only going to Nazareth after.
Luke starts with them in Nazareth, traveling to Bethlehem then going back to Nazareth by way of Jerusalem.

If you treat these four accounts as independent eye witnesses--which you have repeatedly said that they are--they clearly disagree. Mark say nothing about a Bethlehem birth while John only mentions it as a denial. Matthew says nothing about a census or living in Nazareth before Jesus' birth. Luke says nothing about Egypt or the slaughter of the innocents--a shit job for someone  "investigated everything from the beginning". You can close your eyes and pretend the contradictions don't exist, but it does not make it so.

[reasonist]

Lol, not as "knowledgeable" as you might think.  You don't have "knowledge".  You've learned propaganda.  You reject "knowledge" if it doesn't agree with you.

Interestingly the pious call themselves 'people of faith', not people of knowledge. Knowledge means having reviewed and accepted factual claims that have been tested and proven to be true. If any scientific theory is not disproved by experimentation and calculation, by testing and re-testing, the theory is accepted as fact. Religion does not have such a mechanism. Claims are thrown around without a chance of testing or disproving them. Religious claims by nature have to be accepted as fact without the benefit of proof. That's exactly why it is called 'faith'! The ridiculous attempts by the pious to sell the supernatural as fact has been tried for thousands of years, until recently via coercion and torture. That's why they were so "successful". Now it is indoctrination of the most vulnerable members of society, children, that keeps the illusion going.

[SGOS]

just remember to keep telling yourself that you won this exchange.

No one wins a debate about the existence of God.  Such a debate may inspire believers, but the answer is unobtainable, and the debate becomes meaningless.  Any debate about issues that depend on an unobtainable premise (a god) are mental masturbation.  This doesn't mean there is no god.  It doesn't mean that the Bible is accurate.  It's just mental masturbation, however good the masturbation might feel.

[Sargon The Grape]

Randy is about as likely to see the problems with praying to idols as a Calvinist is to see the issues with pre-destination and free will existing simultaneously.

[Baruch]

There were other Infancy Gospels that were popular for a time.  So the revised Synoptics had to mention the infancy, childhood and presence in Egypt, to compete with the Isis/Horus narrative.

[Flanker1Six]

While there are undoubtedly some historically accurate bits (been verified via archaeological evidence outside of the sales brochure; aka Bible) in both the testaments......................so what. 

There are no direct credible witnesses to any of these ancient events alive today to testify to their authenticity.
There is little credible non christian documentary evidence to establish the validity of new testament claims.
There is no credible physical evidence of many-most new testament claims i.e. unbroken chain residency records establishing Jesus parents (whatever their real names were)  lived at 5150 Hillel Street, Nazareth, PL from CE -5 to CE 1  etc

christianity is a belief system; aka faith based on beliefs not founded on any reality.  My late brother was a near life long schizophrenic who during many periods  maintained he was an alien; receiving instructions from "the other aliens" in another galaxy via several pieces of the household furniture.   He could go on at length about a great variety of subjects that if the rest of us were only smart enough to listen to him; our lives would be much better.  One Doctor asked my brother why none of the rest of us were ever getting these vitally important life changing alien coms?   My brother became righteously indignant, and replied he was the only one who had the special alien ability to receive them. HAH!  Gotcha!  To all outside observation; he genuinely believed that silly shit.  To this date no one has stepped up to try and convert any others to his beliefs.  Go figure. 

That is a belief system not that different from any superstition.....................oh say christianity., islam, and any of that other stupid shit.  They all have their own circular internal logic that can not be "reasoned" with as it is not reasonable, but a "belief". 

Throw in the fact the bible is only half christian, and half coopted from another superstition (interestingly both groups believe they're special because of their beliefs); has been edited by "god only knows" how many people over the centuries to say whatever their interpretation of what the previous version/s said........................and there you have it...........................a sales brochure.  Of course it's true/happened...................says so raht here! 

A few years ago; whilst in Jerusalem (the one in Israel) I took a guided tour of the Old City, which concentrated on the sites, acts, and final days of good 'ol Jesus (tour guide was jewish).  While we were following the seven stations of the cross.................one of them was "the spot" in an alleyway where Jesus became so physically debilitated (what with the beatings, scourgings, trials, mockery, and all) he stumbled and fell under the weight of the cross.  Our tour guide pointed out the very spot on the alley way wall (next to a door way) where Jesus placed his out flung hand to steady himself.  Fortunately for us on the tour......................there had been a half spherical glob of fresh cement on that wall for Jesus to leave his "actual" hand print for us to gaze in wonder at some 2000 years later!   I "SWEAR BEFORE YEE ALL", it was so convincing and inspirational.....................I almost re-signed up for the whole program right then and there.      I actually burst out laughing, and said something rather unchristianly (pretty much frosting off the other more enraptured tour members) expressing a slight note of disbelief that there just happened to be a glob of wet cement on the wall 2000 years ago for Jesus to steady himself in?  The tour guide smiled, shrugged her shoulders, and says, "Aahhh; it's part of the tour", then turned and walked on to the next station of the cross.  LOL! 

aitm said it very succinctly.  I'm with him/her.       

The historical reliability of the new testament?  You're best off getting such an assessment from a trained multi discipline historical researcher who is most definitely not a christian.   

[widdershins]

If you treat these four accounts as independent eye witnesses--which you have repeatedly said that they are--they clearly disagree. Mark say nothing about a Bethlehem birth while John only mentions it as a denial. Matthew says nothing about a census or living in Nazareth before Jesus' birth. Luke says nothing about Egypt or the slaughter of the innocents--a shit job for someone  "investigated everything from the beginning". You can close your eyes and pretend the contradictions don't exist, but it does not make it so.

You know, I just realized that the term "eyewitness account" is getting the fuck abused out of it here by our dear friend, Randy.  He is claiming that these are, in fact, eyewitness accounts and, therefore, the writings of these people are nothing more or less than what they actually witnessed.  Really?  ALL of what they wrote?  They were with Jesus throughout his ENTIRE life?  They knew him as a baby and continued hanging with him until his death?  ALL of what is written in the gospels is a "eyewitness" statements?  It occurs to me which is why it is ALL correct?  The actual absurdity of this claim just hit me.  AT BEST they are accounts from eyewitnesses from a SMALL PART of the life of Jesus and they are filling in the blanks with what they are told (and they're not even that because it is KNOWN FACT that the gospels weren't written until well after the death of Jesus).

Aside from that the Bible is FILLED with magic.  Do you know what other "historical documents" talk about magic hoodoo?  None.  It's hard to believe that there are NO other types of documents out there talking about magic.  Wait, THERE ARE!  They talk of Zeus and Osiris, resurrections and eternal life, people flying up into the sky and great feats of magical power.  But ALL of them which don't have religions based around them which survive today are considered "myth".  If the world was once so filled with magic then where did all the magic go?  Did Jesus say, "You can move mountains with just a little faith!  No, really!  All right, you got me!  I was fucking with you.  You can't really do that.  But it would be cool if you could, right?"  Did God say to Moses, "Dude, there's water over there.  It's about two miles out, just over the hill."?  Did idol worshipers die when the golden cow buckled under its own weight and fell on them?

He loves this "eyewitness account" shit, thinking he's really onto something.  Yet he knows full well that in a "court of law", which he also loves, an "eyewitness" claiming that, "Magic did it!" would be immediately dismissed.  They say if you talk to God, you're praying.  If God talks to you, you're crazy.  WHY do they say that?  God talked to LOTS of people in the Bible.  But nobody expects him to today.  EVEN IF I were a Catholic and agreed with everything Randy said he would STILL think something was wrong with me if I claimed to have had a conversation with God.  Now, I could claim to have seen Pope John Paul or one of the other dead idols Catholics worship.  All except Jesus, of course.  Why is that?  Magic was all over the damned place at the founding of the church, but suddenly magic from God dried up.  In fact, let's look at the history of magic in Christianity.

In the beginning, there was BIG magic.  There was creation, global destruction, mass murder of magical proportions, even sticks into snakes.  And God wasn't even the only one who could make magic.  Pharaoh had magicians with similar tricks to Moses.  Even the small stuff there is pretty impressive.

Then we move onto the New Testament.  There were healings, minor transformations, food production.  Still kind of impressive.  Certainly a lot easier to fake than fire raining down from the sky or people being turned into pillars of salt.  God was no one-trick-pony back in the old days!  But he kind of went that way in the New Testament.  Gone was ALL the creation AND destruction magic, replaced with "helpy" magic.

Then we move past the New Testament.  And we have...um...dead people revealing themselves in dreams and, occasionally, public squares, but only in places and at times when there JUST HAPPENS to be nobody around to document it properly.  Statues crying.  Wooptie-do, Basil.  Bodies mysteriously not decaying...after being embalmed...  Um...I got nothing.

And today, right now, what do we have?  Squat.  You could visit some piss-ant little town turned tourist trap and hope to see the Virgin Mary appear, but she mysteriously only does that when tourism drops so much that all investigative teams have, FOR CERTAIN, left the area.  Oooh, my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate was healed!  Before they prayed for him he had something you couldn't check for and after they prayed for him it was gone!  Now there's an "eyewitness account" for you!

So, where did all the magic go?  What is the simplest, most reasonable explanation for it's disappearance?  People have gotten less stupid over the centuries.  There was no magic.  Ever.  It's not gone, people 2,000+ years ago were just a lot stupider and more gullible than people today.  And THAT is why you can still convince them God is real, but good like trying to convince them you met him.

[sdelsolray]

Much of the Bible text is quite like common fictional writing.  Jesus goes into the desert (alone), meets up with Satan (that makes two), and somehow the event is written down in detail by someone else.  How did the author observe these events?  How were the private conversations recorded?

Gollum, in scenes all by himself, talks with himself.  The conversations are written down verbatim in Lord of the Rings.  Who observed these conversations?  Who wrote them down?

The simple answer is that both situations were "observed" by and written by an author of fiction.  In the later case it was JRR Tolkien.  In the former no one knows.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If this is your belief, then what you're saying is that the apostles knew that their prank had gotten out of control, but rather than simply drop it, they continued preaching it without recanting until their deaths.

IOW, they were lying, they knew they were lying, and the whole thing was a conspiracy.

Is that your position?

I always love seeing "...then what you're saying is...", because it gives me a chance to spot yet another strawman argument.

You are so weak.