Merged Topic - Historical Reliability of the Gospels

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Still haven't proven your god, or any god, exists.

[SGOS]

Okay, but you sure choose to spend your time in an unusual forum for someone who does not like debate. Do you come here just to laugh at believers?

You don't have to be here to debate.  Some members openly admit they come here to debate, and that's fine, but it's just not all the forum is about.  I would say my main draw to this place is that it occasionally gives me an insight about things normally outside my awareness, not often, but often enough that it's worth my time.  In between there's lots of fun threads that serve little purpose beyond fun.  In addition, there's news and links to news that I often miss.  I like hearing other's perspectives on national and world events.  Also, I'm an atheist in a world of theists.  Before the internet, I felt isolated, like I might be the only atheist in a world that made little sense.  I'm drawn here, like you are drawn to a church filled with like minded believers of Catholicism.  I'm drawn by a community of atheists.  It's like a wonderful breath of fresh air.  I don't frequent theist forums.  I get enough of that from my neighbors.  I used to hang out with the community of flight simulator enthusiasts, although I just look in occasionally now.  Of all the people I know among my off line friends that do flight simulator, I can think of three off the top of my head, and those seem like they don't have a clue what to do with a flight simulator program, but a global community of flight sim fans brings things alive.  Communities like that don't exist for small niche interests offline, and there's more than just debate going on here.

[Blackleaf]

I have demonstrated that you are trying to force me onto the horns of a false dilemma, and I have avoided this by stepping between the horns.

You made a choice. You decided that it was easier (note I didn't say it was easy) to become an atheist (even leaving beloved stuff behind) than it was to give up the thing you desired more.

You preferred your new *whatever* to the old that you had. It was a cost-benefit analysis, and you made your choice. You have the Pearl you consider to be of greater price.

My point is that there was (and still is) a third way, and I suspect that you knew this, too.

It is no false dilemma. I am only asking you to justify the claim that you have already made. If you honestly think that the choice I made to give up my religion was convenient, when I would lose all of the advantages of religion, when I simply could have continued to believe and use free grace as an excuse, then like I said before, you're an idiot.

The third option is irrelevant. It is the result of your pitiful attempts to avoid admitting what you know and refuse to believe to be the truth. Either all Christians who give up their religion are masochists or Christianity, as I previously demonstrated, believe in most circumstances because it is convenient for them to believe. And if you are just going to continue to evade, continue trying to change the subject, then you arr utterly hopeless.

[Randy Carson]

Still haven't proven your god, or any god, exists.

Nope. Not yet.

But what I have done is to provide compelling reasons to accept that the NT was written early enough to have been written by eyewitnesses (IOW, they were there.) and that it is historically reliable (which is different from claiming it is inspired).

One step at a time.

[Randy Carson]

You don't have to be here to debate.  Some members openly admit they come here to debate, and that's fine, but it's just not all the forum is about.  I would say my main draw to this place is that it occasionally gives me an insight about things normally outside my awareness, not often, but often enough that it's worth my time.  In between there's lots of fun threads, that serve little purpose beyond fun.  In addition, there's news and links to news that I often miss.  I like hearing other's perspectives on national and world events.  Also, I'm an atheist in a world of theists.  Before the internet, I felt isolated, like I might be the only atheist in a world that made little sense.  I'm drawn here, like you are drawn to a church filled with like minded believers of Catholicism.  I'm drawn by a community of atheists.  It's like a wonderful breath of fresh air.  I don't frequent theist forums.  I get enough of that from my neighbors.  I used to hang out with the community of flight simulator enthusiasts, although I just look in occasionally now.  Of all the people I know among my off line friends that do flight simulator, I can think of three off the top of my head, and those seem like they don't have a clue what to do with a flight simulator program, but a global community of flight sim fans brings things alive.  Communities like that don't exist for small niche interests offline, and there's more than just debate going on here.

I'm sure the forum as a whole offers all kinds of interesting discussions and entertainment.

This particular subforum probably gets a little more heated than most given the strong feelings that a lot of folks have about the topic.

[Randy Carson]

You're avoiding the question because you know that if you answered honestly, it would demonstrate your present argument to be completely baseless.

Have you ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?

The book hinges on the main character, Phaedras, being presented with a dilemma which he successfully avoids when he recognizes that it is a false dilemma.

Wikipedia lists this as a fallacy:

False dilemma (false dichotomy, fallacy of bifurcation, black-or-white fallacy) â€" two alternative statements are held to be the only possible options, when in reality there are more.

[Randy Carson]

It is no false dilemma. I am only asking you to justify the claim that you have already made. If you honestly think that the choice I made to give up my religion was convenient, when I would lose all of the advantages of religion, when I simply could have continued to believe and use free grace as an excuse, then like I said before, you're an idiot.

I have already said that I do NOT consider the choice to be "easy". I said it was easier to leave your faith community, etc. than it was to give up the new love that you chose to embrace instead.

The third option is irrelevant. It is the result of your pitiful attempts to avoid admitting what you know and refuse to believe to be the truth. Either all Christians who give up their religion are masochists or Christianity, as I previously demonstrated, believe in most circumstances because it is convenient for them to believe. And if you are just going to continue to evade, continue trying to change the subject, then you arr utterly hopeless.

Was there a third choice, Blackleaf?

[Blackleaf]

I have already said that I do NOT consider the choice to be "easy". I said it was easier to leave your faith community, etc. than it was to give up the new love that you chose to embrace instead.

Yes, you did say it was easy. You said that atheists exist because we want to sin. You're just trying to dig yourself out of the hole you dug yourself in.

The love I chose? What are you talking about? Are you so numb you've forgotten that the example of a man choosing to leave his religion for a boy/girlfriend was your invention? I gave up Christianity for one reason: God did not answer my prayers. Either he knew what I needed for my faith to survive and chose to do nothing, or he doesn't exist.

Once again, which of the two is the easier option?

1. Use free grace as an excuse to sin however you want.

2. Give up your religion, and all of its advantages, so that you can sin all you want?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Or maybe believers see things that you do not.

I'm sure they do, but then I don't see holy fantasies.

[Baruch]

<sigh>

A book entitled, A History of the Jews - From Abraham to the Present, contains no chapter on the Holocaust.

Why? Was it written by a denier? No...it was written by a rabbi.

So, why no mention of the shoah?

When was this book written?  If written after 1960, you would have to ask the author as to why (sometimes the most recent events are not covered, because they are too fresh).  Otherwise one is engaged in conspiracy theory ... just like the fifth generation Christians, almost all Gentiles without knowledge of, and hostile to Jews, the ones who never met Jesus, never met an apostle of the first generation, had only congregational tradition and episcopal direction (at least in the East), had hand-copied epistles and gospels of various sorts (see Shepherd of Hermas) ... and had to rely on that and their imagination, to try to understand what type of community they were a part of, and how they fit in.  Not that such people and such communities weren't historical (no miracles) or valuable in their own way (self help proletarians, not peasants).  Really not any more or less valid than equivalent pagan social groupings.  If I were alive and Jewish then, I would be a part of such a "chavurah" and we would be a synagogue any time we had a "minyan" quorum for official prayers/worship.  Institutional Judaism only came about when Jewish people were first liberated from the ghetto around 1750 CE.  Otherwise a rabbi was simply a male elder, who could read, and was noted for his piety.  At that time 1750 - 1850 Jews in Europe became liberated, but as a Jewish state within a Christian state ... as Jews had long been in Muslim lands.  Then there would have to be a chief rabbi or ethnarch, responsible politically for the Jewish community ... who may or may not have been a rabbi.  Judah haNasi was just such an ethnarch in early Rabbinic Judaism times circa 200 CE ... when the Mishnah or Oral Torah was codified.  Think of this as the core of a pre-Nicene Synagogue Fathers literature.  There were both halakhah (code) and aggadah (stories) in this literature.  The now Gentile Christians were doing the same things, but semi-universally, rather than ethnically.  Semi-universal, because only Jews had to give up their ethnicity to join the Church, no other group had to do that.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Nope. Not yet.

But what I have done is to provide compelling reasons to accept that the NT was written early enough to have been written by eyewitnesses (IOW, they were there.) and that it is historically reliable (which is different from claiming it is inspired).

One step at a time.

And the first step to provide proof that your god exists. All you've don't is argue whether a unicorn's horn spirals clockwise or counterclockwise.

And, of course, you won't prove your god exists, you can't do that. So your argument is based on plain old bull shit and irrelevancies.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Nope. Not yet.

But what I have done is to provide compelling reasons to accept that the NT was written early enough to have been written by eyewitnesses (IOW, they were there.) and that it is historically reliable (which is different from claiming it is inspired).

One step at a time.

BTW, your reasons aren't compelling unless you're invested in their being compelling. Catch that tail, puppy!

[Baruch]

You imply a dichotomy where none exists.

At the entrance to the Academy, Plato had placed a notice, "Let no one enter here who knows no geometry".  Now that is proof as understood by the ancients, as perfected by Euclid.  If you can do a geometric proof of G-d, then I will be impressed.  Otherwise you are misusing words.  Demonstration is more applicable, than proof.  And demonstration is best if you demonstrate it yourself, not rely on anecdote.  Go find a dead person, and raise them.  Not even the Genii of Aladdin (in the first Robin Williams movie) thought that was a good idea.  Otherwise admit to the metaphor.

[Baruch]

Or maybe believers see things that you do not.

Perceive ... not see or hear.  See or hear implies raw sensation (as provided by the sense organs) but without the brain working on the sensory data.  Gestalt proves that this is impossible (to not at least involuntarily process sense data).  Perception is always involved, and in educated people, it is voluntary though often habitual.

So yes, you and I can look at the same thing, and while both theists, we can and probably will perceive it differently in non-trivial ways.  And both of us will perceive differently than the majority of posters here.  That is the way things are.  It is the ego who insists that my perception is valid, and hubris who insists that my perception is not only valid, but the only valid one.  The Greeks predict terrible things to people who have hubris.  Got Oedipus?

[Poison Tree]

Except for the fact that we have four independent eyewitness accounts from reliable men

If I didn't respond, then you are correct. Was there some critical point that I should have addressed?

You assert that the gospels are independent reliable eyewitness accounts and that they alone should be sufficient reason to accept what they say as truth. Even if we unreasonably restrict ourselves to the 4 accounts and ignore textual criticism we are still left with blatant contradictions between your reliable eyewitnesses.