Follow up to: Fine detail in the gospels: made up or not?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Utterly wrong: do you ever read for comprehension?

I didn't ask Spud to 'prove there are [no, which I think you meant to say] mistakes', so I suggest you read back. I simply asked him if he had checked that there were none, and if so how he did so: and that is a reasonable question to ask of anyone who is supporting the claims of ancient anecdotal accounts.

You really do need to think a little more about what people are actually saying before posting responses that you get wrong.

Chronological snobbery?

[Gordon]

Chronological snobbery?

Nope: just highlighting your failure to comprehend what I actually said combined with your lack of understanding of what constitutes the NPF.

[Sebastian Toe]

Nope: just highlighting your failure to comprehend what I actually said combined with your lack of understanding of what constitutes the NPF.

You could have stopped at 'comprehend', then copy to clipboard, then paste for every reply to Vlad!
 Saves a whole lot of otherwise wasted effort, IMO!

[jeremyp]

For example, Jeremy says "how do you know Ignatius knew John?" so I google that question and find that although there's no direct evidence that he did, the theme of some of his letters was the same as one of John's letters. See 2 John v.7, which is about those who were not acknowledging Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh (ie they claimed Jesus only seemed to exist).

That’s not the same John as wrote the gospel. Furthermore, knowing John’s writing is not the same as knowing the man himself.

[jeremyp]

No Gordon you are saying that Spud cannot prove there are mistakes etc. therefore there might be.....I believe Hillside says there most certainly are. Therefore you are at least shaking hands with an NPF...…..History is not I think your strong suit.

No the reasons why we assume there are mistakes in the Bible are twofold.

The Bible is a collection of works written by humans. Many of the books in it were preceded by years of oral transmission. Of course there are mistakes in the Bible. Furthermore, one of Spud’s arguments that the Gospels are sourced by eye witness accounts depends on the assertion that eye witness accounts often have discrepancies with each other (and what actually happened, but Spud conveniently ignores that).

Secondly, we know that the Bible contains mistakes because we can see them. A Christian scholar - John Mills went through all the manuscripts of the New Testament he could lay his hands on and found over three hundred disagreements in the text. Go through the manuscripts we have today and there is more than one disagreement per word.  Most of them are pretty minor but there are some significant problems like the disagreement between Matthew and Luke on the nativity. Also the additions to the end of Mark and the fabrication of the story of the adulterous woman in John.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

You could have stopped at 'comprehend', then copy to clipboard, then paste for every reply to Vlad!
 Saves a whole lot of otherwise wasted effort, IMO!

No
You started to talk about ancient texts as though that was significant .That is the fallacy of chronological snobbery.

Hillside and yourself have both committed this by talk of issues with being ancient and bronze age and incorrect information regarding attitudes of the time to ressurrection.

There is obviously no one who witness this event alive to day but it is considtent with Jesus still being around to personally relate to us.

Where it has specified possible mistake your objections are down to what you believe.

[Gordon]

No
You started to talk about ancient texts as though that was significant .That is the fallacy of chronological snobbery.

You're replying to Seb but I suspect this is aimed at me: I've argued that the risks associated with anecdotal accounts apply to all such accounts. For example, the police accounts of the Hillsborough disaster contained mistakes and lies, and as recently as last week the jury at the trial of the police commander couldn't agree on a verdict - and this is just 30 years after the event.

Hillside and yourself have both committed this by talk of issues with being ancient and bronze age and incorrect information regarding attitudes of the time to ressurrection.

Of course attitudes to miracle claims have changed over the last 2,000 years, and especially given the religious culture of that place in those times - but that is the problem of those who take the resurrection claim seriously but who, it seems, are seemingly reluctant to consider that the accounts they rely on could be flawed. 

There is obviously no one who witness this event alive to day but it is considtent with Jesus still being around to personally relate to us.

Obviously, but then again Jesus isn't around today either (having been dead for around 2,000 years or so).

Where it has specified possible mistake your objections are down to what you believe.

Nope: I hold no beliefs on this, but I do recognise that the risks of human fallibility and human error are ubiquitous in the affairs of people, to the extent that if there has been no attempt to address these risks then the only sensible option is to simply disregard whatever the claims is since it cannot be a serious proposition is these risks remain. So far as I can see these risks remain in relation to the Jesus stories in the NT.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spud,

Guys. The Bible interprets itself because it is a collection of books by different authors.

Doesn’t work. If it was a collection of books by different authors each of whom were reporting different eyewitness accounts that much at least would suggest that the explanation “resurrection” was more widespread among the crowd than would have been the case if just one or a very tiny number believed it. As it is though, the various books draw on the same sources (often each other), so the repetition of the same story adds nothing to is veracity. 

I could refer you to the cold case Christianity website which has lots of relevent stuff on eliminating the possibility of mistakes, lies, bias etc.

As eliminating any of these things but especially honest mistake would be impossible, could you at least tell us how they attempt to do it then?

But I didn't start the thread to address all those issues, more to encourage people to look at the ways in which the gospels corroborate each other. Happily I think I've found another one similar to the two examples in he op.

As indeed various other multiple texts in supposedly holy texts corroborate each other, only from different faith beliefs entirely. Which is just what you’d expect if the explanation “miracle” was sufficient for someone who lived in a place and time when such explanations were commonplace, who couldn’t write it down, whose account was repeated and translated frequently with the attendant risk of corruption of the prior versions, and whose story happened to be picked by a Roman emperor to mollify the uppity locals so caught the wind and survived. None of which though would suggest that a kosher miracle actually happened.     

[bluehillside Retd.]

Incidentally Spud, I just had a look at the Cold Case Christianity website you referenced a while back. It’s the project of an evangelist and former detective called J Warner Wallace, and I notice that some of the arguments he tries are the same ones you try here that are then falsified by myself and others.

I didn’t read the whole thing but I picked more or less at random some of the quick answers pieces he does and found them all to be logically wrong. I’d caution you against relying on him for support.     

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Of course attitudes to miracle claims have changed over the last 2,000 years, and especially given the religious culture of that place in those times

Yes Gordon, and I believed that too when I knew precious little about the bible or the history of the first century and wasn't particularly bothered and happy with a folk understanding of humanity and swallowed the Progress shit, hook, line and sinker.


In my defence though I was not a public atheist on media trying to undermine religion and therefore had little obligation to get my facts right.


The popular non acceptance of resurrection is covered in the Gospel of John where Thomas meets the resurrected Christ and still thinks it is a stunt and Paul has to answer popular disbelief in the epistles.


Was resurrection a staple of the old testament No. In fact in the OT stories of the supernatural were probably understood to be exceptional and hardly day to day.


There still needs to be a facing up to chronological snobbery with casually dismissive statements about old books, ancient texts and bronze age goat herders who probably had more thinking and reflection time than many a modern jobsworth concerned about his newsfeed and what kind of fucking toasted panini he's going to get from Pret.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

You could have stopped at 'comprehend', then copy to clipboard, then paste for every reply to Vlad!
 Saves a whole lot of otherwise wasted effort, IMO!

Yes I find paste useful everytime antitheistic comedy is mentioned.

[Sebastian Toe]

No
You started to talk about ancient texts as though that was significant .That is the fallacy of chronological snobbery.

Hillside and yourself have both committed this by talk of issues with being ancient and bronze age and incorrect information regarding attitudes of the time to ressurrection.

There is obviously no one who witness this event alive to day but it is considtent with Jesus still being around to personally relate to us.

Where it has specified possible mistake your objections are down to what you believe.

QED!

[Gordon]

Moderator:

Posts that were a clear derail, in that they were comments targeted at a member and not this topic, have been removed.