More on the gospels.

[Gordon]

One of the risks you said needed to be assessed was the risk of lies.

So I did: read back, since it was the 'first' of the two types you suggested that I was referring to: those who die in support of a cause they believe in.

Were NASA and Neil Armstrong mistaken when they claimed they had landed on the moon? They tell us they went in a spaceship which took a certain time to get there, and that there was reduced gravity there. That they were mistaken about where they landed is not a credible interpretation of their claim: either they did land on the moon or were making the story up.

That it can reasonably be concluded that they did indeed land on the Moon is because there is evidence for this other than just their anecdotal accounts of having done so - this isn't rocket science, Spud (though it is, in another sense).

It seems the gospels give specifics about why they thought Jesus was dead but didn't stay dead. That he was merely injured or that what they thought was him alive again was really a hallucination, is not a credible interpretation of their accounts. Therefore they must have been deliberately making it up, or, Jesus really did rise from the dead.

The gospels contain anecdotal accounts of uncertain provenance that claim a miracle, which is a very different matter to lunar landings, and since anecdote is all there is in relation to the remarkable claim of Jesus being dead but not staying dead, then the risks associated with anecdotal reports (such as mistakes or lies) are relevant, and if these can't be meaningfully addressed then I'm afraid the gospels stories are, as I've said before, indistinguishable from fiction.

[Gordon]

With regard to Muslims being oppressed

Their actions are a strong indicator that Muslims are being oppressed.

So what? That there is demonstrable political oppression isn't confined to Muslims.

[jeremyp]

With regard to Muslims being oppressedTheir actions are a strong indicator that Muslims are being oppressed.

Let's unpack that a little. The Muslims are being oppressed and yet they don't give up being Muslims.  That means they surely believe their faith is the true faith. Do you agree with them? If you do, why are you not a Muslim? If you don't, then it should be obvious that people strongly believing something, even to the point of death, is not a good indicator of its truth. 

[Spud]

So I did: read back, since it was the 'first' of the two types you suggested that I was referring to: those who die in support of a cause they believe in.

That it can reasonably be concluded that they did indeed land on the Moon is because there is evidence for this other than just their anecdotal accounts of having done so - this isn't rocket science, Spud (though it is, in another sense).

The gospels contain anecdotal accounts of uncertain provenance that claim a miracle, which is a very different matter to lunar landings, and since anecdote is all there is in relation to the remarkable claim of Jesus being dead but not staying dead, then the risks associated with anecdotal reports (such as mistakes or lies) are relevant, and if these can't be meaningfully addressed then I'm afraid the gospels stories are, as I've said before, indistinguishable from fiction.

In 2000 years' time, if no further lunar landings are attempted, all people will have as evidence is some documentation and video recording. Will that be enough for them to believe we landed a man on the moon?

[Roses]

It's actually a fair indication that they are correct. Read about how the Crusaders slaughtered all the Muslims in Jerusalem in the 11th century, or the persecution of Muslims in Myanmar, or the killing of innocent Muslims in Afghanistan by US forces. Of course that doesn't justify them being a suicide bomber

When people claim the less than credible to be true, like the resurrection, one has to seriously question why they believed that to be factual. There is likely to be an explanation which has nothing to do with the 'supernatural'.   

[Roses]

In 2000 years' time, if no further lunar landings are attempted, all people will have as evidence is some documentation and video recording. Will that be enough for them to believe we landed a man on the moon?

At least that is evidence, which can be put to the test. In 2000 years time people might be visiting the moon on a regular basis for their hols, for instance. There is no reliable evidence to substantiate the claims made about Jesus.

[Gordon]

In 2000 years' time, if no further lunar landings are attempted, all people will have as evidence is some documentation and video recording. Will that be enough for them to believe we landed a man on the moon?

Don't forget the stuff left on the Moon or that the current documentation and video has established provenance well beyond anecdote.

[Roses]

Don't forget the stuff left on the Moon or that the current documentation and video has established provenance well beyond anecdote.

Spud can't even point us in the direction any documentation written during the lifetime of Jesus, or a portrait of him. One would have thought that one of the faithful might have drawn a picture of him for posterity.

[Spud]

Let's unpack that a little. The Muslims are being oppressed and yet they don't give up being Muslims.  That means they surely believe their faith is the true faith. Do you agree with them? If you do, why are you not a Muslim? If you don't, then it should be obvious that people strongly believing something, even to the point of death, is not a good indicator of its truth.

We are talking about the first Christians, not us centuries later. They claimed to have witnessed something, which they refused to stop talking about having been told to by the Jewish leaders, then later on by the Romans because they were converting gentiles to monotheism. That much is clear. My point is that they would not have continued to do so if they had been lying about seeing stuff.

[Spud]

So I did: read back, since it was the 'first' of the two types you suggested that I was referring to: those who die in support of a cause they believe in.

That it can reasonably be concluded that they did indeed land on the Moon is because there is evidence for this other than just their anecdotal accounts of having done so - this isn't rocket science, Spud (though it is, in another sense).

The gospels contain anecdotal accounts of uncertain provenance that claim a miracle, which is a very different matter to lunar landings, and since anecdote is all there is in relation to the remarkable claim of Jesus being dead but not staying dead, then the risks associated with anecdotal reports (such as mistakes or lies) are relevant, and if these can't be meaningfully addressed then I'm afraid the gospels stories are, as I've said before, indistinguishable from fiction.

Point taken. However, in some countries evidence of some sort can be used to convict a murderer and put him to death. Would you agree that this evidence needs to be as good as the evidence for the miracles in the gospels, and that if evidence can be used to take away human rights as punishment, then it has to be rock solid. What is the difference between this and evidence for miracles?

[Roses]

We are talking about the first Christians, not us centuries later. They claimed to have witnessed something, which they refused to stop talking about having been told to by the Jewish leaders, then later on by the Romans because they were converting gentiles to monotheism. That much is clear. My point is that they would not have continued to do so if they had been lying about seeing stuff.

What is reported in the Bible and what is actually factual is open to question. Christianity came into being as a religion well after Jesus was dead. I suspect many, if not all, of the people who actually knew the real Jesus, instead of the story book character, were dead and gone by then too.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spud,

We are talking about the first Christians, not us centuries later. They claimed to have witnessed something, which they refused to stop talking about having been told to by the Jewish leaders, then later on by the Romans because they were converting gentiles to monotheism. That much is clear. My point is that they would not have continued to do so if they had been lying about seeing stuff.

But they may have done if they were genuinely mistaken remember?

Point taken. However, in some countries evidence of some sort can be used to convict a murderer and put him to death. Would you agree that this evidence needs to be as good as the evidence for the miracles in the gospels,…

No – it needs to be much, much better than that. Non-contemporaneous hearsay would be unlikely to convict someone of murder even under an extreme legal systems, and especially not if that “evidence” concerned a supposed supernatural event.

…and that if evidence can be used to take away human rights as punishment, then it has to be rock solid. What is the difference between this and evidence for miracles?

See above. “The evidence for miracles” would be laughed out of any court of law worthy of the term “law”.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spud,

In 2000 years' time, if no further lunar landings are attempted, all people will have as evidence is some documentation and video recording. Will that be enough for them to believe we landed a man on the moon?

No – what they would have as evidence in addition to that would (presumably) be a reasonable understanding of the technology available in 1969, so there’d be no particular reason to doubt the story. 

You’re making a category error here by conflating the naturalistic with the non-naturalistic. For an equivalence the story would have to be something like an account written around 1989 by people who weren’t there that, say, in 1969 three men flew to the moon on the backs of dragons after which all the evidence was destroyed but for the subsequent accounts themselves. Even if that story was true, people 2,000 years hence would still have every reason to doubt it because of the flimsiness of the evidence.   

[Anchorman]

Many radicalised Christians have very little idea about the Bible, they pick out the bits which appear to support their extremist version of that faith.   

     



Whether they are 'Chridtian' in that premis,is moot.
After all, one definition of 'Christian' - and probably the one which bears most, came from Jesus Himself.
"By this shall all men know that you are MY disciples; that you love one another as I have loved you.."

No love, no Christ.
Simples.

[Roses]

     



Whether they are 'Chridtian' in that premis,is moot.
After all, one definition of 'Christian' - and probably the one which bears most, came from Jesus Himself.
"By this shall all men know that you are MY disciples; that you love one another as I have loved you.."

No love, no Christ.
Simples.

As the gospels were written well after the guy was dead, it is unlikely that what Jesus is quoted as saying are his exact words as they were not written down at the time he is supposed to have said them. I bet you would be unable to quote the exact words some one spoke years later! It is likely people put their own construction on what he is supposed to have said.

I don't know what you mean by the phrase, 'no love, no Christ'?

[Spud]

Blue hillside,
What I meant was "Would you agree that this evidence (for murder) needs to be as good as the evidence for miracles in general?" Especially so if capital punishment is used. In other words, both need to be 100% reliable.

[Gordon]

Point taken. However, in some countries evidence of some sort can be used to convict a murderer and put him to death. Would you agree that this evidence needs to be as good as the evidence for the miracles in the gospels, and that if evidence can be used to take away human rights as punishment, then it has to be rock solid. What is the difference between this and evidence for miracles?

Any evidence used in legal cases is better than 'evidence' for miracles, for two main reasons;

1. Evidence in legal cases, such as here in the UK, is testable in court and requires more than just uncorroborated hearsay.

2. If you use what is legally acceptable as your standard then there is no evidence for miracles: no reputable court would entertain the notion.

You are conflating the natural (human behaviour) with the supernatural (miracle claims) - and you should avoid this line of thinking since it is silly. For your approach to work you need a method for assessing miracles that is as robust as, say,the fingerprints of 'Harry the Cat' being found on the recovered stolen silverware - do you have one?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spud,

What I meant was "Would you agree that this evidence (for murder) needs to be as good as the evidence for miracles in general?" In other words, both need to be 100% reliable.

There's no such thing as 100% reliable, and it still makes no sense. If you're asking something like, "Would you agree that this evidence (for murder) needs to be as good as the currently available evidence for miracles in general" then, as I said, it needs to be much better than that because the currently available evidence for miracles is so flimsy.

If though you meant something like, "Would you agree that this evidence (for murder) needs to be as good as the evidence would be to demonstrate an actual miracles in general" then, leaving aside for now the category error problem of applying a naturalistic method (evidence) to a supernatural claim (miracle) then arguably I suppose it would actually be less. Courts concern themselves with evidence "beyond reasonable doubt", whereas the evidence for a miracle would have to be so extraordinary (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence etc) that it would probably exceed that normally required by a court of law.

As I said though, I have no idea how even conceptually you could have evidence for a miracle.       

[ProfessorDavey]

The fact of the matter is, the gospels record many miracles and were written within the lifetimes of the people who met Jesus. If the gospels were mistaken, they would have been refuted.

But in effect they were refuted, in that Christianity, pretty well alone amongst the major religions, failed to gain a foothold in the place where it arose. What this means is that most of the people who were eye witnesses to the purported events in the gospels didn't align themselves with Jesus and the new religion. So either that the purported events in the gospels didn't concur with their eye witnesses recollection (most likely) or the events were as reported but people failed to be impressed (seems exceptionally unlikely given the hyperbole of claims in the gospels).

[ProfessorDavey]

The fact of the matter is, the gospels record many miracles and were written within the lifetimes of the people who met Jesus.

That's non-sense - we need to consider proximity both in time and geography.

Time - most experts suggest the gospels were written sometime between about 70AD (Mark) and 110AD - John. Given life expectancy in the 1stC (probably only 40-50 assuming you survived childhood) there would be fairly few eye witnesses still alive, even by the time Mark was written.

But you also need to consider geographic proximity - most eye witnesses would have remained in Palestine - but of course Christianity failed to take root there, so the gospels when they arose appeared in places hundreds or thousands of miles away and written in languages alien to those eye witnesses.

Taken together I think the numbers of actual eye witnesses to the purported events in the gospel who actually saw (and could understand) what was actually written in the gospels decades later would have been vanishingly small.

What we do know, however, is that the events purported to have occurred in the gospels were not sufficiently compelling to mean that christianity gained a foothold amongst that community of eye witnesses. That tells you everything you need to know, really.

[BeRational]

Plus it is not known who wrote the gospels

[Walter]

Plus it is not known who wrote the gospels

of all the things theses clever people who could read and write could have written , why did they come up with this nonsense? hhmmmm?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

But in effect they were refuted, in that Christianity, pretty well alone amongst the major religions, failed to gain a foothold in the place where it arose.

But Davey that's like an atheist's refutation where an atheist disagrees and miraculously that, some strange how, becomes a ''refutation''

Secondly Christianity existed happily as a sect of Judaism at that time and were excluded as deliberate policy afterwards and there have been many situations when an excluded splinter has been more successful.

[ProfessorDavey]

But Davey that's like an atheist's refutation where an atheist disagrees and miraculously that, some strange how, becomes a ''refutation''

Secondly Christianity existed happily as a sect of Judaism at that time and were excluded as deliberate policy afterwards and there have been many situations when an excluded splinter has been more successful.

The bottom line is that unlike Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam and Sikhism, Christianity failed to take root where it arose. It's claims weren't sufficient to persuade the people who were alive at the time, and living in the place where the purported events happened. To put it bluntly, the eye witnesses were not persuaded in any meaningful numbers.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Taken together I think the numbers of actual eye witnesses to the purported events in the gospel who actually saw (and could understand) what was actually written in the gospels decades later would have been vanishingly small.

What we do know, however, is that the events purported to have occurred in the gospels were not sufficiently compelling to mean that christianity gained a foothold amongst that community of eye witnesses. That tells you everything you need to know, really.

But considering Christianity is a world religion what makes non adherence of a small country (who have perhaps the most entrenched position of national chosenness) significant for it.

I think the trouble is your analysis of the resurrection as a sort of one of empirical and sensual event without due attention to the consequences of the resurrection and the ascension.

Clearly the vast majority did not witness this so there must be more to Christianity than an empirical sensual approach. Surely if there were not more Christianity should have just been reabsorbed into Judaism.

Going back to Christianity I think Christians would acknowledge they were not eyewitnesses to this but are witnesses to the ascended Christ. The resurrection then is not so much a mystery in this context.

Similarly with miracles in general. There have been great and faithful cessationists in Christianity who have held with the idea that If there were miracles, the age of miracles has past.

The position of many atheists on this thread is to make Christianity merely a question of the miraculous.....Diddle it so the miraculous, with the exception of the resurrection, is the key to Christianity and then tackle a straw man caricature.


In other words Davey there is IMHO no significance in Judaism rejecting Christianity and as a point of fact was Buddha not an Indian prince? and yet India is predominantly Hindu.