bacht

No offense Roger but this is an apologist perspective, not a skeptical one.

The names of the NT books have little or no connection to their original authors. They were probably anonymous, and arbitrarily labelled by Catholic theologians for religious reasons, not historical. Some of the epistle material may be ascribable to the first generation apostles, but there's no way to prove it.

The tradition that a John lived to a ripe old age is just that, a church tradition. Even so, it's likely that most of the writings we have date from after 100 CE anyway. By the 140s there were no living witnesses left, and the Jewish state had disintegrated. This was when the Christian lit industry really got going imo.

Johnny Skeptic

If a supposed eyewitness testimony is considered to be written in the first person, the Gospels rarely mention eyewitness testimonies.

I am not impressed with hearsay evidence written decades after the fact.

eheffa

What a coherent & succinct summary Atheos.

-evan

spamandham

You can't have a rational discussion with someone who starts off with patently absurd claims like this. Even if it were the case that the authors claimed to be eyewitnesses, we would know they were lying, because they record the absurd as if it were historical. Since we know they are liars, why should we believe anything they say?

Johnny Skeptic

Regarding "any statements to the contrary can only be based on speculation," that is quite comical since accepting the testimonies of non-Biblical, first century Christian sources regarding the miracles that Jesus performed is speculative . Will you please quote some of your first century, non-Christian sources regarding the miracles that Jesus performed? No?, that is what I thought was the case. There is no need for you to embarrass yourself. You are quite bold until the questions get tough. Then you conveniently take the next bus out of town.

spamandham

Roger knows he's an apologist, and I think he actually takes pride in it. He's smart and well informed, but that doesn't stop him from making ridiculous self promoting arguments such as the one above.

aa5874

I concur. Great post by Atheos.

show_no_mercy

There's really nothing else to say, other than pointing out that there are other gospels out there that were being used by Christians in Irenaeus' time. Why weren't these gospels included as well (a question for the Christian apologists)? They were just as valid "eyewitness testimony" as the now canonical four. Irenaeus concluded that there should only be four gospels because there are four winds and four corners of the Earth.

bacht

No problem. I just wanted stay with the atheist focus of the OP.

JoeWallack

JW:
The best reason (and only reason needed) why we do not have eyewitness testimony of Impossible events is because it would be Impossible to witness an Impossible event. Ignoring this is like trying to conclude who will win the World Series but assuming that the Cubs are still in it.

Apologists and even some Skeptics can whine that in spite of the word "Impossible" being in every possible dictionary, there is no such thing as "impossible", but even if you reduce to extremely unlikely, the logic is the same. It is extremely unlikely that we would have eyewitness testimony of extremely unlikely events because it is extremely unlikely that anyone would witness an extremely unlikely event.



Joseph