Steven Carr

Does anybody have any reports of this?

RUmike

From the Holy Cross website:

RUmike

Transcript is up!

http://www.holycross.edu/departments...surrdebate.htm

dongiovanni1976x

Thank you!

dongiovanni1976x

I didn’t understand how Craig’s “Ehrman’s Egregious Error” lent any weight to his overall argument. Suppose he was simply trying to demonstrate that you can have a mathematical probability for any given event, no matter how unlikely- sure, I can see this. But the point is he doesn’t input any figures into his equation. R (Which he said stood for the intrinsic probability of the Resurrection) would have to be a number so small that it took into account that of the billions of people who have died in the past hundred years must be added to the untold millions who have died since the beginning of recorded history. Since there is no evidence of anyone of these people coming back to life, not to mention no animal or insect doing so either, the base factor for his “intrinsic probability” number must make any other explanation (like Ehrman’s familial grave robbery) exceedingly more likely.
It just seemed like Dr. Ehrman did not even want to go down that road. He felt he was there to discuss the limits of historical research. It was an interesting read but I felt that the historical evidence was not really debated- it was more a debate about methodology.
I want to know who these New Testament historians are who all seem to believe that Joseph of Arimathea really used his tomb to bury Jesus and why they think this is so clearly a historical fact.
To bad time restricted Dr. Ehrman from demonstrating why Dr. Craig’s appeal to five independent sources really all depended upon Mark. Craig even interjected once to argue that Ehrman was arguing as if all these sources relied upon Mark but Dr. Ehrman did not get to go into any specific detail.

Merzbow42

Interesting, but Craig rightly nailed Ehrman for claiming that historians cannot speak to the existence of God. In fact, one MUST take the likelihood of God into account in order to make the claims that Ehrman is making. Ehrman needed to make this argument:

1. The probability of a historical event being true is a combination of its natural plausibility and the strength of the historical evidence for that event. The more naturally implausible an event, the stronger the historical evidence must be.

2. The existence of a miracle-making God is a naturally implausible event, I think we can all agree. Other explanations for the accounts we have of Jesus - that he had a twin brother, that his family hid the body, etc. are not naturally implausible.

3. Given 1 and 2, any reasonable person would conclude that the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is in no way strong enough to counteract the natural implausibility of that event. How much historical evidence would in fact be needed? Well, in modern times we have thousands of eyewitness accounts of miracles by Hindu yogis, multiply corroborated. This is a degree of evidence for Hindu miracles an order of magnitude greater than what we have for Jesus.

An example: let's say we have a single historical account that claims a Roman General named Biggus died at age 55 by falling off a cliff. This is an account written by a well-educated Roman whose existence is known of via other accounts. We would have little reason to doubt this account because, well, people die by falling off of cliffs all the time in the modern day.

But then let's say that instead of claiming Biggus fell off a cliff, the account claims that he died by being eaten by a giant green dragon. This is a very naturally improbable event, so a single historical account is not nearly enough. We would need a crushingly large amount of additional corroboration for this event before any reasonable person could claim it probably occurred. At a minimum, we'd need dozens of written accounts from many different Romans, accounts from non-Roman visitors, multiple accounts of other people being eaten by the same green dragon, and so on.

Damn, they should let me debate Craig. I'm pretty sure the green dragon example is immediately fatal to his argument.

dongiovanni1976x

Very good argument. I agree.

Also I think Ehrman should have pointed out that Craig made a vague equivocation when he made that accusation against Ehman.

Dr. Craig is making an equivocation between the empirical facts surrounding the death, burial and subsequent visions of Jesus, to that of the existence and interaction of a non empirical God himself. Dr. Ehrman is saying that there is no empirical source material to even make any affirmative or negative statement about God- this in and of itself is not a statement about God, but rather a statement about the limits of the empirically inclined mind.

Basically if something is supernatural we, as natural beings would never be able to experience it as such. In fact, as soon as it becomes something empirical, in order for us to experience it, it ceases to be supernatural.

Merzbow42

This is where I think Ehrman has boxed himself into a corner, because we're not talking about a deist-type God unconcerned with the real world, but a God that is claimed to measurably interact with us.

Ehrman is just wrong to claim that historians cannot concern themselves with God because "miracles are such an improbable event". The correct formulation of this statement is to say that since miracles are such an improbable event, if a historian claims that it is probable that a miracle occurred, he must present spectacularly overwhelming evidence. And the evidence we have for the resurrection is anything but spectacular.

But he did get in some good shots at Craig. He absolutely destroyed Craig in that one exchange where Craig was forced to admit that he cannot properly analyze the Gospels as historical documents because he holds them as inerrant from a theological standpoint.

Steven Carr

Really? Because Craig has debated for many years and always hides that from his audience and demands that everybody ignores the fact that he might be prejudiced if he would, by some chance, be an inerrantist.

So why would he suddenly start admitting that he was an inerrantist?

dongiovanni1976x

I have to agree with you except that since the only tools we have for investigating a phenomena are our natural senses so how would we ever determine if something was of a SUPERnatural origin if we can only experience it in the natural. Even Craig might agree on some level if we look at Paul's distaste for the philosopher's of his day who could have schooled him in sophistry had they been given the chance:

or

But I completely understand what you are saying and I think if there was a scoring system used in this debate then Criag won this particular tactical aspect.