sotzo

One of the common arguments throughout any such debate (I was most recently reading the Barker/Horner debate on the same subject) is the Christian claim that 'anybody could have refuted the claims of the early Christians, and obviously nobody did'.

So, where is the case of a 1st century skeptical debunking? Hello....?

The arguments I've seen referring to that refuting of early Christian claims is not aimed at the skeptic, but the Jewish/Roman authorities.

Those groups certainly would have cause to refute the resurrection as an historical event. Perhaps you have seen an argument that I haven't which refers to skeptics refuting the Chrisitan claims?

thanks
-jkb

sotzo

J.P. Holding....bleecchh.

Yes, I know he is not very well liked 'round these parts.

Holding doesn't so much "rebut" as he does "ridicule."

While I agree that he could skip some of the satire, he most certainly offers well-researched arguments, whether one agrees with them or not.

I see very little worth in the Tektonics site. Not because Holding doesn't occasionally make the good point (he does), but because you have to wade through mountains of sarcasm, insults, hyperbole, and downright purple prose to get to them.

And that never happens here!

I'd say that the reason Craig continues to use the same arguments five years later is because he and his primary audience (generally conservative Christians) continue to find them compelling. No big mystery there.

And I'm sure you'd agree the same thing could be said of Crossan, Price, Funk, et al with their audience. But this misses my original point which was that if Craig's arguments were so easily refuted, non-theists would cease engaging him in debates - written, oral or otherwise.

The fact is, as non-theists own publications/presentations show, he is perceived as a respected philosopher. And he is percieved as such having not changed his apologetic to any great extent over the last several years. This argues against Toto's implication that Craig's arguments are outdated.

-jkb

Toto

If you read my comments in the <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=51&t=000070" target="_blank">Craig-Luedemann debate thread</a>, I do not describe his arguments as "outdated." I think that they are pure sophistry and do not hold water, and that they have been extensively refuted. (I am speaking of his arguments on history - I haven't read his philosophical arguments as closely.) However, Craig is in full command of modern persuasion techniques, and is a formidable debater based on his style and presentation. That is why skeptics treat him seriously, not that he is a respected philosopher or that it is impossible to counter his arguments.

As far as anyone in the first century refuting Christianity by disproving the Resurrection - in the account in Acts, the disciples do not begin to preach the Resurrection until 40 days have passed, by which time the body would have decomposed. But that is probably not how it happened. Christianity was small and low key in the first century, and there is little evidence that the Romans had heard enough of it or took it seriously enough to bother producing a body, even assuming that those early Christians preached a physical resurrection, which is open to question. And after 70 CE, Jerusalem was in ruins and there would have been little hope of finding any evidence one way or the other.

When skeptics point out the numerous writings from the first century that do not mention a Jewish prophet called Jesus, Christians respond that you can't use that as proof he didn't exist because Christianity was a small movement at the edge of the empire, Jesus was just an itinerant preacher, etc., etc. For those same reasons, the Romans would not have bothered to put a stop to the new movement by producing a body.

Gooch's dad

Why would they have cause for that? The Romans were famously tolerant of any religion that didn't cause political turmoil.

I don't know how you got confused--how is 'skeptic' exclusive of 'Jewish/Roman authorities'? You are saying that they would have been skeptical of those claims. Any evidence for that?

And, like I said, any evidence that the Jewish/Roman authorities DID debunk any religious beliefs around that time?

sotzo

Hi wanderer:

At this risk of going off on tangents this post was never intended to go...

I especially love the "Lincoln challenge" in response to Dan Barker's Easter Challenge, at the end of that "rebuttal". The argument seems to be: If Lincoln's biographers differ, then it's okay that the gospels differ.

His argument is actually this: If skeptics treated the apparent contradictions in Lincoln's biographies as they do those in the Gospel then the conclusion would be that Lincoln either never existed or that we cannot know anything about him.

The problem is that historians don't blindly accept all of those Lincoln biographies as inspired truth, and they'll write other, better biographies as they reflect on the available data.

And which Biblical historian(s) are asking you to subscribe blindly to the Bible as inspired truth?

So are you suggesting that we update the Gospels according to a naturalistic metaphysic in order to make them better? Unfortunately, that is the same bias of which you accuse Chrisitians further down in your post.

Conservative Christians would avoid that at all costs.

No we wouldn't. In fact, Paul himself welcomes the challenge in Corinthians..if Christ is not raised then the whole enterprise is a scam.

The apologists do not understand historical methods well (or don't take them seriously enough), nor do they, for purely ideological reasons, desire to hold the the traditional interpretation accountable to scrutiny and possible override if historians decide the facts warrant it.

This is a sweeping generalization that would be called ad hominem argument if I were to insert "atheist" for "apologist" and "modern" for "traditional". Unless you'd like to argue that non-theist historians have no ideological assumptions behind their research, then this same statement applies to your camp as well.

If Craig and his bunch do everything they can to make the gospels exempt from such criticism,

And they don't as is clear from the fact that Craig has publicly engaged Price, Crossan, Flew, et al.

this does not testify to the NT's authority, but rather to the likelihood that Christian claims are very weak and would be undermined if (as has been the case) they are subjected to reasonable modern critical examination.

Do you mean the reasonable modern critical examination that is bias-free (unlike that biased theistic examination)? Of course, "reasonable" to you equals "naturalistic" which betrays your apparent bias-free examination.

Modern historians admit that biographies are reconstructions, and they understand that ancient chroniclers of whatever cultural background wrote from the perspective of their supernatural-accepting worldviews.

And the modern historians write from their naturalistic worldviews. What's your point?

Only those sharing a compatible supernatural-accepting worldview can accept at face value the claims of the gospels without a great deal of corroborating evidence.

I disagree. I'm a supernaturalist and I don't accept at face value supernatural claims. I do accept those of the Gospels because I've evaluated the evidence, as a former agnostic myself, and found it to be compelling. However, that conclusion is seen as irrational in this forum since the conclusion does not comport with a naturalistic worldview.

At no point would an historian say, "Well, there's no evidence to support x claim about y individual, and in fact there's evidence of mythical borrowing and reinterpretation, and numerous contradictions between the accounts, but we'll ignore all that and assert, as interpretive authorities, that x happened in y's lifetime, because the biographies selected by y's later and very devoted followers (and only they) agree it happened."

I sure would enjoy finding out which apologist has presented his case in the way you have portrayed in this paragraph. I thinks me sees a strawman.

Also, you imply that the early church was rendered incapable of thinking and merely selected books that fit their with their beliefs. What the early church was taught by way of oral/written apostolic authority was matched against circulated writings. It would only make sense that the church would filter out those writings not comporting with that apostolic teaching. Would you expect the church to accept writings that contradicted church apostolic teaching anymore than you would expect the Secular Web to include a mission statement that included adherence to supernaturalism?

No. They would highlight what they consider to be unlikely or obviously based on supernatural bias.

In other words, since naturalism is the correct worldview, the Gospels must be flawed because they speak of supernatural events as occuring in history. Further, the only historians who should be permitted to speak authoritatively on the issue are those who hold to naturalism. Sounds a bit like your view of the early church bias eh?

If a distant-future "church of Lincoln" claimed that he caught a bullet in his teeth to stave off assassination, and died long afterwards as the result of pouring out his life-spirit for the sake of the newly re-United States, historians of that time would not be likely believe it - even if there were no other record about the end of his life.

And if that conclusion was arrived at on the basis of naturalistic assumption, those historians would not be exempt from criticism.

They would be skeptical, and would categorize the savior elements of any and all biographies of Lincoln under "myth." And they would be absolutely right to.

Because...

Skepticism regarding very unusual assertions is the rule, not an aberration, in historical study as in any serious discipline. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" has rightly become the skeptic's mantra in general, because it is a reliable barrier between an otherwise healthy mind and superstitious thinking.

Actually, the skeptic's mantra is: "Supernatural events do not occur" which then excludes a priori all claims of the Gospels which can be put into the supernatural category. I will demonstrate this by asking you what qualifies as "extraordinary evidence"?

When applying historical standards to the gospel - consistently - it's inevitable that skepticism abounds.

Which historical standards might those be?

It is anything but hard evidence in favor of its own claims, and there is just no outside evidence that its numerous extraordinary claims are true.

So are you saying that you would accept the Gospels if there was 1 source outside the Gospels that concurred with the events? 2 sources? 3 sources?

The skeptical position is the most valid.
Faith plays fast and loose with the facts and with the methodology of just about every discipline critical of the traditional story.

Not that faith doesn't play a vital role. With that aside, I can't recall the last debate I heard where the theist appealed by saying, "There is no evidence...you should just believe". Another strawman here.

Modern critical Jesus scholarship stands alongside the gospel record as an interpretive resource, and will continue to do so, despite apologists' fantasies that all such re-evaluations of the traditional picture can be easily dismissed with rhetorical flourish in a staged debate.

And all of those who, once agnostic, looked at the evidence and found it compelling, must have been drugged and brainwashed prior to conversion.

What are we up to now - our 4th quest for the historical Jesus? It seems to me that the traditional picture is faring pretty well in comparison.

Cheers

-jkb