Johnny Skeptic

How can we tell the difference between lies and innocent but inaccurate revelations? Let's use the Gospel accounts of the events at the tomb as an example.

aa5874

"Fiction" means "literary works of imagination" and can also mean "something that is untrue and has been made up to deceive".

The NT is fundamentally works of imagination that are untrue and made up to deceive.

A and B IS SATISFIED with respect to the NT. The authors failed to declare their works to be fiction and untrue and was made up to deceive. I therefore categorise them as liars by deduction.

For example, the story of the couple that were killed by God as a result of lying about the sale of property in Acts is completely unrealistic and further the author of Acts claimed that both died within 3 hours and were buried. This episode could not have occurred in such a manner. It is fiction and a lie.

When I say someone is liar, it is not that everything they say is untrue. It is just that they have been found to be lying consistently.

Doug Shaver

Maybe not in your epistemology. In mine, belief, not disbelief, requires justification.
You mean, whatever someone tells me, I should believe until I've dug up enough evidence to prove it false? I don't think so.

What you can or can't see isn't my problem. I don't have to rule out the possibility of wholesale fraud to explain Christianity's origin. I accept that the possibility exists. However, its actuality would run afoul of Occam's razor, and that is reason enough to reject it.

Doug Shaver

If you're using it to mean both, then you're equivocating.

You are assuming intent to deceive. You have no evidence to support that assumption.

You contradict yourself again. If they lie consistently, then everything they say is untrue. If they sometimes tell the truth, then they lie inconsistently.