Freethought & Rationalism Archive

aChristian · 08-02-2008, 10:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gregor

Quote:

Originally Posted by rizdek

I get the feeling apologists are wearying of our comebacks.

The only reason I monitor and occasionally post to threads such as this is when Xians post false and absurd statements. aChristian's posts here are paradigms of misleading and uneducated apologetics, and I would hope that lurkers aren't deceived by his essentially content-free positions.

Prime examples from his last two posts

1. "people alive at the time had both parts of the story and saw no contradiction. . ." Demonstrating a gross question begging. aChristian has demonstrated an ignorance or intentional ignoring of scholarship of dates of authorship, authors, & etc.

2."accounts were written by liars" - fallacy of the excluded middle. The best explanation is voiced by Crossan and others, to wit 'No one until the 1700s even thought to assert that the Bible was the inerrant word of god that had no contradictions.'

3. "as the historic record states, the authors were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and the early church knew this and knew enough of the background details to see no contradiction" - question begging, wilfull ignorance of scholarship.

4. "Matthew was considered the first written historically" Ibid.

5. "earlier dates by conservative scholars" - appeal to anonymous authority

6. "I don't have much confidence in their opinions" appeal to personal (in)credulity

7. "Luke seems to have written Acts before Paul died (?64AD?)" - anyone actually interested in arguing the bases for date determinations ought to set out their facts and conclusions. aChristian, please rebut the thesis of L/A's reliance on Josephus. You can find the thesis here in the II library.

I'll look at the Josephus thesis if you can direct me to it (I looked for it and couldn't find it), but to tell you the truth, I haven't seen much good scholarship on this site and I don't expect to find any in this thesis you are referring to. For all your other points, read some good conservative scholars if you want evidence for my points. It should be easy to find. I have seen enough of the liberal scholarship and their dates and theories to have little respect for their opinions. Your claim about inerrancy coming about in the 17th century is particularly absurd. I can read first and second century church fathers and see it in their writings. It is more importantly in the NT itself.

Toto · 08-03-2008, 12:22 AM

Luke and Josephus.

Please identify the "conservative" scholars that you respect.

angelo · 08-03-2008, 01:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aChristian

Quote:

Originally Posted by angelo atheist

The clues seem to sugest otherwise.
Mark is silent on the events of the war that broke out in 70 ce.
While in Mathew the destruction of the temple is stated as a prophecy [24:3]. a clue that it was writen after 70 ce. After the destruction of the temple.

Those clues are weak. Mark's mentions the destruction of the temple in Mark 13:2 as a prophecy, just as Matthew does. It is no indication that it was written after 70 AD. It is a prophecy. The reasons I already gave indicate it was written before 64 AD and I would think it was written much closer to 50 AD or earlier.

Your dating would almost make Paul a contemporary of Jesus as his are the very first christian writings, and who most scholars date to around at the very earliest 40-50 ce. 10-20 years after Jesu's life ended.

08-03-2008, 04:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aChristian

... Clement ... quote[s] from the gospels all over the place in [his] letter.

No he doesn't.

Clement merely gives a couple of sayings of Jesus.
No mention of any written Gospel at all.

Iasion

rizdek · 08-03-2008, 06:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rizdek

Quote:

Originally Posted by aChristian

All of your examples are of liars

Not really, the boss may have just forgot to tell the person the whole story. The doctor might just have a really weird sense of humor. The boy didn't lie, he just got sidetracked. He told what happened afterwards. The girl felt that was all she needed to say because she didn't feel it was his business that she went to a movie with another guy, because in her opinion, they weren't that close in their relationship.

But, do the statements contradict reality/what happened? The answer seems to be, technically no, because there is way to explain what happened to match the statements.

See, they do not contradict reality, but they certainly suggest either duplicity or a willingness to "use" language in ways that can be construed to subtly mean one thing when common usage means something else.

If I am talking to someone on the phone, and just before I hang up I say, "I'll leave quickly and run over to tell you something 'in person'." The person at the other end has an expectation of what this means. There is little room of other interpretations such that if I don't arrive in the a time frame reflective or "running" to a place, the person might well wonder what happened. If I explain I had car troubes, that would suffice for ruling out duplicity. But, if after the fact, I report the incident and I say I left quickly and ran over to so and so's house, without reporting the intermittent car trouble, I'm essentially not "telling the whole story" and someone later learning that I left it out might wonder at my ability to tell the truth, or at least wonder whether they and I use language in the same way. It is no longer, "oh forgive me for being mistaken, but I had car trouble." The facts do not support the original promise to leave quickly and run over so to be honest, that should not be what is reported after the fact. I might not feel compelled to say I had car trouble, but the phrase "run" should be replaced by something less temporally explicit like, "went." But if someone thinks the "run" can still be employed to describe what happened, their understanding of the connotation is different them mine.

That would be my point with NT authors. Clearly they have a way of writing that eludes me and makes me skeptical that they use language in the same way I do. Perhaps they exaggerate, maybe they use idioms, they might insert figures of speech such that "what really happened" is also hidden and elusive to the point of being unreliable. That would seem to be the essential point in all of this. Can the bible scriptures be relied upon to guide someone in how they are to think and run their lives when we find out, by reading multiple accounts of one event, that authors tend to tell it their way and we have no way of knowing what the real way was. We don't know if some left seemingly important things out, or if others added events that never happened. In a way, settling for "no contradiction" is like winning the battle but loosing the war in trying to show the bible is reliable. Either there are contradictions because the NT authors use language the same way we do, or there are no contradictions and we have no idea what can be believed from the bible.

sschlichter · 08-03-2008, 06:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jab

Quote:

Originally Posted by sschlichter

If you had a contradiction that did not first require that I put atheist goggles on to see, it would be a more compelling argument. (ie. a passage contradicts as long as you interpret it the way that is contradictory to the others).

However, your statement stands as pretty accurate. Once I beleived that the Scriptures were inspired, the nature of that inspiration is of little consequence. God did not dictate but chose to reveal himself through the personalities, talents, and situations of fallible men and the Bible is the only example of what that looks like so I have no reason to expect something different.

~Steve

So: do you understand that therefore the Bible is fallible, like the men who wrote it? Or do you understand that like the God who is revealing Himself in it, it is infallible?

No, fallible men are used to communicate infallible truth in the midst of their personality, talents, and situation.

sschlichter · 08-03-2008, 06:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thentian

Quote:

Originally Posted by sschlichter

If you had a contradiction that did not first require that I put atheist goggles on to see, it would be a more compelling argument. (ie. a passage contradicts as long as you interpret it the way that is contradictory to the others).

I really don't see how you can say that about atheist goggles. For example in the case of Judas' death, it requires no kind of special goggles to notice that the two stories are very different. It is you apologetists who have to come up with a fanciful way to combine the two versions. It is only through apologetists goggles that the result does not look ridiculous and contrived. "He hanged himself, but the branch was rotten so he fell to the ground and burst open"?!? Similarly with the spices that the women brought to the grave; Can you really not see how contrived it is to say that they realized they didn't have enough, so they had to buy some more? I think you must be wearing some very special goggles indeed, if so! Am I wearing special goggles if I assume that when Mark writes "...they told nobody." it means that they told nobody? You however add the parenthetical clause "... of the people they met in the street, but they ran and told Peter." I think you must be wearing some very special goggles if you can't see that you just turned Mark into a liar!

Please remove those goggles!

great example of what I am talking about. 100 years ago that would have been an apparent contradiction. Prior to the 20th century, it was thought that the word translated "falling headlong" could only mean that (prenes). However, investigation of ancient papyri since has revealed that the same word is used to describe something "swelling up" like the internal organs of someone that hanged himself might do.* No way to know for sure but their is little reason to cry contradiction.

The problem here is that the initial christian reaction to liberal Biblical criticism was to stick their head in the sand. Since then, many Christians have woken up and have been digging and studying. Your contradiction is a great example that might have been compelling back in the 1890's.

* (citing A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament)

sschlichter · 08-03-2008, 06:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gregor

The only reason I monitor and occasionally post to threads such as this is when Xians post false and absurd statements. aChristian's posts here are paradigms of misleading and uneducated apologetics, and I would hope that lurkers aren't deceived by his essentially content-free positions.

2."accounts were written by liars" - fallacy of the excluded middle. The best explanation is voiced by Crossan and others, to wit 'No one until the 1700s even thought to assert that the Bible was the inerrant word of god that had no contradictions.'

speaking of fallacies,

"I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly beleive that the authors were completely free from error"

- St Augustine - long before 1700

sschlichter · 08-03-2008, 06:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by angelo atheist

Quote:

Originally Posted by aChristian

Those clues are weak. Mark's mentions the destruction of the temple in Mark 13:2 as a prophecy, just as Matthew does. It is no indication that it was written after 70 AD. It is a prophecy. The reasons I already gave indicate it was written before 64 AD and I would think it was written much closer to 50 AD or earlier.

Your dating would almost make Paul a contemporary of Jesus as his are the very first christian writings, and who most scholars date to around at the very earliest 40-50 ce. 10-20 years after Jesu's life ended.

almost? Paul was a contemporary of Jesus.

Amaleq13 · 08-03-2008, 11:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sschlichter

However, investigation of ancient papyri since has revealed that the same word is used to describe something "swelling up" like the internal organs of someone that hanged himself might do.*...
* (citing A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament)

Please provide a more specific citation. I have never encountered this claim before and have not been able to confirm it, myself.

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08-03-2008, 12:22 AM	#792
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	Luke and Josephus. Please identify the "conservative" scholars that you respect.

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