figuer

Why wouldn't the same criteria apply to the miracles of Jesus?? He had a team...he evidently was an expert in suggestion and crowd pleasing...we have no evidence how much long term organic improvement occurred.

Cheerful Charlie

I would not be sure if the Vespasian stuff was staged, but if we read Lucian's Alexander the Miracle Mongerer, we find that some people did in fact stage fake miracles. We do read that the ancient Roman empire at that time swarmed with itinerent Jewish exorcists and faith healers. I am sure a lot of these were no more than the equivalent of modern day faith healers. This stuff continually is reborn in some new form or the other, witness mesmer's creation of hypnotism and alledged cures from that.

We do read later the sneering comments of Christian writers who claimed that during the destruction of pagan temples, trick passageways, tunnels and door swere found that allowed the priests of these temples to stage all sorts of trickery and fake miracules, opening of doors without obvious aid of human hands and like.
Fakery was not unknown.

And of course we have the baleful history of fake Christian relics and miracle cures involving these which by the middle ages was a big racket and big money for the Catholic church.

http://www.abrock.com/Greece-Turkey/ephesus.html

The story of Paul in Ephesus is told in Acts 19:1-20:1. Acts says that he went first to the synagogue, but Ephesus has yet to yield any synagogue remains. From there he moved to the hall of Tyrannus for his ministry of preaching and healing. Paul called his hearers to join a new community, one stripped of ethnicity, and built on self sacrifice and mutual helpfulness.
Out of almost three years, Acts details only two incidents to highlight what Paul encountered in Ephesus. The city was known as a center for magic and miracles and the first story is about itinerant Jewish exorcists who tried to heal in the name of Jesus as Paul did, but were unsuccessful (Acts 19:13-16). Later a number of converted magicians burned their books on the magic arts. (19:19).

The Asclepian temples were such a draw that they were destroyed by Christians, ancient tablets from these detail numerous miracle cures. Dozens of temples of minor gods offered cures for ailments, some were incorporated into Christainity as Christian saints. Saintly men like Apolloinus of Tyana were reputed to be powerful miracle workers.

Magical amulets were popular, and had been since earliest times.

We see some of that in the gospels, just touching the hem of Jesus's coat was enough to effect a cure. The disciples of Jesus report demons and illnesses were curable by their efforts after Jesus sent them forth. The air was thick with superstition and faith healing during the age of Jesus.

And this stuff goes back to the old testement, Elisha resurrecting a dead person and other miracles.

Its little wonder that this stuff was attached to Jesus by anonymous gospel writers.

CC

Johnny Skeptic

If supernatural means accomplished by intelligent non-humans, I propose that all supernatural claims be rejected unless new and better evidence becomes available. If supernatural events sometimes happen that are caused by intelligent non-humans, what is the intent of the beings who cause them to occur? Do the beings wish to establish a reasonably verifiable cause/correlation? Fundamentalist Christians would of course say "yes," and of course I say "no." In my opinion, an intelligent non-human who was able to cause supernatural events to happen, and wanted people to know that he was able to do that, would do much more to convince people than Jesus supposedly did.

waked

Maybe the first question to be asked is what is the point of performing a miracle?
If the answer is that the miracle occurs to show the greatness of God .then God must do all what he could to preserve enough evidence so that every body in any time and over the ages can see and feel this miracle and in this case we don’t have to go searching for rational explanations or any evidence from sinful humans.
A miracle must be a self proven occurrence.

GakuseiDon

What the heck do "intelligent non-humans" have to do with my response??? Johnny, do you see how you ignore my question, and then just return to a theme that you continually bring up -- in this case, that God should provide more verifiable evidence -- regardless of the thread topic? Derailing your own thread is one thing, but that you do it so often in others is frustrating, and quite rude, even if unintended.

Do you want to discuss the topic that you raised in the OP? If so, save the "Why doesn't God provide more verifiable evidence?" crap for its own thread. (It's a reasonable question btw, but NOT IN NEARLY EVERY DAMN THREAD!) God has no place in this thread, just as facts have no place in Jesus Mythicism (apologies to the Simpsons). Note that if you don't want to talk about the topic, I'll put you back on to Ignore for a while, and then urge everyone on every thread you try to derail to Ignore you, until you start actually responding to the thread topics.

Now, I think that we should examine supernatural claims in religious texts in the same way that we examine non-supernatural claims -- by taking into consideration bias, closeness of source, etc. IOW, in the exact same way. What do you think? Let's do an example: Assume that you were an intelligent non-human assessing these claims in a religious text: Jesus turning water into wine, and Jesus giving a sermon on a Mount. How would you go about assessing them, and how would your assessment vary between the supernatural claim and the non-supernatural one? (To be honest, I suspect that you never really wanted to talk about how we, i.e. people should assess supernatural claims, but you just wanted to bring up YET AGAIN what you think the Sky Wizard should do. But please prove me wrong, by sticking to the OP)

ETA: To the mods: yeah, I know I'm close to the border in my comments to Johnny about his posts. But ye gads! the guy irritates me like a 100 mosquitoes in a sleeping bag. However, I'll let this one be my last on the topic of his posting style.

GakuseiDon

Hmmm... so then how would you assess a non-supernatural claim in a religious text?

andrewcriddle

Some of the reported miracles would be more easily explained this way than others eg it is difficult to explain claims of resurrection by suggestion.

About long term evidence Quadratus according to Eusebius says
Quadratus supposedly wrote in the reign of Hadrian.

How reliable this tradition is is another matter.

Andrew Criddle

Johnny Skeptic

You did not like my previous reply, so let me try again. Here is my revised reply:

I propose that people reject all supernatural claims pending the possible future availabity of better evidence that supernatural events occur.

My first reason is evidential. My second reason is philosophical. Regarding my first reason, like many other skeptics, I do not believe that the historical record supports even one tangible supernatural claim in any text. Regarding my second reason, I believe that philosophical evidence against TANGIBLE supernatural claims is better than any other kind of evidence. An important issue regarding philosophical evidence is INTENT. If supernatural beings exist, and cause tangible supernatural events to occur, why do they do it? Do they want people to establish the correct cause/correlation? Apparently not since if they did they could easily show up and do things that humans are not able to do. That would not prove who they were, but it would prove that intelligent beings exist who are able to do tangible things that humans are not able to do. Regarding the still unsettled issue of identity, conclusions that people made would depend upon how much additional evidence, if any, the beings were willing to provide. The more evidence, the better. Logically, the best decisions are the best informed decisions. As a liberal Christian, identity does not make any difference to you, but it does to fundamentalist Christians, and as you know, opposing fundamentalist Christianity is my main reason for debating at these forums.

Do you believe that an intelligent being(s) exists in the world who has done many tangible things that humans are not able to do? If so, upon what evidence do you base your assumption, and what are some of these things? If not, upon what evidence do you base your assumption?

It is not so much my approach that you do not like as it is philosophy. Philosophy presents all theists with insurmountable problems, as you discovered for yourself at the General Religious Discussions Forum. As long as people love their neighbors, what do you care whether they believe in God or not? Are you not aware that many of the skeptics who you debate love their neighbors? Actions are more important than beliefs, right?

I am not convinced that you are as liberal as you claim to be. You once said at the General Religious Discussions Forum that you do your part to oppose fundamentalist Christianity. Do you have any evidence to back up your claim? When is the last time that you debated a fundamentalist Christian at these forums about anything? Isn't the real truth that you do not believe that fundamentalist Christianity is a threat to American society? Which would you prefer, that all skeptics remained skeptics, or became fundamentalist Christians a la Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell? Have you ever visited some of the fundamentalist Christian web sites that say many hateful things about homosexuals? Do you approve of such tactics? Have you ever publicly opposed such tactics?

By the way, I do not care if you put me on your ignore list.

waked

We are not discussing non – supernatural claims are we?
And to be clear I don’t believe in miracles.

Johnny Skeptic

Ok, using those criteria, what are your conclusions regarding the claims that Jesus healed people, and that he rose from the dead? Please include an analysis of how you used "bias, closeness of source, etc." to arrive at your conclusions. I would like to know what you meant by "etc."