ercatli

Yes, I think that's fair.

I agree about consistency. A miracle by definition is a rare occurrence relatively. But as to odds, I think you are right if you limit yourself to science because science has defined itself as limited to the natural. One can't see what one's closed one's eyes to.

I don't think so. The main reasons for believing in God, apart from the historical Jesus, are based on the central core of reality - the origin and design of the universe, the rationality, ethics, freewill and humanness of the human race, and so on. They aren't going away any time soon, and (IMO) naturalism can't explain them adequately. But that's another story and another thread.

I'm not aware of any sweeping conclusions I draw.

I think those are dogma statements, and you'll find some of them right here. Christian faith as most people I know understand it is based on both reason and faith. But again, another time, another thread (maybe).

I think I'll be concluding on this thread soon, but I'll wish you well and thank you for a polite and interesting discussion. :wave:

ercatli

A big question, mate, and one that's occupied us for 14 pages without doing more than scratching the surface. Quick answer ....

I don't think scholars say "that Jesus said anywhere near everything that the Gospels say that he said". Most scholars look at documents and conclude that some parts are historical, some parts are not, and some parts they don't know for sure. In the case of the Gospels, the "not sure" bits may be because there is not enough evidence to make a definitive judgment, because the writers mixed up the facts and their beliefs in ways that can't easily be untangled, or because those bits contain miracles that some people can believe and some can't, but none can decide on historical study alone.

Once (or "if") we accept the judgment of scholars, the rest is personal judgment. I am happy to conclude from the scholars that Jesus did indeed exist and he did and said many of the things attributed to him. I am also willing to accept the historians judgment of where there appear to be contradictions, e.g. in the birth stories. (They may not actually be contradictions, but they appear to be.) On that basis, I am happy to accept the writers on face value, that they wrote honestly about what eye-witnesses had passed down to them, perhaps even that they were eyewitnesses themselves. So I trust the rest on the basis of the bits that historians can endorse.

As a Johnny Skeptic, I guess you won't agree, but perhaps you can at least see how I get to my conclusion?

Thanks.

ercatli

I didn't read this until after I posted, but you will now know that you were mistaken in what you thought.

1. I can explain my reasoning.
2. I don't appeal to authorities that agree with my views, but to the consensus of all experts. How can you honestly say this? It is others on this forum who do that - don't trust anyone except Richard Carrier. Talk about pots and kettles!
3. I do question their methodology, but as I'm a non-expert, I have to accept most of it. The alternative is to reject it all and rely on my own lack of expertise, something others do here but I do not.

I know this is an adversarial situation, but I am extremely disappointed in how you have distorted this. The Secular Web website and library is very fair-minded, giving time and respect to alternative viewpoints. I am really sorry and surprised that you would so depart from that ethos.

ercatli

I don't know anything about that program. I got the facts by reading, as follows:

M Grant: I compiled them from his book, "Jesus, an historians review of the gospels", pages 50 (forgive sins), 168-179 (most of the rest).

E Sanders & NT Wright: from in MA Powell's "The Jesus Debate", which summarises the conclusions of 5 leading scholars including these two.

Johnny Skeptic

In order to try to simplify things, let's take one example, what Jesus said about why he would die and rise from the dead. Isn't it true that there is not reasonable proof regarding 1) who wrote the texts, at least most of them, 2) when the texts were first written, 3) where the writers got their information from, and 4) how many later changes might have been made to the texts?

Regarding item 1, as far as I know, there is not a sizeable consensus among scholars regarding who wrote the texts. Regarding item 2, as far as I know, the majority of scholars agree that the texts were written decades after the supposed facts. Regarding item 3, as far as I know, the majority of scholars have not stated where the writers got their information from. Regarding item 4, as far as I know, it is often very difficult to be reasonably certain regarding the issue of interpolations.

Regarding what Jesus said, in my opinion, unknown authors, dates of composition decades after the supposed facts, unknown sources, and the issue of interpolations discredits Christianity to a great extent.

Regarding the miracles that Jesus supposedly performed, I refer you to a thread at http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=270530 that is titled "Maybe the historical Jesus really did do miracles." If you wish, you can make posts in that thread, or if you wish I can cut and paste arguments that I used in that thread to this thread.

I am an agnostic. It is not my position that supernatural events cannot occur, but is it my position that there is not reasonable evidence that any have occured. The New Testament says that Jesus' fame spread all over Syria and beyond after he performed many miracles. Let's assume that the texts claimed that Jesus had a pet pig that always travelled with him, that the pig had wings, and that the pig frequently flew around him. If that had happened, do you think that the Roman government in Palestine would have heard about it and investigated the claims?

In your opinion, is a flying pig any more unusual than the miracles that Jesus performed? If so, why?

bacht

I don't argue for or against God, there's no way to prove it either way, and many have tried.

You seem to be blissfully ignorant of the work done in psychology around things like confirmation bias and anthropocentrism. It does seem to be true that humans possess the most advanced awareness of the cosmos among earth's creatures, but that doesn't mean that our conclusions about how it all started and what it means are true. This is really a form of egotism.

Ethics starts as pragmatic rules for maximizing group cohesion. Putting a divine gloss on it doesn't mean anything. Wherever people live together they need guidelines for behaviour agreed upon by the community because humans aren't born with instinctive restrictions, we have to learn these.

show_no_mercy

I'm just pointing out your apparent hypocrisy. Case in point: you think that the gospel of John was written by the disciple John, when the consensus DOES NOT agree with you.

So if this is your obvious agenda, then there's no point for conversation.

Amaleq13

Agreed and that's why I've been asking how, exactly, the alleged 16 accurate locations in John suggest that the narrative content is also accurate or provide additional indication of at least one early source for the final product.

This is the hasty leap that ercatli seems to be making and attributing to the "consensus". One of John's authors or editors had a source for the lost 7 pools. Why should we assume that any other portion of the text also comes from that source? We obtain nothing but complaints that we're disrespecting the scholars by questioning the basis for the contention. :huh:

Amaleq13

No, I'm not going to use the woefully inadequate Amazon search engine to wade through a book so as to support your contentions. Are you kidding? Get off your ass and bring the information here and quit trying to get others to do your homework!!

The fact is you cannot justify the illogical leap from 16 accurately described locations to a claim for accurate descriptions of Jesus or his teachings. You cannot justify the belief of certain scholars that there really was an empty tomb because you do not know the basis for their conclusion. You cannot justify the ridiculous notion that unique details suggest an early source or that they suggest historical reliability. You simply hope and believe that the scholars you rely upon can do so.

That you call anyone else "anti-intellectual" is hypocrisy at its worst.

Tharn

I just did. Once again, my argument that they can't come back to life is the millions and billions of dead bodies (of all species) that we've observed rotting away without a single one of them ever ever ever coming back to life. All by itself this is overwhelming evidence for the proposition.

But it gets better. Not only do we have an enormous observation set to induct from, but we also have massively, massively consilient bodies of knowledge from neurology, cellular biology, and thermodynamics which together form a cast iron induction that dead bodies can’t come back to life after three days. It is a nomological certainty that they cannot.

If anything is certain, this conclusion is certain. Of course, what you were actually asking for was not nomolgical impossibility, but modal or logical impossibility. Apologists train their readers to “back the skeptic into a corner” by getting them to admit that they “can’t disprove the naked logical possibility that they might be wrong.” But it can be seen instantly how fundamentally disingenuous this move is. It’s special pleading of the most obvious kind.

You can, must, and do accept this level of evidence for any other proposition because you use induction to form the most parsimonious, consilient world-model. And you insist that everyone else accept it. In this very thread you have supplied arguments which implicitly rely on parsimonious inductions such as “earlier documents are more reliable than later documents” (because we observe them to be and have good theoretical reasons for them to be) and “documents describing accurate locations are reliable in other details” (because this is allegedly a good induction from our observations of upright apes writing squiggles on paper). Of all the responses you’ve received so far, not one of them has tried to pull shenanigans like “prove that it is metaphysically impossible for earlier documents to be unreliable” or “prove that it is logically impossible for documents with accurate locations to be inaccurate about other details.” That is because your respondents are not special-pleading.

The relevant question is whether we can be more confident on the grounds of parsimonious induction about the reports of anonymous 2nd century manuscripts than we can be about our knowledge of neurology, biology, and thermodynamics – which induction is stronger, and which induction would do more epistemic damage if it were violated? And when you phrase it this way, the answer becomes obvious.