chrisengland

Ok why is it unlikely?
There are lots of things that only happen once which historians are pretty confident happened.
Just asking politely' don't mean to sound rude.
Chris

Athrond

I can't see how the boat is related to the bible?

Amaleq13

Why are "supernatural" events unlikely? Are you kidding?

They appear contrary to everyday experience as well as the laws of physics which seem to govern that same everyday experience.

Do you imagine "supernatural" events to be common?

And is it not evidence that leads them to that conclusion?

chrisengland

If a book that is historically very accurate says a miricle happened that is evidence isn't it?
I,m just saying if book is historically very accurate then if your going to say well I don't think those bits happened then you have to give a reason why.
As I said I think part of it comes down to how good the arguments for God are' if they are good then that would make the chances of a miricle higher.
Chris

Toto

There is no book that can be shown to be historically accurate (in a scientific sense) that claims that a miracle happened.

You have heard the claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof? If a miracle did happen, we would want some evidence beyond an anonymous religious text that can't even be dated accurately. We would at least want an eyewitness account and investigation by a trained observer who documented the events, the participants, and the reasons to believe that a miracle occurred.

But one of the reasons we don't believe in miracles is that every time a modern investigator tries to doucment a supernatural event, it turns out to be either fraud or self-deception - usually the latter.

Is there any reason to think that God would fiddle with the laws of nature just once, two thousand years ago, and never try it again?

DFrechetteNH

Do you think Santa Claus is real too? There are lots of stories about him in many languages and cultures. I've seen books and movies about it.

How about ANY of the greek gods? They've got statues of them. Somebody MUST have posed for them, right?

How about the egyptian gods? Once again, very old paintings MUST confirmed THEY existed, right?

Do you really think David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear? I saw the video. Or do you think it was a trick in which Copperfield mandated the conditions in which you are allowed to witness the event thus creating a false reality?

Whether or not Jesus was a real person or not is irrelevant. It comes down to whether or not you believe he was magical. I do not. Most likely he was one of many guys back then, as today, preaching about the end of the world. Maybe he had a better show and public relations crew than the others. Being martyred probably helped too as we tend to immortalize those who die young.

When it comes to the Dead Sea scrolls, you are still talking about OT, which, if writtend in the 1st and 2nd century are still copies of copies of copies. The OT is old history by the time the 1st century has rolled around, so I don't see your point at all. All the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls show is that in the 1st century people were writing down stories similar to the ones we find in the OT. Big deal.

I don't want to go off topic but why is that you believe one thing over another? By what criteria does reniia decide what is true and what isn't? Is it just a 'feeling'? Common sense? Everybody else believes it?

Lastly, my point... again... about the Kennedy assasination as an analogy is to try, albeit badly, to demonstrate that with only 40 years of spin and differing opinions about what happened, the actual truth is muddied up to the point where the average non-critically thinking person is unsure of the events.

If that can happen in just 40 years with LOTS of original sources to go by, what do you think happens after 2000 years and NO original sources to go by?

Amaleq13

No. How did you establish the book was, otherwise, "historically very accurate" if not be accepting the evidence which supports its claims? Or did you just establish the first claim and simply assumed the rest were equally true? See the problem with what you are suggesting?

And I have but I really need no other reason than the absence of supporting evidence.

Donn10

I disagree with the position of the OP. IMO it's a story about a guy trying to make a point with an analogy using conventional wisdom. If you could show that it was common practice to put new wine in old wine skins around 25AD and they rarely broke then you might have something.

Moving on...
The argument as to the voracity of the bible from historical accuracy won't hold wine either. Just look at modern fiction. Just about everything in one of the recent Godzilla movies is accurate. NYC exists, Madison Square Gardens exists, tall buildings in NYC exist, the trucks used to bring the fish to the intersection exist, the infrastructure to obtain a large number of fish exist, cameramen with portable video equipment exist, the weapons used to attack Godzilla exist. We know that man made radioactive pollution exists and can cause mutation. We also know that at some point in earths history, giant "lizards" existed. But it would be unwise to conclude that a giant lizard attacked NYC. It's equally unwise to conclude from any historical accuracy in the bible that a god exists.

The dead sea scrolls prove that the books of the OT existed at or before 150BC but does not prove the existence of a god.

chrisengland

Knowbody was claiming godzilla was real.

Donn10

It was an analogy. Just because a story makes reference to real people, places or things does not mean that everything in the story is true. The point of my analogy was that historical accuracy only shows that the person who wrote the story was familiar with the region and culture which is portrayed in the story.