Vorkosigan

BTW, aChristian, conservative Daniel Wallace from the Dallas Theological Seminary has an article on the Synoptic Problem that explains why your position is not consider tenable.

http://www.bible.org./page.asp?page_id=669

As Wallace writes:

"It is quite impossible to hold that the three synoptic gospels were completely independent from each other. In the least, they had to have shared a common oral tradition. But the vast bulk of NT scholars today would argue for much more than that.3 There are four crucial arguments which virtually prove literary interdependence."

Hope this helps.

Mr. Aardvark

AChristian, you have repeated various forms of this argument throughout your interactions w/ the scholars here.

Why not take the time to write and post your case for the resurrection here for us to read? Set it forth and let us read it. But I think it is reasonable to ask that you make a case that doesn't engage in any blatant logical fallacies, question-begging is the one that immediately occurs to me in reading the discussion so far.

I am not sure that even if someone established the bodily resurrection of Christ that one should content themselves w/ the standard of finding "no problem" in believing that the gospel writers prophesized events before they occurred as a way of dealing w/ the issue of the apparent late authorship of these texts, especially since many of the appearances of these events in the Gospels don’t have the flavor of prophetic utterances but, rather, act as assumed historical context from which the Gospel narratives were written.

Be that as it may, establishing the literal resurrection of Christ would be feat enough and if can you do that, I am quite sure that many of the heavyweights here would cut you considerable slack on the rest. So why not prove it to us?

diana

Yes, Rick. I read that. That is one type of "appeal to authority." There are other types of "appeal to authority," though--which you are ignoring.

Here's one that makes it more clear, perhaps.

First of all, the basic definition of appeal to authority is this: In an appeal to authority, something is claimed to be true based on the expertise of an authority rather than objective facts. This is what you're doing, even if you're appealing to those who are authorities in the field in question, etc. If all you have for your argument is "authority X said Y," you are appealing to authority.

The appeal to authority, of course, is not always a fallacy. It is, however, if there is insufficient agreement (a valid minority qualifies), and if the authorities are biased, both of which apply in this case.

However, if you feel any given authority has made a particularly good argument, it would not be appealing to authority to relate his/her arguments for our consideration. I'm not suggesting you reinvent the wheel. I simply don't take any "authority's" word for anything when it comes to matters of religion, because it matters to me personally that I find the truth of the matter and stand on my own conclusions--and the historicity of Jesus qualifies as a religious matter, as we've already discussed--even if the authority in question appears to support the viewpoint I subscribe to at the moment.

Your earlier point about us having to accept some things is well-taken. The translation of the bible, for example. There was a time that people had no information available to study further to make sure the Church was providing them authentic scripture and a proper (or even close) translation of it. In such cases, one can only do what one can do. Sometimes, you are stuck appealing to authority. Even now, we can study the various translations and reasons for each translation, but we're still stuck assuming the "original Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek" is a fair and complete copy.

When the information is available for further study, however, and the person in question is content with what the authorities of his choice claim, deigning not to research the question further when the conclusions of those authorities are questioned, opting instead for "authority X claims this which contradicts what layman Y has said, therefore authority X automatically wins," that person appeals to authority. This appears to be what you're arguing in this case. While it can be a good shortcut, it is not infallible. If this was a valid "rule of reason," the world would still be flat and be the center of the universe.

Basically, authorities may be accepted and used as a valid argument until their methods, evidence and conclusion are questioned, at which point they must put up or shut up. This might be easier to see if you were the authority in question and someone was asking you to explain/defend your own conclusions. If you replied, "You don't know enough to question me" as an answer, you'd be appealing to authority (your own). The only reasonable answer to questions concerning your conclusions would be laying out your evidence and reasoning when asked. The same applies if you yourself aren't the authority in question, and you're just quoting someone you trust as well-educated on the subject and have no desire to look farther into it yourself.

"Authority X said Y" may be a valid reason for you to accept Y, but it is insufficient reason to argue for Y if your opponent does not accept Authority X's word for it.

d

Rick Sumner

1) You are still misunderstanding what an appeal to authority is, and what was being said at the outset, though I've better things to do than repeat myself ad nauseum.

2) Despite your repeated insistence about what I "seem to be arguing," I'm not arguing anything at all based on any authority of any kind.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Skeptical

I refer you to Hume on miracles. The only way a "miracle" can be said to occur is if it would be _more_ miraculous to say it did not occur. Why? Because the extreme weight of evidence will always be against a violation of the laws of nature since we all experience the laws of nature every day. (for example, we have all experienced that when someone dies, they stay dead) To overcome this extreme weight by appeal to personal experience would be difficult, but not impossible.

To oversome it in a historical record thousands of years old would be, IMO, next to impossible. Logic dictates that all else being equal, if you have to choose between 2 unlikely events, you choose the one that is more likely. It is almost always going to be more likely that a miracle did not occur in a historical account since the extreme weight of evidence is against it. You would have to demonstrate that it is more unlikely that human error accounts for these stories than that they actually occured. Since we know that human errors of this type occur often, and since none of us have ever actually seen someone rise from the dead, the only logical choice is to conclude human error. It's just that simple. That may not be emotionally satisfying for you, but it is the conclusion that logic dictates.

That's an assumption on your part. Let's focus on the resurrection stories. (this all assumes of course that the stories are accurate, which they are not, but I will assume they are for your argument). It is more than possible to survive being crucified. Josephus himself reports of this happening. If Jesus survived, there would be no large undertaking for him to have lived and talked with his disciples after the fact. The "ascending to heaven" part can easily be explained as a religious vision, these happen all the time in every culture.

You seem to continue to have this strange idea that humans don't make mistakes regarding visions that are not objectively real. That tales of this sort cannot be accounted for other than by saying they occured objectively. I can assure you, if you were to do a little research into this area, you would find that people in all times, in all cultures report visions of this sort on a near constant basis, even over long periods of time. That does not mean they occured, at most it would mean that people believed they occured.

Just because you keep saying it doesn't mean your right. I would surmise that you have done zero study in the area of what is generally called "cognitive error", what a lay person would term delusion or hallucination. People who have not investigated this tend to think that delusions of this kind are rare. In fact, they are extraordinarily common. They become more common when people are involved in very emotiional states, such as religious affectations or when they are under the sway of a charismatic leader. Hmm, sound like any stories you know?

You make these claims, but it is clear to me you are simply assuming it is true because in your experience, you don't have these sorts of visions. However, if you haven't researched the topic, how would you know? Arguments from personal experience are very evidentiarily weak. I provide several references to you below if you are interested that demonstrate how widespread these sorts of cognitive errors are.

Ok, first, as far as I am aware, the only people the NT claims "died for their belief" is Stephen. Paul never met Jesus, so he doesn't count and I am aware of no one else that the NT says "died for their belief". I don't think Stephen counts as "many".

However, let me again grant you leeway and assume that there were "many". Your argument _still_ doesn't hold because you make the error that the strength of belief tells us anything about the objective truth. I'll say it again, it simply does not. This isn't something I am just making up, Psychologists and Cultural Anthropolgists have been doing studies in this area for a long time, they have actual data on these phenomena and not just armchair, layman assumptions which is what you have.

All you are doing is making a bunch of assumptions about cognitive conditions of humans that you have done no research on just because it happens to support your belief system. If it makes you feel better to believe that your assumptions are accurate, then please continue in your self deception.

However, as someone who has actually done research on this topic, I can tell you that you are quite simply wrong. Don't take my word for it, here are some references for you:

Anomalistic Psychology: A study of Magical Thinking - Zusne and Jones

The Biology of Belief - Giovannoli

Religion Explained - Boyer

At a minimum, I highly encourage you to read Anomalist Psychology. It is the best single account I have found of the various cognitive errors that humans make all the time. This is actual research in the area, not speculation and assumption. Besides which it is a fascinating read.

Bottom line, all you are saying is that you, personally, think it is impossible that the "eyewitnesses" made serious cognitive errors because you, personally, don't make these kinds of errors and it is emotionally comforting to you to think they did not make errors. There are mountains of actual evidence by actual researchers in this field that demonstrates that humans make errors of this kind all the time, particularly under certain conditions, many of which are tied to religious experiences.

If you were not emotionally invested in your assumptions, who would you think was right? I think the answer is obvious.

Finally, it is almost surely irrelevant though. Even if I were to demonstrate to you that it is not only possible but likely that cognitive error would account for the stories in the NT, it would not change your worldview because I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that you came to your view by logic. Faith needs no logic to support it, so what your are arguing is an after the fact justification for your faith. It's fairly typical in apologetics which is where I'm sure you got this argument from. The problem of course is that all such arguments are very weak, and they don't really account for the belief at all. It would be much more honest if people would just say "it's an emotional belief based on faith, not reason", but many people just don't seem willing to admit that. But I digress.....

Skeptical

BTW, as I understand your argument, it is circular.

1) After you establish the resurrection, the NT stories are shown to be true

2) The resurrection is established, because the NT stories are true

This seems to be circular, but maybe its just me.

Of course, if you insert "the resurrection is true based on faith, not evidence", that neatly solves your problem, which is really what your argument essentially boils down to whether you admit it or not.

Chris Weimer

this has got to be the longest thread in a while...

diana

Always a possibility. If this is the case, the respectable response on your part would be to explain my error. As you've done nothing of the sort, opting instead to just say "you're wrong," I put no store by your overt dismissal of my position. Perhaps you, as a gentleman, can at least understand that.

This has not constituted what I'd consider an honest exchange of ideas. I've done my part, but alas. Both must play in order for the formula to work.

It's possible also that I'm wrong here. Again, your handwave over it does nothing to support your position or educate me on my error.

Perhaps you realize that repeating "you misunderstand" or "you're wrong" doesn't contribute anything worthwhile to the discussion, in which case, I agree that I have better things to do than read such meaningless repetition ad nauseum, so we are of one mind on that score.

In that case, thanks for arguing nothing at all and helping me consolidate my thoughts on the matter and make my point. Foils are so hard to come by these days.

Happy New Year, Rick.

d

Amaleq13

But did you consider it good evidence before God revealed himself to you or after?

I ask because I have never encountered a convert who embraced their faith purely by strength of the more-or-less objective evidence. Instead, I have, time and again, encountered Christian converts who came to consider the evidence compelling only after they had some sort of personal revelation.

This would appear to support my suspicion. God's help must precede the honesty that you consider necessary to accurately understand the evidence. That is exactly what I said earlier. Your conclusions from the evidence are only possible if one starts out with faith. It is your faith, not reason, that allows you to grant a rather substantial benefit of the doubt whenever there exists even the most tenuous possibility of support for your beliefs.

Unfortunately, I consider this approach to be too susceptible to error to be relied upon due to its circular nature.

I came to my conclusions because I made a conscious effort to consider the evidence without regard to my personal preferences or prior beliefs. It is only human nature to hope for and expect to find support for what we already believe. While completely ignoring them probably cannot be accomplished with 100% success, it seems to me that making the effort is the most rational way to ensure that one does not always conclude in agreement with one's prior-held beliefs.

The evidence is, on its own, simply not sufficient to convince.

Mr. Aardvark

That undoubtedly is the rule.

I did meet a guy once who claimed that he was converted because of a philosophy prof's explanation of the Ontological Proof, which he found convincing. Strange but true.