Skeptical

With all due respect, you are simply begging the question WRT disproving the NT.

First, how would one _know_ a certain body was Jesus in the first place? There's no objective way to verify this. We have no dental records, no living witnesses, no x-rays. We don't even know for sure within a reasonable degree of accuracy where one would look for remains. This is a non argument.

Also, my question is how would one _prove_ or, at least demonstrate with a great degree of certainty, that the gospels weren't written by eyewitnesses. You are simply restating in the specific what I asked in the general.

The reason I ask is that it would seem that the vast majority of scholars, even those who are Christian, already agree that the gospels were not written by eyewitnesses, yet you continue to believe that they were. How would someone show you that they weren't? What would constitute evidence that would convince you? Please be specific.

Apparently you don't believe the vast amount of reasons given by NT scholars as to why they believe the NT books were not written until the late 1st or early 2nd century, so what _would_ you believe?

Also, you still are not addressing my core questions. I gave specific examples of what would be evidence for divinity in the NT, why does no such evidence exist in the NT?

I also am very curious for your answer regarding raising of the dead. I am not aware of any reason to be found in the NT as to why current Christians should not be able to raise the dead since there are reports that not only Jesus, but his apostles could also raise the dead. Please explain.

Finally, in my view, the argument about whether the apostles believed they were dying for a lie is irrelevant. I stated that I don't think they thought it was lie, it is only common sense that most people would not die for something they knew was not true.

Your continuing to argue this point is, I would posit, just a distraction from having to answer what I consider to be questions that are harder to respond to.

Atticus_Finch

First, with respect to your second point, don't set me up as that strawman. Read my previous posts and you will not find any reliance on a simplistic assertion that "God did it".

Second, I do not suggest, nor have I ever, that supernatural events are normative. The bible does not suggest that they are. Therefore, you create a false test for the accuracy of the scriptures. Further, you suggest that you will not believe in the supernatural nature of any event unless there is NO POSSIBLE natural explanation. That leads to rank speculation and does not deal with the evidence head on. Multiple witnesses attested to the resurrection and died for those beliefs. The Roman records we have suggest that the Christians only had to recant in order to save themselves. Are you aware of any other similar event in history?

Regards,

Finch

Hans

1) I don't believe I have accussed anyone of working on rank speculation.

2) I haven't made any assertion. I offered a reasonable possibility.

3) You missed the question entirely. I'll try again.

What do we have to let us know that they (Peter, John, and Matthew) are not fictional and the facts of which they speak are true?

Skeptical

Actually, the NT suggests that it was normal for Jesus and his disciples to perform supernatural acts. Spontaneous healings of cripples and the raising of the dead occur multiple times in a short span of Jesus' ministry.

You suggest one should deal with the evidence of supernaturalism "head-on", but you don't list anything that remotely looks like evidence for supernaturalism.

You say "multiple witnesses attested to the resurrection". I think the problems with this statement have been repeated ad nasuem, but even taken at face value, it has no veracity. The cases of people being mistaken throughout history, especially in credulous times, are, to say the least, ample. (Witch burnings are a very powerful example of this)

You say the Christians only had to recant to save themselves and are we aware of any other similar events in history. You mean, are we aware of any instances of people willing to die for their beliefs, especially _religious_ beliefs? I find it hard to believe that this is a serious question, but I'll answer it anyway.

Look at modern day Muslim fundamentalists. They are perfectly willing to die for their beliefs. Can there be any doubt that if the US were suddenly to react toward Mulims as the Romans did toward Christians, that many muslims would die for their beliefs? What does this prove other than that people are capable of holding strong beliefs? Are you saying that strength of belief is a judge for the veracity of that belief? Many people believe with all their heart they have been abducted by aliens, are they right just because they believe it so strongly?

The Romans from time to time persecuted many non-Christian religions, they seemed to take pleasure in this. Were the Pagans just as correct in their beliefs as the Christians since they were persecuted for their beliefs as well?

What is your point? None of this bears the slightest resemblance to an objective test of the veracity of the NT. Is this what you consider "strong evidence"?

Atticus_Finch

Once again the responses misunderstands this point. It does not apply to all believers through time. It only applies to the apostles. The question is are you aware of any other example where people who were in a postition to KNOW that it was a lie and died for it anyways.

Regards,

Finch

Skeptical

I must be dense because I simply do not understand why you keep repeating a question which is irrelevant. Let me try again.

The question, quite simply, is not what "position" someone is in with regard to knowledge, its what did they _believe_. Your argument seems to boil down to:

1) The apostles knew Jesus
2) The apostles would have known if he was divine or not
3) The apostles would not have died for their beliefs if they didn't believe Jesus was divine
4) The apostles _did_ die for their beliefs, therefore Jesus must have been divine

The problem is that even granting a great amount of latitude in allowing you to make claims that the NT stories are reasonably accurate, number 2 simply does not follow. Perhaps Jesus could perform miracles, but he wasn't divine. Perhaps people in the 1st century lived in a world of credulity very different from our own where everything worked by magic and events that were very normal were interpreted as being supernatural. (again, I refer you to the example of the Witch Hunts, which only occured for the most part 400 years ago or less, nothing close to the 2,000 for the NT)

Let me restate the above differently:

1) The apostles knew Jesus
2) The apostles believed he was divine
3) The apostles would not have died for their beliefs if they didn't believe Jesus was divine
4) The apostles _did_ die for their beliefs, therefore they must have believed he was divine

Notice that 4 is just a restatement of 2. All that can be deduced from this is that the apostles _believed_ Jesus was divine. "Witnesses" at witch trials in the 16th century believed they had seen people flying on brooms and fornicating with the devil. Does this make it real because they believed it? History has shown very strongly that belief is a poor judge for the veracity of a claim EVEN FOR PEOPLE WHO CLAIM TO FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE OF AN EVENT. This is especially true the more credulous the people and the more supernatural the event or events in question.

Your argument is not evidence for veracity, it is evidence of belief. One can deduce little of the former from the latter.

If your argument is those closest to the events believed strongly they were true, I would even grant that proposition, but I fail to see how that is relevant to determining veracity. There are simply too many cases of supernatural claims of witnesses which turned out not to be accurate to accept any such claims at face value without at least _some_ sort of corraborating evidence.

Belief is not evidence of fact, it is evidence of belief.

Incidentally, I'm still waiting for an answer on why modern Christians cannot raise the dead if Jesus' followers in the NT can do it.

Baloo

A parable, of sorts, might be appropriate.

George, Larry and Phil go on a fishing trip. They see a bright UFO (that is, an object unidentified to themselves). They go home, tell their friends and families about it (adding a few embellishments here and there, innocently enough - who wants to tell a boring light in the sky?). Their friends repeat the stories to yet a wider circle of friends, placing emphasis on the already added embelishments (often necessary to justify the telling of second-hand anectdotes). The stories circulate thus, and George, Larry, and Phill get more attention, and begin to draw vast amounts of skepticism. In face of this, they begin incorporating each-other's embelishments into each-other's stories (for the sake of keeping the story consistent). Soon, they are overwhelmed with people who have naively accepted their stories at face value, and dedicate THEIR lives to what George, Larry, and Phil, deep-down, know to be mostly half-truths, exaggerations, and yes, even a few white lies. People begin pilgrimages to the observation point. Other sightings are reported, and other reports embellished. The movement grows. A communist government, ruling over the lands, decides to "nip this one in the bud" and brings the three to trial for a crime against the state, with a penalty of execution, unless they recanted and said that all embellishments were false, and theat they had truly seen nothing more than a bright light.

G, L and P, having told their story (exaggertions, embellishments, lies and all) so many times, having sworn to its truth to so many people so close to them, having savored the taste of fame and popularity, having felt the complete respect and reverence of the masses for each word they spoke, could not conceive of a life with all of this removed, a life where they were not respected but actually despised, not revered but spit upon, a life where their loved ones - hurt by the lies they told and unable to trust them anymore - would certainly leave them behind. Suicide is very common in our society, and comes about when a person decides that death is preferable to life. And Geroge, Phil, and Larry had unintentionally painted themselves into a bleak corner - and made a fateful decision: they would rather die as heroes standing up to the powers that be, than live the rest of their lives as dipicable, cowardly liars.

That, AF, is human nature at work. No part is unbelievable, no part is supernatural. And yet it concludes with three very rational men dying for a lie about an event for which they were eyewitnesses.

Did your "eyewitnesses" (or people who claimed to be eyewitnesses) die for a lie? Probably not, per se. I'm betting they died for the inability to to come clean.

not a theist

I often see such assertions repeated as if we could be sure that all of the apostles actually died for their beliefs. There are a number of problems with it however.
1. For the most part, we have no good evidence that most actually did die for their beliefs. Most of the accounts are late and unreliable. If you care to offer the accounts, I will demonstrate why that is. At most, of the eyewitnesses, we can only be fairly confident that Peter and the Jameses and perhaps John were martyred. Even in these cases, the evidence is not great.
2. Those who were killed such as James may not have had any chance to recant. Once the ball was rolling, they may have had no way out. You seem to assume a scenario where they had the chance to recant. This is reading the situation of the later persecutions into the earlier ones. I think that this is highly doubtful in the majority of the early, eyewitness cases. In any case, you would have to demonstrate that they would have had the chance to recant once they were taken for execution.

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: not a theist ]</p>

Sojourner553

________________________________________
Originally posted by Atticus_Finch:

The question is are you aware of any other example where people who were in a postition to KNOW that it was a lie and died for it anyways.
___________________________________________

Of course they believed it

So did the apostles (or equivalents) of Mohammed, Joseph Smith, and the Reverend Moon...

Does that make their doctrines true? You need to be consistent you realize.

Actually the evidence points to the followers of Jesus believeing in a Jewish version of a messiah -- similar to a king David, where God grants supernatural powers -- sort of like a superman.

The trinity, spirits, heaven in a sky after birth,virgin birth, resurrections -- these are all from EARLIER Greek religions -- the mystery religions.

The Greeks re-interpreted the events years after Jesus died. Proof?

*Why is James the brother of Jesus mostly expunged from the New Testament? Theologians hate the book of James because it attributes no supernatural powers to Jesus.

Why did Jesus' family nor anyone from his home town not believed in his powers.

See site for citations:
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/JERCHRIS.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/JERCHRIS.TXT</a>

or
Section I Chapter 6 from:
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html</a>

====================

Your argument sounds like Josh McDowell's Trilemma. See the refutation for this in

(half way down the page)
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/RESPONSE.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/RESPONSE.TXT</a>

Sojourner

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

ex-preacher

According to the Bible (not always a reliable source) only one apostle was killed: James, the son of Zebedee. If you'll re-read Acts 12, you'll see that he was not killed for refusing to recant belief in the resurrection of Jesus. His execution, according to Acts, was purely political. There is only one other Christian martyr in the New Testament: Stephen (see Acts 7). It does not appear that he ever claimed to have been an eyewitness.