Sauron

That Nomad has tried to defend these things is not disputed. So, your point above, although oft-repeated, is nonetheless off-topic and irrelevant.

What is true is that during his defense of these issues (and other topics), that is when we all see Nomad employ his famous double standard: he wants his sources, his texts, and his authors treated differently and less stringently than if the subject were something else. He, like you, lacks the necessary evidence to play in this cardgame. So you both try to convince the other players to lower the minimum bid, and thus allow your paltry selves into the game. Of course that doesn't work, and the resulting tantrum is not a pretty sight.

Not quite. He often performs circular reference to the select few conservative scholars that he cherishes.

That is not the saem as (and is a far cry from) "adopts the research of the finest New Testament scholars available."
Nice try.

Wow. You do sound pathetic here, Layman. YOU'RE A LIAR! YOU'RE A LIAR! YOU'RE ALL LIARS! Next thing we know, you'll accuse us of trying to eavesdrop on your brainwaves using antennae made of tinfoil.

Unfortunately, your statement about DennisM is not true. Dennis never said that Nomad fails to support his positions. What Dennis said is that whenever Nomad does provide "support" and ask his audience to accept his "support", that "support" is inconsistent and reeks of special pleading.

And, in a larger sense, Dennis said that Nomad wants his audience to accept a lower standard of evidence for the claims that he cares about (xtianity, resurrection, etc.) than would be required for other claims in history.

You've done a lot of witness-badgering in your responses. For example, your constant petulant whine of "Show me where Nomad said that", when everyone knows that a person's intentions are discernible through the focus and framing of an argument, in addition to explicit declarations.

Oh, well. That settles it, then. One credulous christian discussed it with another one, and they agree.

1. There are no "independent" accounts. All accounts contain substantial problems, or reasons to doubt their validity.

2. Being early is not a sufficient insulator against error or honest mistake. Nor does it suffice for the claim of being accurate. Earliness (for lack of a better term) does not prevent the development of legendary material.

3. Reliance on women is just another form of the criterion of embarassment. Which, as we saw earlier, is indistinguishable from factual error.


Flatly incorrect. Most historians do not acccept anything like this. Unless you count hallucination or vision, as a form of "resurrection account genuinely experienced".

Again, flatly incorrect, unless within the above stated parameters.

Sauron

How pathetically lame.

In both cases (Paul and Caesar), the storyteller had something to be gained, or lost, depending upon how the story was "spun". The question of whether or not Paul voluntarily became a xtian, or a missionary, is therefore irrelevant.

There was still something to be gained here, if the story could be spun properly: Paul could (in his mind) do a good work, win souls for Christ, etc. And there was something to be lost, if the story were mis-handled, and not spun the way the storyteller intended (i.e., Paul would make a mistake, lose souls for Christ who might have been won over, etc.).

So by trying to say that Caesar couldn't escape his reputation, while Paul could exit being a xtian, you fail to account for the above possibilty of loss--a possibility that Paul would have wanted to avoid. It is not necessary that both actors have the exact same kind of exposure to damage here. All that is necessary is that they have some kind of exposure to damage, and that they both desire to avoid that damage.

It might also be pointed out that since Paul's decision to become a xtian was a past matter of fact by this time, he did have a lot to lose: he could not simply turn his back at that point, and become the laughingstock of the region.

Your response is hugely and sorely irrelevant, Layman.

Benjamin Franklin

Hi Omnedon1

Can you explain this to me. It might have be discussed earlier but I did not have the chance to read the earlier discussion.

Thanks

Tjun Kiat

sentinel00

Irrelevant nit-picky correction:

It was "good morning."

Sauron

Hi back

Did you change your screen name, from Tjun Kiat Keo, to Ben Franklin?

Anyhow, the criterion of embarrassment says (briefly) that any claim that is derogatory or embarrassing has a high likelihood of being true. This is because (or so it is claimed) that most people wouldn't voluntarily relate stories that put them in a bad light.

There are several problems with this criterion:

• It is an evaluation of the storyteller's motive, not the veracity of the claim - by this I mean, a person would probably avoid volunteering information that was embarrassing. But that doesn't mean that the information is necessarily factually true. The person may be sincerely convinced that the information is true; but that is not the same thing. Let me give you a concrete example: suppose I had been told all my life that I was a bastard child, an orphan, left because my parents did not want me. I might be terribly embarrassed by this information, and thus when I relate the story to other people, it is unlikely that I would be lying. After all, if I were to lie, I would probably come up with a lie less shameful and more complimentary. But what if I then discover than everything I have been told about my birth is wrong? I was not a bastard, nor was I abandoned - my parents were killed in a car wreck instead? So you see, even though a story can be embarrassing, that does not necessarily guarantee that the story is true. The criterion of embarrassment is thus only useful to examine the motives and self-interest of the storyteller. It has no value in judging the facts of the story itself. This distinction escapes the majority of theists on this board who try to utilize the criterion of embarrassment.
• This criterion is unfalsifiable - by that I mean, if the text refers to an incident that is not embarrassing, we're asked to take it as accurate because it is fairly plausible and non-controversial. But if the text contains an embarrassment, then that somehow proves the truth of the text and again, the skeptic is asked to accept it. No matter what the text, the theist manages to twist it to result in a substantiation of their position.
• The criterion of embarrassment cannot differentiate between honest error, accident, and deliberate inclusion - by that I mean, that religious people would be willing to correct an error of antiquity. Assume for a moment (just for argument's sake) that an embarrassing story were to be inserted into a text, one that would not be flattering to the church, to Jewish society, etc. The only way for something to be done about it would be for someone to actively try to expunge it. But would anyone try to do that? No. If it were deliberately inserted, then obviously no one would remove it. If it were accidentally inserted, then would anyone have removed it? Unlikely. Once a story becomes part of a established body of legend, especially religious legend, it is sacrosanct. People who fear divine retribution are unwilling to tamper with the story as it has been handed down to them - warts, and all. The only way to test this is to postulate a situation where these religious individuals would have been willing to violate their religious laws and tamper with their own holy book, to remove the error. That is highly unlikely.
• This criterion is wide open and can produce bogus results - by that I mean, it can be used to substantiate things that we know are either logically contradictory, or historically wrong. For example, it might be "embarrassing" for Islam to mention Jesus Christ as a miracle-worker and a prophet, considering that Islam rejects Christianity. Yet that description of is what we see in Sura 5:110 - an example of an Islamic source validating the ministry of Christ. If we accept the criterion of embarrassment, then we would have to accept Islam's other claims, since obviously the reference to Christ is not helpful to the cause of Islam. Yet Islam and Christianity are contradictory.

[ December 26, 2001: Message edited by: Omnedon1 ]</p>

godfry n. glad

DennisM:

You've done a masterful job. And, you're right, Layman has done his/her best to aid and assist you with their base assertions.

Have fun reading Brown. You are correct that his work is far more nuanced than you might expect from Layman. However, you do need to keep in mind that Raymond Brown was, and his protege' John P. Meier, author of _The Marginal Jew_ series, is, a priest of the Roman Catholic church. As good as their historical work is, their end products are still tainted with their confessional interests. Keep this in mind when reading their works.

godfry n. glad

Benjamin Franklin

Hi Omnedon1

Yap I changed my screen name is presently considering writing under a psuedonmyn


A Christian would reply by saying that is precisely the point. They operate under the false trilema that the resurrection accounts must be either fabricated, hallicuinations or genuinely true.

If they can show that it the first two is not possible, it must follow that the third one must be true.

Secondly I don't see what is so emabrrassing for the Koran to admit that Jesus is a wise prophet. After all they claim that the bible has been corrupted and it did not fairly accurately reflect what Jesus said. It would be more credible for them to admit that Jesus was a wise prophet than to adopt Jesus myth position(tongue in cheek intended) given the influence of Christianity at that time

Of course my Christian friend would counter by saying that while the Koran grants authority to the Gospels, the Koran never said that the Gospels have been corrupted.

Tjun Kiat

[ December 28, 2001: Message edited by: Benjamin Franklin ]</p>

Sauron

However, that leaves out the possibility of sincere error or mistake, as in my hypothetical example, above. But as you said, it is indeed a false trilemma.

And my comment was intended to drive home the fact that apologists try to use a test for a person's character, as though it worked to demonstrate factual accuracy of the account. It does not. But on these boards, you can often see people using the former test, as though it worked in the latter scenario.

There is some truth in this. However, the most advantageous position for the Koran would simply be to ignore Christ and leave out any mention whatsoever. Either that, or make the strong claim that he was a false prophet with zero divine credibility. That would set up the necessary antagonism and tension needed, to keep Muslims as far away from Christianity as possible. But by opening up the "can of worms" to the idea that Christ was at least partially guided by God, it raises the possibility that a Muslim may start exploring Christianity with a semi-favorable viewpoint. In other words, if you're an exclusivist religion and you want to get the maximum number of converts, it's better to claim that all other religions are wrong, than to claim that some of them are 70% correct, but not totally correct.

And where I am going with all this statement above, is to show how the criterion of embarrassment can lead to some unexpected results. If Islam were just a made-up religion interested only in spreading converts, then it would not have made any such "truce" with Christianity by saying nice things about Christ.

[ December 29, 2001: Message edited by: Omnedon1 ]</p>

Lonergan

J.P. Holding at <a href="http://www.tektonics.org" target="_blank">www.tektonics.org</a> has written great
bulk in defending the Christian positions. He has
written about historical evidence for the Gospels.
In addition, he has attempted to refute the high
profile skeptics on the Internet including
DennisM. I haven't seen much effort by many of the
Internet skeptics to respond to Holding's articles.
Why is there so little attention given to Holding ?
Is he just not worth responding to ?

Sauron

1. Holding writes under a pseudonym; his real name is Robert Turkel - a prison librarian in the Florida state prison system. He has consistently lied about his reason for using such a name. It does not affect the quality of his argument, but it does go to the character of the individual that we are dealing with here.

2. Turkel refuses to link directly to his opponents' source documents during a debate. Providing the listening audience with access to the opponent's original argument is both courteous as well as scholarly. But instead of showing his audience his opponents' original statement, Turkel will instead cut and paste only the section that he wants his audience to see. This is both dishonest, as well as unscholarly. It prevents the audience from seeing exactly what both sides have to say, and allowing the audience to make up their own minds -- without having it pre-digested for them by Robert Turkel.

3. Few of Turkel's arguments are unique; he basically cuts and pastes a lot of quotations from other people (Glenn Miller, WL Craig) and strings them together. Those arguments have already been addressed in their original form.

4. Turkel has refused to participate in an on-line, real time debate with several people (for example, Farrell Till). Several such challenges have been issued, and he has backpedaled from each one.

5. Finally, you must not have seen the various documents in the Infidels library which either dealt with Turkel's arguments, or addressed various points that he made. Farrell Till (on his website) also has a list of Turkel's arguments that have been refuted.

I guess in summary, Turkel has demonstrated that he is dishonest and not truly interested in a fair, academic discussion of the topic. He is far, far more interested in running his website and portraying himself as the greatest apologetic since St John the Divine.

[ January 01, 2002: Message edited by: Omnedon1 ]</p>