lcb

I see plenty of "preaching" and "witnessing" here by atheists who simply couch it in terms of superstition/myth/opinion, etc..but when a theist posits a logical corollary that the eyewitnesses may have in fact saw what they said they saw, it is "preaching". a priori bias against the supernatural is in logical forensic equipoise with a priori belief in the supernatural. None of us were there, and there is a rule in the Federal Rules of Evidence which allows the admission of past recorded eye-witness accounts. I will try to follow the "rules" here but i think what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, I see a lot of theories and opinions here which have nothing to do with archaeological artifacts and settled jury and peer reviewed historical accounts. I apologize if i offended anyone but i see plenty of sarcasm and ridicule from the atheist side too. lcb

Autonemesis

Methodologial naturalism != Federal Rules of Evidence. The nature of reality will not be understood as the verdict in a trial. So you are exactly correct that there is a double standard. There is evidentiary rules for a court of law, and there is methodological naturalism. NEXT!

[ August 15, 2002: Message edited by: Kind Bud ]</p>

Babylon Sister

I have never been sarcastic to you and I have never ridiculed you. In fact this is only the second time I have responded to you. (You ignored my first request for information.)

But, putting all that aside, I'd just like to say that, there isn't enough cheese in Wisconson to go with your whine.

Ted Hoffman

lcb
Do you have ANY eyewitness evidence to ANY miracle associated with christ? Do you have eyewitness evidence that Christ lived on earth?

Jayhawker Soule

Don't go there unless you want to discuss such things as 'chain of evidence', 'witness credibility', and the problems with 'eyewitness testimony'.

I suggest that you focus on safer 'facts' ... Oh, sorry, it seems that you don't seem to have any. Better luck next time.

[ August 15, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

Vibr8gKiwi

Pardon me but I suspect you don't know jack about rules of evidence, nor how they apply (or not) to the "evidences" for Christianity. If you're interested in reading something from someone who does have a clue, here's a start:

<a href="http://home.teleport.com/~packham/montgmry.htm" target="_blank">Critique of John Warwick Montgomery's Arguments for the Legal Evidence for Christianity
</a> (The initial bit is a summary of the apologetics--the actual critique begins about 1/4 way down in the "Critique" section)

This is a rather long article, but it goes into detail on the errors used in Christian apologetics when trying to apply rules of evidence to the Christian "eye-witness" accounts. I hope you read it (though I won't make any bets that you will), as it's written for the layman and really underlines how dishonest some Christian apologetics can be.

[ August 15, 2002: Message edited by: Vibr8gKiwi ]</p>

Skeptical

Not to state the obvious, but "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". If you make a claim regarding something that no living human has ever witnessed and that we have no reliable records of (i.e. something that took place under carefully controlled scientific conditions), then the burden of proof is on the the person or persons positing the event. It's just that simple.

WRT the NT, although it is generally agreed by NT scholars that the gospels were not written by "eye witnesses", it's not even necessary to show that they weren't. No anecdotal evidence will ever suffice to show that the raising of the dead has occurred. Some of the other "miracles" also fall into this category although the vast majority of the healings reported can be seen today. "Faith healing" is based on known psychological principles and it has been shown in controlled experiments that its merit rests entirely on the beliefs of the person being healed, not on the healer's prowess or lack thereof. Anyone can be a faith healer if the person being "healed" believes in the "healer".

Ask yourself this, if someone you knew and trusted came to you and said they just saw a pudgy bald guy wearing a robe sitting in the lotus position fly over his house, circle around, land in front of him and then proceeded to create flowers and birds out of thin air in front of him, would you believe it? Would you need confirmation? What if your friend also said that the person said they were the buddha and that in addition to the previously mentioned acts, they took them flying around with them and they saw things like the raising of dead people, healings, translocations, etc. Would you believe it? If not, why not?

Humans are notoriously, even pathologically poor "eye witnesses". We are also terrible at telling fact from fiction and wishful thinking even under everyday circumstances, much less when we have been "prepped" to expect the "miraculous". People in the presence of a strong personality tend to attribute miraculous abilities to that person. Witness the recent extreme examples of the Heaven's Gate and David Koresh groups.

If you want to understand a bit about the way in which our minds continual trick and mislead us and why we are generally poor judges of events, even in the best of circumstances, I highly recommend reading "Anomalistic Psychology: A study of magical thinking", I am just finishing it now. The book contains numerous accounts of studies of the "miraculous" that show there is nothing at all miraculous about the events, despite many people being absolutely convinced that there were.

We are poor judges of the miraculous even standing in the shadow of hundreds of years of scientific progress. Why would we think that those living in 1st century Palestine would be better at it than we are today?

PS Can you please start inserting a few blank lines at appropriate places in your posts, its a little difficult to read a post without any blank lines in the text. Thanks.

CX

This belongs in Miscellaneous Discussions as the topic has nothing to do with biblical criticism.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by lcb:
<strong>i see plenty of sarcasm and ridicule from the atheist side too. </strong>

You don't say. Tell me more. Why are these bad atheists being sarcastic to you? I'm sure the theist side would never behave so terribly.

diana

Originally posted by lcb:
i see plenty of sarcasm and ridicule from the atheist side too.

But then, we've never claimed to turn the other cheek.

d