Radorth

You must be highly selective about what you read. When did you decide not to read any Christian, Jewish or agnostic historians?

There you go again. To whose satisfaction would that be? Doherty's?

Modern catholics have a pretty rigorous test, and there are many reports backed up by M.D.s, a surprising number of whom have witnessed miracles.

Oh wait! They're just ordinary "spontaneous remissions" from things like terminal cancer. Forgive me.

Radorth

Vorkosigan

Actually, as a number of authorities have pointed out, the cure rate for Lourdes and other places is lower than the spontaneous remission rate. Further, the Church protocol is pretty much worthless -- can you explain how the Catholic Church proves Jesus and not Buddha was the reason those people were cured? If you look at individual cases, you'll find that the medical justification for a cure was not there (for example, cures of MS earlier in the century). Now that the Pope has done away with the office of devil's advocate, I am sure the number of "cures" attributed to Lourdes will rise.

Vorkosigan

Radorth

Ah yes. More evil plots, conspiracies and myths with thousands of self-deluded ordinary people and M.D's helping out.

Nobody is saying to believe them all. But without personally checking out every claim and testimony and supplying evidence of misconduct, it is foolish to say "No miracle ever happened. We know that." That is just hyperbole.

It is a great marvel how great a faith skeptics place in their own unprovable assertions, while giving no credence to anyone who disagrees, then calling people who disagree "self-righteous."

Criminy. Faith drives the world, period.

Radorth

Anunnaki

It better hurry up and make a u-turn because you and faith just drove right past the entrance to the mental hospital. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

[ September 26, 2002: Message edited by: Anunnaki ]</p>

NOGO

How many miracles have they found outside Catholicism?

How many Protestant miracles?
How many Muslim miracles?
How many Buddhist miracles?

Or is it just catholics that experience these miracles?

Layman

Well again, you are just begging the question because you will not accept books that discuss the possibility of obtaining historical evidence of miracles as "historical literature."

Stephen Davis' book "Risen Indeed" and Craig Evans book, "The Jesus of Faith and the Christ of History" both address this very topic. But, I doubt you'll accept them as "historical literature" because they do not agree with your assumptions. So once again we are left with you justifying your conclusion merely by asserting your initial assumption.

See, you are accusing me of "special pleading" only after you mix in your own definition and attribute it on me (an unwilling receipient of your assumptions). Since I do not agree that there can be no evidence of a miracle I do not agree that the evidentiary support for all miracles is zero (which is what I guess you mean when you say "the evidentiary value of miracles claims is always zero").

And you failed to understand my main point about special pleading. When you say I am using a different standard to judge Christian miracle claims than I am to judge Pagan miracle claims, you are not proving that I am using the wrong standard to judge Christian miracle claims or Pagan miracle claims. If true, it would just show that I was being inconsistent, not that I was using the wrong standard. So while a Pagan might use this argument to force me to admit I must apply the same standard to his pagan claims (or use the claim I am using for pagan claims for Christian claims), it does not follow from your use of the argument that I am using the wrong standard for Christian claims.

In other words, if you could show I was using special pleading, all you would accomplish is to show that I was using different standards, not that the standard I was using was necessarily incorrect. It might very well be correct, and my fault would be not applying broadly enough.

Layman

How can you possibly know that unless you've evaluated all miracle claims? Of course, under your approach you never have to evaluate any miracle claim because its impossible that there could ever be any evidence for any "miracle."

This gets into definitional games and philosophy. If you are saying, how do I know that a God known as Jehovah raised Jesus from the dead, that is a different question than how do I know that Jesus was dead but rose from the dead?

The latter statement is more factual, the former carries with it some theological conclusions that might be very reasonable inferences, but are not subject to the kind of evidence as the former.

Since history is full of one-time events, most of it cannot be "verified" in the way you seem to suggest (which sounds like replaying a video tape of the event). So the inability to 'verify' something (if I understand your use of the term) cannot mean something is not a "historical event."

I agree that our assumptions are in conflict, but I've had to spend several threads even getting you to admit that you were simply resting your case on assumptions rather than evidence.

As for getting support among historians, I suppose that would depend on how you phrased the question to them. Certainly most do not think that the resurrection -- for example -- is something historians should be passing judgment on. But perhaps if you phrased the question as to whether anyone could reasonably infer from historical evidence that a miracle ocurred, you might get a different response.

Of course, your point rests on whether your historians are correct in their assumptions -- which is more of a philosophical queston than an evidentiary one. And I can find you plenty of philosophers (many historically studied) who argue that historical events like the resurrection can be reasonable inferred from historical evidence. Richard Swinburne, Craig Evans, Stephen Davis, and the infamous and beloved William L. Craig are just such philosophers.

Oh, and you asked about E.P. Sanders above. I myself have pointed out on this forum many times that Sanders rules out passing judgement on miracles a priori.

[ September 26, 2002: Message edited by: Layman ]</p>

Family Man

Radoth --

All you need to do to refute me is to show one supernatural event that is widely considered in the literature to be historic. I've never seen one, and I don't believe you can produce one.

Radorth

Suddenly popular belief proves or disproves historical facts. (More esoteric logic to decipher) Why don't you tell us exactly what you would believe yourself, or what you think half the world would call a miracle and which you would believe. Half the world could see one on TV and very few would believe it. Proving a miracle to even a hundred historians would be a virtual impossibility.

Radorth

Family Man

Really, Layman, this is getting way too silly. I'm talking history, not the biased musings of Christian philosophers like Craig. He doesn't do history and you know he doesn't do history. He does apologetics. Didn't he say something to the effect that if the evidence was against Christianity he would still believe because he believes he knows in his heart it was true? That sounds like a man who takes an objective approach to history? He has no standards; he starts with the assumption that Christianity is true. If any of those other philosophers are anything like Craig, I see no reason to waste any time on them. Why should anyone waste time on writers who have no interest in objectivity at all?

A basic assumption of history is that supernatural events are not verifiable, thus not historical. This is not "my" assumption. This is the assumption of every historian I've ever read or studied under. This is the assumption of E.P Sanders, of Michael Grant, of Raymond Brown, all of whom you've cited in the past but now you scurry away from because there are those other nice, Christian authors who are much more palatable to your taste.

The fact is: I'm not begging the question. I'm simply resisting your attempt to replace the assumption that is universily used in the field t with one used only by Christians so that they can justify their beliefs. Can you tell us what the standards are that your Christian scholars use? Are they used by secular scholars on topics unrelated to religion? Are they used by anyone outside of your narrow Christian minority that needs to "prove" that Jesus rose (so they can imply he was a god, even if they don't want to say it directly)? If not, how dare you tell us they have anything to do with serious historical scholarship?

It's this simple. "My" assumption is widely used it the field, over all ideologies, including Christian ones. Yours appear to be used by only a small minority of questionable scholars whose main purpose is apologetics, not history. And that still strikes me as special pleading, however it is disguised.

In short, you've stopped doing history. You're out there in your own special little Christian world that is totally unrelated to what the rest of us do that it is hardly worth discussing.

Thus, my point remains. The Resurrection, as Raymond Brown explicitly stated, can not be considered historical. You can believe it happened nonetheless, since all historical means is that this is something we are sure happened. No, one can not presume that something considered not historical did not happen (though I've seen E.P. Sanders say Jesus did not walk on water). But you can not, under the standards used by professional historians, say the Resurrection happened as a fact. You can keep your William Lane Craig and the rest of your Christian friends. I'll throw my hat in with Brown and other scholars who do real history.