sighhswolf

Atticus,
I realize that you have much on your agenda to
consider with the posts I have read here, but I do
have just a couple of questions I would like you to answer for me when time permits.
Not being a scholar, or historian, or a theology
student or even a very intelligent person, I sometime have a problem with Biblical information.
It would seem that you have continuously used biblical text as proof of your assertions and to validate your views on Jesus and christianity in general.
You have repeatedly stated that eyewitness, the
followers of Jesus actually saw the risen Jesus,
As stated in the NT testimonials to that fact.
As it has been pointed out to you several times,
no one, including the most prominent Theologians of today can verify the actual authorship of the NT gospels.
In fact the majority of scholars and theologians
actually agree on this point, that the writers of the New Testament Gospels were not the NAMED Authors.
How can you use documents that have been proven through computer analysis and the use of "Statistical Stylometry" to be forgeries as proof of any assertions? Being a law sage,
You must know that this technique is considered realiable enough to be used in court to determine the authenticity of confessions, so how can you continue to try and use testimony from unrealiable, unverifiable sources that would be considered as "hearsay" to prove any of your assertions? I am having a very difficult time understanding the use of hearsay and third and forth person testimony to establish proof.
Secondly:
If you were to examine the Oral and written laws of Moses, and look at the Mishne Torah you would find many compelling reasons why the Hebrews did not ,nor have they ever, believed that Rabbi Jesus was in fact the "Messiah" promised.
Moshe Maimonides in the Jewish code of law is very clear on the conditions that must be accomplished by the true "King Messiah".
Jesus did not even come close to fulfilling these conditions.
Why would you believe the information of early christian writers over the people who lived the religion, the actual founders of this form of monotheism brought to the world through the ancient hebrew teachings?
Thirdly:
In the area of the "supernatural" and the alledged resurrection story, there are very strong reasons why the Jews do not believe this story.
It is common knowledge that the Jews did not consider "supernatural Acts" supposedly performed
by any of the multitude of "messiahs" of the time period as validation or proof of divinity.
In Jewish doctrine, a supernatural act cannot be used as evidence of divinity, they believe (and I have to agree with this) that supernatural events can be, and are staged.
And that god has on occassion given the power of healing and or reviving the dead to certain people throughout history for the specific purpose of testing the "faith" of his chosen.
The Jews believe that "faith" built on perceived
"miracles" is not true faith and will falter when questioned or brought under heavy examination.
What do you say about the Hebrew beliefs upon which your christian doctrines were in part based on?
Are they wrong? And is Christianity right?
Fourth:
I am curious about your feelings about salvation.
I know you believe that Jesus died on the cross, was resurrected and now resides in heaven beside his holy father right?
You are christian so you have to believe in the atonement through blood sacrifice.
Now as I understand the christian faith, atonement is the act of reconciliation.
Its end goal is repentance, asking for forgiveness for sins committed. I understand that this concept is the very cornerstone on which the christian faith is built. And is the basis for the story of the resurrection.
But....atonement is in itself NOT forgiveness, it is a ritual act, and according to the Bible there are many different ways to make atonement besides the shedding of blood, or the taking of a life.
The act of shedding blood may have been a small part of the ritual act of atonement, but it is not part of "repentance" itself.
One of the points I have often wondered about is why there would have even been a need for the sacrifice of this person Jesus in the first place?
If I cannot shed light on the inconsistancies and disinformation that is coloring your view of the resurrection, then let me ask you from a theological point why was it necessary for Jesus as related in the NT to shed blood and give up his life as an act of atonement?
I ask this because the Bible clearly states that god does not require the shedding of blood nor rituals of any kind for forgiveness.
It would seem that christian interpretation of biblical text looks over the text of Psalms 40.
"Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, you have led me to understand burnt offerings and sin offerings you have not required."
God answers, "Would I eat the flesh of Bulls?
or drink the blood of sheep?
Instead, make gratitude your offering......."
From the man himself, issues a statement of policy.
He does not require a blood sacrifice as atonement.
The sacrifice could be anything....money, land, crafts built by craftsmen, produce..this is the very reason there were moneychangers in the temple
when Jesus showed his act.
Jews would travel from far away to make sacrifice in the temple, as it was a very tough proposition
for them to travel with anything other than bare essentials, they would convert their offerings into money to be given in the temple.
All currency could be given proper valuation by the temple "moneychangers" so the indignation of Jesus as portrayed was totally uncalled for as the Jews and the Rabbinic authorities were only doing what god himself had told them was correct.

I ask the above question in all honesty..why was it even necessary for this act of atonement to take place?
There is no way for you to prove to anyone who looks at the evidence objectively that this incident did in reality take place, but for me it is a question of the NEED for it in the first place.
Before you answer this in your most condesending manner, I must ask you not to answer with the same memorized doctrine you have defended so fervently, this is not a question of eyewitnesses.
It is not a question of the realiability of historic documents, it is a simple question concerning what the christian god says is necessary for forgiveness and why it was necessary for christians to fabricate this story.

Far be it from me to question any of the sources
of the so-called passion narrative, even though I personally believe there were no witnesses to any of the acts described.
The real question is why the story?
Was there a need for the blood sacrifice? If not why was it made the cornerstone of the christian faith?
If god himself has said there is no need to shed blood as sacrifice to atone for sin where is the basic need for the story? And what was the aim of this story?

Reason says that there is always cause and effect for every event yet there seems to be no cause for this event.
Christianity would have us believe that Jesus shed his blood for the atonement of mankinds sins.
God says it is not necessary and so do the Hebrews who fathered this form of monotheism..who is correct?
Wolf

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Skeptical

I believe I have had an epiphany on the drive home, as I think I finally understand what you consider to be "signficant and credible evidence".

I believe that your view of the NT veracity goes like this:

1) The stories in the NT are told by eyewitnesses who were there. They were in the best postion to evaluate the evidence. (I now understand your comment about adding to the debate after 2,000 years)

2) The eyewitnesses suffered much for their belief in Jesus and his divinity, they would not have suffered as they did if they were not utterly convinced that he was divine.

3) Therefore, since those closest to the events in question were convinced of Jesus' divinity, it only makes sense for everyone to be convinced of it.

(please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't want to misrepresent your position)

If I am correct, I finally see where the disagreement truly lies. The heart of the problem is that even if one grants both propositions 1 and 2, the conclusion 3 simply does not follow at all. (there are severe problems with 1 and 2, but for the sake of making a point, I'll assume they are true in my comments)

Here is the issue: Humans are unreliable, credulous, superstitious, emotional and generally un-critical in their assessment of the world unless they have been taught skeptical thinking skills. There is a tremendous amount of evidence demonstrating human fallibility in believing all sorts of things such as witches, alien abductions, dousing rods, unlucky numbers, lucky numbers, "animal magnetism", etc. etc.

People who are credulous tend to grossly under-estimate their own credulity and that of others. That is the case here.

Surely you can understand that there have been many cases of human gullibility and credulity over the centuries (PT Barnums famous quote "there's a sucker born every minute" is not often wrong). Surely you can grant that people living in a time of almost no science, in a world where literally everything around them was caused by mysterious and magical forces, would be likely to simply believe in wonderful and magical happenings, perhaps even see things that did not really happen, especially in the presence of a charismatic leader. (this is the essence of myth-making)

Surely you can grant that under such circumstances it would be very credulous on our own part to simply accept whatever these people believed as fact, especially if the stories they told involved very extraordinary events which have never been reliably recorded in modern human experience and for which we have absolutely zero corraborating evidence outside of the NT.

You may not consider yourself a credulous person, and perhaps you are not in most day to day events. However, I would submit to you that the skepticism you may deploy in evaluating whether the guy on the street asking for $5 is really in need of food or simply wants to buy alcohol, is noticably absent in your evaluation of the veracity of the NT.

Ask yourself this. Why is it that you demonstrate complete incredulity with regard to the stories of other religions, but complete credulity with regard to Christianity? Is it because Christianity has more provable facts, or is it because you were brought up in a Judeo-Christian leaning society and you want badly to believe Christianity so you look for ways to believe it. This is a rhetorical question obviously, but please think about it.

My position is the same as it was at the beginning. One can believe in Christianity all one wants, but there is simply no good reason to believe it other than that one simply _wants_ to believe it. At least, there has been no evidence to this point that would lead to an alternative conclusion by a skeptic.

Kassiana

Atticus_Finch:
I didn't mention Luke.

Kass:
I know. YOU need to pay attention. I mentioned him.

AF:
With respect to Matthew, earliest church history attests to its authorship by the apostle.

Kass:
Oh wow! I'm so convinced! Christian fanatics believed it was written by Matthew. Well, that settles that. /end sarcasm

Seriously, is that all you have? Come on, AF. Church history doesn't prove anything. Does OBJECTIVE history show that any apostle wrote it? If not, who cares how many Muslims believe the Koran is a gift from God or how many Christians believe "Matthew" wrote the gospel attributed to him?

AF:
Further, the fact that Luke makes clear that he was not an eyewitness suggests that he was distinguishing himself from the other gospels.

Kass:
No, it doesn't. It just suggests that he was more honest than either the authors of Mark or Matthew.

AF:
What difference does it make if portions of Luke and Matthew were copied from an earlier source?

Kass:
Quite a bit, if I claim this is what I saw and did, not that it's a history of my family (nice straw man you built there, BTW). If I claim I'm an eyewitness but build my claims on someone else's claimed witness, I'm not an eyewitness. Thanks for admitting the author of Matthew wasn't an eyewitness.

AF:
I did not limit my statement to the gospels. Peter was an eyewitness to Christ's resurrection. I Peter 1:1-4.

Kass:
Any evidence that "Peter" was the author other than your desire to believe it or "church history"? Nah, I didn't think so.

AF:
John 21:24 indicates that it was the discipline John who bore witness to the things in that gospel.

Kass:
And objective scholarship indicates that the gospel was written in the late 90s/early 100s A.D. by a community to codify its beliefs and give authority to them. I'll go with objective scholarship over your simple desire to believe despite the evidence, thank you.

Nice straw men. We aren't going to accept them, though. Try something else, would you?

Atticus_Finch

I believe they are more apparent than real. Why don't you give me an example.

Regards,

Finch

madmax2976

For critiques of the Josh McDowellian type apologetics that Atticus is offering see:
<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/apologetics.html#mcdowell" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/apologetics.html#mcdowell</a>


This stuff has all been refuted before and Atticus has brought nothing new to the table.

Jayhawker Soule

• Genesis - creation myth 1
• Genesis - creation myth 2
• The sons of God copulating with the daughters of men
• Noah - the world wide flood
• Exodus - the set-up
• Exodus - the escape
• Isaiah - three years as a nudist
• Babylon - cockatrice, dragons, and satyrs; oh my
• Jonah - the whale tail
• Jesus - the virgin birth
• Jesus - the resurrection

... and that's the short list

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

Malaclypse the Younger

Atticus_Finch

This comment from page 2 deserves more careful examination:

The issue is not whether evidence exists which suggests the NT is false. Atticus_Finch appears to misunderstand evidential arguments using the falsification criterion as applied by skeptics and scientists.

The falsification criterion does not say, "We should believe a proposition in the absence of evidence to the contrary." Rather, it states that, given a proposition, to use evidence to believe that proposition, we must be able to actually see evidence which distinguishes the truth of the proposition from its falsity. In the absence of those facts, the evidental argument simply doesn't apply.

In other words, if the proposition were false, we would expect to be able to see, in principle, some factual evidence of that falsity. But it is not enough to not see those facts; rather we want to see real facts which contradict the facts that would falsify the proposition.

It is the sparsity of any kind of fact in the study of ancient history that makes the falisfication criterion difficult or impossible to falsify in principle any but the most obvious conclusions about ancient history.

More importantly, the falsification criterion applies only to naturalistic propositions. No possible fact can "falsify" supernaturalism; there is no fact that we could possibly see that would prove supernaturalism false. Indeed the very concept of supernaturalism denies that we can infer the truth of propositions from how propositions entail facts.

Therefore, no fact that we actually see could contradict a falsification fact and lead us to believe that supernaturalism is true; thus evidential arguments for supernaturalism are, by definition, not well formed.

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: Malaclypse the Younger ]</p>

MOJO-JOJO

Agreed. Josh McDowell has no irrefutable evidence or argument for christianity...neither does Atticu_Finch, case closed. THIS evidence demands the correct verdict.....

Ted Hoffman

I think you are being argumentative, but lets play on:

Who, would you classify as being in a position to know that some belief is a lie? What would it take for someone to quialify as being in that position?

Was Jesus is a position to know that insane people were mentally ill and NOT posessed by demons?

When I look at Baloos analogy, not a theists response and skepticals response, I have no doubt in my mind that A_Fs reasons have been blown away to bits.

A_F, I suggest you respond to those posts directly and honestly. Instead of spewing other reasons for belief and making corners, just concede, then come up with another rationalisation, which we here will blow to vapour, bit, by bit.
There is no point acting as if your reasons have not been refuted, while they have actually been refuted - if you are short on time, say so. But at least strive to respond directly to peoples arguments. This pick and choose style of responding is very weak.

David Bowden

-----------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by sidewinder:
I'd be curious to know what AF thinks about the numerous contradictions and errors in the OT and NT?
-----------------------------------------------------
Can anyone explain away these examples of contradictions or errors -- without engaging in equivocation or "special pleading"?

-Isaiah 7:14 is mistranslated in Matthew 1:23; Matthew misinterprets Isaiah as predicting Jesus' virgin birth. Most modern translations - and all Jewish ones - correct the Isaiah 7:14 error made in the Septuagint (which was known to have such errors before the time of Herod the Great). This is a real, not an apparent, error in Matthew.

-Also, did flies and bees settle all over the land after Jesus' birth, as Isaiah prophesies immediately after the "virgin"/young woman prophecy? In that day, did the prophecies about milk and honey and peace come true, as Isaiah clearly prophesied? If not, either Isaiah erred on several points in his prophecy concerning Jesus' birth (raising the question of where he got his prophecy), or Christianity does not have the prophesied messiah (not a good thing for traditionalists). (This is not the only place Matthew has trouble accurately quoting the Old Testament.)

-Was it God or Satan who incited King David to take that fateful census, after which God destroyed many lives to punish David's action? (2 Sam. 24:1 vs. 1 Chron. 21:1)

(One really absurd aspect of this tale's plot, whoever incited David's census, is God's decision to strike the population for the sin of David. It is especially absurd if 1 Chron is correct and Satan started the whole business. As David himself says, "I am the one who has sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall upon me and my family." God never bothers to explain this action, either to David or to the surviving relatives of those massacred.)

-Are there in truth insects with four legs, as Leviticus 11:20-21 states? And does the hare or rabbit in fact chew its cud, as Lev 11:6 quotes God as claiming? Are these passages really without error?

-Where did Aaron die? Deut. 10:6 says he died and was buried in Moserah, while Numbers 33:38 says he died on Mount Hor, after leaving Moseroth (=Moserah) and passing through half a dozen other places.

-In Judges 7:12, it says that camels were without number as the sand of the sea, and that the human population was similarly very high. Archaeology confirms some human population in the area in question, but there is no trace of camels until hundreds of years later -- an odd finding given the wealth of other artifacts from that period. Is Judges still to be considered correct?

-An oddity of incredible proportions: According to 1 Kings 6:2, and 2 Chronicles 3:3, Solomon's temple was only about ninety feet long by thirty feet wide (area=~2700 sq feet, or about the area of a modern upper-middle-class house).
And yet:
-153,300 persons were employed to build it (1 Kings 5:15-16),
-it took seven years to build (1 Kings 6:38),
-13,100,000 lbs. of gold and 116,400,000 lbs. of silver were consumed in its construction (1 Chronicles 22:14), and
-24,000 supervisors and 6,000 officials and judges were employed to manage it (1 Chronicles 23:4).
-How many builders, supervisors, officials, and judges (and how much raw material) does it take in the real world to construct a building not larger than a Super 8 Motel?

-In James 4:5, the author quotes scripture. Where in scripture does this quotation come from?

-In John 5:31 Jesus says that if he bears witness to himself, his testimony is not true. But in John 8:14 Jesus says that even if he bears witness to himself, his testimony is true. Well, one still wonders: if Jesus bears witness to himself, is his testimony true?

-God himself restricts the diet of his chosen people; for instance, He prohibits forever the eating of blood and fat in Lev. 3:17. But in Colossians 2:20-23, Paul says of dietary rules that they "have an appearance of wisdom," but are in fact based only on human injunctions.

-In Acts 9:7 those present at Paul's conversion remain standing. However, in Acts 26:14 they all fall to the ground.

-Also, do they or do they not hear a voice? (The NIV is rare among translations in hiding the contradiction, by translating "voice" as "noise.")

-In Jeremiah 7:21-22, God claims he did not give the Israelites commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices. The Pentateuch is very clear: God did do just that. (Once again, the NIV hides this contradiction, but the original doesn't, nor do most translations.)

-Take Dan Barker's Easter Challenge:
"...The conditions of the challenge are simple and reasonable. In each of the four Gospels, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the book: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Also read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul's tiny version of the story in I Corinthians 15:3-8. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension: what happened; who said what, when; and where these things happened.
"The important condition to the challenge is that not one single biblical detail be omitted..."

-And while we're harmonizing the end of Jesus' life, his Davidic lineage needs some attention. Using Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38 as incontrovertible authorities, compile Joseph's family tree - without omitting any names listed by these authors. Also, what purpose does it serve to cite Joseph's ancestry if Jesus wasn't really his son/a son of David?

-It is known from other historical sources that the punishment for Roman soldiers who fall asleep on their watch was death. Why would Matthew record that a group of them accepted money and a worthless pledge of safety, in exchange for their death-inviting testimony? (Also, if Roman soldiers could die for what they knew to be a lie, couldn't the earliest Christian martyrs?)

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: wide-eyed wanderer ]</p>