orac

Hehehehe.

You need to get a new job, writing humour.

Someone who wasn't even born when Jesus was alive qualifies as an eyewitness. That's the best laugh I've had since you said the Egyptians wern't around until after the flood.

Um, you may have missed this, but they wern't actually there when Jesus died, so they could not have observed anything at all. While this might explain their not being able to provide details, it doesn't explain why people who were there didn't write down what happened.

I'm impressed that you could provide the references, but I'm now left confused as to what your point was. "People who wern't there didn't notice what happened" may be true, but it doesn't prove that anything actually happened.

According to you, noone who was present at the crucifixion except Matthew Mark and Luke (but not John) could be bothered to write down that there was an amazing and unexplainable darkness, but decades later people believed that there was some religious leader who was crucified and the Bible says miracles happened, even if noone else noticed.

Magus55

Well, first of all, do we know their actual birthdays? And i'm quite aware that they weren't there, that wasn't what i was trying to show. You said show where Tacitus and Josephus describe the crucifiction. You never said anything about them being eyewitnesses. And, they got their information from a one generation gap, so there likely wasn't much if any clouded documentation. Someone who did witness the crufiction, was likely still around when Josephus and Tacitus recorded it. Granted, you could say thats hearsay, but generally hearsay involves a third party, where as this involved 2. And if it is hearsay, why do we assume that the person witnessing the crucifiction wasn't telling the truth? The accounts of crucifictions of Christians taking place under Tiberius and Pontius Pilate is known, so why wouldn't Jesus' crucifiction be accepted just because Tactitus or Josephus recorded it from one other person?

Both of them were Hostile to Jesus, so why would they make it up? How do we know any of history is correct, since we don't know for sure whether the documentations are from eyewitnesses or not? To dismiss the accounts just because they got it from someone who witnessed it, instead of them witnessing it themselves is silly at best.

There aren't many historians or archaeologists who deny Jesus of Nazareth walked the Earth and was crucified. Its even recorded in the Acts of Pontius Pilate ( although I'm well aware most atheists don't consider them valid).

Biff the unclean

Why couldn't the foot prints been left after the flood?

Ever been to the Grand Canyon? It's a mile deep and made up of layers upon layers each only a few inches deep at best. That's what all those stripes are on the walls.
The footprints on on each and every layer that was laid down after feeT evolved. They didn't all get deposited all at once as would have been the case if Noah's flood were nonfiction.

Biff the unclean

Its even recorded in the Acts of Pontius Pilate ( although I'm well aware most atheists don't consider them valid).
Most Atheists and ALL Christians don't consider them valid. The church had them banned for being apocryphal in the fourth century. The Acts of Pilate are heresy.

Magus55

Do you pictures or proof that foot prints are fossilized in every layer?

Biff the unclean

Not on me. You can find them at your local Museum of Natural History.

Radorth

You mean they had to write papers to explain that? My, my. Thanks, I'd rather take an agnostic's paragraph for it than their wordy, tendentious musings, although my faith hardly rests on such historical data. I just find it extraordinary that even one person felt the need to explain the phenomenon.

He must have been one of those sly Christians who went around helping make up stories, eh?

Rad

Radorth

Biff isn't much into backing up his statements. You have to read all the books on his list and visit four or five museums yourself. This saves him time, and if you refuse to do so, gives him an excuse to sat you aren't interested in truth.

Rad

lpetrich

Biff the Unclean's footprints-everywhere statement is most likely an overstatement, but there are numerous footprints, burrows, and other "trace fossils", which are scattered across the geological column.

There are also numerous other fossil features that suggest terra firma, like mudcracks, sand dunes, and evaporites (minerals left behind by evaporation). And these, also, are layered.

A planetwide flood was discredited by the early nineteenth century. One reputable advocate of such a flood, Henry Sidgwick, noted in a parting statement that his advocacy was based on totally unwarranted assumptions about when different sediments had been laid down and suchlike.

lpetrich

Radorth:
You mean they had to write papers to explain that? My, my. Thanks, I'd rather take an agnostic's paragraph for it than their wordy, tendentious musings, although my faith hardly rests on such historical data. I just find it extraordinary that even one person felt the need to explain the phenomenon.

Radorth, have you ever bothered to read any of Richard Carrier's writings?

Doesn't it seem strange that only one or two outside historians seem to have known about this alleged darkness? And not all the others living at the time?

As I'd pointed out, Pliny the Elder would have noted that in his Natural History; he would have seen it with his own eyes when he was a boy.

He must have been one of those sly Christians who went around helping make up stories, eh?