mlem123 wrote: » I'd argue that belief has nothing to do with proof. A belief is just something you believe in.
Jordan2077 wrote: » You don't have to convince people, there is no excuse for not believing in God for the evidence has been clearly displayed in all of creation.
Jordan2077 wrote: » Ok so if you dont believe in God then what is good and bad, why dont we just make up good and bad for ourselves and do what we want?
Jordan2077 wrote: » If a cat kills a bird why is that not bad. But if a cat kills a human that is bad.
Jordan2077 wrote: » What makes our life worth more than theirs?
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » Some people claim that they can feel God with them, around them - fair enough, this is something quite personal so you can never say that they do or they do not with complete certitude.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » Going to quote something I posted in an earlier thread
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » Jesus is either mad, bad or God; he cannot be simply a good man walking around and helping people because he never claimed to be this persona
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » If what he was saying is true, then he is God.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » The third test used by Ehrman is called “the criterion of contextual credibility”. This means that historical texts have to “conform with historical and social contexts to which they relate” in order to be credible.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » What I have shown with the above arguments is that belief in God is reasonable
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » This requires faith - an assent of the mind to what God reveals about Himself.
Jordan2077 wrote: » Ok so if you dont believe in God then what is good and bad, why dont we just make up good and bad for ourselves and do what we want? why do we let other things create what is good and bad for us?
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » (the existence of God itself can be reached by reason alone though).
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » This requires faith - an assent of the mind to what God reveals about Himself. Moreover, this faith is a gift from God to those who want it.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » The above authors try to put forward various arguments for the historicity of the Gospels. They are arguments, not conclusive proofs, therefore they do differ from each other. However, what is important is that they are all quite reasonable. From what I remember of reading him, I think Dunn's argument was that the evangelists described those events of Christ's life in which they were personally interested. That is why not all of them have extended narratives of Christ's infancy etc, but they might instead focus on how he fulfills the Old Testament (this was very important for Matthew, for example).
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » Well the large diversity of detail of the Gospel accounts would argue against this. John's prologue is very philosophical. Matthew and Luke are all about the parables.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » This would have been a massive deal. Read the account to see how uncomfortable John the Baptist is with baptising Christ. He is told to "suffer it for now". John was basically baptising God.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » Again, this is not a proof but an argument. Nevertheless, I think it is a good one. As stated above, the apocryphal Gospel of Philip, which contains a gnostic understanding of Baptism and the Eucharist more appropriate to the second or third century, was rejected as inauthentic. It is a mechanism used to discern error.
Bannasidhe wrote: » of course in ancient Egypt this argument went 'cat kills bad human therefore is god' :P
Hotblack Desiato wrote: » I wasn't making statements, I was asking questions and there's no harm in that - unless you think that religious belief is immune from being questioned?
That's rather... convenient, isn't it? Does your god require you to do "good works" or give to charity or do anything at all, or is it all one way? You get the good feels and don't have to really do anything?
pauldla wrote: » I'm just glad that I have lived to see the much-neglected 'cat kills human bad, therefore god' argument finally being presented. What a time to be alive!
Hotblack Desiato wrote: » That's rather... convenient, isn't it? Does your god require you to do "good works" or give to charity or do anything at all, or is it all one way? You get the good feels and don't have to really do anything?
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » What I have shown with the above arguments is that belief in God is reasonable and that Catholic claims are credible.
why do we let other things create what is good and bad for us?
If a cat kills a bird why is that not bad. But if a cat kills a human that is bad.
What makes our life worth more than theirs?
Yet if any other creature or thing kills any other creature or thing it is not bad?
mlem123 wrote: » I believe in God but that is my own personal belief. I also don't really go to mass etc as I don't think it's necessary. Actions speak louder than a few words in a specific building.
Jordan2077 wrote: » Ok so if you dont believe in God then what is good and bad, why dont we just make up good and bad for ourselves and do what we want? why do we let other things create what is good and bad for us? If a cat kills a bird why is that not bad. But if a cat kills a human that is bad. What makes our life worth more than theirs? Yet if any other creature or thing kills any other creature or thing it is not bad?
storker wrote: » Sounds like you're confused about what qualifies as evidence. Also, people don't need an excuse for not believing in something for which there is no evidence. And if you're dealing with people who prefer rational thought and critical evaluation to blind faith, yes, you definitely do have to convince them...or content yourelf with being dismissed as a crank.
Mark Hamill wrote: » So asserting that the Gospels should not be read as a historical biography is an argument that they should? Either they are historical documents or they aren't. And doesn't this contradict your other books who do approach the bible as an historical text?
Mark Hamill wrote: » More likely to be true, or more likely to be from the same original source? It is possible that after the first gospel was written, the later ones used it as a reference and added to it. Therefore, despite repeating some of it's claims, do not corroborate claim.
Mark Hamill wrote: » I've never seen anyone else try to argue that plotholes (Jesus being baptised makes him less spiritual that John) make a story more likely to be true.
Mark Hamill wrote: » This equally applies to Spider-man and New York.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » As to books on the topic, there are quite a number which make great arguments on the historicity of the Gospels. Here are a few: James D.G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Louisville Kentucky, Westminister Press; 1985) Dunn, in arguing for the historical nature of the Gospels, highlights that they should not be read as a historical biography of Jesus because that is not what they are.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » He calls the first test “independent attestation”, which refers to the premise that assertions which are corroborated are more likely to be true. He points out that information on the historical Jesus exists in the Synoptic Gospels, John, the letters of Paul, the New Testament Apocrypha and historians such as Tacitus.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » Ehrman calls his second test “the criterion of dissimilarity”, meaning that if something is problematic to the writer or community from which the text originates and yet is still included, there is a high likelihood of authenticity. He points to a number of examples. The Baptism performed by John the Baptist on Christ raises a number of issues, as it was assumed that “when a person was baptised, he or she was spiritually inferior to the one doing the baptising”. Yet this event is recorded in all four Gospels. Similar examples are the betrayal of Judas and the Crucifixion of Christ, which Paul himself called a “stumbling block” for the Jews.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » The third test used by Ehrman is called “the criterion of contextual credibility”. This means that historical texts have to “conform with historical and social contexts to which they relate” in order to be credible. Therefore, the story of Jesus as found in the Gospels must sit well in the historical setting of first century Palestine, which it undoubtedly does.
So, you're wrong, and here's why. Let's start with Josephus. As Bannasidhe points out, Josephus isn't a contempraneous source. He wasn't even born until 37CE and his first major work Jewish War wasn't written until the 70s CE. The text that supposedly mentions Jesus wasn't written until the 90s CE making it already later than the first two gospels. And the growing opinion is that the entire Testimonium Flavianum in Josephus is a forgery. There are a number of reasons for this. For those unfamiliar with the Testimonium and for ease of reference, here is the passage from Josephus:About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. " This passage is likely to be a forgery, for the following reasons.
It's unlikely that the Roman audience Josephus is targeting in 93 CE would have understood the connection between Jesus and Christians.
"If the Josephan reference to "performing surprising deeds" were authentic we would expect Origen to mention it."
Now, we can continue to go through all of the supposed extrabiblical sources for Jesus, going through the reasons why they aren't the evidence that Christians claim them to be, but for the moment I think the points above serve as a lesson in not taking random references to Jesus at face value.
As for the scriptures, they also aren't reliable as evidence for a historical Jesus. Apart from their late composition, late manuscript evidence, internal and external contradictions, factual mistakes and borrowed stories, the gospels and Acts don't even read like historical accounts or eyewitness testimonies. There are several reasons for this.The gospels make little or no attempt to identify the sources they draw upon in writing their stories. (e.g. Luke mentions that he draws on sources but does not name them) The later gospel authors make no attempt to resolve contradictions with earlier works (e.g. Luke makes no attempt to reconcile his nativity narrative with Matthew's) The author does not place himself in the story. The gospels are written for the common man rather than the social and literary elite audience of Greek and Roman histories/biographies. The gospels contain far too many hagiographical elements to be historically reliable. There is no attempt to warn the reader that certain events or words may not be recorded clearly. None of the gospel authors make any attempt to identify where they speculate on content. The interdependence of the gospels makes them unlike the historical writings of the time. Unusual events disappear from the wider narrative. The aftermath of the graves opening in Matthew is not discussed in any other text. Moreover, the layout of the gospels themselves align better with fictional novels that of historical accounts. Mark, for example, employs dramatic irony and an omniscient narrator, uncharacteristic of a historical retelling. The gospels also employ dialogue at a much higher level than historical accounts of the day. Acts reports the highest usage with 51% of the overall text being made up of direct speech. The gospels have a slightly lower but similar proportion. This aligns well with Jewish novels of the day (Judith 50%, Susanna 46%) but stands in marked contrast to historical accounts and biographies: (Josephus’ Jewish War I: 8.8%, Plutarch’s Alexander: 12.1%; Tacitus’ Agricola: 11.5%).
Luke mentions that he draws on sources but does not name them
The author does not place himself in the story.
The gospels are written for the common man rather than the social and literary elite audience of Greek and Roman histories/biographies.
The gospels contain far too many hagiographical elements to be historically reliable
Moreover, the layout of the gospels themselves align better with fictional novels that of historical accounts. Mark, for example, employs dramatic irony and an omniscient narrator, uncharacteristic of a historical retelling. The gospels also employ dialogue at a much higher level than historical accounts of the day.
The interdependence of the gospels makes them unlike the historical writings of the time
As for your rewording of Lewis' trilemma of liar, lunatic or lord, I've always felt that Lewis left out one option from his original trilemma: legend. It is perfectly possible for Jesus to have been an obscure preacher who later had legends build up around him. It is also possible for Jesus to have been an entirely fictional character, made up out of whole cloth to fill a Jewish theological need. You see, there is the Jewish belief that the Jews are God's chosen people and that God is on their side. You also have the Jewish belief in the Messiah, a kind of immortal warlord who will turn the Jewish people into the rulers of the world, presiding over an era of perpetual peace. However, in reality its difficult to reconcile this self-image of God's chosen people with being overrun by the Roman empire and having the temple, which the Messiah was supposed to rebuild and resume sacrifices in, being destroyed. So, its possible that first century Jews adopted a revisionist idea of what the Messiah should be, just as second temple Judaism did after the Babylonian captivity.
Absent a direct line to the Almighty and a conviction that the last days are upon us, how is it 'moral' [...] to claim a monopoly on access to heaven, or to threaten waverers with everlasting fire, let alone to condemn fig trees and persuade devils to infest the bodies of pigs? Such a person, if not Divine, would be a sorcerer and a fanatic.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » This is touching on something which was discussed in another thread recently. Some people claim that they can feel God with them, around them - fair enough, this is something quite personal so you can never say that they do or they do not with complete certitude.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » The series must have a start. Therefore, God exists.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » b) We can define God as 'something than which nothing greater can be conceived'. This is an idea which is true by definition – people hear it and understand it. In order to deny this we must understand what we are denying. Therefore, God must exist as an idea in the mind. However, to exist in reality is greater than to exist simply as an idea in the mind. If God was to exist as an idea in the mind only, something greater than God can exist. But if this were so, it would produce a logical contradiction, as God is the greatest existent. Therefore God must exist.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » As to Christianity itself, how about this: 1) We know that Jesus was a historical figure. As well as the Scriptures, secular commentators of the time wrote about him (Josephus is a prime example); 2) Jesus is either mad, bad or God; he cannot be simply a good man walking around and helping people because he never claimed to be this persona - He said that he was God and king, that he had the power to forgive sins and that he always existed. Calling him a 'good moral teacher' is simply not left open to us; 3) If he said this and it was false, then he was either mad (he lost his mind) or bad (he was actively deceiving people); 4) If what he was saying is true, then he is God.
Marhay70 wrote: » In addition much of Josephus' account of Jesus is considered to be interpolation, there was, apparently, a whole cottage industry dealing with the altering of historical documents to suit the narrative. Also the philosophy that nothing comes from nothing is not, IMO, a principle of faith but of physics.
Bannasidhe wrote: » How about this - there are exactly zero contemporary accounts of Jesus. Your prime example, Flavius Josephus, is generally agreed to have been born in 37 CE - which would mean he was born 4 years after Jesus apparently died. Jesus never claimed anything. The accounts of 'his' life were written long after the events by anonymous people (later given names) who were not eye witnesses to any of the events they describe,and in parts contradict each other. 'Jesus' left no account of his actions. Hearsay is not testimony.
Ty Straight Villa wrote: » Interesting title. As to Christianity itself, how about this: 1) We know that Jesus was a historical figure. As well as the Scriptures, secular commentators of the time wrote about him (Josephus is a prime example); 2) Jesus is either mad, bad or God; he cannot be simply a good man walking around and helping people because he never claimed to be this persona - He said that he was God and king, that he had the power to forgive sins and that he always existed. Calling him a 'good moral teacher' is simply not left open to us; 3) If he said this and it was false, then he was either mad (he lost his mind) or bad (he was actively deceiving people); 4) If what he was saying is true, then he is God.
