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Evidence for why we know the New Testament writers told the truth.

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sonofgloin said:
You know him better than I given I have been on JREF for five minutes, but debasing tactics such as his mission statement "I detest liars and dishonest debaters. Sorry if I care about honesty and truth", is a deceitful two pronged attack on the character of the interlocutor.
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Attack? It was a statement of fact.
He is stating "I am a paragon of virtue and you are as excrement is to the rose".
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Yes, and that is wrong how?
He has chosen a stance thats fine, but I will not openely debate mine and he does not like it.
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Are you projecting or using your magic mind reading skillzzzz? I don't give a rat's ass about your beliefs.

What I do care about is facts. You spoke BS; was called on the BS and refuse to do the honest thing and actually correct yourself. That is what I call dishonesty.
I have told him I am a slave to physics but who knows there could be more.
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Wow. That's as profound as...well nothing.
Pax is comfortable with compliance or combat, I offer him neither.
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Projecting much? Sorry little strawman maker, I love a great debate and discussion. Your nonsense, is neither great nor even interesting.
 
AdinDraco said:
Dude, you rebutted a serious answer with sarcastic nonsense and a strawman. Please try to give logical debate beyond "Nuh ah". Like Pax (I'm assuming) I care because religious dogmatic thinking does demonstrable harm to myself, my friends, complete strangers that I don't know and society in general.
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That seems like a defense mechanism doesn't it? When presented with an actual argument, he either fires off some idiotic and rather unfunny quip or attacks a strawman...and he thinks he is saying something profound. That seems like his entire MO.
 
paximperium said:
What I do care about is facts. You spoke BS; was called on the BS and refuse to do the honest thing and actually correct yourself. That is what I call dishonesty.
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Pax to settle this tell me what I lied about (the BS) be specific as for a newish arrival I have said much today.
 
sonofgloin said:
Originally Posted by pakeha
The enviornment of the 'faithful' at the time of Jeus' death, yet again?
As I mentioned above, it reads like paranoia or even simply a literary devise to heighten the drama of the narrative.
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It is supposition, just as the post it responded to was supposition.
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Thanks for answering, sonofgloin.
The thing is, the topic of this thread is 'Evidence we know the NT writers told the truth'.

I had some hope you'd found something when you wrote of the Roman persecution in the enviornment of those three days as though it were a fact rather than a supposition. So I asked about it.

But no. We're still at the OP, but 174 pages later.
Awaiting proof the NT writers told the truth.
 
Elizabeth I said:
Hmmm...haven't you often used the Bible as "the bestselling book in the world" as "evidence" that it's true?
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Not to my memory; I might have used that fact as evidence of the importance of Christ's life and teachings when someone is trying to compare Christ and his teachings to some insignificant person who has no effect on world history.
 
Elizabeth I said:
Hmmm...haven't you often used the Bible as "the bestselling book in the world" as "evidence" that it's true?
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my great big bolding
DOC said:
Not to my memory; I might have used that fact as evidence of the importance of Christ's life and teachings when someone is trying to compare Christ and his teachings to some insignificant person who has no effect on world history.
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Cite please.
 
Hokulele said:
Because some ancient texts do not document things that violate the laws of physics as we know them. DOC is basically asking us to accept everything in the bible as being true because some things in the bible are true. Logic doesn't work like that.
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Several people are talking for me without responding to a specific post of mine. That should send up a red flag that there is a good chance that a straw man is going on. I never said what you implied I said {thus another Straw Man}.

But I am asking you to look at historical evidence for Christ in the same way you look at historical evidence for other figures. As Geisler has basically said, if it wasn't for a supernatural bias, the miracles of Jesus would be considered historical based on the quality of historical writings we have. Thomas Arnold of Oxford and author of the 3 volume "History of Rome" didn't say there is better and more historical evidence for Jesus (and the resurrection) then for any fact in history (up to that point) for the heck of it.
 
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DOC said:
Not to my memory; I might have used that fact as evidence of the importance of Christ's life and teachings when someone is trying to compare Christ and his teachings to some insignificant person who has no effect on world history.
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Muhammad had an insignificant effect on world history?
 
amb said:
Muhammad had an insignificant effect on world history?
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I never said he was insignificant. But world history is far from over with. And for the most part the Muslim world has censored Christianity whereas in the modern world Christian nations do not usually censor Islam. If Muslims believe their religion is the best and most truthful they should not need to censor other religions.
 
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DOC said:
http://books.google.com/books?id=PC..._brr=0#v=onepage&q=Geisler 10 reasons&f=false

The above URL shows much of that evidence from chapter 11 of the book cited in post 1. If you live outside of the US you'll have buy the book to read chapter 11.
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Here is an extract from a review of the book.

''As the title shows, this book contends that it takes faith to be a theist or an atheist. In fact, contrary to popular opinion, atheism is not a condition of having no faith, rather it is a condition of having great faith, even greater faith than the theist. The authors contend that it takes greater faith to ignore all the evidence for God's existence and remain an atheist than to believe in God.''

Nonsense.
 
DOC said:
Well I see Callisthenes is reported to have written about Alexander the Great but all his works have perished. You demand contemporary evidence for Jesus, but then rely on perished works for Alexander the Great.
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sonofgloin said:
Doc an excellent point, and miraculously the point I have been trying to bring to the attention of theists and the atheists, the agnostics are still pondering. At the end the subject is faith and that is decided individually. We can not positively or negatively discriminate on the evidence of texts altered, abridged, and manipulated by the hand of man over the past 2000 years. But that they exist is an indicator to a core truth.
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Thanks
 
dafydd said:
Here is an extract from a review of the book.

''As the title shows, this book contends that it takes faith to be a theist or an atheist. In fact, contrary to popular opinion, atheism is not a condition of having no faith, rather it is a condition of having great faith, even greater faith than the theist. The authors contend that it takes greater faith to ignore all the evidence for God's existence and remain an atheist than to believe in God.''

Nonsense.
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Not if you read the book.
 
dafydd said:
Here is an extract from a review of the book.

''As the title shows, this book contends that it takes faith to be a theist or an atheist. In fact, contrary to popular opinion, atheism is not a condition of having no faith, rather it is a condition of having great faith, even greater faith than the theist. The authors contend that it takes greater faith to ignore all the evidence for God's existence and remain an atheist than to believe in God.''

Nonsense.
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So, Occam's Razor is outflanked according to that book?
 
DOC said:
But I am asking you to look at historical evidence for Christ in the same way you look at historical evidence for other figures. As Geisler has basically said, if it wasn't for a supernatural bias, the miracles of Jesus would be considered historical based on the quality of historical writings we have. Thomas Arnold of Oxford and author of the 3 volume "History of Rome" didn't say there is better and more historical evidence for Jesus (and the resurrection) then for any fact in history (up to that point) for the heck of it.
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Historians do look at the historical evidence for other figures in the same way that most do for Jesus. It isn't as though there is a consensus of opinion about Alexander or Gaius or any other figure. We do better with Julius Caesar because we have some of his own writings. We also have physical evidence that survives for many of the Roman Emperors and some of the other key figures in history (and that puts them in a different category than Jesus as historical figures).

The issue is not just supernatural bias, though that way of approaching the evidence is held constant for all historical figures. Few think that Apollonius of Tyana did all that was attributed to him. I don't think anyone thinks that Caligula was a god, though he wanted them to; or that Octavian was a god, though the Romans deified him.

It is silly to approach historical information with wide-eyed acceptance of all that is written. We do not simply accept history; we interpret it. The interpretation of history requires a stance from which to interpret, and that stance is grounded in methodological naturalism. We simply have no current evidence of supernatural involvement in the world, so we feel safe in concluding that supernatural elements in stories from the past serve other purposes than direct relation of events as they occurred on the ground. So, we read the gospels closely and we see that many of the stories, and particularly the stories of the miracles, serve obvious literary purposes (we can repeat all those arguments again if you like) calling into question their historicity.

To repeat -- we do not blindly accept what is written. We particularly do not blindly accept information that falls in line with the intended purpose of an ancient author because we realize that information may be manipulated for political purposes. Tacitus had a thing about denigrating the Julio-Claudian line to contrast them with the "good emperors", so we read his accounts with a careful eye. The gospel writers intended to demonstrate why an obscure preacher executed by the Romans was actually the chosen one of God because they believed that he had been resurrected from the dead. We read those accounts with an equally careful eye.
 
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