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

[paximperium]

But we do know that the existing sources for Alexander the Great were writing hearsay. Yet I doubt few skeptics ever questioned his existence. Special Pleading.

Another no information opinion that takes up space and offers nothing to the thread from DOC.

Highlighted part is mine.

 

[Akhenaten]

But we do know that the existing sources for Alexander the Great were writing hearsay. Yet I doubt few skeptics ever questioned his existence. Special Pleading.

Evidence DOC? Got any?

 

[amb]

But we do know that the existing sources for Alexander the Great were writing hearsay. Yet I doubt few skeptics ever questioned his existence. Special Pleading.

Alexander left many relics of his existence including a city.

 

[DOC]

I don't "feel" so. I'm simply stating a fact.

Your entire statement rest of a premise that people give a rat's ass about anything you say. That premise is false therefore your logic is flawed.

Please provide a reasoned explanation why I'm wrong, I doubt you will.

Your statement is not related to my request for you to explain your response in this post,

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=5291925#post5291925

therefore I must assume you can't explain it, and it was just put there for effect rather than any substance. This kind of thing has been happening a lot more then usual lately. People want to make negative statements or implications about me, but don't want to explain themselves when I ask.

Wouldn't it be nice if people just talked about the subject matter of my posts and not about me. But I know that is unlikely ever to totally happen on this system. Some people hope that by continually attacking me in any way possible they can discredit what I'm talking about. You might fool some people, but I think many people can see through all that and are instead focused on the material presented (and not DOC).

 

[DOC]

Alexander left many relics of his existence including a city.

Maybe if Christ had a military army like Mohammed and Alexander, he would have had a city too.

But then Christ did tell one of his apostles to put away his sword because, "those that live by the sword die by the sword". Christ had a different way to get his message out. And it did get out against all odds.

 

[amb]

DOC it's you who have been typing that the story of Alexander may have been hearsay also. It's clearly not is it?

 

[Akhenaten]

Maybe if Christ had a military army like Mohammed and Alexander, he would have had a city too.

Existing would have been a bigger help.

But then Christ did tell one of his apostles to put away his sword because, "those that live by the sword die by the sword". Christ had a different way to get his message out. And it did get out against all odds.

I assert that this is a bald-faced lie. Do you have evidence to refute my assertion?

 

[BobTheDonkey]

(First, a thanks to people for your considerate 'listening' to my posts).

I do not think that there is an infallible tool for judging what is historical truth and what is not. Since it is not possible to know for sure whether something is true or not, the important thing for me is what did the writer wish to convey through the story. Understanding the genre of a text is very important IMO. For instance, many cultures have told stories to try to make sense of the world, where we come from and what it all means. The first 11 chapters of Genesis very much fall into this category. These stories, therefore, are not meant to be taken as history and definitely not science. This is not a new view, either.

Job has the ring of a morality tale and if it were true then God is a bastard and not to be respected IMO.

In an earlier post I wrote that I thought that there was now some evidence to suggest that a small group of Hebrews fled Egypt and then this grew into the Exodus tale, whole armies, magic snakes and all.

I find the idea of talking snakes and asses to be extremely unlikely.

When we get to the NT and I feel reluctant to type this (because I like to be rational), I think that there is now much more chance of things being historically true. It is still not possible to say with certainty whether something did actually happen or not. The gospels are not written in straightforward ways. Their purpose is to show how Jesus is the Messiah, not history in the modern sense, and they weave together actual happenings and stories. For instance, the dead rising from the graves in Matthew 27 (help, zombies) is picking up the image from Ezekiel 37 (dem bones, dem bones) to show that Jesus is the real deal. It is difficult, if not impossible, to say with certainty whether something is history or not. Of course, it is possible that the Jesus rising from the dead thing is not history either and I think that that is a reasonable position and perhaps one that I would hold if it were not for my own experiences and those of people I trust which suggest that odd things are possible. These experiences are, of course, not proof, are not convincing, especially on the internet (!), but are there.

Also, I find the message of Xtianity to be true. What's that? I see it as the possibility of change, of turning one's life around. Xtianity can encourage being extremely honest with one's character, and attempting to do something about it.

As for what I believe - I am not a fundamentalist.
I think women should have equality with men, gay with straight. I 'believe in' Evolution and AGW and am a 'near' universalist. To use theological terms, I think that Protestantism can be prone to focussing on Salvation (are you saved?) and forgetting Sanctification (are you attempting to become less selfish?). Unfortunately, I am at heart quite selfish, but I do not see other people as my playthings in my universe so much any more.

So, if all you get from the Xtian religion are the aspects you like:

Self-critique, morality (well, really just the good-er morals), hope, etc,

then why "force" yourself to fit into this religion? You've already stated that you don't believe in the supernatural bits of the Bible, which really means that you aren't a Xtian at all. Why hang on?


You are on a board (in a discussion right here, right now) with other human beings who have very similar (if not the exact same) values as you do. The main difference between you and us is that we don't rely on a book written 2000 years ago to determine what is right, and what is wrong.

You've already broken from "The Church," I think you just don't see it.


Give in to the bright side

 

[AdinDraco]

Answer my question and all will be revealed.

If 100 people say they saw an object that looked like a flying saucer on Friday, and 1 person says they saw an object that looked like a flying saucer on Saturday, on which day would you claim a flying saucer was seen?

Um, I'm actually interested in logic so may I have a stab at answering or are we waiting for DOC to attempt an actual answer? I'll wait if people think I should.

 

[amb]

''If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong.''

-- Francis Crick--
########################################################################
''The christian community continues to exist because the conclusions of critical study of the bible are largely withheld from them.''

--Hans Conzelmann-- [German New testament scholar [1915-1989] ]

 

[zooterkin]

You must have made a mistake because I never said I was going to report people in the post you responded to or in any of the edits.

Possibly I did misread what was there. I can't tell because the post was edited just before I hit 'Quote', so I have no way of seeing what was there originally. Perhaps you could post the original?

 

[Lothian]

This is just another example of how the priority is to try to make Doc look bad in some way.

my posts in the Columbus thread speak for themselves

read all 1200 of my posts

So then you think these threads with over 100,000 hits each are low grade garbage?

Of course you ignored the main purpose of my post which was to demonstrate the threads that should not be considered being low grade garbage and concentrated on me giving the post counts of two of them. This was done to show if the threads are garbage then the people responsible for the 100,000+ hits must like low grade garbage.

The threads I've posted in response to a person who criticized my threads speak for themselves

This is just another example of the frequent policy exhibited in my threads that the main focus is to attack DOC and the issue at hand is of secondary importance.

Another no information opinion that takes up space and offers nothing to the thread. And my 1300 posts (several hundred with information) show that I have a different opinion than you.

Why can't people just let my posts stand for themselves without continually taking up space offering their no information opinion?

Another generalized opinionated post that offers no information, and no specific examples. Why don't people just let my 1200 posts stand for themselves instead of continually trying to influence others with such generalized opinions and no specifics.

Actually I probably left much more than 40 posts on this slavery/servant issue.

I'm not going to repeat all my many posts I put in that thread in here.

I've must have left at least 40 posts countering your slavery {or rather servant} claims,

Wouldn't it be nice if people just talked about the subject matter of my posts and not about me.

It would be nice if you talked about the subject matter and not yourself. Got any evidence?

 

[amb]

Of course DOC has evidence. Over a thousand pages of it. It's called the bible.

 

[joobz]

Your statement is not related to my request for you to explain your response in this post,

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=5291925#post5291925

therefore I must assume you can't explain it, and it was just put there for effect rather than any substance. This kind of thing has been happening a lot more then usual lately. People want to make negative statements or implications about me, but don't want to explain themselves when I ask.

Wouldn't it be nice if people just talked about the subject matter of my posts and not about me. But I know that is unlikely ever to totally happen on this system. Some people hope that by continually attacking me in any way possible they can discredit what I'm talking about. You might fool some people, but I think many people can see through all that and are instead focused on the material presented (and not DOC).

I noticed that this entire time, you have avoided answering Hokulele's question.

I suggest that it is because you realize what the answer to that question would mean and you do not wish to expose your poor logic.

 

[pakeha]

Originally Posted by pakeha
And some are false, like the Thallus and Phlegon assertion.
But since you cite these two as sources, why write them off so easily?
Could it be you only knew them from lists and didn't know just how forced their 'evidence' is?

Your opinion that 2 or the 10 sources are false is just that an opinion. There are biblical scholars that have a different opinion than yours.

What I wrote were conclusions drawn after reading studies, not lists.
Please cite these bibical scholars who have shown Phlegon and Thallus to be credible source material on the subject of Jesus as I'm interested in reading them, DOC.
And no, authors of lists don't count.
I'll be interested in your opinions of the refutation of Mara bar Serapion and the Talmud as reliable sources for information about Jesus, as well.

As far as I can see, these listed sources are a mix of elements ranging from merely repeating hearsay through wishful thinking to outright twisting of facts.
I'd be interested to see studies which show a different point of view on these listed sources.

I suppose it is a pure coincidence that at least one of these sources only comes down to us through having been quoted by another author, precisely the same objection DOC raises about the sources of information about Alexander the Great.

 

[pakeha]

In a most interesting post by mr Clingford these's this

...In an earlier post I wrote that I thought that there was now some evidence to suggest that a small group of Hebrews fled Egypt and then this grew into the Exodus tale, whole armies, magic snakes and all. ...

Could you shout a source for that, please?
Thanks in advance!

 

[Cleon]

http://yaba.com/LoverOfWisdom/blog/12856/

Here is a list:

Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Phlegon, Thallus, Suetonius, Lucian, Celsus, Mara Bar-Serapion, Jewish Talmud.

Completely false. The Talmud does not reference Jesus in any way. That's a myth. (Oh, and the Talmud post-dates Jesus by even more than the New Testament.)

 

[joobz]

http://yaba.com/LoverOfWisdom/blog/12856/

Here is a list:

Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Phlegon, Thallus, Suetonius, Lucian, Celsus, Mara Bar-Serapion, Jewish Talmud.

To support Cleon's point:
http://www.angelfire.com/mt/talmud/jesusnarr.html

 

[six7s]

Most religious belief systems posit there is a God

So?

You're not using the fallacious argument from popularity as the basis of your belief system, are you?

If you investigate the phenomenomenomenon, you'll soon realise that its almost certain that they are ALL wrong... fatally so

Douglas Adams: Is there an Artificial God?

Where does the idea of God come from? Well, I think we have a very skewed point of view on an awful lot of things, but let's try and see where our point of view comes from. Imagine early man. Early man is, like everything else, an evolved creature and he finds himself in a world that he's begun to take a little charge of; he's begun to be a tool-maker, a changer of his environment with the tools that he's made and he makes tools, when he does, in order to make changes in his environment. To give an example of the way man operates compared to other animals, consider speciation, which, as we know, tends to occur when a small group of animals gets separated from the rest of the herd by some geological upheaval, population pressure, food shortage or whatever and finds itself in a new environment with maybe something different going on. Take a very simple example; maybe a bunch of animals suddenly finds itself in a place where the weather is rather colder. We know that in a few generations those genes which favour a thicker coat will have come to the fore and we'll come and we'll find that the animals have now got thicker coats. Early man, who's a tool maker, doesn't have to do this: he can inhabit an extraordinarily wide range of habitats on earth, from tundra to the Gobi Desert - he even manages to live in New York for heaven's sake - and the reason is that when he arrives in a new environment he doesn't have to wait for several generations; if he arrives in a colder environment and sees an animal that has those genes which favour a thicker coat, he says "I'll have it off him". Tools have enabled us to think intentionally, to make things and to do things to create a world that fits us better. Now imagine an early man surveying his surroundings at the end of a happy day's tool making. He looks around and he sees a world which pleases him mightily: behind him are mountains with caves in - mountains are great because you can go and hide in the caves and you are out of the rain and the bears can't get you; in front of him there's the forest - it's got nuts and berries and delicious food; there's a stream going by, which is full of water - water's delicious to drink, you can float your boats in it and do all sorts of stuff with it; here's cousin Ug and he's caught a mammoth - mammoth's are great, you can eat them, you can wear their coats, you can use their bones to create weapons to catch other mammoths. I mean this is a great world, it's fantastic. But our early man has a moment to reflect and he thinks to himself, 'well, this is an interesting world that I find myself in' and then he asks himself a very treacherous question, a question which is totally meaningless and fallacious, but only comes about because of the nature of the sort of person he is, the sort of person he has evolved into and the sort of person who has thrived because he thinks this particular way. Man the maker looks at his world and says 'So who made this then?' Who made this? - you can see why it's a treacherous question. Early man thinks, 'Well, because there's only one sort of being I know about who makes things, whoever made all this must therefore be a much bigger, much more powerful and necessarily invisible, one of me and because I tend to be the strong one who does all the stuff, he's probably male'. And so we have the idea of a god. Then, because when we make things we do it with the intention of doing something with them, early man asks himself , 'If he made it, what did he make it for?' Now the real trap springs, because early man is thinking, 'This world fits me very well. Here are all these things that support me and feed me and look after me; yes, this world fits me nicely' and he reaches the inescapable conclusion that whoever made it, made it for him.

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

...if this God is worthy

Considering the 'worthiness' of what is likely a mythical character is not a good starting point

I suggest that you first think if there is ANY compelling evidence to support the idea of ANY god

...whatever religion is closest to the truth

Huh?

Being the least wrong doesn't make it right

I have only had experience of trying to live the Xtian faith and there are loads of very different positions within that one religion to consider.

Seriously and sincerely, I suggest that you acknowledge that you have the cart before the horse

As you know, we have ABSOLUTELY NO 'evidence for why we know the New Testament writers told the truth'

Rather, we have ample evidence that the NT and the OT are (literally) so ridiculously full of contradictions that they are useless in determining the authenticity of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god

So... what's left? Anecdotes? Pish!

Serious question: WHY do you entertain the possibility that there is a god?

 

[six7s]

Some sources are not as good as others- that can be expected. Bottom line is that all evidence can be put on the scale of evidence. Some just weighs more than others.

Fairy nuff

Note, however, that the sum total of all the so-called evidence that you have presented don't amount to a hill o' beans