Here's the thing about eye witness accounts. They're highly unreliable. When it comes to courtroom evidence, all attorney's will tell you they would rather have DNA than an eye witness testimony.
Test the Turin Shroud?
Are you familiar with the "basketball gorilla study? It is a visual cognition study in which Daniel Simons at the U. of Illinois, has subjects watch a video in which a basketall is passed around. He instructs the subjects to count the number of passes they make with the basketball. After about thirty seconds into the exercise, a person in a gorilla suit walks out and into the middle of those passing the basketball around. Only about fifty percent of the test subjects noticed the gorilla as it walked through!
That's because they were asked to count the number of passes being made, so they were concentrating hard on something else. How does this relate to more than 500 disciples in a room and Jesus walking in?
Add to this that the four gospels were each written 30-60 years after the death of Jesus, and you're bound to have discrepencies (which there are).
Discrepancies can in fact add validity to an account, as someone in GA once explained to me. If it were carbon-copy the same a jury would be suspicious.
We don't even know who the actual authors were of the four gospels.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
James Patrick Holding: Dates and authorship of the Gospels
Evidence That the Gospels Are Authentic
And to answer your question about martydom, yes, people do die for unworthy causes everyday.
Jim Jones: >900
That was suicide, like Hitler's bunker, not martyrdom.
9/11
suicide bombers in Gaza
suicide bombers in London
suicide bombers in Pakistan
They are more seeking glory, and are agressively dying, not passively, like a berserker warrior or a kamikaze pilot, it's essentially an atrocity, not a martyrdom, whatever label they slap upon it, it's done out of hate, not love. And the young civilian ones in war zones are mostly doing it because their families, who are in poverty, are paid money by the insurgents, and they have no other prospects.
The ... comet?
Who wrote Matthew? When was the author murdered? How was he murdered? Where was he murdered?
Matthew the tax collector wrote Matthew, he was martyred, the method isn't known, but it happened in Ethiopia in 90 AD, under Domitian.
Term paper on St. Matthew (One of the Twelve Apostles)
St. Matthew - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online
St. Matthew
Who wrote Mark? When was the author murdered? How was he murdered? Where was he murdered?
Mark, a member of the early church, the son of Peter's friend Mary, wrote Mark, he died while being dragged through the streets of Alexandria, later than 62 AD.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Saint Mark
Mark the Evangelist
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Gospel of Mark
Who wrote Luke? When was the author murdered? How was he murdered? Where was he murdered?
Luke the physician wrote Luke, he was hanged in Boeotia at age 74.
http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/saint-luke.htm
Saint Luke
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Gospel of Saint Luke
Who wrote John? When was the author murdered? How was he murdered? Where was he murdered?
John the apostle, the "disciple whom Jesus loved" wrote John, he died a natural death in Ephesus at a great age in about 100 AD.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. John the Evangelist
St John The Evangelist
St. John, Apostle and Evangelist
Do you know it was 500? Were people taking attendance? Doing accurate head counts? Heck, look at reporting on crowds of events today (i.e. tea bagger protests). You get numbers all over the map.
It just says "more than 500 of the brothers at the same time" 1 Corinthians 15:6.
This is also the problem given that many of the gospels were written long after they occured. Ever play the telephone game? What might have been an event witnessed by half-a-dozen people (assuming it actually occurred) could easily morph to 500 or more within a few tellings.
The gospel preached by all the apostles was described as this:
"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born." 1 Corinthians 15:3-8
Lots of people stand up for things they believe in. Regardless, this is all well after the fact and the exact details can get very muddied by history.
Ah, it is not so easy to dismiss the gospels, if you really want to know if they're historically accurate take the gospel of Luke - called 'the historical gospel' - as many have done, and try to disprove it.
So the answer is no, you don't. Like I said earlier, you have more in common with atheists than I think you realize.
Yes, I know the quote, just I can't compare
the God to the ones dividing Him up into many small pieces. But there is still a universal God who's the same in many religions.
