And again, I must stress that I do not find the "historicity arguments" to be the main problem here. I am willing to accept that there may be (although I've not seen any) data that supports the concept that a literal man named Jesus ("Joshua" if you will, since it was Hellenized) lived in Palestine about 2017 years ago. And I am even willing to accept that this person spoke at length about God.
Yeshua (His Hebrew name), you're right Joshua was His name in the Greek but He was born Hebrew.
Obliquinaut said:
The point is, there is no way to evidence the supernatural. And that is the KEY aspect to going to the point of becoming a Christian.
One of the key aspects, but there are a number of others, truth being one of them. And you discount the miracles He performed (one of the biggest things that skeptics can't get beyond, if they at least consider the possibility they might actually realize that Jesus was God) is that Jesus did many miracles in His 3 1/2 years of ministry, and there were many (probably thousands) of eyewitnesses to them (let me reiterate that eyewitness accounts are in fact the best and most reliable form of evidence).
Obliquinaut said:
Speaking as a GEOLOGIST by training I can tell you that OFTEN times we do NOT have anything more than a "record" of what happened that must be interpreted. It is very much the same sort of thing. Albeit it is harder for rocks to make stories up or lie, but the point remains the same: forensic evidence is often all we have.
What about eyewitnesses, who were actually there during the events? And doesn't that compare quite favorably than rocks in the sand some 2000 years later. As far as evidence is concerned, multiple eyewitnesses to the same event (events), the more the merrier is the best possible evidence you can have, especially in a court of law. I believe that this was one of the most compelling aspects of Strobel's research which brought him to his final conclusion. Your forensic evidence becomes more important when you don't have the eyewitness accounts and in those cases, it's all you have and is much more difficult to prove.
Obliquinaut said:
And where is the documentary evidence from the contemporary times that he did? But that isn't at all what my main point is about. I honestly do not know how much more I can explain it or how more simply I can explain the major problem.
There's two potential meanings for the word "contemporary":
- living or occurring at the same time.
"the event was recorded by a contemporary historian"
- belonging to or occurring in the present.
"the tension and complexities of our contemporary society"
synonyms: modern, up-to-date, up-to-the-minute, fashionable; Mor
Jesus had much more than forensic evidence to prove His existence and His Deity.
In contemporary times you have people continually writing books about Jesus, the Bible and all things related, certainly more books than any one particular science book (not counting textbooks perhaps). And you have the greatest work ever written, more sold than any other with more historical accuracy than any other book in existence. None of these books written were written as fiction, all were written as historical fact and about real people who actually existed in the past. There's plenty of documentary evidence which was written during the time it took place.
Obliquinaut said:
If it is simply proving the existence of a particular human being then we must explain why Strobel isn't a follower of David Koresh or any other number of people who claimed (or were claimed to be) the Messiah throughout human history.
Wow! Some of the arguments you present are not PhD like. David Koresh? No one needs to do research on him. Everyone knows he was a lunatic and a murderer. Need any research be done. Other than the foolowers that all perished, who else do you know still following him today? Zilch. Really horrible analogy. Compare him to Koresh. Could have at least used Mohammed or Buddha. Would have at least had some credibility and we could compare them although none would come close to measuring up. Koresh has absolutely zero.
Out of all the "claimants" over the years that you refer to, who of them are still even remembered (other than the "infamous" ones like Koresh) let alone still being looked up to? Very few, if any. And even if there are a few still hanging around (who aren't mentally ill or strung out on drugs) how many followers do they still have? Certainly not over 2 billion almost 2000 years after His death. There must be something to the guy.
Obliquinaut said:
And again, I must stress that the yardstick is very much the same. It is any researcher's goal. UNLESS you are saying that Strobel relied on a special level of gullability, but I would not go that far. I trust that when someone says Strobel investigated and came to the conclusion that his original position of atheism was in error that he was doing EXACTLY what I've described: testing against the null hypothesis using only forensic data. EXACTLY like what a geologist might do.
OK, so then you're saying his research was honest, thorough and unbiased, right?
