Ask a Christian philosopher a question

bhsmte said:

Too much confirmation bias for that to happen.

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Reading widely within a subject is the best way to understand it; to know the points of contention amongst specialists and the arguments they place to and fro in defending differing beliefs. I absolutely love reading atheist philosophers, particularly within the Continental philosophical tradition: Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida - they have very interesting critiques of theism and religion in general.

bhsmte said:

He says?

Are you referring to the bible claiming to speak for God?

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Does the bible claim to speak for God? I can't remember having read that, can you show it to me?

bhsmte said:

If so, let me say, we have no way of objectively verifying the bible speaks for God, none what so ever. Men who write stories, can claim whatever they like. Confirming what they say has any validity, is a completely different story.

Even Christian NT historians and scholars will admit, little of what is attributed to Jesus in the NT, can be determined to have any degree of historical reliability, when the historical method is applied to the writings.

This is why faith is required to believe the stories, because they are simply not objectively verifiable.

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I think this really depends on the validity of the claim above, so I will wait for that to be substantiated.

As well as this, I noticed that you have not really answered the question, which is to establish whether you are right to doubt that what Jesus says is true. I was quite looking forward to see how you might answer that.

Aelred of Rievaulx said:

The historical Jesus matters because he lead a movement that would become one of the biggest driving forces in human history. He mattered about as much as Alexander the Macedon mattered.


Well, I did say what the methods were for ascertaining what may be historical and what may not be, multiple early attestation, dissimilarity and continuity. These tend to frame what most scholars would identify as the earliest Palestinian tradition, it makes sense within the wider milieu of second temple Judaisms, it is relatively early and attested many times, so it's likely historical. The crucifixion is a prime example, it's probably one of the earliest things we know about Jesus, it was attested by everyone, and it seems like a likely thing to happen to a royal pretender.

All, we have is the textual evidence, the same one that we've always had, all we can approach it with is method, method and even more scrupulous method. Historical analysis is painstaking and rigorous.

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Let me ask you a question.

Do you believe the NT is rigorously investigated objectively and employing the historical method as it was intended to be implied?

IMO, since the vast majority of NT historians are Christian, bias is a real issue, because they have significant skin in the game. Some of them, actually get paychecks from theological institutions.

From the NT historical work that I have read, it appears some of the Christian historians, tend to be lax with applying the historical method.

oi_antz said:

Does the bible claim to speak for God? I can't remember having read that, can you show it to me?

I think this really depends on the validity of the claim above, so I will wait for that to be substantiated.

As well as this, I noticed that you have not really answered the question, which is to establish whether you are right to doubt that what Jesus says is true. I was quite looking forward to see how you might answer that.

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Quick answer to doubting the historical credibility of what the NT claims about Jesus:

-Gospels are written by anonymous authors
-Gospels don't claim to be eye witness accounts
-Gospels were penned, 40-70 years after Jesus died
-Gospels were penned in a language, Jesus or his supposed followers did not speak
-Gospels have been shown to have additions or changes, which happened over hundreds of years
-Originals of the gospels are lost, we only have copies of copies of copies.
-John is the gospel most questioned by historians, because of it's completely different writing style and how late it was written. It is the only gospel that claims Jesus was God and how could matthew, mark and luke have missed such an important point?

Short list, as to why many NT historians, can't validate much of what Jesus did or said, with any level of historical credibility.

bhsmte said:

Do you believe the NT is rigorously investigated objectively and employing the historical method as it was intended to be implied?

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Yes, I think that it does happen. Look into the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus (if you have university access).

bhsmte said:

IMO, since the vast majority of NT historians are Christian, bias is a real issue, because they have significant skin in the game. Some of them, actually get paychecks from theological institutions.

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When you're talking about historical debates about miracles or stuff like that then you're right. These aren't debates which happen in academia generally and they don't happen in the context of the better research done on historical Jesus studies. At the very most the Christian/atheist/any historians can say that Jesus was reputably a healer/exorcist and that his disciples purportedly experienced his resurrection.

bhsmte said:

From the NT historical work that I have read, it appears some of the Christian historians, tend to be lax with applying the historical method.

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Certainly there are some that I would steer clear from, WL Craig for example who argues that there is historical evidence for a bodily resurrection of Jesus doesn't seem to be using very much in terms of critical analysis. But by and large I'm not altogether unimpressed with the state of things in academia.

bhsmte said:

Quick answer to doubting the historical credibility of what the NT claims about Jesus:

-Gospels are written by anonymous authors
-Gospels don't claim to be eye witness accounts
-Gospels were penned, 40-70 years after Jesus died
-Gospels were penned in a language, Jesus or his supposed followers did not speak
-Gospels have been shown to have additions or changes, which happened over hundreds of years
-Originals of the gospels are lost, we only have copies of copies of copies.
-John is the gospel most questioned by historians, because of it's completely different writing style and how late it was written. It is the only gospel that claims Jesus was God and how could matthew, mark and luke have missed such an important point?

Short list, as to why many NT historians, can't validate much of what Jesus did or said, with any level of historical credibility.

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The question is not whether it is true that He said it, but whether what He said is true. Since one who does love the truth would accept the possibility that it is true that He said it, they would be challenged to consider whether what He said is true. Is this something you have done before?

Aelred of Rievaulx said:

Yes, I think that it does happen. Look into the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus (if you have university access).


When you're talking about historical debates about miracles or stuff like that then you're right. These aren't debates which happen in academia generally and they don't happen in the context of the better research done on historical Jesus studies. At the very most the Christian/atheist/any historians can say that Jesus was reputably a healer/exorcist and that his disciples purportedly experienced his resurrection.


Certainly there are some that I would steer clear from, WL Craig for example who argues that there is historical evidence for a bodily resurrection of Jesus doesn't seem to be using very much in terms of critical analysis. But by and large I'm not altogether unimpressed with the state of things in academia.

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I would agree with most of what you said, although I do believe, a good bit of NT historical work is somewhat bias.

I mean, look at how a guy like Bart Ehrman was demonized by many Christian scholars and historians. The guy has impeccable credentials and trained under what many consider, the leading NT scholar of the 20th century and his points, are steeped in more evidence, than I believe his detractors are. The folks who stir the pot, with seeming to be valid points, are typically attacked.

Now, when it comes to miracles, no historian doing real historical work, would touch miracles with a 10 foot pole. Craig is indeed a joke, I got a kick out of how he came up with a mathematical probability as to why the resurrection occurred, when he debated Ehrman.

bhsmte said:

Quick answer to doubting the historical credibility of what the NT claims about Jesus:

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These need some refining because there have been some arguments made which have by-passed some of the bigger concerns:

bhsmte said:

-Gospels are written by anonymous authors

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That's at a general level quite true, the names were added later.

bhsmte said:

-Gospels don't claim to be eye witness accounts

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Richard Bauckham does make a rather convincing case that the gospels contain within them testimonies from various eye-witnesses. The very specific and sporadic names within the various gospels lends to this view, the authors weren't just writing crap for no reason, it's altogether reasonable to assume that the names included within the texts were there to lend credence to the authors points.

bhsmte said:

-Gospels were penned, 40-70 years after Jesus died

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We don't honestly know that actually, JAT Robinson makes a convincing case for an early NT. James Crossley, an atheist NT scholar, makes a very convincing case for Mark's Gospel to have been written within a decade of Jesus' death. At the very least we don't know when they were written and the arguments for a late date don't have the same air of certainty that they did last century.

bhsmte said:

-Gospels were penned in a language, Jesus or his supposed followers did not speak

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We don't know this either. Jesus grew up only a few kilometres away from Sepphoris, a Greek city, we find burial remnants all around Palestine which suggest that Greek speaking may have been quite prominent, a small look at contemporary post-colonies suggests that the poor can learn the languages of their colonists, the Hellenistic presence in the lower Levant was centuries old at the time of Jesus, it's not unlikely that he knew Greek.

bhsmte said:

-Gospels have been shown to have additions or changes, which happened over hundreds of years

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I wouldn't put a time frame on changes in the gospel traditions, they may be separated more by space than by time, but you're right, they do show evidence of religious evolution.

bhsmte said:

-Originals of the gospels are lost, we only have copies of copies of copies.

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True again, we don't have the originals, they're lost. Textual critics think that they can be reasonably certain about what the originals may have looked like, I prefer the air of mystery in that we can't know.

bhsmte said:

-John is the gospel most questioned by historians, because of it's completely different writing style and how late it was written. It is the only gospel that claims Jesus was God and how could matthew, mark and luke have missed such an important point?

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Again, we don't know when it was written, I don't immediately jump on the bandwagon of "it's mythical so it's late". From what I know of first century Palestine it wouldn't surprise me if mythical ideas went all the way back to Jesus' own mind.

bhsmte said:

Short list, as to why many NT historians, can't validate much of what Jesus did or said, with any level of historical credibility.

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For the most part this is true. You just need to remember that there are still debates going on about much of what you've said though.

oi_antz said:

The question is not whether it is true that He said it, but whether what He said is true. Since one who does love the truth would accept the possibility that it is true that He said it, they would be challenged to consider whether what He said is true. Is this something you have done before?

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Are you simply saying Jesus had some good teachings, whether he said those things or not? If so, I would agree, Jesus is portrayed to have some good teachings in the NT.

Now, one does not need a divine being, to come up with those same teachings, which is why man was able to write them.

Aelred of Rievaulx said:

These need some refining because there have been some arguments made which have by-passed some of the bigger concerns:


That's at a general level quite true, the names were added later.

Richard Bauckham does make a rather convincing case that the gospels contain within them testimonies from various eye-witnesses. The very specific and sporadic names within the various gospels lends to this view, the authors weren't just writing crap for no reason, it's altogether reasonable to assume that the names included within the texts were there to lend credence to the authors points.

We don't honestly know that actually, JAT Robinson makes a convincing case for an early NT. James Crossley, an atheist NT scholar, makes a very convincing case for Mark's Gospel to have been written within a decade of Jesus' death. At the very least we don't know when they were written and the arguments for a late date don't have the same air of certainty that they did last century.

We don't know this either. Jesus grew up only a few kilometres away from Sepphoris, a Greek city, we find burial remnants all around Palestine which suggest that Greek speaking may have been quite prominent, a small look at contemporary post-colonies suggests that the poor can learn the languages of their colonists, the Hellenistic presence in the lower Levant was centuries old at the time of Jesus, it's not unlikely that he knew Greek.

I wouldn't put a time frame on changes in the gospel traditions, they may be separated more by space than by time, but you're right, they do show evidence of religious evolution.

True again, we don't have the originals, they're lost. Textual critics think that they can be reasonably certain about what the originals may have looked like, I prefer the air of mystery in that we can't know.

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You are hand picking a scholar or two who you say make legit arguments against the concerns that I mentioned. When you consider how many scholars and historians there are, one off opinions don't amount to much. Heck, I can find you some scientists, that don't believe evolution is true.

I will say again, the consensus of scholars pretty much agree on how late the gospels were written, they agree on changes that took place some times hundreds of years later and they agree, much of the NT, is simply not considered to be historically credible.

The old guard (and there are plenty of them), will always protect the NT.

bhsmte said:

You are hand picking a scholar or two who you say make legit arguments against the concerns that I mentioned. When you consider how many scholars and historians there are, one off opinions don't amount to much. Heck, I can find you some scientists, that don't believe evolution is true.

I will say again, the consensus of scholars pretty much agree on how late the gospels were written, they agree on changes that took place some times hundreds of years later and they agree, much of the NT, is simply not considered to be historically credible.

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Yeah, some of these consensuses are cracking though, the two scholars I mentioned, Bauckham and Crossley, are really very important and they are convincing other academics, both write for the JSHJ.

bhsmte said:

The old guard (and there are plenty of them), will always protect the NT.

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I am talking about new scholars using rather new disciplinary methods. I personally find them convincing because my own research has shown some rather unnerving things about the specific form critical and source critical methods developed in the nineteenth century and how much of it rests of German romanticist idealism.

anonymous person said:

I've read Oppy and Wittgenstein.

I spend almost as much time reading the work of atheist philosophers as I do theist philosophers.

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That's great. Oppy has destroyed Platinga's theodicy as far as I can tell. I was fortunate enough to hear him at a conference speaking on it.

Aelred of Rievaulx said:

The historical Jesus matters because he lead a movement that would become one of the biggest driving forces in human history. He mattered about as much as Alexander the Macedon mattered.


Well, I did say what the methods were for ascertaining what may be historical and what may not be, multiple early attestation, dissimilarity and continuity. These tend to frame what most scholars would identify as the earliest Palestinian tradition, it makes sense within the wider milieu of second temple Judaisms, it is relatively early and attested many times, so it's likely historical. The crucifixion is a prime example, it's probably one of the earliest things we know about Jesus, it was attested by everyone, and it seems like a likely thing to happen to a royal pretender.


All, we have is the textual evidence, the same one that we've always had, all we can approach it with is method, method and even more scrupulous method. Historical analysis is painstaking and rigorous.

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Jesus's story was certainly important to history....Jesus not so much. If he was real, he inspired a dozen people...everyone else simply heard the story.

So when you speak of multiple attestation for things like the crucifixion...specifically you're referring to the fact that the bible claims a lot of people saw it....and the idea that someone couldn't just make these things up back in 40-90AD because people would remember and hold them accountable?

Ana the Ist said:

So when you speak of multiple attestation for things like the crucifixion...specifically you're referring to the fact that the bible claims a lot of people saw it....and the idea that someone couldn't just make these things up back in 40-90AD because people would remember and hold them accountable?

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Well, multiple attestation implies that the sources are independent, for example, we find significant differences of theology between Paul and Mark yet both Paul and Mark believe that Jesus was crucified. Paul implies that he received traditions about Jesus which pre-date him, the Philippians hymn, the creed of 1 Corinthians 15, these we can say are other independent attestations. So already we can say that we have at least 3 independent and very early attestations of the crucifixion. This is why most scholars think it's just a brute fact that there was a Jesus who was crucified.

Aelred of Rievaulx said:

Well, multiple attestation implies that the sources are independent, for example, we find significant differences of theology between Paul and Mark yet both Paul and Mark believe that Jesus was crucified. Paul implies that he received traditions about Jesus which pre-date him, the Philippians hymn, the creed of 1 Corinthians 15, these we can say are other independent attestations. So already we can say that we have at least 3 independent and very early attestations of the crucifixion. This is why most scholars think it's just a brute fact that there was a Jesus who was crucified.

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Pump the brakes for a second...

What we have are three different versions of the same story. We don't actually have authors to attach them to. We do know, however, these aren't historical documents. They weren't even necessarily written by eyewitnesses (aren't the originals in koine Greek?). Here's my problem with "multiple attestation"....

We've got 4 accounts of Barabbas being pardoned...5 if you count non canon (lies) Peter. It's a story that we can be about 99.99999% certain didn't happen...it's totally fictional. Yet the stuff that happens shortly after that? Where Jesus gets whipped and crowned and nailed etc etc....that's all real because we've got 3 accounts of it?

What scholar makes that leap with a straight face lol? Why is it suddenly more credible when it's coming from the same authors who were telling fiction just a little while before?

oi_antz said:

Does the bible claim to speak for God? I can't remember having read that, can you show it to me?

I think this really depends on the validity of the claim above, so I will wait for that to be substantiated.

As well as this, I noticed that you have not really answered the question, which is to establish whether you are right to doubt that what Jesus says is true. I was quite looking forward to see how you might answer that.

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Do you believe the bible is divinely inspired by God?

If so, wouldn't God divinely inspire something that reflects his desires?

bhsmte said:

Do you believe the bible is divinely inspired by God?

If so, wouldn't God divinely inspire something that reflects his desires?

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Or at least comports with reality.

anonymous person said:

That's what multiple attestation means jn a nutshell. Different sources corroborating some event. This is one thing we look for in determining whether or not an event took place.




If you include Paul's writings as one of these "versions", then you are wrong, for we have Paul as an author.

Secondly, the fact that the gospels do not contain the name of their author within the body of the text seems to me to simply be irrelevant. Maybe you can tell us why this fact helps support your contention?


Why not?




And you are certain Barabbas was not pardoned because?



Scholars maintain that Jesus was crucified by order of Pontius because of the cumulative case for the historicity of the event, not just because they open the gospels, read He was, shut them and say it must have happened. Historical criticism is much more involved than that.

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Depending on when you bought Blade Runner you could have up to five (?) Different versions of that. That doesn't make it a true story because it's meant to be fiction.

Do I really need to explain why history books don't contain messages about how to live your life or reasons you should follow one of the characters in them?

We know that no tradition existed where Romans just released enemies of the state....it's absurd. His original name is Yeshua Bar Abbas...a name that translates to Jesus son of the father, or as some say Jesus son of god. That means if you believe it's a real story, the Jews said release Jesus son of the father and execute the other Jesus son of the father. Need i explain further?

What exactly do you think this "cumulative case entails beyond looking at the story and say "it could've happened...so it did."?