Evolutionists and credentialism

sbvera13 · May 23, 2008

for those interested, googling the phrase "historicity of jesus" results in a plethora of responses, all of them biased, but some of them contain descriptions of the vairous historical non-biblical sources. Knowing what those sources are could help your research.

I'd do it myself but I'm too lazy at the moment. Just thought I'd mention it so you could figure out what sources you were looking for are.

Michael1975 · May 23, 2008

Tomk80 said:
Again, the bolded sentence does not mean they do not use the bible as evidence, only that they try to leave their theology and religiosity out when using it as a source.

No, it means that they do not use the bible as evidence.
Look up the word axiom, and look at how the sentence is structured.
There's no "trying to" leave out the bible as evidence. It's left out. Period. That's what "do not include" means.

Plus, there is a whole other part in the article in which scholars did use the bible as evidence, which in turn goes into much further detail. Without the use of a bible as a source, however, they don't know as much, but still enough to prove the existence of Jesus.

plindboe · May 23, 2008

Michael1975 said:
If there were people at that time who believed Jesus had been resurrected, they had to have a reason to do so.

Millions of people today believe Sai Baba is a God, even after it has been shown he's a con man. "they had to have a reason to do so" has got to be the worst argument one can possibly make, in light of what we observe with human belief systems around the world today and throughout history. Study other belief systems, and you'll sooner or later recognize the fact that humans have an uncanny proneness to false beliefs.

Peter

Michael1975 · May 23, 2008

plindboe said:
Your assumption is contradicted by your own link. In the second sentence it clearly says that the Bible is the primary source used to describe Jesus. The extra-biblical evidence used are to provide a historical context of the period.

Peter

It doesn't say that the Bible is the primary source. It says that critical analysis of the gospels was the primary source used. However, this alone still would'nt have given them their conclusion on the existance of Jesus. An atheist wouldn't read the gospel and suddenly believe in Jesus. The extra-biblical evidence is what convinces them.

Michael1975 · May 23, 2008

plindboe said:
Millions of people today believe Sai Baba is a God, even after it has been shown he's a con man. "they had to have a reason to do so" has got to be the worst argument one can possibly make, in light of what we observe with human belief systems around the world today and throughout history. Study other belief systems, and you'll sooner or later recognize the fact that humans have an uncanny proneness to false beliefs.

Peter

If you look at my all of my posts instead of taking one sentence from it, you'd realise it is only the worst argument when read by itself.

plindboe · May 23, 2008

Michael1975 said:
It doesn't say that the Bible is the primary source. It says that critical analysis of the gospels was the primary source used. However, this alone still would'nt have given them their conclusion on the existance of God. An atheist wouldn't read the gospel and suddenly believe in Jesus. The extra-biblical evidence is what convinces them.

The gospel is part of the Bible. If they use the gospel, they use a biblical source.

Michael1975 said:
The extra-biblical evidence is what convinces them.

What extra-biblical evidence? You keep saying that they must have been convinced by it, but you've failed to back that up. If you don't know what it is, you shouldn't just assume it's there.

Peter

plindboe · May 23, 2008

Michael1975 said:
If you look at my all of my posts instead of taking one sentence from it, you'd realise it is only the worst argument when read by itself.

Yes, it was one of your worst arguments, that's why I objected to it.

Peter

sinan90 · May 23, 2008

Michael1975 said:
It doesn't say that the Bible is the primary source. It says that critical analysis of the gospels was the primary source used. However, this alone still would'nt have given them their conclusion on the existance of God. An atheist wouldn't read the gospel and suddenly believe in Jesus. The extra-biblical evidence is what convinces them.

Proving the existence of God and the existence of a historical figure called Jesus are two differing things though. Proving the existence doesn't prove the existence of God, because:
a) Jesus is God in human form or however you want to view it isn't evidenced outside of religious texts
b) Just because one part of the gospel is true doesn't make everything else in it true.

Michael1975 · May 23, 2008

plindboe said:
The gospel is part of the Bible. If they use the gospel, they use a biblical source.

Lol, Ok fair enough, i'm really tired over here and so prone to missing things like this. However, the gospels do not include biblical infallibility, therefore not being worse as a source.

plindboe said:
What extra-biblical evidence? You keep saying that they must have been convinced by it, but you've failed to back that up. If you don't know what it is, you shouldn't just assume.

Peter

But if it isn't true, nothing about non-religious scholars believing in Jesus makes sense. My assumptions have filled the gaps better than those people who have argued against me so far. You tell me why Celsus, Lucian, Porphyry, among others, never doubted Jesus' existance?

Michael1975 · May 23, 2008

sinan90 said:
Proving the existence of God and the existence of a historical figure called Jesus are two differing things though. Proving the existence doesn't prove the existence of God, because:
a) Jesus is God in human form or however you want to view it isn't evidenced outside of religious texts
b) Just because one part of the gospel is true doesn't make everything else in it true.

Sorry, I meant Jesus. I'm really tired, it's passed midnight.

Michael1975 · May 23, 2008

sinan90 said:
Proving the existence of God and the existence of a historical figure called Jesus are two differing things though. Proving the existence doesn't prove the existence of God, because:
a) Jesus is God in human form or however you want to view it isn't evidenced outside of religious texts
b) Just because one part of the gospel is true doesn't make everything else in it true.

a) Jesus claimed to be the son of God.
b) Have everything else in it been proven false?

Michael1975 · May 23, 2008

plindboe said:
Yes, it was one of your worst arguments, that's why I objected to it.

Peter

If you look, I use it to reply to frumious bandersnatch when he says that there is only evidence to show that Christians believed that Jesus was resurrected. So I then said that they had to have a reason to believe that he was resurrected, which is Habermas was saying. It wasn't a bad argument because it is implying that Jesus had to be there to make these people believe he was resurrected.

Tomk80 · May 23, 2008

Michael1975 said:
No, it means that they do not use the bible as evidence.
Look up the word axiom, and look at how the sentence is structured.
There's no "trying to" leave out the bible as evidence. It's left out. Period. That's what "do not include" means.

Michael, really, I'm not unfamiliar with English language. But let's go over the sentence for you:
These methods do not include theological or religious axioms, such as biblical infallibility.
So the methods do not include theological axioms, neither do they include religious axioms. Now, an axiom is a statement that is taken to be self-evidently true. In case of theological and religious axioms these would be statements like "God exists" or "the bible is infallable". But leaving those out does not mean you leave the bible out. You just do not approach the bible with the mindset that it is a literal truth or that God exists. Nowhere does the statement imply that the bible is not used.

Now take that with the preceding sentence:
"These historical methods use critical analysis of gospel texts as the primary source for the biography of Jesus, along with non-biblical sources to reconstruct the historical context of first-century Judea. "
If you read this sentence, you will notice that it explicitly uses the gospel texts as a primary source. The gospel texts are biblical texts, something I am sure I do not have to tell you. So what the paragraph you quoted tells us, is that the bible, more specifically the gospels, are used as primary texts to establish the historicity of the bible. However, these are approached without assuming (not including) the existence of God or biblical inerrancy. In fact, when you read the rest of the paragraph, it becomes clear that the extrabiblical texts are mostly used to reconstruct the historical context of Judea and there used in establishing the historicity of Jesus is minimal at best.

Plus, there is a whole other part in the article in which scholars did use the bible as evidence, which in turn goes into much further detail. Without the use of a bible as a source, however, they don't know as much, but still enough to prove the existence of God.

I assume you mean Jesus. And no, all can show with extra-biblical texts, of which Josephus is the most insightful, is that Christians existed at the time of the writing of those texts. They cannot draw conclusions about the historicity of Jesus from those texts.

sinan90 · May 23, 2008

Michael1975 said:
a) Jesus claimed to be the son of God.

Just because Jesus may have claimed it, doesn't make it true. Lots of people have claimed stuff in the past without it being true. Also where outside of the Bible is this claim mentioned again?

b) Have everything else in it been proven false?

That wasn't my point. My point is just because one thing in the bible may be true, it doesn't make the rest of the bible true. You need to prove each thing on its own independent of what else may have happened unless that's been proven to have happened to a reasonable level.

Michael1975 · May 23, 2008

Tomk80 said:
Michael, really, I'm not unfamiliar with English language. But let's go over the sentence for you:
These methods do not include theological or religious axioms, such as biblical infallibility.
So the methods do not include theological axioms, neither do they include religious axioms. Now, an axiom is a statement that is taken to be self-evidently true. In case of theological and religious axioms these would be statements like "God exists" or "the bible is infallable". But leaving those out does not mean you leave the bible out. You just do not approach the bible with the mindset that it is a literal truth or that God exists. Nowhere does the statement imply that the bible is not used.

Now take that with the preceding sentence:
"These historical methods use critical analysis of gospel texts as the primary source for the biography of Jesus, along with non-biblical sources to reconstruct the historical context of first-century Judea. "
If you read this sentence, you will notice that it explicitly uses the gospel texts as a primary source. The gospel texts are biblical texts, something I am sure I do not have to tell you. So what the paragraph you quoted tells us, is that the bible, more specifically the gospels, are used as primary texts to establish the historicity of the bible. However, these are approached without assuming (not including) the existence of God or biblical inerrancy. In fact, when you read the rest of the paragraph, it becomes clear that the extrabiblical texts are mostly used to reconstruct the historical context of Judea and there used in establishing the historicity of Jesus is minimal at best.

I already acknowledged these.

Tomk80 said:
I assume you mean Jesus. And no, all can show with extra-biblical texts, of which Josephus is the most insightful, is that Christians existed at the time of the writing of those texts. They cannot draw conclusions about the historicity of Jesus from those texts.

I don't follow. Can you rephrase?

Michael1975 · May 23, 2008

sinan90 said:
Just because Jesus may have claimed it, doesn't make it true. Lots of people have claimed stuff in the past without it being true. Also where outside of the Bible is this claim mentioned again?

Outside of the bible scholars know that Jesus was crucified because he claimed to be the son of God. Jesus' claims were also different than most other people's claims, and he did miracles which also show how special he indeed is.

sinan90 said:
That wasn't my point. My point is just because one thing in the bible may be true, it doesn't make the rest of the bible true. You need to prove each thing on its own independent of what else may have happened unless that's been proven to have happened to a reasonable level.

That things do you want proven? I haven't read the bible, but i'll try and find out for you.

Michael1975 · May 23, 2008

OK, I am unbelievably tired. I also have Church tomorrow. The argument here was about the non-biblical sources for Jesus (even though the biblical ones themselves have helped).

Well, on the wikipedia page "Historical Jesus", it says "These historical methods use critical analysis of gospel texts as the primary source for the biography of Jesus, along with non-biblical sources to reconstruct the historical context of first-century Judea". So we can all agree that there are non-biblical sources right?

Like I said, I don't know how to get these. I was told of them by my RE teacher, but I can't get them. However, I am not a scholar. I am 14 years old. Those scholars who did research Jesus know of the sources (for example, my teacher).

Goodnight all

Chalnoth · May 23, 2008

Michael1975 said:
I have never heard of claims of people (other than Jesus) being resurrected. Or bringing people back to life.

Heh. They're not that uncommon. Google "Raised from the dead" some time. Many Christian sites like to trot out these supposed "miracles" all the time. Resurrection myths also found in other traditions, such as in Buddhism.

Michael1975 said:
Charismatic speaker - Why did he begin to believe it?

Good question. With Paul, we actually have a plausible scenario: the "Road to Damascus" story is a dead ringer for a guy having a seizure. During seizures, people often hallucinate. It's definitely within the realm of possibility that an hallucination is the original source of the Jesus myth, with embellishments added later.

Michael1975 said:
Crucifixion survivor - He was stabbed (to check he was dead), and put in a tomb for days. He was definately dead.

You're going off of texts that were written many decades after the fact. The stories have been embellished, so these specific events are not trustworthy.

Michael1975 said:
Pure fiction - But it's not fiction. This guy lived.

How do you know?

Michael1975 said:
Have you got a history scholarship? You don't and you don't believe Jesus lives. However, history scholars do believe he lived. Who is right, you or them?

No, I don't. And I haven't said I disbelieve that Jesus lived (of course I don't believe he lives...if he was ever alive he's been dead and buried for nearly 2000 years). I have said that I'm not sure. As near as I can tell, it's approximately as likely that he lived as he didn't. I've never seen a solid argument that he ever was a real, living person. And I've never seen a mythical Jesus argument that went so far as to really provide solid evidence that he was indeed a myth. So I'm undecided.

P.S. If you want to see one argument for a mythical Jesus, see this article:
http://www.rationalresponders.com/jesus_mythicist_position_revised_2008
It is quite lengthy and goes into quite a bit of depth.

flatworm · May 23, 2008

Michael1975 said:
Well, on the wikipedia page "Historical Jesus", it says "These historical methods use critical analysis of gospel texts as the primary source for the biography of Jesus, along with non-biblical sources to reconstruct the historical context of first-century Judea". So we can all agree that there are non-biblical sources right?

The sentence seems to imply non-biblical sources for the historical context of first-century Judea, not specifically for the existence of Jesus.

Baggins · May 24, 2008

Michael1975 said:
Why does it being a Christian college change how smart teachers are?

I said " you either went to a christian college had a very dim teacher or both" I didn't claim that all teachers at Christian colleges were dim, although some Christian colleges have poor credentials when it comes to teaching science.

When was creationism ever falsified?

creationism in unfalsifiable ( a belief that god stepped in at one point or many points in order to perform magic ) , Creationism ( young earth, single creation event, flood etc ) was falsified around 200 years ago by geologists building on the work of James Hutton.

No, he hasn't. Jesus was resurrected from the dead. In fact, I was watching an interesting argument on this not too long ago...

Not according to the logic we saw deployed in the post I was answering. That said if you weren't there to see it it didn't happen. I have no massive problem with the Historicity of Jesus although it is unevidenced outside of the bible. I , obviously, don't believe in anything supernatural like resurrection.

Evolutionists and credentialism

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