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I would not suggest going there. Reading one's Bible literally gives both cases of true and of false history. Examples:
True: we have confirmed that a ruler named "Pontius Pilot" did exist, as did Caesar Augustus, places like Jerusalem, Rome, Assyria, Galilee, etc. That really doesn't prove much, as even works of fiction sometimes use real place and person names (like Spiderman being set in New York, fictional movies mentioning Bill Clinton, a Tale of Two Cities with London and Paris, etc.)
False - a lot of "history" from a literally read Bible is almost certainly false. If lengendary stories like Babel or the Exodus are taken as history, actual history from historians shows them to be false. Later stories also don't match history, such as the impossibility of the gold and armies of King Solomon, or the idea of Luke's "Census/Bethlehem" story - for which there is no external evidence.
My recommendation would be to direct him to look to his Bible as a source of inspiration, and not to look to history as proof that a Bible is divine. After all, the Qu'ran also mentions real people and real places. If we use the mentioning of real people and real places as "proof" that a Bible is divine, then we confirm the Qu'ran and other books (such as the Book of Mormon) as divine too.
In Christ-
Papias
Yes. I wouldn't call it a "documentary". It's a money-making project by a former rock musician, whose ideas are unsupported by evidence and have been rejected by the actual historians and archeologists. There has been plenty of work by actual archeologists in that area. Thanks for mentioning it though.
(from earlier) The Archeologists, Historians and Biblical archeologists agree - the whole exodus story never happened. How did the Jews get to Israel? They always were there. The evidence (including DNA evidence) shows that they are simply a Canaanite population that has a culturally different identity based on it's own internal stories. They were a Canaanite group that became distinct over time, never leaving its homeland.
There were plenty of expectations a century ago that archeology would confirm the stories in the first books of the Bibles, but as the evidence piled up, it soon became clear that it didn't happen as described in the Bibles. Some basic and well supported facts we now know:
and so on.
- The Jews were never enslaved in Egypt - instead, they developed from earlier Canaanites, and never had to "conquer" the land they always had.
- There is no evidence that Moses ever existed outside of legend, like Hercules.
- No Egyptian records support the enslavement of the Hebrews, or any other Biblical story - and the Egyptians have good records.
- No Egyptian records support the drowning of their army in the red sea, or any other Biblical story - and the Egyptians have good records.
- Jericho has been studied extensively with massive digs and archeological testing - the Biblical story does not appear to have happened. In fact, the famed walls of Jericho were destroyed by the Egyptian army centuries before the Hebrew mythology was supposed to have happened.
This is the consensus view of Biblical archeological historians. Some examples:
- Here is a book by a well known biblical archeological historian, who points out that the stories never actually happened. Read page 6 here: Exodus
- Even the Conservative Jews have accepted reality here - just the first few paragraphs of this article should make that clear: New Torah For Modern Minds
- Here is a good video describing this, by the top Archeologist at Israel's Tel Aviv University. You might notice that he's introduced by Rabbi Wine, who was one of the most respected Rabbis before his recent death.
The other videos by Dr. Finkelstein in that same series are also useful.
I think in today's era of fake news and rampant hoaxes, it's more important than ever to look at what the actual experts say, instead just looking for someone - anyone - saying things that we want to be true. That's the very definition of wishful thinking, after all.
In Christ-
Papias
Often we start to lose faith in the Bible when we stop reading it.
This isn't to say there is no historical evidence, there's plenty, but often that isn't the root problem.
Getting into the evidence, I first recommend reading the Gospel of John, again if you have to.
1 Corinthians 15 is also great, with the majority view agreeing the creed in 1 Corinthians 15 dates back to within 5 years of Jesus' death. This means the Apostles who knew Jesus closely truly believed that He had risen from the dead, and not only that but 500 other people had witnessed Him, and Paul says many are still alive at the time, almost as though he is challenging the Corinthians to go out and ask them! One can then argue, "Okay, but maybe the Apostles were lying." And yet we then see that the Apostles live dangerously for the Gospel, without care for themselves, without financial or material gain, and most of them ending up dying for their witness!
As above for Israel in Egypt. Uniquely when referring to Biblical history the term "we have no evidence for" is often used as equivalence for "it never happened" and reveals a unique standard of thinking in the minds of certain x-spirts on the subject.
It is clear that throughout the ancient world the absence of corroborating evidence for a significant event, people group or place is at least as easily due to the wishes of a competing people group or ruler to completely remove all traces of the memory of that event, people group or place from the face of the earth, as we currently see ISIS currently working on in the Middle East.
Bravo Greg! Well written.It depends what he means by know. There is a sense in which no one knows, if by know he means "can repeatedly demonstrate." To avoid ambiguity, a lot of people instead say, "have sufficient evidence to believe."
Evidence is available in many forms such as archeological evidence and the results of textual criticism of ancient fragments of the Bible (and others).
A problem a lot of people have is to not be willing to accept what someone else says, and I'm not just talking about the testimony of a Christian about experiencing God. A person that doesn't want to accept the general consensus from archeologists or textual criticists may not be able to get enough evidence to satisfy them. This is a level of faith that is often not discussed, but if you can't have faith in the work of tens of thousands of people (which is available for you to examine, but would take more time than you have in your whole life), how are you ever going to have faith in things that you can't examine with your own eyes?
People, Christians in particular, like to compare the level of evidence someone is demanding to believe in God or the Bible with how little evidence they have needed to believe other things. It is to point out the illogical bias that people have.
Sometimes the unbelieving one is trying to argue logically (and has a "superior" attitude about their logic), even though it is still a mish-mash of neurons like feelings or intuition are. The difference is that sound logic produces a sense of satisfaction in us that feelings do not. But what it takes to cause that satisfaction is affected by how they were raised and their culture just like everything else about them.
Decartes' famous assertion (I think therefore I am.) has a depth of meaning that isn't obvious. It was the consequence of acknowledging that we can't prove anything definitively and that we must build upon assumptions (faith). If you dissect human assumptions/logic/presumption, they boil down to: we must accept (without being able to prove) that we exist, because all our other reasoning and logic builds on that. We accept it as true because everything else that makes sense to us requires it to be true.
I wrote all that to say: There is a sense in which you can't "know" anything (e.g., The Matrix argument). What we must do is identify what you consider as sufficient evidence to believe. If you do that, then it will be easier to focus on the evidence you are having trouble believing, and to have realistic expectations for when you will "know" God is real, and the Bible is inspired by him down to the least stroke of the pen (used to write down single alphabetic character) and the choice of a verb tense—both examples Jesus used of how accurate Scripture is.
There are many sources of evidence; perhaps someone will list some. I will speak of the most reliable one, which is to get to know enough people who testify to interactions they've had with God to know that they don't make up stories to deceive people and aren't mentally damaged. Note the difference between what people say they believe about God vs. what they say they have experienced. The Bible is not full of what people believed about God, it is full of people's experiences and recounting of experiences. In practice the easiest way to get to know these people is to consider yourself a Seeker and start attending a church where miracles occur regularly (or from their perspective, are claimed to be happening regularly). Note that what you find to be true about the people in one church has nothing to do with what you would find about other people in another church. Christian individuals come in as many varieties as can be found in any other large group of people.
The Bible "works"—all the supernatural claims it makes still happen today. But only those who have fully committed to, and given themselves over to, Jesus Christ are going to experience them (or believe in them).
People who have been completely devoted to Jesus and been obedient for several decades are the ones that have been transformed the most into Jesus' likeness, and in fact, you don't need even need to get to know them all that well to start to find it uncomfortable to be around them. Fear, pain, and rejection are typical internal responses of those with less faith in God to those with more faith in God (even between two believers). Genuine faith is built up over the decades through experiencing God keeping his Biblical promises thousands of times. I would be impressed with any unbeliever who was able to continue to draw closer to such a person. I've never heard of anyone able to stick with it (without coming to believe in Jesus, too). The unbeliever would start to find the person unreasonable, but without having enough evidence to explain it. That's what happens when unbelief encounters significant evidence (Luke 16:31). (An article I didn't read all of seems to describe this in a lot of detail.)
Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. (1 John 3:24, 1984 NIV)
I had hoped for people who actually accepted the authority of scripture to comment on this post.
No one else has anything of value to say?
This is called confirmation bias.
No, you've missed something here.
Indeed, absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence.
Except when the claim in question is predicting certain evidence. Then, the absence of said predicted evidence, IS evidence of absence.
A clear-cut example is the biblical flood.
It predicts the presence of (among a great deal of other things) a genetic bottleneck in all extant life. It MUST be there. But it isn't.
That IS evidence of absence. It MUST be there, but it is not. Therefor, it is false.
There is no "but maybe we'll find it tomorrow" here. It won't magically pop-up tomorrow. It's not there today and it won't be there tomorrow, just like it wasn't there yesterday either.
This is not always possible and in many (if not most or all) cases simply is NOT possible.
+600.000 slaves simply walking out of Egypt is one of those things.
First, it's not realistic that an event of this scale would go unnoticed by all neighbouring (and rivaling) nations.
Who says they kept quiet?Secondly, it's equally unrealistic that all of Egypt could keep this quite.
Thirdly, such an event would also have serious impact on the Egyptian empire as a whole in such a way that that impact could not have been "kept hidden".
That's like saying that America could have "kept it quite" that the WTC towers collapsed in the middle of New York.
Such things are just not realistic.
Also, next to a ginormous amount of slaves simply walking out of Egypt (which, btw, would have been an extremely large portion of the entire Egyptian population), a BIG chuck of its army supposedly was also drowned. So not only did all the slaves "disappear" overnight... the same goes for the army.
These are not the kind of things you can keep quite or which can go by unnoticed in the pages of history.
How, exactly?
Jesus of Nazareth and His crucifixion are mentioned as real historical events outside the Bible by Tacitus, Pliny and Josephus.Same question... without using the bible, how do you demonstrate that this dude really existed?
Oh come on! You're not seriously suggesting.....????What empty tomb? It seems to me that this tomb in Jeruzalem hasn't been opened at all... coverstone upon coverstone has it sealed of.
No, from our perspective it is not a case of empty tomb...therefore.Also, I don't see how an empty tomb would be proper justification for "and therefor, this dude came back from the dead". Perhaps there never was a body in it. Perhaps it was taken out. Either of those 2 seems incredibly more likely then the dude having himself resurected through supernatural shenannigans.
"Does God exist? We've seen five good reasons to think that God exists:
1. God makes sense of the origin of the universe.
2. God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.
3. God makes sense of objective moral values in the world.
4. God makes sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
5. God can be immediately known and experienced.
These are only a part of the evidence for God's existence. Alvin Plantinga, one of the world's leading philosophers, has laid out two dozen or so arguments for God's existence. Together these constitute a powerful cumulative case for the existence of God.
Does God Exist? | Reasonable Faith
Jesus of Nazareth and His crucifixion are mentioned as real historical events outside the Bible by Tacitus, Pliny and Josephus.
Given that these sources confirm the historical reliability of the documents written by the Apostles in this regard that gives us 6 or 7 independent written accounts of the existence of the man written within 1 generation of Him walking the earth.
The Evidence for Jesus | Reasonable Faith
Oh come on! You're not seriously suggesting.....????
The tomb I'm referring to is the one attested to by the apostles. It's been a long time....
No, from our perspective it is not a case of empty tomb...therefore.
It is a question of plausibility. We weigh all of the possibilities such as the Swoon theory or the Body snatching theory or the Mistaken Identity theory and the Ressurection theory and find that on the balance the most plausible explanation is the Ressurection story as presented by Mary and the Apostles.
The justification is with the people who tell us that this happened, we are merely weighing things to decide whether the story is plausible. In the end however the Ressurection is something that is taken on trust.
The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus | Reasonable Faith
You can make all the philosophical or theological arguments you want, but this does not constitute empirical evidence.
None of it is falsifiable.
The Resurrection, the central tenet of The Faith, is falsifiable.
Where is Jesus' body?
"Does God exist? We've seen five good reasons to think that God exists:
1. God makes sense of the origin of the universe.
2. God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.
3. God makes sense of objective moral values in the world.
4. God makes sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
5. God can be immediately known and experienced.
These are only a part of the evidence for God's existence.
Alvin Plantinga, one of the world's leading philosophers, has laid out two dozen or so arguments for God's existence. Together these constitute a powerful cumulative case for the existence of God.
Does God Exist? | Reasonable Faith
Jesus of Nazareth and His crucifixion are mentioned as real historical events outside the Bible by Tacitus, Pliny and Josephus.
Given that these sources confirm the historical reliability of the documents written by the Apostles
in this regard that gives us 6 or 7 independent written accounts
Oh come on! You're not seriously suggesting.....????
The tomb I'm referring to is the one attested to by the apostles. It's been a long time....
No, from our perspective it is not a case of empty tomb...therefore.
It is a question of plausibility. We weigh all of the possibilities such as the Swoon theory or the Body snatching theory or the Mistaken Identity theory and the Ressurection theory and find that on the balance the most plausible explanation is the Ressurection story as presented by Mary and the Apostles.
Nobody said anything about evidence having to be directly empirical?You can make all the philosophical or theological arguments you want, but this does not constitute empirical evidence.
No. It is all falsifiable, it is just not false and so very difficult to falsify.None of it is falsifiable.
Nobody said anything about evidence having to be directly empirical?
There are other ways of knowing things other than direct sensory experience.
For example the contention that everything that begins to exist has a cause is based upon and strengthened by observations.
No. It is all falsifiable
Anyway truth doesn't need to be falsifiable in order to be true.
All 'not being falsifiable' says is that a contention is not admissable as a scientific theory.
You really need to read the articles behind the links.I started replying to each individually, but then I found that I had to respond to each one with the same question: "how?".
This is just a list of claims. You are trying to support a claim with even more claims, which even assume the claim that you started out with.
While I congratulate you with combo points for creating an argument that employs both the fallacy of circular reasoning and the assumed conclusion, fallacies are not a good way to build an argument.
Follow the links.I should certainly hope so.... So what else do you have??
If words cannot be used to describe something then what do you propose?This is what I like to call the fallacy of "defining things into existence".
You are not going to convince me about anything with evidence that consists entirely out of mere "words".
That's just semantics and linguistic hocus-pocus.
Tacitus, in full Publius Cornelius Tacitus, or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus (born ad 56—died c. 120) Roman orator and public official, probably the greatest historian and one of the greatest prose stylists who wrote in the Latin language. Among his works are the Germania, describing the Germanic tribes, the Historiae (Histories), concerning the Roman Empire from ad 69 to 96, and the later Annals, dealing with the empire in the period from ad 14 to 68.Actually, none of these are contemporary. Some passages' authenticity is also questioned by quite a few historians.
Tacitus does both above and note he is no fan of the pernicious superstition. In case you miss it he writes: Christus, the founder of the name, was Put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign Of Tiberius:But even if there's no authenticity problem, all 3 would have been aware of the newly born sect called christians and they would have been aware of their beliefs and stuff. So essentially, they'ld just be repeating what christians preached.
Both what is beleived and what is known fact would also be reported in this article and anybody who wished to use the article to establish some recognised fact about the sect could do so.It would be no different from writing an article today and mentioned "hindu's who follow visjnoe".
Cool. So now we are on a footing equivalent to the historical basis. Its not necessary to beleive all of the stories about Jesus of Nazareth in order to establish that the man existed and was crucified.So, while I don't have any specific problems with a historical (human) jesus who started some political / religious movement, if I were to take the stance of the "mythical jesus", i'ld call this evidence shaky at best.
Tacitus was an actual official record. Josephus is recognised as a credible historian. Pliny was a Christian so would obviously have lied through his teeth with all sorts of pernicious superstitions and mumbo jumbo and couldn't even lie straight in his bed at night and wouldn't recognise a true story if it tapped dance across his nose, but I include him for interests sake.It's not like they are actually referencing actual official records of the Romans from the time which would indicate a different source.
Tacitus and Josepus are certainly independant of Mathew, Peter, Paul, John and Pliny and, in the case of Tacitus and Josephus at least, would be mortified (I suppose they've actually been mortified for a couple of thousand years now) to think that somebody would suggest anything different.That's what I'm telling you. These are not independent written accounts.
I'm happy that you call it scripture, Christians call it such. But the truth is the accounts were not written as such.In any case... Yeah, i'm not really impressed by the scripture itself saying it happened. After all, that IS the claim...
If God exists then it is not implausible, given the person of Jesus, and given that all other proposed explanations fail on the story as it is given then I consider that it is more plausible.I don't see how the most plausible explanation is the one that includes supernatural shenannigans.
What do you think God is? I would say that the ability to createbiological forms by speaking is the ultimate high tech, indistinguishable from magic by our relative stone age knowledge and techniques. Is it even plausible that other "high tech aliens" exist?I mean, for real... even a version that says that high-tech aliens visited from light years away and resurected Jesus is a more plausible explanation (if we assume for a second that the resurection actually happened) then what is written in the bible.
You suspend the laws of nature every time you catch a ball (which may well be miraculous to some). So why can't a God who got the ball rolling in the first place.For the sheer fact that it doesn't require the laws of nature to be suspendend or defied (which the supernatural does).
Clarkes 3rd law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."magic" is never the "most plausible" explanation.
A proper understanding of the way in which ancient people used so called mythology and the way in which subsequent people understood it reveals that it is unlikely that ancient people really beleived this stuff in the way we accuse them of doing.What seems actually most plausible... is that this is just a religion like any other, invented out of the imagination of people and taken for real for whatever reason.
I mean... Romans really, really believed that Rome was founded by Remus and Romulus, who were raised by a wolf.
Thats right, so we can compare the crazy stuff and the people that invented it all with the guys that claimed that Christ rose from the dead to see if they are the same.Surely we have enough examples of people inventing some serious crazy stuff and actually believing it and build complete cultures and empires around it.
It's not like we are without precedent there........
You really need to read the articles behind the links.
The list is a summary of the main points raised in the article behind the first link I posted, that in itself is only a quick summary of the much larger and more complete arguments made by Bill Lane-Craig and others.
Follow the links.
If words cannot be used to describe something then what do you propose?
Tacitus, in full Publius Cornelius Tacitus, or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus (born ad 56—died c. 120) Roman orator and public official, probably the greatest historian and one of the greatest prose stylists who wrote in the Latin language. Among his works are the Germania, describing the Germanic tribes, the Historiae (Histories), concerning the Roman Empire from ad 69 to 96, and the later Annals, dealing with the empire in the period from ad 14 to 68.
But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the Bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements Which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero From the infamy of being believed to have ordered the Conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he Falsely charged with the guilt, and punished Christians, who were Hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was Put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign Of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time Broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief Originated, but through the city of Rome also, where all things Hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their Center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first Made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an Immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of Firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.
Tacitus does both above and note he is no fan of the pernicious superstition. In case you miss it he writes: Christus, the founder of the name, was Put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign Of Tiberius:
as an explanation of the history of the sect and goes on to complain that His execution didn't acheive much.
Both what is beleived and what is known fact would also be reported in this article and anybody who wished to use the article to establish some recognised fact about the sect could do so.
Cool. So now we are on a footing equivalent to the historical basis. Its not necessary to beleive all of the stories about Jesus of Nazareth in order to establish that the man existed and was crucified.
Tacitus was an actual official record. Josephus is recognised as a credible historian. Pliny was a Christian so would obviously have lied through his teeth with all sorts of pernicious superstitions and mumbo jumbo and couldn't even lie straight in his bed at night and wouldn't recognise a true story if it tapped dance across his nose, but I include him for interests sake.
Tacitus and Josepus are certainly independant of Mathew, Peter, Paul, John and Pliny and, in the case of Tacitus and Josephus at least, would be mortified (I suppose they've actually been mortified for a couple of thousand years now) to think that somebody would suggest anything different.
I'm happy that you call it scripture, Christians call it such. But the truth is the accounts were not written as such.
For example the letter to the Corinthians is a pastoral letter written to the Church in Corinth, telling them to behave themselves.
The book of Luke goes along with the book of Acts and is written as a historical explanation of the situation that Paul found himself in under arrest in Rome.
If God exists then it is not implausible, given the person of Jesus, and given that all other proposed explanations fail on the story as it is given then I consider that it is more plausible.
What do you think God is? I would say that the ability to createbiological forms by speaking is the ultimate high tech, indistinguishable from magic by our relative stone age knowledge and techniques. Is it even plausible that other "high tech aliens" exist?
You suspend the laws of nature every time you catch a ball (which may well be miraculous to some). So why can't a God who got the ball rolling in the first place.
Clarkes 3rd law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
A proper understanding of the way in which ancient people used so called mythology and the way in which subsequent people understood it reveals that it is unlikely that ancient people really beleived this stuff in the way we accuse them of doing.
I can't really reference it online but there is a very good book written in New Zealand that compares known historical events with the way in which early Maori later relayed the stories of these events to subsequent explorers.
I've also spoken recently to a Hindu man about the million odd detities of Hinduism and observe much the same.
So I'm sceptical of your claim that anybody really, really believed these things.
Thats right, so we can compare the crazy stuff and the people that invented it all with the guys that claimed that Christ rose from the dead to see if they are the same.
In the case of the Christian message we even have our own apochraphyl "gospels" to compare as well.
What we find is that the Gospel accounts and what we know of the people who held the story do not fit in the same box.
I'ld think it's implied.... I mean... evidence that can't be verified isn't evidence at all... Then they are just more claims piling on.
(Other ways of knowing apart from direct sensory experience?)Such as?
I'm not sure what your point is here.First, I don't really agree with the wording here. Technically, we never see anything "beginning to exist". Rather, we see "already existing things being reconfigured".
I don't beleive so but I guess if it is a falsifiable hypothesis it is possible that some may.Secondly, the kalaam cosmological argument has been teared apart multiple times over and has been shown to be nothing but another cesspool of unsupported premises and fallacious thinking..
Right away? Right now? As in 6 hours ago? OK ummmmmm, how about...If it could be demonstrated that the universe does not have a beginning then the Kalam cosmological argument would fail?Ok. Give a single example of how it could be falsified. Just give the BEST example right away.
Only if it is to be accepted as a scientific theory. Truth is knowable in more ways than sensory knowledge and so testability for the truth of what are probably one off events is probably not all that important.Indeed. But it needs to be falsifiable in order to be able to rationally accept it as true after it's been tested.
It is interesting, but what makes you think that anything you sense is true?Because how else do you tell the difference between what is false and what is true, if not by falsifiability??
On the grounds of some other source of knowledge.I can invent on the spot a couple hundred of unfalsifiable claims. And if just one of them was true, how would you tell it apart from all the others??
FYI Refer: Theory of Knowledge IB Guide | Part 4 | IB BlogObviously, falsifiability is a requirement for scientific ideas... But not because it is a "science" thing. Rather because it is a "rational" thing, when you are trying to tell what is true from what is false.
(Other ways of knowing apart from direct sensory experience?)
There are 7 other ways....hahaha. Yes 7 little ways of knowing...
1.Language;
2.Emotion;
3.Reason;
4.Imagination;
5.Faith;
6.Intuition;
7.Memory.
I'm not sure what your point is here.
A cake may be the reconfigured constiuents of....whatever a cake is made of....but the cake itself begins to exist at some point, and before that point it was not a cake.
This is true for all things down to what must be the uncaused-cause, that is God.
I don't beleive so but I guess if it is a falsifiable hypothesis it is possible that some may.
Right away? Right now? As in 6 hours ago? OK ummmmmm, how about...If it could be demonstrated that the universe does not have a beginning then the Kalam cosmological argument would fail?
Only if it is to be accepted as a scientific theory.
Truth is knowable in more ways than sensory knowledge
and so testability for the truth of what are probably one off events is probably not all that important.
It is interesting, but what makes you think that anything you sense is true?
What you sense may have some utilility for this world, but true? On what basis can you asses that?
The truth is that the first principle of knowledge in all of us is trust, simple trust in our faculties to convey truth about the world.
So the first principle of truth is trust, not empiricism.
On the grounds of some other source of knowledge.
You really need to read the articles behind the links. The list is a summary of the main points raised in the article behind the first link I posted, that in itself is only a quick summary of the much larger and more complete arguments made by Bill Lane-Craig and others.
Follow the links.
If words cannot be used to describe something then what do you propose?
Tacitus, in full Publius Cornelius Tacitus, or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus (born ad 56—died c. 120) Roman orator and public official, probably the greatest historian and one of the greatest prose stylists who wrote in the Latin language. Among his works are the Germania, describing the Germanic tribes, the Historiae (Histories), concerning the Roman Empire from ad 69 to 96, and the later Annals, dealing with the empire in the period from ad 14 to 68.
But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the Bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements Which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero From the infamy of being believed to have ordered the Conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he Falsely charged with the guilt, and punished Christians, who were Hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was Put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign Of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time Broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief Originated, but through the city of Rome also, where all things Hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their Center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first Made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an Immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of Firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.
Tacitus does both above and note he is no fan of the pernicious superstition. In case you miss it he writes: Christus, the founder of the name, was Put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign Of Tiberius:
as an explanation of the history of the sect and goes on to complain that His execution didn't acheive much.
Both what is beleived and what is known fact would also be reported in this article and anybody who wished to use the article to establish some recognised fact about the sect could do so.
Cool. So now we are on a footing equivalent to the historical basis. Its not necessary to beleive all of the stories about Jesus of Nazareth in order to establish that the man existed and was crucified.
Tacitus and Josepus are certainly independant of Mathew, Peter, Paul, John and Pliny and, in the case of Tacitus and Josephus at least, would be mortified (I suppose they've actually been mortified for a couple of thousand years now) to think that somebody would suggest anything different.
I'm happy that you call it scripture, Christians call it such. But the truth is the accounts were not written as such.
For example the letter to the Corinthians is a pastoral letter written to the Church in Corinth, telling them to behave themselves.
The book of Luke goes along with the book of Acts and is written as a historical explanation of the situation that Paul found himself in under arrest in Rome.
If God exists then it is not implausible, given the person of Jesus, and given that all other proposed explanations fail on the story as it is given then I consider that it is more plausible.
What do you think God is? I would say that the ability to createbiological forms by speaking is the ultimate high tech
Is it even plausible that other "high tech aliens" exist?
You suspend the laws of nature every time you catch a ball (which may well be miraculous to some).
So why can't a God who got the ball rolling in the first place.
Clarkes 3rd law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
A proper understanding of the way in which ancient people used so called mythology and the way in which subsequent people understood it reveals that it is unlikely that ancient people really beleived this stuff in the way we accuse them of doing.
I can't really reference it online but there is a very good book written in New Zealand that compares known historical events with the way in which early Maori later relayed the stories of these events to subsequent explorers.
I've also spoken recently to a Hindu man about the million odd detities of Hinduism and observe much the same.
So I'm sceptical of your claim that anybody really, really believed these things.
Thats right, so we can compare the crazy stuff and the people that invented it all with the guys that claimed that Christ rose from the dead to see if they are the same.
In the case of the Christian message we even have our own apochraphyl "gospels" to compare as well.
What we find is that the Gospel accounts and what we know of the people who held the story do not fit in the same box.
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