Let's suppose God did....

[Dave Ellis]

Yes, I'm familiar with C.S. Lewis. I have read most of his books.

His statement is a false dilemma. He forgot to add a fourth, and most likely, option, that of myth. Jesus was either god, liar, lunatic or myth.

He could have also been a popular 1st century rabbi who's exploits were blown way out of proportion in the decades after his death.

 

[super animator]

That's why we say it's evidence of absence, not proof of absence.

Suppose you tell me there's an elephant in my garden, and I go out and have a look, and I don't see an elephant, nor do I see elephant poop, nor elephant tracks, nor elephant hide, nor a suspicious elephant trunk peeking out from behind my tree. There's a conspicuous absence of evidence for the existence of this alleged elephant, and this absence of evidence is itself evidence that the elephant does not exist.

It is perfectly reasonable to note the absence of evidence for elephants in my garden, and ipso facto conclude there are no elephants.

For starters we know what an elephant is, and what to expect to from it, the same thing couldn't be said about god though, we couldn't come to universal conclusion of what the ideas of god is.

Other user.
"The absence of evidence generally means that we can't start making assertions about a thing, and at that point religion is relegated to uselessness."
What? Your not making any sense to me. There nothing preventing us to make assertions when it comes to anything.

"The Atheist doesn't need to make any assertions about anything supernatural, or about divinity or whatever."
We don't "need" to make any assertions about everything, if it has nothing to do with our survival. What point your trying to make here? You just confusing me here.

 

[Elioenai26]

Mr. Frenchy and Mr. Dave,

You two gentlemen and several others believe that C.S. Lewis left a fourth option to choose from in his famous "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" proposition.

You argue that he also should have included "Legend, or myth" in there to bring it to four and that he was unjustified in omitting it which makes it a fallacious proposition.

Therefore, the real question here is:

"Is there warrant in omitting the option of Legend or Myth from the proposition?"

If Mr. Lewis had warrant in omitting Legend or Myth from his proposition then no charge of a fallacious composition can be justifiably leveled against him. So there real matter at hand is the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth.

But there are two way in which these terms can be used.

1. Legend or myth can be used to refer to Jesus as never having existed as a real person. I.e., that He was completely made up by the imaginations of those who claimed to follow Him.

2. That He really was a Jewish man who lived in Palestine during the rein of Tiberius Caesar, but most of what He is recorded as having done, i.e. miracles, etc. are simply made up by those who followed Him.

With regards to one, it is a non-issue. No credible historian or scholar denies the existence of Jesus of Nazareth as an actual historical person.

I will let my following resources speak for themselves. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed,[1][2][3][4] and although there is little agreement on the historicity of gospel narratives and their theological assertions of his divinity,[5][6][7][8] biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted.[9][10][11] Most scholars agree that Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was born between 7 and 2 BC and died 30–36 AD.[12][13][14] Most scholars hold that Jesus lived in Galilee and Judea, did not preach or study elsewhere[15][16][17] and that he spoke Aramaic and may have also spoken Hebrew and possibly Greek.[18][19][20] Although scholars differ on the reconstruction of the specific episodes of the life of Jesus, the two events whose historicity is subject to "almost universal assent" are that he was baptized by John the Baptist and shortly afterwards was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.[21][22][23][24]

Resources in the following post.

 

[Elioenai26]

Courtesy of Wikipedia. Sources for previous post.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-Ehrman285_1-2 In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart Ehrman (now a secular agnostic who was formerly Evangelical) wrote: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees" B. Ehrman, 2011 Forged : writing in the name of God ISBN 978-0-06-207863-6. page 285
2. Robert M. Price (a Christian atheist who denies the existence of Jesus) agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars: Robert M. Price "Jesus at the Vanishing Point" in The Historical Jesus: Five Views edited by James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy, 2009 InterVarsity, ISBN 028106329X page 61
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-Grantmajority_3-1 Michael Grant (a classicist) states that "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." in Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels by Micjhael Grant 2004 ISBN 1898799881 page 200
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-Burridge34_4-1 Richard A. Burridge states: "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more." in Jesus Now and Then by Richard A. Burridge and Graham Gould (Apr 1, 2004) ISBN 0802809774 page 34
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-CEvans5_5-1 Craig Evans, "Life-of-Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology," Theological Studies 54 (1993) p. 5,
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-Charles_H._Talbert_pg_42_6-1 Charles H. Talbert, What Is a Gospel? The Genre of Canonical Gospels pg 42 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977).
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-Jesus_1995_7-1 “The Historical Figure of Jesus," Sanders, E.P., Penguin Books: London, 1995, p., 3.
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-MAPowell168_8-2 Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee by Mark Allan Powell 1998 ISBN 0-664-25703-8 pages 168–173
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-voorst16_9-3 Robert E. Van Voorst Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence Eerdmans Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-8028-4368-9 page 16 states: "biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted"
10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-DunnPaul35_10-1 James D. G. Dunn "Paul's understanding of the death of Jesus" in Sacrifice and Redemption edited by S. W. Sykes (Dec 3, 2007) Cambridge University Press ISBN 052104460X pages 35-36 states that the theories of non-existence of Jesus are "a thoroughly dead thesis"
11. The Gospels and Jesus by Graham Stanton, 1989 ISBN 0192132415 Oxford University Press, page 145 states : "Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed".
12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-ChronosPaul_12-5 Paul L. Maier "The Date of the Nativity and Chronology of Jesus" in Chronos, kairos, Christos: nativity and chronological studies by Jerry Vardaman, Edwin M. Yamauchi 1989 ISBN 0-931464-50-1 pages 113-129
13. The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament by Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum 2009 ISBN 978-0-8054-4365-3 page 114
14. ^ Amy-Jill Levine has summarized the situation by stating that "there is a consensus of sorts on the basic outline of Jesus' life" in that most scholars agree that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, debated Jewish authorities on the subject of God, performed some healings, gathered followers, and was crucified by Roman prefect Pontius Pilate who reigned 26-36 AD The Historical Jesus in Context edited by Amy-Jill Levine et al. Princeton Univ Press ISBN 978-0-691-00992-6 page 4
15. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, I. Howard Marshall, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (InterVarsity Press, 1992), page 442
16. The Historical Jesus in Recent Research edited by James D. G. Dunn and Scot McKnight 2006 ISBN 1-57506-100-7 page 303
17. Who Is Jesus? by John Dominic Crossan, Richard G. Watts 1999 ISBN 0664258425 pages 28-29
18. James Barr, Which language did Jesus speak, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1970; 53(1) pages 9-29 [1]
19. Handbook to exegesis of the New Testament by Stanley E. Porter 1997 ISBN 90-04-09921-2 pages 110-112
20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-Hamp3_20-1 Discovering the language of Jesus by Douglas Hamp 2005 ISBN 1-59751-017-3 page 3-4
21. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-JDunn339_21-3 Jesus Remembered by James D. G. Dunn 2003 ISBN 0-8028-3931-2 page 339 states of baptism and crucifixion that these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent".
22. Prophet and Teacher: An Introduction to the Historical Jesus by William R. Herzog (Jul 4, 2005) ISBN 0664225284 pages 1-6
23. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#cite_ref-autogenerated145_23-2 Crossan, John Dominic (1995). Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. HarperOne. p. 145. ISBN 0-06-061662-8. "That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus...agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact."
24. Eddy & Boyd (2007) The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition Baker Academic, ISBN 0-8010-3114-1 page 127 states that it is now "firmly established" that there is non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus

________________________________________________________________


So we see from the above, Jesus was not a myth or a legend in the sense that He never existed.


Now what about two? Is there any evidence that Jesus' followers made Him out to be something that He was not? Did they misrepresent Him and intentionally deceive people regarding who He was?


There is no evidence, no sustainable argument, no proof whatsoever that Jesus' disciples and those who were responsible for writing the New Testament documents misrepresented Him, intentionally engaged in deception, or inaccurately recorded the particular events of Jesus' life and teachings that they did.



Aside from the above, the disciples had nothing to gain by lying and spreading untruths about Jesus It seems quite evident, that we would have expected quite the opposite from what they wrote considering the consequences that their endeavors generated. For their efforts, they were scorned, excommunicated from their communities, beaten, imprisoned, tortured, ridiculed, slandered, falsely accused, and most were ultimately martyred for their endeavors. There is simply no good reason to believe that these men would have endured all of these things for propagating a lie that they knew to be false.


__


In light of the above my friends, C.S. Lewis knew that he was more than justified in presenting us with the following:


Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?


__


When we look at the life of Jesus, which do you think He was?

 

[variant]

Elioenai26 you haven't really addressed their point at all.

Consider the following premise.

P1 We do not know that the man depicted in the Bible made any of the claims attributed to him.

For the purpose of argument accept P1 as true and tell me which of CS lewis's propositions is correct.

Now, did C.S. Lewis have warrant to reject P1 based upon the historicity of Jesus?

The problem here of course is that for C.S. lewis's possibilitys all require that we take the story of Jesus and the claims attributed to Jesus at face value, which of course no one is required to do.

 

[quatona]

Elioenai,
assuming for a moment that "LLL"Lewis´ trichotomy were accurate [which it isn´t: "misrepresented/misunderstood/misinterpreted" is a fourth option - but let´s just assume that what you insist to be an accurate trichotomy were actually one]:
What would prompt me to pick "Lord" over "Lunatic" or "Liar" (apart from the fact that the latter options are probably prohibited by CF rules)?
I do know that people can be lunatics, I do know that people can lie, but I have never experienced a person to be God. So your first option is by far the most exceptional and incredible one.
Thus, whenever this trichotomy is applied to a person I would certainly consider one of the latter to be way more likely than the first. (And I suspect, you would, too - except, of course, when it is about a belief you have been holding anyway).

 

[Elioenai26]

Elioenai26 you haven't really addressed their point at all.

I think I did.

His statement is a false dilemma. He forgot to add a fourth, and most likely, option, that of myth. Jesus was either god, liar, lunatic or myth.

He says that it is more likely that Jesus was just a myth. I have shown why this is not a sustainable assertion.

Dave Ellis said that He may have been a rabbi whose persona was blown way out of proportion. I also addressed that.

Consider the following premise.

P1 We do not know that the man depicted in the Bible made any of the claims attributed to him.

For the purpose of argument accept P1 as true and tell me which of CS lewis's propositions is correct.

Now, did C.S. Lewis have warrant to reject P1 based upon the historicity of Jesus?

Yes Variant, the two posts preceding this post of yours demonstrate this. That was my point in posting it. He had warrant to reject your premise 1.

The problem here of course is that for C.S. lewis's possibilitys all require that we take the story of Jesus and the claims attributed to Jesus at face value, which of course no one is required to do.

No one is required to take them at face value. C.S. Lewis knew this very well. People deny that the New Testament documents are reliable all the time. Many atheists here do.

But is there good reason to deny them as accurate, objective accounts of Jesus' life and ministry and death and burial and resurrection?

If you do not take them at face value, i.e. you find them unbelievable or unreliable, or not trustworthy, and you want it to be more than a statement of personal opinion, then the onus is on you to provide evidence and or an argument that would be compelling in demonstrating that the New Testament documents should not be considered accurate records of Jesus' life.

 

[variant]

But is there good reason to deny them as accurate, objective accounts of Jesus' life and ministry and death and burial and resurrection?

If you do not take them at face value, i.e. you find them unbelievable or unreliable, or not trustworthy, and you want it to be more than a statement of personal opinion, then the onus is on you to provide evidence and or an argument that would be compelling in demonstrating that the New Testament documents should not be considered accurate records of Jesus' life.

Personal consistency actually, if someone brought me a story today that read anything like the Jesus story I would want independent verification on the spot.

When people write books that claim that the dead rose and all sorts of other fantastical ideas and want me to join them they are quite hard to take at face value.

Acting like I have to disprove the story of Jesus when none of it is actually in evidence is just shifting the burden.

Lewis is of course just begging the question, if taking the Gospel as Gospel is a prerequisite for his argument than wouldn't I already be a believer?

 

[Elioenai26]

C. S. Lewis was an Oxford medieval historian, popular writer, and Christian apologist. He used the argument outlined below in a series of BBC radio talks later published as the book Mere Christianity.

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."1
​

Lewis's trilemma is based on the view that, in his words and deeds, Jesus was asserting a claim to be God. For example, in Mere Christianity, Lewis refers to what he says are Jesus' claims:

• to have authority to forgive sins—behaving as if he really was "the person chiefly offended in all offences."2, 3, 4http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis's_trilemma#cite_note-7http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis's_trilemma#cite_note-8
• to have always existed,5 and
• to intend to come back to judge the world at the end of time.6

Lewis implies that these amount to a claim to be God and argues that they logically exclude the possibility that Jesus was merely "a great moral teacher", because he believes no ordinary human making such claims could possibly be rationally or morally reliable. Elsewhere, he refers to this argument as "the aut Deus aut malus homo" ("either God or a bad man"),7 a reference to an earlier version of the argument used by Henry Parry Liddon in his 1866 Bampton Lectures, in which Liddon argued for the divinity of Jesus based on a number of grounds, including the claims he believed Jesus made.8

1. ^ Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity, London: Collins, 1952, p54-56. (In all editions, this is Bk. II, Ch. 3, "The Shocking Alternative.") Forty years earlier, G. K. Chesterton used a similar argument about someone else in his The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), where Adam Wayne is described this way: "He may be God. He may be the Devil. But we think it more likely as a matter of human probability that he is mad." See Cecil Chestrton, G. K. Chesterton: A Criticism (Seattle: Inklng, 2007), 26.
2. ^ C S Lewis,Mere Christianity, Simon & Schuster. p. 55.
3. ^ Compare G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
4. ^ Mark 2:1–12 is the most common of several passages interpreted this way.
5. ^ Probably a reference to John 8:58: "Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.’"[John 8:58]
6. ^ Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity, London: Collins, 1952, p. 51.
7. ^ C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on theology and ethics, 1945, Eerdmans, p101; letter to Owen Barfield, c. August 1939, printed in Walter Hooper (ed.), The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 2, Harper Collins (2004), page 269
8. ^ Henry Parry Liddon, The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Lecture IV (London, 1867): Liddon's version was 'Christus si non Deus non bonus'. According to Charles Gore, (The Incarnation of the Son of God, (1890), Liddon could not recall the source of the epigram but Gore thought it went back to Victorinus Afer. (Appendices, page 238)

Wikipedia

 

[Elioenai26]

 

[variant]

All that citation proves Elioenai26 is that you are presenting Lewis's argument for something it wasn't intended to do.

Of course his argument still does hinge on the entirety of what is attributed to Jesus being on it's face true.

Lewis meant to counter the argument that Jesus was merely a great moral teacher only, which, of course, if you like the morality supposedly espoused by Jesus, it makes no real difference whether it is his thoughts or not.

 

[JGG]

I think I did.



He says that it is more likely that Jesus was just a myth. I have shown why this is not a sustainable assertion.

Dave Ellis said that He may have been a rabbi whose persona was blown way out of proportion. I also addressed that.




Yes Variant, the two posts preceding this post of yours demonstrate this. That was my point in posting it. He had warrant to reject your premise 1.



No one is required to take them at face value. C.S. Lewis knew this very well. People deny that the New Testament documents are reliable all the time. Many atheists here do.

But is there good reason to deny them as accurate, objective accounts of Jesus' life and ministry and death and burial and resurrection?

If you do not take them at face value, i.e. you find them unbelievable or unreliable, or not trustworthy, and you want it to be more than a statement of personal opinion, then the onus is on you to provide evidence and or an argument that would be compelling in demonstrating that the New Testament documents should not be considered accurate records of Jesus' life.

Virgin birth, turning water into wine, walking on water, loaves and fishes, raising people from the dead, magic healing, raising self from the dead...

Throw on top of that the Jews themselves calling for their own blood libel on his death, which I have been having a hard time reasoning out for a good long time.

So, I guess I will again go with unbelievable.

 

[Elioenai26]

Personal consistency actually,

What do you mean by "personal consistency"? Could you elaborate on that and explain how it is an argument for rejecting the New Testament documents?

if someone brought me a story today that read anything like the Jesus story I would want independent verification on the spot.

If someone brought me a story about someone working miracles, healing the sick, raising the dead, dying for my sins and rising after He had been entombed for several days and told me that belief in this man was the only way to obtain salvation from my sins, I would say that this story was either true or false. I would then investigate the story and ask questions. I would try to speak with those who had witnessed these event. I would want first hand testimony if it were available and things such as that.

I get your point. It is not unreasonable to desire support for claims such as what were made in the New Testament scriptures. I do not see how this is an argument against the reliability of the New Testament scriptures though. That is what I asked for. Can you tell me how this statement of yours is evidence that the New Testament scriptures are not reliable?

When people write books that claim that the dead rose and all sorts of other fantastical ideas and want me to join them they are quite hard to take at face value.

Well these "books" you speak of are more along the lines of "letters". The term epistle is used often, as well as "gospel" which refers specifically to narratives and accounts of Jesus' life compiled by His disciples. The word "books" are usually used by laymen. So these are not "books" in the traditional sense of the word.

Within these accounts, there are numerous recordings of various miraculous occurrances. We should expect this if it were an accurate record of God interacting personally with His creation.

When you say "join them" I do not quite understand what you mean. Do you mean to say that the New Testament authors desire for you to take their accounts as being accurate and true? I think that is safe to say. Yes they would.

Records of miraculous occurrances and events should not be taken at face value unless there is some sort of warrant which gives us justification for doing so. If someone walked up to me and said: "I am God, worship me", or if someone said: "I am God, and I just raised somebody from the dead the other day, now worship me!" I would ask them for proof of their claim. I would want to see evidence for this claim. I am not going to take their word for it by any means. Only the gullible and naive would do so.

So I agree with you.

Acting like I have to disprove the story of Jesus when none of it is actually in evidence is just shifting the burden.

My goodness Variant! What a sweeping claim you just made! None of Jesus' story is in evidence you say! Hmmm.. what can that mean? Surely you've read the most recent scholarly work on His life? Have you not? Have you ignored all of the hard work I have recently engaged in when I provided sources and links for conclusions regarding Jesus' life by historians and scholars?

Lewis is of course just begging the question, if taking the Gospel as Gospel is a prerequisite for his argument than wouldn't I already be a believer?

What is he begging the question for? All he has done is present us with a trilemma.

There are many that will confess they do indeed believe God exists and that Jesus was God incarnate and they also will confess that they hate Him. They are called misotheistic anti-Christians.

So no, just because a person believes the gospel accounts as accurate records of Jesus' life and ministry, does not necessarily mean they will be believers in Christ, if by "believer" you mean a follower and worshiper of Christ.

 

[pjnlsn]

I think I did.

To say that the figure of Jesus is or could have been a myth is more to say that Jesus, the son of an invisible anthropomorphic entity with magical powers is a myth, not Jesus, the Jewish carpenter who may have grown into a religious leader in some fashion.

 

[variant]

What do you mean by "personal consistency"? Could you elaborate on that and explain how it is an argument for rejecting the New Testament documents

I already did, I am saying I would reject such claims and look for verification if someone on the street today was claiming the exact same thing.

If someone brought me a story about someone working miracles, healing the sick, raising the dead, dying for my sins and rising after He had been entombed for several days and told me that belief in this man was the only way to obtain salvation from my sins, I would say that this story was either true or false. I would then investigate the story and ask questions. I would try to speak with those who had witnessed these event. I would want first hand testimony if it were available and things such as that.

The truth of the matter is the point here though before we go about organizing our lives around basic principles that other people claim.

People historically have a nasty habit of making up religions based upon sketchy and unverifiable info.

The accounts of what Jesus said and did are of course suspect for the reason that they claim all sorts of things that are practically unbelievable. The writers are suspect in and of the fact that I don't really even know who they are in the first place. I can say nothing really of their motivations or their intentions, who they were or what they were doing when the wrote such tales. And again, if an eye witness to the events told me in person I would not believe such things unless I could go see them for myself.

I get your point. It is not unreasonable to desire support for claims such as what were made in the New Testament scriptures. I do not see how this is an argument against the reliability of the New Testament scriptures though. That is what I asked for. Can you tell me how this statement of yours is evidence that the New Testament scriptures are not reliable?

They aren't reliable in the exact same way as a person telling me the same thing on the street is unreliable.

If someone would have told me of Jesus during that time I would have asked to go see him and witness it for myself.

Which means that like me other people would have too. But, of course we all know that these things were written down and distributed about the man mainly after his death and supposed resurrection.

I can't dub religious writings with my credulity based upon claims I have not way to verify and have never, ever experienced anything like.

Well these "books" you speak of are more along the lines of "letters". The term epistle is used often, as well as "gospel" which refers specifically to narratives and accounts of Jesus' life compiled by His disciples. The word "books" are usually used by laymen. So these are not "books" in the traditional sense of the word.

They would be serving the same purpose.

Within these accounts, there are numerous recordings of various miraculous occurrances. We should expect this if it were an accurate record of God interacting personally with His creation.

If that is how God acts with regard to his creation.

Then why can't your God make a display for me? Kind of goes to the heart of this thread don't you think?

God can spend years convincing other people directly but I get to argue over 2000 year old stories?

When you say "join them" I do not quite understand what you mean. Do you mean to say that the New Testament authors desire for you to take their accounts as being accurate and true? I think that is safe to say. Yes they would.

Yes join in and relish in the story.

Records of miraculous occurrances and events should not be taken at face value unless there is some sort of warrant which gives us justification for doing so. If someone walked up to me and said: "I am God, worship me", or if someone said: "I am God, and I just raised somebody from the dead the other day, now worship me!" I would ask them for proof of their claim. I would want to see evidence for this claim. I am not going to take their word for it by any means. Only the gullible and naive would do so.

So I agree with you.

OK, then why do you think a recording of such a supposed occurrence is credible?

My goodness Variant! What a sweeping claim you just made! None of Jesus' story is in evidence you say! Hmmm.. what can that mean? Surely you've read the most recent scholarly work on His life? Have you not? Have you ignored all of the hard work I have recently engaged in when I provided sources and links for conclusions regarding Jesus' life by historians and scholars?

I have indeed been through the work on the subject.

The contemporary history of Jesus barely actually tells us that there was a guy named Jesus, and much of it is questionable. You have to go to the Gospels proper to get the claims attributed to him.

Well the Gospels or the many various other apocryphal works that say Jesus said A or B or C.

None of which were written at the same time Jesus was alive.

What is he begging the question for? All he has done is present us with a trilemma.

If one accepted the entire story of Jesus as told by the four canonical gospels truthful you would already be a believer.

There are many that will confess they do indeed believe God exists and that Jesus was God incarnate and they also will confess that they hate Him. They are called misotheistic anti-Christians.

So no, just because a person believes the gospel accounts as accurate records of Jesus' life and ministry, does not necessarily mean they will be believers in Christ, if by "believer" you mean a follower and worshiper of Christ.

These people do believe though, thus I call them believers.

 

[Dave Ellis]

Eli:

While I am willing to grant there might have been a person the stories about Jesus are based on, and I grant that few historians are willing to claim he didn't exist at all, it's worth noting we still have no actual evidence that confirms he did exist without a shadow of a doubt.

However, I think it's far more reasonable to say there was a popular rabbi in 1st century Israel who's exploits were exaggerated by his followers in the decades after his death. Many of the things that were attributed to Jesus simply are not reasonable to assume are true without hard evidence, and that hard evidence simply does not exist.

 

[Elioenai26]

Virgin birth, turning water into wine, walking on water, loaves and fishes, raising people from the dead, magic healing, raising self from the dead...

Throw on top of that the Jews themselves calling for their own blood libel on his death, which I have been having a hard time reasoning out for a good long time.

So, I guess I will again go with unbelievable.

And assuming these accounts were all accurately recorded, they would qualify as evidences or "proofs" if you will, of God's existence and Him actively demonstrating His power over nature, correct?

 

[Elioenai26]

All that citation proves Elioenai26 is that you are presenting Lewis's argument for something it wasn't intended to do.

My motive for presenting the argument is immaterial to my question put to you regarding your justification for denying the reliability of the New Testament documents.

Not only that, but your accusation is actually obviously false. For Lewis' motive is given in his own words:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice."

This was my exact reason in providing the trilemma in the first place to Paradoxum.

So you are not providing a good argument for denying the credibility of the New Testament documents and you are falsely accusing me of presenting the trilemma for something it was not designed for.

Of course his argument still does hinge on the entirety of what is attributed to Jesus being on it's face true.

If you will notice, all the argument requires is for someone to generally accept the fact that Jesus existed and that the sayings recorded in the gospels are His. Paradoxum, the person I presented the trilemma to, if you will notice, has not expressed any misgivings regarding these things.

So she is the most appropriate type of person to present the argument to which renders your statement unnecessary.

Lewis meant to counter the argument that Jesus was merely a great moral teacher only, which, of course, if you like the morality supposedly espoused by Jesus, it makes no real difference whether it is his thoughts or not.

Lewis meant to counter the assertion that Jesus was a moral teacher and no more than a moral teacher. This clearly cannot be a tenable position as he demonstrates. If Jesus was just a man, He would be the worst type of man imaginable if He were sane, and if He were not sane, well, then He may have actually thought He was God incarnate. All the evidence we have suggests He was not insane and He was not a megalomaniacal liar nor was He a mythological misrepresentation of some rabbi carpenter.

He was God.

 

[FrenchyBearpaw]

And assuming these accounts were all accurately recorded, they would qualify as evidences or "proofs" if you will, of God's existence and Him actively demonstrating His power over nature, correct?

But they weren't recorded accurately. The Gospels are pseudonymous, so we don't know who wrote the first account, and it was written 50-60 years after Jesus' death, by someone who never met him, as evidenced by third person reporting.

 

[FrenchyBearpaw]

Mr. Frenchy and Mr. Dave,

You two gentlemen and several others believe that C.S. Lewis left a fourth option to choose from in his famous "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" proposition.

You argue that he also should have included "Legend, or myth" in there to bring it to four and that he was unjustified in omitting it which makes it a fallacious proposition.

Therefore, the real question here is:

"Is there warrant in omitting the option of Legend or Myth from the proposition?"

If Mr. Lewis had warrant in omitting Legend or Myth from his proposition then no charge of a fallacious composition can be justifiably leveled against him. So there real matter at hand is the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth.

But there are two way in which these terms can be used.

1. Legend or myth can be used to refer to Jesus as never having existed as a real person. I.e., that He was completely made up by the imaginations of those who claimed to follow Him.

2. That He really was a Jewish man who lived in Palestine during the rein of Tiberius Caesar, but most of what He is recorded as having done, i.e. miracles, etc. are simply made up by those who followed Him.

With regards to one, it is a non-issue. No credible historian or scholar denies the existence of Jesus of Nazareth as an actual historical person.

I will let my following resources speak for themselves. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed,[1][2][3][4] and although there is little agreement on the historicity of gospel narratives and their theological assertions of his divinity,[5][6][7][8] biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted.[9][10][11] Most scholars agree that Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was born between 7 and 2 BC and died 30–36 AD.[12][13][14] Most scholars hold that Jesus lived in Galilee and Judea, did not preach or study elsewhere[15][16][17] and that he spoke Aramaic and may have also spoken Hebrew and possibly Greek.[18][19][20] Although scholars differ on the reconstruction of the specific episodes of the life of Jesus, the two events whose historicity is subject to "almost universal assent" are that he was baptized by John the Baptist and shortly afterwards was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.[21][22][23][24]

Resources in the following post.

And there you have it.