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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.
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.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.
Elioenai26 you haven't really addressed their point at all.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I think I did.
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 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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 3036 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.
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