Believing without direct verification

[Vera_Ljuba]

Fair enough, but you know how it goes: absence of (dissenter) evidence isn’t evidence of absence (of truth).

Actually, the “absence of proof is not a proof of absence”. On the other hand, “the absence of evidence is a very strong evidence of absence”.

 

[e_c]

Bad answer. Those alleged miracles happened in the physical world, so they need to be substantiated in a rational, physical manner.

So now this particular text must be taken literally. Any other witnesses corroborating the story?

It has everything to do with demands of verification.

I did not talk about the American system. I am not aware of any country, where the curriculum of ancient history includes the Bible. Are you? I am not aware of any library where the Bible would be included in the history section. It is always presented in the mythology section.

These are just names. And textual analysis indicates that there were several, unnamed and unknown people whose writs were assembled under these names.

You can’t have it both ways. Either the life of Jesus is very well documented in the Bible, and then why are there no other texts from the same time mentioning the miracles? Or those miracles are just a few “ho-hum” events in some far away, dusty corner of the Roman empire, which no one bothered to report? Walking on water, raising Lazarus from the dead should have made an impact - if they actually happened.

1. They are substantiated in a rational, physical manner about as much as any historical event can be.
2. Yes, it must be taken literally. Yes, you could have asked anyone those 500+ people had told about what must have been an incredibly shocking event. Why does that matter though? You exclude the eye witnesses BECAUSE they are eye witnesses??? Now we need corroboration for eye witness accounts of the same event by non eye witnesses? WHAT? They are there, but this is getting wacky.
3. Sure. But the answer originally given is not a good one, in my opinion. I gave what I think is a good one. That someone actually gave the answer you presented is irrelevant to the assessment of MY answer.
4. First of all, it could be used in many Christian run schools in many countries. Second, I do not know of any particular curricula in particular countries that use the Bible in public schools in particular curricula, but certainly there are many. Climb out of the bubble! Would you say the same about the Quran? Think about how different some countries are… But you certainly could find ancient history courses in American high schools that use the Bible. And the higher in education one goes, the more necessary it is to use the Bible as an historical tool, because there is just not that much information on certain periods and places outside of it. Also of note is the ruling in Abingdon Township v. Schempp:

It might well be said that one’s education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.

BUT ALL OF THIS IS POINTLESS ANYWAY. There could be no public school on Earth that uses the Bible in history courses, but that would not mean it is not historical, unless you use as a first principle that what boards of education decide can go into a curriculum and what individual teachers decide to use are INFALLIBLE measures of what historical truth is. And I don’t think you want to claim that.

1. Cicero, Virgil, Dante, Plato, and Shakespeare are just names too. I have even heard there are plenty of people who think Shakespeare was a group of people using a common name too… Go figure!

I did not deny that there are possibly some unnamed contributors and redactors. What is impossible is that several groups, apparently coordinated among themselves, made up mythical namesakes and passed off life-altering fairy tales as contemporary truth in a brutal, skeptical, and highly intelligent world. Interesting too is that you don’t name these “textual analysts.” And I have never heard an academic opinion - EVEN ON THE HISTORY CHANNEL - claim that certain letters of Paul were not written by him.

1. If it was written down by a reliable source, it was put into the Bible. The only definitely 1st century reliable Christian text that is NOT in the Bible is 1 Clement, but he does not claim to be an eye witness of anything, nor is he telling us about someone’s preaching who did claim to be. So it seems it is rather you who are trying to have it both ways - having a collection of texts (assembled together well after those texts’ composition, mind you) which only uses reliable accounts, and then having OTHER reliable accounts that the compilers of that collection would not be interested in adding. Like you say, if it is a big deal, people will want to preserve the memory (if they are going to begin distrusting their already solid oral tradition’s staying power)… And why would a compiler fail to include any such material?

 

[goout]

Bad answer. Those alleged miracles happened in the physical world, so they need to be substantiated in a rational, physical manner.

How is it a bad answer? :whacky:
You asked it there is proof.
I said no, like this:

None, if by evidence you mean fundamentalist rationalist material proof. (I hope you find this to be a direct answer).

How is that a bad answer? It confirms your bias that miracles are BS. Miracles cannot be substantiated in a fundamentalist rationalist material way.
You should be satisfied. We admit we are fools.
So, unless you really want to believe and are looking to shed your bias, we can all be
(or you just want to argue…)

 

[1Lord1Faith]

You can’t have it both ways. Either the life of Jesus is very well documented in the Bible, and then why are there no other texts from the same time mentioning the miracles? Or those miracles are just a few “ho-hum” events in some far away, dusty corner of the Roman empire, which no one bothered to report? Walking on water, raising Lazarus from the dead should have made an impact - if they actually happened.

I have a few points to bring up here. The first being that just because you have not seen another text outside of Christianity talking about Jesus’ miracles does not mean that such a text does not, or has not existed. It would stand to reason that most of what was written down 2K years ago is no longer around. Furthermore, people did not “just write things down” back then, it wasn’t that easy.

The second point I would bring up is that Jesus’ miracles were not considered “ho-hum” by their eyewitnesses - hence, they were written down in the Gospels. Logic would tell me that the Roman Centurion who’s servant was healed by Jesus did not tell his superior what happened. Not to mention, the Romans occupying the area did not understand Judaism very well, and Jesus was not the only “miracle worker” in the area in those days either. In short, it would not have been a big deal to the Romans. Even the Resurrection of Jesus was not necessarily an important matter to the local governor’s ears, much less a matter of record:

Mt 28
The Report of the Guard.*

While they were going, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had happened.
They assembled with the elders and took counsel; then they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers,
telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep.’
And if this gets to the ears of the governor, we will satisfy [him] and keep you out of trouble.”
The soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has circulated among the Jews to the present [day].

My third point is that there are four different texts that mention Jesus’ miracles that were written during the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses of the miracles. This is not even counting Paul’s letters and the others in the NT. The Bible is a collection of different texts.

I have a fourth thought to add. I would think that the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem would have been a significant event to the early Christians, yet it is not explicitly mentioned in the Gospels that were thought to be written after the Temple was destroyed. This point emphasizes the fact that writing back then was not taken lightly and only that which would have been considered essential to the writer’s purpose would be mentioned.
Eighty years after Christ’s death and resurrection there is, in the context of something very important to Rome … the great fire in Rome in 64 AD, a passing mention of Christ by the Roman Senator, Tacitus in 116 AD:

“Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons, first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess. And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married women. But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre 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. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.”
en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Annals_(Tacitus)/Book_15#44

 

[JapaneseKappa]

On its own, not much information. But when you consider the immediate context (where certain individuals are named), and you realize the implication that these 500+ people must be in a particular area (Jerusalem-ish), and that Paul has kept tabs on these individuals’ lives (he knows that some are dead, which is probably not something that one is going to know in the ancient Mediterranean unless he is trying to keep in touch) or knows someone who claims to have been, there is a better picture.

I am sure you will want to zoom in on that last point. “He knows someone who claims to have kept tabs. Riiiiiiight. Back to whispers.” Problem is, while 500+ is not a very large number of people for us today, in 1st century Jerusalem it is significant. The degrees of separation between any Jerusalem dweller and one who would have claimed to have actually seen this event would be probably 2 or 3 at most. Not hard to find the real eye witnesses.

And this was one particular event, presumably public. It would not be that hard to track down exactly what that particular appearance was like, when it occurred, how long it lasted, and so on.

The larger point is this: we are not less gullible or “smarter” than most ancient peoples. If you told me your cousin knew a guy who knew a guy who said he had heard that someone met a guy that claims that 500+ people saw someone who had risen from the dead, I would laugh at you… Unless you could get me the eye witnesses, or do miracles in proof (which Paul could and did), or provide other arguments of support (which Paul could and did, in the immediate context), or claim to be an eye witness yourself (which Paul could and did, in the immediate context)…

So I proposed a thought experiment a while back, and I think it might be time to update it.

Imagine the people in ISIS and surrounding communities. They will serve as an approximation of people from the bibilical times, since they have low overall education, death-by-stoning-for-adultery kinds of religious views, and even similar professions. Now they are not a perfect analogue; they have more access to information through the internet. They have better transportation because of the internal combustion engine. They can communicate with each other easier through cell phones and radio.

The question is: how many ISIS fighters would need to claim that one of their fighters had resurrected from the dead and was therefore God before you would believe them? Naturally, the fighters who believe this continue sacrificing their lives for this belief. Naturally, they spread the word through written testimonials, as well as personal videos containing their statements of belief.

Would 500 be enough for you?

 

[e_c]

So I proposed a thought experiment a while back, and I think it might be time to update it.

Imagine the people in ISIS and surrounding communities. They will serve as an approximation of people from the bibilical times, since they have low overall education, death-by-stoning-for-adultery kinds of religious views, and even similar professions. Now they are not a perfect analogue; they have more access to information through the internet. They have better transportation because of the internal combustion engine.

The question is: how many ISIS fighters would need to claim that one of their fighters had resurrected from the dead and was therefore God before you would believe them? Naturally, the fighters who believe this continue sacrificing their lives for this belief. Naturally, they spread the word through written testimonials, as well as personal videos containing their statements of belief.

Would 500 be enough for you?

Low overall education, eh? Even though Saddam actually subsidized college education for women and even gave them stipends? And back to the same myth that ancient peoples were stupid…

I digress.

If we are supposing this world, ceteris paribus, then it would take quite a lot more convincing, since I believe something that would presumably rule out such an occurrence, and I believe it on what I think is an even more convincing witness.

But let’s bracket that.

I suppose I would be quite so inclined, if it weren’t for just a few things.

1. A lack of a sensical, discernible larger narrative, such as the Judeo-Christian narrative provides. WHY would THIS man rise from the dead?
2. They already have an agenda that such an event would serve, thus providing incentive for propaganda. This is the bigger issue… The analogy does not hold with Christianity. Having a worldly failure for a Messiah? What can it serve other than something utterly supernatural? Now, if you are simply trying to overthrow Rome, that’s another matter, and maybe you rally around some revolutionary and make up stories about his greatness. But that is not what happened with Jesus, because His purpose was not primarily about politics.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

If we are supposing this world, ceteris paribus, then it would take quite a lot more convincing, since I believe something that would presumably rule out such an occurrence, and I believe it on what I think is an even more convincing witness.

So lets say that the ISIS account clearly denies the truth of the NT account. Therefore, you are forced to simply weigh the two accounts on their merits.

1. A lack of a sensical, discernible larger narrative, such as the Judeo-Christian narrative provides. WHY would THIS man rise from the dead?

I mean “this man is God,” which was part of my scenario, IS an answer to that question. It seems that what you want is “a better story.” That is to say, maybe you think that the subjective interpretation of the even-less-reliable old testament narratives are sufficient to tip the new testament narratives (whose reliability is in question) into credibility.

1. They already have an agenda that such an event would serve, thus providing incentive for propaganda. This is the bigger issue… The analogy does not hold with Christianity. Having a worldly failure for a Messiah? What can it serve other than something utterly supernatural? Now, if you are simply trying to overthrow Rome, that’s another matter, and maybe you rally around some revolutionary and make up stories about his greatness. But that is not what happened with Jesus, because His purpose was not primarily about politics.

Who said that the resurrected ISIS fighter was successful? The scenario is that there are allegations of a single ISIS resurrection, not sudden ISIS military or economic success, or even that the allegedly-resurrected person has taken charge of ISIS.

Second, what is your evidence for the lack of an agenda among the early Christians? Why does their clear disagreement with the political/religious leadership of the day not constitute an agenda?

 

[e_c]

So lets say that the ISIS account clearly denies the truth of the NT account. Therefore, you are forced to simply weigh the two accounts on their merits.

I mean “this man is God,” which was part of my scenario, IS an answer to that question. It seems that what you want is “a better story.” That is to say, maybe you think that the subjective interpretation of the even-less-reliable old testament narratives are sufficient to tip the new testament narratives (whose reliability is in question) into credibility.

Who said that the resurrected ISIS fighter was successful? The scenario is that there are allegations of a single ISIS resurrection, not sudden ISIS military or economic success, or even that the allegedly-resurrected person has taken charge of ISIS.

Second, what is your evidence for the lack of an agenda among the early Christians? Why does their clear disagreement with the political/religious leadership of the day not constitute an agenda?

1. …Right. I stay with the one with better witness and narrative fittingness.
2. What makes you say the OT is less reliable? That’s quite a common opinion, but a strange one indeed. Anyway, if your situation really did happen, it would be basically out of nowhere. That God would surprise people in that way does not seem right, given the ordered nature of the universe - God would let us know He is coming somehow. And the Muslim interpretation of the Bible is just so dishonest and full of cherry picking. This is an argument from fittingness and is therefore something of a soft argument. It is not supposed to be a slam-dunk, just a mild indicator.
3. Political success or failure is not the issue (although surely, a group with defined apocalyptic goals would only have Divine recognition if it actually did achieve those goals, right?)… The issue is about purpose preceding presentation of something in favor of that purpose. It could, for instance, be a tactic to intimidate, and, I don’t know, terrorize, in order to achieve a goal (political or spiritual or whatever). But if these 500 militants and their closest comrades announced that their risen leader has told them they need to go freeze and die in the Antarctic instead of restoring the caliphate, and then they all actually go do that, then it becomes much more compelling.
4. I think the burden of proof is on you to describe what worldly advantage one would gain by telling tall tales that got Rome’s attention, and then letting them kill you with a smile on your face together with all your friends making the same claim about what they saw. And it must be worldly advantage, unless one’s strategy is to trick God. This is quite different from ISIS, who have interpreted a pre-existing text and its tradition and drawn spiritual conclusions from it that compel them in conscience to do what they do… They are not inventing stories, they are interpreting one.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

1. …Right. I stay with the one with better witness and narrative fittingness.

But I mean, the ISIS case is clearly superior in the quality of evidence. In the ISIS scenario, you have 500 unique first-hand, eye-witness testimonials. In the bible case, you have 0-5 1st hand accounts (depending on your view of who exactly the authors of the gospels were), and the accounts of all the other eye-witnesses are second hand. That is to say: if you have any sober evaluation of the evidence at all, you must conclude that 500 first-hand accounts ARE NECESSARILY better witness than a second-hand account of 500 first-hand accounts. The only way you can possibly deny this is by doing exactly what you’ve been trying to do: inventing reasons for suspecting the ISIS fighters that weren’t in the original scenario.

1. What makes you say the OT is less reliable? That’s quite a common opinion, but a strange one indeed. Anyway, if your situation really did happen, it would be basically out of nowhere. That God would surprise people in that way does not seem right, given the ordered nature of the universe - God would let us know He is coming somehow. And the Muslim interpretation of the Bible is just so dishonest and full of cherry picking. This is an argument from fittingness and is therefore something of a soft argument. It is not supposed to be a slam-dunk, just a mild indicator.

(Invention #1: the resurrected person & followers endorsed the Muslim interpretation of the bible)

We know that the OT is not reliable for a number of reasons, such as archaeology. That is to say: the authorship, dating, and historical claims of the Old Testament are even less well established than those in the New Testament. Of course you will object: but we don’t take a literal view of the bible! Of course you don’t, but that makes your interpretation of the claims made in the Old Testament subjective. Specifically, you are interpreting them in the way that is most favorable for your interpretation of the New Testament. I.e. you form your view of the Old Testament assuming that the New Testament is correct, instead of forming your opinion of the Old Testament in a vacuum, then applying that opinion to the New Testament.

1. Political success or failure is not the issue (although surely, a group with defined apocalyptic goals would only have Divine recognition if it actually did achieve those goals, right?)… The issue is about purpose preceding presentation of something in favor of that purpose. It could, for instance, be a tactic to intimidate, and, I don’t know, terrorize, in order to achieve a goal (political or spiritual or whatever). But if these 500 militants and their closest comrades announced that their risen leader has told them they need to go freeze and die in the Antarctic instead of restoring the caliphate, and then they all actually go do that, then it becomes much more compelling.

(Invention #2: The fighters who continue to sacrifice their lives for their belief in the resurrected guy are trying to accomplish the same things as before the resurrection)

I mean, Catholics are pretty proud of the “On this rock I will build my church” passage, which is not meaningfully different from a leader saying “on this rock i will rebuild my caliphate.” Clearly both groups of people are motivated by strong belief in some eternal reward over temporal rewards, and crucially, the concept of eternal rewards would not be a new concept invented by the resurrected person.

1. I think the burden of proof is on you to describe what worldly advantage one would gain by telling tall tales that got Rome’s attention, and then letting them kill you with a smile on your face together with all your friends making the same claim about what they saw. And it must be worldly advantage, unless one’s strategy is to trick God. This is quite different from ISIS, who have interpreted a pre-existing text and its tradition and drawn spiritual conclusions from it that compel them in conscience to do what they do… They are not inventing stories, they are interpreting one.

(Invention #3: That the resurrection easily fits into the ISIS narrative.)

What were some of the teachings of early Christianity? Be more kind to the poor. Deny the authority of the Sanhedrin and challenge the necessity of following Mosaic Law. A belief in human equality. People fight and die for those kinds of beliefs all the time. Why is it unreasonable to think that a group fighting for these beliefs wouldn’t try to get some religious legitimacy by claiming a miracle consistent with the prevailing religion of the time? Why is it unreasonable to believe that people fighting for those causes might believe that those causes are implied by their correct interpretation of the prevailing religion of the time. Or even that their correct interpretation required them to act the way they did for an eternal reward.

 

[e_c]

But I mean, the ISIS case is clearly superior in the quality of evidence. In the ISIS scenario, you have 500 unique first-hand, eye-witness testimonials. In the bible case, you have 0-5 1st hand accounts (depending on your view of who exactly the authors of the gospels were), and the accounts of all the other eye-witnesses are second hand. That is to say: if you have any sober evaluation of the evidence at all, you must conclude that 500 first-hand accounts ARE NECESSARILY better witness than a second-hand account of 500 first-hand accounts. The only way you can possibly deny this is by doing exactly what you’ve been trying to do: inventing reasons for suspecting the ISIS fighters that weren’t in the original scenario.

(Invention #1: the resurrected person & followers endorsed the Muslim interpretation of the bible)

We know that the OT is not reliable for a number of reasons, such as archaeology. That is to say: the authorship, dating, and historical claims of the Old Testament are even less well established than those in the New Testament. Of course you will object: but we don’t take a literal view of the bible! Of course you don’t, but that makes your interpretation of the claims made in the Old Testament subjective. Specifically, you are interpreting them in the way that is most favorable for your interpretation of the New Testament. I.e. you form your view of the Old Testament assuming that the New Testament is correct, instead of forming your opinion of the Old Testament in a vacuum, then applying that opinion to the New Testament.

(Invention #2: The fighters who continue to sacrifice their lives for their belief in the resurrected guy are trying to accomplish the same things as before the resurrection)

I mean, Catholics are pretty proud of the “On this rock I will build my church” passage, which is not meaningfully different from a leader saying “on this rock i will rebuild my caliphate.” Clearly both groups of people are motivated by strong belief in some eternal reward over temporal rewards, and crucially, the concept of eternal rewards would not be a new concept invented by the resurrected person.

(Invention #3: That the resurrection easily fits into the ISIS narrative.)

What were some of the teachings of early Christianity? Be more kind to the poor. Deny the authority of the Sanhedrin and challenge the necessity of following Mosaic Law. A belief in human equality. People fight and die for those kinds of beliefs all the time. Why is it unreasonable to think that a group fighting for these beliefs wouldn’t try to get some religious legitimacy by claiming a miracle consistent with the prevailing religion of the time? Why is it unreasonable to believe that people fighting for those causes might believe that those causes are implied by their correct interpretation of the prevailing religion of the time. Or even that their correct interpretation required them to act the way they did for an eternal reward.

Okayyyy…

1. In the fake scenario you have prevented, there is a comparison of 2 things: a secondhand claim of 500 firsthand claims, and 500 firsthand claims, each about one incident. The conclusion is fine on its own narrow and purely conceptual terms, but where it fails is in the reality of the texts and what they propose to be emerging from - namely, not one secondhand claim about 500 firsthand claims, but a firsthand claim together with a secondhand claim about 500 firsthand claims, together with all kinds of other first hand claims from other authors, and the claim that thousands and thousands and thousands witnessed certain miracles which preceded this one event which would legitimize the proposition that that same man did something incredible once again. It also fails because of the motivation problem. No dice.
2. It’s not an invention. ISIS is Muslim:

maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/12/liberal-logic.html

So I don’t know what you are talking about.

 

[e_c]

1. You cite the lack of information in a Wikipedia article as “evidence” that one particular event in the OT is bunk and that therefore the entire extremely complex corpus is “unreliable.” That’s not fair, especially considering that Egyptology is a brand new field of study - that place is an iceberg, only hotter. Also, ancient peoples did not necessarily even conceive of writing history as you and I do… So that is a large hermeneutical issue. As for studying the OT in a vacuum, it is unnecessary if I find a reliable tool for interpreting it… such as the NT.
2. This was not an essential element of my argument, especially in the Antarctica example. Maybe he tells them that they are all wrong and must therefore change everything they are doing.
3. This is a very strange analogy, considering that one is spoken by a founder, is ontologically spiritual, and refers to an individual person and his office, and the other would be a made up phrase by an interpreter of a pre-existing tradition, is primarily about restoring a civic entity, and does not refer to anything in particular at all (what is the “rock?”)… Do you really suppose Catholics go around trying to keep the Church on the rock the way ISIS tries to restore the caliphate? Not at all. Anyway, the main problem is that of why I would trust these 500 people who have a pre-existing agenda which this event would help to legitimize… If they went to Antarctica and apologized to the world because of their resurrection experience, then that is quite a different story.
4. It does not fit at all, and I never claimed it did. But they could certainly make something up and say that it did.
5. People do not die and fight for executed carpenters, unless those executed carpenters made special claims that motivated them in a special way. You are inserting a primarily temporal agenda where there is none… One could use the Tanakh to teach about love, the futility of certain rituals, and so on. This was done by Jesus, in fact. But Christianity is about, go figure, CHRIST. There would have been nothing notable about someone simply talking about love n peace n stuff, especially if he annoyed people enough to get killed and then didn’t come back. What exactly would the motivation be to then claim that he did when he didn’t, especially when doing so meant trouble for you and all your friends? Name one other occasion in human history that such a claim was really made by a contemporary of the supposed event.

 

[Bradski]

On its own, not much information. But when you consider the immediate context (where certain individuals are named), and you realize the implication that these 500+ people must be in a particular area (Jerusalem-ish), and that Paul has kept tabs on these individuals’ lives (he knows that some are dead, which is probably not something that one is going to know in the ancient Mediterranean unless he is trying to keep in touch) or knows someone who claims to have been, there is a better picture.

I am sure you will want to zoom in on that last point. “He knows someone who claims to have kept tabs. Riiiiiiight. Back to whispers.” Problem is, while 500+ is not a very large number of people for us today, in 1st century Jerusalem it is significant. The degrees of separation between any Jerusalem dweller and one who would have claimed to have actually seen this event would be probably 2 or 3 at most. Not hard to find the real eye witnesses.

So back in a time when information was almost always transferred by word of mouth and travel, even between towns, was difficult, dangerous and rarely undertaken, Paul kept tabs on over 500 people for over thirty years at a distance of over 1200 miles (he wrote about it in Ephesus in Turkey).

There are millions of Americans who haven’t travelled outside their own state and wouldn’t know anywhere near 500 people even with all modern technology has to offer.

Yet you believe that a guy 2,000 years ago, when almost everyone was illiterate and travelled from A to B on a donkey, after speaking individually to these 500 people, kept in touch with them all so he’d know if some of them were still around when he wrote his letter. All of them being at least in their mid fifties by then, when the average life expectancy was not much more than thirty.

Of course he did…

 

[JapaneseKappa]

namely, not one secondhand claim about 500 firsthand claims, but a firsthand claim together with a secondhand claim about 500 firsthand claims, together with all kinds of other first hand claims from other authors, and the claim that thousands and thousands and thousands witnessed certain miracles which preceded this one event which would legitimize the proposition that that same man did something incredible once again. It also fails because of the motivation problem.

I do not know of any corpus of writings which could be described as “all kinds of other first hand claims from other authors.” I also do not know of any first hand accounts of the “thousands of miracle viewers” other than the gospels themselves. Therefore I have no choice but to call this bluff and ask for sources. If you can identify by name more than 5 authors that explicitly claim to have witnessed the resurrection of Jesus (note that you attempted to move the goalposts from the resurrection to any miracles), I’ll admit I was ill informed.

If you can find more than 10 authors that explicitly claim to have witnessed Jesus’ miracles, I will admit I was ill informed, and that there are indeed “all kinds of other first hand claims from other authors.”

1. It’s not an invention. ISIS is Muslim:
   So I don’t know what you are talking about.

Jesus and the disciples were mostly Jewish, up until they started a new religion. So there’s nothing stopping post-ressurection ISIS from being to Islam what Christianity is to Judaism.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

Dear e_c, it would be a good idea if you learned the proper usage of the “quote” feature. Here is a short help for you.

Suppose the original post was two paragraphs (or sentences), like this:
Paragraph / sentence number one.

Paragraph / sentence number two.
You use the “quote” feature, and you get
**{quote}**Paragraph / sentence number one.

Paragraph / sentence number two.{/quote}
Then this moment you copy the {quote}{/quote} pair, and the result:
**{quote}**Paragraph / sentence number one. {/quote}

{quote}Paragraph / sentence number two.{/quote}
And thus you can insert your answers, and get:
**{quote}**Paragraph / sentence number one. {/quote}
Answer to paragraph one
{quote}Paragraph / sentence number two.{/quote}
Answer to paragraph two
And everyone can see immediately which reply refers to which part of the post. So much easier to follow than your habit of putting a number in front of your sentences (or paragraphs). Not that it matters, but I am simply not interested to decipher what you refer to in your answer. Mea culpa, but I am not interested in solving your riddles.

Best wishes.

 

[Gorgias]

Actually, the “absence of proof is not a proof of absence”. On the other hand, “the absence of evidence is a very strong evidence of absence”.

Only if it may be reasonably presumed that the evidence should have been found, if it existed. You haven’t demonstrated anything that even suggests that the Romans kept records on local miracle workers throughout the empire; therefore, it’s not ‘evidence’ of anything that there are no Roman records of Jesus’ miracles.

I mean… it’s a nice attempt, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

 

[e_c]

So back in a time when information was almost always transferred by word of mouth and travel, even between towns, was difficult, dangerous and rarely undertaken, Paul kept tabs on over 500 people for over thirty years at a distance of over 1200 miles (he wrote about it in Ephesus in Turkey).

There are millions of Americans who haven’t travelled outside their own state and wouldn’t know anywhere near 500 people even with all modern technology has to offer.

Yet you believe that a guy 2,000 years ago, when almost everyone was illiterate and travelled from A to B on a donkey, after speaking individually to these 500 people, kept in touch with them all so he’d know if some of them were still around when he wrote his letter. All of them being at least in their mid fifties by then, when the average life expectancy was not much more than thirty.

Of course he did…

Paul was pretty active, even by today’s standards. Look at a map of his 3 missions. It’s quite a bit. So no, I do not find it at all unlikely, especially given that these people would have been of great interest to him, and he would have certainly been of great interest to them. He would not have to speak individually with them either. Could I really not trust you to tell me some stuff about some friends of yours?

 

[e_c]

Dear e_c, it would be a good idea if you learned the proper usage of the “quote” feature. Here is a short help for you.

I know how to do that, I choose not to. It is tedious. But if it means you are not bothering to read, then fine.

 

[e_c]

I do not know of any corpus of writings which could be described as “all kinds of other first hand claims from other authors.” I also do not know of any first hand accounts of the “thousands of miracle viewers” other than the gospels themselves. Therefore I have no choice but to call this bluff and ask for sources. If you can identify by name more than 5 authors that explicitly claim to have witnessed the resurrection of Jesus (note that you attempted to move the goalposts from the resurrection to any miracles), I’ll admit I was ill informed.

Remember that these texts were written at a time when one could actually go to the places mentioned and ask at least some of the people involved. Sometimes, names are even given. As for “authors,” yes, they are all in Scripture, as I already mentioned. I don’t know why the criteria for verification is that it must be written. The sillier one is that it must not be in Scripture, as has been implied elsewhere. Also, the “explicitly claim” criterion is bizarre. Why can’t it be an implicit claim, especially since Jude and James and Luke and Mark are writing to people who have already begun to believe by some other way and don’t necessarily need the recap?

If you can find more than 10 authors that explicitly claim to have witnessed Jesus’ miracles, I will admit I was ill informed, and that there are indeed “all kinds of other first hand claims from other authors.”

Again, why must it be that these people have actually written something down? There was no twitter. Paper was not something people had just laying around. You are applying a standard which is unfair for the ancient world, and one which if applied to other events in the same time period would come up with basically no history at all, just one guy saying some stuff. Why doesn’t Livy have to be “corroborated”? The fact that there are multiple people writing anything down about the same event, and from different parts of the world (Matthew in Ethiopia, John in Turkey, etc.) is a pretty big deal. Again, I invite you to try applying the same rigor to other ancient texts. Writing things down was not nearly as normal of a thing to do as it is today.

Jesus and the disciples were mostly Jewish, up until they started a new religion. So there’s nothing stopping post-ressurection ISIS from being to Islam what Christianity is to Judaism.

Exactly. They would have no motivation to do that other than something they truly thought was real and had such significant meaning. The equivalency that I proposed to what happened with Christian Jews departing from Moses and the hopes of establishing a worldly kingdom of peace is ISIS forsaking the caliphate (which, by the way, is not actually their whole plan, it’s way more bizarre than that) and going to Antarctica.

 

[goout]

EC:
This is all well and good support for belief in the historical elements of Christianity, but it’s not proof that will satisfy fundamentalist rationalism.

When I was in college many years ago a young fundamentalist Christian lived next door who did not believe man had landed on the moon.
We talked about the evidence all day long but his battle cry was “prove it”.
That was even in the face of video evidence, which he believed was fabricated.

One who is stuck in fundamentalist rationalism will never accept your evidence.
It is not scientifically verifiable, and we all know that only science expresses the sum total of reality.

Really the only answer to the thread question is “no”, there is no evidence for the fundamentalist rationalist. “direct verificiation” can only satisfy the realm of science, it says absolutely nothing about the concepts that really matter:

Who am I
Where did I come from
Where am I going
What is the meaning of my life
What is the purpose of my life

Science, as good a thing as it is, can only provide juvenile minimalist answers to these questions.

 

[Gorgias]

I do not know of any corpus of writings which could be described as “all kinds of other first hand claims from other authors.”

Psst… you, yourself, are posting on one…

I also do not know of any first hand accounts of the “thousands of miracle viewers” other than the gospels themselves. Therefore I have no choice but to call this bluff and ask for sources. If you can identify by name more than 5 authors that explicitly claim to have witnessed the resurrection of Jesus (note that you attempted to move the goalposts from the resurrection to any miracles), I’ll admit I was ill informed.

One of the assertions that Bradski makes, in an attempt to disprove the veracity of Scriptural accounts, is “widespread illiteracy.” Let’s take that at face value: if that’s the case, then the requirement to find any arbitrary number of authors of written accounts for a particular event is poorly-formed at best, and deliberately disingenuous at worst.

Instead, it would seem, we would expect an age of illiteracy to produce accounts from scribes who are reporting on the first-hand accounts of others. That would seem to be the reasonable standard for such a period in time.