Coercive miracles?

[Aloysium]

1. Who are those who comprehend the significance of a bunch of colored blobs and lines?. . .

Comprehending some event as a bunch of coloured blobs and lines, one sees randomness and no order except that of those basic forms.
The most complex, I would say is a line, being a very precise shape of blob.

“A bunch of colored blobs and lines” is a statement providing an analogy concerning the nature of reality.
The analogy supposes that reality can be perceived and understood.
It speaks to the mystery that, whatever it is, we can approach it from different perspectives.
Reductionistically, we can say that it has to do with blobs and lines.
The fact is that if they exist at all, there would be other structures that underlie and overarch whatever they might be in themselves, to constitute what is.

The other mystery lies in the comprehension.
We can conceptualize the physical aspect of this process in which we are currently engaged as commencing with pixels on a monitor, followed by a complex series of causal events, giving rise, within the totality of the person, to these words.
These words which jsdkcb qweqlwejhd wsqns qwdnsqn.
An artist may have as his/her intent to portray the beauty and apparent order that is a chaotic splashing of paint on a canvas.
What appears under a magnifying lens as a collection of lines and blobs of paint, may alternatively portray the image of a Madonna.
There is clearly an order to physical reality, created through the genius of the artist.
Similarly, most people see the hand of God in nature.
As rational beings, we exist in relation to the Truth. We are compsosed of a mental structure, which discerns what is real inside and outside ourselves.

Between the two mysteries lies the relationship between what is self and what is other, iluminating each, but not itself.

I am reminded of Someone, in whose image we are formed.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

Comprehending some event as a bunch of coloured blobs and lines, one sees randomness and no order except that of those basic forms.

The point of this was very simple. When you see a picture, it is composed of lines or blobs of different colors - but the picture is MORE than just the colored lines and blobs. But the difference is not something “supernatural”.

As we go from simple to more complex hierarchies, new laws are necessary to explain things. Mechanics is insufficient to explain optics or magnetism, even though they all belong to physics. The combination of atoms into molecules also need more complex explanations and that leads to chemistry. Certain types of carbon molecules will combine into active organisms - and we have biology.

It would be ridiculous to expect to reduce everything to the Brownian motion of molecules, even though the molecules all participate in the random motions. Just like to expect a reductionist explanation for the electro-chemical interactions of the neurons in the brain and get to the questions of “thinking”, and “will”.

There are some simplistic people who cannot understand this. They are either ignorant of the principle of emergent attributes, or are unable to apply it. Either way, after dozens of attempts to explain it to them, the only rational method is to leave them to their ignorance. Of course they are too ignorant even to fathom their own ignorance. Wisdom is ability to see how much one does not know. Stupidity is the inability to measure one’s ignorance. The worst ones keep demanding simplistic explanations for complex phenomena.

 

[tonyrey]

Comprehending some event as a bunch of coloured blobs and lines, one sees randomness and no order except that of those basic forms.
The most complex, I would say is a line, being a very precise shape of blob.

“A bunch of colored blobs and lines” is a statement providing an analogy concerning the nature of reality.
The analogy supposes that reality can be perceived and understood.
It speaks to the mystery that, whatever it is, we can approach it from different perspectives.
Reductionistically, we can say that it has to do with blobs and lines.
The fact is that if they exist at all, there would be other structures that underlie and overarch whatever they might be in themselves, to constitute what is.

The other mystery lies in the comprehension.
We can conceptualize the physical aspect of this process in which we are currently engaged as commencing with pixels on a monitor, followed by a complex series of causal events, giving rise, within the totality of the person, to these words.
These words which jsdkcb qweqlwejhd wsqns qwdnsqn.
An artist may have as his/her intent to portray the beauty and apparent order that is a chaotic splashing of paint on a canvas.
What appears under a magnifying lens as a collection of lines and blobs of paint, may alternatively portray the image of a Madonna.
There is clearly an order to physical reality, created through the genius of the artist.
Similarly, most people see the hand of God in nature.
As rational beings, we exist in relation to the Truth. We are compsosed of a mental structure, which discerns what is real inside and outside ourselves.

Between the two mysteries lies the relationship between what is self and what is other, iluminating each, but not itself.

I am reminded of Someone, in whose image we are formed.

I don’t think the writer had that in mind. The context of the blobs was:

But “we” don’t exist and there is no mind, just a horde of neural impulses which are incapable of learning and don’t know what they’re doing.

Just like there is no picture on the wall, only a bunch of colored blobs and lines.

There is no attempt to explain the unity of the mind and the learning process or how the mind is related to the body. Two further evasions follow:

Did consciousness come from things which lack consciousness?

How can a colored picture come from colorless atoms?

Why is there a distinction between mind and brain if there is no difference between them?

Why is there a distinction between the legs and walking?

The sequel speaks for itself:

That is not an explanation.

Only to those who not comprehend the significance of it. But I will not explain it. I had enough of this.

Rather petulant!

 

[tonyrey]

The point of this was very simple. When you see a picture, it is composed of lines or blobs of different colors - but the picture is MORE than just the colored lines and blobs. But the difference is not something “supernatural”.

As we go from simple to more complex hierarchies, new laws are necessary to explain things.

Ah, new laws! Amidst chaos a revolution is occurring!

Mechanics is insufficient to explain optics or magnetism, even though they all belong to physics. The combination of atoms into molecules also need more complex explanations and that leads to chemistry. Certain types of carbon molecules will combine into active organisms - and we have biology.

The inevitable sequence continues. Back to Jacques Monod’s “Chance and Necessity.” I wonder which came first…

It would be ridiculous to expect to reduce everything to the Brownian motion of molecules, even though the molecules all participate in the random motions. Just like to expect a reductionist explanation for the electro-chemical interactions of the neurons in the brain and get to the questions of “thinking”, and “will”.
There are some simplistic people who cannot understand this. They are either ignorant of the principle of emergent attributes, or are unable to apply it. Either way, after dozens of attempts to explain it to them, the only rational method is to leave them to their ignorance. Of course they are too ignorant even to fathom their own ignorance. Wisdom is ability to see how much one does not know. Stupidity is the inability to measure one’s ignorance. The worst ones keep demanding simplistic explanations for complex phenomena.

Ah! The magic word has arrived: “emergent”. It solves all problems except the problem of why emergence emerged… Unfortunately you have failed to explain the increase in complexity. Sheer chance yet again? The accumulation of improbabilities is becoming somewhat perplexing but no doubt there is once again no explanation! It must be contagious… :stretcher:

 

[Aloysium]

I don’t think the writer had that in mind. The context of the blobs was . . .

I wasn’t following the discussion. I just read what you wrote as the most recent post, and ran with it.

In keeping with my making random comments:
As to the current state of science, I believe that it will remain off the mark as long as it keeps the material and that which it can manipulate, at its centre, where God actually belongs.
Science has to be rooted in good philosophy; it is not currently.
The reality is that mind and brain are one in the person, who is a unity of spirit and matter.
When we think of ourselves as physical beings, we contemplate the brain with its infinitely complex series of causal events that are continuous with the rest of the universe, in which it participates.
While we are constituted of physical processes, we also exist in relation to everything else.
We are individual consciousness communing with that which is outside.
There is no real inside and outside physically; it is all one humongous material happening.
It is the soul which separates being into self-other. (I don’t like this wording, but it’s too late. Time for bed.)

As to the OP, my view would be that there is one big miracle - creation.
The rest are minor tweaks of the system, to get things back on track according to God’s will:

• Someone is saved where others perish, as we all do eventually, probably because that person is needed to fulfill His purpose, whatever decisions that person will make.
• An apparition brings a divided and lost community together in common prayer to God.
  There is enough information for each individual’s conscience to make their decision to approach or distance themselves from God.
  All the atheists, agnostics and deists on these forums clearly know what giving of themselves entails.
  I’m not sure how any miracle would sway any of them to being better human beings than they already are.

:twocents:, hopefully not too random.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

In another thread one poster asked what would be a convincing argument for the existence of the supernatural (or God). I gave my answer, and then another poster (name withheld) jumped in and said that if there would be no ambiguity, no way to explain away the miracle, then we would be “robbed” of our free will to decide if we would choose to believe of not…

This has probably been said by someone else already, but Christ performed clear miracles, sometimes in full view of His enemies, who still went ahead and crucified Him.

No doubt they believed in God, as Israel was nominally a theocracy, but that didn’t stop them abusing their free will.

I don’t think it would make much difference. I’ve sometimes day dreamed about someone performing a miracle in front of James Randi, el sceptic supremo, like an amputated leg or legs reappearing miraculously so there could be no element of doubt.

While I think he’d be honest enough to admit the fact if it happened right in front of him, I don’t think it would make much difference overall. It would just be another seven day wonder in the media, who would soon move onto some other novelty.

The only difference would be that a few days later, you couldn’t wrap your fish and chips in your laptop.

 

[Bradski]

This has probably been said by someone else already, but Christ performed clear miracles, sometimes in full view of His enemies, who still went ahead and crucified Him.

It might be more accurate to say that you have read that someone wrote, quite sometime after Jesus lived, that someone claimed that they had heard that Jesus had performed a miracle.

Supernatural events are not what you might describe as common these days. Short of supermarket tabloids and their stories of alien probes and Elvis sightings, we are not exactly subjected to serious claims of unnatural behaviour on a regular basis. But that wasn’t the case even just a few hundred years ago. Go back a couple of thousand and they were common.

And that’s not because there were more of them, it’s just that people reported them as being supernatural events because they didn’t have the knowledge to explain them in any other way. If someone told you tomorrow that their neighbours dog was run over and killed but then someone made some incantations over it and sprinkled ash over it from a special tree with healing powers and it came back to life, then you would treat it as nonsense. Go back a few hundred years and you would be amazed. Go back two thousand and you probably wouldn’t be that surprised at all.

The point being is that if a lack of knowledge makes it more likely that you will believe in supernatural events, then supernatural events become quite common, entirely believable and while perhaps you wouldn’t become blasé about them, you would certainly accept them with a great deal less scepticism than you do now. Notwithstanding that people tend to believe what they want to believe. There are perhaps people on this forum who think that the Twin Towers were not hit by planes, despite million, if not billions of people watching the horror live as it happened.

So stories of miracles were not, in biblical times, going to be discounted out of hand. In fact, I would suggest that they would be accepted as entirely believable. And if someone says that someone said that they saw something happen – a sick man made well, or even a dead man raised up, then it’s going to be accepted as fact.

You are in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and are introduced to a tribe who has had zero meaningful contact with what we describe as civilisation. They have as much knowledge of how the natural world works as would itinerant sheepherders would have had two thousand years ago in Palestine. They tell you that it is written that fourty or fifty years ago there was a man in a tribe in a valley somewhere near who had special powers. He was in touch with the spirit world and could do many magical things. He could drive evil spirits out of people and into pigs. He could make blind people see. He even raised someone from the dead!

You would not grant that story any credence whatsoever. Because you know better. And yet…

 

[Bob_Crowley]

It might be more accurate to say that you have read that someone wrote, quite sometime after Jesus lived, that someone claimed that they had heard that Jesus had performed a miracle.

Supernatural events are not what you might describe as common these days. Short of supermarket tabloids and their stories of alien probes and Elvis sightings, we are not exactly subjected to serious claims of unnatural behaviour on a regular basis. But that wasn’t the case even just a few hundred years ago. Go back a couple of thousand and they were common.

And that’s not because there were more of them, it’s just that people reported them as being supernatural events because they didn’t have the knowledge to explain them in any other way. If someone told you tomorrow that their neighbours dog was run over and killed but then someone made some incantations over it and sprinkled ash over it from a special tree with healing powers and it came back to life, then you would treat it as nonsense. Go back a few hundred years and you would be amazed. Go back two thousand and you probably wouldn’t be that surprised at all.

The point being is that if a lack of knowledge makes it more likely that you will believe in supernatural events, then supernatural events become quite common, entirely believable and while perhaps you wouldn’t become blasé about them, you would certainly accept them with a great deal less scepticism than you do now. Notwithstanding that people tend to believe what they want to believe. There are perhaps people on this forum who think that the Twin Towers were not hit by planes, despite million, if not billions of people watching the horror live as it happened.

So stories of miracles were not, in biblical times, going to be discounted out of hand. In fact, I would suggest that they would be accepted as entirely believable. And if someone says that someone said that they saw something happen – a sick man made well, or even a dead man raised up, then it’s going to be accepted as fact.

You are in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and are introduced to a tribe who has had zero meaningful contact with what we describe as civilisation. They have as much knowledge of how the natural world works as would itinerant sheepherders would have had two thousand years ago in Palestine. They tell you that it is written that fourty or fifty years ago there was a man in a tribe in a valley somewhere near who had special powers. He was in touch with the spirit world and could do many magical things. He could drive evil spirits out of people and into pigs. He could make blind people see. He even raised someone from the dead!

You would not grant that story any credence whatsoever. Because you know better. And yet…

I make the claim that the night my father died, he appeared in my room. He started with an apology for the way he treated me for over 20 years, we argued and talked, and at the end he gave this terrifying, almighty scream and then just disappeared. It was obvious something was coming for him.

And I haven’t been allowed to forget it. Even during the proceedings I asked at one stage, “What is this! A dream or something??” He got this sort of bemused look on his face, and replied, “It’s not a dream. I died tonight.”

*]But I was an atheist at the time and didn’t want to believe it./*I] When my uncle turned up 4 days later to tell me he’d died, but it was a mess because his body hadn’t been found for four days, my first reaction was to count back 4 days, turn towards the bedroom, and think to myself"Then what the hell was that the other night!!?"

I still remember my uncle seeing the expression on my face, and asking “Are you all right?”

I recovered, assured him I was and he left.

But my next line of defence was “Nah, I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in those sorts of things!” And I did my best to forget it. But later when I became a Christian, nearly four years later, the memory returned. It wasn’t that it didn’t happen - I didn’t WANT to believe it happened.

My father is in Hell. You didn’t see the terrifyng scream. Even during the proceedings he remarked “You’ll wonder if you should pray for me. It’s too late for me - all I was expected to do was to look after my own family, and I didn’t even do that!”

I’ve had other spiritual experiences as well, but they weren’t visible to anybody else. I’m thinking specifically of three “double whammies” like a very strong breath going through you in waves from head to foot, and each time used to emphasise a phrase someone else was saying at the time. Each time it was unexpected, particularly the first time.

But prove it? Not on your nelly.

Those miracles you disparage were witnessed by people who in many cases could read and write in 3 languages or part thereof - Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. Christ was crucified because He was seen as a threat. Now why was He seen as a threat? Because He gave visual testimony to being the Son of God by virtue of His miracles.

This wasn’t some backwoods PNG tribe. This was a highly educated people by ancient standards, in a theocracy, under foreign rule, and expecting a Messiah at the time.

The miracles happened all right.

This whole show and shebang didn’t get here without an intelligent designer at work.

And if you think it did, you’ve been deceived.

 

[tonyrey]

It might be more accurate to say that you have read that someone wrote, quite sometime after Jesus lived, that someone claimed that they had heard that Jesus had performed a miracle.

Supernatural events are not what you might describe as common these days. Short of supermarket tabloids and their stories of alien probes and Elvis sightings, we are not exactly subjected to serious claims of unnatural behaviour on a regular basis. But that wasn’t the case even just a few hundred years ago. Go back a couple of thousand and they were common.

And that’s not because there were more of them, it’s just that people reported them as being supernatural events because they didn’t have the knowledge to explain them in any other way. If someone told you tomorrow that their neighbours dog was run over and killed but then someone made some incantations over it and sprinkled ash over it from a special tree with healing powers and it came back to life, then you would treat it as nonsense. Go back a few hundred years and you would be amazed. Go back two thousand and you probably wouldn’t be that surprised at all.

The point being is that if a lack of knowledge makes it more likely that you will believe in supernatural events, then supernatural events become quite common, entirely believable and while perhaps you wouldn’t become blasé about them, you would certainly accept them with a great deal less scepticism than you do now. Notwithstanding that people tend to believe what they want to believe. There are perhaps people on this forum who think that the Twin Towers were not hit by planes, despite million, if not billions of people watching the horror live as it happened.

So stories of miracles were not, in biblical times, going to be discounted out of hand. In fact, I would suggest that they would be accepted as entirely believable. And if someone says that someone said that they saw something happen – a sick man made well, or even a dead man raised up, then it’s going to be accepted as fact.

You are in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and are introduced to a tribe who has had zero meaningful contact with what we describe as civilisation. They have as much knowledge of how the natural world works as would itinerant sheepherders would have had two thousand years ago in Palestine. They tell you that it is written that fourty or fifty years ago there was a man in a tribe in a valley somewhere near who had special powers. He was in touch with the spirit world and could do many magical things. He could drive evil spirits out of people and into pigs. He could make blind people see. He even raised someone from the dead!

You would not grant that story any credence whatsoever. Because you know better. And yet…

Do you really believe science can in principle explain **you **and everyone else - and itself of course? Now there’s a real miracle for you…

 

[Bradski]

I make the claim that the night my father died, he appeared in my room…

I don’t want to appear insensitive, but I think we’ve all heard the story many, many times.

Those miracles you disparage were witnessed by people who in many cases could read and write in 3 languages or part thereof - Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.

Sorry, I didn’t realise that you had a list of the people who witnessed the miracles and passed the information on down the years until such time as it was recorded. Oh, and the languages they spoke. And wrote, apparently. I guess they also made notes (in either of those 3 languages) so that when it was officially recorded a couple of generations later it was all transcribed verbatim.

Here’s a way you can confirm what you say. Give me a miracle, tell me who wrote about it and tell me who he got the information from. Otherwise you are just blowing smoke.

This wasn’t some backwoods PNG tribe. This was a highly educated people by ancient standards, in a theocracy, under foreign rule, and expecting a Messiah at the time.

So who were these highly educated people who reported these miracles to whoever wrote about them.

And hey, ‘by ancient standards’ isn’t saying a lot, is it. your average citizen knew less about the natural world than a 12 year old would today. Let’s keep a sense of proportion.

 

[Bradski]

Do you really believe science can in principle explain **you **and everyone else - and itself of course? Now there’s a real miracle for you…

Thanks, Tony. You just let me know if you have anything constructive to bring to the discussion.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

Thanks, Tony. You just let me know if you have anything constructive to bring to the discussion.

That will be the day! Just for the fun of it, I went and read the whole thread from the beginning. It was very informative.

Especially the post which said: “Only a lunatics/fanatics are sure they’re infallible.” When I asked (repeatedly) if he considers the Magisterium to be composed of lunatics or fanatics, all I received was a deafening silence. And we “know” from another repeated sentence: “Silence is the sign of agreement or the admission of impotence to mount a successful argument…”.

Anyhow, the results of the poll are quite encouraging. Most people realize that “knowledge” about something does not limit one’s freedom to act in accordance with that knowledge or act contrary to that knowledge.

 

[tonyrey]

Thanks, Tony. You just let me know if you have anything constructive to bring to the discussion.

Your failure to answer the question is hardly constructive even though it does impress those who adopt the same policy. It’s a pity that shared weakness never amounts to strength but I can understand that it’s a form of consolation.:hug3:
Come on, boys! United we fall! I

It reminds me of:

That is not an explanation.

Only to those who not comprehend the significance of it. But I will not explain it. I had enough of this.

 

[tonyrey]

That will be the day! :frighten: Just for the fun of it, I went and read the whole thread from the beginning. It was very informative.

Especially the post which said: “Only a lunatics/fanatics are sure they’re infallible.” When I asked (repeatedly) if he considers the Magisterium to be composed of lunatics or fanatics, all I received was a deafening silence. And we “know” from another repeated sentence: “Silence is the sign of agreement or the admission of impotence to mount a successful argument…”.

It’s a pity the Magisterium is not a collection of individuals but rather:

“The teaching authority or function of the Roman Catholic Church.”

But ignorance is bliss - at least until there is a rude awakening… :bigyikes:

 

[tonyrey]

Here’s a way you can confirm what you say. Give me a miracle, tell me who wrote about it and tell me who he got the information from. Otherwise you are just blowing smoke.

You have one in the UNDHR with the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. How do you think it originated? In the 18th century? If you cannot answer those simple questions I’ll tell you.

 

[tonyrey]

Do you really believe science can in principle explain **you **and everyone else - and itself of course? Now there’s a real miracle for you…

Still no response! Is it really such a difficult question?

 

[Bradski]

You have one in the UNDHR with the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. How do you think it originated? In the 18th century? If you cannot answer those simple questions I’ll tell you.

Pay attention, Tony. We’re talking about miracles that Jesus performed. Apparently all viewed and documented for later inclusion in the gospels (a couple of generations later) by well-educated trilingual members of the sceptical community. No proletariat allowed. Who were these people who recorded them at the time and were they the same people who dictated them to the gospel authors?

Why do people not believe in the miracle at Zeitoun which was seen, in living memory, by millions and was photographed and filmed and investigated by the Coptic church yet have no problem in accepting a miracle from 2,000 years ago, seen by a handful of people and recorded by a single person many decades after the event?

It wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone if I said I expect another answer in response.

 

[icamhif]

Do you really believe science can in principle explain **you **and everyone else - and itself of course? Now there’s a real miracle for you…

Is this suppose to be the transcendental argument for God’s existence?

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Pay attention, Tony. We’re talking about miracles that Jesus performed. Apparently all viewed and documented for later inclusion in the gospels (a couple of generations later) by well-educated trilingual members of the sceptical community. No proletariat allowed. Who were these people who recorded them at the time and were they the same people who dictated them to the gospel authors?

Why do people not believe in the miracle at Zeitoun which was seen, in living memory, by millions and was photographed and filmed and investigated by the Coptic church yet have no problem in accepting a miracle from 2,000 years ago, seen by a handful of people and recorded by a single person many decades after the event?

It wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone if I said I expect another answer in response.

This is a two part answer. The first is a reply to your assertion that we’ve all heard the business of my father’s appearance the night he died “Many times…”. You’re right, and I get a bit sick of referring to it.

But the reason I put it in there is that as far as I’m concerned I had a supernatural experience that night, even though I was an atheist at that time. ** But note - because I was an atheist, I didn’t want to believe it myself.** And I’ve had other supernatural experiences as well. But this time, they were as a Christian. And I know other people who have also had supernatural experiences.

Secondly I don’t have a problem with Zeitoun myself, having seen photos of the apparitions.

I have even fewer problems with Fatima in 1917, with three miracles - the dancing sun witnessed by 70,000 people; the fact they could stare at the sun for minutes on end without damaging their eyesight; and the sudden drying of ground and clothes pretty much instantaneously after hours of rain (energy requirement equivalent to a 10 megaton explosion according to one site).

And note the circumstances of both - Zeitoun between the 6 day war and the Yom Kippur War between her original nation Israel and the country where she took refuge during the Herodian threat, Egypt. An appeal for peace?

And Fatima in 1917, with World War I raging and millions of young men slaughtering each other on the Western Front, with the warning that if men didn’t change, there’d be another and worse war. Which eventuated, following an incredible aurora seen as far south as Italy, in January 1938 (a great light in the sky as predicted by the children).

As for proving the miracles of the Gospels, we can’t. But as far as we’re concerned they’re reliable documents with differences in minor points, such as you expect from honest witnesses. Ask a cop if his witnesses always give the same point of view of a traffic accident they’ve seen - there’ll be differences, but what won’t be in dispute was that there was a traffic accident.

And they were all written well before the first century was out, in an age when people relied far more on their memories that we do now, with all our modern recording methods, and bite sized TV segments. They don’t even mention the sacking of the temple in actual fact, which would be like a British historian writing thirty years after the depression, and not recording World War II as one of the consequences. Christ predicted it, but nowhere in the New Testament is that event actually recorded. It might be implied, depending on how you read the text, but it’s not stated.

Which indicates they were written before that date, or at least Q or other sources were in circulation before the destruction of the Temple by the Romans.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Pay attention, Tony. We’re talking about miracles that Jesus performed. Apparently all viewed and documented for later inclusion in the gospels (a couple of generations later) by well-educated trilingual members of the sceptical community. No proletariat allowed. Who were these people who recorded them at the time and were they the same people who dictated them to the gospel authors?

Your assertions depend completely on the premise that the Gospels were written “a couple of generations later” by those who were not first hand witnesses. That is a dubious premise upon which to ground such an important conclusion. Richard Bauckham, in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, shreds the reasons that anyone might have to support later authorship and shows that early authorship by first hand witnesses is a far more tenable position. It is pretty clear that Mark was the “secretary” for the preaching of Peter, Luke was who he claimed to be and a close associate of Paul, Matthew was the Apostle and John was John the Apostle or John the Elder, an early disciple of Jesus.

The claim that the writers had access to details that were thought inaccessible to them is also dismantled by Bauckham. Tim McGrew further addresses the question of undesigned coincidences among the Gospels showing that so many events and details in the Gospels demonstrate the quality of corroboration in ways that the authors could not have intentionally tried to write those into the text.

premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Bart-Ehrman-vs-Tim-McGrew-Round-1-Can-we-trust-the-Gospels

premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Ehrman-vs-McGrew-Round-2-Do-undesigned-coincidences-confirm-the-Gospels