Dealing with Atheists

[AntiTheist]

Paul (and Luke) are passing on the testimony given them by people who had not all gone crazy in 20 years

They’re telling stories. Now the stories may be based on a real guy named Jesus, but stories are not sufficient to establish that supernatural things happened.

Yes, but I don’t think you’re really using the analogy properly.

The alien abduction analogy is not an attempt to compare the claims – I’m comparing standards of evidence in each case. You could replace “alien abduction” with any extraordinary claim and the point would be exactly the same: stories are not sufficient to demonstrate the truth of supernatural claims.

If many people agree on the facts, we don’t doubt that they sensed these facts on that date in that place. If we still consider the event to be a priori impossible, then we think “they saw a weather balloon” or “it must have been a lighthouse”. In other words, we do not live our lives doubting the testimony of groups of normal people.

Sure, but we don’t have the eyewitness testiony of “many people” in the case of the Gospels. We have stories written by a few anonymous authors decades after these events happened, and none of the authors, to our knowledge, are eyewitnesses.

They’re a bunch of stories, and while I think it’s likely that they were based on a real person (or maybe real people), I see no reason to accept the supernatural parts of the stories.

I’ll just apply the same standards we apply to other ancient manuscripts. I do not doubt that Socrates really was executed and I do not doubt that his student recorded the event. Likewise, I do not doubt that Jesus was executed and his followers recorded the event. They also claim an extraordinary event happened, and they anticipate objections to this. They note that eye-witnesses not of the inner Christian circle can be and have been consulted in the local area.

As you imply, there are no magical claims made about Socrates, so I have no problem accepting that there probably was a guy named Socrates – and even if there wasn’t, what’s important about Socrates are his ideas. As long as someone came up with those ideas, then “Socrates” – if we’re defining Socrates as “the guy who came up with these ideas” – absolutely existed.

With Jesus, what’s important are the supernatural claims, and we don’t have a single contemporary eyewitness account of him, much less the supernatural claims made about him.

I’m not sure where the Bible claims that non-Christian eyewitnesses are available, but it’s irrelevant since we don’t have any accounts from them and there’s no way to tell if they even existed and, even if they did exist, whether what they thought they saw was accurate.

I’ll say it again: stories are not evidence for supernatural claims.

Even if we had autographed copies of texts that we were 100% sure were eyewitnesses, reporting all kinds of miracles, it would not be evidence that something supernatural happened.

I don’t know exactly which of the theories about the Gospels you subscribe to so it’s no use wading into that unless you want to tell me.

I don’t have “theories” about the Gospels. They’re ancient texts that tell stories. Those stories are probably based on a real guy, but they’re insufficient to substantiate claims about the supernatural.

I suppose I could disbelieve everything in history.

You don’t need to. Just disbelieve magical claims for which there is no evidence.

For example, there are accounts of generals in Roman history that attribute supernatural events and magic to some of these figures. Now, I accept that these generals exist (there’s other, corroborating evidence that most of them did), but I don’t accept the supernatural aspects of their stories for the same exact reason that I don’t accept the supernatural aspects of the Jesus story: stories are not evidence of the supernatural.

I’m certainly tempted to apply my desires to it.

On this particular point, I would side with your religion and urge you to resist temptation.

 

[Pons]

Hm, this thread has gotten a bit off topic from the OP, I hope folks don’t mind if I stray from the current topic a little and go back to the main point…

I’ve been reading a lot lately on this argument, concerning whether the life of Jesus may have been based on various other religious stories that had been circulating the Mediterranean area before Jesus was said to have lived. The OP’ friends are obviously a little ignorant toward the actual argument that some theologians are making. It’s not just the death and resurrection they claim to have been copied from some Pagan/Greek/Egyptian God-figure, but almost every aspect of His life as depicted in the Gospels.

See these helpful and informative articles by forumite PhilVaz.

bringyou.to/apologetics/JesusEvidenceCrucifiedSaviors.htm
bringyou.to/apologetics/HORUS.htm