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Aloysium
Guest
sorry, i was trying to be funny, 
it only sometimes works:shrug:
my bad
consider me reprimanded:blush:
it only sometimes works:shrug:
my bad
consider me reprimanded:blush:
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aprilfloyd
Guest
me likeysorry, i was trying to be funny,
it only sometimes works:shrug:
my bad
consider me reprimanded:blush:
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Bradski
Guest
I wasnāt being too serious either, so all good. Takes a while to get someoneās sense of humour. Unless you use those smilies, which I donāt like using. Or PRās video snippets.
Then again, I get some comments in some forums that you think - Jeez, that must be a joke and treat it as such, and then it turns out not to be serious.
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PRmerger
Guest
Ah, I see what your position is now.
The gospel writers were liars. They embellished. No one told them that they had actually seen Jesus rise from the dead. But they were simply following some obscure OT prophecies.
Is this a correct explication of how you think Christianity ran with a story that never really happened?
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Peter_Plato
Guest
It is interesting how you draw conclusions from evidence. It was merely written that the disciples saw Jesus, therefore they didnāt see anyone. What is it that warrants that conclusion based upon āit was just written?ā
Apparently because the evidence that actual Apostles may not have directly written the accounts means they definitely did not and, therefore, they could not have seen Jesus.
You seem to have a penchant for moving quickly and unreservedly from lack of perfect proof to therefore didnāt happen. You do understand the concept of warrant in drawing conclusions, do you not?
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Bradski
Guest
Iām not saying they were liars and Iām not saying it didnāt happen. There were misinformed and wrote something that they believed was true. With a little embellishment. That doesnāt make them liars in my book.
The evidence is therefore, for me, very slim indeed that what they were writing about actually happened as they described it. And what is purported to have happened is so unlikely in any case that it would need very strong evidence indeed for me to consider that it might be true.
A few people writing conflicting accounts many years after the event (without any definite proof the the authors were the ones claimed) who had reasons to tell the story as they would want it to have been written is not what I call proof of anything.
To get it over the line one needs faith. Thatās what you have and I donāt. The question arises, do you need faith to believe it or do you need to believe it to some extent to have faith. I think that the way PR described it earlier, the latter is the case.
Iām a skeptic by nature. So much so that you could describe it as a fault. It causes problems in that I can on times be very difficult to persuade that something is true. And even when I do accept it, I still find myself questioning it.
I thing that doubt should be the default position. Doesnāt make life easy, thoughā¦
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PRmerger
Guest
Youāre not saying the Resurrection didnāt happen? Really? Youāre open to the possibility that it did?
But Bradski,* who* misinformed them?
Letās start from the position that after Jesus died and was buried, there he stayed.
Now, tell me how you believe this Resurrection story got promotedā¦and repeated. Until finally 4 men heard about it and decided to write it down.
Keep in mind that while the story was being promoted there would have been individuals around who could have attested to it being a hoax. All they had to do was provide the corpse of Jesus, right?
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PRmerger
Guest
What do you think of this commentary about skepticism, Bradski:
"But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. . . . As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. . . . The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.ā --GK Chesterton
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Peter_Plato
Guest
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1-4)
Either Luke was lying or incompetent, since he claimed to have ācarefully investigated everythingā ā¦ āthingsā¦just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses.ā
This sounds like someone who relied upon direct evidence handed down from eyewitnesses to write a complete and orderly account. All this care and attention to detail on the part of Luke, a physician, would seem to preclude misinformation and embellishment. So he was either intentionally attempting to deceive or simply incompetent. Misinformed just does not show up on the radar screen.
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JamesATyler
Guest
Morality has itās basis in love not law. Good law is a expression of love. Jesus stated the two most important commandments. Both are commandments to love. If that love exists in you then those commandments are āwritten in the heartā. All good law derives from love in the heart for God and neighbor. Therefore, even a society starting from scratch with no written law will develop law that echos the love in their hearts.
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cornbread_r2
Guest
The Gospel of Matthew is supposed to have been written by an eyewitness. His gospel is the only one that records the raising of many dead people who appeared to many people in Jerusalem after Jesusās death (Matthew 27:51-54). It seems improbable that an event that extraordinary would have gone unnoticed, if for no other reason than for the fact that there would have been a lot of empty tombs in addition to Jesusās. If Luke was so meticulous and complete with his research, why didnāt he (or any other contemporary source) mention that extraordinary event?
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Aloysium
Guest
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cornbread_r2
Guest
Faith without reason? I donāt think thatās allowed.Maybe his ox ate it.
Seriously, at what point does one just have faith?
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Peter_Plato
Guest
The absence of that event from his account does not argue against Luke as a reliable or credible source, but rather for it. Luke was writing to a different audience and never seemed to have spent time in or around Jerusalem. He was of Greek background, likely from Antioch and lived for a time in Troas. As such, he personally may not have had the means by which to verify, to his satisfaction, the empty tombs event and therefore could not reliably defend its inclusion if questioned on it by his Greco-Roman audience. That seems to argue for him being meticulous because he did not succumb to including events beyond his means to verify. The exclusion of the event from Lukeās account does not mean it didnāt occur, but merely that Luke had no way to verify it to a standard he could live with.
Even today, there are claimed miraculous events that some will accept but other believers may find the evidence insufficient. That some individuals do not subscribe to or accept fully the supernatural or miraculous nature of an event does not add up to a case against it occurring, but merely that the evidence is not sufficient to be persuasive to a particular individualās way of thinking.
Keep in mind that the canon of inspired Scripture was not set at the time of Luke so he had no way of knowing which events were authentic beyond his means to verify them.
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Aloysium
Guest
once you have faith it all makes sense
having faith that the world of the senses is not merely illusory has prompted mankind to explore the natural world; if we believed the natural world were essentially magical weād be looking for spells and potions
the spiritual world has its particular structure; if you think of it as some sort of appendix to the physical, you will never explore and understand it
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PRmerger
Guest
True, that.
Fideism is rejected by the Catholic Church.
Now you have to proffer some argument that proves that itās unreasonable to believe that what St. Matthew wrote in his gospel is false if none of the other 3 gospel narratives alludes to it.
By what reasoning do we assume that St. Matthew wrote a lie because the other 3 gospel writers did not include it?
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cornbread_r2
Guest
Iāll start another thread in the scripture forum in a day or two addressing Peter Platoās response and your questions as well. If this thread is still open when I do that, Iāll let you all know here; otherwise Iāll PM you.
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aprilfloyd
Guest
Eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable. It is harder to imagine a story not changing over 2,000 years. The bible used in the UK has itās roots in the 1600s and was very much ātidied upā or ācleaned upā by itās authors to represent the views of the time.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
You havenāt looked much into the textual reliability of the Old and New Testaments have you? Your points here are merely general ones which donāt adequately address the specific and unique characteristics of Biblical texts. As such, your critique is of little value. What you can or cannot imagine is irrelevant to the issue.
I suggest you watch this video by Dr. Gary Habermas (begin at about 7:54 on the timecode) to get a sense of why your critique is simply uninformed on the question of reliability.
youtu.be/XEGXaGif0Ow
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
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