Creation, Evolution, and faith

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All I'm saying, that in my brief studies, there is enough evidence for me to belief A, B, and C, in the Bible, thus I can believe X, Y, and Z.

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And all I am doing is pointing out that the real situation might be that you have decent evidence for A, weak circumstantial evidence for B and your "evidence" for C is based on falsehoods or even lies. And on top of that the jump from A, B and C to X, Y and Z is likely to be invalid to say the least.

Huntard,Fair question and for the record, I don't consider your question as a cheap shot, it's a legitimate question to ask.For one, the Illiad doesn't claim to be the Word of God and lay out the plan of salvation. The Iliad pretty much just claims (without so much as saying it) to be just that. You may say the same thing about the Bible, but the Bible CLAIMS to be the Word of God. A christian believes the Bible to be inspired by God himself through man...another claim the Iliad does not make...clearly being written by a fallable human being. That, in a nutshell, is the main difference.

I call BS on this.
No one doubts the existence of Pontius Pilate. But this in no way validates the bible. Letters? Do you mean Tacitus, written over 50 years after the event? This is no evidence for anything.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

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The Iliad pretty much just claims (without so much as saying it) to be just that. You may say the same thing about the Bible, but the Bible CLAIMS to be the Word of God.

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That's stretching the truth somewhat. The Quran claims to be the literal word of God, but the Bible does not. There are sections of the texts where the author claims to be relaying God's work, and there's that one vague reference to "inspiration" (which is unclear on the meaning and even which texts it refers to), but there is nothing that even clearly covers the whole of the Bible as we have it today.

Theodoric,As I said, it validates that PART of the Bible. I did not say it proved Adam and Eve, Eden, ect. I thought I was clear in that.I also hope you realize that 50 years after the event is sooner then what the Gospels were written. The earliest reference to the book of Matthew is probably in the Epistle to the Smyrnaeans by Ignatius of Antioch around 110 AD. Some have dated it as early as 50 AD but many critics of that date do so because of the destruction of Jerusalem between 80 and 100 AD.Mark is probably the earliest gospel written around 70 AD so if you accept the 50 years mark for the letter, or for anything prior to any of the gospels that independently validate portions of the Bible then you are admitting to an independent source outside of the Bible. Justin Martyr didn't write any of the gospels either.

I wasn't referring to the Quaran...I was addressing Huntard's question about the Illiad.By your post I get the impression that for the Bible to be the inspired Word of God, it probably should have said so in every single verse????The Bible as we know it today? The NT was put together, all 27 books by 363 AD. Almost 1800 years ago. So since their writings, not a whole lot has changed with them. There's certainly more controversy surrounding the OT due to the amount of years since their writings but the NT has been a part of western culture since well, since the beginning of western culture.Edited by Flyer75, : added last paragraph

What I am interested in is the logic and reason Paul used to reach this view. The GS rule only allows us to discern what Paul believed, not why he believed it. Again, defining the claim is not the same as using reason and logic to arrive at a claim. If I gave you a specific definition for "leprechuan" would that be a logical and well reasoned argument for the existence of leprechuans? I did. What you gave me was reason and evidence as it is applied in linguistics.

This is not a well reasoned argument. What you are saying is that once someone is correct that they can never be wrong. This fails every test of logic and reason. From what I have seen, no one has unearthed archaeological evidence for the existence of God. Yes, there is archaeological evidence for groups of people who believe in God, but not of God himself (or herself ).

You do know that many books were excluded from the NT, and that groups pushing apocryphal texts were strongly persecuted by the Roman Catholic church, right? At a minimum there were at least two to three gnostic gospels that were excluded. The books that did make it in were voted on, and the vote wasn't unanimous.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Well, I hate to use Huntard's argument on this, but I will. So letters written 200 years ago from John Adams to his wife Abigail aren't evidence of events that happened around them? Any historian shy of a conspiracy theorist counts these letters, over 200 years old, to be historically reliable.Edited by Flyer75, : No reason given.

I was wrong about Tacitus. He wrote in the 2nd decade of the 2nd century. That would 90 years after. Post the first gospels.
There is no contemporary corroboration of the christ of the bible. Tacitus is not contemporary, Josephus is not contemporary(and probably did not even write the pro-christ comments attributed to him). Show me something contemporary. Anything. Just in Martyr was even later than Tacitus. He wrote mid 2nd century.None of these people help your argument.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Yes, I do know all this. Quite frankly, 3 books that are in the NT now were originally left out in 170 AD or around there in the first cannon...that's why I used the 363 AD date and not the earlier date.Many people were persecuted over the cannon. During the reign of Emperor Diocletian from 284 to 305, the Bishop of Carthage, was ordered to hand over his books of the Bible and hid them instead, offering the authorities heretical writings instead. Persecution forced the church to be clear on the books that would be accepted as "scripture".From 200 AD to the time of the cannon the Roman Catholic church as you call it was not the Roman Catholic church as we think of today. It was in it's initial stages but was the church that had been started on Pentecost. It had obviously become more organized and was starting to have politics creep in. There was no Reformed Church yet, no Methodist Church, no Lutheran Church as we have today.

What a stupid argument. John and Abigail were writing about events contemporary to them. They were not writing about events 90-150 yeas in the past.
Fail. Try again.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Do we have verified letters written by Pilate to his wife that not only speak of the crucifixion but also Pilate's first hand account of the resurrection?You can't compare first hand accounts with second hand accounts written 50 years after the event. And even then, the simple act of writing something down does not make it true. You need verification from several primary sources.

You are correct. Tacitus and Josephus are the two earliest writings we have of Christ, outside of the Bible of course. Obviously you don't believe that Christ was the Son of God but if you don't believe he was actually a person, based on writings of Tacitus, who was not a believer then why do you believe that Galileo invented the telescope 400 years ago?