Summations Only

I've already point that out ringo.

Let's not bother.

Initially there is no evidence of guilt or innocence. Yet we lock up the defendant or otherwise take steps to insure that he is present for trial. The choice of which side to assume for trial purposes is not a matter of Occam's razor but a matter of not wanting to punish an innocent person. In so doing we take on the risk that we are freeing a guilty person. That is not required by Occam's razor either. The assignment of the burden of proof is simply a technique for conducting an investigation.On the other hand, since we are not talking about depriving John of his liberty in this case, we need not make the same assumption we make in a criminal trial, making it more akin to the will situation. The sole criteria is to find which position is most likely correct. So we don't just assume any piece of paper brought in front of us is authentic. And the fall back position is to divide things up using the state's formula and not to give a will of undetermined authenticity any weight at all.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Feel free to repeat yourself instead of being evasive.Edited by ringo, : Fixed quote.

If you are really interested, you can read back a few posts to see where I quoted you and gave my comments.Is there really any point to continuing this?

No one has questioned the fact that authorship attribution has a long history; what they point out is that long tradition says absolutely nothing about reality or actuality of authorship.Once again though you just refuse to provide any evidence to support your position.While there is certainly evil so far there has never been any evidence that supports the existence of some "devil" or any explanation of how a Bible could be a threat if such a critter as the devil did exist. Or would you like to explain how such a threat might exist?I would also ask how my acceptance of any tradition says anything about whether or not I think any attribution is correct or authoritative; though I will admit that the evidence in favor of the Buddha's existence and authorship is far greater than exists for Jesus.

Also, Jesus, if he existed, evidently did not write anything and no one that knew him seems to have written anything.Edited by Theodoric, : No reason given.

Well remember that the Buddha as royalty was the product of an excellent education and his ministry lasted far longer and was widespread. Jesus though had a very short ministry and was limited to a really small geographic area.

Right. Nobody I know ever met John, therefore John didn't write the gospel of John or the Letters of John or the book of Revelation, since clearly somebody I know would have to have known him if he did. Of course nobody I know ever met any of the supposed ghost writers of John either but that doesn't matter, the fact that we actually have a name, John, and no name for "them" makes it far more likely that "they" wrote it than the man with the name, who identifies himself in many ways as well as being identified by other writers, but still the no-name ghost crew is far more believable to us moderns than the actual named man. Or Matthew, who also has a presence in the gospels and in Acts, or Luke who clearly knew Paul. But Paul too, gosh, all the letters imputed to him, no no no, can't be any real Paul, has to be some unnamed person or persons. And of course despite the fact that four separate historical accounts describe Jesus He can't possibly have existed because we've never known anyone who knew Matthew or Mark or Luke or John and besides some of gospels repeat the other gospels which proves, gosh I'm not sure what but it's not good, and besides, Luke wasn't even there and we can't vouch for any of those names, but obviously somebody wrote all that, probably lots of unnamed somebodies and we can believe in them just not in the named somebodies. And the fact that bazillions of people believed the accounts and believe in Jesus and even claim to know Him personally, well we KNOW that's bogus. Just because we know. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes you have your faith, I know. What you don't have has evidence, provenance or even originals. I know, I know, when you have faith none of that matters.

Faith is always based on evidence, despite what Phat says. My evidence is the history of these things, the multiple attestations by others back two thousand years. You want an unreal kind of evidence, nothing I can do for you there.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No, I want the same level of evidence wanted for any historical figure or event. Jesus should not get some sort of historical bye just because of religion.

Curiously enough, this resembles more closely your own arguments about geology than it does any argument anyone has made here. I'll agree that the argument is ridiculous.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

How about a pointer to an attestation from two thousand years ago? That would be from one of John's contemporaries acknowledging his authorship. I'd agree that such an attestation is evidence. So where is it?

Or a contemporary saying anything about John.